• The iPhone ? What about the App Store ?

    19Nov
    Categories: Apple, iPhone, Open Source, Technology Comments Off

    I’ve read plenty iPhone success stories recently. Forgive me if I don’t cite references for these, but they’re very current stories, I’m lazy, and not many people read this blog right now.

    The iPhone is the number #2 business smartphone.

    *cough*honeymooneffect*cough*

    The iPhone is #1 in business smartphone reliability.

    Well, we all know this is based purely on hardware defect statistics. It doesn’t reflect the fact that the iPhone is probably the WORST phone for software reliability.

    You’ve got to give Apple credit. They grabbed the whole world by the balls with the iPod, and everyone said “Wow. Apple did something right for a change. What an amazing fluke”. Then there was murmurings about a phone. But in the Apple world, most rumours turn out to be just that – rumours, so noone took too much notice. Besides, they couldn’t pull it off again, surely ? Oh, what’s that, they did, and they are now the most successful product in another field ? Damn, that’s lucky.

    Ok, putting the humour aside for the moment. There’s one aspect of the iPhone that noone seems to be talking about. It’s not the elegance, the simplicity, the ease of use. No, the thing that noone is talking about is the fact that Apple have turned software distribution on its head, with the App Store.

    It used to be that when you wanted a piece of software for a device, you went to a shop and paid $100 for it. Or, if it was from a smaller development company, then you went to their web site, and you downloaded a limited feature trial version that worked for a month, and then if you were able to evaluate it properly within that time (presuming it didn’t do something really lame like preventing you from saving your document) you would contact the developer, give them your credit card, pay about $50 and get a long key via email to unlock your software.

    Sometimes this process worked well, sometimes it didn’t. I tried to register PDA-Net (not an AppStore application) for my iPhone this week when it expired suddenly. The link they provided was a fake one pointing to localhost to perform some ridiculous trickery that they thought was cute. Maybe it was part of an anti-piracy measure, I don’t know. I don’t care. All I know was that I tried for three hours, and I got two mates on the phone (since I had no net) to try and find the phone number for the company to register it. Unfortunately what I found was many reports about the company never responding to email, have an unlisted phone number, and serial numbers often failing to work at all.

    I thought “If this was on the App Store, I wouldn’t have this problem”. Why ? Because the App Store is BEAUTIFUL. It works ! It’s cheap ! Most applications are less than $3 Australian, and you always get what you pay for, simply, easily, without hassle.

    See Apple have mastered two concepts here. One is the centralised distribution of software. Anyone could do this, it’s not rocket science. Linux has been doing it for years in the form of APT. The real genius comes when you pair that concept with another one that economists have been bandying about since the 90′s – Micropayments.

    To be fair to the true vision of the word, micropayments are more about paying mere cents to access content. Not dollars to make purchases. But what Apple have done is ask “Could a micropayment-style model work for the inexpensive distribution of user-contributed software ?”.

    Well, yes it can, and it’s glorious to behold. Thousands of applications submitted within the first couple of months alone. Millions of purchases. In the first few months of release, purchases of applications vastly outpaced purchases of music on iTunes. While Apple keep their figures pretty close to their chest, only announcing them when they reach a new milestone, I think it’s safe to say that not only is the iPhone a runaway success, but that the App Store is possibly an even bigger success.

    So here’s a thought. What if the App Store came to your PC ? The concept is simple, it’s (arguably) better for a developer to sell an application a thousand times at $10 than to sell it a hundred times at $100. While the cost of managing support for a thousand customers is higher, those customers are not going to be as demanding over a $10 application as a $100 one. You’ve made a lot more people a lot more happier. So what if instead of having to register X-chat via the makers, for $25, if instead, you could just buy it from the App Store for $5, and download it immediately ?

    The developer gets more sales and more recognition for their work, the customer gets their applications cheaper, and the lower costs reduce the appeal of piracy. Quite simply, when I only have to pay lunch money to buy an application easily and reliably from a trusted distribution source – why in the hell would I want to pirate it ?

    Make things easier and cheaper, and you stamp out piracy, and make more money as well ! What could possibly be better ? As the underpants gnomes would say:

    1. Create inexpensive, centralised distribution and micropayment model.
    2. ???
    3. PROFIT !!!

  • iPhone loses it’s legal shackles

    16Nov
    Categories: Apple, iPhone, Open Source, Technology Comments Off

    If you were to ask me a couple of months after the iPhone’s launch, what the worst things were about the device, I would have told you very quickly and honestly:

    1) The official applications (Maps, Mail, Safari) are riddled with bugs and crash constantly.
    …and…
    2) Apple are insanely, unreasonably, unfathomably strict with their developer restrictions – the SDK and NDA.

    Not only could a developer not ask another developer a simple question about the SDK, but it was even forbidden to share your own code. Yes, on a platform based on open source software – it was forbidden to share your source. So, I put my love/hate relationship with Apple on hold, and put up with the iPhone while I waited for Android with bated breath. Because Android is open right, it’s gonna be innovative and new right ?

    Well, early signs show Android is just a cheap iPhone knock off, and so is the hardware it runs on, but time will tell. More importantly, Apple have actually STOPPED being bastards. What’s that, you say ? Impossible ?

    No, really. Back in October, they lifted the NDA. Instantly the ban on talking about fight club, err, I mean iPhone development was gone, at least among registered developers (which anyone can become for free incidentally) and within Apple’s little walled garden. But it looks like the lawyers haven’t finished being beaten into the ground, burned, drowned, chopped up into little bits, and then burned again just yet. There may be more joy on the horizon.

    Look I predicted this. Ok, not here, in writing, but I swear I did predict it. Mainly as a last desperate hope for change that I thought was never likely to happen, but nevertheless, I hoped, and it seems it was not in vain. The shackles are coming off. Infoworld’s Yager covers some of the changes in a vague nonspecific way here.

    Apple are setting up Open Source Code Repositories. They are providing more places to talk about development. They are even allowing distribution of apps outside the AppStore now. How we will install these apps remains to be seen, maybe developers can simply host an .ipa on their web site and that’s it. What was know is that now just because it can’t go on the App Store, doesn’t mean it’s not allowed to exist.

    You write it, you host it, you take responsibility for it. That’s basically what Apple are saying and we must take this for what it is – the closest thing to true unrestricted freedom of development so far. Once developers all share the arcane secrets of background apps, PUSH, and system hooks – there might one day be no need to jailbreak at all ! And that’s a future that we should all look forward to.

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