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).
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.
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).
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.
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.
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!
I think the killer app in mobile are the devices themselves. They're all being sold as a package: web, e-mail, music, video, store, camera, etc. The apps are very important too but my guess is most people are mostly looking at the core functionality of the device. You don't really have to sell people with third party apps anymore though a lack of apps can still be a liability just because it weakens the package. It's not like the old days where hardware was somewhat useless to the average person without killer apps. SmartPhones come packed with a ton of functionality before you ever install a third party app.
To that extent I agree with the author of this article. Apple views third party apps as an accessory. They are going to do everything possible to protect what they think really matters: stability, reliability, good end user experience, easy OS upgrades, easy syncing/backup with iTunes, etc. I don't think there's much evidence to suggest Apple wants to play the Microsoft role and attempt to dominate the applications as well. After more than 3 years Apple has released very few paid applications for iOS and they haven't really undercut third party app makers by integrating a lot of additional features into the OS that would be better served as third party apps. They don't even bundle iBooks on their devices so it exists (more or less) on a level playing field with Kindle and the B&N reader.
> "my guess is most people are mostly looking at the core functionality of the device."
Once a device has an exclusive killer app, people start to treat that app as part of the device's core functionality.
Apple views apps as an accessory. Would it trouble them to see consumers begin to treat a third party app as a core system component? The author seems to think so. (He has no evidence, though.)
the truth is users don't really want hundreds of apps, they want one or a small number that are really meaningful.
Funny hearing this from a pundit. For Mac users it was the same argument they were trying to use for years, but the Windows market used its superior numbers to bury Apple and even Linux. You could even say you have a choice of which crappy app you want to use today.
I can guarantee one thing. By, intentionally, excluding Flash they have sealed it's fate. As a developer none of my clients are saying, "I'd like 38% of the mobile market not know I exist". All of them know Flash. All of them have asked for a Flash and Flashless site. Most would rather not pay double for the same thing.
It is true that a small number of apps matter to any given person. That was his point.
But a larger number of apps gives coverage to a greater segment of the populations. This is why Windows still locks people in even though we all use very few programs and we all know it sucks.
For example, I only really use about 6 big programs - browser, Word, Excel, Eclipse, a media player, and SolidWorks. There can be a million other programs in the Windows world, and aside from a few utilities, I'm not using them.
But switch to Mac OS X? I can't. Not completely anyway, because I need SolidWorks. I can't do my job without it. I used Ubuntu almost exclusively for a while, but I could never get rid of that pesky Windows install because I need it for Solidworks.
So at that point, why the pay the premium for a Mac if I'm going to be using crappy Windows on it anyway?
It is not quite the same in the mobile world. There are few big programs (exceptions: browser, primary phone functions like dialer, contacts, email etc), and most of the time they are used by everyone. So # of apps really is a long tail thing. I might want a ski trail map app, or a golf app. Those are small apps that can be on any platform, they're not make it or break kind of apps. We have yet to see a big killer platform specific app.
Building a killer app generally has nothing to do with using the hardware, a custom programming language, or any other fancy thing that gets engineers excited. Building a killer app usually means that you identified a common problem and solved it for users in a novel and useful way. I fail to see how any of the admittedly draconian policies in the SDK prevent you from building the next killer app for mobile.
That's an easy one ... they can reject your application (it says so in the SDK agreement).
See Google Voice for such an example. Or ask any iPhone developer that's been playing this game for a while ... you would be a fool to drop an app in the App Store with lots of functionality, the more there is to use in your app, the more likely it is to get rejected. That's why people are doing incremental upgrades ... at least if a new version gets rejected, your lost investment isn't that much.
If you read the article, you would notice that it is reaction to changes in the app store terms, changes which entail "we can reject your app for any reason whatsoever".
I don't think what language you use to code an app really makes a difference in how killer your app is. Also this makes no sense because I'm pretty sure apple developers use objective-c, c and c++ to code their apps (look at their job descriptions.) They're pretty powerful languages. I'm pretty sure the operating system you're running was written with c. All the music you listen to was produced with an app written in c and c++. How is this going to prevent awesome apps from being created?
The programming language directive was targeted directly at Flash, because Flash itself is a potential killer app. They thought they killed it by just not supporting it in the browser, but then Adobe managed to find a way to resurrect it. So they had to kill it again, this time with a stake through the heart.
>>The greatest support for my thesis is that there are not yet any third party companies that have made a huge amount of money on the iPhone.<<
That's his "greatest support" for his thesis? Apple claims to have paid out US$1 billion to developers so far, what about Android Marketplace? During Steve Jobs's WWDC keynote speech, he quoted Theo Gray: "I earned more on sales of The Elements for iPad in the first day than from the past 5 years of Google ads on periodictable.com".
So if going by commercial success is the yardstick, then the App Store is ahead by at least 1825 times.
As long as they continue to improve mobile safari I'll be happy. Performance on it still doesn't match its desktop counterpart but it's definitely getting there.
Only issue of course is little or no access to the hardware. On a desktop you'd have flash to fill in that gap currently. Is it plausible that with HTML5 we'll be able to write native-like apps on an iOS device in a year or two? I don't know. Anyone?
I'm not expert here, but I believe the answer is: depends on how many extensions Apple decides to make.
I imagine that there will continue to be a significant feature deficit for quite some time, particularly with regard to lower-level stuff like the camera and accelerometer/gyroscope.
Here's a great article on the native code vs web app question: http://bit.ly/bwPn6J
I don't know what Apple is thinking, but it seems more likely they want as many and as diverse a field of apps as they can get. If some small company comes up with a "killer app," they can buy it and make it part of their brand. This would be a strategy by which they effectively out-source the dev risks of killer apps.
I don't know if that is what Apple is thinking, but that is what I would do.
This argument makes no sense. Mobile "killer apps" already exist, I'd say they are Maps, Facebook, YouTube, email and Exchange support. The iPhone has all of these, just like every other smartphone. Apple is under some threat from these apps in that Google or Facebook or Microsoft could pull them, but Apple hasn't avoided them.
It's a cool idea, but I'm skeptical. This strategy does nothing to prevent the creation of a killer app. All it does is prevent the creation of a killer app on the iphone. If we assume that someone somewhere is gonna drop an app-bomb, forcing them to other platforms might not be the best idea.
In a parallel universe, when Microsoft released Windows 3.1 they also introduced a certification program requiring that they approve all applications. When NCSA developed Mosaic, Microsoft recognized the long-term danger to the Windows platform that it represented, and rejected it on the grounds of security/privacy/instability/resource consumption/whatever. It was available only on Mac and Unix platforms, and never became mainstream.
This gave Microsoft time to develop their own hypertext platform, one that was deliberately tied to Windows. With great fanfare they released it a few years later, and it was widely adopted. Of course, only Windows machines could serve the documents that it used, and they worked best on Windows clients. The inevitable result was an entrenched Microsoft monopoly and technological stagnation, but hardly anyone complained because to most people the very concept of an alternate OS or browser was meaningless.
I tried to look for why Apple would be afraid of a Killer App on its platform in this blog post. I couldn't find a justification for why this might be the case. Did I miss it, or does the article just leave us to assume that "shame" is a compelling reason for it?
Because it's a strategic risk for a hardware maker to be dependent on an outside company's software application to move hardware units. Reason being that the other company could take the killer app to another platform and quit supporting your platform altogether - and then your sales go down the tubes.
"If that killer app vendor decides to support Android more effectively than they support Apple, or if for some reason they decided to drop the iPhone, that one vendor could have a devastating effect on Apple's position in the marketplace"
This is a pretty badly thought out, and badly composed article.
The worst case for apple is that someone builds a 'killer app' that compels people to purchase the device, but it then doesn't get released to the iPhone, but the Android instead.
Maybe its just money. Of the 15000 apps, only a handful make money. Apple could just sell those, preinstalled, and be done. Apple may just think there's not much blood left in that turnip, so who cares about new apps.
Pushing all my red buttons like using the term "Lifestyle Business", mentioning Google Voice's non approval and the quality vs quantity discussion makes me very skeptical about this article.
If it's a killer app, it will be regardless of its acceptance onto the iOS platform. The notion that Apple is hegemonic enough to restrict the level of innovation on mobile platforms is silly.
Ok, then help me to understand.
First is how does Apple keep developers from producing the killer app? Does this imply, that the Killer App™ cannot be produced with Objective-C and without built-in interpreters?
If it can, what is the evidence, that Apple did reject such an app, and for what stated reasons? (No, google voice is not a killer app).
Next, Jobs did state three reasons why app can be rejected. App does not be great, they just have to work and don't use private APIs.
Now, if majority of apps in App Store is crap, how does this compare to apps in Android Market which does not have those draconian rules. Are they generally higher quality than apps for iOS?
Then it makes even less sense: how does not allowing the Killer App™ help Apple? They sell boatloads of devices without such an app and would sell even more with it. If someone comes with the brilliant idea author talks about, how does Android having that app available and iOS not help Apple in any way? Where is the sense in this claim?
And finally: there will be no killer app for smartphone. Ever. On any platform. When almost no one owns a computer and you make Visicalc and it sells 700 000 that's an killer app. However there are almost 100 000 000 users of iDevices. They already have the killer apps which could appeal to such an wide audience: mail programs, web browsers.
You can have a killer app for the platform which is smaller than niche your app fits in. There is no niche several hundred millions people wide.
Although I can see some sense in the claim that iOS 4 is an killer app for iDevices.
[+] [-] ErrantX|16 years ago|reply
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).
[+] [-] mustpax|16 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] kenjackson|16 years ago|reply
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).
[+] [-] chc|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] illumin8|16 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] CodeMage|16 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] stcredzero|16 years ago|reply
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!
[+] [-] bad_user|16 years ago|reply
The truth of the matter is nobody has a clue, and yet many people pretend otherwise.
[+] [-] jsz0|16 years ago|reply
To that extent I agree with the author of this article. Apple views third party apps as an accessory. They are going to do everything possible to protect what they think really matters: stability, reliability, good end user experience, easy OS upgrades, easy syncing/backup with iTunes, etc. I don't think there's much evidence to suggest Apple wants to play the Microsoft role and attempt to dominate the applications as well. After more than 3 years Apple has released very few paid applications for iOS and they haven't really undercut third party app makers by integrating a lot of additional features into the OS that would be better served as third party apps. They don't even bundle iBooks on their devices so it exists (more or less) on a level playing field with Kindle and the B&N reader.
[+] [-] lotharbot|16 years ago|reply
Once a device has an exclusive killer app, people start to treat that app as part of the device's core functionality.
Apple views apps as an accessory. Would it trouble them to see consumers begin to treat a third party app as a core system component? The author seems to think so. (He has no evidence, though.)
[+] [-] yardie|16 years ago|reply
Funny hearing this from a pundit. For Mac users it was the same argument they were trying to use for years, but the Windows market used its superior numbers to bury Apple and even Linux. You could even say you have a choice of which crappy app you want to use today.
I can guarantee one thing. By, intentionally, excluding Flash they have sealed it's fate. As a developer none of my clients are saying, "I'd like 38% of the mobile market not know I exist". All of them know Flash. All of them have asked for a Flash and Flashless site. Most would rather not pay double for the same thing.
[+] [-] krschultz|16 years ago|reply
It is true that a small number of apps matter to any given person. That was his point.
But a larger number of apps gives coverage to a greater segment of the populations. This is why Windows still locks people in even though we all use very few programs and we all know it sucks.
For example, I only really use about 6 big programs - browser, Word, Excel, Eclipse, a media player, and SolidWorks. There can be a million other programs in the Windows world, and aside from a few utilities, I'm not using them.
But switch to Mac OS X? I can't. Not completely anyway, because I need SolidWorks. I can't do my job without it. I used Ubuntu almost exclusively for a while, but I could never get rid of that pesky Windows install because I need it for Solidworks.
So at that point, why the pay the premium for a Mac if I'm going to be using crappy Windows on it anyway?
It is not quite the same in the mobile world. There are few big programs (exceptions: browser, primary phone functions like dialer, contacts, email etc), and most of the time they are used by everyone. So # of apps really is a long tail thing. I might want a ski trail map app, or a golf app. Those are small apps that can be on any platform, they're not make it or break kind of apps. We have yet to see a big killer platform specific app.
[+] [-] gfodor|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bad_user|16 years ago|reply
See Google Voice for such an example. Or ask any iPhone developer that's been playing this game for a while ... you would be a fool to drop an app in the App Store with lots of functionality, the more there is to use in your app, the more likely it is to get rejected. That's why people are doing incremental upgrades ... at least if a new version gets rejected, your lost investment isn't that much.
[+] [-] joe_the_user|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] protomyth|16 years ago|reply
example: no Adobe CS that ignores almost all Apple tech and implements sloppy custom interface widgets
[+] [-] johnl87|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zmmmmm|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brisance|16 years ago|reply
That's his "greatest support" for his thesis? Apple claims to have paid out US$1 billion to developers so far, what about Android Marketplace? During Steve Jobs's WWDC keynote speech, he quoted Theo Gray: "I earned more on sales of The Elements for iPad in the first day than from the past 5 years of Google ads on periodictable.com".
So if going by commercial success is the yardstick, then the App Store is ahead by at least 1825 times.
[+] [-] adriand|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fjabre|16 years ago|reply
Only issue of course is little or no access to the hardware. On a desktop you'd have flash to fill in that gap currently. Is it plausible that with HTML5 we'll be able to write native-like apps on an iOS device in a year or two? I don't know. Anyone?
[+] [-] Magneus|16 years ago|reply
I imagine that there will continue to be a significant feature deficit for quite some time, particularly with regard to lower-level stuff like the camera and accelerometer/gyroscope.
Here's a great article on the native code vs web app question: http://bit.ly/bwPn6J
[+] [-] dhimes|16 years ago|reply
I don't know if that is what Apple is thinking, but that is what I would do.
[+] [-] guelo|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stavrianos|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] orangecat|16 years ago|reply
This gave Microsoft time to develop their own hypertext platform, one that was deliberately tied to Windows. With great fanfare they released it a few years later, and it was widely adopted. Of course, only Windows machines could serve the documents that it used, and they worked best on Windows clients. The inevitable result was an entrenched Microsoft monopoly and technological stagnation, but hardly anyone complained because to most people the very concept of an alternate OS or browser was meaningless.
If this seems absurd, consider South Korea where IE's monopoly is guaranteed by law: http://www.mobinode.com/2009/01/16/activex-regulations-in-so...
[+] [-] KirinDave|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bartl|16 years ago|reply
So the killer app becomes a killer app for the smart phone, but not for the iPhone.
[+] [-] Jeema3000|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kristiandupont|16 years ago|reply
"If that killer app vendor decides to support Android more effectively than they support Apple, or if for some reason they decided to drop the iPhone, that one vendor could have a devastating effect on Apple's position in the marketplace"
[+] [-] bandushrew|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] extension|16 years ago|reply
The other things - delays, rejections, draconian rules - those were just risks. I can live with risk. I don't think I can live with a glass ceiling.
[+] [-] JoeAltmaier|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hoggle|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jdavid|16 years ago|reply
* maps = google
* audio = pandora
both were launch apps, both made the iphone plausible, both, were not designed by apple.
[+] [-] unknown|16 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] drivebyacct|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rimantas|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rimantas|16 years ago|reply
Next, Jobs did state three reasons why app can be rejected. App does not be great, they just have to work and don't use private APIs.
Now, if majority of apps in App Store is crap, how does this compare to apps in Android Market which does not have those draconian rules. Are they generally higher quality than apps for iOS?
Then it makes even less sense: how does not allowing the Killer App™ help Apple? They sell boatloads of devices without such an app and would sell even more with it. If someone comes with the brilliant idea author talks about, how does Android having that app available and iOS not help Apple in any way? Where is the sense in this claim?
And finally: there will be no killer app for smartphone. Ever. On any platform. When almost no one owns a computer and you make Visicalc and it sells 700 000 that's an killer app. However there are almost 100 000 000 users of iDevices. They already have the killer apps which could appeal to such an wide audience: mail programs, web browsers.
You can have a killer app for the platform which is smaller than niche your app fits in. There is no niche several hundred millions people wide.
Although I can see some sense in the claim that iOS 4 is an killer app for iDevices.