Why Would Apple Limit 3rd Party Apps?
March 12, 08 by Doug My Average |
VS | Your Average |
I was reading this blog post and it was responding to the following statements from Apple. . .
“An Application may write data on a device only to the Application’s designated container area, except as otherwise specified by Apple.”
“Applications may only use Published APIs in the manner prescribed by Apple and must not use or call any unpublished or private APIs.”
“Only one iPhone application can run at a time, and third-party applications never run in the background. This means that when users switch to another application, answer the phone, or check their email, the application they were using quits.”
About 2 days before the SDK ‘roadmap’ keynote, I sat down and really thought about how I thought the SDK would impact InstallerApps.com.
If you think about it. . .Apple could do this 100% right. . .and in the process could wipe out the entire ‘homebrew’ community. From developers to publishers. I thought, why would they let this ‘open sdk’ be as open as we all want it to be. I thought it was bad enough that I can’t replace my own iPod Touch battery(without drastic measures). . .and even with the new Macbook Air!!! Apple could have made it easy with the USB connector and not gone proprietary. I’m sure there is some ‘technical spec’ out there that they say is their reason for doing this. . .but really it’s just Apple’s way of doing things. Reminds me of the AOL/Walled Garden days.
In any case. . .In the event that Apple did this right, I purchased a domain name that relates to the new ‘App Store’. Though I may end up launching this website anyway(as a side project). . .I can breathe easy now and keep focused on the content.
It confuses me that the iFund provides 100 million dollars to developers. . .yet to get an app listed you have to pay an initial 99 dollar setup fee.
qwest Says: 12.03.08 at 10:06 am
Well, let’s keep in mind that apple is in a business to make money, and has liabilities. They need to protect their users’ experience. The average iPhone/iTouch owner probably does not care about jailbreaking or installer.app, they just want a ‘cool and sexy’ phone/music player. They will cry defect if they were to replace the battery and something went wrong, even if it happened because they did not read the manual. They would cry crap software/hardware if they downloaded some software that drained their battery, and failed to realise that it was running in the background and had to be turned off when not in use. Closing the software/hardware to a certain point lets apple minimize average ‘user errors’ (and maybe more inportantly for apple, keeps their $$$ flowing). That said, I agree with you that it is a bit intriging that the SDK is this ‘open.’ Maybe it is a way for them to attract many talented developers who would have otherwise focused their effort on Android first? We’ll see