In an open letter (also available directly from the apple website, here) to the world, posted on engadget, Steve Jobs attempts to layout his reasoning for why no flash and other "third party" libraries on the iPhone, iTouch, and iPad.
I am going to pick a little on point number six from his letter:
"Our motivation is simple – we want to provide the most advanced and innovative platform to our developers, and we want them to stand directly on the shoulders of this platform and create the best apps the world has ever seen. We want to continually enhance the platform so developers can create even more amazing, powerful, fun and useful applications. Everyone wins – we sell more devices because we have the best apps, developers reach a wider and wider audience and customer base, and users are continually delighted by the best and broadest selection of apps on any platform."
Yes Steve - this can be thought of as a laudable goal. The problem, you see, is choice. In some respects "...if you build it, they will come..." holds true when you talk about cool features and tools to make applications. However, making the choice to not allow ANY THIRD PARTY tooling (flash not withstanding) you are restricting all the other people that might not want to learn Objective-C in order to program for the platform. True - there are plenty of people willing to use your tools, as the number of applications currently available demonstrates, but if the number of applications 'COULD' be 10X as large if you allowed Java, C#, other languages into the space without compromising quality (which you shouldn't be able to control in the first place Steve) would you say that's a good trade off?
I am not sure I buy into the simplistic argument that Apple is using to draw this particular line in the sand.
...To make sure people can 'always' make use of the latest and greatest platform features...
Is it not the case that anyone that wants to do that should be able to make the CHOICE to utilize Objective-C as their platform for coding applications. However, if I am not always interested in the latest or greatest features, essentially I don't care about the cutting edge, I just want an application to work... why can't that type of thing be done in another language and without compromising the supposed quality/availability that you taut.
Sorry Steve, I am just not buying it - literally and figuratively.
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Monday, April 12, 2010
The Great Debate
So - The new shiny thing is out for the iPhone, OS4, which contains a change in the Terms-of-Service that seems to have everyone talking. There are some great posts discussing the TOS changes from John Gruber over on Daring Fireball, here and here. There is also some additional commentary, including an email exchange with Steve Jobs, over on the TaoEffect - here with a follow up due to user comments here.
What I have been wondering reading all of the various commentary about the TOS change is this:
Other then form factor, what makes the iPhone platform so substantially different from a MacBook?
You could talk about computing power, the iPhone obviously has a lot less over all computing power then a MacBook. Yes, very true. So what - it still seems to run programs just fine.
You could talk about screen size, the iPhone screen is obviously a lot smaller then your typical MacBook @ 15 inches or so. Yet somehow the information from the programs on the iPhone still seems to make it to the user just fine.
You could talk about the lack of multitasking, however as I recall macs well into their golden age, before OSX came out, used to do cooperative multitasking (which arguably gave the appearance of multitasking without really doing it) - which with a few tweaks looks alot like the multitasking being introduced in iPhone OS4.
On the MacBook I can write applications in:
Ruby
Python
C
C++
Objective-C
Java
Perl
Erlang
JavaScript
And the list goes on.
On the iPhone I can write applications in:
C
C++
Objective-C
JavaScript (WEBKIT Only)
So the only substantial difference is the programming languages I can utilize to write for the platform? Ok, I admit that this is an oversimplification of the situation, but it does make for a good talking point.
So why is the iPhone so limited in regard to the languages one is allowed to use to write applications? I think the answer is simple, Apple is attempting to control every single aspect of how their software/hardware is used in the name of 'Good user experience'. Apple has, as a company, always tended to lean in the direction of 'control everything' - take their historical stance on mac clones as a for instance. However the control Apple is attempting to wield on the iPhone is much tighter then that of the computers that they also market. I can write in any language I choose on the MacBook - but I need Xcode, Objective-C and Apples blessing to write an iPhone app. The platforms are not different enough to warrant the 'language' restriction. Add to the concern that the last item on the above list, Apple's blessing, can be very difficult to come by if your application happens to compete with Apple's interpretation of 'good user experience' (i.e. if what you write using the tools they say, competes in anyway with the built in functionality).
It seems to me that Apple is not interested in the user experience - just their own bottom line... like any other market driven company. Apple's stance seems to be working, at least for now, based on their current stock price as of the time of this post. I do question however if the stance Apple has taken will work in the long term - people may start to take notice and do what I have done... vote with my dollars and not purchase the things that they produce. Essentially avoiding the 'Apple Tax'. Make no mistake, this is not an Apple bashing exercise - I believe that they do make a very unique user experience and a lot of coders could learn from the 'little' things and polish on development that they do so well. I just think that those things don't make up for a corporate stance that is attempting to squeeze everything that isn't C based on a Mac out of the iPhone development picture.
What I have been wondering reading all of the various commentary about the TOS change is this:
Other then form factor, what makes the iPhone platform so substantially different from a MacBook?
You could talk about computing power, the iPhone obviously has a lot less over all computing power then a MacBook. Yes, very true. So what - it still seems to run programs just fine.
You could talk about screen size, the iPhone screen is obviously a lot smaller then your typical MacBook @ 15 inches or so. Yet somehow the information from the programs on the iPhone still seems to make it to the user just fine.
You could talk about the lack of multitasking, however as I recall macs well into their golden age, before OSX came out, used to do cooperative multitasking (which arguably gave the appearance of multitasking without really doing it) - which with a few tweaks looks alot like the multitasking being introduced in iPhone OS4.
On the MacBook I can write applications in:
Ruby
Python
C
C++
Objective-C
Java
Perl
Erlang
JavaScript
And the list goes on.
On the iPhone I can write applications in:
C
C++
Objective-C
JavaScript (WEBKIT Only)
So the only substantial difference is the programming languages I can utilize to write for the platform? Ok, I admit that this is an oversimplification of the situation, but it does make for a good talking point.
So why is the iPhone so limited in regard to the languages one is allowed to use to write applications? I think the answer is simple, Apple is attempting to control every single aspect of how their software/hardware is used in the name of 'Good user experience'. Apple has, as a company, always tended to lean in the direction of 'control everything' - take their historical stance on mac clones as a for instance. However the control Apple is attempting to wield on the iPhone is much tighter then that of the computers that they also market. I can write in any language I choose on the MacBook - but I need Xcode, Objective-C and Apples blessing to write an iPhone app. The platforms are not different enough to warrant the 'language' restriction. Add to the concern that the last item on the above list, Apple's blessing, can be very difficult to come by if your application happens to compete with Apple's interpretation of 'good user experience' (i.e. if what you write using the tools they say, competes in anyway with the built in functionality).
It seems to me that Apple is not interested in the user experience - just their own bottom line... like any other market driven company. Apple's stance seems to be working, at least for now, based on their current stock price as of the time of this post. I do question however if the stance Apple has taken will work in the long term - people may start to take notice and do what I have done... vote with my dollars and not purchase the things that they produce. Essentially avoiding the 'Apple Tax'. Make no mistake, this is not an Apple bashing exercise - I believe that they do make a very unique user experience and a lot of coders could learn from the 'little' things and polish on development that they do so well. I just think that those things don't make up for a corporate stance that is attempting to squeeze everything that isn't C based on a Mac out of the iPhone development picture.
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