Steve Jobs’ Email Debate With Gawker Blogger
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I have this theory. You see, Apple (mostly) tends to not engage in the all-too-common tricks to try and con you out of your money. Store staff is typically honest and straight-forward, very little pushing and no hidden fees. Apple Care is probably a better value than most extended warrantees, and at least you know you're going to get Apple's level of customer service. Yes, there are lock-ins, but they've always been a trade-off in order to provide a better experience for their customers (i.e. DRM on iTunes sucks, but it was the only way to get the majors to play ball).
In general, Apple believes that you should give them money only if you believe their products are worth it. I think it's just that we've gotten so used to capitalism being such a hostile activity between producer and consumer that we forget that there was a time when you would've wanted to pay for something. So, it's no wonder that people want to think that Apple is somehow conning them into giving up their freedom or being locked-down unnecessarily.
Really...trust me...you don't have to buy an Apple product. No, seriously, you don't! So why don't you take your "freedom" and "open platform" rant and turn it into a why isn't anyone even close to competing on Apple's level missive.
I doubt this...
They're not unbeatable, but let's be honest, a lot of money has been thrown at the "kill Apple" by some very large players with a lot of money and experience. No one has done it yet - I'm not convinced it's really simply a matter of determination.
Palm trying to out-iPhone the iPhone, Microsoft trying to out-iPod the iPod, both of which weren't successful on the same level.
You either need to transcend their technology (which is difficult given the positive brand experience that Apple has) or compete in different fields to truly beat them. This just hasn't happened yet.
http://news.cnet.com/2100-1001-202143.html
Instead, try to make things people want.
Because, considering human nature, that is a much better defined and more static goal than "kill Apple."
Look at Zune -- First generation was ugly (eh, that's a personal opinion), but it had some features the iPod didn't. Second generation cleaned up the design a bit, was at least competitive on price, and had a feature that iPod's still to this day don't have: the ability to sync wirelessly...
...but was Microsoft ever really that into Zune? I mean, they made one strong push at the start, but then what? Microsoft is such a schizophrenic company these days. If they were really determined, I think they could've beaten Apple.
But, then, if they were really determined I think they'd have to do something radical...like change their name. I mean, come on! Microsoft? That's so...80s! Sure, changing their name would mean throwing away practically priceless brand identity, but I'll bet you it would improve their ability to compete with Apple in the consumer electronics market. What's that you say? They'd be stupid to toss the brand behind their Windows/Office monopoly just to compete in consumer electronics? Well, maybe...maybe they don't really want to kill the iPod...maybe the Zune was a half-hearted, ultimately misguided attempt...
...maybe they don't have the guts. I did hear about this one company that changed its name and abandoned the best selling personal music player so that they could introduce a new model with less capacity at a higher price because they believed that flash technology was better than mini-hardrives and then held their announce their annual developers' conference wouldn't cover their operating system even as sales of it are better then they've ever been before...
GUTS!
Anyway, Microsoft is a soft and pretty easy target. Your critique of Google's efforts with Android, please?
Palm's WebOS and HP's acquisition of them are gutsy. Google's development of ChromeOS is gutsy. Android ain't.
The Android team did most of what they could to repeat all the mistakes of NewtonOS (app transclusion), the Sidekick (mandatory incomplete instant OTA-only sync), and classic Windows Mobile (total fealty to fractious manufacturers and carriers) — and then they added some of their own absurd retardation on top of that (like anything to do with the SD card, Dalvik, OpenBinder, etc.).
App transclusion, in my mind, is a positive. The application stack on Android makes great sense. It creates a repeatable sequence of events that I find easy to navigate. My wife, who is very much non-technical agrees. She has a much easier time with Android than she did with iPhone(s).
While there are definitely issues with device fracturing it's an issue I'm hoping Google works to control more cleanly in the future. As it stands today you can safely target a small number of devices with more or less compatible specs and do quite well.
Android 2.2 continues to address a lot of these issues. The pace at which the platform has matured is very nice.
Overall, I think the user experience on Android is rapidly approaching (and in some cases surpasses) that of the iPhone. I do find it interesting that in my social world, 2/3 of my non-technical friends have Android phones (mostly Motorola Droids). Every single one of them is pleased as punch.
Similar to Zune, Google's efforts with Android seemed really promising at the start. They took a different approach, attempting to be open from the start...and then went, what? six months without an update to the "public" source? That was just the first sign of trouble though, and the first indication that Google was not willing to do what it took to stand up to the carriers and stick by their original idea: an open phone OS.
Since then, we've seen time and again how Google has essentially just thrown this OS out there and the handset makers and service providers are free to do with it as they please... Want to never update the OS for your users? eh, Google doesn't care. Want to provide a custom, potentially inferior, UI while still claiming the "Android" brand? bah, who cares about brand purity anyway, right?
Seriously, outside of the hacker community I don't know of anyone who identifies their "Android" phone as an "Andriod" phone. In other words, Google seems to have done a giant favor to the handset makers by doing their job for them and demanding almost nothing in return, including nothing to improve the situation for Google's customers. If I buy an HTC phone from Verizon running Android, who's making sure I get what I want? and not just what happens to be most convenient and profitable for the companies involved?
When Apple went carrier shopping, they went to Verizon first. Verizon was the biggest. Verizon had the best network. But Verizon demanded their typical suite of extortions and lock-downs on the phone. Did Apple cave? Nope! GUTS! They said, "You know what? AT&T might not have the best network, but we see this as a platform. Trust us, the call quality might not be great, but we're going to give you in a phone something no one has ever thought of giving you in a phone, and that's going to change everything!"
Oh, and Google is no less schizophrenic of a company at the moment than Microsoft. Worse even! They seem to be frantically trying to find some way of earning money that doesn't involve advertising, but at the same time they seem too timid to really put all their chips behind anything.
(edit: Oh, and yes...dropping "Computer" wasn't huge, but I also didn't mention the drastic change of processor architecture, the complete reinvention of their OS, cutting their product line down to 3 or 4 major SKUs...I could go on.)
It's about users, and creating a great experience for them. Developers getting upset about flash not running on the device, apps getting rejected, etc--that's just an unintentional side-effect of putting the user first.
It doesn't mean it's a large, non-zero positive value. I think recent developments in mobiles have shown that customers have orders of magnitude more leverage above everyone.
If there are users, the developers will come. Just because there are developers, doesn't guarantee users. This explains everything about Apple and Linux.
Why would you think a web browser connecting to website is a user using the OS of the website? Why would you make that connection?
Why?
Anyways, back on target. Users choose to use Linux all the time. Countless people choose Linux over other OS's for hosting their websites. Even people with little technical knowledge choose Linux over other options out there as their OS of choice.
And then you have Linux on mobile devices. Android isn't doing half bad, last I checked. And Android is based on Linux.
While your original argument is sound, your conclusion about Apple and Linux is off the mark.
Of course you don't care about violating my principles. But do you care about violating your own?
3.3.1 is not the only problem - there have been lots of bullshit rejections too.
As I understand, there are two Apple bureaucracies in the way: one which collects about a $100/year fee to let you go beneath a superficial level, and another where Apple bureaucrats examine your software before it can be conveniently shared. (Do I misunderstand?) This apparently even holds true with free software.
These bureaucracies make it difficult for interested users to move along the skill spectrum. They seem to enforce a strict separation between developers and users.
What makes it so frustrating, I think, is that most people like the Apple platform and experience. Giving it up and going somewhere else for ideological reasons sounds good until you're resetting your phone by pulling the battery, struggling to get hardware to work, asking why Linux still has no good mixed sound support layer, or other realities of less unified platforms.
We want Steve & his company to agree with us so that we can have our cake and also know that the cake is made according to our ideology.
If you make something well and it's non-trivial, the chances of it getting refused for any substantive reason (porn, stepping on Apple's toes, etc.) are actually pretty small.
I.e., there's small set of things you can't do, but an unlimited set of things you can do.
I called to complain and got a fairly hopeless uninterested manager.
It's frustrating, but mainly saddening, as I'd never seen anything quite like that before. A friend of mine bought his iPhone from a New Hampshire AT&T store the following week and the difference was amazing. Since when does a cell phone store have a less pushy sales team?
That's a non-argument. Like saying if you don't like America why don't you leave. It's designed to shut down criticism. He's saying you should accept (or reject) the entire package without looking at details.
> and turn it into a why isn't anyone even close to competing on Apple's level missive.
It's certainly not because open platforms are unsuccessful, if that's what you're implying. You can find any number of examples of this.
Bzzzt! But thanks for playing... Unfortunately there's this concept known as citizenship. You're sorta born into it (usually). Ask any immigrant you meet, and I'm pretty sure they'll tell you that getting over all the legal requirements associated with moving countries is non-trivial (and that's even considering that the US, for all the criticism it receives, has one of the more open immigration policies in the world).
You know what it takes to be free from the tyranny of the iPad? Don't buy one! So why is that a non-argument? Because you're entitled to an iPad under terms and conditions you feel are reasonable? Freedom comes with citizenship because you don't have a choice there...
> It's certainly not because open platforms are unsuccessful
Did I say that? Here, let me try this again: Apple makes a product and sells it for a price. You have a job (presumably) and make money to spend on products. You can buy Apple's product, or not. They're not trying to trick you by claiming this product is something its not. You, having not entered into a contract commissioning the product they are selling have precisely zero right to demand the product be anything other than what it is.
If you don't like the product, buy something else. If there's nothing else comparable to buy your choices are: 1. make something better yourself 2. ask somebody else to make something better for you to buy
So just like the advice "if you do not like the devices, buy something else" is valid, so is "if you do not like hearing critique, grow a thicker skin".
We are (mostly) from free countries, with freedom of expression and all that jazz.
A lot of people have been led to believe that their computing problems will all go away if they switch to Apple, which simply isn't true.
As long as Apple products either 1) play with open standards or 2) remain a niche, that's fine, they can lock in and lock down all their loving fans as much as they want. Not my game, but yeah, I buy other stuff and don't worry about it.
The worries start when they get big enough in something to have "positive network externalities" - network effects - that start influencing my life, whether I like it or not. For instance, if their phones managed to really take over the market, it would make it impossible not to deal with their crap for me, and I would at that point face the choice of either having to deal with "Steve's world" or simply not doing mobile phone stuff. I think I'd choose the latter, but it's not a choice I want to be forced into.
It's called network effects and it's one of the basic elements of information technology. That's why we care about what the idiots are buying and what the power-crazed shysters are selling them.
Ironically, the answer to your question is that many of the other large companies (e.g. Microsoft, Telcos) have already locked people in and don't even need to care about competing at Apple's level in order to rake in the cash, they just have to occasionally intervene to prevent competition from entering their market. Does that sound familiar in the context on Apple?
Creating something of value is hard. It takes dedication, iteration, consistent work, focus, and sacrifice. And to do it again and again? Rare.
Apple - regardless of motivation - has done that under Jobs. The sales show the result. I'd respect him, a doer, above a talker like Gawker any day.
In a nutshell, my respect goes to the builders and hackers of the world, not the talkers.
To put it differently: What has Jobs made in the past 10 years? I don't mean: what have employees over which he's had supervision as CEO made. What has Jobs made? Is he really a "builder and hacker"? My impression of the early days is that he wasn't even then: Woz was the builder and hacker; Jobs was the suit.
So, yes, in this case, the guy who took apple from the dumps to one of the biggest consumer devices companies in the world, he gets credit.
CEOs, and Deans, do of course have influence on success, but I don't think a blanket, "all credit goes to the man on the top" makes any sense. One needs to investigate the extent to which different people actually contributed, i.e. whose contributions were minor, moderate, necessary, etc. Some executives of successful companies deserve a lot of the credit; others don't; depending on why the company succeeded, and what they or other people did.
And if you want to take a real capitalist-agency view, the CEO is merely another employee, and ultimately the owners are responsible for success or failure.
I do think that many CEOs are approximately as involved in day-to-day operations as Deans are, with primary responsibility for the financial/governmental/organizational side of things (budgets, personnel, lobbying), and very little involvement in anything technical. Due to lots of family working in it, I have a decent impression of how much credit CEOs in the oil industry deserve for the success of their companies, and how much knowledge they have of petroleum engineering in even its high-level aspects; the answer in both cases is, not much.
Great companies or teams aren't happy accidents. They require leadership, vision, and execution. I wouldn't want to work with Jobs - but I admire what he's done. Apple would not be here without his vision and leadership.
On leadership, yeah, I do believe that ultimately, a leader is responsible and accountable. Whether it's the leader of a fire-team in Iraq, the leader of a country, or a four-man startup in Mountain View.
My very personal view: we'd be better off as a society if leaders were held responsible for success and failure. I see too many leaders / ceos / politicians taking credit for success and pointing to anybody but them for failures.
Additionally, he's presuming credit for the work Apple's engineers and designers have done. There is no doubt that Jobs guidance, and decision making has pulled Apple from the ashes. But he's not personally writing up engineering documents or slinging code.
My wife made some meatloaf today for the very first time. I thought it was pretty "great". Does that mean Jobs thinks that she's worth his consideration now? Or only if she puts the recipe out and made a metric ass load of money? I gave her the recipe, should I just take all the credit?
By defining "make" in a way that implies Jobs' participation in the process beyond those normally assigned to a CEO, and conflating credit and accountability with the process of actually "making" something, implies that he gets the credit for the late nights up writing code, testing out production designs, and all the other things that Jobs most certainly did not do is wrong.
If the world worked that way, with people taking credit for other's work, it would make for a pretty shitty place.
I, obviously, can't say what Jobs would consider great. I think that question is meaningless, though. If somebody asked me the same question Jobs asked, the definition of great would be my own.
I have no problem valuing the industrial engineers who figured out how to make the iPad 13 mm thick more than Jobs who decided it would be 13 mm thick.
[1] http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/2taste [2] http://blog.fawny.org/2010/04/12/appletype/
Anyway, if vision and negative taste are cheap and easy, why don't more tech companies seem to have them? It doesn't at all seem to me that the trait that makes Apple stand out is that they have engineers that are head and shoulders above the rest of the industry. Not at all. Apple's engineers are good, but hardly unique in their ability to make 13mm thick tablet computers. It's that they have taste and vision and they execute on top of them.
Agreed on more respect for the creators than for the talkers, though.
Jobs isn't exactly bound by divine law to uphold every blogger's rosy picture of the future of mobile computing. If he's bound by anything as CEO of Apple, it's to make the future of the company a great and profitable one, and you cannot argue that he is not doing that.
His is a common retaliation to Gawker's kind of criticism: the criticism that your creations ought to satisfy the consumer. This has always been bullshit. You should create what you think is right and then discover who the consumer is. The alternative is design by committee writ large and absurd, like Windows. You get something that even the creator hates.
Steve says the effect of "if you don't like it, buy something else" (almost in as many words, in fact). I hate that this sentiment isn't respected. So many people think they have a stake in something because they put it on their credit card.
This is a fairly standard "engineering" view of the world. It is also why 90% of startups go out of business.
> "The alternative is design by committee writ large and absurd."
That is one alternative, but certainly not the only alternative. You could also get out and talk to your potential customers, find out what their problems are and what it would take to solve them, then build what THEY think is right. The nice side effect is you'll already know who the consumer is.
As a customer, I do have a stake in something when I put down my credit card. If a company doesn't respect me as their customer, you bet I will not be repeating my business.
However, the business can (and SHOULD) decide if they want me as a customer. If they don't, they should make it clear. I think Apple does this very well: You are given the Apple sandbox that is very well defined. If you don't like it, don't buy Apple (yet, people still do, then bitch forever about it).
I think that every business should listen to its customers, though obviously not without having a grand vision in mind. That will mean losing customers, but each business has a risk at its heart.
I think rejecting Flash is part of a vision I'd want to buy into (and have, I type this on an iPad). There are going to me more tradeoffs like this, and in Apple's case I think they're going to be consistent with a product-centric vision.
So far I like that product and what it's turning into, so I think Apple is taking the right risk.
Despite what you may think of Jobs, he's pulled his company from horrible performance and has created value over and over. Anybody can talk smack and criticize. It takes will, dedication and passion do create.
Yes, let's hi-light and praise what's probably one of the most absolute jerkiest part of the exchange.
You don't have to make something popular to do something great. And no matter how great Jobs thinks he is, he didn't personally create most of the things Apple puts out -- the team of dedicated employees at Apple did. Jobs is deriding and belittling their work just the same.
I didn't read that Jobs thinks he's great or that his employees are stupid.
...nice attitude you've got there
What he's advocating for the app store may be a good thing, but it's certainly insane to call it freedom. Freedom is when you can do whatever you want. When you restrict stuff, for better or worse, that's less freedom. Taking away all meaning from the word "freedom" is a really bad idea.
There is simply no such thing as freedom from the option to watch porn if one wants to watch it. That's like freedom from truancy, or freedom from marijuana, or freedom from leaving your jail cell, enforced by the police. Some will argue those are good things, but none should argue those are freedoms.
They're the same kind of people who made the word "liberal" mean "socialist" or "interventionist" which is something of the opposite of its original and true meaning.
But the fact is freedom has a simple and plain meaning, and it's a meaning we need to have a word for. If you want to say that police stopping you from using marijuana is good, whatever, just make up some other word for that because that's the opposite of freedom.
Or if you think people have the right to "freedom from want" at the expense of others, it's nothing but a nasty and misleading rhetorical trick to call that freedom. It may or may not be good, but you're taking away people's freedom of choice when you force them to provide for the poor. Force is not freedom, it's force, end of story.
> the power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants without hindrance or restraint
Or in my words "not being restricted or forced".
"The phrase "freedom from" can have as an object: fear, want, hunger, pain, disease, stress, depression, debt, poverty, necessity, violence, war, advertising, addiction, etc."
You're using the word "true" here in the same sense as others do in phrases like "the one, true god". I'll step forward and be the heathen to the absolutist concept you idolize...
But the fact is freedom has a simple and plain meaning
...actually, like many words, it has several. I opened my dictionary and can count seven different nuances in the entry. Here's the one I believe it was used in, and I see no problem accepting the intended semantics:
"(freedom from) the state of not being subject to or affected by (a particular undesirable thing)"
[1] This instance of the word "freedom" means "not being restricted or forced"
I remember when my son went through a similar phase where he fell in love with the "one, true meaning" of various words, and the endless circular debates I enjoyed coming out of it. Good times. But even he, at a tender young age, learned that your freedoms and my freedoms can come in conflict with each other — that a utopia of everybody being infinitely free was not possible to realize.
I believe the common phrase used to resolve such cases is "your freedom to swing your fist ends at the tip of my nose".
Companies have a right to make design choices, set licensing terms, and decide what to stock in their stores (whether they be real or virtual). If you don't like their choices, you're free not to do business with them. If you don't want companies to have such freedoms, you and I will have to agree to disagree.
"We have created for the first time in all history a garden of pure ideology, where each worker may bloom, secure from the pests of any contradictory true thoughts."
Yes, Steve, save us.
You're missing his point. There's nothing on the iPad that prevents you from watching porn if you want to - Safari on iPad goes to the same porn sites as any browser anywhere else. What he's referring to is protecting your machine from porn adware, and providing effective parental controls.
But are you telling me parental controls -- i.e. software to restrict the freedom of children -- should in any way be called freedom? For better or worse, restricting people is not freedom. What I'm saying is it's perverse to use words to mean their opposites.
And BTW, as you surely know, porn apps are restricted in the app store. He thinks that is a way of protecting users from porn. It may well be the right decision, but protecting people from themselves is not increasing freedom.
There is the freedom to allow you to install Flash.
There is also the freedom from the burden of Flash.
My great fear about allowing Adobe to install Flash on the iPhone is that we will, again, be stuck with a buggy de facto standard with rebellion only in designer/developer websites while the big sites still use Flash. Forcing HTML5 forces competition in a much needed area (web video), even when it's competing devices that allows only one or the other.
By all means vote with your wallet and buy something that frees and empowers you. While you might not like it, I personally like Steve's freedoms.
I'm not claiming that the porn app restriction is increasing people's freedom. I'm claiming that when Jobs refers to "freedom from porn", he's referring to blocking the malicious pornographic adware that plagues exploited Windows machines, and providing effective parental controls.
Steve knows this, and -- considering he has porn in his App Store, behind the age limit -- he knows that his lines about porn on Android (also behind the age limit) are pure FUD. It's kind of embarrassing.
(Edit: added comma, added clarifications)
Before you say "don't be crazy, the magazines will be creating specially formatted documents that their readers will load", why can't Adobe make a "Flash Player" app that can load "specially formatted documents" (i.e SWF files) too? Is it merely because SWFs often contain ActionScript fun rather than Jobs' preferred JavaScript fun?
It's usually the same as the line between code and data. Yes, this line has been crossed before, but the practice is not without downsides one might want to avoid, and so a Turing Complete format like Postscript was supplanted by a static representation of the same drawing model in the form of PDF documents. Word macro viruses may not have done the same to the Doc format, but I still think it should be considered an antipattern.
Freedom from porn? Steve pulls no punches--what does porn mean to us? Is it something evil, something that only subjugated people will perform in? Does it provide an legitimate outlet for a different sort of sexual fetish? Who uses whom? I don't know the answers, but I'm sure there are a multitude, many of them with a nugget of truth.
I don't feel as if we need to be protected from ourselves. This is a statement--assuming that it was, in fact, reported in good faith--written by a man in a position of power which asserts a sort of moral judgement about our culture.
Please, don't misunderstand: Mr. Jobs is entirely correct in his statement that, "Microsoft had (has) every right to enforce whatever rules for their platform they want. If people don’t like it, they can write for another platform, which some did. Or they can buy another platform, which some did." Indeed, Apple appears (from my non-lawyerly perspective) to be exercising the same supposed right without serious challenge in a court of law.
I, myself, write on a MacBook. I enjoy using and working with the technology that Apple offers--but I'm not married to Jobs' vision. I wonder what the future holds, and Jobs' words don't paint a great picture for me.
What does the world he and Apple envision for us look like?
I think that's the main problem. It's not enough to simply have pure motives. Nobody actually understands the complete extent or realization of their motives, and whether or not they're truly 'pure'. Hence, the importance of listening.
You can 'envision' all you want, but if you don't have good feedback loops, you're going to run into serious problems.
Jobs wants elegant and beautiful apps on his "revolutionary" device. If it's not one or both of those things, then he's probably not happy with it and doesn't want users to see it.
Pure environment, pure performance ('not wanting garbage clunking up their beautiful and "magical" device' as you mention), and also pure as in honest.
But purity is not really a word you want to overload.... Fundamentally incoherent to conflate two ideas about purity. And really deeply problematic. Anyhoo, thx for your thoughts.
He implies that once you become a parent, porn is a taboo. It isn't in my neck of the woods, and I'd much rather my daughter stumbled across some people banging on the TV in future than most of the bullshit violence that passes for "entertainment" nowadays. But, hey, I'm European.
It's more like an entire state prohibiting any stores whatsoever except Walmart and then dictating Walmart can't sell pornography. So, sure, if you don't like it, you can up sticks and go a long way away (or just use Safari to get stuff off the Web, like anyone sane does).
For now. Do you really think Apple isn't trying to find a way to control that as well? They are. Safari is a prime example of Apple's attempts to exert control. Apple's interest in "open" stops at their business interests. They are open because at the moment, they have to be.
I immediately thought about the movie Thank you for smoking where this guy said that the best way to win a discussion was to prove the opponent wrong. You didn't have to be right, as long as he was wrong.
For some reason, though, I think I've seen this before... somewhere...
Do you really want to? or do you just want to pontificate on the internet using this as a coy rhetorical device? Because, you know, if you really wanted to...well, you might just be successful!
Steve is not being overly controlling... You are all looking at his "blocking" of Flash as a closed-minded policy. Consider this: Do Active-X controls run on the iPhone (or Android)? No -- they never have, and this is for technical AND business reasons. It would be fairly easy to support them -- just have WINE as part of OS X. The reason Apple doesn't do this is because they would be letting the fox into the henhouse and adding unnecessary bloat to a mobile device. Everyone seems to get this, which is why you don't hear complaints from all of the Java and Silverlight people about not being able to code for iPhones.
To another point: Ask yourselves -- What is Adobe's business model? They make NO money on the Flash plugin. It's free. They make their money on tools. If I'm the Adobe CEO, I would strive to have every app in the world written in Flash. Now who is close-minded? And by the way, Adobe could solve this VERY easily by making their tools output in HTML5, etc. Why don't they want to do this? Because they feel that HTML5 might be slow to adopt features that they already have. Oh wait -- now the shoe is on the other foot! Adobe realizes that the innovation of their platform would be stifled by any lack of features in HTML5. So why don't they have their tools output Objective-C code which could then be compiled by Apple's tools? My understanding of section 3.3.1 is that this is allowed.
Developer tools are the gateway to a platform. Microsoft knows this -- which is why they have some of the most mature tools around. When Microsoft adds a feature to their operating system, why do you as developers feel comfortable waiting for Flash, Java, etc to create an interface to that new feature? If I were a software company, I would embrace a platform and strive to be the best on it -- use every new feature to its fullest extent. Guys, this is what you get paid to do -- innovate, using whatever tools are necessary! It's about the end user experience. This is what makes an app sell.
So what Steve is gambling on, and it's a bold yet well-considered move, is that the iPhone/iPad/iPod platform (hardware + OS) will always be slightly ahead of competitors. And the developers who agree will retrain themselves to take advantage of the platform. Development tool vendors will do the same. If Apple were to release a killer hardware feature on the iPhone (which is their business model to do so!), how long would it take for Flash to incorporate it into not only their player but also their development tools? Would they wait until Android implemented it too before doing the release? This harms Apple, it harms developers, and it harms consumers.
Flash has a cross-platform, least-common-denominator approach to computing. This is a thing of the past!
You might be saying to yourselves that Microsoft never blocked anything -- Flash, Java, RealPlayer, etc. Well, they have a different business model. They want people to consider Windows as the defacto OS platform, and they want to support an ecosystem of ISVs that fill in all the gaps. It's a very well-conceived plan, and it only works because they have a near monopoly on the desktop. If they did not, then their business model would not work. Imagine if you will a world where Linux itself was not free AND they charged for the development tools AND those were the only tools you can use to develop for the platform (as is DevStudio). As you can see, Linux's lack of market share would make this an untenable business model.
Why do you think they charge money for their development tools? Eclipse, XCode, and dozens of others are free of charge (yes, I know there is a free version of DevStudio but it is missing some key features). They charge money because they CAN. Adobe charges money because they CAN. If Apple were to charge money for XCode, it would kill the platform. Think about this anytime you are bashing Apple for the high perceived cost of their computers relative to humdrum PCs -- you're getting software that was developed by companies that got the tools for free, and this means you will get better software.
Flash developers, you are right to be up in arms over the omission of Flash as part of the iPhone OS. But you're directing your anger at the wrong party. First, I understand that you are loathe to have to learn a new toolset (which you feel is inferior to Flash) to get your apps out there. Years of experience that you have will help to bridge that gap! You are good developers and you will find a way. You should instead be asking yourselves, why are there no 3rd-party Flash development tools that compare to Adobe's?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Flash#Third-party_tools
Why is the .SWF format not entirely open?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.swf#Licensing
Adobe has great tools that create compelling apps -- there's no denying that.
Microsoft has great tools that create compelling apps -- there's no deny that.
And Apple has great tools too. Closed systems are a thing of the past (remember when Microsoft had "hidden" APIs that their apps used?). By being forced to expose the hidden APIs, it removed the need for cross-platform emulation/library layers. Yes, it's more work for you, but c'mon, you're good developers, the best at what you do. You will find a way.
It seems to suggest that at Apple he has no opportunity to have such debates. Everyone is too scared, it's almost like he's surrounded by yes-men and is therefore astonished at the negative response he's getting. "Why can't people just understand me?" type of thing.
Here's a thought. If no one at Apple is actually standing up to Jobs, and since he seems open to outside input via email, perhaps it's a good idea to let him know how you feel? Maybe he actually doesn't get how much he's turned Apple into the 1984 Big Brother that Apple was supposed to vanquish?
How is this e-mail chain in any way evidence that Apple has not had internal debate or that no one has the guts to disagree with Steve Jobs?
Apple has made a lot of really ethically questionable moves, and is being quite hypocritical in many cases. This is obvious to me, and others. So when someone on the outside brought this up, Steve Jobs responded in a way that almost seems like it's the first time he's having this debate. That's just my take on it.
Or do you really think that many at Apple had this same or similar kind of debate with Jobs, and then he's willing to publicly have it again with Tate? His arguments are just too weak and unpolished for it, and it's surprising he's responding to Tate at all if he's already deliberated it internally and settled on his position.
I'm willing to believe that as a possibility. As in physically possible. You don't find that at least a little surprising though? Really?
Selling people a product that will give them cancer and telling them it makes them look cool is an ethically questionable move. Restricting the programming languages that can be used to develop for your platform is not.
Umm.. Yeah. I've come to the conclusion that this debate isn't worth participating in anymore. People don't get the bullshit Apple is pulling or are willing to look past it because of the superb quality of the iDevices and the App Store gravy train. It's hard to explain it in a paragraph. And when you explain it in detail people don't listen. You get comments like the above. You get people saying "Flash sucks" when Flash has nothing to do with it. I just don't have the time anymore, sorry. Bury away.
Livelihoods? Or shots at a quick buck for relatively little work building on the back of someone else's invention?
Apple doesn't legally owe gold rush developers a livelihood, but the ethics are not so clear cut, especially when they pull a Facebook-like policy switch after people have already invested.
...but honestly, how many devs would've turned around and walked away if they had?
2) Apple changes section 3.3.1 in the developer agreement for OS 4.0.
3) You have to spend the time and possibly money to learn a new language if you want your application to work on OS 4.0, or forgo your previous investment of time and money. Most iPhone OS devices will be upgraded to 4.0 relatively quickly.
Legal? Probably. Justified from Apple's point of view? Likely. Reasonable, fair or ethical? That's pretty subjective.
See, this right here^^^ This is the key: why did you decline the offer from BigCorp? Only two reasons I can think of...
1. You were naive and thought you could make a quick buck with less work by developing for the iPhone platform without doing it the way Apple suggested you should.
2. You had the drive to strike out and make it on your own, BigCorp be damned!
If it's #1, you only have yourself to blame. If it's #2, you're not about to let something like 3.3.1 stand in your way...
Now he has to either train them too in Obj-C or recruit a new bunch of Obj-C developers.
To top it all off, he must stop improving his product and start rewriting it in Obj-C, while his competitor who started off with Obj-C doesn't have to. There was nothing in the previous version of the OS agreement to suggest that cross-compilation would somehow be banned in future versions. All because Steve Jobs, loves Obj-C. Now how isn't that screwing people's livelihood?
Take out the job offer from bigcorp from my example. You're still going to have to invest in hardware and probably ramp-up.
We absolutely do. You won't find a more ardent opponent of 3.3.1 than me. But that doesn't mean I accuse every person underneath Steve Jobs of kowtowing to his every whim without a whiff of disagreement, or claim that Jobs doesn't permit dissent based on absolutely zero evidence. I can disagree with and express opposition to a particular action of Apple's without making it into a personal vendetta.