So unless you're taking the position that refusing to allow users to use third party App Stores is the thing that developers really like
It's one of the things most developers really like, yes.
That may seem counter-intuitive, so I'll explain:
1) It's one of the things that removes a barrier to consumers purchasing. The barrier being the niggling questions: Can I get this product cheaper elsewhere? Can I get something better elsewhere? The closer you can get people after their initial impulse the more likely they are to buy. With a single app store, after they've put a search term in, the best option for them to buy is probably amongst the things listed on that page.
2) It cuts down on drudge-work. If there were 10 competing app stores, I'd probably feel that I'd have to submit my app to all of them in order not to miss out on sales. 10 times the admin of a single app store.
3) Opening up the app installation procedure so any app store could install apps would necessarily mean allowing pirated apps on non-jailbroken phones. And that would be a step in the wrong direction for developers.
iPhone users buy a lot more apps than Android users. There's more than one reason for that, but I have no doubt that single App Store ecosystem is a significant part of it.
They are doing it for now. They simply can't keep it up. It won't work.
And you say that because....
I'm an iOS developer and I can tell you that over the 3 years of the App Store, review times have got shorter, and there appear to be less mistakes, not more. They are getting better at it not worse even as the volume of submissions has increased.
It's simple linear scaling. The bigger the App Store gets, the more money Apple makes from it, and the more app reviewers Apple can hire. Meanwhile the quality and speed of app reviewing continues to improve as software tools are improved and automate more of the process.
I'm not sure what information you're expecting me to get from humblebundle. For sure it's a success, but it's for all three platforms: Windows Mac and Linux. How much of it's success is down to Linux isn't clear to me.
Incidentally the guy behind Humble Bundle looks like he's a Mac developer. First ever game on Hypercard. The first ones he distributed were Mac OS 9. So a Mac developer doing cross platform games, who then invites other similar developers to join in to do a pay what it's worth cross platform bundle. What's the Linux message in that?
You're saying Snow Leopard was worse than Leopard? That's just nonsense. Snow Leopard was the best ever version of OS X. It was only for Intel Macs, so those still on PowerPCs might have been disappointed it wasn't for them. But it was certainly a great upgrade for those that upgraded.
The situation with Snow leopard is serious enough to make a 15 year mac veteran dump OSX for Linux.
PowerPC?
For sure, Lion has some problems. But Snow Leopard was excellent.
Well let's see now. Amazon has a Kindle app on the App Store. It's free, so Apple don't make a penny from it. And it's direct competition for Apple's own iBooks.
I have no way of knowing how many of the others fall into this category. So let me guess: 42,547.
Also, this speciality don't make sense for a computer device (anything with a CPU, memory and a display). Because for the "Electric Drill" you need to get all the attachments, and some attachments probably don't work as good. But with a computer device all you need is to start a different app for the task.
"Attachments" works perfectly well as a metaphor for software you add to a device. Like putting a a phone app on a PC: it works, but it's not as good as a phone app on a phone. The PC isn't small enough to always keep in your pocket for example.
Android has 3rd party Chinese app stores that you've never heard of. So what Android apps do I have to worry about as an Android user on this side of the planet?
What do Chinese app stores have to do with the fact that theres a fuckton more malware on Android than iOS?
You're just engaging in some self serving fear mongering based on some crude, incomplete, and misleading information.
Read it and weep. Look at the pie chart - Android is the target of 63% of mobile malware. iOS malware is so rare or non-existant it doesn't even get a wedge on the pie chart.
Walled gardens eventually get as infested as everywhere else. The only way they can make it otherwise, is to screen everything that comes through, which they have tried to do.
They are not trying to do it, they are doing it, and very successfully. You are focussing on the odd story on slashdot every month or two, about some hiccup in someone getting an app approved, versus the half a million apps that are on store. The 99.99% that are reviewed without issue. I know, I'm a iOS developer.
Not to mention arbitrary rules, and the rest of it.
There are no arbitrary rules. There are rules with good reason, listed by Apple for developers to refer to before they even start development.
But eventually, it will all even out, once outlets other than the app store become more popular. There is nothing they can do about it; it is inevitable.
The GP was talking about Linux repositories. I'm not sure how an iOS repository answers my questions. If I want to sell software on Linux, can I use a Linux repository or not? I really don't know.
Given the prevalence of gratis software, I'm not sure how relevant the payment aspect is with either model.
It's very relevant if you make your living by developing apps.
As a Linux outsider, it seems that the OSS community is hostile to people who want to make their living developing apps. It looks like support is an acceptable way to make a living, but being paid for the software you programmed is not.
By contrast generally I find that OSX and iOS users are supportive to people making their living developing apps. If the apps are good people are only too happy to encourage you by paying for it.
The pretext of the thread is that the PC is going to be replaced by specialized walled garden devices.
The one I responded to was "So the PC is dead because a single machine can be replaced by three machines." So I explained why.
Moreover, the PC is not like a drill. It is already the specialized version. It's the thing you use when you want a keyboard, a big screen and better performance.
You're looking through the wrong end of the telescope. You're looking at the situation now. For sure if you look at the electric drill now it looks like a specialist device for drilling. But that's only because of the rise of those other specialized devices. In the past it was indeed the jack of all trades, master of none that I described.
Same apples to the PC. It used to be a tool for EVERY job that required information processing. Now it's sphere of use is reduced because there are other specialized devices.
Before you argue any more, I suggest you buy, borrow or steal a copy of The Invisible Computer by Donald Norman. A very influential book of about a decade ago. The electric drill analogy comes from there, and is sound. And it documents a lot more history of the electric motor to make it's point than I could possibly do here.
There were alternate apps in all those categories more or less from day one. There are a couple of other rules that some apps were failed because of that some people misinterpreted as a non-compete rule.
1) The first is that web-browsing must be done via the built in Webkit. Alternate browsers are allowed, but their rendering engine must be webkit. This is understandable from a security perspective. Browser engines are common sources of security vulnerabilities, so Apple insists on the one they control. It's also understandable from a UI point of view. Every view that looks like a web page on the device functions in exactly the same way.
2) You may not clone the look and feel of the built in apps. Nor built in controls for which there is no API. Again there are perfectly valid practical reasons these rules. But one doesn't even need to argue those, because it's just plain plagiarism to copy the look and feel of other apps.
I don't think that's particularly a fair comparison. The iPhone brought a lot of things to the mobile device market other than a walled garden and you can't disambiguate the effect of those things (like, say, a UI that doesn't look like an attempt to put Windows 95 on a phone).
Well I was once a Symbian developer, and now an iOS developer. And whilst the nice UI and the much more pleasant development environment are nice for developers, that's not the reason why my colleagues and I got excited with the announcement of iPhone development. It was because of the App Store. Because Apple would host and administer the sales of our apps, and the market was destined to be huge because for the first time Apple had removed virtually all the barriers to selling apps. A one stop shop with more or less one click download and install. Brilliant! It had us old time mobile app developers salivating at the prospect, and eager to sign up ASAP.
The iShiny simply hasn't existed very long so those that want one may not have gotten one yet. Look at how PC sales went nuts when they first became affordable, hell stores were going through units as fast as they could get them in the store.
So you're saying they are like PC sales when they were new.
Appstores are a niche market for a niche product, that is all. Sure they make good money but that is ONLY because they are a NEW market and once the shiny wears off and those that want one have one the bottom will crash and crash HARD.
Don't forget to include all the other computing devices you have. Set top boxes of various kinds. Consoles. Car - engine management and GPS. White goods.
The latest thing is thermostats - no doubt the Nest thermostat will start a whole new generation of thermostats.
Still it's quite possible that your personal experience is against the trend of ever more specialised computing devices.
On the contrary, it's proving the point. A hundred thousand is a tiny sliver of the what, tens of millions of software developers in the world?
Most software developers are not interested n developing for mobile devices. What you need to compare with is how many were/are developing for non-walled garden mobile devices. And there are far more developing for iOS than for any of those non-walled garden mobile platforms. Apple actually made it easier and more attractive for developers to create mobile apps.
if no one is allowed to produce anything that "duplicates functionality" of an existing app, you have no competition.
There are lots of iPhone apps that duplicate functionality of other apps. There are plenty of apps that duplicate functionality of built in apps. There are alternate diary apps, contact apps, camera apps, map apps etc.
I'm curious. What device did you use to post you delusional response? Did anyone not using a PC post on this topic today? "average person no longer wants or needs a PC."
Your curiosity doesn't seem to extend to recognising the future tense meaning of "we are transitioning to" rather than "we are now at".
Can we stop mincing words and replace "average person" with the the true description of "idiot" or at least "sheep"?
Back in the 1970s and earlier consumers used to buy an electric motor called "An Electric Drill". And as well as drilling with it you could buy attachments to do sanding, polishing, circular sawing, screwing, pumping, grinding. (almost sounds like a sex aid! maybe there were attachments for that too!)
As time went on the price went down and affluence went up, and people bought dedicated devices for whichever of these things they needed to do. They didn't need a general purpose electric motor any more. They could get better purpose built devices with their own inexpensive electric motor built in.
That movement from a single general purpose device to a variety of more specialised devices is now happening with computing. And that's exactly the metaphor Donald Norman used to predict it happening a decade ago.
For sure many websites aren't designed with touch screens in mind. However as time goes on, they will be. Web developers develop to be compatible with the majority of clients out there, and as tablets and phones have become a significant proportion of web clients, new website designs and updates will support that.
For sure for some tasks you need a real keyboard. But the Asus Eee Transformer shows that that doesn't have to be a PC.
As to browsers, Webkit is the biggest mobile browser engine, and it's just as fully featured as a desktop browser engine - it's the very same one used in Safari and Chrome.
Your argument is only that phones aren't suitable for every computing task, not that PCs are needed.
Photoshop and watching movies only require large screens with adequately powerful processing power. They don't have to be general purpose PCs. And they can indeed be devices that work in a walled garden.
A better argument for the continued requirement for PCs is that developers need them to create new software, even for the walled garden devices. However this is a niche market. We're transitioning to a time when the average person no longer wants or needs a PC.
Slashdot Mirror
So unless you're taking the position that refusing to allow users to use third party App Stores is the thing that developers really like
It's one of the things most developers really like, yes.
That may seem counter-intuitive, so I'll explain:
1) It's one of the things that removes a barrier to consumers purchasing. The barrier being the niggling questions: Can I get this product cheaper elsewhere? Can I get something better elsewhere? The closer you can get people after their initial impulse the more likely they are to buy. With a single app store, after they've put a search term in, the best option for them to buy is probably amongst the things listed on that page.
2) It cuts down on drudge-work. If there were 10 competing app stores, I'd probably feel that I'd have to submit my app to all of them in order not to miss out on sales. 10 times the admin of a single app store.
3) Opening up the app installation procedure so any app store could install apps would necessarily mean allowing pirated apps on non-jailbroken phones. And that would be a step in the wrong direction for developers.
iPhone users buy a lot more apps than Android users. There's more than one reason for that, but I have no doubt that single App Store ecosystem is a significant part of it.
They are doing it for now. They simply can't keep it up. It won't work.
And you say that because....
I'm an iOS developer and I can tell you that over the 3 years of the App Store, review times have got shorter, and there appear to be less mistakes, not more. They are getting better at it not worse even as the volume of submissions has increased.
It's simple linear scaling. The bigger the App Store gets, the more money Apple makes from it, and the more app reviewers Apple can hire. Meanwhile the quality and speed of app reviewing continues to improve as software tools are improved and automate more of the process.
I'm not sure what information you're expecting me to get from humblebundle. For sure it's a success, but it's for all three platforms: Windows Mac and Linux. How much of it's success is down to Linux isn't clear to me.
Incidentally the guy behind Humble Bundle looks like he's a Mac developer. First ever game on Hypercard. The first ones he distributed were Mac OS 9. So a Mac developer doing cross platform games, who then invites other similar developers to join in to do a pay what it's worth cross platform bundle. What's the Linux message in that?
You're saying Snow Leopard was worse than Leopard? That's just nonsense. Snow Leopard was the best ever version of OS X. It was only for Intel Macs, so those still on PowerPCs might have been disappointed it wasn't for them. But it was certainly a great upgrade for those that upgraded.
The situation with Snow leopard is serious enough to make a 15 year mac veteran dump OSX for Linux.
PowerPC?
For sure, Lion has some problems. But Snow Leopard was excellent.
Well let's see now. Amazon has a Kindle app on the App Store. It's free, so Apple don't make a penny from it. And it's direct competition for Apple's own iBooks.
I have no way of knowing how many of the others fall into this category. So let me guess: 42,547.
What was your point?
Also, this speciality don't make sense for a computer device (anything with a CPU, memory and a display). Because for the "Electric Drill" you need to get all the attachments, and some attachments probably don't work as good. But with a computer device all you need is to start a different app for the task.
"Attachments" works perfectly well as a metaphor for software you add to a device. Like putting a a phone app on a PC: it works, but it's not as good as a phone app on a phone. The PC isn't small enough to always keep in your pocket for example.
Android has 3rd party Chinese app stores that you've never heard of.
So what Android apps do I have to worry about as an Android user on this side of the planet?
What do Chinese app stores have to do with the fact that theres a fuckton more malware on Android than iOS?
You're just engaging in some self serving fear mongering based on some crude, incomplete, and misleading information.
Read it and weep. Look at the pie chart - Android is the target of 63% of mobile malware. iOS malware is so rare or non-existant it doesn't even get a wedge on the pie chart.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/245380/ios_safer_from_malware_than_android_security_firm_says.html
Fact once again scuppering the claims of Android evangelists.
Unfortunately, there's a lot of stuff that Apple simply doesn't make available. This is true for their Music store as well as their video store.
Apple don't have to sell it. Apple devices support music and video sold from where ever. With a large range of supported formats and codecs.
Apple and it's fanboys lower the bar.
As far as I've seen they're all more intelligent than you.
Walled gardens eventually get as infested as everywhere else.
The only way they can make it otherwise, is to screen everything that comes through, which they have tried to do.
They are not trying to do it, they are doing it, and very successfully. You are focussing on the odd story on slashdot every month or two, about some hiccup in someone getting an app approved, versus the half a million apps that are on store. The 99.99% that are reviewed without issue. I know, I'm a iOS developer.
Not to mention arbitrary rules, and the rest of it.
There are no arbitrary rules. There are rules with good reason, listed by Apple for developers to refer to before they even start development.
But eventually, it will all even out, once outlets other than the app store become more popular. There is nothing they can do about it; it is inevitable.
Ah, the confidence of the uninformed.
Cydia provides an infastructure to take payments
The GP was talking about Linux repositories. I'm not sure how an iOS repository answers my questions. If I want to sell software on Linux, can I use a Linux repository or not? I really don't know.
Given the prevalence of gratis software, I'm not sure how relevant the payment aspect is with either model.
It's very relevant if you make your living by developing apps.
As a Linux outsider, it seems that the OSS community is hostile to people who want to make their living developing apps. It looks like support is an acceptable way to make a living, but being paid for the software you programmed is not.
By contrast generally I find that OSX and iOS users are supportive to people making their living developing apps. If the apps are good people are only too happy to encourage you by paying for it.
The pretext of the thread is that the PC is going to be replaced by specialized walled garden devices.
The one I responded to was "So the PC is dead because a single machine can be replaced by three machines." So I explained why.
Moreover, the PC is not like a drill. It is already the specialized version. It's the thing you use when you want a keyboard, a big screen and better performance.
You're looking through the wrong end of the telescope. You're looking at the situation now. For sure if you look at the electric drill now it looks like a specialist device for drilling. But that's only because of the rise of those other specialized devices. In the past it was indeed the jack of all trades, master of none that I described.
Same apples to the PC. It used to be a tool for EVERY job that required information processing. Now it's sphere of use is reduced because there are other specialized devices.
Before you argue any more, I suggest you buy, borrow or steal a copy of The Invisible Computer by Donald Norman. A very influential book of about a decade ago. The electric drill analogy comes from there, and is sound. And it documents a lot more history of the electric motor to make it's point than I could possibly do here.
There were alternate apps in all those categories more or less from day one. There are a couple of other rules that some apps were failed because of that some people misinterpreted as a non-compete rule.
1) The first is that web-browsing must be done via the built in Webkit. Alternate browsers are allowed, but their rendering engine must be webkit. This is understandable from a security perspective. Browser engines are common sources of security vulnerabilities, so Apple insists on the one they control. It's also understandable from a UI point of view. Every view that looks like a web page on the device functions in exactly the same way.
2) You may not clone the look and feel of the built in apps. Nor built in controls for which there is no API. Again there are perfectly valid practical reasons these rules. But one doesn't even need to argue those, because it's just plain plagiarism to copy the look and feel of other apps.
I don't think that's particularly a fair comparison. The iPhone brought a lot of things to the mobile device market other than a walled garden and you can't disambiguate the effect of those things (like, say, a UI that doesn't look like an attempt to put Windows 95 on a phone).
Well I was once a Symbian developer, and now an iOS developer. And whilst the nice UI and the much more pleasant development environment are nice for developers, that's not the reason why my colleagues and I got excited with the announcement of iPhone development. It was because of the App Store. Because Apple would host and administer the sales of our apps, and the market was destined to be huge because for the first time Apple had removed virtually all the barriers to selling apps. A one stop shop with more or less one click download and install. Brilliant! It had us old time mobile app developers salivating at the prospect, and eager to sign up ASAP.
Here's why you think that:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias
That sounds very nice in theory, but in the real world it doesn't work that way, and never has.
Which has more malware, iPhone or Android? Answer: Android has a fuckton more malware. It doesn't just work in theory it works in practice.
The iShiny simply hasn't existed very long so those that want one may not have gotten one yet. Look at how PC sales went nuts when they first became affordable, hell stores were going through units as fast as they could get them in the store.
So you're saying they are like PC sales when they were new.
Appstores are a niche market for a niche product, that is all. Sure they make good money but that is ONLY because they are a NEW market and once the shiny wears off and those that want one have one the bottom will crash and crash HARD.
So now you're saying they're not like PC sales.
You're confused.
You do understand that the "App Store" is just a variant of Linux repositories?
Can I sell something through Linux repositories? Does it provide the infrastructure to take payments, and forward my share to my bank account?
Personally, my current main app store is ftp.au.debian.org/debian/, but I could always switch if I felt like it.
I'm not seeing how sales are made on that site.
Don't forget to include all the other computing devices you have. Set top boxes of various kinds. Consoles. Car - engine management and GPS. White goods.
The latest thing is thermostats - no doubt the Nest thermostat will start a whole new generation of thermostats.
Still it's quite possible that your personal experience is against the trend of ever more specialised computing devices.
You're confusing specialization with control.
I'm not confusing anything. Try following the thread. Specialization makes sense as an answer to the GP's post. Control doesn't.
On the contrary, it's proving the point. A hundred thousand is a tiny sliver of the what, tens of millions of software developers in the world?
Most software developers are not interested n developing for mobile devices. What you need to compare with is how many were/are developing for non-walled garden mobile devices. And there are far more developing for iOS than for any of those non-walled garden mobile platforms. Apple actually made it easier and more attractive for developers to create mobile apps.
if no one is allowed to produce anything that "duplicates functionality" of an existing app, you have no competition.
There are lots of iPhone apps that duplicate functionality of other apps. There are plenty of apps that duplicate functionality of built in apps. There are alternate diary apps, contact apps, camera apps, map apps etc.
I'm curious. What device did you use to post you delusional response? Did anyone not using a PC post on this topic today?
"average person no longer wants or needs a PC."
Your curiosity doesn't seem to extend to recognising the future tense meaning of "we are transitioning to" rather than "we are now at".
Can we stop mincing words and replace "average person" with the the true description of "idiot" or at least "sheep"?
No. You can be an ignorant snob on your own.
Back in the 1970s and earlier consumers used to buy an electric motor called "An Electric Drill". And as well as drilling with it you could buy attachments to do sanding, polishing, circular sawing, screwing, pumping, grinding. (almost sounds like a sex aid! maybe there were attachments for that too!)
As time went on the price went down and affluence went up, and people bought dedicated devices for whichever of these things they needed to do. They didn't need a general purpose electric motor any more. They could get better purpose built devices with their own inexpensive electric motor built in.
That movement from a single general purpose device to a variety of more specialised devices is now happening with computing. And that's exactly the metaphor Donald Norman used to predict it happening a decade ago.
98% of the time people with a PC are also consuming rather than creating.
As to the idea that you can't create on a tablet - you ought to look at the many ways of making music with iPads. (for example)
For sure many websites aren't designed with touch screens in mind. However as time goes on, they will be. Web developers develop to be compatible with the majority of clients out there, and as tablets and phones have become a significant proportion of web clients, new website designs and updates will support that.
For sure for some tasks you need a real keyboard. But the Asus Eee Transformer shows that that doesn't have to be a PC.
As to browsers, Webkit is the biggest mobile browser engine, and it's just as fully featured as a desktop browser engine - it's the very same one used in Safari and Chrome.
I'll be a complete computer snob here... iMac, iPod, iPad, iChat are all for people who are iChallenged.
A Windows user calling the users of a genuine Unix system challenged? What an idiot.
These people are not going to use Photoshop or code ever.
Quite hard to explain all those designers and iOS developers using OSX then.
Your argument is only that phones aren't suitable for every computing task, not that PCs are needed.
Photoshop and watching movies only require large screens with adequately powerful processing power. They don't have to be general purpose PCs. And they can indeed be devices that work in a walled garden.
A better argument for the continued requirement for PCs is that developers need them to create new software, even for the walled garden devices. However this is a niche market. We're transitioning to a time when the average person no longer wants or needs a PC.