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There seems to be a deliberate ignorance of recent history regarding the iPhone as a development platform, to the point that a lot of people are developing a se

There seems to be a deliberate ignorance of recent history regarding the iPhone as a development platform, to the point that a lot of people are developing a sense of entitlement regarding access to the device. Apple didn't originally announce application support at all for the iPhone in the first place. (Remember Steve Jobs pushing Safari as a web app host for the iPhone, with no mention of a possible SDK just 2 years ago?) The iPhone/iPod touch is probably the most quickly successful product that Apple has ever produced, much more so than the original iPod or the iMac. Yet, people expect Apple to have the resources to bend over backwards for every individual developer for the platform, regardless of good intentions. I was once a shareware/freeware developer for the Mac platform back in the 68k era. The simple fact of the matter is that despite Apple's "big" size, in comparison with most of the computer industry, they are small potatoes. For over a decade, the primary development tools for Apple hardware were provided by third-parties even. (First Symantec, then Metrowerks.) This, combined with Apple's reluctance to take on debt (partly out of self-defense), means that Apple will never have the responsiveness towards developers that the open source community or even Microsoft has. Compared to back then, Apple is much more developer friendly, but the company has always been more focused on user experience, even if this leads them to try to shackle developers with overly limited or complicated APIs or UI conventions. If the letter writer really thinks Apple is being that incompetent, he should give up on the iPhone as a platform and focus on the rest more accessible platforms. Yes, I know the goal is the maximize visibility for your cause, but the problem with any and all outreach efforts is that people naturally avoid information channels like this. Just as web readers migrated from SlashDot to Digg to Reddit to Hacker News, and social networking drifted from MySpace to FaceBook, the "popularity for its own sake" principle and the people it attracts alienate the very people you try to reach. Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded. - Yogi Berra

StrawberryFrog 18y ago
"a lot of people are developing a sense of entitlement regarding access to the device" Yeah, it's funny how people get these notions of fairness and equal treatment from somewhere.
- unalone 18y ago
  Yeah, they get it from a lot of crap in society that doesn't hold as true as people pretend. "Everybody should be equal" means that everybody ought to have an equal chance. That doesn't mean everybody should succeed equally. This idea that we should all be the same person is twisted and wrong and actively harmful. This applies to phones, too. You have a choice of phone. You know what phone I use? It's this model by Samsung that doesn't allow any applications because I think applications on a standard phone are bunk. I don't complain. I like that my phone makes calls and sends text. It's worth saying again, because people like you really like ignoring it to complain: Apple changed the mobile industry forever. The sheer existence of the iPhone changed the game plan of everybody else on the planet. Now the iPhone's been out for 2 years, and nobody has a user experience that comes close! I've used other multitouch phones. They're all pathetic. When the iPhone came out, it was the announcement of a vast reform in the way phones worked. Apple didn't have applications. Nobody cared. Suddenly, Apple releases this App Store, which has become a hundred-million-app success in a year, and people are complaining because this magical thing they didn't have before is imperfect. It's like Louis C.K.'s routine. Everything is amazing, and yet nobody is happy, because we all feel entitled. (I'm not saying complaining is bad if it's constructive, but your response unlike the OP's was just lazy and fat and ugly and I hate that attitude.) You don't like Apple? Go buy other phones. Buy one like mine, with small keys and a bad screen, because that's all you're getting from other groups until Apple made their phone. Revel in the lack of user experience. Note the lack of decent apps on those phones, too. You want equal treatment, you'd better stop dealing with the human race. I was forced into working in groups for classes in school, under this notion that we all can contribute equal parts. I got worse grades in classes because people would mess things up. At some point I started doing all the work myself, because I couldn't stand this equal distribution. It made me into a manager rather than an employee. I prefer the auteur route, where unless you have somebody as smart as you working on something, you do it yourself and don't complain. You don't like that? Say goodbye to art. Know who was dictatorial and unfair? Stanley Kubrick, who referred to actors as tools to be disposed of and who disliked all but a handful of actors (the rest of whom called him abusive). James Joyce, who produced two novels so complex that people refused to work fairly with them for years, who insisted on not compromsing his work. (Or Ayn Rand if you'd prefer something more "pop" - she refused the notion that anybody could edit her writing.) Pretty much everything awesome comes from somebody who's unfair and doesn't treat people equally and gets done the stuff that's supposed to get done. Now buckle up and stop complaining unless you've got a better solution.* *Switching to a worse phone system doesn't count as a solution.

StrawberryFrog 18y ago

"a lot of people are developing a sense of entitlement regarding access to the device" Yeah, it's funny how people get these notions of fairness and equal treatment from somewhere.

unalone 18y ago
Yeah, they get it from a lot of crap in society that doesn't hold as true as people pretend. "Everybody should be equal" means that everybody ought to have an equal chance. That doesn't mean everybody should succeed equally. This idea that we should all be the same person is twisted and wrong and actively harmful. This applies to phones, too. You have a choice of phone. You know what phone I use? It's this model by Samsung that doesn't allow any applications because I think applications on a standard phone are bunk. I don't complain. I like that my phone makes calls and sends text. It's worth saying again, because people like you really like ignoring it to complain: Apple changed the mobile industry forever. The sheer existence of the iPhone changed the game plan of everybody else on the planet. Now the iPhone's been out for 2 years, and nobody has a user experience that comes close! I've used other multitouch phones. They're all pathetic. When the iPhone came out, it was the announcement of a vast reform in the way phones worked. Apple didn't have applications. Nobody cared. Suddenly, Apple releases this App Store, which has become a hundred-million-app success in a year, and people are complaining because this magical thing they didn't have before is imperfect. It's like Louis C.K.'s routine. Everything is amazing, and yet nobody is happy, because we all feel entitled. (I'm not saying complaining is bad if it's constructive, but your response unlike the OP's was just lazy and fat and ugly and I hate that attitude.) You don't like Apple? Go buy other phones. Buy one like mine, with small keys and a bad screen, because that's all you're getting from other groups until Apple made their phone. Revel in the lack of user experience. Note the lack of decent apps on those phones, too. You want equal treatment, you'd better stop dealing with the human race. I was forced into working in groups for classes in school, under this notion that we all can contribute equal parts. I got worse grades in classes because people would mess things up. At some point I started doing all the work myself, because I couldn't stand this equal distribution. It made me into a manager rather than an employee. I prefer the auteur route, where unless you have somebody as smart as you working on something, you do it yourself and don't complain. You don't like that? Say goodbye to art. Know who was dictatorial and unfair? Stanley Kubrick, who referred to actors as tools to be disposed of and who disliked all but a handful of actors (the rest of whom called him abusive). James Joyce, who produced two novels so complex that people refused to work fairly with them for years, who insisted on not compromsing his work. (Or Ayn Rand if you'd prefer something more "pop" - she refused the notion that anybody could edit her writing.) Pretty much everything awesome comes from somebody who's unfair and doesn't treat people equally and gets done the stuff that's supposed to get done. Now buckle up and stop complaining unless you've got a better solution.* *Switching to a worse phone system doesn't count as a solution.