
IPhone devotion blinds Silicon Valley app developers  - peter123
http://venturebeat.com/2009/04/11/iphone-devotion-blinds-silicon-valley-app-developers/
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mattj
Two huge reasons keeping developers on the iPhone -

(1) Ease of development - cocoa + objc isn't very hard, and often is quite
fun. Its roots in smalltalk help in the appeal to ruby/rails people, and,
let's face it, cocoa apps are just plain sexy

(2) Non-Apple / Android handsets have a terrible distribution system. Carriers
are in the stone age and have no intention of budging one bit. I've gotten
back evaluation reports from carriers with complaints like how their bottom-
end, 25-character wide phone screen couldn't read text, thus they wouldn't
ship on any phone. It's attitudes like this that scare the crap out of
developers.

~~~
bcl
Add to that a customer base that actually buys apps. How many other cell-phone
platforms have a customer base that buys anything more than ringtones?

~~~
jhancock
I think Palm and Blackberry have healthy 3rd party app markets.

~~~
pmjordan
The only people I've met who have either of those devices are "business
people" for lack of a better word. A market very different from the iPhone
crowd - the hype certainly isn't about bussiness applications. Maybe the
demographic is different elsewhere.

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colinplamondon
iPhone: Standard hardware specs, standard input mechanisms, standard form
factor.

Nokia: Hundreds of different hardware specs to target, dozens of input
mechanisms, wildly differing form factors.

~~~
10ren
Macs vs PCs all over again? Cheap and customizable won over expensive,
designed and usable.

But Apple has cracked a mass-market since then (iPods), so either they've
learned how to dominate or (more likely) found the market that suits them in
the form of "special-purpose consumer electronics".

This latter hypothesis predicts that if the iPhone category become a general
computing device, Apple will lose.

~~~
DougBTX
Looks like we are still waiting for the "IBM Compatible" of smart phones.

I also wonder what effect customization of hardware will have. With OS 3.0,
hardware add-ons for the iPhone just got a whole lot easier. Arguably the
iPhone is already highly customizable, selling a billion apps which don't
require a fixed keyboard.

~~~
10ren
Yes, "IBM Compatible" is it exactly: modular vs. integrated.

Integrated components (hardware and software) enables them to work very
together, in terms of efficiency as well as usability. To make something as
tiny and as fast as the iPhone means you have to squeeze every last bit of
performance out of your components. Apple have done such a brilliant job, it
is not at all apparent that the iPhone processor is on the slow side (about
600MHz [1]).

Modular design becomes possible when the components become faster, because you
don't need to integrate to get adequate performance. You can slap things
together, even mix and match. Anyone can do it. It get customizable, but the
most significant result of fast-enough components is that it gets cheaper.

Faster components are inevitable. When they're fast _enough_ , the iPhone
acquires comparable competitors. How fast is "fast-enough" for a smart phone?
I don't know, but according to Moore's Law, smart phone processors will hit
netbook speeds (1.6GHz) in a bit over 2 years: 27 June 2011

[1] [http://www.engadget.com/2007/07/01/iphone-processor-
found-62...](http://www.engadget.com/2007/07/01/iphone-processor-found-620mhz-
arm/)

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philwelch
Of course. iPhones are a fun platform well suited for a single programmer to
spend evenings writing apps for. Nokias are a "serious" platform designed for
"real companies" to devote teams of "software engineers" to develop software
for.

~~~
berntb
A year ago, I looked into writing a simple application and getting it
published on Nokia etc platforms. It was slow and expensive to get anything
certified. And you seemed to have to redo it all for version upgrades and even
bug fixes.

Apple's app store is the best thing that ever happened to Symbian (Nokia, etc)
developers AND users, since the App store is soon copied by everyone.

~~~
berntb
On consideration, to be fair, I should add that I quite liked the Symbian Java
APIs (without being a fan of Java; boring). The APIs had lots of interesting
functionality, but it was just not realistic to get applications signed so you
could do a serious install on mobiles. The painful App store method looks like
a dream, in comparison.

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wallflower
Before the iPhone, some smartphone manufacturers (Microsoft) thought it was
normal to wipe out the user's data with a mobile operating system upgrade.

The iPhone is a 3rd generation* product.

* Jared Spool's definition 1st generation - All about the technology. The Motorola brick phones.

2nd generation - Features -
camera/games/ringtones/contacts/SMS/mms/mp3/games/voice dial/speakerphone/etc

3rd generation - Experience

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cubicle67
I think the headline is misleading. It's not that devs are being blinded by
the iPhone, it's just that it significantly raises expectations for what the
"Develop and Sell a Mobile Application" experience should be like.

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dejb
As an SV and US outsider I can definitely see a dismissive-ness towards other
platforms. However rather than blindness I see it more as a group phenomena
like a 'collective subconscious' that can often drive a meme towards a self
perpetuating dominance. The group senses that if they all push together they
can create a new dominant platform and benefit from being early adopters. For
a time this can lead to the kind of sustained dominance that SV is
experiencing but of course nothing lasts forever - just look at the US
automotive industry.

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TweedHeads
A billion apps downloaded, a billion dollars paid to developers.

Developers want money and fame and the iPhone provides both.

Easily.

