
Why alienating developers is a winning strategy  - scommab
http://apenwarr.ca/log/?m=201004#21
======
cypherpunks
I'd disagree with the author. iPhone won't see very many large, high-risk
applications developed as a result of Apple's approach. Apple screws over
developers and partners too often. You will build a $1 application in a few
man-months for iPhone, no questions.

Build a Google Voice? Build a Flash->iPhone compiler? You might get screwed
and lose a really big wad of cash.

When business types decide what to build, they multiply out risks. You have
technical risk (developers can't build it), market risk (people won't buy it),
and a bunch of others. Typically, they're individually low-risk (say, 80%
chance of success), but when you multiply them together, you get pretty low
numbers.

If you toss in the additional risk of "Apple will cut me off if I'm successful
and they want to compete with me" and "Apple will cut me off if they don't
like me," it makes it a much less compelling platform.

The costs also go up if you can't share codebase. Requiring iPhone SDK is sort
of sane -- you make an iPhone-specific front-end, and it looks better.
Requiring Objective C or one of their other languages is kinda wacko -- you
can't even share back-end logic. If I just spent millions on something complex
(image processing engine, voice recognition system, or whatever), I don't want
to spend another big portion of that for an iPhone port.

Worse, the same applies to custom business software, but even more so. If I
have an enterprise app employees must use (think UPS guy or bus driver or
anything like that), I care a lot about development time, not much about
usability, and I can dictate platforms. If I can recompile to Android but
rewrite for iPhone, guess what I'm gonna do?

~~~
kls
What these authors fails to see is that innovation does not come from the big
guys and that is all a heavily regulated platform will attract. In my mind I
project that a lot of the authors must be younger, and have not been through
one of the typical screw the developers cycles. This has been seen so many
times in the tech sector, it is almost like clockwork.

The small developers will pack their bags and take their innovation to another
platform, once one is up to par and that is the trick, as of now Apple is
ahead of the pack, and so long as they are, developers will put up with them,
but as soon as another platform is on par; The trickle will start to happen.
Apple knows this and they have placed a huge bet on the fact that, they can
remain the leader of the pack. I would assume that they feel that their
patents are strong and that will keep them the front runner given their suit
against HTC.

~~~
pohl
The author doesn't even mention innovation, and may not even see it as
important in the platform game. After all, Apple spent years leading in
innovation while it varied between "marginal" and "beleaguered" in the market.
So clearly innovation isn't enough to win the platform game, and looking at
the winner of the last big platform game I'd say that it may not even be
necessary.

So while I personally value innovation, I don't see how it's relevant to the
author's thesis.

------
Zak
The author has entirely missed the reasons for Apple's successes and failures.

I was a Mac guy in the '90s. The Macs of the day were uninspired beige boxes.
They were also expensive and used connectivity technology that made
peripherals more expensive[0].

The OS also sucked. The UI was nice, but from a technical standpoint, NT4 was
easily and clearly superior[1]. Even Windows 95 had better memory management
and multitasking.

Everything Apple made from about 1988 to 1998 would have gotten the Steve Jobs
"This is shit!" stamp. Apple lost ground in the '90s because it made average
products and sold them at premium prices; it had little to do with third-party
developers.

The success of the iPhone also had little to do with third-party developers.
It simply has the best user experience, and a "wow-factor" that makes people
want to buy one when they play with it. The iPhone would be the most popular
smartphone even if it had no third-party apps at all; most people by the
iPhone for the iPhone, not the apps.

[0] Not inherently, in many cases, but the result was less competition between
peripheral makers than on the PC side.

[1] It pains me to say this. I've always hated Windows.

~~~
pohl
Maybe it's too early and I need my coffee, but I can't tell where you differ
from the author. He also says the success of the iPhone had little to do with
developers. ("Developers never had anything to do with it." is his closing
line.) What you call "wow-factor" translates to the author's "awesomeness".

~~~
Zak
The last paragraph of the article is

 _Microsoft won on the desktop by being developer-friendly and Apple won in
mobile by being developer-hostile._

Quite a bit of the rest of the article doesn't seem to support that
conclusion, but that does appear to be the conclusion of his article. I'm
saying that Microsoft being developer-friendly has little to do with them
winning on the desktop instead of Apple.

Incidentally, on the desktop Apple is now making good products and being
developer-friendly. They don't have a huge market share, but I recently read
that they're getting 20% of the global profits from PC sales.

~~~
pohl
I see where you're coming from now, thank you. FWIW, the sentence that
followed made me interpret it more like this:

 _Microsoft won on the desktop [while] being developer-friendly and Apple won
in mobile [while] being developer-hostile._

(I didn't think the author meant to imply causality)

------
lionhearted
Author misses one important point - Apple doesn't need the goodwill now with a
big winner on its hands, but it might need the goodwill later if they're in a
competitive race in a new market. And all things being equal, I think
developers would choose "the other side" if the quality/market size was close.

These sorts of short term capricious mandates don't always come back to bite a
major player, but sometimes they do. It might bite Apple later, or might not.
That article was a really fun read though, I do like his style and tone.

~~~
donaq
Not only that, he has a point: it might be fun to have an evil empire for
hackers to rally against once more. ;-)

