11 ms·

Serving at the Pleasure of the King

375 points by tmcdonald 15y ago

dsr_ 15y ago
Even ordinary users are beginning to understand this. My sister was upset at Amazon because the Kindle app on her iPod would not let her buy books directly. After she found out that Apple was demanding a 30% cut of those sales, she changed her mind. Now she's unhappy with Apple. I understand the impulse to look at however many millions of IOS devices and to immediately want to get into that market, but the long tail is not a comfortable place to be in a land of 99c standard prices. Having an arbitrary and capricious landlord makes it worse.
- ciudilo 15y ago
  30% cut only applies to subscriptions so in this case it is Amazon's choice to sell books on their website and not from app directly.
  - thorstadt 15y ago
    The 30% applies to all in-app purchases, and attempting to circumvent IAP is against Apple's guidelines. http://www.amazon.com/forum/kindle/ref=cm_cd_ttp_ef_tft_tp?_encoding=UTF8&cdForum=Fx1D7SY3BVSESG&cdThread=TxFSUR2H7D8D9W http://www.amazon.com/forum/kindle/ref=cm_cd_ttp_ef_tft_tp?_...
- vacri 15y ago
  Why is she unhappy that a retailer gets their cut for supplying the MITM service? I don't like Apple philosophy in the slightest and don't own any apple gear (old ipods excepted), so I'm not a fan of theirs in the slightest. But this 30% thing is just a non-issue. They're a retailer providing content. 30% is a boringly normal number for the retailers cut. If amazon wanted to share their profits with the retailer (like book publishers have to with brick and mortar stores) then those books would be available. If Apple allowed those purchases for free, then they don't get any benefit for providing the service.
  - dsr_ 15y ago
    Why is she unhappy? At a basic level, it's because her mental model of How Things Work broke. She thinks that it's reasonable that using the Amazon Kindle application on any platform she ought to be able to buy books from Amazon as part of that app. After all, she's signed in, Amazon knows who she is, at most they ought to ask for a password confirmation to let her spend her money. And that doesn't work. So she was unhappy with Amazon. Reasonable. She was so unhappy, she posted on Facebook about it, where a dozen of her friends pointed out that Apple wanted a 30% cut of content sold on their device. Their device. Not her device. She paid for it, but now she sees that it isn't hers. She thought that an iPod was like a computer: you use it, you select software to put on it, you use the software. Her mental model breaks AGAIN, because she thought she owned the iPod. Now she finds out that it's actually an Apple-owned store that doesn't like competition. Apple got their benefit when they sold her a device. They got more benefit when they sell her software to go on the device. Why should they get more benefit for interfering in a transaction between her and Amazon? She knows what rent-seeking means, and she doesn't appreciate it.
    - vacri 15y ago
      Does she also have a problem that Amazon takes the lions share of the remaining money, instead of it going to the authors? Amazon is just another MITM - a facilitator of getting product to consumer. Same argument with the kindle, right? "Amazon got their benefit when they sold her a device"? Perhaps she doesn't realise that the App Store is the same kind of service that Amazon provides - after all, the Kindle is also locked down. You have to do Frowned-On things to read your other ebooks on it. Perhaps you should inform her of this, and watch her mental model break yet again.
dos1 15y ago
These are the exact reasons that I decided to quit developing for iOS. I loved the APIs, I enjoyed the platform and access to millions of users. In the end though, I just wasn't willing to bend the knee.
nickpp 15y ago
That post rings true. But then it is true about every single platform provider and 3rd party external dependencies on the market: Windows, Mac OS X, iOS, Facebook, Twitter Even big apps will eventually include features initially provided by plugins. See Photoshop or Jira. Not to mention the strategy of web giants like Google who will purchase existing successful commercial companies and the offer their product for free, thus crippling entire markets. See Google Analytics, Earth and Sketchup.
AndrewDucker 15y ago
This is one of the reasons that I hope Metro apps crash and burn - if the only way to get hold of them is through the MS store, with all the same issues that the Apple store has, then I just don't want anything to do with them. I know that the Android equivalent has problems (piracy, for instance), but I'd rather have that than something completely locked down.
- frou_dh 15y ago
  I can't imagine how MS would save face if Metro crashed and burned. Seems like it would be tantamount to checking out of the consumer market.
  - slowpoke 15y ago
    Seeing as Metro/Win8 is MS last desperate push to enter the market for tablets that in the near future will replace the market where they currently hold almost all their monopolies (the desktop), that's a very accurate description of what will most likely happen. And seeing as Windows is not and never was an OS for power users, they will lose the remaining desktop niche - which will be populated by exactly those power users - as well once the tablet will be our primary multimedia communication device.
    - frou_dh 15y ago
      A lot of Windows users do consider themselves power users even if they have minimal knowledge of other platforms. For example, it's quite frustrating to participate in PC building or gaming communities where every schmo thinks they're an authority on computing.
      - slowpoke 15y ago
        I think this too will fade with time as gaming moves to the tablet/other platforms. My prognosis is that the only people using desktop machines in the future will be scientists, professions performing heavy computing and programmers/developers.
Vivtek 15y ago
1. Windows has always done this. Occasionally people complain; usually they don't. Honestly, I normally consider it a good thing - the Windows functionality is usually bland and relatively feature-free, but works perfectly. There was a time when TCP/IP support was a purchased add-on, after all. I think we all agree that's better to have built in from the get-go and consistent on every aged uncle's machine we're asked to fix on Thanksgiving. 2. The cleanup feature doesn't really support his point. If I store data on my phone and the phone deletes it all without warning when it thinks I have too much, that's not protecting me at the expense of the app developer - that's just plain screwing me and the developer at the same time. Honestly, I find it incomprehensible that any professional could possibly have considered it a good idea, and I think it's indicative of Apple's manic secrecy that it wasn't headed off early instead of being ignored until release. I know Apple's doing really well in the market lately - by innovating quicker than anybody else, which has been fantastic for everyone. But in the long run, this arrogance is not going to be good for them. It shot them in the foot for two decades with the Mac, and it's going to bite them now.
- MatthewPhillips 15y ago
  I disagree with point number 2. From Apple's perspective, it's deleting temporary storage (after all, they're called Caches and tmp. You wouldn't store anything important on /tmp on your desktop, would you?) The "correct" place to put user data on iOS 5+ is any place that syncs with iCloud. That's the crux on this issue: iOS 5 is Apple's assertion that App Store users are their customers, not the app developer's customers, and they want to handle the backup and security around their customers data.
  - Vivtek 15y ago
    Ah, I see - well, chalk that up to my having very little knowledge about the iOS ecosystem. I think my larger point still stands, that Apple's arrogant assertion of ownership of everything is going to bite them; arguably this is just telling everybody where they have to store their data. With Apple. And honestly, if /tmp were the only filesystem I were allowed to touch, then yeah, I'd try to do something with it. That's kinda screwed up.
programminggeek 15y ago
He's right and certainly more levelheaded about these kinds of issues than most, but what most don't realize is that many of the software platforms we love have had worse policies for years. Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, and Sega all have/had extremely rigorous review process that was even worse than Apple's if you want to be on their game platform. Phone companies had all these build processes if you wanted to write Java ME apps to work on feature phones. And so on and so forth. The problem is, as devs we are spoiled by the web, where you can just push out new code that says or does whatever you want it to without any consequence because the web is a "relatively" safe runtime, so nobody cares. We are like children who grew up with a silver spoon in our mouth and we've been asked to endure plastic. Sure, it's still a spoon, but it's not silver and that pisses us off.
- mcantelon 15y ago
  >We are like children who grew up with a silver spoon in our mouth and we've been asked to endure plastic. Sure, it's still a spoon, but it's not silver and that pisses us off. No, we're like adults used to being able to do what we want with our own hardware. Being able to do what you want with hardware is the historical computing norm (gaming consoles being the exception). Android-based devices carry on this tradition so I use them, rather than paying Apple $99/year for the privilege of putting applications I've written on my own hardware.
  - Derbasti 15y ago
    Really, you are paying for the privilege to be listed in the App Store and to be distributed to customers.
    - mcantelon 15y ago
      Unless you jailbreak, you can't even make your own app and have it run on your own phone without paying $99/year. And as far as paying for the privilege of being including in the App Store, seems like the 30% cut Apple takes should more than cover that.
- 15y ago
raganwald 15y ago
Did I really just read Jeff complaining that Apple shipped something that duplicates third-party behavior and compare them unfavorably to Microsoft in that regard? I won't excuse Apple for acting like a King, but I think Jeff should find another poster boy for benevolent dictators. Microsoft is famous for steamrolling third-party developers, both from their applications group and their systems group. I think this rant would read better if it complained about ALL proprietary platforms and used Apple as an example, rather than disingenuously implying that they are the rotten fruit in the barrel. p.s. Joel Spolsky once said that companies always try to "Commoditize their complements." If you as a developer can create something that adds value to the platform in a broad way, it's inevitable that the platform owner is going to want to commoditize it, either by giving it away or making it easy for your competition to drive prices down to negligible levels. Building it into the platform is the ultimate commoditization.
- bcl 15y ago
  I don't think he was implying that Microsoft was any better than Apple in this regard. He was pointing out that the complaints from developers has been relatively mild compared to the outrage when Microsoft does the same thing.
  - raganwald 15y ago
    The complaints from Apple developers have been around forever. Waxing nostalgic, I remember threads on the old Mousehole BBS about Apple and its love-hate relationship with developers. The reaction to Apple steamrolling Panic is classic, and there was a major furor over the dashboard and the way it steamrolled third party widget frameworks. I suspect that Jeff is in a Microsoft-centric culture, so he simply doesn't spend as much time talking to Apple developers as he does Microsoft developers, so of course he hears more from them. Likewise, there are way more Windows developers than OS X developers, so you'll always hear more about anything from them. iOS is popular, so there ought to be plenty of developers out there in the long tail. Maybe that's the real problem: Most developers are trying to grab a little tiny piece of the pie with a niche side-project, so they don't have the same perspective as someone who has employees and a big marketing budget sunk into their business. If this supposition is correct, you'll see the same dynamic with other walled gardens from Microsoft and Google and whomever else gets into the "curated app store" business.
DodgyEggplant 15y ago
He is a bit unfair. Good platforms vendors paved the way for everybody. And they ALWAYS do it THEIR WAY (ask Netscape, Novel and Real). One can argue that Instapaper is actually a missing browser feature. But Apple is pushing the envelope: they are the first platform to break the "specific device limit". Android competes on phones, Windows on the desktop, Amazon with content, Samsung on hardware. But Apple is everywhere. And they are not the underdog anymore. This is Tim's Cook real challenge, and we wish him luck.
michaelfeathers 15y ago
About a year ago, someone asked me why I don't write apps for the AppStore. I told them I have too much self-respect.
andrewcooke 15y ago
the final image is wonderful. where did you get it from?
- ranebo 15y ago
  http://www.bernardpras.fr/ http://www.bernardpras.fr/ Courtesy of Google search by image: http://www.google.com/insidesearch/searchbyimage.html http://www.google.com/insidesearch/searchbyimage.html
- ecounysis 15y ago
  http://www.joeydevilla.com/2009/01/03/from-sun-chips-to-sun-king/ http://www.joeydevilla.com/2009/01/03/from-sun-chips-to-sun-...
- deleted 15y ago
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jp_sc 15y ago
I guess Jeff doesn't remembers "After Dark" anymore.
sjs 15y ago
What a long winded, and hyperbolic, story of doom. Marco needs to get over his fears[1] and store the offline data in Documents. It is user generated and is absolutely not transient nor re-downloadable given that a core feature of Instapaper is offline reading. Apple will get a deluge of bug reports and questions from all app devs that make apps that need to cache content for offline use - but not back it up or store it in iCloud - and will rectify the situation in some way. (I don't think Instapaper is in that camp but that's kind of beside the point.) I know that most people hold Apple to a higher standard than many other companies but let's not forget Hanlon's Razor: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." This is merely an oversight. Apple is never this hostile to the user experience, and the current guidelines make for a positively horrid user experience. It will be rectified. Is there a short-bets website? I'll make that bet any day. [1] I think he was correct not to take chances in getting the first iOS 5 version out, but I hope that the minute it was "Processing for App Store" he had a build ready for submission that stores content in Documents to feel out the review team's reaction to it.
cstross 15y ago
If Microsoft added a feature to Windows that duplicated a popular application's functionality, developers would be screaming bloody murder and rioting in the, er, blogs and web forums Utter rot. This used to happen all the time in the 1980s and 1990s, before the DoJ anti trust lawsuit really got rolling. It was most obvious in office apps (ever wonder where the third-party spelling checkers and grammar checkers went? Or the standalone mailmerge applications? Microsoft added their functionality to Word and killed an entire add-on market at a stroke each time they did so), but a load of that stuff happened in Windows too (the graphical shell that became an OS in its own right). The most flagrant late example was web browsing; the most recent one I can think of (not being a Windows user) was their antivirus/malware add-in. (Honestly ... young 'uns these days ... wanders away mumbling into beard and waving walking stick in the air.)
- tsotha 15y ago
  >This used to happen all the time in the 1980s and 1990s, before the DoJ anti trust lawsuit really got rolling. Yes, and the reason for the DOJ anti-trust lawsuit? Developers were screaming bloody murder.
  - latch 15y ago
    Your parent's point is that the reason Microsoft doesn't do this as much now isn't because they are more benevolent, it's because they were so over the top tyrannical that they've been forced to stop.
    - redthrowaway 15y ago
      Not really. Microsoft really is far less evil under Ballmer than Gates. It's also less effective, less farsighted, and slower, but it is less evil.
      - 0x12 15y ago
        I think it is just as evil, just less successful at implementing the evil because Ballmer isn't half as smart as Gates was. Even evil suffers from poor execution.
adabsurdo 15y ago
I think the Apple app store policies is the bigger problem, because Apple is using it to control not just quality, but content, and forcing applications to use its payment gateway; which in itself, wouldn't much of a problem if they didn't take this gigantic 30% cut (10x more than other payment gateways), and prevented you from knowing your customer. This is truely unprecendented. Microsoft could screw you by cloning your app, but they never blocked third-party applications, nor tried to be the commerce gateway to the internet. If Apple succeeds in making webapps obsolete, and competition cannot be strong enough to force it to be fairer and more reasonable in its app store policy, than to me an ipad/iphone app world sounds like a regression from the webapp world. And this is why I never understand why so many Apple users want Android & Windows to fail. As a customer, you should want other platforms to be succesful, so that we don't end up again with a monopolistic platform that screws us all. Didn't we try this before??
- ryanhuff 15y ago
  The AppStore isn't just a payment gateway. It's essentially a retail store. You would be hard pressed to get to keep 70% from many other retailers.
  - adabsurdo 15y ago
    I was referring to 'in app' payment gateway
  - vacri 15y ago
    70% is about right, give or take. Depends on the industry. But retailers certainly don't ever take only 3% like payment gateways do. This whole 30% thing comes from a new demographic that has never had any previous experience with business, who don't really understand the value of distribution channels and middlemen.
- glassx 15y ago
  > And this is why I never understand why so many Apple users want Android & Windows to fail. Huh? I thought it was the other way around, no? (i.e.: it's not fee, must die, etc) And really, webapps aren't going anywhere. The App Store was created because of user demand (not because Steve Jobs was a genius), and with Webkit and newer mobile IE it's probably the best time ever to write an web app. It's up to developers to choose.
Androsynth 15y ago
So Apple pushed out it's browser sync feature at the same time it pushed out the cleanup feature which effectively broke the competition? How Microsoftesque.
- jpxxx 15y ago
  That is absurdly limited thinking. Ponder that iCloud was invented to ensure the following scenario: that a typical user could not, in any reasonable scenario, irrevocably lose the user-state associated with their purchased applications. Apple is gunning hard for a market worth one trillion dollars, not Marco Arment. He is inconsequential collateral damage in Apple's race to a 100% managed computing experience.
  - Androsynth 15y ago
    Thats no different than Microsoft in the 90's. The business goals are different but the strategy of getting there is the same.
    - jpxxx 15y ago
      I don't feel this situation is the same. Microsoft didn't win for two decades by nibbling small potatoes off of everyone else's plate, they won by persecuting swallowing entire industries that were evolving rapidly. Word processing, fileserving, WWW access, telephony, video gaming, SQL, e-mail, ad infinitum... Instapaper is not an industry of this scope - it's a single webbrowsing feature.
      - Androsynth 15y ago
        Go read the top comment in this thread, cstross did a pretty good job of explaining it.
mechanical_fish 15y ago
Did Apple really once provide a direct link to Instapaper as the inspiration for their new built-in features? If so, did they actually ask Marco before they took that link out? If so, did Marco ask them to take it out? And, if he did - which, having heard Marco speak on this topic, I do not assume, but merely suppose - was that the right call? My understanding was that an App Store developer might kill for that kind of free publicity. Could it be, for example, that Apple stopped linking Instapaper so as to avoid playing favorites? Might one of Instapaper's competitors have complained about that link?
0x12 15y ago
When you are developing for a platform that is active on multiple layers (say, both OS, GUI or APP) then you are essentially validating the market for whatever you come up with. You have to calculate that in, if you are successful you will have competition, and if you are very successful the entity controlling the market will re-implement what you have already proven works. If you develop something that is just an 'add on' or a missing feature you are setting yourself up for eventual trouble. Such products have a life cycle and you can't reasonably expect the situation to continue unchanging forever.
mikerg87 15y ago
Nobody has a monopoly on ideas.
- marshray 15y ago
  I guess you've never heard of patents.
ethank 15y ago
Reading List doesn't have an API, so for the moment it doesn't come close to what instapaper provides in terms of instapaper and third party apps.
dbkbali 15y ago
I think some good ant-trust regulatory lawyers would have a field day with this. But one would have to have deep enough pockets to pay the legal bills!
nestlequ1k 15y ago
Funny how Android Instapaper (a 3rd party app) is infinitely better than the iPhone version (the official version) since it plugs right into the browser.
nirvana 15y ago
It strikes me that this is exactly the position every web developer has with google. Google can arbitrarily and capriciously exclude them from their index. When google excludes you from the index, there is no appeal, there is no explanation, and, unlike Apple, google will not publish a set of (reliable) rules. (It gives a lot of advice but is inconsistent.) Also, like Apple, if you are not able to get in the big leagues for distribution, you can distribute your product thru other, less popular channels that are more of a hassle. Unlike Apple, however, which give you explicit feedback on the feature that was the problem (with screenshots if needed) and always cites chapter and verse from the handbook for the exclusion, google will not tell you why, or give you any way to resolve it. With Apple, you can resolve the issue and resubmit it. Your app will be on the store in about 7 days. With google, even if you figure out what the problem is, and you resolve it, you have no way of knowing if you'll ever be let back into the index.
- 0x12 15y ago
  Conclusion: don't be dependent on google for your traffic (search) or your income (adsense).
- mcantelon 15y ago
  >Also, like Apple, if you are not able to get in the big leagues for distribution, you can distribute your product thru other, less popular channels that are more of a hassle. Are there any alternative channels that don't require jailbreaking?
  - lukifer 15y ago
    There is openappmkt.com, but there are certain hardware features which are inaccessible to web apps, so it's a subpar solution.
- lacker 15y ago
  You don't need Google indexing you to be successful on the web. Just look at Facebook.
  - 15y ago
DanielBMarkham 15y ago
It's tragically ironic that the very thing Microsoft would have been very happy to do -- lock down windows and control all apps on it -- is what is taken for normality everywhere else but windows. I'm not trying to defend Microsoft. It's all too clear they have been very anti-competitive. But if windows had the controls on it that apps on iOS had we'd be hearing folks call for criminal prosecutions. I understand the gee whiz factor of Apple. I own a bunch of Apple stuff and I love their design. I also understand that if you don't control your garden, all kinds of weeds grow in there. But geesh, folks, Jeff is correct. Perhaps this is the best future we could hope for, but it is an extremely sub-optimal destination compared to where we thought we were going.
ugh 15y ago
So Apple can never ever implement bookmark sync in their browser? Because that’s what they did and there is nothing whatsoever wrong with that. It’s a minor obvious feature, not some big complicated thing. You know what I also don’t understand? What this has to do with the big open vs. closed debate. Apple implemented a new feature in their own browser. Google can just as well implement the exactly same feature in their browser. Open vs. closed doesn’t figure into this. At all. That whole cleaning behavior of iOS debate is just stupid. Apple screwed up. So what.
- ethank 15y ago
  The telling thing is: it's existed for years with Mobile Me. Reading List isn't new.
earl 15y ago
I love that the iphone and ipad are locked down. I gave ipads to family members and I'm finally done with tech support. My parents, girlfriend, and brother were bit by endless amounts of spyware, spam, and trojans because they used windows. I had to reinstall windows on my gf's laptop 3 times because adobe are useless worthless fuckwits who fill flash and pdf with security holes and her computer was repeatedly infected. Every time I went to my parents house I had to clean endless amounts of crap off their computer. My brother's laptop was infected with a virus that tried to get into bank accounts. He owns a pair of pizza stores and does his accounting on his laptop, and he accesses bank accounts with significant funds in them. Using ios fixed all the above. While in theory it's nice that people can run any application they wish, in practice, it sucks. People end up having to be experts on computer security. As a group of computer professionals we've pounded on this for twenty years and it simply isn't fucking working. If telling people to be careful what programs they run or what websites they visit worked, it would have worked long ago. Instead, I give them ipads for casual browsing and they're finally secure. My parents don't need my help to get pictures off their camera. There finally is a way for non experts to securely use the internet and applications -- just buy stuff from the app store. It won't spam you, it won't steal information, it won't install spyware, and it will most likely do what it claims to do. If not being able to run arbitrary apps is the price we pay... well, we tried doing it the other way for 20+ years and it didn't work.
- slowpoke 15y ago
  >While in theory it's nice that people can run any application they wish, in practice, it sucks. While in theory it is nice that people enjoy essential liberties, in practice, they suck. Franklin sends his regards. > it won't steal information So, it's okay if Apple collects your personal data instead of some criminal? Sure is hypocritical. >well, we tried doing it the other way for 20+ years and it didn't work. You know why it doesn't work? Because we let people use computers, but don't require them to learn how to use them. I still don't get why people think they are entitled to use a computer. It's the same as demanding to drive a car without knowing how to operate it, in addition to having no clue about traffic rules. We're not attacking the root of the problem, we're simply slapping the symptoms around.
praptak 15y ago
It is just the most recent (I wanted to write last, but I'm sure it is not the last) of many similar stories and articles, which can be summed up as "Do not be a sharecropper." Some previous ones: http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2003/07/12/WebsThePlace http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2003/07/12/WebsThePla... http://weblog.raganwald.com/2004/11/sharecropping-in-orchard.html http://weblog.raganwald.com/2004/11/sharecropping-in-orchard...
- akmiller 15y ago
  True, but didn't it used to be that sharecropping mainly meant building plugins to existing applications (i.e. adding a plugin to Microsoft Word). Suddenly sharecropping is broadened to writing an application on someone else's Operating System! This is extremely scary that we now consider that sharecropping as well.
  - praptak 15y ago
    > Suddenly sharecropping is broadened to writing an application on someone else's Operating System! Yes, because operating systems have been written that make you a true sharecropper - not only you do need permission from the liege to distribute your app, but the permission can be revoked at any time, whenever your lord feels like it. This was not the case with the proprietary systems of the past. Even Microsoft, being criticized as the evilest of evil did not try to stop you from distributing your Windows apps.

375 points by tmcdonald 15y ago

dsr_ 15y ago

Even ordinary users are beginning to understand this. My sister was upset at Amazon because the Kindle app on her iPod would not let her buy books directly. After she found out that Apple was demanding a 30% cut of those sales, she changed her mind. Now she's unhappy with Apple. I understand the impulse to look at however many millions of IOS devices and to immediately want to get into that market, but the long tail is not a comfortable place to be in a land of 99c standard prices. Having an arbitrary and capricious landlord makes it worse.

ciudilo 15y ago
30% cut only applies to subscriptions so in this case it is Amazon's choice to sell books on their website and not from app directly.
- thorstadt 15y ago
  The 30% applies to all in-app purchases, and attempting to circumvent IAP is against Apple's guidelines. http://www.amazon.com/forum/kindle/ref=cm_cd_ttp_ef_tft_tp?_encoding=UTF8&cdForum=Fx1D7SY3BVSESG&cdThread=TxFSUR2H7D8D9W http://www.amazon.com/forum/kindle/ref=cm_cd_ttp_ef_tft_tp?_...
vacri 15y ago
Why is she unhappy that a retailer gets their cut for supplying the MITM service? I don't like Apple philosophy in the slightest and don't own any apple gear (old ipods excepted), so I'm not a fan of theirs in the slightest. But this 30% thing is just a non-issue. They're a retailer providing content. 30% is a boringly normal number for the retailers cut. If amazon wanted to share their profits with the retailer (like book publishers have to with brick and mortar stores) then those books would be available. If Apple allowed those purchases for free, then they don't get any benefit for providing the service.
- dsr_ 15y ago
  Why is she unhappy? At a basic level, it's because her mental model of How Things Work broke. She thinks that it's reasonable that using the Amazon Kindle application on any platform she ought to be able to buy books from Amazon as part of that app. After all, she's signed in, Amazon knows who she is, at most they ought to ask for a password confirmation to let her spend her money. And that doesn't work. So she was unhappy with Amazon. Reasonable. She was so unhappy, she posted on Facebook about it, where a dozen of her friends pointed out that Apple wanted a 30% cut of content sold on their device. Their device. Not her device. She paid for it, but now she sees that it isn't hers. She thought that an iPod was like a computer: you use it, you select software to put on it, you use the software. Her mental model breaks AGAIN, because she thought she owned the iPod. Now she finds out that it's actually an Apple-owned store that doesn't like competition. Apple got their benefit when they sold her a device. They got more benefit when they sell her software to go on the device. Why should they get more benefit for interfering in a transaction between her and Amazon? She knows what rent-seeking means, and she doesn't appreciate it.
  - vacri 15y ago
    Does she also have a problem that Amazon takes the lions share of the remaining money, instead of it going to the authors? Amazon is just another MITM - a facilitator of getting product to consumer. Same argument with the kindle, right? "Amazon got their benefit when they sold her a device"? Perhaps she doesn't realise that the App Store is the same kind of service that Amazon provides - after all, the Kindle is also locked down. You have to do Frowned-On things to read your other ebooks on it. Perhaps you should inform her of this, and watch her mental model break yet again.

dos1 15y ago

These are the exact reasons that I decided to quit developing for iOS. I loved the APIs, I enjoyed the platform and access to millions of users. In the end though, I just wasn't willing to bend the knee.

nickpp 15y ago

That post rings true. But then it is true about every single platform provider and 3rd party external dependencies on the market: Windows, Mac OS X, iOS, Facebook, Twitter Even big apps will eventually include features initially provided by plugins. See Photoshop or Jira. Not to mention the strategy of web giants like Google who will purchase existing successful commercial companies and the offer their product for free, thus crippling entire markets. See Google Analytics, Earth and Sketchup.

AndrewDucker 15y ago

This is one of the reasons that I hope Metro apps crash and burn - if the only way to get hold of them is through the MS store, with all the same issues that the Apple store has, then I just don't want anything to do with them. I know that the Android equivalent has problems (piracy, for instance), but I'd rather have that than something completely locked down.

frou_dh 15y ago
I can't imagine how MS would save face if Metro crashed and burned. Seems like it would be tantamount to checking out of the consumer market.
- slowpoke 15y ago
  Seeing as Metro/Win8 is MS last desperate push to enter the market for tablets that in the near future will replace the market where they currently hold almost all their monopolies (the desktop), that's a very accurate description of what will most likely happen. And seeing as Windows is not and never was an OS for power users, they will lose the remaining desktop niche - which will be populated by exactly those power users - as well once the tablet will be our primary multimedia communication device.
  - frou_dh 15y ago
    A lot of Windows users do consider themselves power users even if they have minimal knowledge of other platforms. For example, it's quite frustrating to participate in PC building or gaming communities where every schmo thinks they're an authority on computing.
    - slowpoke 15y ago
      I think this too will fade with time as gaming moves to the tablet/other platforms. My prognosis is that the only people using desktop machines in the future will be scientists, professions performing heavy computing and programmers/developers.

Vivtek 15y ago

1. Windows has always done this. Occasionally people complain; usually they don't. Honestly, I normally consider it a good thing - the Windows functionality is usually bland and relatively feature-free, but works perfectly. There was a time when TCP/IP support was a purchased add-on, after all. I think we all agree that's better to have built in from the get-go and consistent on every aged uncle's machine we're asked to fix on Thanksgiving. 2. The cleanup feature doesn't really support his point. If I store data on my phone and the phone deletes it all without warning when it thinks I have too much, that's not protecting me at the expense of the app developer - that's just plain screwing me and the developer at the same time. Honestly, I find it incomprehensible that any professional could possibly have considered it a good idea, and I think it's indicative of Apple's manic secrecy that it wasn't headed off early instead of being ignored until release. I know Apple's doing really well in the market lately - by innovating quicker than anybody else, which has been fantastic for everyone. But in the long run, this arrogance is not going to be good for them. It shot them in the foot for two decades with the Mac, and it's going to bite them now.

MatthewPhillips 15y ago
I disagree with point number 2. From Apple's perspective, it's deleting temporary storage (after all, they're called Caches and tmp. You wouldn't store anything important on /tmp on your desktop, would you?) The "correct" place to put user data on iOS 5+ is any place that syncs with iCloud. That's the crux on this issue: iOS 5 is Apple's assertion that App Store users are their customers, not the app developer's customers, and they want to handle the backup and security around their customers data.
- Vivtek 15y ago
  Ah, I see - well, chalk that up to my having very little knowledge about the iOS ecosystem. I think my larger point still stands, that Apple's arrogant assertion of ownership of everything is going to bite them; arguably this is just telling everybody where they have to store their data. With Apple. And honestly, if /tmp were the only filesystem I were allowed to touch, then yeah, I'd try to do something with it. That's kinda screwed up.

programminggeek 15y ago

He's right and certainly more levelheaded about these kinds of issues than most, but what most don't realize is that many of the software platforms we love have had worse policies for years. Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, and Sega all have/had extremely rigorous review process that was even worse than Apple's if you want to be on their game platform. Phone companies had all these build processes if you wanted to write Java ME apps to work on feature phones. And so on and so forth. The problem is, as devs we are spoiled by the web, where you can just push out new code that says or does whatever you want it to without any consequence because the web is a "relatively" safe runtime, so nobody cares. We are like children who grew up with a silver spoon in our mouth and we've been asked to endure plastic. Sure, it's still a spoon, but it's not silver and that pisses us off.

mcantelon 15y ago
>We are like children who grew up with a silver spoon in our mouth and we've been asked to endure plastic. Sure, it's still a spoon, but it's not silver and that pisses us off. No, we're like adults used to being able to do what we want with our own hardware. Being able to do what you want with hardware is the historical computing norm (gaming consoles being the exception). Android-based devices carry on this tradition so I use them, rather than paying Apple $99/year for the privilege of putting applications I've written on my own hardware.
- Derbasti 15y ago
  Really, you are paying for the privilege to be listed in the App Store and to be distributed to customers.
  - mcantelon 15y ago
    Unless you jailbreak, you can't even make your own app and have it run on your own phone without paying $99/year. And as far as paying for the privilege of being including in the App Store, seems like the 30% cut Apple takes should more than cover that.
15y ago

raganwald 15y ago

Did I really just read Jeff complaining that Apple shipped something that duplicates third-party behavior and compare them unfavorably to Microsoft in that regard? I won't excuse Apple for acting like a King, but I think Jeff should find another poster boy for benevolent dictators. Microsoft is famous for steamrolling third-party developers, both from their applications group and their systems group. I think this rant would read better if it complained about ALL proprietary platforms and used Apple as an example, rather than disingenuously implying that they are the rotten fruit in the barrel. p.s. Joel Spolsky once said that companies always try to "Commoditize their complements." If you as a developer can create something that adds value to the platform in a broad way, it's inevitable that the platform owner is going to want to commoditize it, either by giving it away or making it easy for your competition to drive prices down to negligible levels. Building it into the platform is the ultimate commoditization.

bcl 15y ago
I don't think he was implying that Microsoft was any better than Apple in this regard. He was pointing out that the complaints from developers has been relatively mild compared to the outrage when Microsoft does the same thing.
- raganwald 15y ago
  The complaints from Apple developers have been around forever. Waxing nostalgic, I remember threads on the old Mousehole BBS about Apple and its love-hate relationship with developers. The reaction to Apple steamrolling Panic is classic, and there was a major furor over the dashboard and the way it steamrolled third party widget frameworks. I suspect that Jeff is in a Microsoft-centric culture, so he simply doesn't spend as much time talking to Apple developers as he does Microsoft developers, so of course he hears more from them. Likewise, there are way more Windows developers than OS X developers, so you'll always hear more about anything from them. iOS is popular, so there ought to be plenty of developers out there in the long tail. Maybe that's the real problem: Most developers are trying to grab a little tiny piece of the pie with a niche side-project, so they don't have the same perspective as someone who has employees and a big marketing budget sunk into their business. If this supposition is correct, you'll see the same dynamic with other walled gardens from Microsoft and Google and whomever else gets into the "curated app store" business.

DodgyEggplant 15y ago

He is a bit unfair. Good platforms vendors paved the way for everybody. And they ALWAYS do it THEIR WAY (ask Netscape, Novel and Real). One can argue that Instapaper is actually a missing browser feature. But Apple is pushing the envelope: they are the first platform to break the "specific device limit". Android competes on phones, Windows on the desktop, Amazon with content, Samsung on hardware. But Apple is everywhere. And they are not the underdog anymore. This is Tim's Cook real challenge, and we wish him luck.

michaelfeathers 15y ago

About a year ago, someone asked me why I don't write apps for the AppStore. I told them I have too much self-respect.

andrewcooke 15y ago

the final image is wonderful. where did you get it from?

ranebo 15y ago
http://www.bernardpras.fr/ http://www.bernardpras.fr/ Courtesy of Google search by image: http://www.google.com/insidesearch/searchbyimage.html http://www.google.com/insidesearch/searchbyimage.html
ecounysis 15y ago
http://www.joeydevilla.com/2009/01/03/from-sun-chips-to-sun-king/ http://www.joeydevilla.com/2009/01/03/from-sun-chips-to-sun-...
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jp_sc 15y ago

I guess Jeff doesn't remembers "After Dark" anymore.

sjs 15y ago

What a long winded, and hyperbolic, story of doom. Marco needs to get over his fears[1] and store the offline data in Documents. It is user generated and is absolutely not transient nor re-downloadable given that a core feature of Instapaper is offline reading. Apple will get a deluge of bug reports and questions from all app devs that make apps that need to cache content for offline use - but not back it up or store it in iCloud - and will rectify the situation in some way. (I don't think Instapaper is in that camp but that's kind of beside the point.) I know that most people hold Apple to a higher standard than many other companies but let's not forget Hanlon's Razor: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." This is merely an oversight. Apple is never this hostile to the user experience, and the current guidelines make for a positively horrid user experience. It will be rectified. Is there a short-bets website? I'll make that bet any day. [1] I think he was correct not to take chances in getting the first iOS 5 version out, but I hope that the minute it was "Processing for App Store" he had a build ready for submission that stores content in Documents to feel out the review team's reaction to it.

cstross 15y ago

If Microsoft added a feature to Windows that duplicated a popular application's functionality, developers would be screaming bloody murder and rioting in the, er, blogs and web forums Utter rot. This used to happen all the time in the 1980s and 1990s, before the DoJ anti trust lawsuit really got rolling. It was most obvious in office apps (ever wonder where the third-party spelling checkers and grammar checkers went? Or the standalone mailmerge applications? Microsoft added their functionality to Word and killed an entire add-on market at a stroke each time they did so), but a load of that stuff happened in Windows too (the graphical shell that became an OS in its own right). The most flagrant late example was web browsing; the most recent one I can think of (not being a Windows user) was their antivirus/malware add-in. (Honestly ... young 'uns these days ... wanders away mumbling into beard and waving walking stick in the air.)

tsotha 15y ago
>This used to happen all the time in the 1980s and 1990s, before the DoJ anti trust lawsuit really got rolling. Yes, and the reason for the DOJ anti-trust lawsuit? Developers were screaming bloody murder.
- latch 15y ago
  Your parent's point is that the reason Microsoft doesn't do this as much now isn't because they are more benevolent, it's because they were so over the top tyrannical that they've been forced to stop.
  - redthrowaway 15y ago
    Not really. Microsoft really is far less evil under Ballmer than Gates. It's also less effective, less farsighted, and slower, but it is less evil.
    - 0x12 15y ago
      I think it is just as evil, just less successful at implementing the evil because Ballmer isn't half as smart as Gates was. Even evil suffers from poor execution.

adabsurdo 15y ago

I think the Apple app store policies is the bigger problem, because Apple is using it to control not just quality, but content, and forcing applications to use its payment gateway; which in itself, wouldn't much of a problem if they didn't take this gigantic 30% cut (10x more than other payment gateways), and prevented you from knowing your customer. This is truely unprecendented. Microsoft could screw you by cloning your app, but they never blocked third-party applications, nor tried to be the commerce gateway to the internet. If Apple succeeds in making webapps obsolete, and competition cannot be strong enough to force it to be fairer and more reasonable in its app store policy, than to me an ipad/iphone app world sounds like a regression from the webapp world. And this is why I never understand why so many Apple users want Android & Windows to fail. As a customer, you should want other platforms to be succesful, so that we don't end up again with a monopolistic platform that screws us all. Didn't we try this before??

ryanhuff 15y ago
The AppStore isn't just a payment gateway. It's essentially a retail store. You would be hard pressed to get to keep 70% from many other retailers.
- adabsurdo 15y ago
  I was referring to 'in app' payment gateway
- vacri 15y ago
  70% is about right, give or take. Depends on the industry. But retailers certainly don't ever take only 3% like payment gateways do. This whole 30% thing comes from a new demographic that has never had any previous experience with business, who don't really understand the value of distribution channels and middlemen.
glassx 15y ago
> And this is why I never understand why so many Apple users want Android & Windows to fail. Huh? I thought it was the other way around, no? (i.e.: it's not fee, must die, etc) And really, webapps aren't going anywhere. The App Store was created because of user demand (not because Steve Jobs was a genius), and with Webkit and newer mobile IE it's probably the best time ever to write an web app. It's up to developers to choose.

Androsynth 15y ago

So Apple pushed out it's browser sync feature at the same time it pushed out the cleanup feature which effectively broke the competition? How Microsoftesque.

jpxxx 15y ago
That is absurdly limited thinking. Ponder that iCloud was invented to ensure the following scenario: that a typical user could not, in any reasonable scenario, irrevocably lose the user-state associated with their purchased applications. Apple is gunning hard for a market worth one trillion dollars, not Marco Arment. He is inconsequential collateral damage in Apple's race to a 100% managed computing experience.
- Androsynth 15y ago
  Thats no different than Microsoft in the 90's. The business goals are different but the strategy of getting there is the same.
  - jpxxx 15y ago
    I don't feel this situation is the same. Microsoft didn't win for two decades by nibbling small potatoes off of everyone else's plate, they won by persecuting swallowing entire industries that were evolving rapidly. Word processing, fileserving, WWW access, telephony, video gaming, SQL, e-mail, ad infinitum... Instapaper is not an industry of this scope - it's a single webbrowsing feature.
    - Androsynth 15y ago
      Go read the top comment in this thread, cstross did a pretty good job of explaining it.

mechanical_fish 15y ago

Did Apple really once provide a direct link to Instapaper as the inspiration for their new built-in features? If so, did they actually ask Marco before they took that link out? If so, did Marco ask them to take it out? And, if he did - which, having heard Marco speak on this topic, I do not assume, but merely suppose - was that the right call? My understanding was that an App Store developer might kill for that kind of free publicity. Could it be, for example, that Apple stopped linking Instapaper so as to avoid playing favorites? Might one of Instapaper's competitors have complained about that link?

0x12 15y ago

When you are developing for a platform that is active on multiple layers (say, both OS, GUI or APP) then you are essentially validating the market for whatever you come up with. You have to calculate that in, if you are successful you will have competition, and if you are very successful the entity controlling the market will re-implement what you have already proven works. If you develop something that is just an 'add on' or a missing feature you are setting yourself up for eventual trouble. Such products have a life cycle and you can't reasonably expect the situation to continue unchanging forever.

mikerg87 15y ago

Nobody has a monopoly on ideas.

marshray 15y ago
I guess you've never heard of patents.

ethank 15y ago

Reading List doesn't have an API, so for the moment it doesn't come close to what instapaper provides in terms of instapaper and third party apps.

dbkbali 15y ago

I think some good ant-trust regulatory lawyers would have a field day with this. But one would have to have deep enough pockets to pay the legal bills!

nestlequ1k 15y ago

Funny how Android Instapaper (a 3rd party app) is infinitely better than the iPhone version (the official version) since it plugs right into the browser.

nirvana 15y ago

It strikes me that this is exactly the position every web developer has with google. Google can arbitrarily and capriciously exclude them from their index. When google excludes you from the index, there is no appeal, there is no explanation, and, unlike Apple, google will not publish a set of (reliable) rules. (It gives a lot of advice but is inconsistent.) Also, like Apple, if you are not able to get in the big leagues for distribution, you can distribute your product thru other, less popular channels that are more of a hassle. Unlike Apple, however, which give you explicit feedback on the feature that was the problem (with screenshots if needed) and always cites chapter and verse from the handbook for the exclusion, google will not tell you why, or give you any way to resolve it. With Apple, you can resolve the issue and resubmit it. Your app will be on the store in about 7 days. With google, even if you figure out what the problem is, and you resolve it, you have no way of knowing if you'll ever be let back into the index.

0x12 15y ago
Conclusion: don't be dependent on google for your traffic (search) or your income (adsense).
mcantelon 15y ago
>Also, like Apple, if you are not able to get in the big leagues for distribution, you can distribute your product thru other, less popular channels that are more of a hassle. Are there any alternative channels that don't require jailbreaking?
- lukifer 15y ago
  There is openappmkt.com, but there are certain hardware features which are inaccessible to web apps, so it's a subpar solution.
lacker 15y ago
You don't need Google indexing you to be successful on the web. Just look at Facebook.
- 15y ago

DanielBMarkham 15y ago

It's tragically ironic that the very thing Microsoft would have been very happy to do -- lock down windows and control all apps on it -- is what is taken for normality everywhere else but windows. I'm not trying to defend Microsoft. It's all too clear they have been very anti-competitive. But if windows had the controls on it that apps on iOS had we'd be hearing folks call for criminal prosecutions. I understand the gee whiz factor of Apple. I own a bunch of Apple stuff and I love their design. I also understand that if you don't control your garden, all kinds of weeds grow in there. But geesh, folks, Jeff is correct. Perhaps this is the best future we could hope for, but it is an extremely sub-optimal destination compared to where we thought we were going.

ugh 15y ago

So Apple can never ever implement bookmark sync in their browser? Because that’s what they did and there is nothing whatsoever wrong with that. It’s a minor obvious feature, not some big complicated thing. You know what I also don’t understand? What this has to do with the big open vs. closed debate. Apple implemented a new feature in their own browser. Google can just as well implement the exactly same feature in their browser. Open vs. closed doesn’t figure into this. At all. That whole cleaning behavior of iOS debate is just stupid. Apple screwed up. So what.

ethank 15y ago
The telling thing is: it's existed for years with Mobile Me. Reading List isn't new.

earl 15y ago

I love that the iphone and ipad are locked down. I gave ipads to family members and I'm finally done with tech support. My parents, girlfriend, and brother were bit by endless amounts of spyware, spam, and trojans because they used windows. I had to reinstall windows on my gf's laptop 3 times because adobe are useless worthless fuckwits who fill flash and pdf with security holes and her computer was repeatedly infected. Every time I went to my parents house I had to clean endless amounts of crap off their computer. My brother's laptop was infected with a virus that tried to get into bank accounts. He owns a pair of pizza stores and does his accounting on his laptop, and he accesses bank accounts with significant funds in them. Using ios fixed all the above. While in theory it's nice that people can run any application they wish, in practice, it sucks. People end up having to be experts on computer security. As a group of computer professionals we've pounded on this for twenty years and it simply isn't fucking working. If telling people to be careful what programs they run or what websites they visit worked, it would have worked long ago. Instead, I give them ipads for casual browsing and they're finally secure. My parents don't need my help to get pictures off their camera. There finally is a way for non experts to securely use the internet and applications -- just buy stuff from the app store. It won't spam you, it won't steal information, it won't install spyware, and it will most likely do what it claims to do. If not being able to run arbitrary apps is the price we pay... well, we tried doing it the other way for 20+ years and it didn't work.

slowpoke 15y ago
>While in theory it's nice that people can run any application they wish, in practice, it sucks. While in theory it is nice that people enjoy essential liberties, in practice, they suck. Franklin sends his regards. > it won't steal information So, it's okay if Apple collects your personal data instead of some criminal? Sure is hypocritical. >well, we tried doing it the other way for 20+ years and it didn't work. You know why it doesn't work? Because we let people use computers, but don't require them to learn how to use them. I still don't get why people think they are entitled to use a computer. It's the same as demanding to drive a car without knowing how to operate it, in addition to having no clue about traffic rules. We're not attacking the root of the problem, we're simply slapping the symptoms around.

praptak 15y ago

It is just the most recent (I wanted to write last, but I'm sure it is not the last) of many similar stories and articles, which can be summed up as "Do not be a sharecropper." Some previous ones: http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2003/07/12/WebsThePlace http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2003/07/12/WebsThePla... http://weblog.raganwald.com/2004/11/sharecropping-in-orchard.html http://weblog.raganwald.com/2004/11/sharecropping-in-orchard...

akmiller 15y ago
True, but didn't it used to be that sharecropping mainly meant building plugins to existing applications (i.e. adding a plugin to Microsoft Word). Suddenly sharecropping is broadened to writing an application on someone else's Operating System! This is extremely scary that we now consider that sharecropping as well.
- praptak 15y ago
  > Suddenly sharecropping is broadened to writing an application on someone else's Operating System! Yes, because operating systems have been written that make you a true sharecropper - not only you do need permission from the liege to distribute your app, but the permission can be revoked at any time, whenever your lord feels like it. This was not the case with the proprietary systems of the past. Even Microsoft, being criticized as the evilest of evil did not try to stop you from distributing your Windows apps.