What Apple Just Did: What if music had tools restrictions and a review process?

There's many instances of media where I look at older versions of the product and think, "man, why is this quality absent from their product today?". I didn't consciously notice it when the snowball was still near the top of the mountain. But eventually the snowball got big enough for me to bail.

"Closed systems canot possibly equal the innovation and development of open!!'"

I always look at the internet as proof that an open system that was successful because it was open. The same with email. Both of these systems was more successful than anything Apple could every do.

In the world of closed v.s. open, closed is generations behind in the innovation and success department.

    The insistence on closed that seems so anathema to much
    of the history of software development may in fact be a
    good thing for the end user

Closed systems generally aim to give you a capability quickly, but lock you in as they do. Open systems are often a dog to get working, but once you do you find the capability continues to pay dividends.

- Visual basic lets you create apps quickly but there's a lot of things you can't do, and your platform might be taken away from you.

- Microsoft word allows anyone to create small, well-formatted document with low training. But there's tooling lock-in, it's unwieldy to have many people work on documents, it's hard to transform your data.

- Iphone lets you get easy access to music and apps. But they won't transfer forever; long-term upgrade options are even more complicated than in consulting software because Apple would need to participate in maintenance.

Something we've seen with open platforms is that they move slowly but rarely lose ground. The PC architecture and unix are examples.

Here's the thing: Apple is a platform company, and in essence, it's been in the business of screwing those that are hostage to its platform at least since its renaissance. Apple doesn't want those in its ecosystem to make much money, because it wants you to give it your money.

That's why it said "Rip. Mix. Burn." with respect to musicians' work back in 2001 (to much cheering and adulation from developers): they were quite happy for you to get all your music for free (at the expense of the artists and labels), and instead allocate your disposable income to their hardware devices. When they opened iTunes, they added insult to injury by not allowing musicians to control how their music gets packaged and priced. I don't remember anyone complaining about the Apple's hard-driving tactics then.

And lo, now they're treating third-party developers with the same contempt they previously reserved for musicians -- and suddenly the Hacker Community is up in arms. Plus ca change...

> Maybe all of us 'rockstar' developers should be careful what we wish for.

It's what you wished for ten years ago that put you in the quandary you now find yourselves in. Apple's stranglehold on music is what gave it the wherewithal to extend into other areas.

Hacker News, you've just discovered what it feels like when someone's got you by the balls.

In this case Apple is the music label, the music shop and the people that make the CD player. And that's the problem. If there were multiple app stores for the iPhone then nobody would care if Apple chose to filter the apps in their store.

Apps--or music--made with limited construction kits tend towards sameness: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pablum

(In that sense, both Ableton and GarageBand could be considered construction kits, so perhaps a better analogy would be if iTunes banned sequenced music, only allowing music musicians personally play?)