5 ms·

Why Apple Doesn't Trust Developers

94 points by redial 16y ago

thurn 16y ago
Not trusting developers is kind of a problematic approach when your platform's key strategic asset is a vast library of third party applications. Apple's own iOS software is great, but the playing field for Android and Windows Phone 7 seems a lot more level without developers on Apple's side.
- Anechoic 16y ago
  > but the playing field for Android and Windows Phone 7 seems a lot more level without developers on Apple's side. The funny thing is, I bet Apple prefers that to the alternative - having the health of platform being dependent on a 3rd-party act. Love 'em or hate 'em, it's clear to me that pretty much all of the decisions Apple made over the last 10 years has been to keep them out of the position they were in in the 1990's where Microsoft and Adobe were essentially threatening to sink the Mac platform by yanking their most popular applications.
- forensic 16y ago
  >Not trusting developers is kind of a problematic approach when your platform's key strategic asset is a vast library of third party applications. I still don't think that's true. The key strategic asset is the unbeatable user experience and the core functionality - web browsing, movie watching, book reading, maps, stuff that comes built in. A very large number of iPad users have never downloaded an app. Same for iPhone users. They find the core functionality to be sufficient for their needs. And they would be unhappy with ANY Android device because the user experience is sub par.
  - cubicle67 16y ago
    A very large number of iPad users have never downloaded an app. Same for iPhone users. er, I'm going to need some sort of citation on that as it's pretty much the exact opposite of what I've seen
    - forensic 16y ago
      Well I have heard on a few occasions that over a third of iPad users haven't touched the App store. I would assume it's even more for the iPhone... I know several non technical people with iPhones who have never used the app store but they're still happy with the phone.
    - dwynings 16y ago
      9% of iPad users haven't downloaded an app. http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/connected-devices-does-the-ipad-change-everything http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/connected-...
      - trotsky 16y ago
        Seems possible a fair amount of that 9% simply aren't using it.
    - neutronicus 16y ago
      I've never paid for iPhone app, or an Android one on my last phone. I download a free one every now and then, but I don't use them all that often.
  - thwarted 16y ago
    The key strategic asset is the unbeatable user experience and the core functionality The number of apps, which Apple mentions frequently in their ads, is one of Apple's key strategies to bring people in to make a purchase. You can't really say that the "unbeatable user experience" is as key because you don't experience that until you've made the purchase and used it for a while, and you'll never find out if it's unbeatable until you've used something else. Something like number of apps is easy to compare when making a decision among platforms, just like screen size is easy to compare, because it's a number. Unless you're in the lead on the specs, you downplay or don't mention specs because the numbers are not subjective like "unbeatable user experience" is. Number of apps is one of the few objective measurements Apple continuously uses when doing comparisons.
    - forensic 16y ago
      Most people try Apple products first, and THEN buy them. They try them out at the store or they play with a friend's. This is the common pattern. Have you ever been to the Apple store? It's one big room full of people playing with iPads and iPhones The user experience is unbeatable and everyone knows it, the non-techies just don't call it "user experience". But they play with the iPad/iPhone/iPod and then they play with a few other competitors and the difference is beyond obvious. And this keeps them sticking with Apple. Especially with phones -- everyone has tried blackberries, androids and iPhones because it's so easy to try out other people's phones. There are a few really nice android phones that are as beautiful as the iPhone but they are rare - it's rare to run into a person with one of them. Most of the non-iPhone phones people own are ugly pieces of crap. This is negative advertising for the Android/Blackberry platform. Blackberries in particular are incredibly unintuitive on the first usage, while typical Android phones (admittedly cheap, but no one talks about the price at a party) suffer from blurry screens and clunky animation.
  - neutronicus 16y ago
    I agree with you. I use my phone as a phone, an e-mail reader, a GPS, and a web browser. I bought it for those things, and apps are a nice bonus, but a pretty negligible part of the overall value proposition for me.
greattypo 16y ago
I think "Trust" is used in a weird context here.. "Why Apple Doesn't Rely on Developers" might be a more accurate title. He's saying that Apple doesn't sit around waiting for developers to create compelling apps for their products, not that developers are "untrustworthy." To me those have different connotations.
- megablast 16y ago
  Nintendo might be the same way, which is why the own so many of the big title characters for their machines. Sony and Microsoft picked up on this, and own their own franchises as well.
- neutronicus 16y ago
  I think "trust" is actually the perfect word. Apple seems determined to avoid depending on Photoshop and Final Cut Pro to sell hardware, to the point of curbing software offerings that might become the reason to own an Apple device. They don't simply believe that "you can't count on third-party software to sell your device." They believe "if you let third-party software sell your device, you have made a deal with the devil that you will regret."
benatkin 16y ago
This is a new blog. I think it must be a play on http://statichtml.com/ http://statichtml.com/ which got on HN a day or two ago. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2289610 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2289610
trotsky 16y ago
But I also think there is more to it than that. Apple needed to provide those services in order to highlight the devices they were selling, because specs alone don’t sell. [...] And you can’t trust third party developers to do it for you. It all sounds pretty reasonable until you remember that the 30% tax is more or less aimed directly at removing Amazon ebooks from the platform, and that the kindle app was available well before iBooks.
- rimantas 16y ago
  > 30% tax is more or less aimed directly at removing > Amazon ebooks from the platform Lots of books apps were available before iBooks. Apple has no interest of driving any content provider off iOS: anything that helps sell hardware is good for them. And Kindle App is still available on iOS.
  - fpgeek 16y ago
    For now. Amazon and the rest have until June 30th to give up their margins on iOS or leave.
    - ghiculescu 16y ago
      If Amazon were serious about leaving, they would have left by now, to try and force Apple to not make the change on June 30. Once June 30 goes past, Apple isn't going to reverse their policy again; if Amazon is there on the 30th, they're not leaving.
      - abraham 16y ago
        Amazon is not going to leave before they absolutely have to. Every second they hare on the iPhone increases their exposer, makes them money, and keeps their customers happy.
        fpgeek 16y ago
        It is more than that. The latest estimate I've seen says that Amazon has 58% of the ebook market, while Apple has 9%. With every Kindle book bought and every day that passes under the status quo, Amazon's leverage grows. They have no interest in forcing a confrontation even a minute early.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
kkowalczyk 16y ago
The article provides no evidence to support the conclusion that it's about Job's or Apple's trust of developers. It just recounts some history and then jumps to disjointed conclusion. In fact, it has nothing to do with trust. I can predict with 100% certainty that developers will flock to popular platforms and mostly stay away from failed platforms. In the platform business Jobs had failures (NeXT, Macintosh classic) and successes (Apple II, iPhone, iPad). His successful platforms had no problems attracting developers, his failed platforms less so. The trust relation actually goes in the other direction: it's important that the developers trust the platform maker. Platform providers have a symbiotic relation with their developers which creates a positive feedback loop: successful platform attracts developers which make useful programs which makes the platform even more successful etc. At the same time platform providers invariably compete with developers on their platform. Nintendo competes with other game companies writing games for their consoles, Microsoft competes with some companies writing software for Windows and Apple competes with other companies writing software for Mac or iOS. To me the core of the issue is: how fair is the game. Platform provider will always have technical and marketing advantage over independent developers. Nintendo programmers probably know the hardware the best and Nintendo can cross-promote their games with their console. At the same time we know it's not enough to win: there are games that, at a given time, sell better than Nintendo's games. Microsoft Money couldn't beat Quicken and the Windows software market is so huge that Microsoft is not even playing in most categories. Apple did set up the game to be unfair and they are fully taking advantage of that to maximize profit. As such, they've broken my trust and trust of many developers. First, unlike Android or Microsoft, they set themselves up as a final arbiter of what kind of software is even allowed to run on iOS. When Microsoft was competing with Netscape, they actually had to write a better browser for Windows. Due to Apple rules (no interpreters allowed => no JavaScript allowed) you can't even write a competing browser for iOS which is why there's no FireFox for iOS or Chrome for iOS. When they didn't like Google Voice app, they just banned from iOS (despite it not even violating any official rules). It allegedly took government (FCC) investigation to get it enabled. But that wasn't enough: the new in-app payment rules target companies that have much bigger and comprehensive businesses that just writing iOS apps. Apple wants to interject themselves between any service that offers some kind of paid service and users using iOS devices and collect chunk of the revenue despite the fact that for many such businesses 30% is economically impossible. Those are major violations of developer's trust on the part of Apple. I for one will not write a single line of iOS code as long as there is a viable alternative like Android. Breaking developers' trust isn't enough to break the platform. If the platform is successful enough, most developers will just swallow the bitter pill. However, if there's one thing that doesn't change it's this: things change. Apple is on top of the world right now but Android is gaining momentum. Apple's greed is a dangerous game: if the Android momentum continues, it'll be much easier for developers to walk away from Apple's platform into a welcoming embrace of Google.
MoreMoschops 16y ago
"The iPod started the digital revolution" I suppose next you'll be telling me Apple invented the helicopter, and next week will be increasing the chocolate ration.
- recoiledsnake 16y ago
  And according to Gruber, the iOS ecosystem is the biggest and most important thing in the history of the industry. It as if, when it comes to Apple, some people completely lose their perspective.
  - rbarooah 16y ago
    Right because in 10 years time when we're all using Android tablets that will be because the Xoom and the Galaxy Tab started it all.
  - parasubvert 16y ago
    Gruber said that's what Apple thinks the iOS ecosystem is. Arguably, it's the right attitude to have when you're riding a wave that is now over 60% of your revenues...
DjDarkman 16y ago
The article exaggerates a lot. Denying users to have a browser other than Safari does not make iOS a better platform. Safari(and other similar apps) is not the best there is, the there ever was and the best there ever will be. Someone may create a way better browser then Safari at any time. There is something we call competition in a free market. Example: when only IE was relevant, Microsoft couldn't care less about making IE better, but when things started to heat up, Microsoft took up the challenge and made IE a lot better. Apple shipping a default browser and whatnot is good, but not letting developers compete with them is terrible. Here is an example when Apple was forced to relax it's restrictions: http://my.opera.com/community/countup/ http://my.opera.com/community/countup/
stcredzero 16y ago
I have karma to burn, so here it goes with another hard truth: There is a big, undeniable, compelling reason for Apple to distrust us iOS developers: as a whole we're incompetent bumblers. I'm talking about security. The number of iOS developers who do things like transmit the UDID (Universal Device ID) in plaintext, or who "encrypt" their communications by doing things like zipping it (no encryption, or the same key for every client) then "securely authenticate" it with CRC32 is just jaw-dropping. In terms of doing things with just a competent level of security, large numbers of us are screwing the pooch in ways that severely contaminate the pool for the rest of us. Of course, this points to the ultimate incompetent bumbler in this regard: Apple. Apple should've built a better security library -- one which makes it harder to use security in an incompetent way. (Forces you to do security right, or the API doesn't work at all.) For heaven's sakes, they require you to muck with 3 objects just to shift a date from one month to the same day-number the next month. Some better support in security might benefit the iOS developer community just a bit more than the ability for our apps to work smoothly in both Julian and Gregorian calendars. I plan on making my living through iOS in the next year, but Google seems to be way ahead of Apple with regards to security.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
zdw 16y ago
Well, if you need examples, look at Android, which has frequent malware scares: http://www.androidpolice.com/2011/03/01/the-mother-of-all-android-malware-has-arrived-stolen-apps-released-to-the-market-that-root-your-phone-steal-your-data-and-open-backdoor/ http://www.androidpolice.com/2011/03/01/the-mother-of-all-an... (not a slam on Android, but just the natural progression - if you allow anything, someone, somewhere will abuse the privilege)

94 points by redial 16y ago

thurn 16y ago

Not trusting developers is kind of a problematic approach when your platform's key strategic asset is a vast library of third party applications. Apple's own iOS software is great, but the playing field for Android and Windows Phone 7 seems a lot more level without developers on Apple's side.

Anechoic 16y ago
> but the playing field for Android and Windows Phone 7 seems a lot more level without developers on Apple's side. The funny thing is, I bet Apple prefers that to the alternative - having the health of platform being dependent on a 3rd-party act. Love 'em or hate 'em, it's clear to me that pretty much all of the decisions Apple made over the last 10 years has been to keep them out of the position they were in in the 1990's where Microsoft and Adobe were essentially threatening to sink the Mac platform by yanking their most popular applications.
forensic 16y ago
>Not trusting developers is kind of a problematic approach when your platform's key strategic asset is a vast library of third party applications. I still don't think that's true. The key strategic asset is the unbeatable user experience and the core functionality - web browsing, movie watching, book reading, maps, stuff that comes built in. A very large number of iPad users have never downloaded an app. Same for iPhone users. They find the core functionality to be sufficient for their needs. And they would be unhappy with ANY Android device because the user experience is sub par.
- cubicle67 16y ago
  A very large number of iPad users have never downloaded an app. Same for iPhone users. er, I'm going to need some sort of citation on that as it's pretty much the exact opposite of what I've seen
  - forensic 16y ago
    Well I have heard on a few occasions that over a third of iPad users haven't touched the App store. I would assume it's even more for the iPhone... I know several non technical people with iPhones who have never used the app store but they're still happy with the phone.
  - dwynings 16y ago
    9% of iPad users haven't downloaded an app. http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/connected-devices-does-the-ipad-change-everything http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/connected-...
    - trotsky 16y ago
      Seems possible a fair amount of that 9% simply aren't using it.
  - neutronicus 16y ago
    I've never paid for iPhone app, or an Android one on my last phone. I download a free one every now and then, but I don't use them all that often.
- thwarted 16y ago
  The key strategic asset is the unbeatable user experience and the core functionality The number of apps, which Apple mentions frequently in their ads, is one of Apple's key strategies to bring people in to make a purchase. You can't really say that the "unbeatable user experience" is as key because you don't experience that until you've made the purchase and used it for a while, and you'll never find out if it's unbeatable until you've used something else. Something like number of apps is easy to compare when making a decision among platforms, just like screen size is easy to compare, because it's a number. Unless you're in the lead on the specs, you downplay or don't mention specs because the numbers are not subjective like "unbeatable user experience" is. Number of apps is one of the few objective measurements Apple continuously uses when doing comparisons.
  - forensic 16y ago
    Most people try Apple products first, and THEN buy them. They try them out at the store or they play with a friend's. This is the common pattern. Have you ever been to the Apple store? It's one big room full of people playing with iPads and iPhones The user experience is unbeatable and everyone knows it, the non-techies just don't call it "user experience". But they play with the iPad/iPhone/iPod and then they play with a few other competitors and the difference is beyond obvious. And this keeps them sticking with Apple. Especially with phones -- everyone has tried blackberries, androids and iPhones because it's so easy to try out other people's phones. There are a few really nice android phones that are as beautiful as the iPhone but they are rare - it's rare to run into a person with one of them. Most of the non-iPhone phones people own are ugly pieces of crap. This is negative advertising for the Android/Blackberry platform. Blackberries in particular are incredibly unintuitive on the first usage, while typical Android phones (admittedly cheap, but no one talks about the price at a party) suffer from blurry screens and clunky animation.
- neutronicus 16y ago
  I agree with you. I use my phone as a phone, an e-mail reader, a GPS, and a web browser. I bought it for those things, and apps are a nice bonus, but a pretty negligible part of the overall value proposition for me.

greattypo 16y ago

I think "Trust" is used in a weird context here.. "Why Apple Doesn't Rely on Developers" might be a more accurate title. He's saying that Apple doesn't sit around waiting for developers to create compelling apps for their products, not that developers are "untrustworthy." To me those have different connotations.

megablast 16y ago
Nintendo might be the same way, which is why the own so many of the big title characters for their machines. Sony and Microsoft picked up on this, and own their own franchises as well.
neutronicus 16y ago
I think "trust" is actually the perfect word. Apple seems determined to avoid depending on Photoshop and Final Cut Pro to sell hardware, to the point of curbing software offerings that might become the reason to own an Apple device. They don't simply believe that "you can't count on third-party software to sell your device." They believe "if you let third-party software sell your device, you have made a deal with the devil that you will regret."

benatkin 16y ago

This is a new blog. I think it must be a play on http://statichtml.com/ http://statichtml.com/ which got on HN a day or two ago. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2289610 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2289610

trotsky 16y ago

But I also think there is more to it than that. Apple needed to provide those services in order to highlight the devices they were selling, because specs alone don’t sell. [...] And you can’t trust third party developers to do it for you. It all sounds pretty reasonable until you remember that the 30% tax is more or less aimed directly at removing Amazon ebooks from the platform, and that the kindle app was available well before iBooks.

rimantas 16y ago
> 30% tax is more or less aimed directly at removing > Amazon ebooks from the platform Lots of books apps were available before iBooks. Apple has no interest of driving any content provider off iOS: anything that helps sell hardware is good for them. And Kindle App is still available on iOS.
- fpgeek 16y ago
  For now. Amazon and the rest have until June 30th to give up their margins on iOS or leave.
  - ghiculescu 16y ago
    If Amazon were serious about leaving, they would have left by now, to try and force Apple to not make the change on June 30. Once June 30 goes past, Apple isn't going to reverse their policy again; if Amazon is there on the 30th, they're not leaving.
    - abraham 16y ago
      Amazon is not going to leave before they absolutely have to. Every second they hare on the iPhone increases their exposer, makes them money, and keeps their customers happy.
      - fpgeek 16y ago
        It is more than that. The latest estimate I've seen says that Amazon has 58% of the ebook market, while Apple has 9%. With every Kindle book bought and every day that passes under the status quo, Amazon's leverage grows. They have no interest in forcing a confrontation even a minute early.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

kkowalczyk 16y ago

The article provides no evidence to support the conclusion that it's about Job's or Apple's trust of developers. It just recounts some history and then jumps to disjointed conclusion. In fact, it has nothing to do with trust. I can predict with 100% certainty that developers will flock to popular platforms and mostly stay away from failed platforms. In the platform business Jobs had failures (NeXT, Macintosh classic) and successes (Apple II, iPhone, iPad). His successful platforms had no problems attracting developers, his failed platforms less so. The trust relation actually goes in the other direction: it's important that the developers trust the platform maker. Platform providers have a symbiotic relation with their developers which creates a positive feedback loop: successful platform attracts developers which make useful programs which makes the platform even more successful etc. At the same time platform providers invariably compete with developers on their platform. Nintendo competes with other game companies writing games for their consoles, Microsoft competes with some companies writing software for Windows and Apple competes with other companies writing software for Mac or iOS. To me the core of the issue is: how fair is the game. Platform provider will always have technical and marketing advantage over independent developers. Nintendo programmers probably know the hardware the best and Nintendo can cross-promote their games with their console. At the same time we know it's not enough to win: there are games that, at a given time, sell better than Nintendo's games. Microsoft Money couldn't beat Quicken and the Windows software market is so huge that Microsoft is not even playing in most categories. Apple did set up the game to be unfair and they are fully taking advantage of that to maximize profit. As such, they've broken my trust and trust of many developers. First, unlike Android or Microsoft, they set themselves up as a final arbiter of what kind of software is even allowed to run on iOS. When Microsoft was competing with Netscape, they actually had to write a better browser for Windows. Due to Apple rules (no interpreters allowed => no JavaScript allowed) you can't even write a competing browser for iOS which is why there's no FireFox for iOS or Chrome for iOS. When they didn't like Google Voice app, they just banned from iOS (despite it not even violating any official rules). It allegedly took government (FCC) investigation to get it enabled. But that wasn't enough: the new in-app payment rules target companies that have much bigger and comprehensive businesses that just writing iOS apps. Apple wants to interject themselves between any service that offers some kind of paid service and users using iOS devices and collect chunk of the revenue despite the fact that for many such businesses 30% is economically impossible. Those are major violations of developer's trust on the part of Apple. I for one will not write a single line of iOS code as long as there is a viable alternative like Android. Breaking developers' trust isn't enough to break the platform. If the platform is successful enough, most developers will just swallow the bitter pill. However, if there's one thing that doesn't change it's this: things change. Apple is on top of the world right now but Android is gaining momentum. Apple's greed is a dangerous game: if the Android momentum continues, it'll be much easier for developers to walk away from Apple's platform into a welcoming embrace of Google.

MoreMoschops 16y ago

"The iPod started the digital revolution" I suppose next you'll be telling me Apple invented the helicopter, and next week will be increasing the chocolate ration.

recoiledsnake 16y ago
And according to Gruber, the iOS ecosystem is the biggest and most important thing in the history of the industry. It as if, when it comes to Apple, some people completely lose their perspective.
- rbarooah 16y ago
  Right because in 10 years time when we're all using Android tablets that will be because the Xoom and the Galaxy Tab started it all.
- parasubvert 16y ago
  Gruber said that's what Apple thinks the iOS ecosystem is. Arguably, it's the right attitude to have when you're riding a wave that is now over 60% of your revenues...

DjDarkman 16y ago

The article exaggerates a lot. Denying users to have a browser other than Safari does not make iOS a better platform. Safari(and other similar apps) is not the best there is, the there ever was and the best there ever will be. Someone may create a way better browser then Safari at any time. There is something we call competition in a free market. Example: when only IE was relevant, Microsoft couldn't care less about making IE better, but when things started to heat up, Microsoft took up the challenge and made IE a lot better. Apple shipping a default browser and whatnot is good, but not letting developers compete with them is terrible. Here is an example when Apple was forced to relax it's restrictions: http://my.opera.com/community/countup/ http://my.opera.com/community/countup/

stcredzero 16y ago

I have karma to burn, so here it goes with another hard truth: There is a big, undeniable, compelling reason for Apple to distrust us iOS developers: as a whole we're incompetent bumblers. I'm talking about security. The number of iOS developers who do things like transmit the UDID (Universal Device ID) in plaintext, or who "encrypt" their communications by doing things like zipping it (no encryption, or the same key for every client) then "securely authenticate" it with CRC32 is just jaw-dropping. In terms of doing things with just a competent level of security, large numbers of us are screwing the pooch in ways that severely contaminate the pool for the rest of us. Of course, this points to the ultimate incompetent bumbler in this regard: Apple. Apple should've built a better security library -- one which makes it harder to use security in an incompetent way. (Forces you to do security right, or the API doesn't work at all.) For heaven's sakes, they require you to muck with 3 objects just to shift a date from one month to the same day-number the next month. Some better support in security might benefit the iOS developer community just a bit more than the ability for our apps to work smoothly in both Julian and Gregorian calendars. I plan on making my living through iOS in the next year, but Google seems to be way ahead of Apple with regards to security.

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]

zdw 16y ago

Well, if you need examples, look at Android, which has frequent malware scares: http://www.androidpolice.com/2011/03/01/the-mother-of-all-android-malware-has-arrived-stolen-apps-released-to-the-market-that-root-your-phone-steal-your-data-and-open-backdoor/ http://www.androidpolice.com/2011/03/01/the-mother-of-all-an... (not a slam on Android, but just the natural progression - if you allow anything, someone, somewhere will abuse the privilege)