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Devs Bet Big On Android Over Apple's iOS
CWmike writes "A majority of mobile app developers see Android as the smart bet over the long run even as they vote for Apple's iOS in the short term, according to a survey conducted jointly by Appcelerator and IDC. The survey polled more than 2,300 developers who use Appcelerator's Titanium cross-platform compiler to produce iOS and Android native apps. Of the 2,300 polled, 59% said that Android had the 'best long-term outlook,' compared with just 35% who pegged Apple's iOS with that label. But three out of four said that iOS offers the best 'near-term' outlook, with 76% tagging Apple's operating system as the best revenue opportunity."
Given the way that Apple treats 3rd party devs and the locked down phone, it would be very surprising if Apple keeps their loyalty without making a major course correction. Those dick moves like randomly rejecting applications and stealing functionality out of apps for the base system isn't really endearing them with the people they need to keep the appstore vibrant.
This is not really a surprise considering it is the only mainstream open platform not tied to any particular hardware.
Apple users are used to paying for costly proprietary applications, so of course there is a better revenue opportunity. I just find it so disgusting that there are so many developers all of a sudden interested in making money from their code. It seems Apple is doing more to destroy the environment created by the open source community than any other company...
So among cross platform developers, just over half said one platform was better than another.
Talk about sampling bias. This just in, 70% of AppleInsider users think iOS is great, and 99% of lactose intolerant people think Ice Cream suck
big deal.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
While Apple's market is very dynamic, and quick to adopt new products (even when very expensive), it is unfortunately a very small market overall. It's estimated that roughly one in ten people are homosexuals, and only a small number of those people are hipsters with trust funds. So well over 90% of the population will have absolutely no interest in buying Apple's products.
We've seen this trend with most of their other offerings. Mac OS X has never managed to exceed around 2% to 3% of the consumer personal computer market (that is, we're not even counting large corporate purchases). It's just how Apple's markets work.
...considering that I just bought this Droid X that I'm posting from :)
Perhaps I'm missing something, but isn't this effectively a survey of people who are undecided? After all, isn't that why they're using a cross-platform kit rather than writing right to Android/iOS?
I would think looking at the developers who have firmly committed themselves to a platform as a better metric. The uncommitted developers have nothing to lose.
Android will be more popular in the long run for one simple reason. Cost...
The lockdown goes to vendors that can use iOS (1), US telcos that you can use (1), developer programs you can use (1, with variants), approval process for applications (1, draconian), years you can wait for a CDMA phone (divide by 0 error), and of course, the all important under 18 years old experience, meaning bleached and sanitized content (arbitrary, sometimes capricious).
Yet Android has its lockdowns, vendors with dubious business plans, hardware that breaks both in and out of warranty. Couple this to Google, who is a white knight in sheep's clothing, having ostensible control over Android future.
Ok, I like wild and wooly rather than the device of (1).
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
This will play out like the PC clone wars. The vertically integrated and expensive manufacturer will be buried by the clones and their common OS.
Now I'm an android user, and I'm registered to dev on both iOS and Android (with pet projects for each), but the set sampled in this survey is anything but statistically sound.
Rejecting apps is only the tip of the iceberg. Objective-c is Apples attempt to co-opt developers. This has backfired. Developers like freedom to own what they make and not be locked into a solution. I can use C,C++ and java on any desktop system really easily. Rejecting apps is all part of Apples attempt to lock you in. Conform or die. Resistance if futile.
Apples attempt to assimilate developers will fail.
Android ports of our existing iOS apps are unlikely, at least until the NDK is complete and native apps allowed.
Porting once to Clutter via the C API would be the preferable route, assuming it's as widely supported as it deserves to be. Google are including clutter in their Chromium OS so there's hope for the future even if Android and it's Dalvik VM continue to suck.
I took a poll among the neighborhood wooofers. The overwhelming consensus is that cats are bad news, good-for-nothing waste of cat food.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
You do realize that Apple has paid out over a billion dollars to developers? I always enjoy these off the cuff statemetns about how poorly Apple Developers are treated when the simple fact is, that it is a lucrative market, which is why 3 of 4 still plan to develop for it in the immediate future. (ref: http://news.cnet.com/8301-31021_3-20007010-260.html)
Assuming they create a good product, they are treated very well, getting an instant distribution model that functions at break even. Not a bad deal at all.
The simple fact is that a huge majority of apps are approved within 2 weeks. Of those that are rejected, almost unilaterally they violated the developer agreement, and then complain about it after the fact. Google Voice was a good example. At the time it was developed, it offered unlimited texting, which duplicated core functionality, which of course is listed in black in white the agreement.
I know it's popular to love to hate Apple lately, but the simple fact is that the majority of apps are rejected because the developer took a chance and ignored the agreement. I will grant that some of these rejections seem a bit stupid.
Given that 95% percent are accepted without any issue at all, leaving only 5% of questionable apps, the argument that Apple is rejecting apps willy nilly is not exactly a good reflection of reality.
with 76% tagging Apple's operating system as the best revenue opportunity
translation: where you can even sell an app that does nothing but make fart sounds
Unfortunately, it doesn't have anything to do with what developers WANT to do or WHERE they prefer to program, because at the end of the day (for most developers) it all boils down to making some sort of income on the work they do. To do this they have to go where the customers are spending money on their apps and/or where the customers are viewing their ads.
Instead of believing articles like this, I think it's wiser to find a particular niche thats lacking on a mobile device or find something that can be implemented better and create it. If your app fulfills either of these scenerios, then you will make a profit.
The real Sig captains the Northwestern. This one captains
I think Apples walled garden approach may result in more per-user spend. But that's about it. A many times larger user base, I don't see Android's market share plateauing until it is many times that of iOS. It always makes sense to target the larger user base as a starting point (but only as a crude rule of thumb of course). This is a repeat of the Mac vs PC era and again Apple is just to selfish.
However, this time the OS competing with the Apple camp is *really good* and Android is so far ahead of everything it's not funny. Apple is being forced to eat humble pie and add features that Android pioneered and thus demonstrated Apple was wrong about, it's gotta be a sign.
Oh and the Android development community is fscking awesome.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
What are you talking about? The only ObjC code you need to write is stuff that binds to Apples frameworks and there's a "Toll Free" bridge for C types via Core Foundation.
Google attempted to co-opt JavaME developers for Android with the end result that nobody sane wants to write for their platform. If 100% native apps written in C/C++ (or even Go) were possible, I'd already be developing for android and I suspect I'm not alone on that front.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selection_bias
speculation is shit. who cares...
They can speculate all they want. Meanwhile, Apple will probably expand their WWDC to > 10k developers and they'll still speculate that the majority of devs are betting on Android.
You do realize that Apple has paid out over a billion dollars to developers? I always enjoy these off the cuff statemetns about how poorly Apple Developers are treated when the simple fact is, that it is a lucrative market, which is why 3 of 4 still plan to develop for it in the immediate future. (ref: http://news.cnet.com/8301-31021_3-20007010-260.html)
Assuming they create a good product, they are treated very well, getting an instant distribution model that functions at break even. Not a bad deal at all.
The simple fact is that a huge majority of apps are approved within 2 weeks. Of those that are rejected, almost unilaterally they violated the developer agreement, and then complain about it after the fact. Google Voice was a good example. At the time it was developed, it offered unlimited texting, which duplicated core functionality, which of course is listed in black in white the agreement.
I know it's popular to love to hate Apple lately, but the simple fact is that the majority of apps are rejected because the developer took a chance and ignored the agreement. I will grant that some of these rejections seem a bit stupid.
Given that 95% percent are accepted without any issue at all, leaving only 5% of questionable apps, the argument that Apple is rejecting apps willy nilly is not exactly a good reflection of reality.
Extremely well said. Sorry to have to watch your comment get modded down by the anti-apple crowd :(
speculation is shit. who cares...
True. This is a survey of developers who are already using a cross-platform development tool. How about they take the same survey of developers who are using XCode - are they considering Android as the better long term bet? What percentage of iOS developers are using cross-platform tools?
USERS paid developers over $1 billion, and Apple snatched over $300,000. Saying Apple has paid $1 billion to developers is like saying VISA has paid companies $1 zillion dollars. Nice try, Steve Jobs!
I'm surprised nobody has mentioned jqTouch. When coupled with phoneGap, you get an incredibly powerful *platform independent* combination. This is why the web was developed. People who try to force you to exchange free information through proprietary technology that you must pay to use should be shunned.
35% of mobile application developers are FUCKING RETARDS.
Did your survey determine which 35%?
Cry over your Starbucks Hipster Douchebags.
Enjoy your inevitable market-share irrelevance. Again!
LOL
Ah Dude. You're telling people that do not want to be mainstream that they're products will never be mainstream.
Do you also go onto white supremacist websites and post
"You'll never be Black! Suck it Whitey!" ?
RIP America
July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
The biggest PITA isn't the whole app store process etc. its the fact that developers cannot:
a)You cannot make your own dynamic libraries, only static ones(though the OS obviously supports it, you can include any of Apple's own dyilibs in your project) I don't need to go into why dynamic linking is much better than static....
b)There really isn't a clean way to talk between applications. You can send files, but it's really a drop box, I can COPY(not link!) something into another apps area, but after that the file is no longer mine. So if I want to send something to another app to process and then get it back to do some processing by my application I have to hope the app tells me about the changes, and considering the app may not even know I exist(nor should it, thats the beauty of decoupling), thats a lot to ask.
I can *sort* of understand 1 from a performance standpoint, if you allow user created dynamic libraries every time the application is swapped out of memory you have to find which dynamic libraries it uses, make sure nobody else is using them, then unload them. However as memory increases the rationale behind needing to constantly load/unload them starts to disappear.....
Maybe Apple will change it's tune, but long term I think you will be able to do more interesting things with Android because it allows for the creation of dynamic libraries and inter-application communication.
Monstar L
Just like those evil retail stores. I hear they buy the product for less than they sell it!
I can't wait to write apps for the Android tablets that Google isn't going to allow to access the Marketplace, openness and freedom ftw!
Both wanted walled gardens. Both played hard. Both backed down in some areas of code dev when exposed in public. Lesson learned, you will be used and they wanted total control.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
"You do realize that Apple has paid out over a billion dollars to developers?"
Thats like getting a nice home in East Germany and a non Trabant car.
You still have no freedom to code or install a better OS. People dont "hate Apple" they are just aware Google, MS, Apple ect are building some very thick and high walls around mobile computing.
Why should we not get the same freedoms we enjoy on most desktops?
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Any application worth it's bandwidth is going to go cross platform in time. Android has a lot of ground to cover and if the tablets get any real marketshare it will take off. I don't need a culture with only one or two platforms. This isn't 1982 where the home PC market had serious restrictions based on platform.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
Just like those evil retail stores. I hear they buy the product for less than they sell it!
AHAHAHAHA
Mod this up!
I reflect your pompous signature back upon you.
I think you might have forgotten a few zeros there, otherwise I don't see your point. Apple only taking .03%? Doesn't seem that bad...
Most Android devices are more locked down than any iDevice. The ones that aren't tend to be more expensive than the equivalent iDevice. I'm actually surprised Google hasn't worked with Chinese manufacturers to make sure some cheap Android devices weren't more developer friendly. I'm not sure why these cheap devices aren't more friendly since the manufacturer isn't making any effort to benefit from the closed state of the devices.
I think Apple needs to be more clear in why they do or don't reject apps and it shouldn't be for political reasons. If there is a technical reason they should be clear on why and be open to change as the devices become more powerful or developers suggest workarounds. If there is a business reason (such as not allowing smut) they should be clear that they think it'll give the best experience for end-users. If anything though I think Apple should be more strict about maintaining quality. They need to make all apps pass a vigorous quality test that checks for stability, security, ease of use, and simply delivering what it claims to. Customers have to trust that when they buy an iOS app it won't suck.
Stealing functionality is a hard issue. If it makes the base better then they need to do it but if it's really anything novel they should compensate the app developer. Even if it's not really novel but well done they'd be foolish not to at least hire the developer. What better way to find the best people to develop iOS? Likewise they'd be stupid to crush the jailbreak community. It's much better to hire the best from the pool of developers there.
Of course for the most part none of this really matters. The more difficult it is to distribute iOS apps the better for the developers that stick to it so long as Apple maintains good sales and iDevice users remain more prone to spending money than Android users (who are actually pretty negative about paid apps). This is a good reason for maintaining strict quality controls. Users will be more willing to buy and there will be less noise in the system to keep people from finding and buying your app. It doesn't matter how easy it is to develop for Android if you're not going to make money doing it.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
When you're on the top, the only way to go is down. While iOS isn't the zenith of smartphone computing worldwide (Nokia is), it has a lion's share of the market and is expanding tremendously daily. The only problem is that people are fickle, especially when it comes to electronics, and with Android catching up quicker by the quarter, Apple's long-term strategy is definitely a good bet to hold on to.
Now, Apple isn't going to disappear in the smartphone space any time soon. It would have to do something incredibly stupid, or get trumped by something incredibly and undeniably better (iPhone 4 is really tough to beat), for that to happen. However, Android certainly has the potential to become the de facto alternative mobile platform, which is just as good with a market as wide as this. If they can make significant inroads into RIM and Nokia's space while putting Windows Mobile out of the picture for good (which they are certainly capable of), there's no doubt on my mind that this will happen. As an added bonus, it's barrier to entry for application development is pretty low and very cross-applicable (at least in the most trivial sense -- Java is used in so many other places whereas Objective-C is not).
As someone else said on here a few days ago, is it possible to have an entire article rated as Flamebait?
Those dick moves like randomly rejecting applications and stealing functionality out of apps for the base system isn't really endearing them with the people they need to keep the appstore vibrant.
devs care about where the money is. apple wins if they can keep their app market more lucrative, regardless of what devs say they plan to do in the future.
You know what's funny? With all this rush to market with tablets, everybody's saying "GOOGLE" is going to take on Apple. Sorry, but it's "Samsung," "HTC," "RIM," "Dell," and the other hardware manufacturers that are going to take on Apple, using their own customized versions of "GOOGLE'S" OS, which will be locked down and as proprietary and restricted as the HARDWARE makers and their CARRIER partners can make it. And that assumes that Google opens up the Marketplace for tablets, as well, instead of restricting them from it.
Which means that Android developers will be writing apps to a dog's dinner of 15-20 different screen sizes & resolutions, hardware capabilities, and UI variants, all of which will probably be locked down and network-locked to various carriers and data plan models where they're 3G. Think the maintenance burden on any useful hardware is going to get steep? I do.
So cry over your Mountain Dew, OSS douchebag.
Enjoy your inevitable market fragmentation and low user satisfaction ratings. Again!
LOL
Wow im shocked, developers that are trying to cater to both and likely started on the android hope android wins. I have no leanings either way, imho they both have their pluses and minuses but if your going to do a survey should people that are actively involved in a platforms development beyond a cross compiler be at least sampled? This reminds me of the AdMob survey back in march that claimed 70% of iPhone developers were jumping ship while surveying only 108 hand picked participants, oddly enough it was the same week that Apple announced it had passed 100,000 licensed developers. I've been dabbling with android itself, but frankly until they can get their act together (3-4 different versions in the wild, poor upgrade paths from oem's, google denying marketplace to non-phone devices) I really don't think Apple has much to worry about. Yes Apple is draconian as hell in their licensing, contracts and at least IMHO rather greedy on the profit sharing but at least there is some organization and direction.
about Android. If you have brand x phone and I have brand y and you have a cool app, will it really work on my phone with a different processor, screen geometry, camera, sensors, etc? Cause if you have an iPhone and I have an iPhone I know your killer app will work on my phone and I'm past the helping-the-tech-along part of my geek life. I'm ready for the just-gimme-the-kick-ass-shit-that-works part and I'm willing to pay more for the convienence.
Looking at the title of the summary: "Devs Bet Big On Android Over Apple's iOS"
Then look at the statistics quoted:
Long Term: 59% Android, 35% Apple, and 6% other (undecided, supports both, or neither)
Short Term: 76% Apple
I hardly call that "betting big" on Android. Personally I'll "bet big" that Apple gradually relaxes out of its "walled garden" approach, Google will drift toward higher standards for its market place apps... and ultimately whoever designs (or supports) the shiniest phones will win. Slashdotter's sometimes forget, hardware aesthetics often are the deciding factor.
Cool art gallery, if you're into that sort of thing.
I fucked a retard once. Hey, all cats look the same in the dark!
How about the fact that this was a survey of more than 2,300 developers who use Appcelerator's Titanium cross-platform compiler to produce iOS and Android native apps?
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
If You don't want AT&T, you cant get an iPhone (without jailbreaking etc.), so even normal people (non nerds) are going with android....And loving it...
Yes, I do want a custom OS on my microwave. I'd like to change it so that the stupid ass thing doesn't ask for the YEAR, MONTH, and DAY every time it loses power. It doesn't change the clock for DST anyway. It has no reason to know the date. I'd like to change it out with something that isn't so stupid.
It has no reason to know the date
Well, it can't log onto Skynet withou-__-#%%__-*** NO CARRIER
It is clear that the $1B is referring to the money users paid for the apps. Apple says that they paid it b/c it is given to Apple and then immediately forwarded to the developers.
"It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations..." -Winston Churchill
The developers are treated a lot better than the customers.
You are welcome on my lawn.
it offered unlimited texting, which duplicated core functionality, which of course is listed in black in white the agreement.
Therein lies a great reason to hate Apple. The only reason Apple can get away with this is because they cater to a small crowd that is willing to pay big bucks for flashy equipment while bending over taking anything Apple sends their way. If apple didn't have their small crowd of abusees they would have to cater to a larger crowd and would have been taken down a long time ago, just like Microsoft. How do you think people would react if Microsoft put something in their Windows EULA forbidding you to develop software competing with their own core software? No, you cannot develop a browser for Windows. No you cannot develop an office suite for windows. No you cannot create a text-application for Windows.
People would scream bloody murder and sue them from here to Sunday. But since it's Apple catering to their small crowd of bent over abusees what we hear is "the simple fact is that the majority of apps are rejected because the developer took a chance and ignored the agreement".
USERS paid developers over $1 billion, and Apple snatched over $300,000.
iOS developers get 70% of revenue from app sales, Apple gets 30%. 30% of $1 billion is $300 million (not $300,000).
I believe it. This is what Steve Jobs does and has always done.
He builds something great then ruins it with his extremely controlling flaky freakout attitude towards the world.
Nothing new here.
So exactly which part of the big slide in the background that says "$1 Billion paid to developers!!!!" don't you understand? Nowhere on the slide is there a little asterisk that says (after Apple takes it's 30% cut).
It's only five words and $1 in the whole sentence. I didn't post a third party interpretation. I posted a picture of the slide that Apple used in the WWDC.
Uh, users of a cross platform compiler prefer to keep their options open and prefer more open solutions. Duh. What percentage of the *total investment* is going towards iOS vs Android? How much money is each group making off of each OS? This "survey" is about as useful as doing a survey of Linux users for desktop app trends would have been back in 2005: a complete waste of time and electrons.
USERS paid developers over $1 billion, and Apple snatched over $300,000.
Reading comprehension, D-.
It is $1 billion to developers and $429 million to Apple (with a 70/30 split.)
The iOS as a platform for the web and the web app has a larger market share than Linux and five times that of the Android OS. iOS tops Linux
It is clear that the $1B is referring to the money users paid for the apps
No, it is clear that you fail at reading and math. Let's go over this really slowly:
"Apple has paid $1 billion to developers."
How this is even controversial, I don't know, but let's reiterate: Apple has paid one billion dollars to developers. Developers have been paid one billion dollars. That's it. Full stop.
But let's continue:
"Seventy percent of app sales goes to developers"
So of the gross sales, developers get 70%. Okay, now I'm going to do a little math. Try not to get lost, here, this is tricky!
M = Money paid to developers
T = Total sales
P = Percentage paid to developers
Hopefully I haven't lost you yet, 'cuz it's just gonna get harder from here...
M = T * P
1 000 000 = T * 0.7
0.7 is 70% expressed as a decimal value. Just wanted to point that out, I don't want you to get confused. Okay, moving on:
T = 1 000 000 / 0.7
T = 1 428 571
So what does this mean? It means *Apple's* total sales were about 1.4 billion. They then paid developers one billion, or seventy percent of that amount.
If I lost you, please, try reading this again. Slowly. I know you have trouble reading through your blind Apple-hate, as evidenced by your inability to comprehend the basic english in the cited article, but you really need to try, here. It's not that hard, really!
Rip out the jvm and allow first class native code and I might think about it. It is impossible to port any of my iphone apps to Andoid and get a playable frame rate. I love the fact that Android runs a linux core but I refuse to code with one hand tied behind my back.
Got Code?
How much would it cost said developers to market their apps without a central App Store? How much would they pay in credit card processing fees? How many apps would they have sold if Apple hadn't allowed third party apps? Apple enabled developers to make a load of money. Sure the users paid the money but Apple has done a lot to enable developers in a market that prior to the iPhone was very limited. Did you ever try to write and distribute a mobile app before the iPhone - it was all but impossible to be successful at.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
Heh. You guys talk as if revenue isn't the critical factor in the decision to develop for a particular platform.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
The /. front page this evening looks like The Register this morning.
"What kind of music do pirates listen to?" -Paul Maud'dib
"Yeeeaaarrrrr n' Bee!!" -Stilgar, Leader of Sietch Tabr
> and ultimately whoever designs (or supports) the shiniest phones will win.
No. Whoever designs the best phones at attractive pricepoints will win. Whoever has the hardware the must have app of the day runs on wins. Apple has never understood any of that, Steve certainly hasn't. Remember Next? Pure nerdporn but might as well dream of buying an exotic foreign car. Now that the iPhone has a viable competitor for the high end smartphone space we shall see if they learn it now. Doubt it though, these are the same geniuses who let Microsoft wipe the floor with em because they refused to compete on price or by alliance with the rest of the tech industry. Think about that for a moment, Microsoft! The company that truly defines the phrase "to know them is to loath them' totally dominated Apple to the point they have all but given up even dreaming of achieving parity on either the desktop or notebook. Got so far in their heads they can't even imagine competing directly, instead trying to find niches where Microsoft isn't a major force, like music players and phones.
And remember, Microsoft is utterly evil but their tech sucks which is a fairly exploitable weakness. Google doesn't suck. And when the rubber meets the road I fully expect Google to be at least as Evil(tm) as Apple or Microsoft. Interesting times. We only win if they all lose.
Democrat delenda est
You might've missed the recent repeal of section 3.3.1. Apple now no longer requires applications to be written in Objective-C.
http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2010/09/09statement.html
Google Voice was a good example. At the time it was developed, it offered unlimited texting, which duplicated core functionality, which of course is listed in black in white the agreement.
That's all well and good until you realize the only people benefiting from such moves is apple. Google Voice was great for the consumer, not so great for apple. So fair enough, apple don't have to sell it, but they also lock down the platform so no-one else can sell it either. Meaning the end user is simply stuck with their inferior 'core functionality'.
Objective-c is Apples attempt to co-opt developers
Objective-C never was a developer lock in, it is merely used by the API for the operating system. You have always been free to use C/C++ for your application's code. Whether the OS API is objective-c or C/C++ doesn't really matter, such calls are rarely portable to begin with as they are generally platform or hardware specific.
Why do I never have mod points at the right time!?
Still while we're being a little bit mathy I'd like to point out the set of developers this story was pulled from. 59% of developers who already develop for Android said they'd consider Android in the long term. This is totally meaningless!
What percentage of developers make applications exclusively for the iPhone? What ratio of those who develop for both use this companies compiler? What does 'bet big' mean in the long term if they are already developing for iOS?
This is a total non-statistic.
I ate your fish.
in my experience.
To this day I don't understand why they are so popular--or why the perception is that they represent better "software engineering".
The problem is, Android runs on a whole mess of hardware platforms and will be adding new ones regularly. As it stands right now it's on multiple flavors of ARM, x86, etc. Writing 100% native apps in C/C++ is exactly what they should be avoiding like the plague if they want to maintain any kind of reasonable compatibility across the board -- the NDK's existence is bad enough already, leading to marketplace listings that say "Works on Motorola Droid only!" and so on.
It's obvious you can read and count from your user name, but do you understand logic?
"Apple has paid $1 billion to developers." - is a half truth. That's maybe why the editor of the article put in the full sentence:
"And Apple has paid out over $1 billion to app developers (their 70% cut fo all sales)." (spelling error preserved so you could get a hardon)
Apple didn't 'pay $1 billion to developers' cause they're such nice guys. They did so because that's what the developers had coming to them. To put it in the context that they did it for any other reason is faulty and/or misleading logic.
is 100% correct so don't get your panties in a bunch.
*DrugCheese rants*
I do remember NeXT, I learned most of what I know about computers on a 25 MHz NeXT Station Color. With a triangular external speaker, a 400 MB HDD, and giant black laser printer.
My father still has two of them in his office, mostly as keepsakes.
I actually use Mac to this day because I never learned anything about Windows. I had a machine (133 MHz Pentium) that ran Windows 95 back in college but all I used it for was writing papers in Word (or maybe WordPerfect, IDK) and playing Starcraft.
NeXT was ultimately a success once it got bought by Apple. NeXTStep became the foundation for all Apple OSs, Steve got his original company back, pulled it from out of the grave, and now it's the thriving more so then any time in its history. Its building shiny glass temple after shiny glass temple to itself, and producing the sexiest hardware out there. He won, at least enough for one man's lifetime.
Cool art gallery, if you're into that sort of thing.
Apple has never understood any of that, Steve certainly hasn't.
Too right. That SOB keeps borrowing lunch money from me and not paying it back.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Given the way that Apple treats 3rd party devs and the locked down phone, it would be very surprising if Apple keeps their loyalty without making a major course correction. Those dick moves like randomly rejecting applications and stealing functionality out of apps for the base system isn't really endearing them with the people they need to keep the appstore vibrant.
I don't develop for windows because Win32 is such a nice clean API. Windows demonstrates that for profit developers will endure a lot of pain to reach the largest user base.
If apple uses their control to keep the crap out of their phone, users may decide that their phone is the best choice.
> and ultimately whoever designs (or supports) the shiniest phones will win.
No. Whoever designs the best phones at attractive pricepoints will win. Whoever has the hardware the must have app of the day runs on wins. Apple has never understood any of that, Steve certainly hasn't.
You do realize that the iPhone has already been wildly successful, right? The latest statistic I could find said 51.15 million units sold since 2007. Sounds like they understand it pretty well.
If you can't convince them, convict them.
This does, of course, suffer from a self-selection bias. People who use a cross-platform compiler have already decided that they want to play in both fields. All this does is find out their reason why. Which is interesting, make no mistake. To round out the picture, however, you'd have to at least get the number of developers who target one platform exclusively or use other cross-platform tools.
With my own dabbling in iPhone development and a friend who does that plus android semi-professionally, my own take is that the iPhone "peak" is getting ever smaller, to get into the top apps that make money like a printing press is getting ever more difficult. However, people usually underestimate the long tail, which feeds quite a lot of developers. It's not as exciting, but it works well especially for small-time and indy developers.
The same goes for android as a whole. I don't see nearly the same exposure for any android apps as is common for top iPhone apps. Less peak, more long tail. There is a marked difference in willingness to pay, however. At this time, as far as I can gather from people I know, android development isn't very profitable. But the growth rate is good, so that may change.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
"Google Voice was a good example. At the time it was developed, it offered unlimited texting, which duplicated core functionality, which of course is listed in black in white the agreement."
Yes, providing better functionality than Apple is a major no no. Steve Jobs hates it when you show him up. He can only afford so many new livers a year.
Hate to break it to you, but you can use objective-C on any desktop system really easily, too. I used to use it in Linux. It's been supported by GCC for nearly two decades. And it's easily integrated with existing C or C++ code. (you may say that the GUI calls are different, but that is true of Android, too: it is non-standard Java).
In other words, your rant is based entirely on imagination. Please learn some facts before ranting again.
Qxe4
I just find it so disgusting that there are so many developers all of a sudden interested in making money from their code.
You mean like the entire proprietary marketplace?
It seems Apple is doing more to destroy the environment created by the open source community than any other company.
Well if it was that easy to destroy open source then proprietary software would have done it a long time ago.
There are filters on the market to make applications only show up on certain harder it's compatible with.
So that's not a Android market failing that's a developer failing.
Yep, and if it's a tab(let) made by Samsung or another vendor which hasn't tried to lock down their tablet (for phone equivalents, see Motorola and why I own a Galaxy S and not a Droid), then you would still be able to have a web store front, where users can buy your app and proceed to copy them to their phone, thus bypassing the Android Market. Seriously, I was leaning towards a Samsung because of the AMOLED screen anyways, but only wrote off Motorola when I learned they locked down their phones. I've had good luck with my previous Motorola cell (twice in the washing machine for short periods and still worked!) and would have certainly have bought Motorola if I had found it had been the other way around (with Samsungs locked down and Motorola less restricted). But in the end it's not surprising that the Koreans (who cater to the more sophisticated Asian market) would be less restrictive, and that Motorola (being closer to a N.A. cartel cell market) would go the Apple route.
That the carriers get to decide which features are available, what hardware, if an API will actually work, and every other little thing; and that the carriers are luddite, greedy scum; means I will not be developing on Andriod at any point in the near, and possibly far, future. The support issues alone are enough to dissuade me.
These are developers making freebie apps based on web standards.
Personally, I use iPhone myself, but I have Android and am looking forward to getting Windows Phone 7. When I write apps, what's interesting to me more than anything else is my ability to port the basics and write the app around them. On a Java based platform, my hair and fingernails itch just thinking about porting tens of thousands on lines of C++ code to a platform which doesn't guarantee a processor type. I don't mind screen resolution as I do as much as possible with OpenGL as I can, but screen format is a problem. I don't like the aspect ratio problem.
I know my cost of development for iPhone is SUBSTANTIALLY less than for Android as I have all models of iPhone and will probably only need to buy one per year to support it. Testing on all models is pretty easy to do. Android on the other hand is more of a hackers platform where you write it for the phone you have and if it works for someone else... great. If it doesn't, well, you'll need to get another phone to test with. These phones unlocked range from $200-$1000 and for any decent level of quality control, you'd need at least 20 of them today with people testing on all of them. In another year, you'll need a lot more. When Android is shipping on x86 hardware, then you'll need to make your code compile for both x86 and ARM which isn't that big of a deal except for alignment issues, but still then you're maintaining two executables and you have to buy even more devices.
Android doesn't guarantee :
- Screen resolution
- Graphics processor
- CPU type/generation/feature set (vector unit)
- Audio chip
- Audio latency
- Input method
- Multi-touch vs. Single touch
- Keyboard type.
- OS interaction with running applications
So, for anything more advanced than the basics webby kinda stuff, Android is a nightmare.
Cost of development for Android (with some QA) is MUCH higher than for iPhone.
The key is to write the application for iPhone, Android AND Windows 7 and leave it up to your paying customers to decided which one you'll focus the most QA on because of the best profit stream.
If you're starting from scratch on a new app, I guess it doesn't matter that much, you can work around it by using MonoDroid, MonoTouch and Windows Phone 7 SDK. With some work you can port most of your libraries to a CIL assembly. C++ doesn't port so smoothly there, but it's not that bad either. I am hoping that Mono eventually becomes the champion of phone development. It seems well on its way.
Objective C is part of the main development environment of OSX. It is the main development language of OSX. OSX is based on NeXT and that used Objective C in the development environment too.
C++ extensions were only added to OSX due to Adobe not wanting to rewrite all their applications. Apple have been trying to kill off the C++ API (Cocoa) for years.
On a mobile device you can't realistically have numerous runtime environments just because developers are lazy. Android only really lets you code in one language, a Java derivative (or rip off if you side with Oracle) with some potential for native libraries.
What do you have against Objective C? it's a really nice language to use and some of it's useful syntax features have been lifted and put in .NET 4. Things such as named parameters, so you can see the names and values of parameters to a method/function instead of just values.
So you think everyone should work for free?
How do you think these big companies remain so big? they have to raise lots of money to cover their staff and infrastructure costs alone, never mind R&D and so on.
Look at Microsoft Office home and business, £187 in the UK. That's a lot of money for office software, probably about £150 profit too!
Google Voice was a good example. At the time it was developed, it offered unlimited texting, which duplicated core functionality, which of course is listed in black in white the agreement.
You state this as if this is a defense.
The agreement is the problem. It is what gives them the opportunity to reject your app in the first place.
The agreement is what makes the platform hostile to developers. Apple reserves the right to own a piece of functionality. Even if you do it first, they can reject updates to your app after they put in the functionality themselves.
Given that 95% percent are accepted without any issue at all, leaving only 5% of questionable apps, the argument that Apple is rejecting apps willy nilly is not exactly a good reflection of reality.
This is a pretty strong argument for Android in and of itself. If Apple is only rejecting 5% of apps, then I don't have much to lose by going to a platform where no apps are rejected, right?
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
USERS paid developers over $1 billion, and Apple snatched over $300,000. Saying Apple has paid $1 billion to developers is like saying VISA has paid companies $1 zillion dollars.
Nice try, Steve Jobs!
No, users paid Apple and then Apple paid the developers. It's fundamental to how the App Store works.
Your post is like saying you directly paid MS for the Xbox 360 you bought at Fry's.
You still have no freedom to code or install a better OS. People dont "hate Apple" they are just aware Google, MS, Apple ect are building some very thick and high walls around mobile computing.
Which is the number one thing a consumer considers when buying a phone...
Why should we not get the same freedoms we enjoy on most desktops?
For what percentage of desktops purchased do you think this freedom was even in the top 100 reasons for purchase?
The developers are treated a lot better than the customers.
I don't know about a *lot* better, but you're right that Apple does treat developers pretty well. It's hard to compete with this though.
Google Voice was great for the consumer, not so great for apple.
Do explain how so. In direct terms, GV helped Apple. But indirectly it was seen as making iOS worse, which would harm Apple in the long term. Whether their reasoning was right or wrong, their motives aren't as immediately selfish as some people seem to think.
It's not stealing when it's not patented. /sarcasm
Aren't they missing out Android in the Linux numbers?
I have an android tablet, and I think it's a pretty good sign that it won't be that big of a problem. So far I've had a problem with one emulator on it. That's it. Everything else, written for smaller screen, has just scaled perfectly.
Everything will be taken away from you.
Aren't they missing out Android in the Linux numbers?
No, because Android is not the same OS as Linux. Should Mac OS X share be included in BSD's figures?
... and then they built the supercollider.
Do explain how so.
Obviously it takes profit from AT&T, harming their relationship with Apple. Which is why they removed it for 'duplicating core functionality', otherwise you would just let the consumer decide what's best for them. If they were worried about the idea of an user-installed app making their platform less appealing they would get rid of all the ifart rubbish.
That isn't a problem app developers should be concerned with, we should only need to test on a single reference device. You said it yourself; "mess".
ANSI C is portable, anything else is a failing of Googles developer tools and of the Android platform. To be blunt, I don't foresee Google rewriting V8 to run on Dalvik any time soon.
Gee, you poll people using a cross-platform toolkit and they anticipate a potential shift in market shares and value? Maybe the fact that they are using _a cross-platform toolkit_ already is a bit of a pre-selection? Naaaahhhhh..
Indeed, there is some major selection bias going on here. Really, all this poll tells us is that they found out that developers who hedge their bets tend to think that it's a good thing they're hedging their bets. The fact that they are using this compiler backs up your idea that they were probably Android developers first and foremost, since they couldn't have been using a cross-compiler like that for iOS up until very recently.
So what did Apple say -- not an editors interpretation.
Apple said one simple phrase -- "$1 Billion paid to developers". If my company claimed that they paid me $100,000 that means they paid me that much after taking their cut from my billable hours, not before.
Two solutions:
1) buy a new microwave
or
2) buy a UPS
Is there a reason why microwave manufacturers might not want you tinkering about with the software? Safety, perhaps?
http://developer.android.com/sdk/ndk/index.html#overview
Just about the only thing you will need to use the DalvikJava for is integration with the app system. Which you want.
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
Yes! Think of how much better the world would be!
Get down of your high horse gilesjuk, and give that strawman a great, big hug!
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
Given that 95% percent are accepted without any issue at all, leaving only 5% of questionable apps, the argument that Apple is rejecting apps willy nilly is not exactly a good reflection of reality.
That's like saying 95% of police Officers aren't corrupt. 5% being rejected is actually HUGE.
but the simple fact is that the majority of apps are rejected because the developer took a chance and ignored the agreement.
Yet if you look through the App store and you read the developer blogs, you find that the App store is rife with violations. There are so many retarded restrictions that if Apple had seriously enforced their policies a large portion of Apps should have vanished by now.
This huge ambiguity leaves Apple to reign supreme. If your app generates sales and fits into their brand image chances are your violations will be ignored. But if they decide that they don't like your App for whatever reason they're sure to find some excuse for screwing you over.
In other words, what's good for Apple, is good for the consumer? I see... a walled garden & company store monopoly is highly beneficial for Apple, therefore consumers ought to give it to them. It's in their own best interest.
It's bizarre logic, but I admit, it's probably what a lot of Apple fans think, and a reason for its success.
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
Who is easier to satisfy than the person who believes he has bought status?
You are welcome on my lawn.
Sure it's a decent number of apps given that there is something like a quater of a million apps, but its a small percent of the whole. These are also folks that broke the rules, not some innocent victim. Yes there are rare cases where an app is rejected for stupid reasons, but those reasons were spelled out in the dev agreement.
The sense of entitlement of some people these days is amazing. They agreed to the developer agreement, willfully break it, and then act shocked when they get their hand slapped. Then people come in here and say it's a 'HUGE' problem, knowing you created the problem. I hate to break it to you, but this is how business works. You don't get to write your own rules FOSS style when contracting with another business. The developer agreement is a legal agreement. You dont' get to change the rules on a whim. Shocking, I know.
I'm not surprised violations get through. There are over 200,000 apps in the store. When they find them, they remove them.
[Citation Needed]
There are, what, 12 core apps, each pretty specific in the function it performs. Apparently there are at least 200,000 other things you can do on the platform without bumping into that functionality. It doesn't seem that hard.
95% are compliant. Of the 5% that aren't, most knowingly broke the rules themselves. The others chose to delve into areas that are open to the whim of personal opinion, such as adult material, or 'obscene'. Guess what? If you design an little sticky notes app, chances are pretty rock solid it won't get banned for being obscene.
This isn't rocket science. Something those dev's who raked in a billion in cash have figured out. Don't try to cheat the system and you'll do fine. If you realize you can't pass up the chance to cheat it, then iOS is not for you.
It's really just that simple.
Obj C plays quite nicely with C and C++. With the exception of some UIView windowing calls and Audio library, my entire app is written in C++ including all of the OpenGL calls.
Objective-c is Apples attempt to co-opt developers.
Really? I thought Objective-C was Brad Cox's attempt to create a message-passing object-oriented extension to C in the manner of Smalltalk.
I know it's popular to love to hate Apple lately, but the simple fact is that the majority of apps are rejected because the developer took a chance and ignored the agreement.
Maybe you should consider for a moment that the "agreement" is chock full of freedom-restricting, control-freak bullshit.
Okay I know Steve lives in his own world of facts and figures, but in the cited article, Steve says he's paid "$1 billion to developers." Now, semantically speaking, it means exactly that, that they paid $1 billion. That means that users would have paid Apple $1.43 billion or so. Then take 70%, and you have $1 billion paid to developers. If you think Steve is doing stat manipulation, and he's been known to do that, then please site your source. Don't try fighting this argument with math and semantics because you will lose.
And you lost big time when you site apple took "$300,000". Yes I'm sure you meant $3 million. Apple takes 30%, not 3%, and there's that thing called the "millions" before billions. If you are going to try this, please get that number right so it makes it seem like you know what you are talking about.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
Apple have been trying to kill off the C++ API (Cocoa) for years.
Cocoa is the Objective-C API. You're thinking of Carbon, the C API.
The survey is of developers using Appcelerator Titanium, a cross-platform development tool whose whole selling point is that you can use it for different mobile platforms. So, obviously, that's a place where you are more likely to find people that think the currently most popular app market is the best short-term target but something else is more promising in the long-term, since a big the whole appeal of the development tool over platform-specific tools is that it allows the developer security if they don't think the current best target platform is also the long-term best target platform.
If you polled developers who use a iOS-specific dev tool, you'll no doubt find higher numbers who think iOS is the best in the long-term, and if you survey developers who use the Android Eclipse-based dev environment, you'll no doubt find higher numbers who think Android is more attractive in the short-term.
Really? If that's so, why did Apple hem and haw over investigating other issues (like "it might use VoIP" at one point) as the reason for delaying a decision, before settling on the "duplicating core functionality" excuse over the dialer and contact management functionality, not texting.
Percentages aren't the issue. The fact is that Apple has accepted apps (GoodReader is an example) and then demanded that functionality be removed in updates before accepting updates, and has delayed or rejected apps for reasons that are just as applicable to apps that it has accepted. This indicates that the review process is inconsistent and arbitrary, not only between different apps, but for the same app over time.
That creates a risk that developers may accept when Apple's App Store is, in effect, the only game in town, but which becomes less tolerable the more that there are other outlets to reach large number of mobile users. Of course, established Apple-targeting developers, for whom it is easier to continue to develop for Apple than to switch to targeting a different platform (especially those not using cross-platform tools to start with) will be more attached to Apple even as the market shifts; the leading sign of a sea change will be where the new development firms go.
I believe this is wishful thinking, and here's why:
1) Existing install base. iOS is still the leader by a large margin, and concentrating on what *might* be a larger market n-years in the future is an unnecessary gamble.
2) Hardware specs. The set of available hardware/software configurations is much smaller for iOS than for Android. This means higher development time and/or costs for Android than iOS, all else being equal.
3) Vendor customization. iOS' lead becomes even more dominant when compared to a specific version and revision of Android, not to mention any provider-specific customization/crippling of features. When you add in vendors that make it difficult or impossible for users to upgrade their OS, you have a losing proposition.
4) User experience. The single biggest complaint for iPhone users is the network, yet there's little empirical evidence that AT&T is really any worse than T-Mobile, Verizon, or Sprint. To me, the key point here is that iOS is being taken for granted, which is about the highest accolade an OS can receive.
I am NOT saying that Apple is perfect by any means. Objective-C is an unwarranted departure from the industry-standard of C++, Xcode appears to be Apple's best effort at confounding potential developers, and the approval process is about two bits away from opaque. But even with all that, they still provide both the largest market and the path of least resistance for developers overall, and I'm not seeing anything from Android to suggest that's going to change anytime soon. There will be no unified vision for hardware, because both vendors and OEMs need to compete. Even if Android overtakes iOS in sheer numbers, the issue of disparate hardware will continue to plague both developers and potential customers alike. Ideology may favor Android, but ideology doesn't pay the bills.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
> You do realize that the iPhone has already been wildly successful, right?
Yup, by opening up a new niche. It isn't new anymore and they aren't the only game in town anymore. Apple could compete well against the even more clueless cellphone makers. Symbian? Really? Palm was a contender but had tossed the founders for idiots by the time Apple released the iPhone. The cell phone makers might have been stupid enough to get in bed with Microsoft but the carriers knew enough to keep em at arms length and undermine em at every turn. (There is only room for ONE evil monopolist in a market and the cell networks intend it to be themselves.) So yea, Apple had little problem dominating. Until another competent player with enough clout to keep the carriers from screwing up every product's implementation showed up.
Democrat delenda est
I think time will tell if Google and co. are capable of stymying the carriers' penchant for messing up their products (hopefully they are; competition is good). I think you're underestimating the strength of Apple's installed base, though. Android may very well be the better platform (I don't think it's quite there yet, but I'm definitely intrigued and certainly wouldn't say no to owning one), but the iPhone has become so entrenched by this point. Android will beat the iPhone by raw numbers simply by virtue of there being more Android models available, but it'll be hard for any single phone to surpass the iPhone.
If you can't convince them, convict them.
Based on a single tablet...
When there are half a dozen versions of Android (some no doubt customized by the users) running on phones and tablets with varying resolutions and hardware capabilities on 2-3 dozen variations of hardware from different vendors, let's check back and see how easy the process is.
My original response was Flamebaited, and rightly so - it was an obnoxious response to an obnoxious post. But the point stands that bug-fixing and user support is going to get a lot harder for any piece of software that sees widespread adoption in the Android space (i.e., used across a lot of devices.)
THIS
Apple didn't 'pay $1 billion to developers' cause they're such nice guys. They did so because that's what the developers had coming to them. To put it in the context that they did it for any other reason is faulty and/or misleading logic.
As a sarcastic comment above pointed out in regards to retail stores, of course Apple needs to make profit off their store. The fact that they make a profit doesn't mean they're not nice guys. It also doesn't mean they're not mean guys.
Regardless, it means they're doing smart business by running a successful store and giving an (arguably) large amount of profit to developers. They aren't taking advantage of their dominant position to jack up their own profits, afaik. That's what most companies would do in their situation.
This is what the OP was pointing out, not that Apple is some philanthropic martyr, creating an app market at their own expense out of the kindness of their heart.
That would be Google. ;)
Sure, Apple pays, but so does the developer. Do you realize that to develop on the $299 iphone that you need a Mac (like a expensive model), the latest iOS iPhone and/or an iPad (the simulator is like 70% exact), developer fees, snd the fact that the iOS documentation is misleading (ever try building in storekit, multitasking API, or push notification). Mind that you need a decent internet connection to download that 3GB sdk update. Along with the 1/3 app cut from sales, Apple is making up the dev costs but charging the developers a preimum--it's definitely a pay to play business model.
On other platforms, I download free stuff (e.g. eclipse), write it on a desktop, simulate it 99% there (better simulators) and it's out the door within 2 days. And the languages (Android, PalmOS, C#) are a lot more efficient than Obj-C.
Instead of referencing cnet, have you even programmed a major app on the iphone, in 2.1, 3.1 or iOS?
Do you realize the 5% of apps in limbo most of the time are the ones that typically have the most potential (if they are approved). Granted there are a lot of copy-cats that Apple is rejecting.
We got real, experienced developers complaining about the dev community process, not joe shmo learning Obj-C for the 1st time copying the calendar app or a iFart app.
You do know that if you want to deploy to a non jailbroken Apple device you need a license, do you? It's no surprise that there are 100'000, Apple basically forces people to become a licensed developer or jailbreak.
Until OS X, Mac developers used Pascal and Assembler almost exclusively for OS and Application development, with C and C++ being also allowed (as they are now under Objective-C).
C and C++ were not merely 'allowed', they were by far the most popular languages used on 'classic' MacOS. You're overgeneralizing the ancient history. Yes, in the early years, Pascal was the preferred language because that's what the OS was written in, and lots of people went to 68K assembly for performance. But by the time OS X came around, Macs weren't even using 68K processors any more, and Pascal was a distinctly second class citizen. Lots of 'classic' MacOS coders had no exposure to Pascal beyond learning to litter their code with calls to convert strings between Pascal (length byte prefix) and C (zero-terminated) conventions, as there were MacOS APIs which expected Pascal strings (the irony being that the OS probably translated back to C strings internally because by then most of it had been rewritten in C).
What I don't understand about the NDK is how it works across phone architectures. Do all these phones run the same basic instruction set such that you can actually compile a native executable that works across all of them? If not, what happens in the future when new phones with different CPUs come out and there are thousands of apps not working on them?
So Apple is guilty of taking a cut to maintain the servers, fund their R&D, provide advertising and the platform the developers are using? Shame on them indeed for tempting those developers to take home 70% of the profits without having to deal with the headaches of creating a method of distribution!
By the way, you're missing a few decimal points. 30% of a billion dollars isn't $300,000, it's $300,000,000.
"Give a man fire, and he'll be warm for a day; set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life
Sure it's a decent number of apps given that there is something like a quater of a million apps, but its a small percent of the whole.
No, I'm talking about the percentage. Sure, some might have been stupid, but if there are serious developers out there who invest in software, but have genuine trouble assessing whether or not the App will be rejected or not then that tells you there is a problem.
The sense of entitlement of some people these days is amazing.
The sense of Authority some Companies have and the submissive personality of their customers is amazing. Apple has to stick to law like anybody else, and if they're using anti-competitive tactics they deserve to be called out for the cheats they are. Customers and competitors are especially entitled to voice their opinion. That's the only way to get things to change.
When they find them, they remove them.
No they don't.
There are, what, 12 core apps, each pretty specific in the function it performs.
So what about all those calendar Apps? Map viewers? Weather apps? Note-taking apps? Clocks? Calculators? Voice recorders? With suggestive names such as Calculator+? There are hundreds of Apps out there that adress the flaws of the iPhone, most of them seem very welcome in the App store.
The others chose to delve into areas that are open to the whim of personal opinion, such as adult material, or 'obscene'.
I'm not arguing with this one. But it has to be said that this is where Apple is deliberately vague. They have double standards. If you're a successful print magazine you can get away with sexual content, if you aren't then even just suggestive stuff can throw you out.
That's the way it is with Apple. Often they make a stupid decision, and occaisonly this causes an uproar, making Apple backtrack on their original decision and that migt make them change their policy.
Then a few weeks down the line they make another radical change in their EULAs or developer agreements which again stirs up the whole market.
Exactly how is what Apple doing anti-competitive?
The only people this ban on core functionality harms is a developer who chooses to delve into those areas. They could also go to any number of other smartphone manufacturer's, who are far larger than apple. It is not anti-competitive under the definition of the law. Even Android keeps some core functions closed.
You're confusing Core Apps with Core Functionality. A calculator is not what I would consider a core function of a smartphone, and neither is a clock or a voice recorder. Calendar (PIM)'s can have a vast array of choices and functions that a basic calendar does not deliver, and I'm betting that Apple doesn't consider a basic calendar db that holds dates core functionality either.
I thought NDK was dead!
Oh, man!
That's exciting, they added support for "ARM-based CPU architectures" in June 2010!
Who is easier to satisfy than the person who believes he has bought status?
I'm not sure which Internet you've been using this whole time, but on the one I'm on, Apple users tend to be the least easy to satisfy.
Your mistake is in thinking that Apple products serve merely (or primarily) as status symbols and are not valued in their own right. False premises often lead to absurd conclusions.
Obviously it takes profit from AT&T, harming their relationship with Apple.
Except AT&T has no say whatsoever in the matter. They disallowed, until a while back, VOIP apps using the cell network, but Google Voice isn't VOIP. You're grasping at straws.
Which is why they removed it for 'duplicating core functionality',
No, that is most definitely *not* why they removed it (more accurately, never approved it in the first place).
otherwise you would just let the consumer decide what's best for them.
How do you possibly come to this conclusion? Apple is notorious for nixing options that they think degrade the overall user experience of a product. And it appears to work out very well for them.
If they were worried about the idea of an user-installed app making their platform less appealing they would get rid of all the ifart rubbish.
Your if-then is not logically sound. Fart apps do not alter how you use the phone function of the iPhone (nor does it replace any other function of the iPhone).
In other words, what's good for Apple, is good for the consumer?
I'm absolutely certain I said nothing of the sort.
But, in other words, I *did* say what's good for the iOS platform is good for the consumer is good for Apple. By focusing on the quality of the product, Apple trusts that the users will choose their product which will lead to market success. Most other companies fail to realize this dynamic which is one of the reasons why Apple tends to be so unique in their offerings.
I see... a walled garden & company store monopoly is highly beneficial for Apple, therefore consumers ought to give it to them. It's in their own best interest.
No, a walled garden and company store monopoly is good for the iPhone platform, which is why the consumers *choose* the iPhone.
It's bizarre logic, but I admit, it's probably what a lot of Apple fans think, and a reason for its success.
Yes, it *is* bizarre logic. I doubt it's what many Apple fans think, though. It is something that a lot of Apple detractors seem to think, though. The problem is that they are so hung on choice, they fail to realize that many people would rather have a product with fewer but better choices, than one with more but worse choices.
Except AT&T has no say whatsoever in the matter. They disallowed, until a while back, VOIP apps using the cell network, but Google Voice isn't VOIP.
They don't need to have a say in the matter, it provides a free alternative to their paid service. Obviously they aren't going to like that.
No, that is most definitely *not* why they removed it (more accurately, never approved it in the first place).
Well you tell me why then. And don't give me that 'degrading the user experience' bullshit, because installation and usage is optional.
Your if-then is not logically sound. Fart apps do not alter how you use the phone function of the iPhone (nor does it replace any other function of the iPhone).
Neither does google voice, you don't have to use it. Obviously if you don't like it or don't want it anymore you can uninstall it.
You're in trouble. That's why they use a virtual machine architecture in the first place.
You need to keep porting/recompiling your app for all different hardware platforms that come to run android in future years.
Of course, on iPhone, all programs will have to do this if there are ever architecture shifts.
My guess is that if/when it happens, the android stores are going to get fuzzy about reporting correct compatibility information, especially for programs using the NDK.
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
They don't need to have a say in the matter, it provides a free alternative to their paid service. Obviously they aren't going to like that.
Pretty much by definition they *do* need some say in the matter to have the impact you are suggesting. Otherwise whether or not they like it doesn't amount to shit. Or do you think Steve Jobs would pull GV simply because it would make some other company unhappy with otherwise no repercussions?
Well you tell me why then. And don't give me that 'degrading the user experience' bullshit, because installation and usage is optional.
Pre-emptively calling it bullshit doesn't make it so.
Your if-then is not logically sound. Fart apps do not alter how you use the phone function of the iPhone (nor does it replace any other function of the iPhone).
Neither does google voice, you don't have to use it. Obviously if you don't like it or don't want it anymore you can uninstall it.
Whether it alters the phone function of the iPhone is not affected by it being optional. It is meant as a replacement means to place calls, send txts and manage your contacts. It's difficult to see how that's *not* a fundamental alteration of the phone functionality.
You needn't agree with Apple's choices or even with their reasoning, but they've been fairly consistent about trying to manage the user experience of their products far in excess of other companies, including going so far as to limit options that are seen as having a negative impact on that experience.
On the other hand, trying to portray this as being done to protect AT&T requires a tenuous line of reasoning and is out of character for Apple.
This is what the OP was pointing out, not that Apple is some philanthropic martyr, creating an app market at their own expense out of the kindness of their heart.
That would be Google. ;)
Exactly, and you can easily tell because they only ask for a 30% share, unlike the whopping 30% Apple is extorting.
Fandroids hate facts.