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Michael Tsai: Welcome to iPhone: Your Crappy Mac of Tomorrow, Today

49 points by toffer 18y ago

charlesju 18y ago
I completely agree with you. I think that there are very smart reasons for why Steve Jobs did what he did. When the iPhone version 1.0 was released AT&T probably was still in the "I'm a big carrier, hear me roar" kind of mentality. But as the iPhone blew up, AT&T released that it needed to adjust quick, so perhaps that's how Apple was able to push through their SDK. I think in general Apple just has to be more open with it's fan cult.
- tptacek 18y ago
  ... or not. The iPhone has been embraced enthusiastically by the Mac developer market, and has attracted still more developers from outside it. Despite the fact that those same devs clearly are getting smacked around by Apple. 'Twas ever thus; find a longtime Mac developer without a story about how bad a dev partner Apple is. The fact is, 99.999% of the addressable market for iPhones does not concern itself with these "limitations". It might be irrational for Apple to open up more now.
  - pchristensen 18y ago
    Most people will happily accept any restriction that makes their phone less of a PITA than their computer. Has anyone looked at normal cell phones lately? They don't do much, they have a million hard-to-use menus, and they don't crash or reboot. The goal of the iPhone is to improve on #1 and #2 and hold religiously to #3. And they will make a lot of money for doing that.
    - stcredzero 18y ago
      Ever since the 2.0 update, my iPhone crashes and reboots.
      - pchristensen 18y ago
        If the iPhone does become as unreliable as a computer, AppleT&T is in for some trouble. Let's hope the 2.1 update fixes this.
tdoggette 18y ago
He's not wrong. Apple's garden-walling was become extensive enough that it's gone beyond ensuring a good experience for their users, and has started to damage the platform. This should have been obvious to them since jailbreaking became so common, but I guess it hasn't quite sunk in yet. Apple needs to allow people to use their platform, or it won't become as good as it deserves to be.
- deleted 18y ago
  [deleted]
- charlesju 18y ago
  I respectfully disagree. I think it is important to wall off the platform and sandbox the environment. This prevents things like stack attacks with walled off memory and background processes doing things it should not. With so much personal information on the mobile phone, it'll be a complete nightmare if one of the applications is really a virus that spreads as a background process. Since it can contact your ENTIRE contact list, such a viral infection can crippling. In fact, in the Jailbroken iPhone community there have already been a couple of viruses. But on the other hand, they should open up a couple more APIs, the camera, specifically.
  - tptacek 18y ago
    None of the limitations being discussed with the iPhone have anything to do with whether programs are vulnerable to "stack attacks". The iPhone doesn't even have background processes. And "virus" is just a scary-sounding word for "program that deletes important files on your behalf". Don't run those. I respect the "walled garden" as a business decision; it's Apple's platform, and maximizing its revenue is their prerogative. As a technical safeguard, there's no evidence that it works.
    - tomsucks 18y ago
      Here's my top: http://pastie.org/246884 http://pastie.org/246884 MobileSafari, MobileMail, MobilePhone, all running in the background. fairplayd is the fairplay daemon, commcenter manages communications (all of them), springboard is the desktop, lockdownd is the little thing that checks to make sure the phone is activated (and locks it down if not) only the top three apps (bash, top, sshd) aren't there on a vanilla iPhone. Apple's apps will run in the background, but other (app store) apps exit completely when you return to the home screen.
jonmc12 18y ago
So far this year, I have: 1) rented a video from iTunes which I could not play on my iPod, because it was 2 years old and no longer supported. 2) Not been able to utilize my eclipse plugins that run on Java 1.6 due to Apple not supporting 64-bit carbon (required for eclipse on osx). This is after they took an extra 12 months just to support java 1.6 at all. Apple made both of these decisions consciously. They make good products to create a good customer experience, then base support purely on ROI with no concern for customer experience.
fauigerzigerk 18y ago
So we seem to have these facts: The iPhone platform is a commercial success for Apple. The iPhone platform is a commercial success for 3rd party devs. The iPhone platform is tightly controlled by a vendor whose actions range from understandable lies to misleading behaviour and outright bullying. So, is there anything to be criticised or is commercial success a justification for everything that is lawful? I think being the uber cool bully who lends his followers success for a while but may turn against them at any moment is a dangerous long term strategy. It basically means that Apple's growth rates must keep up with the inconvenience caused by their behaviour. And I don't mean just intellectual inconvenience that affects only a small number of people (closed vs open platforms, etc). I mean getting harassed by a vendor has a cost and that cost needs to be covered by growth. It's as simple as that.
- Tichy 18y ago
  I think it is too early to judge the iPhone as platform for 3rd party devs. OK, some people got rich already, but they might have profited from the early hype, in other words, the seeds for their earnings have been sown long before the iPhone platform launched. It remains to be seen if the platform is still viable once the dust has settled down.
tomsucks 18y ago
There's a reason that [FUCKING NDA](http://fuckingnda.com/ http://fuckingnda.com/) exists.
toffer 18y ago
What I thought was most interesting about the linked article was the charge that Apple has been misleading it's developers, not whether Apple's iPhone strategy is right or wrong from a business or technical perspective. At what point does putting the best possible spin on things cross over into outright lying? Is it fair to characterize Apple's guidance to developers as misleading? If so, will Apple's behavior eventually drive away developers, or can they always count on developers sticking around, so long as they continue to produce hot products like the iPhone?

49 points by toffer 18y ago

I completely agree with you. I think that there are very smart reasons for why Steve Jobs did what he did. When the iPhone version 1.0 was released AT&T probably was still in the "I'm a big carrier, hear me roar" kind of mentality. But as the iPhone blew up, AT&T released that it needed to adjust quick, so perhaps that's how Apple was able to push through their SDK. I think in general Apple just has to be more open with it's fan cult.

tptacek 18y ago
... or not. The iPhone has been embraced enthusiastically by the Mac developer market, and has attracted still more developers from outside it. Despite the fact that those same devs clearly are getting smacked around by Apple. 'Twas ever thus; find a longtime Mac developer without a story about how bad a dev partner Apple is. The fact is, 99.999% of the addressable market for iPhones does not concern itself with these "limitations". It might be irrational for Apple to open up more now.
- pchristensen 18y ago
  Most people will happily accept any restriction that makes their phone less of a PITA than their computer. Has anyone looked at normal cell phones lately? They don't do much, they have a million hard-to-use menus, and they don't crash or reboot. The goal of the iPhone is to improve on #1 and #2 and hold religiously to #3. And they will make a lot of money for doing that.
  - stcredzero 18y ago
    Ever since the 2.0 update, my iPhone crashes and reboots.
    - pchristensen 18y ago
      If the iPhone does become as unreliable as a computer, AppleT&T is in for some trouble. Let's hope the 2.1 update fixes this.

tdoggette 18y ago

He's not wrong. Apple's garden-walling was become extensive enough that it's gone beyond ensuring a good experience for their users, and has started to damage the platform. This should have been obvious to them since jailbreaking became so common, but I guess it hasn't quite sunk in yet. Apple needs to allow people to use their platform, or it won't become as good as it deserves to be.

deleted 18y ago
[deleted]
charlesju 18y ago
I respectfully disagree. I think it is important to wall off the platform and sandbox the environment. This prevents things like stack attacks with walled off memory and background processes doing things it should not. With so much personal information on the mobile phone, it'll be a complete nightmare if one of the applications is really a virus that spreads as a background process. Since it can contact your ENTIRE contact list, such a viral infection can crippling. In fact, in the Jailbroken iPhone community there have already been a couple of viruses. But on the other hand, they should open up a couple more APIs, the camera, specifically.
- tptacek 18y ago
  None of the limitations being discussed with the iPhone have anything to do with whether programs are vulnerable to "stack attacks". The iPhone doesn't even have background processes. And "virus" is just a scary-sounding word for "program that deletes important files on your behalf". Don't run those. I respect the "walled garden" as a business decision; it's Apple's platform, and maximizing its revenue is their prerogative. As a technical safeguard, there's no evidence that it works.
  - tomsucks 18y ago
    Here's my top: http://pastie.org/246884 http://pastie.org/246884 MobileSafari, MobileMail, MobilePhone, all running in the background. fairplayd is the fairplay daemon, commcenter manages communications (all of them), springboard is the desktop, lockdownd is the little thing that checks to make sure the phone is activated (and locks it down if not) only the top three apps (bash, top, sshd) aren't there on a vanilla iPhone. Apple's apps will run in the background, but other (app store) apps exit completely when you return to the home screen.

jonmc12 18y ago

So far this year, I have: 1) rented a video from iTunes which I could not play on my iPod, because it was 2 years old and no longer supported. 2) Not been able to utilize my eclipse plugins that run on Java 1.6 due to Apple not supporting 64-bit carbon (required for eclipse on osx). This is after they took an extra 12 months just to support java 1.6 at all. Apple made both of these decisions consciously. They make good products to create a good customer experience, then base support purely on ROI with no concern for customer experience.

fauigerzigerk 18y ago

So we seem to have these facts: The iPhone platform is a commercial success for Apple. The iPhone platform is a commercial success for 3rd party devs. The iPhone platform is tightly controlled by a vendor whose actions range from understandable lies to misleading behaviour and outright bullying. So, is there anything to be criticised or is commercial success a justification for everything that is lawful? I think being the uber cool bully who lends his followers success for a while but may turn against them at any moment is a dangerous long term strategy. It basically means that Apple's growth rates must keep up with the inconvenience caused by their behaviour. And I don't mean just intellectual inconvenience that affects only a small number of people (closed vs open platforms, etc). I mean getting harassed by a vendor has a cost and that cost needs to be covered by growth. It's as simple as that.

Tichy 18y ago
I think it is too early to judge the iPhone as platform for 3rd party devs. OK, some people got rich already, but they might have profited from the early hype, in other words, the seeds for their earnings have been sown long before the iPhone platform launched. It remains to be seen if the platform is still viable once the dust has settled down.

tomsucks 18y ago

There's a reason that [FUCKING NDA](http://fuckingnda.com/ http://fuckingnda.com/) exists.

toffer 18y ago

What I thought was most interesting about the linked article was the charge that Apple has been misleading it's developers, not whether Apple's iPhone strategy is right or wrong from a business or technical perspective. At what point does putting the best possible spin on things cross over into outright lying? Is it fair to characterize Apple's guidance to developers as misleading? If so, will Apple's behavior eventually drive away developers, or can they always count on developers sticking around, so long as they continue to produce hot products like the iPhone?