Microsoft: iPad’s Closed Platform is “Humorous” | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft: iPad’s Closed Platform is “Humorous”

technologizer.com

16 pointspohl23 comments

No Microsoft, this is what's humorous:

Developing applications for the iPhone and iPad is expensive, he said, because iPhone OS uses the Objective C language rather than Microsoft’s more pervasive .NET platform.

Same here, I literally laughed out loud at that, and read it to a nearby programmer. I've used .NET and Cocoa, he's used .NET, and we both think it's a laughable claim. Personally, I vastly prefer Cocoa's API / frameworks to .NET.

Programming for Apple products is frickin easy.

I thought the same thing. Why would a device created by apple run on a platform created by Microsoft.

It can also run Mono, so this makes very little sense.

"With Microsoft’s platforms, developers can build whatever they want"

Except on the Zune & Xbox platforms that is.

If you can compete with the million dollar budgets of video game companies I don't think anybody can stop you from developing for Xbox.

Actually, the Xbox development model is more similar to iPhone than MS would like to admit:

- Cost per-seat to even get your hands on the SDK, check. $99/year for Apple, rumors put the 360 Dev Kit at $10K+ per seat, which is in line with historical numbers for Playstation also.

- Strict review and approval process, often taking a very long time. Developers have long complained that much-needed patches have been submitted to MS, but are stuck in approval/QA limbo.

- Strict control over distribution channel, onerous rules on what can or cannot be included.

- "App Store" model where MS handles all transactions between customer and developer.

Microsoft certainly can. You have to accept their license agreement and possibly an NDA to develop on the Xbox platform. I don't think the exact terms are public knowledge. We can look at the XNA license/participation terms for some hints though:

"Microsoft reserves the right to take down a game retroactively without notice. Microsoft encourages peer reviewers to report objectionable content in a game."

"Peer reviewers will reject your game if:

-Your game contains prohibited content, which is content not allowed on Xbox LIVE services -You misrepresent what is in the game play or in the promotional materials for the game. All games must have a trial mode that showcases the actual game experience. If you fail to do so, or use this method to provide your game for free, your game will be failed in the Peer Review process. Games are NOT available for free currently on the system. This system is NOT a video hosting service and should not be used as such. -The promotional content for your game ( for example, the box art, description, banner or title) is not appropriate for all ages on Xbox LIVE Marketplace -The game crashes, it has too many bugs, or it is technically defective in some way"

If I understand this correctly, you can't make free games for Xbox? At least you can make free apps for the App Store.

Worse, you can't make free updates for Xbox games. MS demands that all additional content cost money - this has been a point of contention between Valve and MS recently, as they are in the habit of releasing frequent, small content packs their games, and the pricing structure prevents this.

I'd like a source for that claim, because there are some free DLCs for XBOX 360 ...

I don't think you even need that with the XBox Live Indie Games project.

I love Gruber's assessment:

Yes, there is much jealousy from iPhone developers at the sacks full of money being made by Zune and Windows Mobile app developers.

http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/01/29/msft-ipad

Show us how to design a mobile platform, Microsoft.

I think that the author is completely right about the iPad (the names still makes me grimace) being an appliance. As are all of Apple's products, more or less. Microsoft is a little off the mark on this one, but it IS their job to criticize their competitors. I look forward to seeing their technological rebuttal since they sound so cock-sure. They better act fast.

> "but it IS their job to criticize their competitors"

I disagree - both Google and Apple in the past have been very polite about their competitors' products. MS (particularly Ballmer) has a long and colorful track record of badmouthing competitors, only to have to eat their words later. Some of what MS has done for competing platforms/products has really bordered on smear campaigning, which IMHO is something that is far from standard procedure in our industry.

Well... Microsoft has had tablets around that can do all of those things for a while. They can do more, actually. No, they do not look as sleek nor are they as targeted. However, all it takes is one hardware vendor to put together something solid together and MS has a strong competitor to the iPad that doesn't tie one down and could provide a much richer applications world.

This attitude is why so few companies even come close to replicating the Apple experience. It's not about "what the device can do", it's about elegance and design from end to end. No one will ever make a Win tablet that can compare to the iPad because the applications will not target that specific device, they will always have a watered down UX.

Maybe I just don't get it, but if the opportunity is there, then what stops an established company or a startup from making a tablet that does exactly this but is more flexible? Probably easier with a linux variant? My point is that this device could likely easily be replicated with a ux that treats the owner like an owner. By restricting everything so much, Apple has seriously limited its options -- especially in enterprise computing.

I don't know if the tablet market will progress the same way as the smart phone os market has, but I doubt Apple has hit a home run here. I look for a "Symbian tablet" or RIM-like product to take the majority of the market share and profits.

I don't think that's true.

Apple are excellent designers. They've designed a pretty solid interface that is very specifically not OSX. MS tablets run Windows.

I believe that's the difference between the two and why Microsoft will never have a successful product in this space. That's the same reason Apple ate Palm and Windows Mobile's lunches: Windows Mobile is trying to be Windows on a small screen.

I'm sure Bill and Steve B sat in board room meetings patting each other on the back for making Windows run on a cell phone. Everyone knows the Windows UI so it can't fail! Think of all the enterprise customers!

Microsoft and other companies focus on protecting their empires. Apple focuses on making more usable products. A hardware manufacturer isn't going to be able to fix Windows/PCs enough to compete with the iPad.

I don't disagree. As we've discussed in previous threads on the iPad, many are opposed to it's closed-system. Everyone is touting open-system as the better approach, and I definitely support that as the way to go, but few are discussing the best way to meld an open-system with turn-key simplicity. Microsoft products lack the industrial design that Apple is famous for as well. So I agree with you when you say that a well-designed, open-system product with turn-key activation and networking with other devices will certainly subvert Apple's domination of this market.

I wonder if Brandon will stop by to comment on this: http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=BrandonWatson

Well, not here, but he has commented on this: http://www.manyniches.com/fun-stuff/broken-tablets/

When did fanboys become apologist?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com