{"id":2457,"date":"2010-04-11T09:56:20","date_gmt":"2010-04-11T08:56:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/?p=2457"},"modified":"2010-04-11T09:56:20","modified_gmt":"2010-04-11T08:56:20","slug":"apple-locks-down-its-platform-just-a-little-bit-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/2457-apple-locks-down-its-platform-just-a-little-bit-more.html","title":{"rendered":"Apple locks down its platform just a little bit more"},"content":{"rendered":"

How much money is enough? \u201cJust a little bit more\u201d, said J D Rockefeller; and Apple is taking a similar line with respect to control of its mobile platform. It is no longer enough that all apps are approved by Apple, sold by Apple, and that a slice of any sales goes to Apple. It now wants to control how you make that app as well, stipulating the tools you use and prohibiting use of others<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

Applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

On the face of it, bad news for third-party companies like Adobe, whose Flash to iPhone compiler is released tomorrow, Novell\u2019s Monotouch, or Unity3D<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

JavaScript and C# scripts are compiled to native ARM assembler code during the build process. This gives an average performance increase of 20-40 times over interpreted languages. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

What is interesting is not only the issue itself, but the way debate is being conducted. I don\u2019t know how Novell is getting on in \u201creaching out to Apple\u201d concerning Monotouch<\/a>, but as far as I can tell Apple introduced the restriction by revising a clause in a contract shown only to paid-up iPhone developers and possibly under NDA, then seeing if anyone would notice. Now that sparks are flying, CEO Steve Jobs is participating by one-line emails to a blogger<\/a> referencing a post by another blogger<\/a>, John Gruber.<\/p>\n

Further, his responses do not altogether make sense. Gruber\u2019s post is long \u2013 does Jobs agree with all of it? Gruber says that Apple wants the lock-in:<\/p>\n

\n

So what Apple does not want is for some other company to establish a de facto standard software platform on top<\/em> of Cocoa Touch. Not Adobe\u2019s Flash. Not .NET (through MonoTouch). If that were to happen, there\u2019s no lock-in advantage.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Probably true, but not the usual PR message, as lock-in is bad for customers. How much are inkjet cartridges? I suspect Jobs was thinking more of this part:<\/p>\n

\n

Cross-platform software toolkits have never \u2014 ever \u2014 produced top-notch native apps for Apple platforms. Not for the classic Mac OS, not for Mac OS X, and not for iPhone OS. Such apps generally have been downright crummy.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

As it happens, I think Gruber, and by extension Jobs, is wrong about this; though it all depends what you mean by the output of a cross-platform toolkit. Firefox? NeoOffice? WebKit, as found in Safari? Jobs says:<\/p>\n

\n

We\u2019ve been there before, and intermediate layers between the platform and the developer ultimately produces sub-standard apps and hinders the progress of the platform.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Well, we know he does not like Java – \u201cthis big heavyweight ball and chain\u201d \u2013 but there are many approaches to cross-platform. In fact, I\u2019m not even sure whether Jobs means technical<\/em> layers or political<\/em> layers. As Gruber says:<\/p>\n

\n

Consider a world where some other company\u2019s cross-platform toolkit proved wildly popular. Then Apple releases major new features to iPhone OS, and that other company\u2019s toolkit is slow to adopt them. At that point, it\u2019s the other<\/em> company that controls when third-party apps can make use of these features.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The point is: we don\u2019t know what Jobs means. We might not know until apps hit the app store and are approved or not approved. It is a poor way to treat third parties who are investing in your platform; and that was one part of the reason for my initial reaction: it stinks<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The other reason is that I enjoy the freedom a personal computer gives you, to install what you want, from whomever you want, and the creativity that this inspires. At the same time, I can see the problems this has caused, for security, for technical stability, and for user experience. Personal computing seems to be transitioning to a model that gives us less control over the devices we use, and which makes a few privileged intermediaries more powerful and wealthy than anything we have seen before.<\/p>\n

In the end, it is Apple\u2019s platform. Apple does not yet monopolise the market – though my local supermarket has iPods in all sorts of colours but no other portable music player on sale \u2013 and the short answer is that if you don\u2019t like the terms, don\u2019t buy (or develop for) the product.<\/p>\n

As Apple\u2019s market share grows, the acceptability of its terms will lessen, and protests will grow louder, just as they did for Microsoft \u2013 though I hesitate to make that comparison because of the many differences between the two companies and their business models. Having said which, looking at Zune and Windows Phone 7, Microsoft seems to like Apple\u2019s business model enough to imitate it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How much money is enough? \u201cJust a little bit more\u201d, said J D Rockefeller; and Apple is taking a similar line with respect to control of its mobile platform. It is no longer enough that all apps are approved by Apple, sold by Apple, and that a slice of any sales goes to Apple. It … Continue reading Apple locks down its platform just a little bit more<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,8,34,47,49,80,1],"tags":[123,158,501],"class_list":["post-2457","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adobe","category-apple","category-flash","category-iphone","category-java","category-software-development","category-uncategorized","tag-adobe","tag-apple","tag-iphone"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2457","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2457"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2457\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2457"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}