You are quite right. The primary goal is to prevent other platforms or APIs from interfering with the advancement of the iPhone OS and the availability of its newest technologies. Preventing cross-platforms applications is one of the goals in order to avoid commoditizing the hardware is also a goal, but not the primary one; and is incidental to the former.
Ultimately, as explained by Jobs in his various comments and letters, Apple wants to ensure that the iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch ecosystem offers the best value to the consumer by not only offering the best technology, but the best applications that take full advantage of this technology, thus increasing its appeal.
That is exactly what this is all about. Jobs expects you to make iPhone applications that are, indeed, iPhone applications--exclusively. Why? Because this will add value to the iPhone and increase its appeal. If the coolest applications were available on all platforms, then the hardware would be comoditized, and people wouldn't care where it ran. He wants people to care about the iPhone; he wants consumers to buy the iPhone because the best applications they want are only available there.
This is no secret. This is not a conspiracy. This is plainly set and explained in Steve Jobs' "Thoughts on Flash" letter, and in his other comments.
Actually, it is plainly obvious from Mr. Jobs' comments that the point of the restriction is to prevent cross-platform applications. Apple wants iPhone apps to be designed for the iPhone, not ported from another platform.
Apple does not require developers to use Apple tools, only the approved languages, which were not invented and neither are owned by Apple: Objective C, C, and C++. XCode is the IDE provided by Apple, and it uses GCC to compile the code.
You are free to use whatever you want, as long as the code is originally written in one of those languages and not ported from a different platform.
If you have a small car company that was leaking red-ink like a sieve, and was about to go bankrupt for lack of a workable business model, and I bought it, I could take advantage of any interesting technology or property that you owned before it went to waste. By doing so, I could also give a job to the most talented of your staff, before they end up in the unemployment line or snatched up by someone else.
Of course someone has to pay. My point wasn't that it is free, my point is that in spite of the patent licenses and potential payments, the web succeeded.
Dude, you do know that JPEG, GIF, and MP3 are all patent-owned standards too, right? Funny that they are all supported by browsers and are rather de facto standards in the "proprietary web".
No. The bundled goods are search results, online advertising, and infrastructure access. Google does not make money from those online freebie apps, and it does a lot more than search.
Nobody is talking about Google having a monopoly with G-Mail or Maps, or whatever freebie online application you are fond of. Google has an effective monopoly on web search and online advertising, and to some extent, access to online content in general, and are commingling these in a manner that may violate anti-trust legislation. This is in essence the same that Microsoft did in the 1990s: leverage their dominant position in one market to brute-force their control on another. Only Microsoft was doing it in order to own all markets, while Google's desires are mainly to extend and preserve their advertising business model.
Google distracts the general public with pseudo-open and free applications which are no more than just fluff, most of them fly-by-night operations or just developer pet-projects that eventually get shutdown unceremoniously. All the while fully concentrating their efforts on maintaining their online advertising dominance. This is their biggest revenue stream so far, and they understand that it may be their only one in the future. In order to preserve it, they are trying to exert control on the access to all valuable properties on the Web. Moreover, they understand that a huge amount of property does not even exist on the Web, and therefore it is outside their control (or more to the point, outside their ability to profit from advertising with it). This is part of their drive to move everything online: online, it is perceived, the rules are different, plus access can be controlled and commoditised. It is basically the same that Microsoft intended to do with their failed "Hailstorm" strategy, only that coming from a transparent monopoly, everyone understood the implications. Somehow, Google being a pretty and cool company, it all seems different now.
Only a naive fool would consider Google, a large commercial enterprise geared towards maximizing their shareholders' profits, a "white knight."
Point granted. However, that seems to give more credence to the proposition that the iPhone's business model works as is, to a large extent, and that Apple has no reason to heed the cries of the common geek asking for a more open platform. That the rest of the industry is awakening to this realisation is even more testament to the insignificance of the IT techie's market power.
So, while some are saying "The Blackberry did not require to be locked-down in order to be popular", RIM is actually looking at this and saying "You mean, we really didn't need to be so open?"
I will posit that the amount of people who jailbreak an iPhone is insignificant compared to the amount of those who don't. Therefore, to the vast majority of the users it "just works."
Can you please offer an example of such Apple marketing? I will not outright deny it exists, but I have never seen it mentioned that both platforms are even close to compatible for development purposes.
You know, I've never seen this claim from Apple. Their tutorials and documentation does mention that it is fairly straight forward to translate your skill set from one to the other, but I've never seen it even suggested that cross-compilation between OS X and iPhone OS was possible.
"Verified by Visa" is a joke. It is a blatant attempt to shift absolute, unconditional liability on the issuing bank. There is little improvement in security underneath, and most of the interface between the retailer and the underlying system is left to each online merchant to implement on their own, offering varying degrees of actual, technical security.
The customer is supposed to feel all warm and fuzzy inside by the mere fact that there's a "Verified by Visa" logo on the web page, just like they're supposed to feel completely safe when they see that little pad-lock on their browser toolbar. But ultimately, there are many inconsistencies in the implementation and not much more actual security than if you went without.
I don't have to prove anything. So, what's your point, that Facebook's position is wrong? Your opinion also does not matter, and since the case did not go to trial, we won't know either way.
Read again my original post; I'm not arguing with you, I was just correcting the argument that Facebook is wrong for suing, a priori, and that if they didn't want anybody to use their information, they should have protected it better. I say that suing others for what they believe is infringement is protecting their property. Then you go off into some spiel about it not being their property, but that is a decision that is neither yours nor mine to make. Facebook think it is and are therefore suing. A judge should decide, but since the developer settled out of court, its moot now.
So Facebook has bigger pockets and more money, so what? This is not a principled case. The developer was looking to make money from data he grabbed off Facebook; it was always about money. If Google decides to exploit information they grabbed off some little blogger's site with their spider, it would be just as bad. But since Google has more money than most, they probably would have settled too in their favor.
Furthermore, He could have gone to the EFF, as suggested by many others, but the truth is that that wouldn't have matter much either. It perhaps would have gone something like this:
Developer: I grabbed the data by legitimately crawling your site. Facebook: You need our permission to crawl our site. Developer: That's not how it works. What say you, EFF? EFF Attorney: That is true, that's not how it works. Facebook: Fine, then. You need our permission to use the data, it's in our ToS. EFF Attorney: That's, true too. You're on your own. Develoeper: mommy!
Slashdot Mirror
You are quite right. The primary goal is to prevent other platforms or APIs from interfering with the advancement of the iPhone OS and the availability of its newest technologies. Preventing cross-platforms applications is one of the goals in order to avoid commoditizing the hardware is also a goal, but not the primary one; and is incidental to the former.
Ultimately, as explained by Jobs in his various comments and letters, Apple wants to ensure that the iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch ecosystem offers the best value to the consumer by not only offering the best technology, but the best applications that take full advantage of this technology, thus increasing its appeal.
-dZ.
I don't think they have anything to fear about an anti-trust investigation.
-dZ.
Ta-DAAAAAAAAAH! Here, have a cookie!
That is exactly what this is all about. Jobs expects you to make iPhone applications that are, indeed, iPhone applications--exclusively. Why? Because this will add value to the iPhone and increase its appeal. If the coolest applications were available on all platforms, then the hardware would be comoditized, and people wouldn't care where it ran. He wants people to care about the iPhone; he wants consumers to buy the iPhone because the best applications they want are only available there.
This is no secret. This is not a conspiracy. This is plainly set and explained in Steve Jobs' "Thoughts on Flash" letter, and in his other comments.
-dZ.
Fine. Does it also own C and C++? How about Javascript?
-dZ.
Does it say in the license agreement that you must purchase a mac? That's just incidental because the SDK is only available on a Mac.
-dZ.
Actually, it is plainly obvious from Mr. Jobs' comments that the point of the restriction is to prevent cross-platform applications. Apple wants iPhone apps to be designed for the iPhone, not ported from another platform.
-dZ.
Apple does not require developers to use Apple tools, only the approved languages, which were not invented and neither are owned by Apple: Objective C, C, and C++. XCode is the IDE provided by Apple, and it uses GCC to compile the code.
You are free to use whatever you want, as long as the code is originally written in one of those languages and not ported from a different platform.
-dZ.
In order words,
the bigger issue is how the errors combine when doing calculations, especially iterative calculations..
-dZ.
If you have a small car company that was leaking red-ink like a sieve, and was about to go bankrupt for lack of a workable business model, and I bought it, I could take advantage of any interesting technology or property that you owned before it went to waste. By doing so, I could also give a job to the most talented of your staff, before they end up in the unemployment line or snatched up by someone else.
Since I can profit by this, it must be evil.
-dZ.
That je-ne-sais-quoi is the Mac OS X: the secret sauce that makes everything work nicely.
-dZ.
Of course someone has to pay. My point wasn't that it is free, my point is that in spite of the patent licenses and potential payments, the web succeeded.
-dZ.
The GIF patent expired within the last decade. It was in full force during the 1990s, and yet the WWW survived.
-dZ.
Dude, you do know that JPEG, GIF, and MP3 are all patent-owned standards too, right? Funny that they are all supported by browsers and are rather de facto standards in the "proprietary web".
-dZ.
Modded "troll", really?
-dZ.
No. The bundled goods are search results, online advertising, and infrastructure access. Google does not make money from those online freebie apps, and it does a lot more than search.
-dZ.
Wow. Just... wow.
Nobody is talking about Google having a monopoly with G-Mail or Maps, or whatever freebie online application you are fond of. Google has an effective monopoly on web search and online advertising, and to some extent, access to online content in general, and are commingling these in a manner that may violate anti-trust legislation. This is in essence the same that Microsoft did in the 1990s: leverage their dominant position in one market to brute-force their control on another. Only Microsoft was doing it in order to own all markets, while Google's desires are mainly to extend and preserve their advertising business model.
Google distracts the general public with pseudo-open and free applications which are no more than just fluff, most of them fly-by-night operations or just developer pet-projects that eventually get shutdown unceremoniously. All the while fully concentrating their efforts on maintaining their online advertising dominance. This is their biggest revenue stream so far, and they understand that it may be their only one in the future. In order to preserve it, they are trying to exert control on the access to all valuable properties on the Web. Moreover, they understand that a huge amount of property does not even exist on the Web, and therefore it is outside their control (or more to the point, outside their ability to profit from advertising with it). This is part of their drive to move everything online: online, it is perceived, the rules are different, plus access can be controlled and commoditised. It is basically the same that Microsoft intended to do with their failed "Hailstorm" strategy, only that coming from a transparent monopoly, everyone understood the implications. Somehow, Google being a pretty and cool company, it all seems different now.
Only a naive fool would consider Google, a large commercial enterprise geared towards maximizing their shareholders' profits, a "white knight."
-dZ.
Point granted. However, that seems to give more credence to the proposition that the iPhone's business model works as is, to a large extent, and that Apple has no reason to heed the cries of the common geek asking for a more open platform. That the rest of the industry is awakening to this realisation is even more testament to the insignificance of the IT techie's market power.
So, while some are saying "The Blackberry did not require to be locked-down in order to be popular", RIM is actually looking at this and saying "You mean, we really didn't need to be so open?"
-dZ.
I will posit that the amount of people who jailbreak an iPhone is insignificant compared to the amount of those who don't. Therefore, to the vast majority of the users it "just works."
-dZ.
Bravo! I would mod you up, but I already commented on this thread.
-dZ.
These aren't products "suitable for end users", these are products specifically designed for and targeted to end users.
-dZ.
Can you please offer an example of such Apple marketing? I will not outright deny it exists, but I have never seen it mentioned that both platforms are even close to compatible for development purposes.
-dZ.
You know, I've never seen this claim from Apple. Their tutorials and documentation does mention that it is fairly straight forward to translate your skill set from one to the other, but I've never seen it even suggested that cross-compilation between OS X and iPhone OS was possible.
-dZ.
"Verified by Visa" is a joke. It is a blatant attempt to shift absolute, unconditional liability on the issuing bank. There is little improvement in security underneath, and most of the interface between the retailer and the underlying system is left to each online merchant to implement on their own, offering varying degrees of actual, technical security.
The customer is supposed to feel all warm and fuzzy inside by the mere fact that there's a "Verified by Visa" logo on the web page, just like they're supposed to feel completely safe when they see that little pad-lock on their browser toolbar. But ultimately, there are many inconsistencies in the implementation and not much more actual security than if you went without.
-dZ.
+1 Funny!
I was about to post the same thing, you bastard!
-dZ.
I don't have to prove anything. So, what's your point, that Facebook's position is wrong? Your opinion also does not matter, and since the case did not go to trial, we won't know either way.
Read again my original post; I'm not arguing with you, I was just correcting the argument that Facebook is wrong for suing, a priori, and that if they didn't want anybody to use their information, they should have protected it better. I say that suing others for what they believe is infringement is protecting their property. Then you go off into some spiel about it not being their property, but that is a decision that is neither yours nor mine to make. Facebook think it is and are therefore suing. A judge should decide, but since the developer settled out of court, its moot now.
So Facebook has bigger pockets and more money, so what? This is not a principled case. The developer was looking to make money from data he grabbed off Facebook; it was always about money. If Google decides to exploit information they grabbed off some little blogger's site with their spider, it would be just as bad. But since Google has more money than most, they probably would have settled too in their favor.
Furthermore, He could have gone to the EFF, as suggested by many others, but the truth is that that wouldn't have matter much either. It perhaps would have gone something like this:
Developer: I grabbed the data by legitimately crawling your site.
Facebook: You need our permission to crawl our site.
Developer: That's not how it works. What say you, EFF?
EFF Attorney: That is true, that's not how it works.
Facebook: Fine, then. You need our permission to use the data, it's in our ToS.
EFF Attorney: That's, true too. You're on your own.
Develoeper: mommy!
-dZ.