Back In
Monday, May 3, 2010 at 8:25PM Last year, I wrote a piece entitled "App Store: I'm Out", which got a little attention. As strange as it feels to be in a position where I have to explain myself, I thought I should write about why I'm again working on an iPhone OS product.
If I wanted to have to constantly twist to justify the opinions of the past, I would enter politics. As it is, we software developers have the luxury of changing our minds as time and requirements dictate.
After the iPad announcement, I wrote a piece entitled "Future Shock", which got a lot of traffic. The reason I was so sure my take was solid was that I've spent a year working through my own future shock over the direction of Apple's platforms. The first piece I alluded to was my own future shock speaking: "They can't make us submit to app review! They can't reject our apps!".
Well, Apple can and Apple absolutely is. That ship sailed some time ago and I have reconciled myself to the idea that the old indie ways on Mac OS X are never going to be available on iPhone OS.
I do not intend to argue that the problems I enumerated about the App Store have gone away. They largely remain and, in some cases, are worse than they were when I first wrote.
The lengthy app review problem has mostly been solved. It's amusing to see tweets like "my update is taking more than 5 hours, haven't seen that kind of delay in ages". A year ago it was two weeks.
The problem of approval - as opposed to review - remains. In particular, the problem that you may be removed at a moment's notice with few channels to quickly remedy the situation is a significant business risk. Few businesses can afford to unexpectedly lose a week or more of revenue and make payroll.
The problem of app rejection - the idea that you build your app and only then find out if you can sell it - remains. It must be said that the number of apps falling foul of this is decreasing. However, it is not an insignificant problem, particularly when approval is not for life and can be withdrawn at any time.
The App Store continues to represent serious risk. However, in business, risk is the currency.
So, having said all that, why am I 'back in'?
When I first wrote about my feelings towards the App Store, it was in the arrogant and vain hope that it might have changed something. The direction of the iPhone OS ecosystem is now clear. To stick to an opinion regardless is to see the world as you would like it to be, not as it actually is.
Down that road lies the Free Software Foundation, and I have zero interest in finding myself in 2020 a bitter forty-something man fighting the battles of a decade ago.
The second factor in this was the iPad. When iPhone OS was just that - a phone operating system - it was obvious at the Apple future would be a combination of iPhone OS devices and Mac OS X computers. Post-iPad, that judgment is far from obviously sound. Having seen the reaction to the iPad from actual potential users, the secure future of the Mac OS as a general consumer computing platform is no longer as clear to me as it once was.
Be clear: I'm not saying OS X is dead, nor that Apple has no interest in improving it. I am saying that I suspect that the days of everyone buying a MacBook to get online are soon to be over. I've already written about how I see our three-Mac family turning into a one-Mac, three-iPad family over the next hardware cycle and I imagine that scenario repeated industry-wide over time. Already the ratio of iPhone OS devices to Macs is 5:2.
This feels like the settling of the wild west. The days of rugged individualism in computing are starting to close. The freedoms we had will still be possible but as with living in remote areas hunting and trapping your own food, few will care to accept those privations in return for the absolutes of liberty.
So where does that leave the small developer? In some ways, we have to shape up a bit. I don't want to say that we have to "become more professional" because, in large part, the Mac indie scene was one of the most professionally committed around.
What I think I prefer is the aviation analogy. We are no longer playing Burt Rutan and building our own aircraft. We're building components for the Boeing or Airbus ecosystems now. Nothing wrong with that - many people do a great job and make a very good living at that. What is lost is the software equivalent of the romance of flight.
I’m Scottish. Frying things and pessimism are our two main industries. It’s worth looking on the bright side too: the iPhone OS ecosystem has in its short life, brought a few incredible things too.
It’s undeniable that iPhone OS devices are incredibly stable. Last night I spent a frustrating hour trying to get my iMac to reboot into a functioning state after it crashed. That was an hour I had planned to spend in bed. In a post-iPhone, post-iPad world such failures feel even less acceptable than before.
iPhone OS is the first mass-market operating system where consumers are no longer afraid to install software on their computers (I’m not counting read-only media software platforms like games consoles here). In a conversation recently, a friend recounted a scene that he passed by in an airport. Four fifty-something women were sitting at a cafe table discussing the latest apps they had downloaded on their iPod touches. New software can’t break your iPhone OS device and, if you don’t like it, total removal is only a couple of taps away.
Finally, the devices are incredibly cheap by comparison with traditional laptop hardware. I could buy myself every iPad that comes out over the course of a three-year hardware cycle and still spend less than I did on laptops. The software is inexpensive too. There remain great strides to be made on discoverability and trials in the App Store. Still, it’s hard to ignore the fact that there’s now a large constituency of users just venturing into their first experiences of purchasing third-party software.
Simply put, I believe, the choice is this: the iPhone OS train is leaving the station in a big way with the iPad; much more so than when it was just for smartphones. I have to ask myself if there's a train that I would rather be on. I don't see one right now, and I don't see one coming down the track.
Reader Comments (40)
Mike Ash wrote: "It would make a huge amount of sense to write the core of your app in a cross-platform language so that you could jump to another platform if Apple got too oppressive, but now Apple is not even allowing this anymore."
C/C++ aren't cross-platform?
@Jon Hendry
C/C++ aren't very cross-platform when it comes to mobile devices, unfortunately. And even allowing that they can be used for some of that, Apple's artificial restriction makes the job much harder.
Thanks for the post Fraser. I'm not a developer, but it always seemed to me that quitting the App Store was cutting off your nose to spite your face. Yes, it's worthwhile putting pressure on Apple to change the parts of the App Store process that aren't working, but they're never going to tear it up and make the platform a free for all. The analogy to the FSF is apt - there's no point sitting in a hole bleating on about how much better your utopian vision would be if only everyone would listen. It is what it is, so make the best of it.
I know your concerns about approval and it's subsequent withdrawal are real and well founded but it seems like a serious developer making serious software has little to fear. I know that's a bit like saying if you've done nothing wrong, there's nothing to fear from Big Brother knowing everything about you, but I think there's an important difference. If Apple really gets to abusing the approval process and the iPhone OS market is large, they'll face anti-trust legislation. It seems that if you're not trying to push out 1,000 apps that are just aggregators of web content, you're probably going to be OK.
Anyway, welcome back and I for one look forward to seeing what you produce.
@Mike Block
I'm sure you are a competent programmer and can program in multiple languages, but I definitely don't want someone writing software for my iPhone who barely has a grasp on programming in ActionScript.
WRT the difference between iPad and Notebook Computers (or more accurately NetBooks), Most non-power-users I know with NetBooks don't use it to the full potential of a Notebook computer. Most Power-users I know with NetBooks can't use it to the full potential of a real Notebook.
If the iPad follows the same cost/price performance curve as the iPod and the iPhone before it, we could see $100 iPads on sale on Black Friday at Wal-Mart in three years. And why not? As the Apple CFO has pointed out, the iPad's manufacturing process has completely re-engineered 20 key notebook computer sub-assemblies, such as the keyboard, that have resisted further savings from economies of scale so long as we were stuck in the tired old notebook/netbook paradigm.
When luxury car manufacturers start distributing sedan owner manuals on the iPad, it's clear that the paradigm is less about business as usual, and more like the legions of marketers who have been using USB drives, not CDs or print, to distribute their presentation. It's why Amazon went all-in with the Kindle -- the new product was as much about commercializing the revolutionary e-Ink display technology as selling electronic books.
I was part of the team that built the very first Apple notebook computer, and made many lifelong friends in the Macintosh developer community. But I stopped developing for the Apple platform many years ago, for many of the same reasons shared by today's Apple naysayers. Steve Jobs has not suddenly changed stripes, and to think that the Apple legal team has suddenly become more mercenary is a fanciful fairy tale that makes it impossible to be objective. There's a part of me that hopes that Fraser Speirs' words fall on deaf ears -- it just means more opportunity for the rest of us.
It's completely understandable to let your principles slide for practical reasons. That sort of compromise for the sake of practicality is a big part of life, and as a mac developer it makes even more sense.
That said, the hate on the FSF for not giving up on their principles seems a bit out of place. You obviously share their primary objections - but now that you're compromising, you're ripping on them for having the moral strength not to. It comes across a lot like a fat person making fun of a thin guy for refusing to eat a doughnut, or the class bully ripping on the smart kid for getting a good grade.
I don't mean this as a personal attack - you're a smart guy, and probably a pretty good one. Plus, I use and enjoy some of your products, and look forward to seeing what you can do on the iPad/iPhone. I was just taken aback by that portion of your post, and figured that feedback is exactly what this comments area is for.
It's not easy to change your mind, and even tougher when it's public. Bravo.
@Fraser, @Ed, and @Dan Woods
Hey Guys,
I just wanted to clear up a few things so it doesn't look like my credibility is shot. My comments about the cross compiler clause were based in the fact that fraser's previous post about leaving the app store were based in a genuine distaste of arbitrary restriction. So it felt like 3.3.1 is an arbitrary restriction in the same way that fraser was originally displeased. I fully agree in the world of tech we can't live justifying our previous opinions so I am happy making that argument a dead issue :-D
On the order of comparing iPads to laptops I misinterpretted the meaning here. If you're talking about the general consumer population that just want to get online and do web based activities then I agree on the order of these devices being comparable because strictly in the realm of getting on-line for the average user the iPad provides a far superior experience, even though I have my reservations about the lack of flash support. I will not delve into those reservations because I do fully believe once HTML 5 is more widely adopted 1-2 years down the road no flash support will be a moot point on ANY device so my reservations are more of semantics.
As a power user though I could not envision trading my laptop (not netbook) for multiple iPads because I do much more then "get online" so that's where my statement about them not being comparable came from.
Before the iPad was released I hated the fact that it was called a tablet because I believed a tablet needed to run a desktop OS, however post-release and hands on I feel like in actuality the iPad is DEFINING the tablet market. For YEARS MS tried to carve out the tablet market with epically minimal success, in swings apple with a fresh take on tablet computing and it's a hit. So I feel like the new tablet market 2 years from now will be devices running iPhone OS, Android, and maybe WebOS pending HP's handling of Palm. The rumors of HP bailing on Win7 for the HP slate are pretty powerful to seal the deal that desktop OS's simply can't live on a tablet device in their current state.
That's why I keep it all to myself, new Ideas, thought, agree - disagree. I guess it's a trendy thing - to brag about whatever it is that's in your head at the moment.
Product announcements that remain coming soon, episodes like yours last year.
On the other side - hey, even Microsoft does stuff like that, so probably it is a good idea…
Today's Gruber's entry is entitled "Look who came crawling back", I hope your products will be cool, so that Gruber won't write a continuation "… and look what he dragged along with"
"To stick to an opinion regardless is to see the world as you would like it to be, not as it actually is. Down that road lies the Free Software Foundation..."
Or Ghandi.
Choosing to use cross-platform development tools (as some seem to favour) just switches the 'control', and changes the organisation in control of your fate, from the platform vendor to the cross-platform tool vendor.
I haven't encountered any testimonies of Adobe being any more responsive to developer-filed bugs and problems in their tools than Apple ever have been, and the closer your tools are to the platform the more chance you have of fixing or finding workarounds for any bugs you do discover.
@James R Grinter
great point about the bugs. There is nothing worse as a developer than those occasions where a bug or quirk in the black box makes it extremely difficult to debug or resolve a problem. I've been there many times in the past and each additional box wrapped around the package increases the chance of it happening.
This of course was one of the six keys in Jobs' letter. As a developer I can just imagine apple and adobe passing the buck around about who owns a particular problem.
A couple of people have indicated that, in the not-so-distant future, Full-OS Macs will go away. If so, what platform will people use to develop iPad software? Will they develop it straight on the device? Or will you need a Windows machine to run the compiler?
The reason that I'm a Mac user is because it gives me a UNIX that "just works". If Apple takes away the UNIX, I'll switch to something else. Mac OS just won't meet my needs anymore.
Apple sold Apple //s for 8 years after the introduction of the Macintosh. I don't think the Mac is going away soon. But it does appear to be at something of an evolutionary dead end. Maybe Apple will yet be able to reinvent the platform.
So, you sold out your convictions for a buck and decided to write a blog post about it.
Cheers!