
How Apple Has Rethought a Gospel of the Web - DavidSJ
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/11/technology/internet/11every.html
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jazzdev
If open platforms are the most innovative environments, then why is the closed
iPhone platform so innovative?

 _by just about any measure, the iPhone software platform has been, out of the
gate, the most innovative in the history of computing. More than 150,000
applications have been created for it in less than two years_

I'm not arguing that it wouldn't be better if the iPhone platform were more
open, I think it would most certainly be better. But isn't it curious that
iPhone developers have been so prolific?

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jeremyswank
I know from personal experience as a sometime working artist that limitations
create a known space where creative attentions can focus less diffusely on the
work at hand, which often has the effect of strengthening the cohesiveness and
effectiveness of the final result. A lack of limitations, where 'anything
goes', in common creativity (to distinguish it from those rare instances of
exceptional creativity, where all bets can seem to be off) can be
overwhelming. In art at least, and I suspect in good app creation as well,
giving the creative impulse every opportunity to focus closely on the
important details of the work will increase the chances that the work will end
up with the qualities we most admire in well-crafted pieces of whatever
medium: clarity, cohesion, efficiency, simplicity, elegance, among other
qualities; that those of us who dwell in the modern era so admire.

