Comments on: Must Read: RIM Developer Eyeing the iPhone

By: Sean Peters

Sean Peters — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 17:19:23 +0000

...is how RIM (like every other Smartphone company out there) has utterly missed the boat when it comes to 3rd party application developers

I'm sorry, but in this regard, Apple has a way to go before it gets as good as Palm. The Palm developer ecosystem is way more developed than iPhone (Apple is catching up fast, but there are still way, way more products for Palm), and even better (in my opinion) is that Treo developers don't have to say "mother may I" to Palm when they want to release an application for it. They just go ahead and release it. I'm not at all impressed by the App Store model of software distribution - more freedom, please.

Sure, iPhone beats the snot out of Treo overall, but not in this particular area. Palm devices delivered the "get out of the mobile developers way" thing a long time ago.

I'm just about to dump my Treo 650 for an iPhone, but I can't help be sad about it. Treos were an unbelievably good product back in the day.

By: Virtuous

Virtuous — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 08:40:53 +0000

It’s taken Apple’s competion years to go up against the iTune Store. Other companies will continue to lag behind Apple because they simply don’t understand how Apple fits all of the pieces together. In the case of the iPhone it’s the large screen, elegant UI, iTunes Store and Apps Store.

By: iPhoneMilk

iPhoneMilk — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 17:32:55 +0000

Well said sir!

By: Rene Ritchie

Rene Ritchie — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 15:54:57 +0000

Ever since NeXT and NeXTStep/OpenStep, Jobs has been targeting developers with very rich, very easy to use environments, objective languages, and extensive frameworks for rapid delivery.

OS X inherited all of that, and Mobile OS X is taking the easy and rapid parts to the next level (pun intended?).

JDE can't really compete short term, especially with a multitude of different OS's and form factors in the field. WinMob suffers from both Microsoft's poor environment and fragmented device base (many different OEMs with different classes of devices, ie. touch/no touch). Android is having similar hardware complications and the brouhaha over secret SDK releases to select developers won't build trust. Palm OS is going extinct and Nova is a wildcard, but the fresh start with a controlled hardware set will give them a huge advantage if they can push it forward.

And that's just the backend. App Store will get copied, for sure, but the initial gold rush of developers to the platform just to benefit from App Store now will be huge. If it keeps mind share, the potential is interesting to say the least...