Comment by kjksf | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kjksf | Hacker News Reader

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So what exactly do you propose?

That every developer simultaneously develops for iPhone, Android, Windows Phone, WebOS, Blackberry, Meego?

Developers aren't so cavalier as you about suggesting that you port your code to multiple platforms because we do know how much time, effort and platform-specific knowledge it takes to build a decent app.

Many iPhone, Android, Windows Phone apps are written by single developers that can't take 6 months per platform to learn how to code for it.

For most of us making a bet on single platform is the only viable strategy.

Bad strategy? Maybe. The only one possible? Unfortunately.

You would be pissed off too if your business failed not because the owner of the platform you bet on built a better product than you (and with their money, teams of programmers, marketing and ability to advertise to users of that platform they do have a huge advantage) but because they just used their monopolistic control over their platform to set business terms that are unheard of on other similar platforms and kill your business without them needing to lift a competitive finger.

I'm sure you'll tell me that Apple has the right to screw everyone on their platform and if I don't like it, I should just use another platform.

And that's exactly what I'm hoping people will do once they realize that Apple not only has the power to screw their developers and their users but is actually screwing them, as this on-going saga of 30% monopoly tax on content sales shows.

"Five of us spent nearly a year and a half of our lives and over a million dollars in cash and sweat equity developing the iFlowReader app"

if they were serious about the risking all their eggs in same basket, they could have used consultants/outside developers to port their app to other platforms with less than 10% of the said investment

Note that they state both cash and sweat equity of one million+.

Between five people and 1.5 years, a million dollars in sweat equity for developers is probably understated. They invest the time & skills (that they could have been using to freelance or consult for others) into their own company. Some people would consider this 'free' - but it's not free, the opportunity cost is still there. When you're closing shop without a gain, you are going to start looking back and counting all those lost opportunities in terms of dollars.

No, my direct suggestion is the following:

a) A game has no issues. It's life cycle is short.

a.a) A long-term product/service strategy can't rely on one platform as they are under the whim of the owner.

b) Don't build exclusively for one platform. Thats right, develop for android, webos, etc. The point is that one choice is to be fucked in the ass by a company at their discretization, the other choice is to have protection vs that.

You can't complain "waa waa waa apple chaned their rules" too bad. It's apple's proprietary tightly controlled market. You want to make money? Bend over backwards for them. Otherwise piss off. It happened to twitter clients, its happening to facebook clients, its happening to apple clients. Learn from history.

Windows applications have been lucky. MS has been pretty nice over the years with what they allow. However if MS says "30% surcharge on any application selling something running on windows" then guess what, same cries will happen. Boo freakety hoo. This is what people were saying about being careful with apple's tight control. This is why I support android. But some didn't listen so they get fucked in the end.

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