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What I find most worrying is that I see very little, if any, gain in it for Apple. I'm not really sure why but it just seems like Apple is picking fights with A

What I find most worrying is that I see very little, if any, gain in it for Apple. I'm not really sure why but it just seems like Apple is picking fights with Adobe and Google for no particular reason. It certainly doesn't benefit their customers, it alienates their developer community and has no benefit to Apple other than inflating their ego.

cheald 17y ago
My take on it is that Apple is attempting to splinter the developer community, and force you to pick sides - will you develop for the iPhone, or for those other platforms? By killing cross-platform compilers, they're attempting to force developers into a corner, where they have to pick a platform to commit to, and they're banking on their superior marketshare to cause developers to pick the iPhone. If successful, it would put a significant dent in the viabilty of the Android platform. If Apple can give an "us or them" (or do it twice) ultimatum and get people to pick them (even grudingly), then they've won. The Mac desktop floundered against the PC for years due in no small part to the fact that all the developers were developing for Windows, and didn't really put much thought into cross-compatibility with Macs. Apple is attempting to repeat history, but with themselves on the other end of the equation this time. It's a risky, ballsy, and brazen gambit, but if they pull it off (after all, the suits who write those developers' paychecks just care about the $ on the balance sheet at the end of the quarter), it could be a decisive turning point against Android. Jobs is obviously doing his best to water down the Android market (they have PORN! UNCLEAN!) and Apple is in full-on assault mode against Android (via HTC at the moment), and there's a very good reason for it - Android is suddenly a very real threat. According to the February metrics from AdMob, Android has a marketshare equivalent to Apple's in the US. Apple still has a hefty lead worldwide, but Android is growing by leaps and bounds, while the iPhone remains stagnant. That's a very real and very direct threat that Apple is pulling out all the stops to counter.

cheald 17y ago

My take on it is that Apple is attempting to splinter the developer community, and force you to pick sides - will you develop for the iPhone, or for those other platforms? By killing cross-platform compilers, they're attempting to force developers into a corner, where they have to pick a platform to commit to, and they're banking on their superior marketshare to cause developers to pick the iPhone. If successful, it would put a significant dent in the viabilty of the Android platform. If Apple can give an "us or them" (or do it twice) ultimatum and get people to pick them (even grudingly), then they've won. The Mac desktop floundered against the PC for years due in no small part to the fact that all the developers were developing for Windows, and didn't really put much thought into cross-compatibility with Macs. Apple is attempting to repeat history, but with themselves on the other end of the equation this time. It's a risky, ballsy, and brazen gambit, but if they pull it off (after all, the suits who write those developers' paychecks just care about the $ on the balance sheet at the end of the quarter), it could be a decisive turning point against Android. Jobs is obviously doing his best to water down the Android market (they have PORN! UNCLEAN!) and Apple is in full-on assault mode against Android (via HTC at the moment), and there's a very good reason for it - Android is suddenly a very real threat. According to the February metrics from AdMob, Android has a marketshare equivalent to Apple's in the US. Apple still has a hefty lead worldwide, but Android is growing by leaps and bounds, while the iPhone remains stagnant. That's a very real and very direct threat that Apple is pulling out all the stops to counter.