

Competing with Apple - or "Never mess with your Landlord" - destraynor
http://contrast.ie/blog/playing-their-game/

======
MatthewB
Apple's new announcements touched so many startups it's scary. iMessage takes
on all the free/group messaging apps that have been built lately. iCloud takes
on (maybe not very well) rdio and other streaming music services. Airdrop
takes on dropbox, box.net etc. Reminders takes on rememberthemilk and other
GTD services. How about the camera plus app that Apple took off the app store
for making the volume button a camera button? Now Apple implemented that
feature!

The Paul Graham quote used in this article was spot on, especially the part
about "...you may find that you were merely doing market research for them."

This is the problem with building apps on top of another company's API. You
will forever be subject to their rules. Whether you're building on Facebook's
API, iOS, or even Amazon AWS...you will always be competing to a disadvantage.

~~~
alanfalcon
>How about the camera plus app that Apple took off the app store for making
the volume button a camera button?

Not exactly. Camera+ was not approved for the app store because of the volume
button as camera shutter feature, so they resubmitted but hid the feature from
the reviewers by including it as an easter egg. It was removed for a while
from the app store because of that intentional deception. They're lucky they
were allowed to resubmit the app at all after that (and so are we all, it's a
wonderful camera app).

~~~
akent
"Lucky"?? This is why I'm glad I'm not an iOS app developer.

So the app with the "volume button as camera" feature was rejected, then
within a year Apple turned around and implemented the same feature themselves.

Even if they didn't directly steal the idea, it seems like a pretty slimy
tactic to me.

EDIT: Re-read the original rejection of the Camera+ feature here:
<http://taptaptap.com/blog/cameraplus-volumesnap-rejected/>

~~~
demallien
Slimy? What exactly would you have had them do? If they let the app through
using a non-public API, they have to explain why some apps are allowed to use
private APIs and some not, opening a can of worms which it is easy to
understand they would prefer to keep closed.

They couldn't change the public APIs until the next release of the software,
which is exactly what they did, and I imagine that Camera+ will be able to
benefit from that API much as any other app.

Doesn't look too slimy to me.

~~~
akent
Is it about the use of a private API or just the violation of the Human
Interface guidelines? Everything I've read has said it's just about the
guidelines, not because an API needed changing.

For me it's all about the timing. They should have relaxed the guidelines
and/or policy about reusing the volume buttons for other purposes (not just
for use as a camera shutter, presumably) at some point before they released an
implementation of the exact same idea as a third party.

------
Tyrannosaurs
Joel Spolsky spoke about this on the SO podcast a while back in terms of
people who develop extensions for Visual Studio (though it extends to all IDEs
and indeed a lot of software).

He described certain applications as grabbing nickels from the path of an on-
coming steamroller. Effectively what he was saying was that there are things
which are going to be added to products eventually and while there is money to
be made by getting there first, the developer needs to accept that it's
inevitable that they're going to be ploughed down eventually.

But this isn't just Apple and it's not just iOS, it's software and in
particularly operating systems everywhere (or does someone want to tell me
that the differences between Windows 1.0 and Windows 7 hasn't impacted on any
developers anywhere?).

If your business model is taking what someone else does and doing it just a
tiny bit better this comes with the territory. You either need to live with
that or keep doing it better so they don't catch up.

Marco Arment wrote a piece on how he didn't care about a rumoured forthcoming
addition to iOS despite it competing with Instapaper because he felt he could
bring more to it than Apple would and in fact it might bring him new customers
by raising awareness of this sort of feature.

If you're not thinking that then I'm sorry to say that your product really
wasn't strong enough or different enough in the first place for it to be
anything other than a short term venture.

~~~
zmmmmm
> (or does someone want to tell me that the differences between Windows 1.0
> and Windows 7 hasn't impacted on any developers anywhere?)

Actually I think Microsoft is partly responsible for the sense of self-
righteous indignation that developers have when they get displaced. They
deliberately held back on introducing even basic features into Windows for a
remarkably long time. Things like anti-virus, paint programs, text editors,
photo management - even opening zip files - were left with token or no support
for 5 to 10 years after they were no brainers in terms of expected or useful
functionality. Of course, MS had (and still has, though less so) a regulatory
threat to worry about that nobody else does.

~~~
redthrowaway
Google's regulatory threat is probably stronger now, although Apple is looking
to control more of the user's interaction with their product. I think Apple
gets away with it because their spread makes sense to regulators: They make
the product, make the software to make it work, and provide the services to
make it useful. That makes sense to regulators in a way that integrating a
browser with the operating system didn't, even though it's the exact same
thing.

~~~
zmmmmm
> Apple gets away with it because their spread makes sense to regulators

I'm not sure it's that. I think it's just that their strategy of only ever
targeting the top 20% most profitable customers means they never broach market
shares that make them a threat to competition by the conventional measures
used by regulators.

~~~
redthrowaway
I think you're right, there. By focussing on the high end, they likely avoid
any accusation of monopoly and so avoid anti-trust investigations. That they
approach a monopoly on the markets they target doesn't really matter if their
market share in total is <10%.

------
Someone
Frankly, what do you expect them to do? They are in it for the money.
Operating systems in the narrowest sense (scheduler, memory manager plus file
system) became commodities decades ago. Graphics libraries, networking,
printing, video and audio player libraries, databases, etc. followed. Even DOS
had a fullscreen text editor, in later versions.

With complete 2GHz systems costing $250 or so, they would have a hard time
selling people "we worked hard for a year, and here it is: it does the same,
but it has a slightly faster/more memory efficient/more robust kernel"
(battery live drives developments here a bit, but that is about it)

So, they start adding features. They could have made APIs for features and
allow third parties to plug into them, but I guess doing that would have been
more of an effort than building a good one (Android has it easier there with
its Java infrastructure), and it just isn't in their DNA to sell a Lego set or
to focus on making money from their hardware.

Yes, this will hurt some third party software, but I can understand why they
'have' to do this (and no, I do not think they could have gotten away with
adding a totally new set of original features instead; people would still have
complained about the lack of a decent notification system)

~~~
destraynor
I'm not sure who you're speaking to here, but I'm the author of the post and I
wasn't criticizing Apple at all. I'm just explaining why it is the way it is.

~~~
ary
Sorry to be slightly off-topic, but I love your site's design. Very well done,
and very tasteful.

~~~
destraynor
:) Thanks.

Design is the work of @eoghanmccabe - our lead visual designer & CEO.

------
nathanb
> Don’t try to one-up Apple by doing slightly better versions of what they do,
> or offering apps they’ll inevitably need to add themselves.

Not sure I can get behind this statement. Are developers shortsighted for
filling in those gaps until Apple did it themselves? No; the shortsightedness
comes in when they assume that just because their product fills a gap, the
same gap will always exist. Nobody is ever guaranteed that something bigger,
better, and bundled won't come along.

~~~
destraynor
Fair enough Nathan, if you use your gap as a foundation to build something
that has legs, then that's fine. I can't think of many examples, but something
like Instagram comes to mind. They one upped the Photo app, but used it grow a
community.

I won't stop using Instagram now, as I follow great photographers there. It's
no longer about easy sharing or photo filters.

------
crikli
This conversation reminds me of the discussions we've had about software
patents. We're all against those, of course.

Yet we're taking umbrage with Apple integrating functionality from existing
apps into iOS/OSX.

Aren't these conversations fundamentally about the same concept, the
protection (or lack thereof) afforded to the owner of an executed idea?

It seems like it's the same conversation with the only difference being our
role in the vignette. If it's the story of Lodsys, we're accused of
infringement. If it's the story of iOS5, we're the infringed.

~~~
georgemcbay
I'm anti-patent and also OK with Apple baking these features right into the OS
just like I'm OK with Microsoft (or any other OS maker) shipping a browser
with the OS.

If the features are useful to such a great number of end-users, they should be
there in the base install, it makes for a better user experience even if it
does cause pain for some small business owners. Nobody is owed a business just
because they already have one, this goes for app devs just as well as anyone
else. As with browsers on Windows there will be plenty of room for
alternatives to the base implementation so long as they offer a decent value
proposition.

The only thing about this that would get me up in arms is if Apple started
blocking updates to the existing apps because they "duplicate functionality".
I don't think we can really count them out from doing that based on some past
events, though I do hope they've moved beyond that by now.

------
baconner
The lesson isn't "never mess with your landlord" so much as it's "choose your
landlord carefully because they have a lot of power to mess with you."

~~~
thaumaturgy
It's weird -- you're the only person in this thread so far that's got the same
takeaway from all of this as I have. I was starting to wonder if maybe I
missed something.

I've been using and developing on Macs for as long as the Mac has existed, and
I've never been more pessimistic about getting in bed with Apple. It's clear
that they want to own their entire ecosystem; they want to own the application
delivery, they want to own the advertising delivered by it or associated with
it, they want to own the hardware and peripherals, they want to own the social
atmosphere associated with it, they want to own their customers' data storage
...

And that's fine, for Apple and for their customers. But, I can't imagine any
reason why any developer in their right mind would see competing with all of
that as anything more than a short-term prospect. If you're successful, Apple
will eventually try to own you (either by buying you, or, more likely, rolling
out a competing product leveraged by the rest of their ecosystem); if you're
not successful, it might not be worth doing in the first place.

Short-term (say, 1 to 2 year) projects can make decent money, and I guess
that's good enough for most people, but there's no point to trying to develop
longer-term relationships with customers, or branding, or a market of your
own.

~~~
pnathan
It's also possible to provide a sufficiently large moat in your product that
Apple _wouldn't_ be able move across without some decay in focus. E.g.,
suppose you created an amazing CAD software for Macs. Not just a 3D sketch,
but a heavyweight competitor, analogous to AutoCad or 3DStudioMax.

Apple can't take your lunch without crossing your moat.

I see these addins to the OSX deployment as things that did not have a
sufficient moat to cross. And let's face it, if you can build it alone in 6-8
weeks, so can most other hackers, and when a big player comes in, 6-8 weeks is
dried peanut shells to them: you lost the game (unless you can move into a
niche they won't steamroll over).

~~~
thaumaturgy
As far as building a moat goes, I'm skeptical about whether there's any
profitable field that Apple wouldn't, eventually, venture into. I'd agree that
it would give you a longer runway, but I don't think it's enough to altogether
discourage Apple. Look at where they've gone already: music (in a big way);
phones (in a big way); eBooks (in a more failed way); heck, they couldn't even
leave well enough alone with the iPad, they decided to market directly to the
medical profession and compete one-on-one with startups in that field too.

I betcha that, somewhere on one of Apple's campuses, there are individuals
using Pro/E (or similar), and that makes Steve Jobs grind his teeth at night.
And, they've got more money than god at this point; like the Eye of Sauron,
all they need to do is move their gaze into another market, and they can
compete in it.

You're right about the effort required to build a thing, though. I was
thinking more along the lines of longtime independent Mac software brands,
like Panic.

------
micflan
But is your point that this is commendable behavior from Apple? Or that
developers should just shut up and put up with it regardless?

What gets me is that software developers aren't a little more discerning when
it comes to fawning uncontrollably over all the good stuff Apple does and just
explaining away (is that what you're doing here?) or blinkering out the bad.

Why can't this same energy and enthusiasm be directed towards keeping the
hardware and software we all depend on for our livelihoods as open and
accessible as possible?

We are the early adopters and the evangelists. We're the ones our friends and
family turn to when they need suggestions on a new computer or MP3 player. Why
perpetuate Apple's "our ball, our game, our rules" environment any more than
absolutely necessary?

~~~
destraynor
My point is that this is expected behavior from Apple. This is what they do.
They build amazing platforms.

The chances are that whatever Joe Bloggs little app is, Apple want to do it
better/differently. So they will. Why should Apple leave the "to-do list"
market alone when they believe they can do it better. And in fact they almost
always can do it better because they can integrate in a way no one else can.

I don't think this behavior is good or bad. I think it's expected.

I didn't criticise Microsoft when they did it. I don't criticise Apple now. I
do laugh at folks who do the former but not the latter.

------
dorian-graph
.. and Microsoft apparently isn't allowed to bundle Windows Media Player with
Windows.

~~~
destraynor
If they did that there would be cries of evil Monopolistic Micro$oft.

Meet the new boss, Just like the old boss.

~~~
pyre
I think part of the difference was that M$ was intentionally putting up
roadblocks on their platform with no other purpose than to block potential
competition (e.g. Netscape vs IE). Apple will be guilty of the same thing if
they in turn start using the AppStore guidelines of 'no duplicate OS
functionality' to boot all of these players off of the platform rather than
letting them continue to compete and differentiate their offers from Apple's.

~~~
dorian-graph
I remember reading yesterday that some camera app was forced to remove the use
volume buttons as photo taker or so.

There was several examples of apps that essentially 'went out of business'
like Konfabulator, some early theming engine for Mac and the like with some
dubious practices from Apple.

------
bediger
If Microsoft's app "eco-system" is any indication, people will allow Apple to
do this to them for ever.

~~~
destraynor
Well what happens typically is people stop going for the low hanging fruit,
and focus on specific verticals. When the best and brightest devs are working
on specific areas they love then everyone wins.

When they're gap filling, then their best hope is acquisition, no matter how
much they love their product. And remember acquisitions aren't guaranteed, and
there are only ever one or two of them.

~~~
micflan
@nextparadigms

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertical_market>

"Search" is not a vertical market. It's something ALL of Google's customers
use (or would use, in your hypothetical). I guess I do agree with Des on that
main point. Plugging a gap in someone else's software may not be a great long
term strategy.

~~~
flatulent1
' "Search" is not a vertical market.'

Search alone isn't vertical, search alone isn't even a market if people don't
pay for it. You misunderstand the (Google) business and who the customers are.
Those doing the searches are not the customers. Advertisers are the customers.
Eyeballs of those searching are the primary product. Search isn't the product,
only part of the means to obtain the product. Search is a supporting part of a
vertical structure that produces revenue for Google.

It's the same thing with commercial broadcast television. The viewers are not
customers, the programs are not the product.

In both cases, the choices that produce maximum advertising revenue are not
necessarily those that deliver what the person searching or viewing considers
best.

In the case of Google, there are elements of a vertical market in the sense
that they're combining pieces. They just aren't combining the same pieces or
using them the same way as most others. They don't actually sell a mobile OS,
or (with past exceptions for developers) handsets. I don't believe they're
directly producing much video either. And while they mine data, that is yet
another companion component to drive sales of or increase value of the
advertising. The will tell how apps fit into their revenue model. They relate
to attracting users, more ads in some cases, and a cut of sales. Even if not a
big part of the total phone revenue stream, apps are still something that
they're stuck dealing with.

There was search before Google, there was data mining before Google, there
were ad brokers before google. They're well beyond all of that, more vertical
than any of those things alone. In some cases they're filling in gaps or
providing alternatives in other vertical products (handset/OS/carrier) only to
insert their ad business into the equation. Mapping, video hosting and other
things they do also are methods to increase the value of ad business, or build
pathways to insert themselves into other ad funded businesses (perhaps
broadcasting)

Whether a particular model or product is "good" all depends on perspective. A
model where the OS is nearly free appeals to some handset makers or carriers.
Low budget "reality" tv and infotainment news programs with 18+ minute of ads
an hour may appeal to a tv network if it has a better viewer/cost ratio than
obtained with more expensive quality programming.

------
bergie
I used to work at Stonesoft, a company which was back then selling a high-
availability extension for Check Point's firewall (<http://bit.ly/ivZ22L>). A
really lucrative business, especially as Check Point's existing customers were
an easy market to sell to.

Then one day Check Point released their own high-availability solution.
Stonesoft hasn't been profitable in the approx. 10 years since.

------
Thad_McIlroy
When I joined McCutcheon Graphics in 1986 to sell Apple's then-new "desktop
publishing" hardware -- the Mac and the LaserWriter and Aldus PageMaker, the
prescient genius David Henry Goodstein
([http://williamshepherd.blog.co.uk/2006/06/10/thursday_8th_ju...](http://williamshepherd.blog.co.uk/2006/06/10/thursday_8th_june~867380/))
warned us: Remember "Apple will always eat its children".

------
programminggeek
Perhaps it's just my business background talking here, but why is anyone
surprised or even upset that Apple continues to do this? All companies are
looking for value adds and providing a good/better/best/integrated/whatever
version direct in the OS layer is a great way to do this. If you owned a
platform, you would do the same thing where appropriate.

Smart businesses don't just build an app or a feature, they build a whole
business and potentially even a whole platform. For example, look at Remember
The Milk or Evernote. Sure, Apple can make their own cloud-synced todo list
app. Great. But, RTM is on many different platforms, as is Evernote. They have
thousands of customers that will keep using their app even though a system app
might do the same thing.

My point is just because apple turns your feature into their feature doesn't
mean you can't have a successful business. It just means you have to adapt and
change. It's no different than if you were running a successful little coffee
shop and Starbucks opens up across the street. You can whine that it isn't
fair that Starbucks Megacorp Inc. just showed up next door stealing your
thunder, or you can take care of your customers so that they don't go across
the street.

In the end, business is competitive. You have no inherent right to build
software or sell it on a given platform or in a given store. The fact that
Apple, Google, Microsoft, HP, Amazon and so on make worldwide distribution for
indie devs so easy is completely 100% incredible.

Just try and sell a physical copy your $0.99 todo list app or game at every
Wal-Mart, Target, Best-Buy, Gamestop, Verizon/At&t/Sprint shop in the country
then maybe you'll have an idea of just how good you have it.

~~~
mikeleeorg
Agreed. I understand the outrage & fear, but in the eyes of their customers &
shareholders, this is exactly what they should be doing.

I believe destraynor realizes this too. He wrote, "Apple always look out for
their customers." And that's exactly what businesses should do.

However, I hope, Apple can handle their relationships with their development
community better than Twitter did. I'm curious to see how they'll deal with
that.

~~~
destraynor
Correct. I do realise this.

I was trying to be neither complementary nor critical in my post. Funnily
enough I've been accused of both here :)

------
psychotik
Well, you can still out-execute them or build apps better than they can. I
don't think fear of competing with Apple should stop you from building
products. If anything, it can server as motivation and spur better products
for users.

------
dbaugh
The only real businesses affected by this are Instapaper and Dropbox. The rest
are just cool applications that our bubble media props up as enterprises.

------
endgame
Why do developers continue to let Apple do this to them?

~~~
ryannielsen
Why do people think this is endemic to desktop software, or even just Apple?
Web developers are as much at risk of a major player, like Google, moving into
their product space and "stealing" their business away.

I'm not defending the practice and saying that it's right or justified. I'm
just pointing out that Apple isn't the only company that does this, and Mac OS
X and iOS aren't the only platforms where this can happen.

~~~
mnutt
It's a bit different to have Google begin competing with you, unless you've
built your product on Google's APIs.

If you're competing with your provider, you're probably not on an even playing
field. They can use internal APIs or just completely lock you out if they
choose to.

On the flip side, Apple has been thinking this way for years, as Steve Jobs
tries to minimize Apple's external dependencies. (Adobe Flash, PPC, etc)

------
arturadib
Exactly - here are some startups hurt by Apple:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2626409>

------
chrisjsmith
I made a similar comment in one of the "Apple" threads going on.

This is sharecropping: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharecropping>

~~~
skimbrel
Care to explain that a bit? I fail to see a direct parallel between farmland
tenancy arrangements and Apple's relationship to iOS developers.

Also, that's a mighty powerful rhetorical weapon (going all the way back to
African-American slavery) to be dropping in a discussion about some ticked-off
software developers.

~~~
Joakal
There should be a digital example on wiki but I believe he's referring to this
article of a digital sharecropper:
[http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2009/08/are-you-a-
digital-s...](http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2009/08/are-you-a-digital-
sharecropper.html)

~~~
chrisjsmith
That's the one. Probably should have linked to that.

I think I heard the term way before that when we were all "application service
providers" in the late 90's.

------
kahawe
This sort of reminds me of Audion and iTunes back in the day - though there
was no Music or App Store back then.

<http://www.panic.com/extras/audionstory/>

" _That's interesting, because honestly? I don't think you guys have a
chance._ "

" _It's like you guys are a little push-cart going down the railroad tracks,
and we're a giant steam engine about to run you down._ "

~~~
ericd
That was a seriously great story, and probably deserves its own submission.

~~~
kahawe
This has already been submitted a bit over 2 years ago:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=620698>

Any suggestions? It does have a certain relevance now since Apple is much more
widely successful and given their recent announcements.

------
ignifero
This is kind of inevitable in any evolving platform . The best we can hope is
open standards, that's why my bet is on web apps and better mobile browsers

