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Apple's iPhone Developer Crisis
David Gerard writes "iPhone development sounds closed-shop but simple — apply to be a developer, put application on the App Store, you and Apple make money. Except Apple can't keep up with the request load — whereas getting a developer contract used to take a couple of days, it's now taking months. Some early developers' contracts are expiring with no notice of renewal options. And Apple has no idea what's going on or the state of things. If you want to maintain a completely closed system, it helps if you can actually keep up with it."
Reader h11:6 points out news of a recent study which suggests that "Android's open source nature will give it a boost over Apple's iPhone," and thus take the lead in sales as soon as three years from now. It will be interesting to see how they deal with the flood of proposed apps as their popularity rises.
Yep and in three years will be the year of linux! I can't wait.
The fact that all naysayers of the iPhone try to compare spec sheets as a way to build their case against it shows that they just don't get it. It's the total package. Hardware, software, integrated together to work seemlessly and intuitively. No one else is doing that. You don't have to have bleeding edge hardware to build a great device, you have to make it usable by the masses, and Apple has done that very well.
I don't root for Android one way or the other, but I fail to see how it can surpass the iPhone in mass market appeal because they will never have the synergy between the hardware and software. Open source is all fine and dandy, but it doesn't necessarily mean better.