I have gotten a somewhat less favorable impression of Apple's motives
and methods...
I believe that Apple has been in anticompetitive territory, such as
killing off apps when when they now compete with their own offerings or
partnerships, and prohibiting features that would let developers or
users add behavior that Apple could not kill off in this way when it
becomes competition.
There is also anti-free-speech territory, with Apple prohibiting
"objectionable" content. Although sometimes they have disingenuously
used the "family values" line for anticompetitive purposes, such as
prohibiting a Project Gutenberg e-book viewer because that competes with
big-business selling e-books, or prohibiting independent apps with
bikini pictures but selling a Playboy app.)
Google has a "don't be evil" policy, but Apple's new policy seems to be
more like, "be a fashionable rich kid, and you can get away with
anything." :)
I believe that this is relevant to any Racket developers considering
whether or how they want to be investing in and supporting the iPhone
platform.
Robby Findler wrote at 06/18/2010 11:15 AM:
We are a fair bit off topic here, but what I see in Apple's policies
is a desire to ensure that their devices behave in consistent,
well-designed ways and to make that happen they have decided to do
things like charge more money for them (presumably to pain for the
extra work that goes into the design process), design their own
hardware & software platform together, and to limit the kinds of
third-party stuff that can go on them. They do this in order to
guarantee they are easy to use and thus hope to sell more of them.
While I certainly agree with the sentiment that they go to far to
achieve this end (and I personally find their earlier PL-based
restrictions to be very disappointing) I can't see how this could be
considered an ethical issue.
Robby
On Friday, June 18, 2010, Neil Van Dyke <n...@neilvandyke.org> wrote:
I think it's both. I mentioned the ethical question because one could probably
find a worthwhile risk-reward solution for the short-term self-interest
economics question, or one could find a way to cover one's own butt (perhaps
involving a backroom deal and PR leverage), but I think that the ethics
(collective, long-term) problem of supporting the iPhone iron-fisting is harder
to resolve.
Robby Findler wrote at 06/18/2010 10:33 AM:
Why is this an ethical question and not an economic one?
Robby
On Friday, June 18, 2010, Neil Van Dyke <n...@neilvandyke.org> wrote:
Apple has been brutal with iPhone developers, running the platform as a
ruthless and fickle dictatorship. I believe that this is the general
perception of iPhone developers.
Even if one is willing to jump through Apple's hoops, and one accepts that, at
any time and for any reason, Apple will have no qualms about simply kicking one
off the platform, instantly and without explanation... I believe that there is
also an ethical question of whether supporting the iPhone platform is
contributing to the success of Apple's ruthless, anti-competitive, and
closed-platform practices.
Android, Symbian, the new Nokia Qt stuff, Java... all alternative mobile device
platforms for civic-minded techies to consider.
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