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No reconciliation is necessary. Before the iPhone, phones were a closed platform. You couldn't get your software onto cellphones without going thru the carrier

by nirvana 15y ago

No reconciliation is necessary. Before the iPhone, phones were a closed platform. You couldn't get your software onto cellphones without going thru the carrier. There was no "app Store", there was no such thing as an app. You needed millions of dollars, to be a big business, to have special contracts or all of the above in order for carriers to even take your meeting to see if they'd think about putting your software on "their" phones. The iPhone opened all that up. Anyone could write software, and provided it was minimally useful and didn't contain malware, sell it in the store. Any consumer could, for the first time, install software on their phones that they chose, rather than having it chosen for them.

tadfisher 15y ago
I know this is a pedantic point, but consumers may choose only from what Apple has chosen for them. The "minimally useful and didn't contain malware" expression is missing the "may replace or complete with Apple products" and "may upset some deep-pocketed special interest group or the CEO" qualifiers.
nitrogen 15y ago
You couldn't get your software onto cellphones without going thru the carrier. That's not really true. Before the iPhone was released it was possible to develop for a great many phones using J2ME. Some carriers did restrict what APIs were accessible on their phones without a signing certificate (cough Sprint), but others allowed everything necessary to develop games and basic apps that could connect to the site where the app was obtained. All you had to do was throw up .jar and .jad files for your app onto your web site.
wvenable 15y ago
> Before the iPhone, phones were a closed platform. That's not even remotely true and I wish people would stop repeating this like it's a fact. Smartphones existed for years before the iPhone and all had user-installable software. My first touch screen smartphone was the Sony Ericsson P800 released in 2002 (5 years before the iPhone) and I had plenty of third party applications for it. I went through a number of different smartphones by different manufacturers and different operating systems before the iPhone ever got apps. And, unlike the iPhone, there were no restrictions.
palish 15y ago
> You needed millions of dollars, to be a big business, to have special contracts or all of the above in order for carriers to even take your meeting to see if they'd think about putting your software on "their" phones. This isn't true at all. Sam Altman had none of these things, yet he was still able to get a meeting to discuss Loopt. Yes, you still needed "a meeting". But the process was not nearly as byzantine as you've made it seem.

by nirvana 15y ago

tadfisher 15y ago

I know this is a pedantic point, but consumers may choose only from what Apple has chosen for them. The "minimally useful and didn't contain malware" expression is missing the "may replace or complete with Apple products" and "may upset some deep-pocketed special interest group or the CEO" qualifiers.

nitrogen 15y ago

You couldn't get your software onto cellphones without going thru the carrier. That's not really true. Before the iPhone was released it was possible to develop for a great many phones using J2ME. Some carriers did restrict what APIs were accessible on their phones without a signing certificate (cough Sprint), but others allowed everything necessary to develop games and basic apps that could connect to the site where the app was obtained. All you had to do was throw up .jar and .jad files for your app onto your web site.

wvenable 15y ago

> Before the iPhone, phones were a closed platform. That's not even remotely true and I wish people would stop repeating this like it's a fact. Smartphones existed for years before the iPhone and all had user-installable software. My first touch screen smartphone was the Sony Ericsson P800 released in 2002 (5 years before the iPhone) and I had plenty of third party applications for it. I went through a number of different smartphones by different manufacturers and different operating systems before the iPhone ever got apps. And, unlike the iPhone, there were no restrictions.

palish 15y ago

> You needed millions of dollars, to be a big business, to have special contracts or all of the above in order for carriers to even take your meeting to see if they'd think about putting your software on "their" phones. This isn't true at all. Sam Altman had none of these things, yet he was still able to get a meeting to discuss Loopt. Yes, you still needed "a meeting". But the process was not nearly as byzantine as you've made it seem.