The interesting bit that I'd like to se more explored is the quote about "two companies that will not help app developers succeed". Those two are obviously Appl

The interesting bit that I'd like to se more explored is the quote about "two companies that will not help app developers succeed". Those two are obviously Apple and Google, and I think a key of the problem could be right there, under our nose. Why would Apple and Google not want to help independent devs push their apps on apps markets? (Let's suppose this statement to be true for a sec). We can find many reasons for Apple and Google to avoid random cowboys getting successful with a piece of code on "their" phone. First, it is concurrence. Google Reader has a lot of unofficial clients, and it must be some kind of annoyance, because they might not use the APIs as intended. Indie apps might bridge unwanted links with bigger competitors, or might just pollute the app store with ugly icons, semi-porn, ponzy schemes, or simply noise. But from their point of view, maybe these companies consider themselves as elephants carrying most of the weight (hear development cost) and just don't want to let a horde of monkeys jump on their back and disturb the convoy. And we need to agree that this convoy has to get his way into the bush. So app devs should go back to good ol' Web, following Vibhu Norby's advice? That smells like a defeat. Fred Wilson is right in saying that mobile is future, "like it or not". The problem is we, as devs, should make this future ours. We should fight, and we have weapons. I'd love to see "I broke out of my own jail" stickers on every iThing on tech talks. We should hear and speak more about the forks of forks of Android. We should make it the new hype to have one phone in each pocket, each with a different system, all running "pre-alpha" obscure OSes. We should make it cool, easy or even normal to have one's own VPN-NAS-cloud where all the things connect. (I might have gotten a slip too far, but) if we don't push hard on this, both Apple and Google may slowly bring us all towards the nightmarish path of MicroSoft, where hundred of thousand of slaves push the wheels of a Gigantic Golden Sphinx, and kiss their own blood on the whips of their executioners.