Ever since Apple introduced the App Store , someone or other has written hebdomadary ( perhaps daily ) about why Apple ’s fuddled ascendence over the App Store is a defective idea . Every meter an app is rejected or delay , the teapot is shake up again .
This is n’t going to be one of those stories where I accuse Apple of being too controlling and discrepant with its App Store rejection policies . Nor am I going to exact , as many have , that Apple require to halt filtering the App Store out of some loose - floating sense of fairness and righteousness .
No , I ’m here to say to Apple that while I realize very well the reasons for the ship’s company ’s walled - garden approach to native iPhone OS apps , the strengths of that approach have now been surpassed by the bad packaging and reputation that Apple and its products are now getting in the market as a whole .
Many critics of Apple ’s policies have suggested that developers will forsake the iPhone O for more open platforms such as Android . Some of them have , and I ’m certain more will watch . But I ’m not convinced that the absence of some developers on the platform will really make the difference . As long as there are tens of billion of iPhone OS devices out there — and Apple keeps selling them at a dissipated stride — there will be developer who want to sell apps to run on them .
It ’s those gimmick sales that care me . Not in the short term , but over time .
Bad reputation
These days , when I blab out to multitude who are not eat up in the minutia of the technology manufacture , I notice a disturbing trend : They tend to speak about Apple ’s products with some warmheartedness , but it ’s increasingly harden with assumptions that the devices are for the most part incompatible with vie technology .
In other words , Apple ’s get a reputation . honest or not , once consumers begin to perceive the companionship as being too controlling and devoted to interlock - in — and do n’t opine that Apple ’s competitors are n’t hammering the company on this point — it will start to be a drag on Apple ’s hardware sales agreement .
The other day I was talk to a colleague , a promising cat who obviously works in the technology and media industries , but is n’t on the technical side . He ’s what I ’d call a moderately inform technical school consumer , and I was showing him my unexampled iPad . His response to me was scandalous : He said that he had been interested in buying an iPad , but need to read PDF files , and since Apple only supported its own format , he could n’t buy one .
Of of course the iPad reads PDFs , I told him . He was surprised . Can I load my own picture and music on it , or only stuff and nonsense I corrupt from Apple ? Sure , I separate him , you could load your telecasting and music . I get by to cream down every single concern he had about the equipment . He did n’t mention Flash once , because running Flash in a web internet browser was n’t a antecedence for him , but Apple ’s anti - Flash stance had helped reinforce his perception that the iPad was a closed - off machine that only played back clobber purchased from Apple .
This sort of consumer sensing is what can hurt Apple , if it disperse . And do n’t think that every Android earphone maker is n’t circulate it , and do n’t think that every tablet maker wo n’t distribute it as soon as they finally ship those tablets .
Droid does
The extroverted release of iPhone OS 4.0 is , in many ways , an attempt to knock items off the Android anti - iPhone checklist . Every morning on the wireless I hear a “ Droid Does ” ad , which describes Droid speech sound as “ multitasking and taking names . ” iPhone OS 4.0 will suffocate those complaints , even as we geekier types argue about just what Apple means byiPhone multitasking .
At the iPhone OS 4.0 launching upshot , Steve Jobs had every opportunity to lick down the other major competitive claim Android has over the iPhone OS : the fact that third - party iPhone app development is n’t “ open . ” alternatively , Jobs perish on a bombast about porn being available on Android and not on the iPhone .
I ca n’t tell you how dissatisfactory that moment was for me . Perhaps Jobs believes what he allege , but it ’s a ridiculous title . set aside the subject that multitude should really make decisions for themselves about what they want to do with their devices , and that the iPhone OS has parental control that could be used to block off adult content from appearing on kids ’ machine , Jobs ’ statement was also totally contrary to fact .
There ’s porn on the iPhone now . Not only does the iPhone have free and easy access code to all the smut on the Web , but there ’s even an iPhone Porn App Store that sell ( WWW - based ) porn apps that play on unmodified iPhone OS devices .
Another reasonableness Apple has plausibly been hesitant to open up up the iPhone to unapproved apps is , that the great unwashed will drop a line malicious apps , and the hurt those apps stimulate could harm Apple and defile the iPhone ’s range of a function . It ’s true , so far as it rifle . But of course , people can jailbreak their iPhones now , and we ’ve already get a line story of iPhone malware on those telephone . At this percentage point the iPhone and the App Store are so established that I do n’t see how any unapproved malware run on devices lay to mesh outside the protection of the App Store could seriously backlash on Apple .
I understand Apple ’s reasons for wanting to control the content on the App Store . But at this spot I think it ’s time for the company to , once and for all , bat down the biggest liability of what has become its most important platform .
I do n’t intend the company require to stop controlling what apps get in the App Store . All Apple need to do is add a new feature , buried several menu item down in the options app , that mirrors the one found on Android machine : an choice that lets you instal Apps from “ unknown rootage . ” If a user tried to turn this option on , they ’d get a shivery admonition about how these sources could n’t be trusted , and that they may run to unstableness , crashes , loss of data , you name it . Scary material .
Most substance abuser will never find that setting . Many who do will be loath to turn it on . But by assign it there , Apple immediately shuts up every individual title that the iPhone is n’t open . ( Just as iPhone OS 4 ’s multitasking feature is debatably not “ true multitasking , ” no doubt many tech insiders would straightaway howl that allowing unapproved apps is n’t truly “ open , ” but I do n’t cogitate even consumers would notice . )
This is why I am surprised that Apple has n’t taken this tone earlier : By keep the App Store close , and by using a stringent blessing physical process , most iPhone o users would never , ever consider installing an unapproved third - party app . Even in a world where unapproved apps can get stretch on an iPhone , developer will desperately require to be in the App Store .
( And who knows ? Perhaps Apple would even feel free to tighten the screw on App Store approvals even further in such a scenario , to make the contents of the store even more groom and filtered . )
The Flash flap and the unceasing rataplan of ridiculous App Store rejection over the past couple of year have give Apple a pitch-dark eye , and I ’m starting to think that consumers are notice — with the aid of Apple ’s contender , who have suddenly realized that they need to throw some punches if they have any hope of competing with Apple .
It ’s a situation that can be cured quickly . But it will require Apple to foreswear some small amount of control and swallow a little piece of its pride . Those are both hard thing to need of Apple , but I think it ’s prison term we take up asking . Otherwise I fear that Apple pride in the App Store will be follow by just what you ’d expect : a fall .
