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I'd disagree with the author. iPhone won't see very many large, high-risk applications developed as a result of Apple's approach. Apple screws over developers a

I'd disagree with the author. iPhone won't see very many large, high-risk applications developed as a result of Apple's approach. Apple screws over developers and partners too often. You will build a $1 application in a few man-months for iPhone, no questions. Build a Google Voice? Build a Flash->iPhone compiler? You might get screwed and lose a really big wad of cash. When business types decide what to build, they multiply out risks. You have technical risk (developers can't build it), market risk (people won't buy it), and a bunch of others. Typically, they're individually low-risk (say, 80% chance of success), but when you multiply them together, you get pretty low numbers. If you toss in the additional risk of "Apple will cut me off if I'm successful and they want to compete with me" and "Apple will cut me off if they don't like me," it makes it a much less compelling platform. The costs also go up if you can't share codebase. Requiring iPhone SDK is sort of sane -- you make an iPhone-specific front-end, and it looks better. Requiring Objective C or one of their other languages is kinda wacko -- you can't even share back-end logic. If I just spent millions on something complex (image processing engine, voice recognition system, or whatever), I don't want to spend another big portion of that for an iPhone port. Worse, the same applies to custom business software, but even more so. If I have an enterprise app employees must use (think UPS guy or bus driver or anything like that), I care a lot about development time, not much about usability, and I can dictate platforms. If I can recompile to Android but rewrite for iPhone, guess what I'm gonna do?

kls 16y ago
What these authors fails to see is that innovation does not come from the big guys and that is all a heavily regulated platform will attract. In my mind I project that a lot of the authors must be younger, and have not been through one of the typical screw the developers cycles. This has been seen so many times in the tech sector, it is almost like clockwork. The small developers will pack their bags and take their innovation to another platform, once one is up to par and that is the trick, as of now Apple is ahead of the pack, and so long as they are, developers will put up with them, but as soon as another platform is on par; The trickle will start to happen. Apple knows this and they have placed a huge bet on the fact that, they can remain the leader of the pack. I would assume that they feel that their patents are strong and that will keep them the front runner given their suit against HTC.
- pohl 16y ago
  The author doesn't even mention innovation, and may not even see it as important in the platform game. After all, Apple spent years leading in innovation while it varied between "marginal" and "beleaguered" in the market. So clearly innovation isn't enough to win the platform game, and looking at the winner of the last big platform game I'd say that it may not even be necessary. So while I personally value innovation, I don't see how it's relevant to the author's thesis.
hga 16y ago
Speaking of enterprise apps, look at the plight of the rather upset SugarCRM. As I recall, they were planning on using the Adobe tools so that they've have one code base for the various smart phones they want to support. It doesn't make much sense that this app be totally in the iPhone style, it mostly needs to be "good enough". I can't see them doing anything other than treating the i<whatever> market as an unfavored stepson, unless a large majority of their customers use it instead of Blackberries and so on.

kls 16y ago

What these authors fails to see is that innovation does not come from the big guys and that is all a heavily regulated platform will attract. In my mind I project that a lot of the authors must be younger, and have not been through one of the typical screw the developers cycles. This has been seen so many times in the tech sector, it is almost like clockwork. The small developers will pack their bags and take their innovation to another platform, once one is up to par and that is the trick, as of now Apple is ahead of the pack, and so long as they are, developers will put up with them, but as soon as another platform is on par; The trickle will start to happen. Apple knows this and they have placed a huge bet on the fact that, they can remain the leader of the pack. I would assume that they feel that their patents are strong and that will keep them the front runner given their suit against HTC.

pohl 16y ago
The author doesn't even mention innovation, and may not even see it as important in the platform game. After all, Apple spent years leading in innovation while it varied between "marginal" and "beleaguered" in the market. So clearly innovation isn't enough to win the platform game, and looking at the winner of the last big platform game I'd say that it may not even be necessary. So while I personally value innovation, I don't see how it's relevant to the author's thesis.

hga 16y ago

Speaking of enterprise apps, look at the plight of the rather upset SugarCRM. As I recall, they were planning on using the Adobe tools so that they've have one code base for the various smart phones they want to support. It doesn't make much sense that this app be totally in the iPhone style, it mostly needs to be "good enough". I can't see them doing anything other than treating the i<whatever> market as an unfavored stepson, unless a large majority of their customers use it instead of Blackberries and so on.