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Comment by ErrantX | Hacker News Reader

This seems a well argued point; but when you break it down not so much,.

First off I think it does something of a disservice to Jobs - because if the theory is true I don't think it fits in with the vision he has.

The thing is that Jobs does have a vision for the iOS platform, and I don't think that is: They want hundreds of thousands of decent or even mediocre or crappy apps. In fact as far as I can make out that is exactly what they don't want.

Jobs seems to much prefer the idea of a smaller number of really really classy apps. And that seems (to me anyway) to be reflected in their changes to the developer terms.

To claim the reverse is kind of going against years of Apple branding (clean, classy, slick).

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I would rephrase the argument as "Apple wants thousands of good or decent apps, but none so great so as to pull the platform into its own orbit."

This rings true especially in light of Jobs' statements about being able to innovate without being beholden to 3rd party vendors.

As to OP's statements about not building a company on iOS apps, this is once again better stated as not building a company on a single iOS app. If you have a bunch of good apps (games or not) then this is much more sustainable, as they pose less of a "threat" to the platform.

Let's examine killer apps that actually were a threat to a platform.

Microsoft Office - At one time, Apple would've been very unhappy if Microsoft took this away from the Mac. MS Office is very dominant in its niche, almost a monopoly.

Adobe Photoshop - Photoshop is a defacto standard. There were other image manipulation programs, but only one considered suitable for professional use. There are times when Adobe could've really hurt Apple by giving the Mac release short shrift.

Metrowerks - At one point, the only way to write code for the Mac.

All of Apple's recent actions are consistent with the intent to prevent another monopoly on their turf. They do not want someone else to exclusively control a killer app on their new platform, because when this happened in the past, they were at someone else's mercy.

Office on the Mac, lways (to me) felt like a kludge. It did not work like other Mac apps, it did not look like other Mac apps, and yet it did not work quite like it did on Windows either.

There was Internet Explorer for the Mac also, it was even a bigger kludge than Office.

I guess Apple thought they needed Office and IE at the time, but surely not because it was great software. In retrospect, I wonder if it really made any difference at all.

I guess Apple thought they needed Office and IE at the time, but surely not because it was great software. In retrospect, I wonder if it really made any difference at all.

They always have and always will need Office as long as it is the dominant tool used in professional environments. Apple does not need it to be any good, but it needs it to be there. It is one of the big separators between OSX and any other non-Windows OS, Apple needs it as on their list of offerings in order to be able to pitch itself more easily.

Not everybody is savvy enough to know of possible Office alternatives (especially not the Apples "lifestyle crowd" audience), so not having the option of using Office would be very easy marketing against OSX, especially considering that their main campaign until recently has been "Get a Mac".

As much as many people don't like the thought of it, Office is, and will for a very long time be, the prime application used in businesses worldwide.

Excellent point.

You could also refined it to "Apple wants thousands of good or decent apps, but none so great so as to pull the platform into its own orbit and removing great-but-threatening apps is going to have to have priority over getting the good or decent apps"

I disagree. Jobs wants to avoid overtly disgusting apps, like porn, but the App Store is littered with horrible user experiences.

The OP makes a valid point, which is that Apple does fear that the mobile space ends up being driven by a handful of third-party apps, rather than by the device/OS (and the AppStore is part of the OS).

So let me be clear. What is a killer app? A killer app is something that drives you to buy a device. The web browser is a killer app. Office was a killer app. Today there is no killer app IN the Apple App Store. The App Store is the killer app. And Apple controls it.

What Apple doesn't want is for Adobe or MS or Google or StartupX to create the killer app on the iPhone as they could diminish the importance of the iOS platform (since presumably this app will also shortly become available on other platforms).

Of course there are some low-quality apps on the App Store, but what do people seriously expect Apple to do? Start rejecting Apps because some reviewer doesn't like it? That is the mother of all 'uncertainty' scenarios that undermine developer confidence (much more serious than the smaller risk that your App is blocked for breaching some obscure/vague part of the licence).

The only thing Apple can realistically do to affect the general quality levels is make broad decisions like no porn, no Flash, no technology X, Y, or Z.

Yes, Apple could have a cleaner process. Here's an example:

1) First submit application spec. The spec must get approved. That way you know the basic idea is fine. 2) Have a clear set of requirements -- largely automatable. MS does this for logo requirements and for the consoles. Devs can test against this even before submitting. This would be things like battery consumption, CPU utilization, stress, etc... 3) Apple has discretion to block apps for extenuating circumstances -- this should be rare, like an App not implementing the spec at all.

This would lead to even greater quality, decreased uncertainty, and increased transparency.

Your kidding right? No company in their right mind is going to submit an application spec for their app to Apple before they have a releasable app. You don't give your unique product/idea away to someone with a vested interest in perhaps beating you to the punch with it. If Apple wasn't in the Mobile Apps business it might fly but they are in that business and giving them an application spec really wouldn't be wise.

Ideas are worthless. It's execution that counts. Examples of "ideas" that were won by the best execution include:

Google (search)

Facebook (social network)

Microsoft Word (word processing)

Photoshop (image manipulation)

iPod (mp3 players)

iPhone (smartphones)

Each of these "ideas" had competitors in the market before them, and each managed to blow the competition away by better execution. This is the reasoning behind VCs not signing NDAs, and entrepreneurs accepting this.

A spec is more than an Idea though It's the plan for your execution. Otherwise it's useless for Apple.

No, I'm not kidding. This is largely what goes on with consoles today anyways.

But in any case, this is Apple's appstore, you have to go through them anyways. If Apple wants to steal your idea, what is to stop them from stealing it after you've written it and submit it.

In fact, its even worse the way it is today, because they can hold on to your app for months before approving/denying it. And then they can reject it, and then the next day release their application, which they built from reverse-engineering your application.

At least with the spec, you describe the user scenario, but they'd still have to figure out how to implement it.

But lets be clear, in any case where Apple owns the key to app store entry you're vulnerable to them stealing your ideas or even implementation.

It's less absurd than rejecting apps because of the language they were "originally written in," less absurd than rejecting minor updates to an app you've already approved — less absurd than most of Apple's rejections, actually, because at least then Apple's rationale would make sense without assuming Apple is simply evil.

What? How is rejecting apps/updates for technical infractions (cross-compiled code) absurd? Undesirable for the developer perhaps, but nothing compared to the worry that someone's general opinion of your individual app could kill the whole project. The rationale is also pretty much irrelevant if the rule is already published (eg. no cross-compiled code) - you don't need to second-guess it, you just need to follow it

If you sketch out pseudocode on a napkin or use an algorithm you learned about in Python, you are technically using something that wasn't originally written in Objective-C and are back to hoping the App Store reviewers exercise the rules with sanity. Compilation is just transforming data from a less useful form into a more useful one. That's why it's absurd.

But why pretend that this would actually happen? Compilation is transforming programming language into machine code; writing in this case is the act of typing out your program in programming language. 'Originally written in Obj-C' means the code was formed by you in Objective-C before being transformed by a compiler. It is now machine-code, it was 'originally,' ie. before compilation, Obj-C.

They care not a jot whether your adopting code from a Python project. Technically it's not the same program then anyway. Everyone knows this! C'mon

He doesn't actually care about porn; it's just an easily defensible position upon which to base controls over a wide variety of apps that harbor even the most tangential possibility to be used to view any pornographic content.

You're assuming that Apple's traditional branding has anything to do with Apple's actions nowadays. Apple branding has been about being an iconoclast, identifying with '60s rock and drug counterculture, embracing openness and freedom — remember Steve Jobs talking about how Bill Gates should drop acid like him? remember the Apple pirate flag? — and now Apple rejects pin-up girl apps from the App Store, even with a 17+ rating, and tells people that if they're that kind of deviant, they can take their counterculture-tarnished hands over to Android.

I agree. I also think Apple is treating the iOS ecosystem like a video game console rather than a computer. If people looked at the console wars between MS, Sony, and Nintendo and compared their developer agreements to Apple's, they probably wouldn't get so bent out of shape over things.

I know Microsoft has literally spent $millions on AAA titles just to get XBox360 exclusive releases. Somehow we don't get bent out of shape so much just because Halo is Xbox only. I don't see pundits wanting to burn Microsoft at the stake because they bought Bungie.

Yet for some reason, when Apple does something similar, they must be evil.

I also think Apple is treating the iOS ecosystem like a video game console rather than a computer.

Exactly.

If people looked at the console wars between MS, Sony, and Nintendo and compared their developer agreements to Apple's, they probably wouldn't get so bent out of shape over things.

Consoles aren't attempting to replace general purpose PCs, while all indications are that mobile computing devices are going to replace desktops and laptops for most of the population. If almost all of those devices are closed, the cost in freedom and innovation will be enormous.

This is not true. The concern people had with Apple is that they were attempting to block content based on how it was originally made, across the board.

No one cares if Apple gets exclusive deals. Good for them is they do. The concern is that Apple tells developers, "if you wrote this game originally in Java then you can't submit it to the app store." Or if your team uses in-house code generators with a DSL then you can't submit it, even if the DSL generates provably the most optimized Obj-C code possible.

Neither MS, nor Sony, nor Nintendo ever made such claims.

I wish I could upvote this more than once. Everybody who makes the "video games" analogy totally ignores this.

I remember one video game company talking about the cool Lisp dialect they'd invented for their games that they said was really integral to the project's success.

As it happens, I do think it is evil that MS limits who can develop what for XBox. I actually see the fact that the console market has evolved that way as a warning to us how easily it can happen. However consoles simply don't matter very much. Phones are far more important than game consoles and that's the primary reason why there is so much more outcry about it for iOS.

> Apple is treating the iOS ecosystem like a video game console rather than a computer

Can you explain why, then, they have an entire series of ads based around the theme of "there's an app for that"? I can't think of anything more direct they could do to tout it as a "general purpose" computing platform. I think Apple fans keep trying to have it both ways here.

> As it happens, I do think it is evil that MS limits who can develop what for XBox.

Although they restrict who can develop games destined for brick and mortar stores, Microsoft has provided XNA as a way of developing for their platform that is not altogether unreasonable in terms or expense.

Jobs seems to much prefer the idea of a smaller number of really really classy apps. And that seems (to me anyway) to be reflected in their changes to the developer terms.

To claim the reverse is kind of going against years of Apple branding (clean, classy, slick).

I think the OP's point was that Apple probably wants those few "really really classy apps" to be Apple's, not 3rd party. It makes sense, too.

It makes sense, too.

I'm not sure it entirely does. In a "perfect" world, maybe. But Apples is a platform (hardware/OS) company and not really a software company (in the same way).

Jobs seems to much prefer the idea of a smaller number of really really classy apps.

Agreed. A killer app would cause many more people to want to buy the iPad. It would transform the iPad from a want to a need.

From the post:

But as platforms mature, Killer apps from third party companies pose more risk.

Is this really thought out? Does the Killer App transform the hardware into a commodity device for running the app? Is there some fundamental law saying Photoshop had to rule over all image editing? I don't think so. It's not Killer Apps that are dangerous. It's 3rd party monopolies on vital parts of the ecosystem! If Photoshop had better competition so it did not become a de-facto standard Adobe would not have been a threat. If Internet Explorer and Microsoft Office hadn't totally dominated their market niches, then those applications wouldn't have been a threat to Mac and OS X either. The Metroworks IDE has already been mentioned on this site as well.

I don't think Apple wants to eliminate killer apps or good apps. I do think that they want to ensure there is viable competition. It's not a killer app on their turf that Apple fears. It's someone else's monopoly!

No, you missed the key, which is that if a company makes a killer iPad app, porting it to Android and whatever variant of Windows CE Microsoft finally decides is worth putting on tablets will be trivial, and the iPad will just be a fashionable tablet, with this hypothetical killer app something you can get on any device, fashion statement or commodity.

There's a piece missing from your logic. Exactly what does Apple have to fear? That they won't become the Dell of tablets? I don't think they're afraid of becoming the maker of the fashion statement tablet -- that's where the high margins are! A killer app (with healthy competition) that benefits all tablets helps them. A killer app that's a monopoly can hurt them, because the killer app can disappear from their platform.

They don't want a third-party app to become a key part of the iOS experience because then when it is ported some of the Apple sheen would likely rub off on Windows/Android.

If there's a killer app on their platform, then Apple can't change their platform in a way that breaks the app. Consider the hoops Microsoft has had to go through with Windows and IE to avoid breaking important third-party products. Since the whole point of Apple products is high-end, uncompromising design, letting killer apps get the upper hand would quickly make iOS stagnate and lose relevance. Once that's happened, the only way to get ahead again is something like the MacOS-to-OS X upheaval, which wasn't particularly pretty.

What is it with people speculating over what Jobs/Apple wants?

The truth of the matter is nobody has a clue, and yet many people pretend otherwise.

Well I'd argue he has been quite clear over the years as to his values and his aims.

Even if we, perhaps, can't say with absolute certainty his thoughts, I suspect there is plenty enough evidence to show that:

They want hundreds of thousands of decent or even mediocre or crappy apps.

Isn't one of them :)

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