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It seems obvious that Apple's interests don't coincide with fully functional cross platform mobile apps. Getting people to build with objective C and native cod

by trotsky 16y ago

It seems obvious that Apple's interests don't coincide with fully functional cross platform mobile apps. Getting people to build with objective C and native code helps lock in and ensures that any sales go through their payment platform. If you don't think Apple has been moving in this way (anti-cross platform dev tools, requiring sales to use the iTunes payments) you simply haven't been paying honest attention.

e1ven 16y ago
I understand that you're unhappy with Apple, but keep in mind that their original iPhone was HTML apps ONLY. Further, they continue run WebKit as an OSS project, and have worked to be accommodating to other mobile providers. The reason they dislike flash isn't some sort of inherent hatred, it's that it's outside their control. They can implement a HTML spec just as well as anyone else, and with Webkit, they can lead the way. Apple Wants to see a strong HTML web.
- cookiecaper 16y ago
  >Apple Wants to see a strong HTML web. They want this as long as they are not the dominant platform. If MS and Apple swapped places tonight and Apple suddenly had 90%+ marketshare, it's likely that their strategies would flip just as fast, because it's the most profitable thing to do. Apple's interests are in ensuring that their platforms can run as much user-desired content as possible; they can do this by promoting cross-platform compatibility and interpreted code like JS and HTML. Microsoft has no need for this, since everything runs on Microsoft by default, because if it didn't, you'd miss out on 90%+ of your potential market. Instead, Microsoft's interests are opposite; they want to do everything they can to ensure that Windows is still required for any and all meaningful usage. This is the major point of IE; do enough to mostly work, but break compatibility where you can get away with it so that developers can't forget about Windows and IE. They also hope, though the environment isn't appropriate for this to work anymore, that IE will be your sole development platform and that considering the time it takes to make stuff work in IE, you will just leave things broken in all other browsers, further solidifying the MS lock-in. Lock-in is the holy grail for the software vendor. Apple is putting this in place as best as they can in the markets they control, and they are trying to ensure that MS doesn't lock them out of the desktop game, because they're still vulnerable believe it or not. MS is trying to ensure that Windows' death grip remains in place FOR. EVER., just as Apple wants iPhone/iPod to do the same.
  - masklinn 16y ago
    > Lock-in is the holy grail for the software vendor. Apple is not a software vendor.
    - bane 16y ago
      http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/shop_mac/software/apple?mco=MTM3ODExMzA http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/shop_mac/software/appl...
    - cookiecaper 16y ago
      They are a software vendor, and by vendor I mean producer. They don't not become a software vendor because they bundle the software and hardware together. They may make money on their hardware which is great for them, but it doesn't change the fact that OS X, iTunes, and the others, like all other software platforms, want lock-in; Apple merely wants to lock you in to the hardware too, so they use the software platforms to do that.
- trotsky 16y ago
  I'm no more unhappy with Apple for wanting lock-in than I am with the sky for being blue. All mature platforms with significant market share seek it.
masklinn 16y ago
> It seems obvious that Apple's interests don't coincide with fully functional cross platform mobile apps. No, it is not that obvious at all. May I remind you that Apple introduced the iOS SDK, spearheads what is usually recognized as the finest rendering engine out there and built what was the first mobile device actually able to surf the web? And that they have shown no will or wish to backtrack on any of these, doubling down instead? There is something much, much simpler to these issues: 1. Jobs's Apple will never again live and die at the whim of a third party. They suffered greatly during the Classic-OSX transition because Apple had lost control of the development platform itself (which was basically owned by Metrowerk and its CodeWarrior) 2. Jobs's Apple takes decisions it thinks benefit its customers and its customers are always its users. Now they may be wrong on that, and they may be misguided, but time and time again you can (pretty easily) explain the decisions of Jobs's Apple either as trying to avoid losing their platform to a third party or trying to make their user's experience life better. With web browser they fully control the platform. Hell, they control what can be argued the best web platform available (Google's Chrome is giving them a run for their money, in no small part by building upon their work). They don't fear people using their web browser, they wouldn't have built Canvas if they did (why not leave it out as SVG? Slow, hard to use and not a threat at all), they wouldn't be implementing WebGL, they wouldn't spearheads CSS animations and transitions and all the stuff that can make web applications snazzier and cleaner, they wouldn't have the engine with the best HTML5 support by far. Web stuff is not a threat, because they can have the best, shiniest and most advanced web stuff and they control all of it (number of full rendering engines allowed on iOS devices? one. Nobody else is allowed to ship a JS interpreter, therefore no full-blown web browser can avoid using the Webkit that ships with it and is fully built by Apple). Apple doesn't fundamentally mind or care for cross-platform mobile apps, what they fear is a third party's cross platform toolkit taking preeminence over their own tool and deciding of their platform's future. That is why they banned flash (also, because flash is a piece of shit). > Getting people to build with objective C and native code helps lock in That only works because you assert Apple wants to lock users in. > and ensures that any sales go through their payment platform. Cross-platform tools would have the exact same restriction or face bans. iTunes payment mandate is trivially explained through integration and user-experience (did you know that Apple's subscriptions services makes user information availability to magazines opt-in by the user, whereas just about every other service makes it opt-out if opt-able at all? That's because to Apple the device owner is the customer, to just about every other publisher the magazine is the customer). > If you don't think Apple has been moving in this way (anti-cross platform dev tools, requiring sales to use the iTunes payments) you simply haven't been paying honest attention. Either that, or I have not been wearing hate-shaped glasses. But really, I wonder why I bother with all that typing. I should know by now that HN's view of Apple is the same as /r/tech's: a bashing wankfest.

by trotsky 16y ago

e1ven 16y ago

I understand that you're unhappy with Apple, but keep in mind that their original iPhone was HTML apps ONLY. Further, they continue run WebKit as an OSS project, and have worked to be accommodating to other mobile providers. The reason they dislike flash isn't some sort of inherent hatred, it's that it's outside their control. They can implement a HTML spec just as well as anyone else, and with Webkit, they can lead the way. Apple Wants to see a strong HTML web.

cookiecaper 16y ago
>Apple Wants to see a strong HTML web. They want this as long as they are not the dominant platform. If MS and Apple swapped places tonight and Apple suddenly had 90%+ marketshare, it's likely that their strategies would flip just as fast, because it's the most profitable thing to do. Apple's interests are in ensuring that their platforms can run as much user-desired content as possible; they can do this by promoting cross-platform compatibility and interpreted code like JS and HTML. Microsoft has no need for this, since everything runs on Microsoft by default, because if it didn't, you'd miss out on 90%+ of your potential market. Instead, Microsoft's interests are opposite; they want to do everything they can to ensure that Windows is still required for any and all meaningful usage. This is the major point of IE; do enough to mostly work, but break compatibility where you can get away with it so that developers can't forget about Windows and IE. They also hope, though the environment isn't appropriate for this to work anymore, that IE will be your sole development platform and that considering the time it takes to make stuff work in IE, you will just leave things broken in all other browsers, further solidifying the MS lock-in. Lock-in is the holy grail for the software vendor. Apple is putting this in place as best as they can in the markets they control, and they are trying to ensure that MS doesn't lock them out of the desktop game, because they're still vulnerable believe it or not. MS is trying to ensure that Windows' death grip remains in place FOR. EVER., just as Apple wants iPhone/iPod to do the same.
- masklinn 16y ago
  > Lock-in is the holy grail for the software vendor. Apple is not a software vendor.
  - bane 16y ago
    http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/shop_mac/software/apple?mco=MTM3ODExMzA http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/shop_mac/software/appl...
  - cookiecaper 16y ago
    They are a software vendor, and by vendor I mean producer. They don't not become a software vendor because they bundle the software and hardware together. They may make money on their hardware which is great for them, but it doesn't change the fact that OS X, iTunes, and the others, like all other software platforms, want lock-in; Apple merely wants to lock you in to the hardware too, so they use the software platforms to do that.
trotsky 16y ago
I'm no more unhappy with Apple for wanting lock-in than I am with the sky for being blue. All mature platforms with significant market share seek it.

masklinn 16y ago

> It seems obvious that Apple's interests don't coincide with fully functional cross platform mobile apps. No, it is not that obvious at all. May I remind you that Apple introduced the iOS SDK, spearheads what is usually recognized as the finest rendering engine out there and built what was the first mobile device actually able to surf the web? And that they have shown no will or wish to backtrack on any of these, doubling down instead? There is something much, much simpler to these issues: 1. Jobs's Apple will never again live and die at the whim of a third party. They suffered greatly during the Classic-OSX transition because Apple had lost control of the development platform itself (which was basically owned by Metrowerk and its CodeWarrior) 2. Jobs's Apple takes decisions it thinks benefit its customers and its customers are always its users. Now they may be wrong on that, and they may be misguided, but time and time again you can (pretty easily) explain the decisions of Jobs's Apple either as trying to avoid losing their platform to a third party or trying to make their user's experience life better. With web browser they fully control the platform. Hell, they control what can be argued the best web platform available (Google's Chrome is giving them a run for their money, in no small part by building upon their work). They don't fear people using their web browser, they wouldn't have built Canvas if they did (why not leave it out as SVG? Slow, hard to use and not a threat at all), they wouldn't be implementing WebGL, they wouldn't spearheads CSS animations and transitions and all the stuff that can make web applications snazzier and cleaner, they wouldn't have the engine with the best HTML5 support by far. Web stuff is not a threat, because they can have the best, shiniest and most advanced web stuff and they control all of it (number of full rendering engines allowed on iOS devices? one. Nobody else is allowed to ship a JS interpreter, therefore no full-blown web browser can avoid using the Webkit that ships with it and is fully built by Apple). Apple doesn't fundamentally mind or care for cross-platform mobile apps, what they fear is a third party's cross platform toolkit taking preeminence over their own tool and deciding of their platform's future. That is why they banned flash (also, because flash is a piece of shit). > Getting people to build with objective C and native code helps lock in That only works because you assert Apple wants to lock users in. > and ensures that any sales go through their payment platform. Cross-platform tools would have the exact same restriction or face bans. iTunes payment mandate is trivially explained through integration and user-experience (did you know that Apple's subscriptions services makes user information availability to magazines opt-in by the user, whereas just about every other service makes it opt-out if opt-able at all? That's because to Apple the device owner is the customer, to just about every other publisher the magazine is the customer). > If you don't think Apple has been moving in this way (anti-cross platform dev tools, requiring sales to use the iTunes payments) you simply haven't been paying honest attention. Either that, or I have not been wearing hate-shaped glasses. But really, I wonder why I bother with all that typing. I should know by now that HN's view of Apple is the same as /r/tech's: a bashing wankfest.