Another developer returns to iPhone post-iPad
Frasier Speirs, one of several well-publicized developers to leave the iPhone over objections to Apple’s App Store policies and controversy surrounding app rejections, has decided to return, post iPad, and his reasons are intriguing:
I suspect that the days of everyone buying a MacBook to get online are soon to be over. I’ve already written about how I see our three-Mac family turning into a one-Mac, three-iPad family over the next hardware cycle and I imagine that scenario repeated industry-wide over time. Already the ratio of iPhone OS devices to Macs is 5:2.
He believes Apple can and will reject apps, and that the frontier days of computing are giving way to the mainstream, appliance future.
iPhone OS is the first mass-market operating system where consumers are no longer afraid to install software on their computers (I’m not counting read-only media software platforms like games consoles here). In a conversation recently, a friend recounted a scene that he passed by in an airport. Four fifty-something women were sitting at a cafe table discussing the latest apps they had downloaded on their iPod touches. New software can’t break your iPhone OS device and, if you don’t like it, total removal is only a couple of taps away.
Speirs also thinks iPads are cheap enough you can buy each year’s new model and still save money compared to traditional computers. And he wants into that ecosystem.
[Frasier Speirs via Daring Fireball]
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Now we just need mr hewitt to come back and fixed the severly broken facebook app
Speirs has a point, never thought of it that way.
Oh well, with all this “softening” of computing, it’ll make power users in higher demand.
I weep for you all.
@Jack
Why?
I must admit that other than Photoshop, there is very little I do that couldn’t be done on an iPad.
Fox.com doesn’t work
a so called “OS” for the technologically impaired coupled with a device for bathroom time. and this dev thinks laptops will die? how fascinating.
He returned because of the green. let’s be real. There’s more money to be made here if your app Is of quality and it somehow gets exposure.
@Jack
An OS for the technologically impaired? Oh I’m sorry, are you talking about…most people. You see, the majority of people are technogically “young”. So what’s the problem with his philosophy? And I don’t think he’s saying the laptop will die. But the OS for the “impaired” is more prevalent (5:2) than MacBooks. So he’d be crazy not go after that market. I don’t see the problem with it. The OS that’s so “impaired” has pleased millions of people, much less made many devs a lot of money. (And Apple). I’d assume you bash everyone that likes different music than you as well and that everyone else is musically impaired.
@Gino
That much is obvious — I am shocked, shocked that neither Gruber nor TIPB quoted these parts, but Fraiser even said in his “return” post that most every problem that drove him away in the first place are still problems, and some of them are in fact much worse. He is back because the money is there, and he will be back out as soon as somebody — anybody — figures out a way to make a pad like appliance without those policy problems.
Somehow I doubt that more iPads means less traditonal computers. I do think that laptops will become the more common version of a ‘computer’ soon, while the iPad will never take the place of a laptop.
Also, for those of you who don’t think the iPad is a computer: computer comes from the latin ‘cum’ (meaning ‘with) and puto (meaning ‘to think’). So, technically, your moleskine notebook is a computer owing to the fact that you think with it.
Yup, I’m looking at getting at 27inch iMac as the “family” computer, and replacing MacBooks with iPads as they become obselete.
Mattheous: too bad the filter had to remove a harmless bit o’ Latin because it happens to share the same spelling as an R-rated verb.
General: I disagree that these things are so cheap that most people will be able to purchase the new models every year. Sure, the 16 GB model is $499 but that’s not the one most people that I know are getting. Smallest hard drive and no 3G.
Apple has really pulled a rabbit out of their corporate hat by having people think of the iPad as a five hundred dollar device. Maybe that will work it in their favor, overall and the developer’s idea will prove to be accurate.
Freaking idiots. An iPad can’t do 5% of what a laptop can do. Maybe that 5% is what 100% of a lot of people want to do but I doubt it. And what of letting one company absolutely dictate what apps you have, how they are written and so on? Surely that doesn’t sit well with a lot of people. To me it is not moral as a developer to help this sort of process along.
I have an iPad. Neat device. But I can’t take notes and store away folders of references like I can in Firefox + Zotero plugin. I don’t have one single iPad app nor have I found any that is way compelling and fully takes advantage of that big touch screen. The only one app at a time thing drives me bonkers. I love the big touch screen but where the heck are the apps that really use it well? Missing Flash and embedded Java type things really pisses me off.
The iPad accessories enable you to connect your iPad to the keyboard without any hassle, download the pictures from your digital Camera without spoiling the picture quality and many other applications smoothly.
Do you care if I put part of th is on my internet site if I submit a link to th is webpage?