Kay C Lan wrote:
To that I say, let it happen, let market forces play out, let capitalism do
it's thing.
Amen. I can't help but wonder if underlying all of this may be that
Steve Jobs doesn't have faith in Apple's ability to deliver an
unquestionably superior experience.
He writes about how multi-platforms apps -- such as the ones we Rev
folks make for the desktop -- lower the quality of the user experience.
If that were the case to any degree that mattered, people simply
wouldn't buy our apps, and would instead choose a truly native alternative.
But in practice I see two factors that support using a "middleware"
engine like Rev:
1. The quality difference is not significant enough to matter to users.
My Rev-based app got a 4.5-out-of-5 review at not just any mag,
but MacWorld, where the reviewer, editorial director Jason Snell,
knows a thing or two about Mac UI conventions. His review
never mentioned that the text in my tab controls is one pixel
lower than spec. Instead, he lauded its efficiency and ease
of use.
The language doesn't make the software, the developers does.
You can make sloppy apps in Objective-C, and you can be
diligent with Rev.
2. In many cases, our is the only Mac offering available.
Many of the apps I make for my clients do not have Mac-native
competitors. Instead, our competitors tell their Mac customers
to run their Windows apps under Parallels or Bootcamp. Few
Windows developers bother to port to Mac -- why double
development costs only to gain an extra 10% market potential?
If we weren't able to keep our costs down by using a single code
base to deliver to all three platforms, we probably wouldn't
deliver for OS X at all, since we make four to eight times as
much money from our Windows customers.
But thanks to cross-platform tools like Rev, it's affordable
to deliver for the Mac audience, and even on our worst day our
UX better conforms to the Mac HIG that running a Win app under
emulation. :)
If we were prevented from using Rev for OS X, OS X simply wouldn't
have some software categories addressed at all.
Today this may not seem relevant on the iPhone OS with its
200,000 apps, but over time I think it'll start to become
noticeable, esp. in vertical categories such as those most
Rev developers make.
If Steve Jobs believes that Apple can deliver an unquestionably superior
user experience, one that matters enough to drive sales, why not let
cross-platform tools continue to address vertical needs for iPhone OS as
they do for OS X?
Is he afraid that he'll see on the iPhone what we've all been seeing on
the desktop for years, that it really doesn't matter to end-users what
language is used to make an app as long as it enhances their workflow?
Is he afraid that Apple won't be able to offer sufficiently compelling
differentiation unless he locks developers into making apps for iPhone
OS exclusively by arbitrarily raising their development costs to the
point that they have to choose between iPhone or the rest of the world?
I agree with your statement:
Let the market decide if Rev apps are worthwhile.
One significant irony in all of this is that Apple already allows one
universal scripting language to be used to make app bundles for iPhone
OS, with access to the accelerometer, GPS, multitouch, and other
features common among modern mobile devices: JavaScript, via WebKit.
With JavaScript you can use a single code base to deliver apps to
multiple mobile OSes, and you could even make them as ugly as you like,
and they'll be fully compliant with the new license terms.
If they allow that scripting language, why not also Rev?
--
Richard Gaskin
Fourth World
Rev training and consulting: http://www.fourthworld.com
Webzine for Rev developers: http://www.revjournal.com
revJournal blog: http://revjournal.com/blog.irv
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