iPhone App Developer Backlash Growing

from the openness-is-a-good-thing dept

Early on, we predicted that Apple's walled garden approach to apps for the iPhone would lead to developer backlash. Even if it was successful at first, the obvious trajectory was that it wouldn't just lead to problems that drove developers away, but it would eventually limit application innovation, just as other competing platforms were getting good enough to match Apple's. We might not be all the way there yet, but the evidence is growing that the backlash is getting serious. Slashdot noted that some respected developers are ditching the iPhone app store and reader Andrew Fong alerts us to Paul Graham's well argued explanation of why Apple's setup is bad for developers, bad for innovation, bad for consumers and bad for Apple.

To summarize, it's bad for developers because they're distanced from their users, and can't quickly make changes and updates, since each change needs to go through Apple's long, mysterious and arbitrary approval process. On top of that, by creating a very real risk that Apple might not approve an app, developers have less incentive to put in the time. It's bad for innovation because you are putting a gatekeeper in front of any innovation. It's bad for consumers, because they can't do what they want and often the apps they get are lower quality than they would be otherwise, because developers cannot rapidly respond with necessary improvements and changes. Finally it's bad for Apple because it's driving away some talented developers who are useful in making the iPhone so powerful. As those developers move to other platforms, it will help those other platforms catch up, and potentially surpass the iPhone. But, perhaps more importantly, it's bad for Apple because it risks Apple's overall reputation. It makes it harder to hire top engineers:

There are a couple reasons they should care. One is that these users are the people they want as employees. If your company seems evil, the best programmers won't work for you. That hurt Microsoft a lot starting in the 90s. Programmers started to feel sheepish about working there. It seemed like selling out. When people from Microsoft were talking to other programmers and they mentioned where they worked, there were a lot of self-deprecating jokes about having gone over to the dark side. But the real problem for Microsoft wasn't the embarrassment of the people they hired. It was the people they never got. And you know who got them? Google and Apple. If Microsoft was the Empire, they were the Rebel Alliance. And it's largely because they got more of the best people that Google and Apple are doing so much better than Microsoft today.

As for why Apple is making this mistake, Graham blames Apple's general view of the market:

They treat iPhone apps the way they treat the music they sell through iTunes. Apple is the channel; they own the user; if you want to reach users, you do it on their terms. The record labels agreed, reluctantly. But this model doesn't work for software. It doesn't work for an intermediary to own the user. The software business learned that in the early 1980s, when companies like VisiCorp showed that although the words "software" and "publisher" fit together, the underlying concepts don't. Software isn't like music or books. It's too complicated for a third party to act as an intermediary between developer and user. And yet that's what Apple is trying to be with the App Store: a software publisher. And a particularly overreaching one at that, with fussy tastes and a rigidly enforced house style.

If software publishing didn't work in 1980, it works even less now that software development has evolved from a small number of big releases to a constant stream of small ones. But Apple doesn't understand that either. Their model of product development derives from hardware. They work on something till they think it's finished, then they release it. You have to do that with hardware, but because software is so easy to change, its design can benefit from evolution. The standard way to develop applications now is to launch fast and iterate. Which means it's a disaster to have long, random delays each time you release a new version.

My guess is that there may be another reason: the perfectionist attitude at Apple. They don't want "bad" apps getting into the store, and certainly some people appreciate that. But the store has 100,000 apps right now, and most people are never going to see the vast majority of them. Having a few "bad apps" get in isn't a huge issue at this point, and certainly user-level reviews can help deal with that issue anyway. And, even if that is the biggest concern, why not at least allow non-approved apps to be viewed and downloaded, just without an official "apple seal of approval." Perhaps it made sense when Apple was first launching the store (though, even that seems questionable), but if it wants to continue to lead the market, it needs to break down that wall.

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Nokia Getting Killed In The Smartphone Market... So Of Course It Sues For Patent Infringement

from the if-you-can't-innovate,-litigate dept

Funny how this works, right? Just a week or so after it's first ever quarterly loss and an admission that it totally screwed up in the smartphone market, Nokia suddenly sues Apple for patent infringement over the iPhone. It looks like the old adage is true again: if you can't innovate, litigate! It's the same story all over again. A company that was a leader in the market but got complacent and lazy, suddenly finds that it lost its lead to a more innovative upstart. Since it's so far behind, even scrambling around doesn't help it to catch up, so it just starts suing over patents.

This story nicely highlights a few other points as well. We keep hearing from patent system supporters how the patent system is necessary because, without it, the market leader would always just immediately copy the upstart and "steal" their idea. Of course, Nokia has had two plus years to "steal" Apple's idea, and where is it in the smartphone market? It's not so easy to just copy someone else's idea -- especially if you're a huge player like Nokia, who will often view the disruptive innovator as not being worthy of paying attention to (which basically was Nokia's reaction to the iPhone).

Separately, remember how confused we were when Steve Jobs proudly hyped up the fact that Apple had over 200 patents on the iPhone concept? We've pointed out that it's hardly done anything to stop lawsuits. Apple has been sued over and over and over and over and over and over again for patent infringement. Welcome to the tragedy of the anti-commons, where it becomes impossible to do pretty much anything innovative without facing massive legal costs. Basically, if you build anything even remotely innovative these days, you're going to get sued for patent infringement, probably multiple times. It's become a massive tax on innovation, rather than a lever for innovation.

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More Evidence Suggests That iPhone App Store Doesn't Really Sell That Much...

from the ain't-looking-so-good dept

Among people who really, really want to believe that there's a huge market out there for selling content directly, the iPhone App Store has recently become "Exhibit A." The thinking is that all you have to do is slap together that perfect Steve Jobsian user interface that just makes it so easy to buy, and people will start forking over their money. It was part of David Carr's argument when we debated newspaper micropayments. Except... there really isn't that much evidence to support even the claim that the iPhone App Store really sells that much. We were a bit skeptical of the early reports that people claimed offered "proof" that people would buy all sorts of apps. Then, earlier this year, we suggested that it was an early warning sign that so many apps on iPhones were never used at all or were used once and abandoned. Basically, that meant that people would test stuff out when they first got the phone, but sales would likely dwindle after that. More evidence was provided by an analyst firm that figured out how little money Apple was making from app sales (which is fine -- Apple is in it just to sell hardware, but it suggested that app sales weren't quite as amazing as people were claiming).

Newsweek is presenting some more evidence -- albeit anecdotal -- that the iPhone App Store isn't making very many people very much money at all. There are, certainly, a few folks at the top who are doing okay, but for most people there just aren't that many sales -- or the cost of getting those sales greatly outweighs the revenue that came in from them.

This isn't to say that the iPhone App Store is a failure. In fact, I'd argue it's been a huge success in making the iPhone significantly more valuable. But as evidence that there's a huge market out there of people willing to pay for content if it's just packaged up nicely? There's just not enough there to be convincing.

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iPhone To Be Offered From Multiple Carriers, eh

from the in-God-Phone-We-Anti-Trust dept

Given all the talk in DC lately about anti-competitive exclusive cellphone distribution arrangements, it's very interesting to see a rumor broken by the Globe and Mail about the iPhone in Canada. According to The Globe, Rogers will soon lose its iPhone exclusive as both TELUS and Bell Mobility add the iconic device to their Christmas line-up. Bell and TELUS are migrating away from the CDMA technology they have used up to 3G, towards the more globally compatible GSM evolutions. To minimize costs, the two carriers are building a single shared-infrastructure network, on which they will both sell services. While Rogers, the long-time GSM user, will have the wider network footprint and offer iPhones fall-back to their 2G data networks when out of 3G coverage, that advantage is countered by TELUS and Bell offering 3.5G HSPA+ speeds to Rogers' 3G. Under current coverage conditions, iPhone urbanites might prefer the new entrants, while sub-urbanites may prefer Rogers.

What is most interesting here is the break from Apple's conventional one-country-one-carrier strategy, which has attracted the attention of more than a few countries' regulators. The Canadian case will be the first market where competing carriers offer the iPhone, without a regulator forcing Apple's hand. Perhaps Germany will follow Canada: there are rumors that T-Mobile will lose their exclusive deal with Apple by year's end, and British/Spanish carrier O2 will enter the market with preferable iPhone plans. In the USA, most of the hot water Apple is swimming in is because the FTC isn't happy with the iPhone app approval process, which nixed the Google voice app. But while the FTC branch is focused on the App Store, some Congressional Reps are voicing their displeasure at the exclusive iPhone deal with AT&T. Governments around the world aren't sure what to make of exclusive phone distribution deals - which, strangely, never seemed to raise an eyebrow until the iPhone. In France, the Orange-Apple 5-yr exclusive was smacked down by the feds who argued that an exclusive arrangement would add "a new element of rigidity in the sector which is already suffering from a lack of competition." But here's where I'm not so clear.

I agree that exclusives, when examined in isolation, are anti-competitive. But overall, I'm not clear on how a 2007 new entrant (Apple), with a disruptive device that lit a fire under the incumbent vendors, could be perceived as "anti-competitive" in terms of net results. In fact, the exclusivity has undeniably forced the competing carriers to work their butts off to come up with a comparable device, seeking it from the likes of Nokia, Samsung (which are scrambling to respond, though they'd never admit it), or newer players like HTC or INQ. The exclusive deals seem to be spurring competition. In contrast, in a world where every telco carries the iPhone, the telcos actually can worry less about offering something else that's equal or better. I suppose someday it could make sense to go after Apple exclusives, but why not wait until the net effect on society is actually negative in some measurable way? A good rule for government should be, "When in doubt, leave it alone."

Meanwhile, the Canadian case will certainly offer Canadians more choice among iPhone providers, and most notably iPhone plans. Canadians tasted the bitter flavor of inadequate competition when iPhone data plans were first announced there in mid 2008. Three-year contracts, no unlimited data plan, high per-MB pricing, and a triple lock-in. Yes, Canada may soon see more service competition around the iPhone -- but will Canada see more or less device competition?

Derek Kerton is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Derek Kerton and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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The iPhone Is Not The End Of Innovation

from the it-keeps-on-going dept

There's just something when we see a dominant technology out there that makes people assume that no one will ever out innovate it, and then fear that we're stuck with the dominant player forever. Adam Theirer has a post discussing this concept in relation to a recent paper by Robert Hahn and Hal Singer, Why the iPhone Won't Last Forever and What the Government Should Do to Promote its Successor, which highlights how dominant platforms often appear insurmountable, but often quickly are defeated from unexpected sources. Thus, worrying about things like exclusive arrangements or if the platform is too closed off may be a waste of time. Eventually, the market ends up taking care of it. The paper points out that previous technologies are often declared the "end of innovation" as well, such as the Motorola MicroTAC flip phone (I had one, ages ago), which Fortune described in 1989 by saying:

Portable phones won't get a lot smaller than this one. After all, they have to reach from your ear to your mouth.

Take a look: And no more innovation ever happened in mobile phones over the past twenty years, right?

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Why Apple Should Let Other Devices Connect To iTunes

from the stop-complaining dept

We've mentioned in the past how silly it is that Apple blocks the Palm Pre and other devices from accessing iTunes. Plenty of people responded, pointing out that Apple really makes its money on the hardware, and thus it makes no sense to allow other hardware products to connect to iTunes. While I agree that Apple makes its money off the hardware, I still disagree that Apple should block others out. In doing so, it makes me and many others less likely to purchase an Apple product, because I don't want to get trapped into Apple hardware. I'd much rather a more open solution.

Over at Slate, Farhad Manjoo has written up a wonderful explanation of why Apple should not just allow the Palm Pre and others to connect to iTunes, but it should encourage it. The whole thing is worth reading, but here's a snippet:

I hope the company continues to search for ways to sync with iTunes, because the fight--silly as it seems--is important, and Palm is clearly in the right. Apple may have the USB-IF on its side, and it may also be protected by copyright law. But by blocking non-Apple devices from its music app, Apple is violating a more fundamental principle of computing--that unalike devices should be able to connect to one another freely. The principle underlies everything we take for granted in tech today: It's why the Internet, your home network, and the PC function at all. And it's why Palm should keep storming the iTunes fortress.

I am not claiming that Palm has the legal right to hack into Apple's software, nor am I calling on any authorities to compel Apple to let Palm in; if the cat-and-mouse game turns into a courtroom brawl, it's very likely that Apple would win the fight. Instead, I'm calling on Apple to stand down. Even better: It should create a legal pathway for Palm and every other company to sync with iTunes. Why? The most obvious reason is that it's good for iTunes users. Nobody other than Apple benefits from locked-down software. Apple frequently extols the wonders of digital music--the convenience, the flexibility, the environmental friendliness. But how flexible can it be if you're allowed to sync your tunes only with devices made by a single company?

What's more, the iTunes block is hypocritical. Like every other tech company, Apple has benefited enormously from the spirit of interconnectedness that pervades the tech industry. The iPod would have fizzled if Microsoft had blocked it from hooking up to Windows PCs. Or look at the iPhone--Apple is proud that it can sync with Outlook, Microsoft Exchange, Gmail, Yahoo, and just about everything else. Indeed, you could argue that Apple, once left for dead on the periphery of the tech industry, managed to come back only because it skillfully marketed Macs as the most promiscuous computers you could buy.

Indeed. While it's unlikely that Apple will actually do this, it would be a smart move. No one's buying Apple hardware because it syncs with iTunes. They're buying it for many other reasons, and Apple can continue to compete on those. Blocking the Pre and other devices from accessing iTunes is petty and unnecessary.

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Doing More With eBooks

from the hey,-look-at-what-the-technology-allows dept

While I can understand some of the interest in ebooks, one of the things I haven't quite understood was the effort to focus on making ebooks more like regular books. In the history of "killer apps," the one thing that tends to stand out is that they show up when the new technology allows something new that couldn't be done before. Simply mimicking the old on a new platform isn't a recipe for widespread success. And, sure, ebooks can let you store a lot of books on a single device, or take notes, but they haven't really taken advantage of what the technology could enable.

David Thomson points us to an interesting ebook experiment involving singer and novelist Nick Cave, who has created an ebook for the iPhone, that involves a whole lot more. Beyond just the text, there are both the audio and video versions of Cave reading along -- and that includes some music that goes with the book as well. Plus, it includes a "news feed" though it's not clear what's in it. The pricing still seems a bit expensive ($25), but it's great to at least see some experimenting with what the technology should allow.

One other interesting tidbit: it wasn't Cave who came up with the idea, but his publisher who really pushed to make the ebook into something more, and roped Cave into agreeing to add the extra stuff. It's nice to see that at least some of the middlemen providers are looking to step up and take charge, rather than just leaving it all to the content creators.

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Apple Approves Spotify App... Spotify Should Thank Google

from the good-timing dept

Just before the whole mess -- including an FCC inquiry -- of why Apple rejected Google voice on the iPhone, we were among those who wondered if Apple would approve Spotify, the well-hyped (perhaps over-hyped) music app that in many ways competes directly with iTunes. Well, it looks like Apple has approved the software, though Spotify is still only available in certain European countries (though there are promises of a North American launch later this year). You really have to wonder, though, how much of the approval was due to the mess and attention that Apple received following the rejection of Google Voice. It seems likely that the company is now (finally) a bit more sensitive to this issue, and may have decided that it didn't need another PR headache... or to give any more fodder to the FCC. Spotify probably owes Google a nice bouquet of flowers.

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Why Just Copying Isn't Enough: Cargo Cult Science And Copycats

from the gotta-leapfrog dept

We've talked about cargo cults in the past around here, and Boing Boing points us to a great video of a talk by Jeff Veen, which argues that copycat innovators are a form of a cargo cult:

The point he's making is one that we've tried to make here many times in the past -- though his analogy is much better than most we've used. Basically, it's easy to just copy what you think is cool about a product, but that's rarely (if ever) enough to actually get people to buy. This is an issue we see all the time when people get upset about our position on patents. They say that, without patents, someone would just come in and "steal" the idea, and then where would you be? But, the fact is, just being able to "copy" the product isn't enough to get it sold.

If you're truly innovative, then you not only understand your product better than some random copycat, but you also understand what makes your market want your product.

That can't be copied. Not easily. Yes, the copycat may win over some customers, but it's not the same. And, by knowing the product and the market better than anyone else, you should also be able to stay ahead of the curve and keep innovating. The copycat just has to catch up -- they're running towards where they think you were, when you may already be well past that.

But the comparison to a cargo cult is quite accurate. The cargo cultists built up their faux airports, thinking that it would bring in the same wonders as the real wartime airports did. Companies make copycat iPhones because they think that people will suddenly rush to buy them like they bought the iPhone. But it doesn't work that way.

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Latest Misguided Lawsuit: Apple Hit With Copyright Infringement Claim For Third Party App

from the learn-to-sue-properly dept

I'm really beginning to wonder if there should be sanctions on plaintiffs who sue the obviously wrong party. We write about so many cases, where people sue whoever has the deepest pockets, rather than those actually responsible, that it's clearly an abuse of the law. The latest example, sent in by davebarnes, involves a photographer suing Apple, because an iPhone app from a third party developer includes some of his photos. Note that the guy did not sue the actual app developer: just Apple. I'd also like to see the argument that explains how getting this guy's photographs more publicity somehow "damages" him, but that's another story...

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Apple Now Censoring A Dictionary iPhone App?

from the really? dept

Apple's continued arbitrariness in banning iPhone apps continues in weird and somewhat incomprehensible ways. The latest getting attention (and sent in by a lot of people) is that a dictionary app called Ninjawords was forced to block out the definitions of certain words in order to get approval to be in the App Store. Even though the app itself has a 17+ rating, apparently Apple came back with a list of "objectionable" words in the dictionary which had to be removed. Never mind the fact that anyone could just go to a website with the very same device and look up those same words... Oh, and of course other dictionaries available at the App Store seem to have those same words. The article also points out that Wal-Mart -- notorious for refusing to sell "objectionable" material sells dictionaries with these sorts of words included. The whole thing is bizarre, and again makes you wonder what Apple is accomplishing with its app review process, other than pissing people off. Update: Apple has responded and explained its side of the story. They're claiming it wasn't censorship, so much as an issue of timing. The app did have what Apple felt were offensive words/definitions, and asked the developer to wait until parental controls had been turned on for the iPhone. The developer then chose to block those words to try to get the app launched prior to parental controls being in place. Fair enough... but it still seems odd that Apple should be able to object to any definitions. It's a dictionary, based on Wiktionary.org... which anyone can visit with their browser. Still, this is one of the first times we've actually seen Apple respond to one of these stories. So that's progress...

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Apple's Google Voice Rejection Wakes Up A Dormant FCC; Investigation Begins

from the whoops dept

We've had a bunch of stories about Apple's rather arbitrary nature in rejecting iPhone apps it doesn't like -- including ones where it claims that they're not allowed because they compete with Apple. However, Apple's recent decision to reject Google's Voice application didn't just attract general public interest in Apple's policies, it appears to have awoken the latest crop of FCC bosses. Yes, the FCC has requested more info from Apple, AT&T and Google concerning Apple's rejection of the Google app. I wonder how the random Apple drone who made that decision is feeling right now?

Either way, this isn't good for anyone. The FCC's reasoning is that it:

"has a mission to foster a competitive wireless marketplace, protect and empower consumers, and promote innovation and investment."

That's actually a bit of a stretch on the FCC's actual mandate. And as ridiculous as I think Apple's actions are here, having the FCC get involved doesn't seem good for anyone either. The FCC shouldn't be involved in deciding what applications get put on phones. Apple's decision has angered a bunch of people, with some swearing off the iPhone because of it. In those cases, those people have other options and other phones to go to. The situation doesn't require the FCC to get involved. It should just require Apple coming to its senses and getting rid of its silly policy of outright rejections of apps it doesn't like.

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iPhone Haters Are Stick-Shifters In An Automatic World

from the P-R-N-D-iii--ii--iPhone dept

Every time we post a story at Techdirt about the iPhone, we see the comments rapidly bifurcating into a religious battle between the "fanboy idiots who make excuses for the useless little iPhone like a beaten wife just because it's trendy and shiny" and the guys who "whine because [the iPhone doesn't do] everything and cost nothing" (this is what the two sides are saying, not us). It's sad to see such an interesting, seminal device be reduced to "nyah, nyah" levels of discourse. Our position on the iPhone is hopefully more objective. No, it's not perfect, lists of gripes are frequently made, but overall it's the phone to beat.

Recently, we've decried Apple's autocratic governance of their App Store. But don't let that mislead you into thinking we're down on the whole product. The iPhone is a turning-point device, which changed the usability level of the mobile Internet. All of a sudden, the mass market - who until then had no interest in muddling with clumsy mobile data services - was able to connect to the web on their phone, browse sites, download apps, and truly realize the promise of "anytime, anyplace, any info". The phone also revolutionized the mobile phone UI. While the other handset vendors developed each application and hardware in its own silo, Apple designed it all as a single whole experience, also sketching-in the content and application ecosystem. And it's been no shock that good user experience matters a whole lot! Lastly, the iPhone shattered the iron grip carriers had on handset vendors, and the phones their customer's eventually owned. Apple yanked some of that control away, and their more open (than carriers) approach has blown open the barn doors of developer creativity. The iPhone sales figures and data usage stats are in. Its a success. So if you are one of the people that says the iPhone is nothing more than a shiny toy, you need to come back to reality.

So why do so many criticize the iPhone, if it's so great? I think it's because they make the classic marketing mistake of thinking "It's all about ME." It isn't. The iPhone haters see the limitations (hard keys, cut/paste, tethering...) of the phone, and they focus on how the phone doesn't have any tech breakthrough or meet THEIR specific needs. But the mass market is what really matters in business. Is the mass market even aware of the limitations of their iPhone? If you told one of them, would they care? They would tell you that, on the contrary, their iPhone has not limited them, it has empowered them to access the mobile services and networks that have been "available" since 2000, but were blocked by poor user experiences and walled gardens.

I liken the whole debate to the stick-shift versus automatic transmission debate decades ago (still in the EU). True motoring aficionados could not accept the dumbed-down, lazy automatic transmission. They insisted on doing the work themselves. It was harder, but it was "the only way to truly 'drive' the automobile". Tough luck if it put driving out of the reach of some. By now, the mass market has decided that "easier" trumps a religious argument about "real feel for the road". Good products take people to their destination as easily as possible. The market has spoken: Getting there is not half the fun.

Derek Kerton is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Derek Kerton and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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Is Apple Suggesting That The DMCA Prevents Terrorism?

from the yeah,-that's-believable dept

The EFF is trying to get a DMCA exemption from the Library of Congress for people who jailbreak their iPhones (if history is any indication, this won't happen -- the Library of Congress never seems to care about consumer rights). However, Apple's response to the Library of Congress, suggesting that open or jailbroken iPhones could be used by terrorists to bring down cell towers is both preposterous and totally unrelated to the issue at hand. First it's preposterous, as there are plenty of "open" devices out there already, and there has yet to be a single report of anyone taking down a cell tower with their mobile phone.

But, much more to the point: the point of copyright is not to protect us from terrorists taking down cell towers. If we, as a country, are relying on the DMCA to protect us from terrorists who don't want us making phone calls, we've got bigger problems. Even if it were true that terrorists could take down cell towers with an open mobile phone, does anyone actually think they'd shy away from doing so because it violated the DMCA? It's not like that's going to make much of a difference at all. It's entirely meaningless to the question of whether or not legal buyers of a mobile device should have the right to place whatever legal software they want on the device.

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Apple Says No To Google Voice On The iPhone

from the shameless dept

As we wait to hear if Spotify's mobile app gets approved (I heard a rumor that it was, but have seen no proof yet), we hear of another questionable Apple iPhone rejection: the Google Voice iPhone app has been forbidden from the iPhone, though the reasons aren't entirely clear. Still, it does show that Apple doesn't care who you are, or how big a name. If it doesn't like your app, too bad. Once again, this seems like an argument for why more open solutions will win out in the end. Not only do users not have to worry about arbitrary rejections like this, but innovation will happen much faster on open platforms where each innovation doesn't need to be approved by a mercurial secret cabal.

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Will Apple Allow Spotify On The iPhone?

from the one-to-watch dept

Having used Spotify a bit, I can definitely see how some people think it could potentially replace iTunes completely. It basically acts like an iTunes that has access to millions of songs at no additional cost (and, yes, it's all licensed and legal). The songs are streamed, but you almost never notice it. It really does feel just like iTunes, while also having "Pandora-like" features for creating specialized stations or sharing others' playlists. Unfortunately, it's only available in the UK for now, though the rumor is it will be available in the US before the end of the year. However, where things could get really impressive is with Spotify's mobile app. For a few months, there's been a YouTube video of Spotify Mobile on Android:

The demo highlights the fact that you can sync any playlist for "offline" play, solving the biggest question about weak mobile signals on the go, or how you use it on a plane or somewhere without wireless access. With offline syncing, it's basically everything that an iPod can do -- with access to 6 million songs without having to pay for each individual song. But, of course, Android is still a limited platform. The big fish these days is the iPhone App Store, and Spotify has now submitted an iPhone app for approval, which raises all sorts of questions. With Apple's history of rather arbitrary rejections -- including ones for things Apple has deemed "competitive" -- will it block Spotify as a rather direct competitor to iTunes? That would be very unfortunate, and again demonstrate the risk of a closed platform.

That said, the initial reviews of the iPhone app seem quite strong. Eliot Van Buskirk at Wired loves the syncing feature, and warns that "you'd have to pry it out of my cold, dead iPhone before I'll delete it from my phone." Meanwhile Music Ally points out that Spotify has uploaded a video of the iPhone app as well: It really does look pretty slick. So now the ball's in Apple's court. I have no idea if Spotify can survive as a business (and I suspect that the royalty rates the music industry wants will make that difficult), but it is great to see more innovation in the space. Now we get to see how Apple feels about that sort of innovation.

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Apple Withdraws Lawsuit Against Wiki Site Owner Over iPhone/iPod Interoperability Hack Discussion

from the took-'em-long-enough dept

Last November, the EFF took Apple to task for threatening the owner of a wiki site. Apple claimed that an ongoing discussion on the site about how to build interoperability between iPods and iPhones and alternative software other than iTunes violated the DMCA -- which requires quite a novel interpretation of the DMCA. After Apple refused to back down, EFF sued in April. Somewhere along the way, it looks like Apple's lawyers started to realize that it had pretty close to no chance whatsoever and has now withdrawn this particular threat. The EFF is dropping the lawsuit, but isn't pleased that the whole thing had to happen in the first place:

"While we are glad that Apple retracted its baseless legal threats, we are disappointed that it only came after 7 months of censorship and a lawsuit," said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Fred von Lohmann. "Because Apple continues to use technical measures to lock iPod Touch and iPhone owners into -- and Palm Pre owners out of -- using Apple's iTunes software, I wouldn't be surprised if there are more discussions among frustrated customers about reverse engineering Apple products. We hope Apple has learned its lesson here and will give those online discussions a wide berth in the future."

Indeed. While the Palm Pre situation is in the other direction (interop between alternative hardware and iTunes software, rather than alternative software with Apple hardware), it shows again that Apple will do whatever possible to stop people from making legal use of products they purchased.

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From Closed To Open: iPhone App Developer Skepticism Highlights Platform Trajectory

from the closed-vs.-open dept

I've been getting into some interesting discussions with people lately concerning open vs. closed platforms -- especially in light of the supposed "success" of Apple's iPhone app store, which is a very closed platform. And the point that I've tried to make is that you have to understand the trajectories of these things over time. At any given time, it's never difficult to find a closed platform that is successful. In fact, I'd argue that if you are reshaping a market, often it helps to have a closed platform initially to drive that market in a useful direction -- though, this can really only be accomplished by someone visionary (Steve Jobs certainly counts). The question is how does this play out long term. And the answer is that you can't stay closed too long, or open solutions will catch up and surpass you. We've seen this pattern multiples times (closed AOL --> open internet?).

Where this gets trickier is that the open solutions are almost always substandard to the closed solutions initially. In some ways, this is by design. The closed solution is often much cleaner and slicker, and so it gets a lot of the initial use. But, overtime, the limitations of the closed solutions become increasingly clear, and as people bump up against those limits, frustrations increase, and more and more effort is put towards making the open solutions better -- even to the point that eventually they exceed the closed solution. It's a messy process, but the point where momentum shifts is often a subtle one, and the proprietors of the closed solution usually don't recognize it's a problem until way too late.

I believe that's the case with the App Store. The iPhone itself did an amazing job pushing the state of the mobile phone/portable computer market forward. There are some people who like to mock it as nothing special, but that's unfair. The device itself was a huge leap forward in demonstrating what a phone could be, and many others are just starting to grasp what this means more than two years after the original was introduced. That said, we're seeing more and more evidence concerning frustrations on the limits imposed by Apple's closed system, such as the arbitrary rejections of apps.

James points us to a worthwhile post from an iPhone developer, noting how the process is getting to the point where it's less and less worth it to develop for that platform. You have to put in a ton of work, and then you have to wait for quite a while just to get the app approved (or rejected), and the whole process is quite arbitrary. With that in mind, developers have a lot less certainty, and it shows a growing interest in other platforms.

To date, admittedly, such alternatives really haven't been very good. There are other app stores (some more open than others), but none has really been able to build up much traction yet on other devices. But there's a huge opportunity here if someone else can make this happen (or, if there were a way to standardize across some of the competitors) and start doing a better job serving both developers and consumers. The closed solution helps define the initial market -- but the open solution almost always wins in the long run.

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The Reality: Not As Many Actual Apps In The iPhone App Store As You're Told

from the pumping-up-the-numbers dept

Years ago, when I worked for a company that was trying to do digital distribution of software apps, we had a competitor that used to claim that it had agreements to distribute 300,000 apps. We, on the other hand, had agreements for more like 3,000 apps, which certainly made us look at lot smaller. The problem? There weren't even 300,000 apps out there at the time. The other company had done some deals with clip art providers, and the counted each piece of clip art as an "app." But, in the numbers game, it really looked good (and bad for us).

I'm reminded of that story as Om Malik digs a bit into Apple's claim of 65,000 apps in its iPhone App Store, and points out how misleading this is, because a few providers are uploading bulk apps. These are really one app but they're differentiated by pulling different content from the web in each implementation:

These are typically local search or travel apps written by a single publisher. Molinker is one such example. It pulls content from Wikipedia and Flickr for a country or travel destination and renders it for viewing offline. Molinker offers more than 800 of such applications, at 99 cents a pop. Another bulk apps provider is GP Apps; it has 380-plus apps, each of which essentially takes a search word and marries it to Google Maps.

In reality, each of these is one app, with a single distinct instruction concerning what content to pull. But Apple gets to count them as a separate app to puff up the numbers (which is useful, given the growing competition from other phone app stores). But Om is correct. Such apps should be counted as a single app and the numbers of apps in the store should reflect that. Otherwise, someone could (for example) create an RSS-reader type app, where each one pulls a specific RSS feed. Then upload each one with the millions of different RSS feeds out there, and you could boost the app store's app count to million in no time. But that would be incredibly misleading.

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DC Police Chief Says It's 'Cowardly' To Monitor Speed Traps With Your iPhone

from the real-men-prefer-ignorance dept

Jeff Nolan points us to the news that Washington DC's police chief is denouncing users of an iPhone app to monitor speed traps/speed cameras/red light cameras as being "cowardly." Apparently, real men prefer ignorance about where the police are hiding to give them tickets for driving a couple miles per hour over the speed limit. The app actually sounds pretty useful, alerting users if they're near one of the cameras or a known speed trap. The creator of the software makes the most salient point:

"If police come against us, it's going to make them look like they are only [after] revenue"

Indeed. Shouldn't the police be happy that a software product is helping people slow down or avoid running red lights? How could that possibly be seen as a bad thing... or "cowardly"?

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