
Developer: “Losing Control of Our Destiny to Apple” - digiwizard
http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/developer_losing_control_of_our_destiny_to_apple/
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raganwald
Scenario A: “I want to buy VisiCalc/Aldus PageMaker/Microsoft
Exchange/Photoshop. What’s the best computer to buy for that?”

Scenario B: “I want to buy a Mac/PC. What’s the best spreadsheet/word
processor/email program to use on that?”

Prior to the rise of monetizable web applications, only Scenario A reflected a
developer in control of their destiny. Scenario B represented a situation
where the platform vendor was gradually "commoditizing their complements,” to
borrow a phrase from Joel Spolsky.

The Web has created Scenario C, “I want to browse the web and use web
applications.” The web business developer may be in control of their destiny.
Then again, we may be looking at Scenario D: “I want to type ___ into Google
on my cheap mobile device with its free operating system.”

~~~
Gormo
Even in scenario B, for most of the '90s and early '00s, a Windows-based PC
was the presumed default platform. If you said "I want to buy a computer", it
would normally be assumed that you meant Wintel. Scenario A, was, until
relatively recently, only meaningful for very specific application categories:
if you did DTP, you might buy a Mac, if you did video editing, you'd use an
Amiga, and if you did research, you'd get a Unix workstation.

But almost all non-specialist applications, and even most specialist software,
was targeted to the DOS/Windows platform, leaving most developers just as much
in control of their destiny as in the earlier iteration of scenario A, if not
moreso, since they didn't have to expend capital porting their products to a
half dozen different platforms and gamble on which platforms would survive.

Platform vendors successfully 'commoditizing their complements' is a very new
phenomenon, and one that's attributable to the vendors integrating their own
distribution channels into the platform.

Scenario C may be helpful for developers' independence, but desktop/native
applications aren't going anywhere in the short term, and the threat of
Scenario D - the web itself becoming a more closed, regulated platform due to
the influence of Google/Facebook/etc. - still looms on the horizon.

What might be helpful is an open, _distributed_ software sales channel that
can compete with the various proprietary app-stores across multiple platforms.
Content retail needs to become a protocol, not a place. But this is probably a
relatively easy technical project and a tremendous marketing challenge.

------
idspispopd
It seems that developers are positive about the store, but feel that Apple
could be doing more to help them suit their business model. I feel it's also a
question of what developers expect the store to do to their business, at the
moment it lets ordinary unsavvy consumers develop a trust relationship with a
developer who they may have never had any interaction with. (Thus a great
opportunity for the developer to market their other wares to the consumer.)
Apple is passing on their seal of approval to all items available in the
store. It's a Disney approach, but it's a significant barrier to many
developers.

I feel that some of the perceived negatives are the result of counter
intuitive thinking. For example, a general lower pricing is the result of
competition amongst commodity applications. While unique apps can demand a
higher price. This is good for consumers, but bad for developers who may have
been relying on the status quo. This allows new developers to challenge the
incumbent, and potentially unseat them.

There is the issue of the upcoming sandboxing, which while everyone
understands why it's necessary, it still has many developers worried. I feel
this is mostly for 2 reasons: Information from apple doesn't seem to be 100%
defined leaving a question mark over some developers apps, and knowing that
change is coming without the full details makes planning difficult. I suspect
apple are mum on details because they're looking for more feedback from
developers, I imagine that they too aren't interested in neutering the apps
that are available on the store.

Many of the other concerns relate to backwards compatibility, something apple
is known to be brutal with (often no more than 5 years of backwards
compatibility) - this is the most realistic concern, although it's not unique
to the app store. Mac os is constantly being revised sometimes introducing
bugs or in the case of PPC apps, having support dropped entirely. This
requires developers to stay on top of beta releases and conduct appropriate
testing.

Overall, the app store leads developers to do a bit more work on maintaining
their app. Of course this is in exchange for continual revenue from sales of
that app. Which I feel is more tailored to career developers and not casual
devs. For consumers this isn't entirely a bad thing, it promotes better apps,
app refinement and makes the store not worthwhile for developers who are
unwilling to deliver - leaving this ripe market available for those that want
to deliver a good experience.

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VengefulCynic
To my mind, the far more concerning part of this is that Apple isn't even
ready for sandboxing. As Jalkut says, "the only things we know now that we
didn’t know [at WWDC] is that there are some sandbox entitlements that exist
in the shipping OS X Lion that we know are available to us."

Apple was going to require sandboxing at the beginning of November, even as
the entitlements system that would power it isn't even ready to support it
(which is, to my mind, the real reason that they pushed the deadline out by
several months).

If I have a beef with Apple, it isn't that they're taking my control away,
it's that they're demanding that I sandbox my app without implementing the
controls to make it work outside of the most basic apps.

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rumblestrut
It's a shame about this typo a little more than halfway through the article:

"TMO: That’s right. The pubic face is, oh, yeah, there’s no problem."

~~~
davethenerd
:) Nice catch. I think John already edited that one out. ;)

~~~
rumblestrut
Indeed he must have.

A lifetime ago I worked as a reporter, but also did page layout. One of the
stories I wrote was about a local food pantry at a church that was running
low. I don't remember exactly what my headline was, but I left the "r" out of
"pantry."

Oops.

------
nirvana
I'm an indie developer and I too think about how much of my destiny is tied to
Apple. I think about it each time we launch another product. You have to when,
rather than getting a bunch of sales from people all over, you get one check
each month from Apple.

However, the other side of this tradeoff is that check from Apple is a lot
more than it would be otherwise. In fact, I can safely say, that my business
would not exist _at all_ , if it were not for Apple and the App Store.

For people like Jalkut, who is one of the inner-circle of mac developers and
fairly well known, there are many marketing opportunities. When he releases a
new product, he is assured that daring fireball will write it up, and others
as well, and suddenly he'll have a huge opening day. This is what worked for
Wil Shipley so well. But we're not in that category.

Unlike the "chosen ones" (and it really is an insular, exclusive circle of
those types who get that kind of coverage) most developers would not be able
to even have an app business if it weren't for the App Store.

Thus, the App Store has allowed tens of thousands of startups to be built by a
much broader segment of the population than ever before. You don't need VC,
you don't need a bunch of employees, you don't even need an angel round, you
just need a Mac, some time, and an $99 a year Apple developer account.

In addition to our startup, I have a friend who has supported himself for the
past several years doing this writing apps. He's not trying to "do a startup",
he's just started a lifestyle business.

Apples "control of destiny" is intrinsically linked to that opportunity. The
opportunity comes form Apple selling your software for you in a single
location. The only way Apple can do that-- given that people are constantly
looking for opportunities to harass, denigrate, and sue Apple-- is to control
what apps appear in the store.

Apple gets sued because people think that their free software update wasn't
good enough! Serious class action lawsuits get launched for crap like that.
So, of course, Apple is going to watch what's in the store.

But so long as you're offering a legitimate app, not trying to scam people,
Apple doesn't really care.

I know people who have hated apple for 30 years think that this is some
draconian thing... because every large company they've dealt with has
habitually screwed over everyone they could. My thirty years as an apple
customer giving superlative support and bending over backwards to _not_ screw
me over, gives me a great deal of trust in them.

Finally, there really is no real point in this campaign of worrying about
whether Apple has too much control. Its obvious that its not illegal for Apple
to offer an App store. So, why are we getting the daily articles like this?
Why the campaign?

Its because the campaigners have an agenda. Their agenda is to promote
android, and maybe get enough popular support for this idea (I once had
someone tell me I was stupid for developing for iOS instead of android--
someone whose a consumer who knows nothing about anything technology wise has
been reached by this campaign!)..... if the campaign is successful enough,
then maybe they'll get legislation passed. Just like the anti-patent campaign
wants to undermine patents, I think that's the real goal here.

And just how does it increase freedom for app development to be regulated by
the government? We can see how that's worked out in other areas of government
regulation of technology (though maybe the crowd here is too young to remember
the dark ages of landline phone service where there was no innovation...
certainly you can recognize that there are only 3 major cell carriers, and
thus the prices are high. That's the result of the government deciding there
could be only 3 spectrum owners in each metropolitan area, limiting
competition via regulation.)

If Apple becomes untrustworthy, then we'll migrate our business. We'll take a
hit, obviously, but the bigger fear is that there isn't any other venue to
access the market like the App Store. Putting up a website and getting people
to go to it, and then getting people to part with money is a whole lot more
difficult than getting into the appstore. And it's a whole lot more expensive
than Apple's %30 cut.

Apple is giving a huge opportunity here, and the restrictions of it are
intrinsic to its nature.

~~~
jacobolus
> _Unlike the "chosen ones" (and it really is an insular, exclusive circle of
> those types who get that kind of coverage)_

You know how these guys got that way? (1) They blogged. They shared their
insights, example code, ways of solving common problems, etc. with the world.
They answered questions from strangers – Wil Shipley had a long blog segment
giving long helpful advice/critiques to code sent in by strangers. (2) They
talked to each other. They hung out in a (not hard to find) IRC channel,
chatted about their common interests, griped about common problems. They met
up and drank beers at WWDC and MacWorld and C4. They organized local meetup
groups: Daniel Jalkut for instance dumped a ton of effort into running the
Boston CocoaHeads group for years and years (maybe still?). (3) They built a
bunch of great products that people liked. They built reputations for solid
support and a rapport with their customers.

In other words, this is not some impossible-to-break-into clique or
conspiracy. Becoming a “chosen one” yourself is quite doable if you put solid
time and effort into making good stuff and giving back to the community.

------
adabsurdo
personnally i find it quite amazing, and incredibly short-sighted, how
developpers are willing to give up the freedom of the web in favor of the
golden chains of the apple platform. because, make no mistake, this is where
its going: in a few years nobody will want to try your stuff unless its an
app, and the web will be a ghetto for porn and 4chan.

haven't we seen this movie before when microsoft controlled basically all of
personal computing? at least on windows the user could install anything he
wanted. now, not only developpers are at the mercy of apple's policies, but
apple has decided to prevent any theoritical disruption from within by
forbidding apps that host code (other than its own browser).

~~~
marquis
Any application that works with media, e.g. audio, video, needs really good
access to the filesystem. I can't see Avid Media Composer for example ever
conforming to the sandbox idea. What is Apple going to do about that in the
long term? Give up on their platform for professional use?

~~~
nirvana
Then you don't understand the sandbox. There's nothing to stop something like
Avid Media Composer being able to access your video.

But it doesn't need to access your address book.

~~~
marquis
I was of the understanding that the sandboxed app needed permission to access
certain files that weren't created by them, I'll read the documentation more
thoroughly. Perhaps a better example are apps that scan you drive to tell you
what your file system is full off (to free up space for example). This type of
thing is extremely useful, and would seem to violate the sandbox idea?

~~~
scott_s
My understanding is that it's not permission from the user, but permission
from Apple. If you need to do something outside of the sandbox, you need to go
through their API calls. And when you submit your application, you need to
justify each out-of-sandbox-API call you make.

------
zorlon
The 1984 commercial comes true. Big brother turns out to be the chick with the
hammer.

