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I wish I was surprised that these platforms are moving more and more toward a sharecropper existence for developers. The mobile app ecosystems for iOS and Andro

I wish I was surprised that these platforms are moving more and more toward a sharecropper existence for developers. The mobile app ecosystems for iOS and Android are bad enough; you have very little control, but at least you know the terms when you sign up and if people buy/use your software, you get paid something for it (if you choose to put a price on it). It sounds like for this market, Amazon pays you whenever and whatever they feel like, down to and including "never" and "nothing".

amelius 9y ago
Platforms should be utilities. We can't really do without them, and there should not be too many of them for practical reasons. But use them, and we risk giving one or few players all the power. Also platforms give rise to internally regulated markets, and it's one thing if the government regulates a market, but yet another if a company regulates it. I'm guessing we need special economic rules for platforms, or governments should own them.
- droopyEyelids 9y ago
  One of the worst aspects of this, to me, is when the platform company affords its own apps access to APIs apps from the platform aren't allowed. As an example consider Apple Pay Cash. It grabs anything you send in the messages app with a dollar sign, and converts it to glittery text that prompts you to pay whoever you're talking to. Aside from the question of whether that feature is useful to you, it's such a bullshit, cheating way to undercut Square Cash and Venmo. They're exploiting their position to make an unfair playing ground. Feels so gross to me.
  - SwellJoe 9y ago
    The deck is stacked at every turn, which is dangerous. The sad thing is that I've always had sort of a belief that "more open wins in the end", but that hasn't really been borne out in the mobile space. Apple and Google have built walled gardens where they always have the advantage in any space they want to operate in (even moreso than Microsoft during its rise to dominance, though they're slightly more subtle about how they wield that advantage to kill competitors). It's pretty much a battle of good vs evil all over again, and evil is winning. It's alarming that new markets are even worse. I haven't looked into the voice apps market for alternatives to Alexa, but I assume if Amazon thinks they can get away with acting this way, the rest of them are the same or worse.
- SwellJoe 9y ago
  I wonder if government ownership solves the problem, and whether it might create new ones (lack of innovation being a big one). But, there is definitely a major problem, and I'm hopeful that an open internet is able to solve it. There's the problem of API access; you still can't make a mobile web app as good as a native mobile app and it may always be playing catch-up (both because of policies at Apple and Google and because of the nature of chasing new features from outside). But, at least it really is "our" platform (if we can keep it). With WebAssembly enabling development in any language (eventually) and easing porting from native to web, things are looking up, but it's still not an even playing field. So...on optimistic days, I think the web will win (again), and will prevent the mobile OS walled gardens from owning our future. On pessimistic days, I read an article about a new platform for apps that is even worse for developers than the App Store or Play Store. I guess my action plan is: Help the web win and hope the app stores die.
  - amelius 9y ago
    I agree mostly. Lack of innovation could be solved by letting the government own and define the platform, not build it; instead they can use contractors, which could be large tech companies. Also, universities can help design the requirements. Note that the definition of platform is broader than OSes. For example, Uber and Booking.com are also platforms (and they have similar problems as OS platforms).

amelius 9y ago

Platforms should be utilities. We can't really do without them, and there should not be too many of them for practical reasons. But use them, and we risk giving one or few players all the power. Also platforms give rise to internally regulated markets, and it's one thing if the government regulates a market, but yet another if a company regulates it. I'm guessing we need special economic rules for platforms, or governments should own them.

droopyEyelids 9y ago
One of the worst aspects of this, to me, is when the platform company affords its own apps access to APIs apps from the platform aren't allowed. As an example consider Apple Pay Cash. It grabs anything you send in the messages app with a dollar sign, and converts it to glittery text that prompts you to pay whoever you're talking to. Aside from the question of whether that feature is useful to you, it's such a bullshit, cheating way to undercut Square Cash and Venmo. They're exploiting their position to make an unfair playing ground. Feels so gross to me.
- SwellJoe 9y ago
  The deck is stacked at every turn, which is dangerous. The sad thing is that I've always had sort of a belief that "more open wins in the end", but that hasn't really been borne out in the mobile space. Apple and Google have built walled gardens where they always have the advantage in any space they want to operate in (even moreso than Microsoft during its rise to dominance, though they're slightly more subtle about how they wield that advantage to kill competitors). It's pretty much a battle of good vs evil all over again, and evil is winning. It's alarming that new markets are even worse. I haven't looked into the voice apps market for alternatives to Alexa, but I assume if Amazon thinks they can get away with acting this way, the rest of them are the same or worse.
SwellJoe 9y ago
I wonder if government ownership solves the problem, and whether it might create new ones (lack of innovation being a big one). But, there is definitely a major problem, and I'm hopeful that an open internet is able to solve it. There's the problem of API access; you still can't make a mobile web app as good as a native mobile app and it may always be playing catch-up (both because of policies at Apple and Google and because of the nature of chasing new features from outside). But, at least it really is "our" platform (if we can keep it). With WebAssembly enabling development in any language (eventually) and easing porting from native to web, things are looking up, but it's still not an even playing field. So...on optimistic days, I think the web will win (again), and will prevent the mobile OS walled gardens from owning our future. On pessimistic days, I read an article about a new platform for apps that is even worse for developers than the App Store or Play Store. I guess my action plan is: Help the web win and hope the app stores die.
- amelius 9y ago
  I agree mostly. Lack of innovation could be solved by letting the government own and define the platform, not build it; instead they can use contractors, which could be large tech companies. Also, universities can help design the requirements. Note that the definition of platform is broader than OSes. For example, Uber and Booking.com are also platforms (and they have similar problems as OS platforms).