The flood of wannabe developers that can't afford $99 to the Android platform may well explain the poor standard of Android apps. As I say, hobbyists who think $99 is even a significant part of the investment in making an app inevitably make crap apps. Google is welcome to them.
And if Google is making money on Android then good for them. I doubt that they are though.
For SSL: a single central athority would only increase the pain when it was compromised
Not really. A criminal only needs one compromised authority to get it's fraudulent certificate from, It makes no difference to the use of that certificate whether there is one authority or 100.
But of course the criminal is far more likely to find a compromised authority if there are 100 of them than of theres one.
Politics wise, I'm not yet that worried about the USA stability to have bothered to look into it.
They all use the same electricity grid and gas pipes. Electricity and gas are fungible. It doesn't matter if the electricity and gas you get out is the same put in by your supplier.
What the supplier puts in and what the consumer takes out is measured by meter. Then it's just a matter of accounting between the companies involved.
It seems like a good idea to the free market / competition is good brigade.
In actual fact it's a pain in the arse to consumers. Suppliers offer sweetner deals to get new customers, and then ratchet up the tariff over time. Thus loyal customers get shafted and if you want to keep on getting a good deal you have to go through the forms and hassle to change suppliers every year or so.
Things were better when the utilities were state monopolies.
I'm sorry, but still no. The piano is perfectly accessible to those that are new to it. They will quickly know what every button does. The fact that they are not musicians and haven't developed muscle memory to operate it in a way that's pleasant to listen to is not a problem with UI design.
I think it depends on what you mean by "less attractive to it's customers". I think that if, for example, making it less attractive to some developers meant making it more attractive to the "shiny shiny" brigade then Apple would be straight there because there are more "shiny shiny" people than developers, so they make more money that way.
For "shiny shiney people" lets be adult and call them users.
It's in Apple's benefit to do the best for it's users, and it's also in the developers interest to do the best for their users. Those users are the same people, with the same best interests.
Apple is so focussed on the short term it went from nearly bankrupt to the worlds biggest company in 14 years. I can see how you'd worry that they don't know what they are doing.
Already in the iPad apps cannot share data between them.
App A defines a URL interface. App B sends request in that URL format. Amazing, they just shared data between them. That data might be a document, such as when you open a document in mail, and that document is opened in a suitable app - possibly 3rd party. There's nothing special about Mail that it can do this.
What you mean though is that apps can't write files to each other's (or a common) directory.
Issues there: 1) Most users don't understand directory structures. And even if they do, they store files in bizarre places and then forget (or never realised) where they are.
2) Bad software developers are bad at following standards or expectations about where to put files. Which results in a mess of a file system.
3) Linux doesn't have a sandbox and is therefore more vulnerable to malware. If Linux doesn't follow the trend and implement sandboxes, they will come a time when it's the least secure OS. Worse even than Windows.
First there were free for all file systems. Then there were file systems restricted by user. The future is file systems restricted by app.
If I want my app to listen to a specific socket and accept connections from remote logging instruments,
If you want to put it on the App Store, yes. That's to allow your app to do it because it needs to, whilst stopping some malware fart app from doing the same.
or I want my app to allow the user to save/load files wherever they want
No. Your app can't take it on itself to save files out of the sandbox without appropriate permission. But user initiated save/open is not sandboxed.
I'll have to convince Apple that I'm deserving of such 'responsibility'?
Why should potential users trust you if you're not deserving of such responsibility?
If Apple allowed anyone to set up their own "app store" and allowed the customer to select which stores the customer approved of, then everyone (except maybe Apple) would be happy.
As an iOS developer I wouldn't be happy if there were multiple iOS stores. As it is I only have to deal with one store. If there were 25 stores, I'd have to deal with 25 of them, or risk losing sales.
As a user I'd be unhappy. It's great to have one store where you'll find everything. I don't want to feel like I have to shop around 25 stores before I'm sure I've seen everything in the category of app I'm after.
Imagine if your car manufacturer only let you buy gas at its stations.
Gas is fungible. It doesn't matter whose gas I buy.
but only gas that it had approved and for which it took a 30% commission.
As a driver I only care about the selling price. I don't care who gets what percentage of that. With iOS App Store, prices of software have never been lower.
As a developer: Before the Apple App Store I was paying Handango 40%, but not getting anything like the volume. Before that, with shrinkwrap, lots of people got a cut of the selling price such that the developer typically got 3-5%.
For both developers and users, things have never been so good.
No. You don't understand Apple's motivations, so your chances of predicting what they will do are small. Rather you're one of many who just consider them the enemy, and so will assume they'll always do the thing that is most objectionable to you.
It's quite common during warfare to suggest your opponents eat babies. And people believe it without ever stopping to ask why they would eat babies.
crush apps some Apple executive didn't like, eg the "no competition" clauses.
There's no general no compete clauses. There are competing contacts apps, mail apps, word processors, spreadsheets, media players etc. etc.
There are specific rules that are there in order to keep confusion and incompatibility off the platform. For the sake of users. For example a third party web-browser app is OK, but it must use the built in WebKit web-view. It's not difficult to work out why. Inconsistencies in different browser engines. Apple want a single standard for how web-sites make their pages iPhone optimised. Thus a site either works properly on iPhone r it doesn't. There's none of this "Well we support IE but not Firefox" type stuff that you get on PCs.
Far from being "abusive" to users, Apple does what it can to make things easy and trouble free. And that's also their motivation for sandboxing. They have nothing else to gain other than it makes users computers more secure and harder for malware to exploit.
"IT Guys" would really appreciate if they could have a) an App store of their own where they can put up their company local solutions and
They already can. Apple has solutions for enterprises.
b) ways to black or white list solutions from the Apple App store so that people don't install erotic applications on their work computer.
You mean give them more work to do. Rather than just accept that the Apple App Store already bans porn. They have playboy, but it's a version without so much as a naked breast.
Of course any device with a web browser can access hard core porn... Only way you can deal with that is disciplinary measures after it's been discovered.
I would like to see each time I install a new plugin a message like "the application X wants this extra permission:read/write external files because - {insert some reason the developer wrote}. Do you agree to add the extra permission?Yes/No".
Not a chance. Most users will just answer yes without thinking it through. Or even reading it though. In fact most users won't have the technical knowledge to know if the developer's claimed reason is true.
Most Apple fans are not experts in computers
Most COMPUTER users are not experts in computers. There's certainly no higher tech knowledge standard amongst PC users.
(see the haters/fanboys difference on slashdot comments)
I've seen them and going on that, the Apple users are way ahead in intelligence and tech knowledge. But we can't extrapolate from that to the rest of Slashdot, let alone the world in general.
lock them into purely "sandboxed" applications, or bureaucrat them to death by refusing to "allow" their new-apps to integrate with "certain things" at random, and that development will wither on the vine.
It doesn't seem to have put off iOS app store developers.
No, it means "designed for people who know nothing and who are unwilling to learn." The history of the PC industry has shown everyone that despite the initial optimism of hackers like Lee Felsenstein, the majority of people are simply not interested in learning about their computers. Most people want to use their computers to be passive consumers of music and movies or to spread their intimate details on social networking sites, and they just get aggravated by the notion that they might have to learn more than the location of the power button in order to do so.
I've been a computer geek for 30 years. I'm a developer. And I too get annoyed with the notion that I would have to read a manual to operate software. I mean when I was a young geek I'd enjoy reading manuals for bed-time reading. But you grow out of that.
To put it another way, Apple's current design methodology is centered around the notion that people should not have to think about how to use their computers. Let me emphasize the important part: people should not have to think.
Why on earth would anyone want a computer that you have to think about and learn in preference to one that you don't? Apart from those young geeks that still enjoy complexity.
"Good" design is subject to the question of who your audience is. And so I take exception to a blanket-labeling of simple UI as good UI without caveats about who and what the UI is intended for.
It's subject to the problem space your app is addressing. That's what defines your audience. If the person understands the problem space, then "idiot-ready/easy to use/good-design means it should be obvious to them how to use the application. Anything else is accidental complexity, and should be stamped on hard.
How would you simplify the UI of a piano, for instance, so that new users could play their favorite songs without all that pesky practice?
A piano is idiot ready. It has buttons that are organised to output a series of pleasant notes from low to high. And the buttons are velocity sensitive. That's all quickly discoverable even by a toddler. The 2 or three pedals are slightly less obvious, admittedly. The only complexity is the problem space - you have to be a piano player. The complexity is not learning how the piano works, it's learning how to make your fingers move appropriately.
If you are a piano player, you are an expert in that problem space. You yet you use exactly the same piano interface that the beginner does. And you can use any manufacturers piano, or piano like instrument.
The only difference between a consumer piano and a pro piano is the quality of it's output. The interface is the same.
people can not instantly dive in and use Photoshop
That's because it's a bad design. Any person who understands the art and science of photography or design should be able to pick up a photo editing app and start using it straight away. Photoshop is absolutely filled with accidental complexity.
"idiot-ready" software is good software... for "idiots".... That approach to software design is "one size fits most" - but it's not "one size fits all" because the limitations of a simple UI will inevitably interfere with (or at least fail to support) something that someone is trying to do.
No. The only acceptable complexity is that intrinsic to the problem space. A PCB routing app is probably more complex than a video editing app. And that is probably more complicated than a word processor. And that is probably more complicated than a calculator. But each of them can and should have an easy to use ("idiot ready") UI.
To take the PCB routing example. It could be that you have to input each component and each connection as a text list. That's not for idiots. You could drag and drop components from palette, and make connections by rubber banding from one connection to the next. That's "idiot ready". The idiot ready version is better for everyone (that understands the problem space of PCB routing.)
I would much rather like to see a sandbox where multiple private companies publish application profiles and the consumer choice is maximized; that's a nice role for the AV companies to play, move from a blacklist to a whitelist model.
The multiple authorities model hasn't worked out so well for HTTPS recently. This year a number of Certificate Authority companies have been compromised.
Should such a company turn into Big Brother, limit the consumer choice and push it's own interests, the consumers can easily move to a different "security provider".
"Security provider"? Most people have trouble reasonably choosing between rival electricity and gas providers. Or just couldn't be bothered. And that is for something they understand. What the fuck is a "security provider" to 99% of the population? It's an unwanted complexity that they don't understand, that's what. Trusting Apple to do what's reasonable to keep their computing safe? Now that's understandable. They know who Apple is.
Apple is a control freak: it's profitable and risky, it almost got them killed when the PC revolution happened.
On the contrary, Apple opened up their OS to clone manufacturers, and the tiny market share came after that. Only after the clone makers were stopped did Apple's fortunes improve. Of course there are many other influences there, but that's the point - you can't say was control freakery that lost them market share. And conversely Apple recovered and went on to become the biggest company in the world during a period when they were exerting more control than before.
For example, if I buy my employee an iPhone or iPad, I then probably need to buy him some apps so he can do work, i.e. an app to work with MS Office files, and probably one or two other apps. The apps have to be purchased under an iTunes account so we put it under his corporate e-mail, now what happens when he leaves?
Apple's word processor, spreadsheet and presentation apps, Pages Numbers and Keynote. $9.99 each. You think businesses are worrying about $29.97 when one a member of staff is replaced? If anything, businesses aren't used to paying so little for software. And most apps are even cheaper than that. It's not worth the time it would take to administer the exchange of licenses when things are that cheap.
What's stopping a developer from releasing their app for free on the app store and requiring the use to input an unlock code before they can use it? This is how it works on PCs. You can download the trial version of Photoshop, use it for 30 days, and then if you want to continue using it you have to purchase it and enter the product key. Why would this not work with apps?
What's to stop them? Apple's rules. You aren't allowed to cheat Apple out of their 30%. But it's a bad idea for developers anyway - free downloads with reg-codes are the most widely pirated software. People can be sure they aren't getting a trojan because they download it from the developers website (or Apple in your scenario) rather than a torrent site. And a reg-code is so easy to pass around.
Sure, iPhone apps are pirated too, but it involves jailbreaking and downloading modified apps from shady sites. And most people don't know how/are afraid/couldn't be bothered doing that. Especially as doing it the honest way, apps are cheap and are no effort to install.
Your suggestions complicate things, and Apple and the App store are both sucessful because they make things easier, not more difficult.
Also, don't even get me started on the fact that you have to have a credit card on file to even purchase apps in the first place. Corporations don't like to give out corporate CC numbers to every employee that needs to purchase apps, so you end up with employees purchasing apps and expensing them, which creates a lot of extra work for the finance dept since they now have a huge influx of expense reports to process
Plus, you have the employees who get a corporate iPhone / iPad and then fill it up with their music collection and complain that they run out of HDD space when they sync it to their laptop, AND they bitch that their music and photos weren't backed up when their laptop dies.
Which is a generic problem with PCs. It's not specific to anything Apple.
Apple won't subsidize anything. They get a 30% cut of everything you make!
So if you ARE selling the app, and Apple is making it's 30%, then you don't need to worry about the $99. 143 app sales at 99c. Less at higher price points.
The flaw is the 99$ just to be able to send the thing to the phone and nothing more. I don't want apple to subsidize me anything, nor do I want charity, I just want to use what I payed for (at the very least).
""Just". OK, now we're talking about the different situation of you not distributing the app. OK, how many man hours do you imagine went into creating XCode? How much did you pay for it?
Back to the general case: There are a lot of steps that Apple need to enable for App Store developers. Amongst them: 1) Create an SDK suitable for public consumption. 2) Document it in a way suitable for public consumption. 3) Create development tools (Xcode etc.) 4) Run a developer web site. 5) Issue a certificate per app and per development device to enable DRM. 6) Run developer forums. 7) Process and review developer app submisssion. 8) Publish apps on the web site. 9) Take money, and pay credit card charges, deal with tax issues. 10) Provide the mechanism and bandwidth for installing the apps.
The first 4 are fixed overheads. They don't scale according to the number of developers and sales. The remaining 6 are variable costs. They scale according to the number of developers and the number of app installs.
Apple make the perfectly reasonable choice to put the token fee that separates the actual developers from the curious time-wasters at the point at which it changes from fixed overheads to variable costs.
You like having to pay 99$ per year to get things on your phone (not even the store), good for you.
Like? My niece would like a pink unicorn. I'd like to get free beer. What has like got to do with what's reasonable?
Look, anyone who can even have a go at developing has already found the money for a Mac and an iOS device. They've then already found out whether they are capable of developing, and whether their app idea has promise because they can have a go with XCode and the simulator. $99 is neither here nor there if you are going to sell it. And if you aren't going to sell it, and Apple didn't charge $99 then Apple would indeed be subsidising you with XCode, the SDK etc.
If you want something from a company, even if you just want it for a hobby, then expect to pay for it. Anything else is an expectation that people should help you to be a freeloader.
And so if you sold as many of your app on Android as you do on iPhone, you'd make more profit on Android. But you won't sell nearly as many on Android. So it still makes more sense to have iPhone as your primary or only platform.
Who said you need to go through iTunes for that? There's an app on the iOS device called "App Store". When you go into it, it'll say that you have updates. And each update will have an install button. No Music, no Movies no TV.
That's for individuals and small businesses.
Enterprise apps can be installed by a similar process or remotely sent by the IT department.
Do you have any objections that are based on actual knowledge rather then misconceptions?
Why do I have to support your purchase? I don't get input into buying it, why should IT have to support it? How do I control your phone? How do I know you have a good password to lock it or even do you lock it? How do I remote wipe the phone if it gets stolen or you leave the company? How do I know it is encrypted? Does it even have encryption? How do I control what goes on the phone? How do I block certain apps on the phone? How do I keep the phone from talking to other devices that IT does not own nor support?
Unless you start to realise you're a cost centre and exist to serve profit centres, you're going to find you're surplus to requirements before much longer.
Slashdot Mirror
The flood of wannabe developers that can't afford $99 to the Android platform may well explain the poor standard of Android apps.
As I say, hobbyists who think $99 is even a significant part of the investment in making an app inevitably make crap apps.
Google is welcome to them.
And if Google is making money on Android then good for them. I doubt that they are though.
For SSL: a single central athority would only increase the pain when it was compromised
Not really. A criminal only needs one compromised authority to get it's fraudulent certificate from, It makes no difference to the use of that certificate whether there is one authority or 100.
But of course the criminal is far more likely to find a compromised authority if there are 100 of them than of theres one.
Politics wise, I'm not yet that worried about the USA stability to have bothered to look into it.
Everyone in Britain does for a start.
They all use the same electricity grid and gas pipes. Electricity and gas are fungible. It doesn't matter if the electricity and gas you get out is the same put in by your supplier.
What the supplier puts in and what the consumer takes out is measured by meter. Then it's just a matter of accounting between the companies involved.
It seems like a good idea to the free market / competition is good brigade.
In actual fact it's a pain in the arse to consumers. Suppliers offer sweetner deals to get new customers, and then ratchet up the tariff over time. Thus loyal customers get shafted and if you want to keep on getting a good deal you have to go through the forms and hassle to change suppliers every year or so.
Things were better when the utilities were state monopolies.
Choice isn't necessarily a good thing.
I'm sorry, but still no. The piano is perfectly accessible to those that are new to it. They will quickly know what every button does. The fact that they are not musicians and haven't developed muscle memory to operate it in a way that's pleasant to listen to is not a problem with UI design.
I think it depends on what you mean by "less attractive to it's customers". I think that if, for example, making it less attractive to some developers meant making it more attractive to the "shiny shiny" brigade then Apple would be straight there because there are more "shiny shiny" people than developers, so they make more money that way.
For "shiny shiney people" lets be adult and call them users.
It's in Apple's benefit to do the best for it's users, and it's also in the developers interest to do the best for their users. Those users are the same people, with the same best interests.
Apple is so focussed on the short term it went from nearly bankrupt to the worlds biggest company in 14 years. I can see how you'd worry that they don't know what they are doing.
Already in the iPad apps cannot share data between them.
App A defines a URL interface. App B sends request in that URL format. Amazing, they just shared data between them. That data might be a document, such as when you open a document in mail, and that document is opened in a suitable app - possibly 3rd party. There's nothing special about Mail that it can do this.
What you mean though is that apps can't write files to each other's (or a common) directory.
Issues there:
1) Most users don't understand directory structures. And even if they do, they store files in bizarre places and then forget (or never realised) where they are.
2) Bad software developers are bad at following standards or expectations about where to put files. Which results in a mess of a file system.
3) Linux doesn't have a sandbox and is therefore more vulnerable to malware. If Linux doesn't follow the trend and implement sandboxes, they will come a time when it's the least secure OS. Worse even than Windows.
First there were free for all file systems.
Then there were file systems restricted by user.
The future is file systems restricted by app.
If I want my app to listen to a specific socket and accept connections from remote logging instruments,
If you want to put it on the App Store, yes. That's to allow your app to do it because it needs to, whilst stopping some malware fart app from doing the same.
or I want my app to allow the user to save/load files wherever they want
No. Your app can't take it on itself to save files out of the sandbox without appropriate permission. But user initiated save/open is not sandboxed.
I'll have to convince Apple that I'm deserving of such 'responsibility'?
Why should potential users trust you if you're not deserving of such responsibility?
If Apple allowed anyone to set up their own "app store" and allowed the customer to select which stores the customer approved of, then everyone (except maybe Apple) would be happy.
As an iOS developer I wouldn't be happy if there were multiple iOS stores. As it is I only have to deal with one store. If there were 25 stores, I'd have to deal with 25 of them, or risk losing sales.
As a user I'd be unhappy. It's great to have one store where you'll find everything. I don't want to feel like I have to shop around 25 stores before I'm sure I've seen everything in the category of app I'm after.
Imagine if your car manufacturer only let you buy gas at its stations.
Gas is fungible. It doesn't matter whose gas I buy.
but only gas that it had approved and for which it took a 30% commission.
As a driver I only care about the selling price. I don't care who gets what percentage of that. With iOS App Store, prices of software have never been lower.
As a developer: Before the Apple App Store I was paying Handango 40%, but not getting anything like the volume. Before that, with shrinkwrap, lots of people got a cut of the selling price such that the developer typically got 3-5%.
For both developers and users, things have never been so good.
mark my words.
No. You don't understand Apple's motivations, so your chances of predicting what they will do are small. Rather you're one of many who just consider them the enemy, and so will assume they'll always do the thing that is most objectionable to you.
It's quite common during warfare to suggest your opponents eat babies. And people believe it without ever stopping to ask why they would eat babies.
crush apps some Apple executive didn't like, eg the "no competition" clauses.
There's no general no compete clauses. There are competing contacts apps, mail apps, word processors, spreadsheets, media players etc. etc.
There are specific rules that are there in order to keep confusion and incompatibility off the platform. For the sake of users. For example a third party web-browser app is OK, but it must use the built in WebKit web-view. It's not difficult to work out why. Inconsistencies in different browser engines. Apple want a single standard for how web-sites make their pages iPhone optimised. Thus a site either works properly on iPhone r it doesn't. There's none of this "Well we support IE but not Firefox" type stuff that you get on PCs.
Far from being "abusive" to users, Apple does what it can to make things easy and trouble free. And that's also their motivation for sandboxing. They have nothing else to gain other than it makes users computers more secure and harder for malware to exploit.
Could you explain what benefit you think Apple would get from making their platform less attractive to it's customers.
"IT Guys" would really appreciate if they could have a) an App store of their own where they can put up their company local solutions and
They already can. Apple has solutions for enterprises.
b) ways to black or white list solutions from the Apple App store so that people don't install erotic applications on their work computer.
You mean give them more work to do. Rather than just accept that the Apple App Store already bans porn. They have playboy, but it's a version without so much as a naked breast.
Of course any device with a web browser can access hard core porn... Only way you can deal with that is disciplinary measures after it's been discovered.
I would like to see each time I install a new plugin a message like "the application X wants this extra permission:read/write external files because - {insert some reason the developer wrote}. Do you agree to add the extra permission?Yes/No".
Not a chance. Most users will just answer yes without thinking it through. Or even reading it though. In fact most users won't have the technical knowledge to know if the developer's claimed reason is true.
Most Apple fans are not experts in computers
Most COMPUTER users are not experts in computers. There's certainly no higher tech knowledge standard amongst PC users.
(see the haters/fanboys difference on slashdot comments)
I've seen them and going on that, the Apple users are way ahead in intelligence and tech knowledge. But we can't extrapolate from that to the rest of Slashdot, let alone the world in general.
lock them into purely "sandboxed" applications, or bureaucrat them to death by refusing to "allow" their new-apps to integrate with "certain things" at random, and that development will wither on the vine.
It doesn't seem to have put off iOS app store developers.
No, it means "designed for people who know nothing and who are unwilling to learn." The history of the PC industry has shown everyone that despite the initial optimism of hackers like Lee Felsenstein, the majority of people are simply not interested in learning about their computers. Most people want to use their computers to be passive consumers of music and movies or to spread their intimate details on social networking sites, and they just get aggravated by the notion that they might have to learn more than the location of the power button in order to do so.
I've been a computer geek for 30 years. I'm a developer. And I too get annoyed with the notion that I would have to read a manual to operate software. I mean when I was a young geek I'd enjoy reading manuals for bed-time reading. But you grow out of that.
To put it another way, Apple's current design methodology is centered around the notion that people should not have to think about how to use their computers. Let me emphasize the important part: people should not have to think.
Why on earth would anyone want a computer that you have to think about and learn in preference to one that you don't? Apart from those young geeks that still enjoy complexity.
The manual is the last resort when someone didn't design the app very well.
"Good" design is subject to the question of who your audience is. And so I take exception to a blanket-labeling of simple UI as good UI without caveats about who and what the UI is intended for.
It's subject to the problem space your app is addressing. That's what defines your audience. If the person understands the problem space, then "idiot-ready/easy to use/good-design means it should be obvious to them how to use the application. Anything else is accidental complexity, and should be stamped on hard.
How would you simplify the UI of a piano, for instance, so that new users could play their favorite songs without all that pesky practice?
A piano is idiot ready. It has buttons that are organised to output a series of pleasant notes from low to high. And the buttons are velocity sensitive. That's all quickly discoverable even by a toddler. The 2 or three pedals are slightly less obvious, admittedly. The only complexity is the problem space - you have to be a piano player. The complexity is not learning how the piano works, it's learning how to make your fingers move appropriately.
If you are a piano player, you are an expert in that problem space. You yet you use exactly the same piano interface that the beginner does. And you can use any manufacturers piano, or piano like instrument.
The only difference between a consumer piano and a pro piano is the quality of it's output. The interface is the same.
people can not instantly dive in and use Photoshop
That's because it's a bad design. Any person who understands the art and science of photography or design should be able to pick up a photo editing app and start using it straight away. Photoshop is absolutely filled with accidental complexity.
"idiot-ready" software is good software... for "idiots"....
That approach to software design is "one size fits most" - but it's not "one size fits all" because the limitations of a simple UI will inevitably interfere with (or at least fail to support) something that someone is trying to do.
No. The only acceptable complexity is that intrinsic to the problem space. A PCB routing app is probably more complex than a video editing app. And that is probably more complicated than a word processor. And that is probably more complicated than a calculator. But each of them can and should have an easy to use ("idiot ready") UI.
To take the PCB routing example. It could be that you have to input each component and each connection as a text list. That's not for idiots. You could drag and drop components from palette, and make connections by rubber banding from one connection to the next. That's "idiot ready". The idiot ready version is better for everyone (that understands the problem space of PCB routing.)
I would much rather like to see a sandbox where multiple private companies publish application profiles and the consumer choice is maximized; that's a nice role for the AV companies to play, move from a blacklist to a whitelist model.
The multiple authorities model hasn't worked out so well for HTTPS recently. This year a number of Certificate Authority companies have been compromised.
Should such a company turn into Big Brother, limit the consumer choice and push it's own interests, the consumers can easily move to a different "security provider".
"Security provider"? Most people have trouble reasonably choosing between rival electricity and gas providers. Or just couldn't be bothered. And that is for something they understand. What the fuck is a "security provider" to 99% of the population? It's an unwanted complexity that they don't understand, that's what. Trusting Apple to do what's reasonable to keep their computing safe? Now that's understandable. They know who Apple is.
Apple is a control freak: it's profitable and risky, it almost got them killed when the PC revolution happened.
On the contrary, Apple opened up their OS to clone manufacturers, and the tiny market share came after that. Only after the clone makers were stopped did Apple's fortunes improve. Of course there are many other influences there, but that's the point - you can't say was control freakery that lost them market share. And conversely Apple recovered and went on to become the biggest company in the world during a period when they were exerting more control than before.
For example, if I buy my employee an iPhone or iPad, I then probably need to buy him some apps so he can do work, i.e. an app to work with MS Office files, and probably one or two other apps. The apps have to be purchased under an iTunes account so we put it under his corporate e-mail, now what happens when he leaves?
Apple's word processor, spreadsheet and presentation apps, Pages Numbers and Keynote. $9.99 each. You think businesses are worrying about $29.97 when one a member of staff is replaced? If anything, businesses aren't used to paying so little for software. And most apps are even cheaper than that. It's not worth the time it would take to administer the exchange of licenses when things are that cheap.
What's stopping a developer from releasing their app for free on the app store and requiring the use to input an unlock code before they can use it? This is how it works on PCs. You can download the trial version of Photoshop, use it for 30 days, and then if you want to continue using it you have to purchase it and enter the product key. Why would this not work with apps?
What's to stop them? Apple's rules. You aren't allowed to cheat Apple out of their 30%. But it's a bad idea for developers anyway - free downloads with reg-codes are the most widely pirated software. People can be sure they aren't getting a trojan because they download it from the developers website (or Apple in your scenario) rather than a torrent site. And a reg-code is so easy to pass around.
Sure, iPhone apps are pirated too, but it involves jailbreaking and downloading modified apps from shady sites. And most people don't know how/are afraid/couldn't be bothered doing that. Especially as doing it the honest way, apps are cheap and are no effort to install.
Your suggestions complicate things, and Apple and the App store are both sucessful because they make things easier, not more difficult.
Also, don't even get me started on the fact that you have to have a credit card on file to even purchase apps in the first place. Corporations don't like to give out corporate CC numbers to every employee that needs to purchase apps, so you end up with employees purchasing apps and expensing them, which creates a lot of extra work for the finance dept since they now have a huge influx of expense reports to process
No credit card required. Single bulk purchase, or pay as you go with normal business purchasing methods.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-27076_3-20079490-248/apple-debuts-app-store-volume-purchase-program/
Plus, you have the employees who get a corporate iPhone / iPad and then fill it up with their music collection and complain that they run out of HDD space when they sync it to their laptop, AND they bitch that their music and photos weren't backed up when their laptop dies.
Which is a generic problem with PCs. It's not specific to anything Apple.
Apple won't subsidize anything. They get a 30% cut of everything you make!
So if you ARE selling the app, and Apple is making it's 30%, then you don't need to worry about the $99. 143 app sales at 99c. Less at higher price points.
The flaw is the 99$ just to be able to send the thing to the phone and nothing more. I don't want apple to subsidize me anything, nor do I want charity, I just want to use what I payed for (at the very least).
""Just". OK, now we're talking about the different situation of you not distributing the app. OK, how many man hours do you imagine went into creating XCode? How much did you pay for it?
Back to the general case:
There are a lot of steps that Apple need to enable for App Store developers. Amongst them:
1) Create an SDK suitable for public consumption.
2) Document it in a way suitable for public consumption.
3) Create development tools (Xcode etc.)
4) Run a developer web site.
5) Issue a certificate per app and per development device to enable DRM.
6) Run developer forums.
7) Process and review developer app submisssion.
8) Publish apps on the web site.
9) Take money, and pay credit card charges, deal with tax issues.
10) Provide the mechanism and bandwidth for installing the apps.
The first 4 are fixed overheads. They don't scale according to the number of developers and sales. The remaining 6 are variable costs. They scale according to the number of developers and the number of app installs.
Apple make the perfectly reasonable choice to put the token fee that separates the actual developers from the curious time-wasters at the point at which it changes from fixed overheads to variable costs.
You like having to pay 99$ per year to get things on your phone (not even the store), good for you.
Like? My niece would like a pink unicorn. I'd like to get free beer. What has like got to do with what's reasonable?
Look, anyone who can even have a go at developing has already found the money for a Mac and an iOS device. They've then already found out whether they are capable of developing, and whether their app idea has promise because they can have a go with XCode and the simulator. $99 is neither here nor there if you are going to sell it. And if you aren't going to sell it, and Apple didn't charge $99 then Apple would indeed be subsidising you with XCode, the SDK etc.
If you want something from a company, even if you just want it for a hobby, then expect to pay for it. Anything else is an expectation that people should help you to be a freeloader.
And so if you sold as many of your app on Android as you do on iPhone, you'd make more profit on Android. But you won't sell nearly as many on Android. So it still makes more sense to have iPhone as your primary or only platform.
Who said you need to go through iTunes for that? There's an app on the iOS device called "App Store". When you go into it, it'll say that you have updates. And each update will have an install button. No Music, no Movies no TV.
That's for individuals and small businesses.
Enterprise apps can be installed by a similar process or remotely sent by the IT department.
Do you have any objections that are based on actual knowledge rather then misconceptions?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/barackobama/4340218/Obamas-new-Blackberry-Speculation-mounts-over-details-of-Presidents-smartphone.html
Why do I have to support your purchase? I don't get input into buying it, why should IT have to support it? How do I control your phone? How do I know you have a good password to lock it or even do you lock it? How do I remote wipe the phone if it gets stolen or you leave the company? How do I know it is encrypted? Does it even have encryption? How do I control what goes on the phone? How do I block certain apps on the phone? How do I keep the phone from talking to other devices that IT does not own nor support?
Unless you start to realise you're a cost centre and exist to serve profit centres, you're going to find you're surplus to requirements before much longer.