6 ms·

Developer: “Losing Control of Our Destiny to Apple”

69 points by digiwizard 15y ago

raganwald 15y ago
Scenario A: “I want to buy VisiCalc/Aldus PageMaker/Microsoft Exchange/Photoshop. What’s the best computer to buy for that?” Scenario B: “I want to buy a Mac/PC. What’s the best spreadsheet/word processor/email program to use on that?” Prior to the rise of monetizable web applications, only Scenario A reflected a developer in control of their destiny. Scenario B represented a situation where the platform vendor was gradually "commoditizing their complements,” to borrow a phrase from Joel Spolsky. The Web has created Scenario C, “I want to browse the web and use web applications.” The web business developer may be in control of their destiny. Then again, we may be looking at Scenario D: “I want to type ___ into Google on my cheap mobile device with its free operating system.”
- bilbo0s 15y ago
  More appropriate 'D' -> I want to type ___ into my cheap mobile device with its free operating system." No one will care if it is Google that gets searched. Only that an answer is forthcoming...or maybe even an app.
- Gormo 15y ago
  Even in scenario B, for most of the '90s and early '00s, a Windows-based PC was the presumed default platform. If you said "I want to buy a computer", it would normally be assumed that you meant Wintel. Scenario A, was, until relatively recently, only meaningful for very specific application categories: if you did DTP, you might buy a Mac, if you did video editing, you'd use an Amiga, and if you did research, you'd get a Unix workstation. But almost all non-specialist applications, and even most specialist software, was targeted to the DOS/Windows platform, leaving most developers just as much in control of their destiny as in the earlier iteration of scenario A, if not moreso, since they didn't have to expend capital porting their products to a half dozen different platforms and gamble on which platforms would survive. Platform vendors successfully 'commoditizing their complements' is a very new phenomenon, and one that's attributable to the vendors integrating their own distribution channels into the platform. Scenario C may be helpful for developers' independence, but desktop/native applications aren't going anywhere in the short term, and the threat of Scenario D - the web itself becoming a more closed, regulated platform due to the influence of Google/Facebook/etc. - still looms on the horizon. What might be helpful is an open, distributed software sales channel that can compete with the various proprietary app-stores across multiple platforms. Content retail needs to become a protocol, not a place. But this is probably a relatively easy technical project and a tremendous marketing challenge.
rumblestrut 15y ago
It's a shame about this typo a little more than halfway through the article: "TMO: That’s right. The pubic face is, oh, yeah, there’s no problem."
- davethenerd 15y ago
  :) Nice catch. I think John already edited that one out. ;)
  - rumblestrut 15y ago
    Indeed he must have. A lifetime ago I worked as a reporter, but also did page layout. One of the stories I wrote was about a local food pantry at a church that was running low. I don't remember exactly what my headline was, but I left the "r" out of "pantry." Oops.
adabsurdo 15y ago
personnally i find it quite amazing, and incredibly short-sighted, how developpers are willing to give up the freedom of the web in favor of the golden chains of the apple platform. because, make no mistake, this is where its going: in a few years nobody will want to try your stuff unless its an app, and the web will be a ghetto for porn and 4chan. haven't we seen this movie before when microsoft controlled basically all of personal computing? at least on windows the user could install anything he wanted. now, not only developpers are at the mercy of apple's policies, but apple has decided to prevent any theoritical disruption from within by forbidding apps that host code (other than its own browser).
- davethenerd 15y ago
  It's definitely interesting to me that some developers call people who purchase their app through the App Store "customers" when, in reality, they have NO way of knowing who these people are, contacting them outside the app, or really doing anything with them at all. That, to me, does not a customer make.
  - feralchimp 15y ago
    If you don't have a way of "doing anything with" your customers that functions independent of holding their email address and/or credit card number, you're not doing something "with" them so much as doing something "to" them. Not every application needs to be a goddamned community experience wherein the original transaction spawns a lifetime of subtle sales attempts from the developer. Be happy that someone paid to use what you built. If you want more money from them, or you want their email address, build so much cool shit that they want to hear about what's next. As Chris Rock said: "You pay to see me? We cool."
- tomlin 15y ago
  Very few people will probably agree with you, probably even try and bury your comment, even though you're absolutely right. No one wants to admit that their fav. ecosystem is basically mob-mentality dressed in a sleek, comfortable, suit - but it is. I love Xcode, the Apple ecosystem - but I'm finding it hard not to look down the road and see the inevitable. Are people willfully blind? It's a mixture of shortsightedness and comfort. We have this Apple/Google fanboy thing going on, where one is trying to be better than the other. While that happens, the open web, something both sides seem to agree is important, becomes an "old media" way of doing things.
idspispopd 15y ago
It seems that developers are positive about the store, but feel that Apple could be doing more to help them suit their business model. I feel it's also a question of what developers expect the store to do to their business, at the moment it lets ordinary unsavvy consumers develop a trust relationship with a developer who they may have never had any interaction with. (Thus a great opportunity for the developer to market their other wares to the consumer.) Apple is passing on their seal of approval to all items available in the store. It's a Disney approach, but it's a significant barrier to many developers. I feel that some of the perceived negatives are the result of counter intuitive thinking. For example, a general lower pricing is the result of competition amongst commodity applications. While unique apps can demand a higher price. This is good for consumers, but bad for developers who may have been relying on the status quo. This allows new developers to challenge the incumbent, and potentially unseat them. There is the issue of the upcoming sandboxing, which while everyone understands why it's necessary, it still has many developers worried. I feel this is mostly for 2 reasons: Information from apple doesn't seem to be 100% defined leaving a question mark over some developers apps, and knowing that change is coming without the full details makes planning difficult. I suspect apple are mum on details because they're looking for more feedback from developers, I imagine that they too aren't interested in neutering the apps that are available on the store. Many of the other concerns relate to backwards compatibility, something apple is known to be brutal with (often no more than 5 years of backwards compatibility) - this is the most realistic concern, although it's not unique to the app store. Mac os is constantly being revised sometimes introducing bugs or in the case of PPC apps, having support dropped entirely. This requires developers to stay on top of beta releases and conduct appropriate testing. Overall, the app store leads developers to do a bit more work on maintaining their app. Of course this is in exchange for continual revenue from sales of that app. Which I feel is more tailored to career developers and not casual devs. For consumers this isn't entirely a bad thing, it promotes better apps, app refinement and makes the store not worthwhile for developers who are unwilling to deliver - leaving this ripe market available for those that want to deliver a good experience.
zorlon 15y ago
The 1984 commercial comes true. Big brother turns out to be the chick with the hammer.
nirvana 15y ago
I'm an indie developer and I too think about how much of my destiny is tied to Apple. I think about it each time we launch another product. You have to when, rather than getting a bunch of sales from people all over, you get one check each month from Apple. However, the other side of this tradeoff is that check from Apple is a lot more than it would be otherwise. In fact, I can safely say, that my business would not exist at all, if it were not for Apple and the App Store. For people like Jalkut, who is one of the inner-circle of mac developers and fairly well known, there are many marketing opportunities. When he releases a new product, he is assured that daring fireball will write it up, and others as well, and suddenly he'll have a huge opening day. This is what worked for Wil Shipley so well. But we're not in that category. Unlike the "chosen ones" (and it really is an insular, exclusive circle of those types who get that kind of coverage) most developers would not be able to even have an app business if it weren't for the App Store. Thus, the App Store has allowed tens of thousands of startups to be built by a much broader segment of the population than ever before. You don't need VC, you don't need a bunch of employees, you don't even need an angel round, you just need a Mac, some time, and an $99 a year Apple developer account. In addition to our startup, I have a friend who has supported himself for the past several years doing this writing apps. He's not trying to "do a startup", he's just started a lifestyle business. Apples "control of destiny" is intrinsically linked to that opportunity. The opportunity comes form Apple selling your software for you in a single location. The only way Apple can do that-- given that people are constantly looking for opportunities to harass, denigrate, and sue Apple-- is to control what apps appear in the store. Apple gets sued because people think that their free software update wasn't good enough! Serious class action lawsuits get launched for crap like that. So, of course, Apple is going to watch what's in the store. But so long as you're offering a legitimate app, not trying to scam people, Apple doesn't really care. I know people who have hated apple for 30 years think that this is some draconian thing... because every large company they've dealt with has habitually screwed over everyone they could. My thirty years as an apple customer giving superlative support and bending over backwards to not screw me over, gives me a great deal of trust in them. Finally, there really is no real point in this campaign of worrying about whether Apple has too much control. Its obvious that its not illegal for Apple to offer an App store. So, why are we getting the daily articles like this? Why the campaign? Its because the campaigners have an agenda. Their agenda is to promote android, and maybe get enough popular support for this idea (I once had someone tell me I was stupid for developing for iOS instead of android-- someone whose a consumer who knows nothing about anything technology wise has been reached by this campaign!)..... if the campaign is successful enough, then maybe they'll get legislation passed. Just like the anti-patent campaign wants to undermine patents, I think that's the real goal here. And just how does it increase freedom for app development to be regulated by the government? We can see how that's worked out in other areas of government regulation of technology (though maybe the crowd here is too young to remember the dark ages of landline phone service where there was no innovation... certainly you can recognize that there are only 3 major cell carriers, and thus the prices are high. That's the result of the government deciding there could be only 3 spectrum owners in each metropolitan area, limiting competition via regulation.) If Apple becomes untrustworthy, then we'll migrate our business. We'll take a hit, obviously, but the bigger fear is that there isn't any other venue to access the market like the App Store. Putting up a website and getting people to go to it, and then getting people to part with money is a whole lot more difficult than getting into the appstore. And it's a whole lot more expensive than Apple's %30 cut. Apple is giving a huge opportunity here, and the restrictions of it are intrinsic to its nature.
VengefulCynic 15y ago
To my mind, the far more concerning part of this is that Apple isn't even ready for sandboxing. As Jalkut says, "the only things we know now that we didn’t know [at WWDC] is that there are some sandbox entitlements that exist in the shipping OS X Lion that we know are available to us." Apple was going to require sandboxing at the beginning of November, even as the entitlements system that would power it isn't even ready to support it (which is, to my mind, the real reason that they pushed the deadline out by several months). If I have a beef with Apple, it isn't that they're taking my control away, it's that they're demanding that I sandbox my app without implementing the controls to make it work outside of the most basic apps.

69 points by digiwizard 15y ago

Scenario A: “I want to buy VisiCalc/Aldus PageMaker/Microsoft Exchange/Photoshop. What’s the best computer to buy for that?” Scenario B: “I want to buy a Mac/PC. What’s the best spreadsheet/word processor/email program to use on that?” Prior to the rise of monetizable web applications, only Scenario A reflected a developer in control of their destiny. Scenario B represented a situation where the platform vendor was gradually "commoditizing their complements,” to borrow a phrase from Joel Spolsky. The Web has created Scenario C, “I want to browse the web and use web applications.” The web business developer may be in control of their destiny. Then again, we may be looking at Scenario D: “I want to type ___ into Google on my cheap mobile device with its free operating system.”

bilbo0s 15y ago
More appropriate 'D' -> I want to type ___ into my cheap mobile device with its free operating system." No one will care if it is Google that gets searched. Only that an answer is forthcoming...or maybe even an app.
Gormo 15y ago
Even in scenario B, for most of the '90s and early '00s, a Windows-based PC was the presumed default platform. If you said "I want to buy a computer", it would normally be assumed that you meant Wintel. Scenario A, was, until relatively recently, only meaningful for very specific application categories: if you did DTP, you might buy a Mac, if you did video editing, you'd use an Amiga, and if you did research, you'd get a Unix workstation. But almost all non-specialist applications, and even most specialist software, was targeted to the DOS/Windows platform, leaving most developers just as much in control of their destiny as in the earlier iteration of scenario A, if not moreso, since they didn't have to expend capital porting their products to a half dozen different platforms and gamble on which platforms would survive. Platform vendors successfully 'commoditizing their complements' is a very new phenomenon, and one that's attributable to the vendors integrating their own distribution channels into the platform. Scenario C may be helpful for developers' independence, but desktop/native applications aren't going anywhere in the short term, and the threat of Scenario D - the web itself becoming a more closed, regulated platform due to the influence of Google/Facebook/etc. - still looms on the horizon. What might be helpful is an open, distributed software sales channel that can compete with the various proprietary app-stores across multiple platforms. Content retail needs to become a protocol, not a place. But this is probably a relatively easy technical project and a tremendous marketing challenge.

rumblestrut 15y ago

It's a shame about this typo a little more than halfway through the article: "TMO: That’s right. The pubic face is, oh, yeah, there’s no problem."

davethenerd 15y ago
:) Nice catch. I think John already edited that one out. ;)
- rumblestrut 15y ago
  Indeed he must have. A lifetime ago I worked as a reporter, but also did page layout. One of the stories I wrote was about a local food pantry at a church that was running low. I don't remember exactly what my headline was, but I left the "r" out of "pantry." Oops.

adabsurdo 15y ago

personnally i find it quite amazing, and incredibly short-sighted, how developpers are willing to give up the freedom of the web in favor of the golden chains of the apple platform. because, make no mistake, this is where its going: in a few years nobody will want to try your stuff unless its an app, and the web will be a ghetto for porn and 4chan. haven't we seen this movie before when microsoft controlled basically all of personal computing? at least on windows the user could install anything he wanted. now, not only developpers are at the mercy of apple's policies, but apple has decided to prevent any theoritical disruption from within by forbidding apps that host code (other than its own browser).

davethenerd 15y ago
It's definitely interesting to me that some developers call people who purchase their app through the App Store "customers" when, in reality, they have NO way of knowing who these people are, contacting them outside the app, or really doing anything with them at all. That, to me, does not a customer make.
- feralchimp 15y ago
  If you don't have a way of "doing anything with" your customers that functions independent of holding their email address and/or credit card number, you're not doing something "with" them so much as doing something "to" them. Not every application needs to be a goddamned community experience wherein the original transaction spawns a lifetime of subtle sales attempts from the developer. Be happy that someone paid to use what you built. If you want more money from them, or you want their email address, build so much cool shit that they want to hear about what's next. As Chris Rock said: "You pay to see me? We cool."
tomlin 15y ago
Very few people will probably agree with you, probably even try and bury your comment, even though you're absolutely right. No one wants to admit that their fav. ecosystem is basically mob-mentality dressed in a sleek, comfortable, suit - but it is. I love Xcode, the Apple ecosystem - but I'm finding it hard not to look down the road and see the inevitable. Are people willfully blind? It's a mixture of shortsightedness and comfort. We have this Apple/Google fanboy thing going on, where one is trying to be better than the other. While that happens, the open web, something both sides seem to agree is important, becomes an "old media" way of doing things.

idspispopd 15y ago

It seems that developers are positive about the store, but feel that Apple could be doing more to help them suit their business model. I feel it's also a question of what developers expect the store to do to their business, at the moment it lets ordinary unsavvy consumers develop a trust relationship with a developer who they may have never had any interaction with. (Thus a great opportunity for the developer to market their other wares to the consumer.) Apple is passing on their seal of approval to all items available in the store. It's a Disney approach, but it's a significant barrier to many developers. I feel that some of the perceived negatives are the result of counter intuitive thinking. For example, a general lower pricing is the result of competition amongst commodity applications. While unique apps can demand a higher price. This is good for consumers, but bad for developers who may have been relying on the status quo. This allows new developers to challenge the incumbent, and potentially unseat them. There is the issue of the upcoming sandboxing, which while everyone understands why it's necessary, it still has many developers worried. I feel this is mostly for 2 reasons: Information from apple doesn't seem to be 100% defined leaving a question mark over some developers apps, and knowing that change is coming without the full details makes planning difficult. I suspect apple are mum on details because they're looking for more feedback from developers, I imagine that they too aren't interested in neutering the apps that are available on the store. Many of the other concerns relate to backwards compatibility, something apple is known to be brutal with (often no more than 5 years of backwards compatibility) - this is the most realistic concern, although it's not unique to the app store. Mac os is constantly being revised sometimes introducing bugs or in the case of PPC apps, having support dropped entirely. This requires developers to stay on top of beta releases and conduct appropriate testing. Overall, the app store leads developers to do a bit more work on maintaining their app. Of course this is in exchange for continual revenue from sales of that app. Which I feel is more tailored to career developers and not casual devs. For consumers this isn't entirely a bad thing, it promotes better apps, app refinement and makes the store not worthwhile for developers who are unwilling to deliver - leaving this ripe market available for those that want to deliver a good experience.

zorlon 15y ago

The 1984 commercial comes true. Big brother turns out to be the chick with the hammer.

nirvana 15y ago

I'm an indie developer and I too think about how much of my destiny is tied to Apple. I think about it each time we launch another product. You have to when, rather than getting a bunch of sales from people all over, you get one check each month from Apple. However, the other side of this tradeoff is that check from Apple is a lot more than it would be otherwise. In fact, I can safely say, that my business would not exist at all, if it were not for Apple and the App Store. For people like Jalkut, who is one of the inner-circle of mac developers and fairly well known, there are many marketing opportunities. When he releases a new product, he is assured that daring fireball will write it up, and others as well, and suddenly he'll have a huge opening day. This is what worked for Wil Shipley so well. But we're not in that category. Unlike the "chosen ones" (and it really is an insular, exclusive circle of those types who get that kind of coverage) most developers would not be able to even have an app business if it weren't for the App Store. Thus, the App Store has allowed tens of thousands of startups to be built by a much broader segment of the population than ever before. You don't need VC, you don't need a bunch of employees, you don't even need an angel round, you just need a Mac, some time, and an $99 a year Apple developer account. In addition to our startup, I have a friend who has supported himself for the past several years doing this writing apps. He's not trying to "do a startup", he's just started a lifestyle business. Apples "control of destiny" is intrinsically linked to that opportunity. The opportunity comes form Apple selling your software for you in a single location. The only way Apple can do that-- given that people are constantly looking for opportunities to harass, denigrate, and sue Apple-- is to control what apps appear in the store. Apple gets sued because people think that their free software update wasn't good enough! Serious class action lawsuits get launched for crap like that. So, of course, Apple is going to watch what's in the store. But so long as you're offering a legitimate app, not trying to scam people, Apple doesn't really care. I know people who have hated apple for 30 years think that this is some draconian thing... because every large company they've dealt with has habitually screwed over everyone they could. My thirty years as an apple customer giving superlative support and bending over backwards to not screw me over, gives me a great deal of trust in them. Finally, there really is no real point in this campaign of worrying about whether Apple has too much control. Its obvious that its not illegal for Apple to offer an App store. So, why are we getting the daily articles like this? Why the campaign? Its because the campaigners have an agenda. Their agenda is to promote android, and maybe get enough popular support for this idea (I once had someone tell me I was stupid for developing for iOS instead of android-- someone whose a consumer who knows nothing about anything technology wise has been reached by this campaign!)..... if the campaign is successful enough, then maybe they'll get legislation passed. Just like the anti-patent campaign wants to undermine patents, I think that's the real goal here. And just how does it increase freedom for app development to be regulated by the government? We can see how that's worked out in other areas of government regulation of technology (though maybe the crowd here is too young to remember the dark ages of landline phone service where there was no innovation... certainly you can recognize that there are only 3 major cell carriers, and thus the prices are high. That's the result of the government deciding there could be only 3 spectrum owners in each metropolitan area, limiting competition via regulation.) If Apple becomes untrustworthy, then we'll migrate our business. We'll take a hit, obviously, but the bigger fear is that there isn't any other venue to access the market like the App Store. Putting up a website and getting people to go to it, and then getting people to part with money is a whole lot more difficult than getting into the appstore. And it's a whole lot more expensive than Apple's %30 cut. Apple is giving a huge opportunity here, and the restrictions of it are intrinsic to its nature.

VengefulCynic 15y ago

To my mind, the far more concerning part of this is that Apple isn't even ready for sandboxing. As Jalkut says, "the only things we know now that we didn’t know [at WWDC] is that there are some sandbox entitlements that exist in the shipping OS X Lion that we know are available to us." Apple was going to require sandboxing at the beginning of November, even as the entitlements system that would power it isn't even ready to support it (which is, to my mind, the real reason that they pushed the deadline out by several months). If I have a beef with Apple, it isn't that they're taking my control away, it's that they're demanding that I sandbox my app without implementing the controls to make it work outside of the most basic apps.