
The First App Store - jvrossb
https://www.makegameswith.us/gamernews/276/the-first-app-store
======
iluvuspartacus
Really the most annoying conclusion possible in the article: "The free market
wins again."

The free market gets to win after sufficient government handouts gets
something up and running. Then private businesses can swoop in and take the
networks (or in this case, the concept) and claim that they won.

If your mother gives you a lollipop, you didn't win an epic battle for the
lollipop. Just saying...

~~~
scott_karana
While I definitely agree with you on the whole, there are some specifics that
are ignored by your comment.

The French Minitel system allowed for _semi-_ free market activities, by
allowing companies to use the system.

The German Bildschirmtext failed because it apparently kept too much control:
the decoder boxes were expensive and only able to be purchased at one
location, and I don't think they allowed for others to use the service.

~~~
iluvuspartacus
Completely agree with you.

If it's time to capitalize something, bring in the free market.

However if you need to build something that's never been built before, you
tend to need a government, a tyrant, or a Rockefeller.

~~~
icebraining
Minitel was not something that had "never been built before", there were
Videotex systems developed before. Of course, it's hard for a private company
to use tax money to offer free terminals to everyone.

------
pron
_This was perhaps the Minitel 's greatest failure as well - because it was
state run... The free market wins again._

If the Minitel launched in the eighties, how could have this article been
written in the fifties?

Seriously, are Americans still fighting commies? What is this sick obsession
with "the gobment"? Today we know we need both the private market and the
government to build an economy that is both prosperous and beneficial to the
people. Could you cut this fifties crap already?

And this wasn't a case of the "free market" winning again. This was just
America winning again. And given that the US median income is steadily
dropping while in France it's steadily rising, I don't know if there's much to
be proud of.

~~~
jvrossb

      And this wasn't a case of the "free market" winning again. This was just America winning again.
    

Could you propose alternative explanations at to why the Minitel failed
despite the fact it had such a head start? Do you think the internet would
have prospered as it did if the only way to access it through the present day
was through terminals developed, built, and lent to you by the American Gov't?

    
    
      Today we know we need both the private market and the government to build an economy that is both prosperous and beneficial to the people. 
    

Elaborate? I think it's still hotly debated and certainly not 'known'.

I think the fact that managed to call out the 22 year old French author (me)
as a 50s era frenzied McCarthyist betrays a stronger, far more irrational
ideology in you than is present in my writing. I'm extremely proud of the
Minitel and its amazing run (a sentiment shared by other commenters) and
simply shared what I believe to be the most plausible and strongest
explanation as to why it didn't make it's way out of France and eventually
failed.

~~~
pron
I don't know why the Minitel failed while the Internet didn't. But the
internet started out as a government project, too[1]. Maybe it was because the
American government-led effort incorporated the private market better,
although, according to your description in the article, the French adopted
what was to become Apple's model, and Apple is doing alright so far. And maybe
it was due to other reasons, like being ahead of its time, or lack of an
international marketing effort (why did the Apple Newton fail?) But in your
article you give no compelling evidence to suggest that the Minitel's eventual
failure was just a result of it being "state run". Both the internet and the
Minitel were state run, and both had a strong private market participation.

If anything, the internet had a very long incubation period in the education
system, while the Minitel immediately reached out to businesses. Governments
usually don't shine in running businesses, but they do know how to build
infrastructure; both the internet and the Minitel are infrastructure, so
there's no reason to assume it would fail because it's state-run.

Whatever the reasons, they were more complex than this simplistic explanation
(actually, it seems like the main reason is that the internet was already
pretty big when Minitel launched – just not in homes – and couldn't be stopped
at that stage).

> I think it's still hotly debated and certainly not 'known'.

The measure at which government should regulate the market is debated and
varies across countries, but history has proven again and again that neither
completely government controlled economies, nor completely free market
economies work. We do know that.

[1]:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Internet](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Internet)

~~~
jvrossb
Working backwards, the Minitel failed because in 2012 when it was discontinued
it was hardly different from its 1983 incarnation. I agree it isn't likely to
be a single-cause explanation, but when you examine the history of the Minitel
and the ways it failed to adapt, it becomes evident that a huge factor at play
was that the Minitel didn't have to respond to market pressures.

------
tantalor
_In the early 1990s US West (previously Qwest now CenturyLink) launched a
Minitel service in the Minneapolis and Omaha markets called "CommunityLink"...
The service was fairly short-lived as competing offerings from providers like
AOL, Prodigy, and CompuServe provided more services targeted at American users
for a lower price. Many of US West's Minitel offerings were charged à la carte
or hourly while competitors offered monthly all-inclusive pricing._

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minitel#Minitel_in_other_countr...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minitel#Minitel_in_other_countries)

~~~
fit2rule
Errm.. _cough_ .. The American BBS Revolution.

MiniTel 'failed' because at the time, in the American market, it was competing
with, well .. seriously better technology. If you even _thought_ about some
service like miniTel, in the US, and then went looking .. you got straight to
the BBS section of CompuMag, &etc. The French had miniTel, hosted services,
whereas in BBS-land, if you had a modem, you could serve. And .. serve you
did.

However, in true -retro spect, MiniTel was brilliant. A Walled Garden, if not
the first.

------
moystard
This article does not mention that the Minitel was a rip-off. All services
were extremely expensive (3617 being the most expensive, at around 1€/minute).
It was also investing on people's credulity at the time: for example,
expensive Minitel services avdertised in video games magasines targeting
teenagers.

And for information, Free is not the largest ISP in France, Orange is.

[http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_%28soci%C3%A9t%C3%A9%29](http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_%28soci%C3%A9t%C3%A9%29)

~~~
fit2rule
.. and thus, the analog with the modern App Store is complete.

~~~
tluyben2
Explain? The Appstore is the cheapest way outside open source I can get
polished software and games at the moment. For a lot of great products in
there i'm not even sure how the creators of that software can survive
considering their pricing. Of course there are exceptions, but you can _use_
most of those exceptions for free or less than the cost of 1 cup of coffee in
a coffeeshop. So what do you mean by analog? E1 per minute to use (use!) or
free/almost free to use?

~~~
widdershins
Perhaps he was referring to the games which convince credulous kids to spend
hundreds on in-app purchases?

~~~
fit2rule
Yup. The modern App Store highlights the exploitative nature of this business
- just as MiniTel did, too, in the 80's .. Microsoft in the 90's, perhaps ..
and so on. Sobering truth: there is a lot of crud software being made in these
markets.

------
asselinpaul
Makes me proud to be French.

Xavier Niel is launching a tuition-free developer school:

[http://www.rudebaguette.com/2013/03/26/rumor-confirmed-
xavie...](http://www.rudebaguette.com/2013/03/26/rumor-confirmed-xavier-niel-
launches-tuition-free-developer-school-baptised-42/)

The FT also recently had lunch with him:

[http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/22167134-b24a-11e2-8540-00144feabd...](http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/22167134-b24a-11e2-8540-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2iOwwym00)

------
brey

      History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme.

(misattributed to) Mark Twain

~~~
memsom
"History repeats itself, heaven knows I'll know it in the next world", End of
Green, Kerbdog, Cormac Battle.

------
cocoflunchy

      Online dating has just started going mainstream in America.
      The Minitel might explain a cultural difference or two between
      the French and the rest of the world...
    

Ironically, in my experience online dating carries much less stigma in the US
than in France. I'm not sure I agree with the implications of the article on
the impact of the Minitel in France as a whole either, but then I'm too young
to have witnessed it firsthand (I always saw one sitting in a corner at my
grand parents', but that's about it).

------
jypepin
I grew up in France, and was completely surprised when I learned that Minitel
was something only in France. This was really the first internet, and the
Minitel was really present EVERYWHERE. My parents had one, my friends' parents
had one, we had a few at my elementary school.

I still remember the billboards, 3615 ULLA, funny memories. We still use the
"3615" number as jokes with friends.

------
aragot
It was hugely expensive for the consumer: 3615 was a phone number, and it was
surtaxed at 0,34€/min if I remember well, even as early as 1995. No wonder the
market was a billion dollars, it was a rip off.

Internet killed the milking cow, and everyone wondered how Yellow Pages could
survive when they couldn't charge per minute anymore...

------
fit2rule
As an owner of a collection of old Minitel-compatible 8-bit machines (my
'nicest': an Oric Telestrat), I yearn for a return of Minitel. I imagine
actually that the "Internet 2.0" movement would do well to make it feasible
for anyone to create a node, and participate in, a MiniTel-like local area
transmission network, with cheap .. like ultra-cheap .. parts and
technologies.

If I collect two months of electronic trash from the local garbage-collector,
I'm fairly sure I could reconstruct a miniTel'ish network, or 10, in short
order.

Perhaps I should stop thinking about it on HN and just go do it, but see ..
this is just another reason why the French are great!

------
vezzy-fnord
Oh yes, I remember reading about the Minitel many years ago. Thanks for
bringing it back to attention.

The fall of these old technologies leave behind a somewhat somber mood in me.
Kind of like the decline of UUCP.

------
Tyrant505
This is amazing and thank you for sharing; As API said in another comment. I
wish i was alive during those days and also alive today. I hope I'll be saying
it about our future, but there is something about the nostalgia, I just fixed
desperately needed box with ribbons and remembered how much I loved it when i
was younger..(fixed it btw.)

[edit] There was zero credit to government persons, which I kinda feel
lacking.. Someone was thinking here.

~~~
fit2rule
Old computers don't die, their users do. If you look, you will discover that
all the old machines of the 80's are indeed still alive and well, and actually
.. getting new software written for them. Yes, kids, its a fact: the c64 is a
thriving platform. The Oric-1/Atmos? Also! /r/retrobattlestations much, I do!?

:)

------
yannk
As a child, I spent hours on the minitel, (disconnected - I never got the
permission to use it online as it was very expensive) just to type ascii
art...

~~~
yannk
That's funny, as far as I remember the keyboard on the model I had, was 'A B C
D...' and not azerty as pictured in the above article.

I'm sure a 'A B C D' keyboard lowered dramatically the barrier of entry for
the intended market (If I remember it right).

------
api
How did I not know about this?!?

~~~
gcb0
I've heard about it plenty before. But never that the machines and basic
service was free!

~~~
temac
I don't think the machine were free. You could either rent it for cheap, or
buy it. There was a few revision of the hard too, but most people had a semi-
old revision like v2 or v3 (don't remember exactly). Maybe in the 2000 the old
Minitels were given to those who rented it previously, that way the government
(well, the now public telecom company France Telecom) did not have to recycle
them all...

The only free service was the Yellow and White pages IIRC. And only for 3
minutes. Well, you could always disconnect when approaching the 3 minutes
limit, then reconnect. Nobody spends whole days on the Yellow and White Pages
anyway :)

~~~
hbbio
There was a free one, I'm pretty sure.

Not remember exactly which years but I remember my parents having to wait to
get one (vs. paying and getting it immediately).

------
tluyben2
We had Viditel in the Netherlands which was like this (modelled after it I
guess). I used it very briefly in the early 80s; after that I discovered ways
to use Pascal and assembler to write BBS software and opened my first BBS on
my MSX computer. That gave so much freedom that I never considered Viditel
again.

------
NKCSS
Very cool, shame I wasn't aware of this, even though I live near France (.nl)
and visted there for years...

------
eric5544
I think "Bildschirmtext" was a similar service that launched around the same
time in Germany and also foreshadowed a lot of what the internet is now.
Online shopping, forums, real time messaging, online dating, etc.

------
TheZenPsycho
The UK had a similar thing run by the BBC called Ceefax
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceefax](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceefax)

~~~
Samuel_Michon
Ceefax was a teletext service, it ran on your TV, you couldn’t actually send
data over it. Prestel was the UK’s videotex service, similar to Minitel.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prestel](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prestel)

~~~
Toenex
Sadly Prestel just never had the penetration of Minitel. As an Englishman who
came-of-age in the 1980's I wasn't aware of anyone with Prestel, it was too
expensive. I remember my dad, who was pretty keen on technology (we had a
sonic remote control for our TV I'll have you know) saying that they needed to
make it's use free, even if you have to rent the kit. Charging for calls meant
you had to think before you did and in the early 80's had any idea what you
would do with it. They needed to be allowed to play for free first.

------
app_lover
great story, but now what do you think apple allow this all stuff?

