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And it's well worth noting that the iPhone came first, not the wave of developers. Apple provided the platform and potential, they put in enormous resources and

And it's well worth noting that the iPhone came first, not the wave of developers. Apple provided the platform and potential, they put in enormous resources and effort to make the iPhone work out, to deploy a phone in a new manner (bending the telecom providers to their will). What existed for developers before the iPhone (the languishing Windows desktop, much amazing)? If the developers are the primary, why'd they have to wait for Apple to make everything possible? It's because the developers are secondary. Apple is the primary, the key to it all.

selectodude 5y ago
I’m not sure how people don’t understand this. If certain apps stopped working on my iPhone, I wouldn’t get an android. I would just stop using that app.
- random314 5y ago
  The argument is - what happens when all non apple apps stopped working on the iPhone
  - kcplate 5y ago
    A straight up mental fantasy exercise with zero possibility of ever becoming reality so ultimately what good is going through the exercise? One, you would never get the complete boycott that it would require to have an impact—-very few app publishers relying on app profits would risk a profitable app just to prove the point, especially if the publisher is a publicly traded company. You would have to rely on activist super small (single dev or two) app studios for your strikers and, no offense to those smaller studios, those apps generally are not the ones that people will miss beyond a mild irritation. Two, for every app participating in the boycott, there would be a similar app that didn’t participate that could backfill. The non-participating apps would be well known within a day or two and would start displacing striking apps pretty much immediately.
    - random314 5y ago
      I am not sure why you are arguing with me. I am paraphrasing the article which you seemed to have misunderstood in your original comment. Of course, this is a hypothetical because the app developers are fragmented while Apple is a single entity. The blog argues that to be fair, Apple should donate 30% of its iPhone revenue to app developers as an iPhone without 3rd party apps is fundamentally crippled. The meta argument is that Apple taking a 30% cut of app revenue is fundamentally unfair. Apple has set a new precedent with the 30% cut. Operating systems such as windows, macOS and unix that came before iOS never demanded a 30% cut of app revenue installed on the device. Would you also be supportive of Microsoft and Unix vendors demanding 30% of revenue generated by applications on their operating system - starting 2022?
      - kcplate 5y ago
        I was speaking to the pointlessness of a hypothetical boycott, not arguing directly with you. I disagree that the device is crippled without 3rd party apps. It may not be quite as useful or perhaps fun, but it would still be a far more useful device than a Motorola Razr phone or a Blackberry. Yes it’s a new premise. Apple provides an app market to 1.65B devices to app developers with little entrance risk to the devs much beyond the elbow grease they spent creating the app. How much more money and effort would a developer have to spend to get their app that level of exposure without the App Store? A lot, and all of it amounting to real dollars at risk with no guarantee of payoff. What’s truly at risk publishing at the App Store? Nothing but a publishers time. Even the 30% you pay to Apple only hits if you are making money. It’s a commission, they marketed and sold the app for you, handled the transaction, distribution, and dropped some cash in your bank account. 30% in my mind is pretty cheap for what you get. Any other business that relied on third parties services to handle the marketing, sales, shipping, and finance transaction of the product would not bat an eye if those costs ran to 30%. As for Unix and Windows deciding to charge a fee? That wouldn’t bother me a bit if they were marketing, selling, and handling the transaction for my app. Do it.
LouisSayers 5y ago
Anyone that remembers history correctly will remember when the iPhone was first released Apple wanted to make ALL the apps. Then developers started jailbreaking the phones, adding their own apps to them. The Appstore wasn't obvious for Apple, and it was only after developer backlash that they changed their tune. So you can say that Apple did everything but the truth is that the success of the iPhone is from the COMBINED effort of Apple, and the work of developers in the community.
- imwillofficial 5y ago
  “The Appstore wasn't obvious for Apple, and it was only after developer backlash that they changed their tune.“ This is not “remembering history correctly” at all. Apple didn’t have an SDK ready, and tried to sell the shit sandwich of Web Apps as a stopgap.
  - LouisSayers 5y ago
    >Apple didn’t have an SDK ready, and tried to sell the shit sandwich of Web Apps as a stopgap. And how exactly do you know that it always was their intent to make an SDK for third party developers? From https://9to5mac.com/2011/10/21/jobs-original-vision-for-the-iphone-no-third-party-native-apps/ https://9to5mac.com/2011/10/21/jobs-original-vision-for-the-... "The App Store came later and apparently as a reaction to jailbreakers and developer backlash."
    - imwillofficial 5y ago
      That’s an editorial, and they floated the eventual App Store idea in dev talks early on.

selectodude 5y ago

I’m not sure how people don’t understand this. If certain apps stopped working on my iPhone, I wouldn’t get an android. I would just stop using that app.

random314 5y ago
The argument is - what happens when all non apple apps stopped working on the iPhone
- kcplate 5y ago
  A straight up mental fantasy exercise with zero possibility of ever becoming reality so ultimately what good is going through the exercise? One, you would never get the complete boycott that it would require to have an impact—-very few app publishers relying on app profits would risk a profitable app just to prove the point, especially if the publisher is a publicly traded company. You would have to rely on activist super small (single dev or two) app studios for your strikers and, no offense to those smaller studios, those apps generally are not the ones that people will miss beyond a mild irritation. Two, for every app participating in the boycott, there would be a similar app that didn’t participate that could backfill. The non-participating apps would be well known within a day or two and would start displacing striking apps pretty much immediately.
  - random314 5y ago
    I am not sure why you are arguing with me. I am paraphrasing the article which you seemed to have misunderstood in your original comment. Of course, this is a hypothetical because the app developers are fragmented while Apple is a single entity. The blog argues that to be fair, Apple should donate 30% of its iPhone revenue to app developers as an iPhone without 3rd party apps is fundamentally crippled. The meta argument is that Apple taking a 30% cut of app revenue is fundamentally unfair. Apple has set a new precedent with the 30% cut. Operating systems such as windows, macOS and unix that came before iOS never demanded a 30% cut of app revenue installed on the device. Would you also be supportive of Microsoft and Unix vendors demanding 30% of revenue generated by applications on their operating system - starting 2022?
    - kcplate 5y ago
      I was speaking to the pointlessness of a hypothetical boycott, not arguing directly with you. I disagree that the device is crippled without 3rd party apps. It may not be quite as useful or perhaps fun, but it would still be a far more useful device than a Motorola Razr phone or a Blackberry. Yes it’s a new premise. Apple provides an app market to 1.65B devices to app developers with little entrance risk to the devs much beyond the elbow grease they spent creating the app. How much more money and effort would a developer have to spend to get their app that level of exposure without the App Store? A lot, and all of it amounting to real dollars at risk with no guarantee of payoff. What’s truly at risk publishing at the App Store? Nothing but a publishers time. Even the 30% you pay to Apple only hits if you are making money. It’s a commission, they marketed and sold the app for you, handled the transaction, distribution, and dropped some cash in your bank account. 30% in my mind is pretty cheap for what you get. Any other business that relied on third parties services to handle the marketing, sales, shipping, and finance transaction of the product would not bat an eye if those costs ran to 30%. As for Unix and Windows deciding to charge a fee? That wouldn’t bother me a bit if they were marketing, selling, and handling the transaction for my app. Do it.

LouisSayers 5y ago

Anyone that remembers history correctly will remember when the iPhone was first released Apple wanted to make ALL the apps. Then developers started jailbreaking the phones, adding their own apps to them. The Appstore wasn't obvious for Apple, and it was only after developer backlash that they changed their tune. So you can say that Apple did everything but the truth is that the success of the iPhone is from the COMBINED effort of Apple, and the work of developers in the community.

imwillofficial 5y ago
“The Appstore wasn't obvious for Apple, and it was only after developer backlash that they changed their tune.“ This is not “remembering history correctly” at all. Apple didn’t have an SDK ready, and tried to sell the shit sandwich of Web Apps as a stopgap.
- LouisSayers 5y ago
  >Apple didn’t have an SDK ready, and tried to sell the shit sandwich of Web Apps as a stopgap. And how exactly do you know that it always was their intent to make an SDK for third party developers? From https://9to5mac.com/2011/10/21/jobs-original-vision-for-the-iphone-no-third-party-native-apps/ https://9to5mac.com/2011/10/21/jobs-original-vision-for-the-... "The App Store came later and apparently as a reaction to jailbreakers and developer backlash."
  - imwillofficial 5y ago
    That’s an editorial, and they floated the eventual App Store idea in dev talks early on.