• Roselyn BARKLEY

The EFF does not “promote” anybody or anything — that would bias them and completely torpedo their mission, which is to act as a neutral watchdog for citizen’s choice and freedom online. Apple, Google, Verizon, AT&T, the FCC — the EFF treats them all equally. (30 seconds on a search engine will show you examples of the EFF challenging each of them.) Regardless of the entity involved, the EFF exists solely to speak up when they see a government or corporate action that abridges citizen/consumer digital freedoms. Nothing more, nothing less.

Nice of them to stick their hands where they don’t belong.

No, the Apple of today is not the Apple of yesterday — in terms of how it treats developers, the rules and support are far worse than for the Mac back in the day. (Though their actual tools are admittedly much better, IMHO)

As for the rest, no worries, I appreciate the discussion and do not think you are just being a smartass. However, even if I had one of those “awesome apps” (Gruber’s words, not mine) kicking around my brainpan, I do not think the NexusOne is there yet, either in terms of its hardware or its market. That is why I do not think Apple’s policies are going to hurt them in the short run at all. While the competition is floundering, this is Apple’s wild summer, and they certainly should feel entitled to enjoy it.

But a smart business should not be the grasshopper who acts as if the summer should never end; the smart business needs to account for circumstances changing. At least in its treatment of its third party developers, Apple is acting the grasshopper, assuming partners need the iPhone market so badly they will put up with comically one-sided rules, forever. Today, it is true. Tomorrow, it will still be true. But if they keep squeezing this tightly, sooner or later (probably later) it will catch up to them.

Still, the risk/reward/hassle scenario you paint isjust plaintrie, and the best descrition of it I’ve read (yes- not joking) – so I hope you won’t just thinkme a smart-ass when I say

No, abiding by the rules is not a problem — I mean it is a problem because such a deathgrip on rules is itself ultimately self-defeating. The 1980s parallel with the Mac is instructive, in that the Windows only became an insurmountable juggernaut when the coolest apps became Windows-first or Windows-only, and that only occurred because Apple treated developers with something between indifference and hostility. Consequently, many shops bolted at first opportunity. Windows might have still snowballed, but Apple would have been in a much better position to fight off their near-death had they kept some of those killer apps from leaving.

With the iPhone’s huge marketshare lead, it is not a short-term problem at all — the Mac did not suffer for 4 years, and I doubt Apple will feel significant effects for a couple years. Some will cite the few early defections and repercussions (e.g. Joe Hewitt and the botched Facebook 3.1 release) from the more philosophically opposed, but for most of us, it is pure business. On one side of my scale is Apple’s unquestioned market superiority; on the other side are App Store policies that introduce significant expense and completely unforeseeable risk to my business. If I can net $250,000 from the iPhone, with a 5% risk of rejection and total loss versus a best case of $15,000 from the Android market, I will choose the iPhone market every time. Since Apple’s policies allow me to little more than guess for that 5%, if and when my projections for the Android market grows to $100,000, the decision is not so clear. If the iPhone gave me a way to run my business rationally with regard to risk, I would never look the other way, and I know I am not alone in that regard.

Good third party apps are the best salesforce a platform has. Apple has a deserved lead, but the unquantifiable headaches the App Store introduces tilts that salesforce towards the competition. As DaringFireball put it “There are awesome iPhone OS apps that aren’t being built because developers don’t trust Apple not to yank the carpet out from underneath them.” That is not an attitude any company can afford to cultivate among your salesforce or your community if you want to maintain your edge. All it will take is a few of those “awesome apps” showing up first on Android, or webOS, or Windows-whatever-the-hell-it-these-days, and the landscape can change.

I do not want to see what happened to my Mac happen to my iPhone, and draconian terms like these sow the eventual seeds of that scenario.

THAT is the problem.

Re “that’s good for us, and ultimate it’s good for Apple”… not really. It’s a nice platitude but without real merit. Apple does not and will not craft its contractual agreements based on popular opinion. Nor should it. Publishing the License Agreement accomplishes nothing but to generate publicity for the EFF (their main motive) and titillate the public with a document they wouldn’t otherwise see. Make a difference? Not a chance.

But the critics, duh? What do you expect.

Yeah, yeah – it’s Apple’s fantastic kitchen, they can set whatever rules they want, and, if you do not like them, cook somewhere else. No duh – that is the problem. Eventually, they will.