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?
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.
It's not that curious. The appstore lets developers crank out tiny apps that users can buy for peanuts with 'one click'. It's the appstore idea which is innovative (or at least, the implementation - I'm not an appstore historian).
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?