

Which Apps are threatened by iOS 5 - nanijoe
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/06/which-apps-are-threatened-by-apples-upgrades/

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tptacek
Marco had _two_ arguments on Build & Analyze for why he wasn't overly
concerned with Reading List.

First, he didn't expect RL to have defer-reading, readability, _and_ sync.
But, like everyone's saying, it does. Shit.

Second, the defer-reading market is theoretically _huge_. It's something
everyone needs to do. A tiny percentage captured off that market is worth
millions of dollars.

iP is currently the best synced defer-reading app around and probably will
remain so even after Reading List is released.

But more importantly, how hard is it to come up with 2-3 killer features to
further differentiate iP from Reading List for the tiny fraction of the market
required to be successful?

I'm sure it's dismaying to see what he expected to be an afterthought feature
showcased in the keynote, but I'm still with him on the dynamics of this
market. Reading List is not going to be the final word in deferred reading.

For whatever it's worth, Marco is the one I feel bad for here. Most of these
other applications were so clearly implicated by Apple's roadmap that it's
hard for me to get too worked up about it. How do you not cheer for Apple
taking steps to replace SMS?

~~~
ChrisLTD
The biggest problem for Marco is that adding articles to Instapaper on your
iOS devices is difficult. Adding a bookmarklet on iOS takes 3 or more steps
that were difficult even for a grizzled nerd like me. Reading List has
absolutely no such friction on any Apple platform.

~~~
miccotech
I've never needed to add an article to Instapaper from my iOS device, but
that's just me. I use Instapaper to sync things I want to read from my laptop
to my multiple devices. At least in the near term, I doubt Reading List will
do the things I want to do as well as Instapaper.

I wouldn't expect Reading List to take many Instapaper users away, and I think
it will drive not-insignificant numbers from Reading List to Instapaper as
people want an upgrade. Net gain for Instapaper, hopefully.

~~~
tptacek
I'm the same way. The value prop of Instapaper for me is, "allows me not to
read things I would otherwise feel compelled to waste time reading, while at
my computer".

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nathanb
I have no great love for Apple, but the rhetoric around this is simply
ridiculous. When a great app comes out, tech sites will say things like "why
isn't this a feature of the OS?", but then when they become a feature then the
OS vendor gets criticized for "stabbing" app developers.

~~~
pyre
For starters, Apple is known for taking an idea that has many 3rd party
solutions, incorporating it into the OS, then presenting it as their own
whizz-bang idea. (See Spotlight vs Butler/QuickSilver/LaunchBar)

~~~
jamesaguilar
nathanb: why is Apple being criticized for doing X?

pyre: Apple is doing X.

Your comment doesn't really address the question, which is, "Why criticize
Apple for not implementing it, then criticize them later for implementing it
like you asked them to?"

~~~
pyre
It does. It has less to do with Apple implementing it or not, and more to do
with Apple's lack of acknowledgement of where their inspiration came from. At
least in my mind.

It's sort of like the difference between copyright infringement and
plagiarism.

~~~
Getahobby
Or the mindset where NBC will bother dedicating time in their nightly news to
cover iCloud (stop looking at me that way, yes some people still watch the
nightly news) and voila, the general public thinks apple invented the idea of
the cloud. Great for Apple, annoying for us that think Jobs doesn't walk on
water.

~~~
Steko
Is this like when that band you liked suddenly got popular so you didn't like
them anymore?

Or is it more like when Roman from Party Down met that girl who was "really
into Sci Fi" and she started talking about Lord of the Rings and then he
berated her with the difference between Fantasy and Sci Fi?

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pg
It looks almost as if they use the existence of startups as a guide for what
products to build. Which is not that bad an idea tactically, considering that
a successful startup is usually a sign of something that was missing in the
world. But it could start to alienate hackers.

~~~
sushrutbidwai
When twitter announced changes in their policies, you had said you will be
concern about startups which are building on it.

Will you say you are now more concerned about startups (YC or not) which are
building innovative apps for iOS?

~~~
pg
This case seems different. The startups they're threatening aren't ones
building stuff on IOS specifically.

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dpcan
True of anything anywhere. Apple is not only your platform, but your
competition.

Utility apps for Windows have been getting squashed by new versions of Windows
for years and years.

\- I used to run tools to move items around in my Task Bar. Now I can just do
that in Windows 7.

\- Or add-ons that told you the resolution of a photo without having to open
it. Now you just roll your mouse over it.

\- Red-Eye elimination and other basic photo functions showed up in Vista.

It's the way of the world. If you are a utility, you may become standard
issue.

~~~
throwaway32
with such windows apps, you don't need to worry about Microsoft removing you
from the only approved sales conduit.

~~~
jamesaguilar
No evidence whatsoever that Apple is going to do this with the affected app
developers. And it seems like a pretty unlikely move.

~~~
throwaway32
why, they have removed apps for "duplicating iOS functionality" before.

~~~
exogen
Have they removed any, or simply not approved them in the first place? (Honest
question.)

It would be pretty unexpected for them to be retroactively banned.

~~~
kenjackson
Apple removed Camera+ after it was in the app store. They removed them since
they found a way to use the volume button as a shutter. Welcome iOS5.

[http://www.iphonehacks.com/2010/08/apple-removes-camera-
ipho...](http://www.iphonehacks.com/2010/08/apple-removes-camera-iphone-app-
from-the-app-store-after-developer-reveals-hack-to-enable-hidden-feature.html)

The reason Apple gives is priceless:

 _Your application cannot be added to the App Store because it uses iPhone
volume buttons in a non-standard way, potentially resulting in user
confusion._

Of course, now it's standard. Say cheese.

~~~
jamesaguilar
That removal was not for duplicating existing functionality, as you correctly
point out. So it's not really germane.

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ansy
If your app is useful and you don't have a patent don't be surprised if Apple
copies it instead of buying you out.

Moral: Get a patent or get out of Apple's way.

EDIT: To the guys below that say patents don't matter because you can't beat
Apple's deep pockets and patent portfolio in court: The patent does matter
because after Apple buys you it can beat Google and Microsoft with it in
court. Conversely, it doesn't want Google buying you doing the same.

~~~
msbarnett
Or better yet, rather than complaining that your market niche didn't exist,
unchanged, in perpetuity, embrace competition and work to differentiate your
product and make it better than Apple's offering.

~~~
nickpinkston
Completely! People still believe in developing new things and not just trying
to patent the market into a corner - right?

------
mechanical_fish
A lot of these arguments just don't seem very well thought out.

Apple's todo-list is going to kill Remember The Milk? Maybe, but there are
hundreds of todo-list apps in the store already, all with subtly different
semantics and presentation, none of which appears to have achieved dominance
and killed all the others, even though many are free. Why should Apple's fare
any differently?

And it's like that in every category. People predicted that Time Machine would
kill SuperDuper. Well, it turns out that Time Machine is totally not a
replacement for SuperDuper, and SuperDuper is very much alive, thank god. And
Time Machine thrives as well, which is good, because the tools have different
audiences and purposes.

Seems like any article like this one should include a link to that classic
article about the guy who had a Starbucks open up next to his indie
coffeeshop, and then a year later started looking around for locations near
other Starbucks stores to open coffeeshops in. It would be a useful
disclaimer, because sometimes the big player co-opts your niche, but sometimes
it justs makes your niche more mainstream.

~~~
panacea
>Why should Apple's fare any differently?

Because it's bundled with the OS and will sit on the homescreen of every iOS
device going forward?

Because, when my wife asked me to research a good to-do list for her the other
day, it was because "Milk Sugar Eggs" wasn't on her phone's homescreen?

------
buster
Instead of building those seperate solutions i really think Apple should build
some general IPC/sharing model into the OS (like the intent system on
android). It would enable so much more integration and open up all
applications, i'd love that. I really miss that on my iPad, being able to just
send the content i am viewing to random app/page X (articles to read it later,
for example). Why rebuild read it later?

I guess the only reason is that this would open up the platform a bit more,
this would be a horrible scenario: At breakfast i could read the web on my
iPad, send interesting articles to "read it later", read those on my android
in the train to work and the rest at work on my linux laptop..

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weaksauce
The flip side of this is: "What apps are enabled by iOS 5?"

~~~
turbodog
Just get them into the App Store quick before Apple adds them to iOS 5.x or 6.

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brisance
It seems the author is missing the forest for the trees. It's not iOS 5 itself
that is threatening apps, and not just apps. It's the entire Apple ecosystem
which includes iOS 5, OS X Lion and iCloud versus everything else. With iCloud
being free, and with iOS 5 being deeply integrated with Twitter, Apple is
giving Google and FB the finger. No more indexable data through web crawlers.

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bergie
It seems for most of these, the best way to compete will be to go multi-
platform. That is something Apple won't be doing anytime soon.

 _Want a chat app that you can also use to talk to your Android-using
friends?_ etc.

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bergie
From the comments of the post:

> Hmmm, let's see, I paid my way to WWDC 2011 with my revenue from google ads
> on my website content - which are removed when using The Read feature in
> Safari. That content can also be mailed in full with no ads and no
> attributive link to friends.

This is actually also an interesting point. Could it be a sneaky way from
Apple to push publishers to go Newsstand as their online ads are not working
any longer?

------
alexqgb
Given the limitations of iCloud (only backs up purchased music, only syncs
productivity docs created in iWork, etc.) I really can't see it killing my
love of Dropbox.

------
blaenk
I don't know if Boxcar is all that threatened. The notification wrangling it
seemed to do seemed like an after-thought, so no doubt the new notifications
will be better.

However, I use it and it has always seemed to me that its focus has been to
create push notifications for services that otherwise wouldn't have them, such
as email, twitter (before the official app added push), and others (they have
an API).

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dominostars
"Apple clearly values their developers. They are a source of innovation and
development. The company was proud to announce during the keynote that it had
paid out more than $2.5 billion to developers."

Wait, what? They value developers by taking $1 billion of their revenue, and
then eating their lunch?

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gallipoli
I would worry more about the spotlight this brings on the functionality
itself. The mainstreaming of deferred reading without ads is likely to inspire
some kind of backlash from the content creators.

------
dsmithn
Most of these are moot for me because my laptop is a Mac and my desktop is
Windows 7.

Chrome with sync set up, plus Dropbox, and I've covered basically everything
on the list.

~~~
joeguilmette
iOS is a mobile operating system.

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smackfu
It's not like this is new. Apple did the same in OS X. For instance, Spotlight
replaced existing search software.

~~~
burke
There's a little bit of a difference here in that Apple has set a precedent of
removing applications in competition with features provided by the OS itself.

~~~
msbarnett
What apps has Apple ever removed because of a feature added to iOS after the
app was originally approved for sale in the market?

I can't think of any examples.

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droob
So what refinements could Apple make, or what features could they add, without
stepping on someone's toes?

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jmjerlecki
Apple just pulled a Twitter!

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warmfuzzykitten
It's a natural progression. Applications that add useful features to a
platform get assimilated in the platform. The only news is it's happening
rather more quickly than in the past. Apple is looking quite nimble.

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jessedhillon
Add another one to the list. Now that the native email client can sign and
en/decrypt emails, there's no need for the enterprise email reader from Good
<http://www.good.com/iphone/>

