NOTE: This is an opinion piece. Read at your own discretion.
So, over the past 2 years, Apple’s user base has grown quite a bit (I’m really too lazy to look up the numbers right now, but I think it’s somewhere in the ballpark of 10% or something like that). With great power comes great responsibilty, unfortunately Apple seems to be lacking in that department at this point.
“Get a Mac ads” - These were cute a few years ago, when they actually made a point of what Macs can do compared to PCs, but it seems since Microsoft shipped Windows Vista, Apple decided to throw out any sense of logic that were in these commercials and go right for the jugular - straight up, unadulterated, product bashing. I’m sorry Apple, but John Hodgeman singing a blues song while Justin Long stands there doing nothing doesn’t make me want to run out and purchase a Mac. Neither does “Crashy-time Vista Chamomile” tea. The idea is dead, now stop beating the horse and move on to more relevant things.
The iPhone SDK NDA - The first rule about the iPhone SDK is not to talk about the iPhone SDK. Give me a break, Apple. In both the Windows and Linux developer ecosystems, everything is fairly open. Go download Visual Studio Express, load up msdn.microsoft.com or the MSDN Express Library, and you’ve got all the information you need to start programming. Need help? Go post some source code on a message board, talk to a programming-savvy friend, or go dig through tons of sample code to get started and modify it to your hearts content. In the Apple world, and more specifically the iPhone, not so much. How can you learn if you can’t get any help from others in the community?
The App Store is a joke - Apple, you have the iTunes Music Store. You’ve added Movies and iPod Games to it. With the iPhone 3G and iPhone Software 2.0 you decided to open the App Store. Which is great, except you’re alienating developers with the iPhone SDK NDA and the restrictions. Developers have to register and sign a one year, $99 subscription with ADC in order to be able to submit things to the App Store. And those efforts are being shot down - applications are being rejected because “they are too close to the functionality in iTunes” or “not useful enough”… and yet there are tons of useless, poorly coded (again, let’s look at Example 2) applications in the App Store as we speak. If you wanted full control over what goes on every iPhone and iPod touch, then you shouldn’t have opened the App Store in the first place. Keep it up, and your developers are going to start writing for Google’s Android platform.
Hardware revisions - Apple didn’t seem to think this one out too clearly: switching to Intel means keeping up with Intel. When Intel releases a new chipset or processor, you’ve only got so much time to bring a new product revision to the market before your competitors (Dell, HP, Lenovo, etc) start pumping out machines that are more powerful than yours at a lower price. Unfortunately, this also means your Apple hardware is worth less over time compared to the PowerPC models. Listen, Steve… we know you’re addicted to the iPhone, but come on, show some love to the Mac for a while, would you?
Well, that’s pretty much all I have to say right now. Thanks for reading.
As if that’s not bad enough, Apple’s rejection letters to app developers come with NDAs (see here: http://valleywag.com/5053883/iphone-app-store-rejection-letters-covered-by-nda). I think that it is a grave error on Apple’s part to be this restrictive because it’s the third-party developers who make a “platform” great — Microsoft recognizes this, the open-source community recognizes this. I’ll be laughing my head off when these third-party developers walk out on Apple.
The App store is actually turning into a steamroller will continue to be an enormous success.
Fact: Less than 20 apps have been rejected out of 4000.
Fact: Developing for the other mobile platforms like Palm, WinMobile and RIM is still way more complicated, expensive and LESS lucrative! That tends to discourage developers more than a few over-hyped rejections.
Fact: One lone developer already made $250K in TWO MONTHS! $250,000 in 60 days for one $4.99 game. Call me when someone on the Google Market makes that much money in that short of time. That’s the kind of story that gets developers all giddy, no matter how many rejections might have happened.
Fact: X-Plane was ported to the iPhone in less than two weeks and is now in the top 10. Again, call me when that kind of sophisticated stuff show up on any other mobile phone.
Fact: In 60 days Apple has had 100 million downloads and has averaged $1 million per day in revenue! That is double the rate of the original iTunes store with a much smaller potential customer base. Remember these apps are only good for the iPhone and iPod touch.
Now, should Apple be more explicit with their guidelines and give better explanations to their developers? Absolutely! Does the application of the NDA to rejection letters seem petty and stupid? Yes! But in the mean time, it’s not going to make one whit of difference. The App store is a gold mine for Apple and developers and no one else has anything like it.
Developers should however, exercise a little common sense and realize that Apple is not going to let them make an end-run around iTunes, Mail, Calendar, Safari or Address book unless you are bowling partners with Steve Jobs or you have a multibillion dollar software machine like Exchange or SAP or Oracle.
If Google had shown up a year ago, that might have been a problem, but the App store has now set the agenda for everybody else.
“NOTE: This is an opinion piece.”
The opinions you have expressed are very different than those of many other people. But opinions can be more universal when they are based on reality.
Each of your opinions on Apple’s advertising, iPhone SDK, App Store, and hardware, imply that Apple is doing everything wrong in these areas.
The reality though, shows the opposite:
Apple’s advertising has won awards and most people find them informative and entertaining.
The iPhone NDA is no different than other software company NDAs (including Microsoft’s) and the developer program has attracted hundreds of new programmers to the platform.
The App Store has thousands of applications, Apple sold it’s first million apps in the first week, and some developers are getting very rich because of the App Store (one developer has already made $250,000).
As for Apple’s hardware, Apple has won many design awards, and the reality is that sales of all Apple’s products (Desktops, notebooks, iPods, iPhones) have been growing at incredible rates while all other manufacturers are struggling.
So with all these facts in mind, it’s very difficult to take your opinions as being relevant.
@ViewRoyal: With your comments in mind, it’s very difficult not to peg you as a typically ignorant Apple fanboy…
I’m an Apple user too, and it seems to me that a jailbroken iPhone is vastly superior to Apple’s “official” device. Likewise, Rockbox gives “regular” iPods additional functionality that frankly should have been there in the first place.
But not only is Apple falling behind the work of 3rd-party devs, it’s actively shutting them out of their ecosystem. I would never buy a desktop Mac if I could ONLY run Apple apps — why should a mobile computer be any different?