http://beust.com/weblog/2010/07/26/local-message-bus/

However — it’s a pretty hopeless article. It’s all very well as a rant, but it’s basically an extremely personal rant against a group of people who, the article hints, are in fact some of the likely readers of the blog — but whose existence is not actually supported in the article. The response to it is pretty much as you’d expect if you posted the typical diatribe against smug clueless Apple users (or whatever) in an Apple-friendly blog: of course there is some truth in the complaints, but much of the article is a long way from being indisputable and the manner is pure provocation. Was it actually intended to achieve anything positive?

I think the essence of the outrage in the comments can be summarised as: You seem to be criticising people like me, in ways that are really kind of personal, just because we don’t show much interest in the things you think are most important.

In that xkcd article, the Linux guy is shown as out of touch with what the typical consumer user wants — but so what? He’s getting what _he_ wants, and he’s happy.

I do agree however that platforms on which it’s easy to sell software are more successful. Example : Windows. Counter example : Linux.

Regarding Apple imposing more and more tech restrictions, well, I obviously really hope it won’t happen. The backlash would quickly reach huge proportions. Just yesterday a rumor circulated that OS X 10.7 would only run Apple signed binaries. The comments were telling enough, even if few bought it at first.

About the software quality control issue, I disagree with you. Apple can much more easily audit a binary compiled in XCode, knowing then that it will only use permitted APIs. That falls more under the “security control” category though, but it’s a valid possibility nonetheless.

Let’s wait and see what happens next with the download pages . May be it’s just a temporary glitch.

In other words, people do also want their computers to just work. Yet in most cases they nonetheless buy computers that do not. I think that to reason about possible sales and market share and suchlike you need to look at what has actually happened in the past, not just work from what you think should happen. If consumers acted rationally, the Mac would have been the dominant platform of the last 30 years. Of course, the past isn’t necessarily a good guide but it’s probably a better one than “common sense” is.

I suppose my argument is that platforms on which it’s easy to sell software (i.e. on which software development is not too hard and software delivery is simple) generally seem to have been successful even where they are not the best platforms to use. Perhaps you disagree with that.

re. the iPod, although I was talking about platforms for software, perhaps the same logic holds: the iPod is the more effective platform (than other music players) for delivery of “content” in the sense that record labels etc can provide stuff for it and know they will be paid.

I guess this means that what I’m talking about is being “easy” (to produce and deliver software for) rather than necessarily “open”. And I am wondering whether Apple will reach a point where their technical restrictions make things sufficiently “harder”, for the developer, to outweigh the advantages in “ease” of their software delivery system. That would require another provider to have a comparably easy and effective delivery system, but when that happens, it’s possible that technical factors may then take over.

I don’t know. I don’t strongly disagree with you on any of this, but it’s a compelling subject because (unlike many software-business affairs) it gives me a nagging feeling that I could actually work it out if only I thought about it for long enough.

About software quality, the main reason I don’t think that’s the primary purpose is simply that I don’t think this would be an effective way to do that and Apple are not that stupid. Whimsical and capricious, but not stupid. As has been pointed out endlessly elsewhere, there are plenty of crap applications written natively and Apple already have the right to reject (or classify) on quality grounds. Portability is a bit more convincing though.

I will be interested to see what happens with the downloads page. I have one small application on there, which funnily enough was written using a cross-platform toolkit and which Apple then picked up as one of their “staff picks” — quality software, you see! My impression was that the service is useful but a bit of a mess behind the scenes (I have that impression about a lot of their web stuff). An app-store alternative might be interesting.

I do think the long-term plan is to have most of the devices sold “into the home” use the iPhone/iPad OS though.

Chris

I don’t think that the iPhone and Mac (or more generally personal computers) development ecosystems are really comparable. Users don’t expect the same kind of services from either platforms, you won’t mind tinkering around on your computer, but you really want your phone to work.

So while I generally agree that a more open platform is more likely to succeed, I also think that this is a computer-bound criteria, mostly geek-oriented, and therefore doesn’t necessarily translate to the mobile platform.

That said, Apple tactics are also different on the iPhone from those on the Mac. Or more precisely, they are similar in principle but pushed much further : much tighter control but also a much more thorough service, and so far users seem to like it. I’d argue that this is one of the reasons why they had such a success in this market.

You mention the iPod, but note that it has so far remained dominant even though it’s just as locked as the iPhone, since it requires iTunes to be used, while many other mp3 players act as USB mass storage device, which can hardly be more open.

I doubt that Apple thinks it can squeeze the developers as much as they like. Quite the contrary, given the quality of the development tools they provide (both for the Mac and the iPhone) and the wealth of information freely available, it’s more like they pay a lot of attention to them. However they don’t want them to be a source of trouble within services that they provide to users (which makes sense). And as you note, these user services, that is, content distribution, are key to Apple’s success. So they require devs to provide products fitting Apple’s quality standards.

Will a challenger rise and take over Apple as the most convenient content distributor ? I don’t know, so far I can’t see any. They’re very well positioned on all the strategic points required to achieve this status (infrastructure, strong reputation, ability to deliver a service, access to large content catalogue, complete control of their platform). I actually see Microsoft a more likely contender than Google.

You say you don’t believe that ensuring software quality has anything to do with this – fine, but then what’s the reason ? Apple are control freaks because it serves a purpose, not out of some silly doctrine.

As for OS X not being a consumer option in the future, I very much doubt that. The iPad/iPhone UI is too limited for many of the uses Apple has traditionally touted the Mac for (i.e. content creation, rather than only consumption).