I remember people telling me that people wouldn't want to buy car insurance over the phone or buy holidays over the internet.
I had a reason to want something like this recently. I was in a store and saw a Wii game that I wanted, but figured I might be able to get it cheaper. I surfed to a store's site on my phone, and saw they were £5 ($10) less. Sure, I'm not going to do it on every item, but big, well-branded goods? Absolutely.
I'm not making moral judgements on this. Microsoft just understands developers and their importance far better than Apple does. And yes, it's all about keeping people using their platform (at the same time as enriching developers).
Online activation is more the result of the internet than anything else, and that the cost of machines has gone up and moved out of the corporate space.
I'm not involved in drivers, but I don't ever see a day when MS will bring in signing of user-mode programs. That's far beyond the point at which it becomes a benefit, and developers of 10s of thousands of weird and wonderful applications will switch to Linux.
It's a bit like COBOL. You won't read many hipsters writing blog posts about Windows Mobile, but dig deep and it's used in a very big way, especially for companies who want to build custom apps to run on mobile. Particularly because they can leverage their.net skills into.net CF.
And what have any of those got to do with being developer friendly? Each of those are the results of Apple being at the leading edge in different ways. I'll give them credit for that, but none of that makes them developer-friendly.
Any OS vendor that regularly forces members of its own developer base out of the market is displaying MS-like behavior. But overall Apple's track record for enabling 3rd party development is (or was) very good indeed.
When was the last time that Microsoft did that? You can argue that when Microsoft makes folders zippable/unzippable or adds a photo organiser, they destroy businesses in those markets, but Picasa and Winzip will still run on Vista if that's your choice. Blocking apps from the iPhone store is a whole different matter.
Regarding 3rd party development, I disagree. Look at the debacle over Java, over Carbon64. Look at how often they break backwards compatibility.
eBay are mostly hanging on because of network effects. It wouldn't be surprised if some big company has an auction site primed and ready to go, waiting for an opportune moment when eBay oversteps the mark.
When eBay started, the fees may have been reasonable, but the costs of hosting a large web site are much lower than they were 10 years ago. The fees should be a fraction of what they are now.
just out of interest, have you heard anything bad about Marketplace? I'm thinking of joining up to sell some computer books (I will not use eBay or Paypal).
Good luck when something goes wrong. As the result of a single incident with Paypal, I will avoid dealing with them, or any company that wants to trade using them.
If you use a cheque, you get all sorts of protection, like if your bank thinks it's fraud, they call the police. PayPal's attitude: "you're screwed, tough luck".
Based on what happened with DVDs, I'd also avoid Blu-Ray discs right now unless you know that they've been done for Blu-Ray.
The early DVDs were very poor versions. Often badly mastered, requiring a flip with no features. Later on, they brought out new editions which were much better.
I think that discs will be cheaper at the blu-ray capacity for a very long time. The discs are that price because the demand is small, but if flash memory starts getting bigger and reaching the 25GB level, we'll see them come down in price.
But Blu-ray is a point release as far as I'm concerned. I'm convinced that DVD will be around for a very long time. It just doesn't have the draw to pull people away from DVD.
The app store limitations were originally no bandwidth hogs and no adult material. No-one said anything about duplicating functionality or limited functionality.
Apple have probably blown out a number of developers over these issues. Anyone who's done the sums on whether they should build an App store app now has to factor in "risk of Apple kicking the application out" into their equation.
As for "another mail app", so what? I can get Outlook Express, Outlook, Thunderbird, Agent, Eudora, Pegasus and a whole load of others that I don't even know. I choose one of those, but it's not a problem to me that the rest exist, and I'm glad they're there because each one makes the next guy work harder.
I briefly had a Mac and hated iPhoto. Picasa on Windows works simply - you map the drives for it to look at and it tracks them. I couldn't stand the way that iPhotos files were buried, that changing the file name didn't actually change the physical file name.
The simple solution for Apple is to allow unapproved Apps to be provided through other means.
My cellphone company has an app store for my phone where I can download java apps. I'm sure that they arbitrarily choose applications, and they come through signed. But at the same time, I can install Putty via their website.
Apple can do what they damn well please, and I, as a developer and phone user can choose not to come to their business.
This sort of article isn't just "Apple is evil". It's also a 2nd warning to developers - Apple can and will arbitrarily remove your applications. So, any work you do for iPhone is at risk of yielding you nothing.
Apple are blowing away a golden opportunity. Developers will go where they have a sensible dual option of selling applications, and if Android becomes a platform, Apple will struggle to then get developers to come back.
I've even discovered some obsolescence that I hadn't thought of before. My Creative Nomad is quite an old machine, and Creative no longer support drivers to new versions of Windows Media Player. So, I can't upgrade my Windows Media Player without buying a new MP3 player.
My next player will either be a cowon, or a high end Nokia phone like the N96, because both just get treated as external drives, so I can either use their special software, or heck, just write my own code to synchronise if I want.
iPod/iPhone? Hell no. When a manufacturer thinks it has the right to ban applications because they compete with their own ones, they can kiss my ass
As a developer, I just can't imagine developing for the iPhone fiefdom. I'm not going to spend weeks building an application that then gets pulled because Apple shake their magic 8-ball and decide that they want another shrubbery before they'll put it on there. What if you wrote a cool app, had some decent income, then Apple release a new app in some firmware that copies your functionality and then rule that your product is competitive?
I can write for Symbian and release it. I can try and sell it through my cell operator's store. If they reject it, that might be a setback, but the point is that I can bypass that and sell direct or through another store.
When I first saw Vista, it was painfully slow. The hardware just wasn't up to the task, and drivers were certainly buggy.
A few months ago, though, I helped 2 friends choose new notebooks, and they're running Vista and very happy with it. As their free tech support, I got a few calls at the start about things moving around, but I get nothing now. They are not exactly hardcore PC users, so maybe your experience is different because of that.
But I do wonder whether the problems of Vista are going to unwind. As the hardware gets more powerful, the performance issues diminish. As manufacturers build new hardware, they'll know how to do better drivers. And as new versions of applications come out, they won't break the UAC rules.
The other problem for Apple is that people's budgets are tightening. Spending a few hundred quid on a laptop that you don't really need for some extra posing value may shift from people's priorities.
But it's going to take a great deal longer for that to happen.
Blu-Ray has one benefit over DVD - better picture resolution. That benefit also requires a TV upgrade. Whilst young men with deep pockets who love sports and action movies will spend on that, a lot of people won't. Do you get much from Oprah being in HD?
Now, eventually, everyone will go HD, but for a lot of people, that will require their existing sets to pack up.
I personally suspect that we'll see a shift - DVD will get replaced with download technology.
Does this present a problem in terms of one of the models of open source? One of the things often discussed on/. is the question of profiting from working in open source.
What's often been suggested is that there's money in support, and that if you create some software, and have experience then supporting it, that you gain a competitive advantage. That the likes of RedHat, MySQL etc will be customer's most likely first port of call.
If companies are simply going to go to someone else, that then suggests that investment in open source software could go down...
Slashdot Mirror
I remember people telling me that people wouldn't want to buy car insurance over the phone or buy holidays over the internet.
I had a reason to want something like this recently. I was in a store and saw a Wii game that I wanted, but figured I might be able to get it cheaper. I surfed to a store's site on my phone, and saw they were £5 ($10) less. Sure, I'm not going to do it on every item, but big, well-branded goods? Absolutely.
I'm not making moral judgements on this. Microsoft just understands developers and their importance far better than Apple does. And yes, it's all about keeping people using their platform (at the same time as enriching developers).
Online activation is more the result of the internet than anything else, and that the cost of machines has gone up and moved out of the corporate space.
I'm not involved in drivers, but I don't ever see a day when MS will bring in signing of user-mode programs. That's far beyond the point at which it becomes a benefit, and developers of 10s of thousands of weird and wonderful applications will switch to Linux.
It's a bit like COBOL. You won't read many hipsters writing blog posts about Windows Mobile, but dig deep and it's used in a very big way, especially for companies who want to build custom apps to run on mobile. Particularly because they can leverage their .net skills into .net CF.
And what have any of those got to do with being developer friendly? Each of those are the results of Apple being at the leading edge in different ways. I'll give them credit for that, but none of that makes them developer-friendly.
Any OS vendor that regularly forces members of its own developer base out of the market is displaying MS-like behavior. But overall Apple's track record for enabling 3rd party development is (or was) very good indeed.
When was the last time that Microsoft did that? You can argue that when Microsoft makes folders zippable/unzippable or adds a photo organiser, they destroy businesses in those markets, but Picasa and Winzip will still run on Vista if that's your choice. Blocking apps from the iPhone store is a whole different matter.
Regarding 3rd party development, I disagree. Look at the debacle over Java, over Carbon64. Look at how often they break backwards compatibility.
In this race, Apple is taking a page from Microsoft's book, while Google looks suspiciously like Linux.
It's more like Apple is taking a page from Apple's book and Google looks suspiciously like Microsoft.
For all their faults, Microsoft have always been more developer friendly than Apple.
Someone will just create a new CL model.
eBay are mostly hanging on because of network effects. It wouldn't be surprised if some big company has an auction site primed and ready to go, waiting for an opportune moment when eBay oversteps the mark.
When eBay started, the fees may have been reasonable, but the costs of hosting a large web site are much lower than they were 10 years ago. The fees should be a fraction of what they are now.
just out of interest, have you heard anything bad about Marketplace? I'm thinking of joining up to sell some computer books (I will not use eBay or Paypal).
Good luck when something goes wrong. As the result of a single incident with Paypal, I will avoid dealing with them, or any company that wants to trade using them.
If you use a cheque, you get all sorts of protection, like if your bank thinks it's fraud, they call the police. PayPal's attitude: "you're screwed, tough luck".
Difference being that the Matrix had good plot/characters/design too.
Based on what happened with DVDs, I'd also avoid Blu-Ray discs right now unless you know that they've been done for Blu-Ray.
The early DVDs were very poor versions. Often badly mastered, requiring a flip with no features. Later on, they brought out new editions which were much better.
I think that discs will be cheaper at the blu-ray capacity for a very long time. The discs are that price because the demand is small, but if flash memory starts getting bigger and reaching the 25GB level, we'll see them come down in price.
But Blu-ray is a point release as far as I'm concerned. I'm convinced that DVD will be around for a very long time. It just doesn't have the draw to pull people away from DVD.
Or is that only for Apache?
The app store limitations were originally no bandwidth hogs and no adult material. No-one said anything about duplicating functionality or limited functionality.
Apple have probably blown out a number of developers over these issues. Anyone who's done the sums on whether they should build an App store app now has to factor in "risk of Apple kicking the application out" into their equation.
As for "another mail app", so what? I can get Outlook Express, Outlook, Thunderbird, Agent, Eudora, Pegasus and a whole load of others that I don't even know. I choose one of those, but it's not a problem to me that the rest exist, and I'm glad they're there because each one makes the next guy work harder.
I briefly had a Mac and hated iPhoto. Picasa on Windows works simply - you map the drives for it to look at and it tracks them. I couldn't stand the way that iPhotos files were buried, that changing the file name didn't actually change the physical file name.
The simple solution for Apple is to allow unapproved Apps to be provided through other means.
My cellphone company has an app store for my phone where I can download java apps. I'm sure that they arbitrarily choose applications, and they come through signed. But at the same time, I can install Putty via their website.
Try Symbian S60 where you can read the GPS location, take a picture, do things through bluetooth.
Apple can do what they damn well please, and I, as a developer and phone user can choose not to come to their business.
This sort of article isn't just "Apple is evil". It's also a 2nd warning to developers - Apple can and will arbitrarily remove your applications. So, any work you do for iPhone is at risk of yielding you nothing.
Apple are blowing away a golden opportunity. Developers will go where they have a sensible dual option of selling applications, and if Android becomes a platform, Apple will struggle to then get developers to come back.
I've even discovered some obsolescence that I hadn't thought of before. My Creative Nomad is quite an old machine, and Creative no longer support drivers to new versions of Windows Media Player. So, I can't upgrade my Windows Media Player without buying a new MP3 player.
My next player will either be a cowon, or a high end Nokia phone like the N96, because both just get treated as external drives, so I can either use their special software, or heck, just write my own code to synchronise if I want.
iPod/iPhone? Hell no. When a manufacturer thinks it has the right to ban applications because they compete with their own ones, they can kiss my ass
I have evidence
Just out of interest, what's the market size of iPhone apps so far and what the market size of Symbian apps, then?
As a developer, I just can't imagine developing for the iPhone fiefdom. I'm not going to spend weeks building an application that then gets pulled because Apple shake their magic 8-ball and decide that they want another shrubbery before they'll put it on there. What if you wrote a cool app, had some decent income, then Apple release a new app in some firmware that copies your functionality and then rule that your product is competitive?
I can write for Symbian and release it. I can try and sell it through my cell operator's store. If they reject it, that might be a setback, but the point is that I can bypass that and sell direct or through another store.
I think that Vista may come back a little.
When I first saw Vista, it was painfully slow. The hardware just wasn't up to the task, and drivers were certainly buggy.
A few months ago, though, I helped 2 friends choose new notebooks, and they're running Vista and very happy with it. As their free tech support, I got a few calls at the start about things moving around, but I get nothing now. They are not exactly hardcore PC users, so maybe your experience is different because of that.
But I do wonder whether the problems of Vista are going to unwind. As the hardware gets more powerful, the performance issues diminish. As manufacturers build new hardware, they'll know how to do better drivers. And as new versions of applications come out, they won't break the UAC rules.
The other problem for Apple is that people's budgets are tightening. Spending a few hundred quid on a laptop that you don't really need for some extra posing value may shift from people's priorities.
hahaha. Very good.
But it's going to take a great deal longer for that to happen.
Blu-Ray has one benefit over DVD - better picture resolution. That benefit also requires a TV upgrade. Whilst young men with deep pockets who love sports and action movies will spend on that, a lot of people won't. Do you get much from Oprah being in HD?
Now, eventually, everyone will go HD, but for a lot of people, that will require their existing sets to pack up.
I personally suspect that we'll see a shift - DVD will get replaced with download technology.
Does this present a problem in terms of one of the models of open source? One of the things often discussed on /. is the question of profiting from working in open source.
What's often been suggested is that there's money in support, and that if you create some software, and have experience then supporting it, that you gain a competitive advantage. That the likes of RedHat, MySQL etc will be customer's most likely first port of call.
If companies are simply going to go to someone else, that then suggests that investment in open source software could go down...