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Should Apple Open Source the iPhone?
An anonymous reader writes "Given the OpeniBoot project is just a breath away from getting Android onto the iPhone, maybe Apple should consider opening up the platform. This post has five reasons, but I think there are far more. Without open source, Apple will find itself in the same position as today's Microsoft in seven years."
are doomed to repeat it
one would think apple would have learned from their past mistake of a less closed platform overtaking them and nearly sending the company down the drain
A huge part of the reason why people buy the iPhone is the unified user experience. Yes, I'd like a platform that I don't have to pay $100 to develop on...
But my mother doesn't care. she wants a smartphone that "Just Works": its easy to use, with lots of apps.
Apple has provided a great unified user experience on the iPhone, and thats the secret. Its a smartphone my MOTHER can use.
Opening up the platform wouldn't help.
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Should Apple Open Source the iPhone? The answer is threefold:
1. We must consider that if hackers mark off the natural paths that official developer programs later pave over and make safe for the less adventurous and smart companies know this, then Apple should - and will - pay attention to their hackers. (Google Maps is a great case in point. It became the mapping platform of choice because, rather than shutting down the early mashup hackers, it quickly figured how to pour fuel on the fire that they'd started.) Despite the official disapproval, Apple knows that the hacker interest in the iPhone is a great boost to their program and their goals. (Witness the fact that the Apple store in Cambridge MA allowed Rob Malda to suck his own cock and to present on iPhone development in a meeting at the store with cum dripping from his jaws.)
2. The open API has a great deal of overlap with the official API. So getting up and running with the open toolchain will help developers get a head start. But it's also more powerful than the official toolchain, and will let developers continue to push Apple in interesting new directions.
3. The demand is there. We should never kid ourselves on this. The number of slots in the official API program is far smaller than the apparent demand. We published the book, and it sold out immediately, indicating that we were right. Information about the official API as soon as the Apple NDA is lifted should be published, but for now, the iPhone is one of the most important new platforms in the market today, and one that developers should be exploring as deeply (and as soon) as possible.
sm2704
one would think apple would have learned from their past mistake of a less closed platform overtaking them and nearly sending the company down the drain
Apple went down the drain more from the clones. Look, Apple's whole thing is about the entire consumer experience from store to computer hardware to boot. It always has been and hopefully always will be. To say that Apple should just be like Microsoft, is kinda crazy. Apple doesn't have the money to compete with Microsoft or Dell and so the real brand differentiator is that they have an entirely different business model.
This is my sig.
It's poorly worded. I read it as, "In seven years, Apple might find itself in the position of Microsoft today [in 2008]."
Microsoft's market share is going down, but the grandparent meant to point out that Microsoft of 2008 has just under 90% of the market. Apple should be so lucky.
oh god yes. there's a new kid in town, he's much cooler, and doesn't whine when you compete with or circumvent his business model. his name is android, and there's already 4 phones slated for release early next year that ship with android. /me waits for htc touch pro to get official android support.
and what's the deal with the list? is /. turning into digg?
I don't care about open source, just give me relatively open platform like OS X. I don't mind if the underlying OS is closed source so long as the dev tools, APIs, and application installation are all open. As long as I know that I can release my application to be installed on other iPhones without going through iTunes (or dev tools), that's all I'm really asking for. I think iTunes still provides a great way to sell and distribute applications, but there's no way I'm developing for a platform where a company can decide on a whim whether or not I can distribute my application.
The development and the iron-clad ties to AT&T are the two reasons I didn't get an iPhone, and this is coming from a huge Mac fanboy. The rest of my family got iPhones, and it's definitely a great phone.
Who cares? The same fuckwits who run out and buy a Mac and then install and run only Linux on it.
C'mon, let's be fair here. They did change, and they did get a hell of a lot better.
That has nothing to do with whether or not you create good products, which I will admit some of Apple's are. Can you use a Zune or a Sansa MP3 player instead of an iPod? Sure you can. Can you use a normal cell phone instead of an iPhone? Of course. That doesn't mean that the iPod and iPhone (or OS X or whatever) are not good products, whether they're hyped or not. Look past the hype and make up your own mind.
That's just the deranged fanboys fapping it up. It's no different than the perception that Windows is some sort of existential nightmare and Linux is perfect and has no problem. It's all in the context. Everybody cheers their platform on.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
Which is what Apple fans need to REALLY worry about, the "cult of Steve" that has been built up around Steve Jobs. So many of the consumers, media, bloggers and day traders have so built up the "cult of Steve" bit that if Steve Jobs gets hit by a truck tomorrow and dies their stock dies with him. Just look at how the stock dove when the "Steve is dying" rumor hit a few months back? If I was on the board at Apple I would be pushing Steve to make sure his #2 man was very visible and making as much noise in the press as possible to negate the "cult of Steve" effect. Otherwise when Steve buys the farm they better damned well hope they can bring back the Woz just to keep the mythology going.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Given all the advantages of open source it's hard to understand why it never really got a bigger foothold and now it seems to be little more than that... a foothold that those involved are trying to keep in fear from falling off the mountain altogether.
Is this a purposeful troll? Linux hasn't done all that well on the desktop, but open source in general has been wildly successful. Open source operating systems are widely used on servers. Firefox has become a very popular browser and continues to grow, Safari is the number 3 browser, and lots of people use some kind of open source applications or tools on a daily basis. Even Apple's OS is largely based on an open source project.
And on top of all that, Linux is starting to do well on the desktop. Those little netbooks are becoming popular, and Novell just announced recently that their sales are way up (I assume at least some of that is desktop Linux).
First, old story, old argument. Apple will never fully open source its products and will fight to keep them closed. It's who they are, and when I use my Apple MacBook I appreciate OS X all the more when I boot back into it from Ubuntu. OS X just works because of Apple's tight integration of software and hardware. As long as my Touch works, why would I load Android and fight to get the features that I already have? For a hobby? Apple isn't selling millions of iPods to hobbyists, they're selling them to those who want their product to just work.
Second, since it's been brought up, does the thought of a Windows based OS in your car frighten anybody else as much as it does me? I mean, I've been forced to re-boot million-dollar servers during high-load times due to to Window's bugs, I don't want to have to re-boot my car on the fraking highway...
Vista is doing fine????
That would be why take up is vitrually non existant in the corporate/education sector. Vista is an epic fail.
Every single person I know who has a Vista machine wants to dongrade to XP. Must be some strange new meaning of the word "Fine" I haven't previously encountered.
"iTunes + iPod are killing everyone else in the music space."
Digital sales are 20% of retail. Apple sells 70% of digital. That's a total market share of 14%. How is that "killing everyone else"? There are plenty of other digital sellers (Amazon), other players (Zune, Archos, cell phones), and services and models (Rhapsody, XM).
Further, in many ways Apple acts as an enabler in the space. iTunes provides a platform for lesser known artists. The iPod/iPhone provides a home for Amazon's MP3's, Audible's audiobooks, to podcasts, to YouTube videos, and so on. SJ recognized long ago that content makes his products MORE valuable, not less.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
So, if Apple has more money in the bank than Microsoft and has more money in the bank than Dell's market cap, exactly why should Apple change its strategy to be more like Dell?
This is my sig.
And there I was thinking its just an expression.
I "picked it up" hanging around Slashdot.
Amusingly, that makes you one of the people you refer to, and I am suitably impressed by your taste.
So, would you prefer
1. Unmitigated disaster.
2. Bloated DRM riddled piece of shit.
3. Pile of slow inefficient rubbish that no one wants.
When the range of people I know that want to be rid of Vista goes from teenagers to middle aged housewives to the elderly, I think that is a fair spread.
In between posts another person came in to my office begging to be freed of Vista.
Still, I guess Vista fanboys( I still dont believe anyone is THAT stupid, but there you are) dont care about facts.
Well said. A few examples:
I still use Linux at work. Ubuntu no less, touted by many as the most user-friendly desktop Linux out there. Yesterday I downloaded Acrobat Reader, because that bloated piece of rubbish is a better pdf-viewer than the standard viewer that comes with Ubuntu. On my Macs I never had the feeling I needed something better than Preview.
A friend of mine recently switched back from Ubuntu to Windows because she couldn't get her microphone working. What the..?!!
-- Cheers!