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I'd love to see control of the "mobile space" be in the hands of individuals instead of large, for-profit and often evil companies. Clearly mobile computing is

I'd love to see control of the "mobile space" be in the hands of individuals instead of large, for-profit and often evil companies. Clearly mobile computing is here to stay. If it wasn't then companies like apple and google wouldn't be fighting so hard for control. Imagine a decentralized app store where people can make a living without having to deal with apple's ridiculous review process or ideas of what's appropriate. I suppose the major challenge is getting all the non-geeks into this ecosystem and away from iTunes and other privately owned app stores. This is obviously wishful thinking. However given the importance of mobile computing going forward I think it's worth imagining the best mobile ecosystem possible.

gurkendoktor 14y ago
> Imagine a decentralized app store where people can make a living without having to deal with apple's ridiculous review process or ideas of what's appropriate. So far, "freedom of App Store speech" and money don't seem to be correlated at all. (Or all the millionaires on OpenMoko and Cydia are being quiet to prevent a gold rush on their turf.) I think the only instance where Apple's guidelines are prohibitive to making a living is porn. I for one would be a thousand times more likely to pay for porn on the trusted platform that is Apple, rather than on some dubious website. Is it possible to use this as an advantage against established app stores? Or is Google already established as the platform to be on for mobile porn? (I can't check first hand, thanks to Google's GeoIP madness.)
- fpgeek 14y ago
  > Is it possible to use this as an advantage against established app stores? Or is Google already established as the platform to be on for mobile porn? Google has similar guidelines to Apple on this front (see Zinio's comments about why they don't have Android/iOS versions of adult magazines, for example). The only notable difference I can think of is that there's probably more post-filtering than pre-filtering of apps.
- spaghetti 14y ago
  You're right about the money being at the traditional app stores. I'm trying to think ahead and see if this will change. The enforcement of Apple's "guidelines" for apps harm developers' ability to make money on the app store far beyond porn. I have a non-porn, totally above-bar app that serves a niche that makes $n/day. I re-skinned my app to serve a different, larger niche and it was rejected multiple times for bizarre, ambiguous reasons. If this second app were in the store today I would be making more money. I'd bet my income would be at least 2 * $n/day from the apps combined.
- splamco 14y ago
  There is no platform on the planet that could get away with exerting absolute control over what can be published on that platform except Apple. People can and do rationalize it but to subject yourself to an eco-system where your entire experience is subject to Apple's totalitarian control is creepy.
ender7 14y ago
The huge, HUGE advantage that the App Store brings to the average consumer is a feeling of safety. An app installed from the App store: - Can be uninstalled easily, and leave no trace behind (remember "Register cleaners"?) - Cannot interfere with other apps - Cannot run in the background and spy on your surfing habits - Cannot steal your credit card information and upload it to Russian mafia servers For a long time, the standard geek response to these problems is "that's the user's problem -- they should be more careful about what they install". The response appears to be "fuck you, I don't want to waste my time worrying about whether this purple monkey screen saver will secretly empty my retirement account." If you can find a way to make this "free and open" system also safe, then I think you'll have a winner.
- kalleboo 14y ago
  > The response appears to be "fuck you, I don't want to waste my time worrying about whether this purple monkey screen saver will secretly empty my retirement account." With the amount of non-techies I know with jailbroken phones with all kinds of super-tacky OS hacks installed, that is definitely not the only response.
- esolyt 14y ago
  All of them are solved by sandboxing and permission mechanism. "Fuck you, I don't want to waste my time" is actually the response developers should be giving to Apple when they are made to wait more than a month for their app to be reviewed and finally it gets rejected for a political, ideological, arbitrary, or personal (competes with an Apple service) reason.
  - fpgeek 14y ago
    Much as I love Android, and much as the Android team has done yeoman's work on this front... Sadly, today, the more accurate statement is all of them are theoretically solvable by sandboxing and permissions mechanisms. Getting those sandboxes and permissions where they need to be at a technical level, explaining those permissions to users in a way they can understand and make decisions based on and making the overall framework as transparent and usable enough is very much an unsolved problem.
azakai 14y ago
> Imagine a decentralized app store where people can make a living without having to deal with apple's ridiculous review process or ideas of what's appropriate. The closest thing we have to that is the web. You can run stores on it completely decentralized, and you can access it from all mobile devices.
- spaghetti 14y ago
  I wonder if the "app ecosystem" will move towards paid web services that people use on their mobile devices. I know the whole native vs web app debate has been done to death. Many games probably won't run in mobile browsers in the future. Would be interesting if apple's (and other companies') mis-management of their centralized app stores ultimately incentivized developers to move to the web as the "app store" to the extent that one could make a living. One data point or trend that seems to support the above idea: The popularity of free apps that are monetized via in-app-purchase. Would be great if the future saw more free web apps monetized via app-in-purchase provided by Stripe or similar.

gurkendoktor 14y ago

> Imagine a decentralized app store where people can make a living without having to deal with apple's ridiculous review process or ideas of what's appropriate. So far, "freedom of App Store speech" and money don't seem to be correlated at all. (Or all the millionaires on OpenMoko and Cydia are being quiet to prevent a gold rush on their turf.) I think the only instance where Apple's guidelines are prohibitive to making a living is porn. I for one would be a thousand times more likely to pay for porn on the trusted platform that is Apple, rather than on some dubious website. Is it possible to use this as an advantage against established app stores? Or is Google already established as the platform to be on for mobile porn? (I can't check first hand, thanks to Google's GeoIP madness.)

fpgeek 14y ago
> Is it possible to use this as an advantage against established app stores? Or is Google already established as the platform to be on for mobile porn? Google has similar guidelines to Apple on this front (see Zinio's comments about why they don't have Android/iOS versions of adult magazines, for example). The only notable difference I can think of is that there's probably more post-filtering than pre-filtering of apps.
spaghetti 14y ago
You're right about the money being at the traditional app stores. I'm trying to think ahead and see if this will change. The enforcement of Apple's "guidelines" for apps harm developers' ability to make money on the app store far beyond porn. I have a non-porn, totally above-bar app that serves a niche that makes $n/day. I re-skinned my app to serve a different, larger niche and it was rejected multiple times for bizarre, ambiguous reasons. If this second app were in the store today I would be making more money. I'd bet my income would be at least 2 * $n/day from the apps combined.
splamco 14y ago
There is no platform on the planet that could get away with exerting absolute control over what can be published on that platform except Apple. People can and do rationalize it but to subject yourself to an eco-system where your entire experience is subject to Apple's totalitarian control is creepy.

ender7 14y ago

The huge, HUGE advantage that the App Store brings to the average consumer is a feeling of safety. An app installed from the App store: - Can be uninstalled easily, and leave no trace behind (remember "Register cleaners"?) - Cannot interfere with other apps - Cannot run in the background and spy on your surfing habits - Cannot steal your credit card information and upload it to Russian mafia servers For a long time, the standard geek response to these problems is "that's the user's problem -- they should be more careful about what they install". The response appears to be "fuck you, I don't want to waste my time worrying about whether this purple monkey screen saver will secretly empty my retirement account." If you can find a way to make this "free and open" system also safe, then I think you'll have a winner.

kalleboo 14y ago
> The response appears to be "fuck you, I don't want to waste my time worrying about whether this purple monkey screen saver will secretly empty my retirement account." With the amount of non-techies I know with jailbroken phones with all kinds of super-tacky OS hacks installed, that is definitely not the only response.
esolyt 14y ago
All of them are solved by sandboxing and permission mechanism. "Fuck you, I don't want to waste my time" is actually the response developers should be giving to Apple when they are made to wait more than a month for their app to be reviewed and finally it gets rejected for a political, ideological, arbitrary, or personal (competes with an Apple service) reason.
- fpgeek 14y ago
  Much as I love Android, and much as the Android team has done yeoman's work on this front... Sadly, today, the more accurate statement is all of them are theoretically solvable by sandboxing and permissions mechanisms. Getting those sandboxes and permissions where they need to be at a technical level, explaining those permissions to users in a way they can understand and make decisions based on and making the overall framework as transparent and usable enough is very much an unsolved problem.

azakai 14y ago

> Imagine a decentralized app store where people can make a living without having to deal with apple's ridiculous review process or ideas of what's appropriate. The closest thing we have to that is the web. You can run stores on it completely decentralized, and you can access it from all mobile devices.

spaghetti 14y ago
I wonder if the "app ecosystem" will move towards paid web services that people use on their mobile devices. I know the whole native vs web app debate has been done to death. Many games probably won't run in mobile browsers in the future. Would be interesting if apple's (and other companies') mis-management of their centralized app stores ultimately incentivized developers to move to the web as the "app store" to the extent that one could make a living. One data point or trend that seems to support the above idea: The popularity of free apps that are monetized via in-app-purchase. Would be great if the future saw more free web apps monetized via app-in-purchase provided by Stripe or similar.