| Tuesday, April 13, 2010 |
08:15 - Jangling the division bell
http://www.taoeffect.com/blog/2010/04/steve-jobs-response-on-section-3-3-1/
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I think it's pretty remarkable that Steve Jobs has officially weighed in on the ongoing iPhone OS SDK controversy, via email, to an interested but lay developer. I think it's even more remarkable that his response more or less endorses a blog (Daring Fireball) as having captured the company's position and intent.
Ars Technica has an analysis of the exchange (via Brian D.) that has plenty of its own conclusions, mostly that Steve's brief proclamations only raise further questions—about whether his claims hold water, whether there's more to the story, whether Apple is gambling too recklessly on its future platform dominance.
I myself can't contribute much to the discussion; it's all moving far too fast, and I don't really have a committed stake in any of the players or sides (I'd love to see Flash be obsoleted by equivalent open technologies, but I also don't want to sacrifice the functionality it brings to the web experience when used properly; similarly, I'd love to see ever more and better iPhone/iPad apps being produced, but I don't relish the idea of more fugly cross-compiled non-native apps that look like Java craplets from the late 90s).
All I can say is that the wild success of the iPhone ecosystem, even in the face of the seemingly inarguable (according to their proponents) advantages of open platforms, and dependent on the community of developers throwing in their lot with a rather weird programming environment (Objective-C) and all the historical baggage that Apple brings, means that its momentum is not something that can be deflected by any one small competitive factor. People are developing for it because it's the obvious place to be, the way Windows was for desktop apps fifteen years ago, and the way LAMP has been for web development for the past decade. People are apparently willing to put up with a hell of a lot of inconvenience for the benefit of being part of the critical mass.
Steve would seem to realize this. Lord knows he's not stupid; he's had thirty years to study Microsoft and learn the lessons he can from its rise, empire-building, and stagnation. He also knows there's no way to do it "perfectly" the second time around; there's always a set of sacrifices to make, and you're always going to be the Evil Empire to somebody if your goal is to dominate. As pragmatic as he ultimately is, I have to assume the recent machinations in iPhone world—giving developers many of the goodies they've been asking for for years now, while at the same time tightening Apple's grip on the development process—is the best tradeoff that can be made at this stage, probably because it would just be all the harder to make moves like this later. Better to piss off a few novices and fence-sitters than to risk enshrining in law and de-facto reality the chinks in your corporate armor.
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Brian Tiemann
