Reply to: Apple

[VectraMan]

Ms beat apple on prce and apps. First year or windows 3 and mac 2 there were something like 30,000 apps for ms developed and 3000 for apple, mainly down to how apple license aps. Verymuch like what they're doing now in fact.

Indeed. It was Bill Gates that realised the potential for a snowball effect: more people would buy the OS if there were more apps for it, and more developers would write apps for their OS if more people used it.

That's why MS dominated the desktop OS world.

[snaw]

We have a different view of how Windows dominated the market.

It was a PR battle that won MS the crown. Pre NT 4 days, there was more Netware in the datacenter than any other O/S.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novell_NetWare

I was around then doing exactly that (netware and lan manager/nt etc) for banks. Quite what netware has to do with ms beating apple I'm not really sure, since it was a different fight.

Ms beat apple on prce and apps. First year or windows 3 and mac 2 there were something like 30,000 apps for ms developed and 3000 for apple, mainly down to how apple license aps. Verymuch like what they're doing now in fact.

With novell, I suspect it was down to how slow they were at adaptin to ip as the underlying protocol (IPX really is a tulipty protocol even on LANs and treuly awful across a wan), plus as mentioned the ease of deploying and supporting NT that killed novell.

[darmstadt]

Wont take much for some of these big companies like Microsoft, Adobe, Google etc to start lobbying for the US and EU to take a close look at Apple business practice and wether it is good for the end consumer and Apple will face time in courts, which they will lose. Apple are pissing off to many people.

Similar things are already happening and have been hapeening for while in the mainframe market: http://openmainframe.org/

[VectraMan]

We have a different view of how Windows dominated the market.

It was a PR battle that won MS the crown. Pre NT 4 days, there was more Netware in the datacenter than any other O/S.

Netware didn't lose because of marketing, they lost because of ease of use. Where I used to work there were two IT guys (a company of about 50), and they hated all the pain they had to go through with Netware, but when they got a second server with NT Server, they loved it because it was so simple and straightforward to use. That wasn't down to marketing to the management; it was the head IT guy's decision.

Netware makes a great cautionary tale: everybody used it because it was the only decent system out there, but everybody hated it and so couldn't wait to ditch it as soon as there was a half decent alternative (even if the alternative wasn't as good). Netware didn't fail because of marketing; Netware failed because of complacency.

[Sysman]

We have a different view of how Windows dominated the market.

It was a PR battle that won MS the crown. Pre NT 4 days, there was more Netware in the datacenter than any other O/S.

Microsoft successfully shifted market share away from NetWare products toward their own in the late-1990s. Microsoft's more aggressive marketing was aimed directly to management through major magazines; Novell NetWare's was through IT specialist magazines with distribution limited to select IT personnel

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novell_NetWare

An excellent link thanks. I came across very little Netware in the large corporations I was working with, but it was largely the same story for other server room operating systems. IBM on the other hand always did realise the importance of marketing to management.

[minestrone]

I believe what will sink Apple will be the anti competition and anti-trust lawsuits that will hit them very soon.
Microsoft got nailed hard in this regard, and the practices were actually far less draconian than what Apple are trying.

Govts like competition, and what Apple is doing is trying to kill competition, it might be how capitalism works, but govts dont like capitalism when it hurts the general public.

Wont take much for some of these big companies like Microsoft, Adobe, Google etc to start lobbying for the US and EU to take a close look at Apple business practice and wether it is good for the end consumer and Apple will face time in courts, which they will lose. Apple are pissing off to many people.

WHS.

Microsoft got chased for putting a default browser on their OS which seems laughable these days.

I read something late last year about how microsoft and google are now accepting they have to work together on this. But then people in glass houses should not throw stones and google have probably more to lose than anyone if the competition rules were applied fully.

[DaveBur]

I believe what will sink Apple will be the anti competition and anti-trust lawsuits that will hit them very soon.
Microsoft got nailed hard in this regard, and the practices were actually far less draconian than what Apple are trying.

Govts like competition, and what Apple is doing is trying to kill competition, it might be how capitalism works, but govts dont like capitalism when it hurts the general public.

Wont take much for some of these big companies like Microsoft, Adobe, Google etc to start lobbying for the US and EU to take a close look at Apple business practice and wether it is good for the end consumer and Apple will face time in courts, which they will lose. Apple are pissing off to many people.

[NickFitz]

How are they changing their ethos? I can (and have) written OS X applications in Obj-C, Java and C#. So what's changed? Apple already review app store submissions so why should it matter the tool that was used to develop it as long as it performs well?

John Gruber of Daring Fireball (who the New York Times acknowledge as the source for the blog post quoted at the start of this thread) has, as usual, a good analysis:

So what Apple does not want is for some other company to establish a de facto standard software platform on top of Cocoa Touch. Not Adobe’s Flash. Not .NET (through MonoTouch). If that were to happen, there’s no lock-in advantage...

<snip>

Flash CS5 and MonoTouch aren’t so much cross-platform as meta-platforms. Adobe’s goal isn’t to help developers write iPhone apps. Adobe’s goal is to encourage developers to write Flash apps that run on the iPhone (and elsewhere) instead of writing iPhone-specific apps. Apple isn’t just ambivalent about Adobe’s goals in this regard — it is in Apple’s direct interest to thwart them.

(My emphasis.)

In other words, this whole story is "Company takes action to protect market share" - which shouldn't come as a surprise to anybody who's got any idea about how Capitalism operates.

[Incognito]

They don't, but it was that exact same ethos that lost them the original battle against windows, and one in the long run I suspect will lose them this one as well if that's how they're going to operate.

We have a different view of how Windows dominated the market.

It was a PR battle that won MS the crown. Pre NT 4 days, there was more Netware in the datacenter than any other O/S.

Microsoft successfully shifted market share away from NetWare products toward their own in the late-1990s. Microsoft's more aggressive marketing was aimed directly to management through major magazines; Novell NetWare's was through IT specialist magazines with distribution limited to select IT personnel

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novell_NetWare

[TroubleAtMill]

I'm sorry, but I don't see how you can make that anology. The way I read it, is that anyone can write apps for the iPhone as long as you follow some specific rules:

- Applications may only use Documented APIs in the manner prescribed by Apple
- must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++ or JavaScript
- only code written in C, C++ and Objective-C may compile and directly link against the Documented APIs

If you can't follow their rules, then tough.

Yes, it is Apple's walled garden but what I'm personally (I know, delusions of adequacy ) annoyed about is what's the point of this rule? How does it improve shareholder value to exclude a many number of developers by making them dump their years of experience in ActionScript (in the case of Flash/Flex), C# (MonoTouch) or JavaScript (Appcelerator Titanium)?

why should they have to change their whole ethos so Joe Bloggs can port some dodgy 99p Flash game.

How are they changing their ethos? I can (and have) written OS X applications in Obj-C, Java and C#. So what's changed? Apple already review app store submissions so why should it matter the tool that was used to develop it as long as it performs well?

nothing annoys me more than code badly ported.

iTunes for Windows comes to mind

[VectraMan]

I'm sorry, but I don't see how you can make that anology. The way I read it, is that anyone can write apps for the iPhone as long as you follow some specific rules:

- Applications may only use Documented APIs in the manner prescribed by Apple
- must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++ or JavaScript
- only code written in C, C++ and Objective-C may compile and directly link against the Documented APIs

The thing you've missed out is that you must get their approval for everything you do. You could spend a fortune developing an App for the iPhad, and Apple say "no sorry, we're going to write our own", and you're screwed.

The "originally written" thing is what's so obviously targeted at Adobe. But not just Adobe. You can't use Java, not because of the language, but because that's a runtime in its own right. Same with anything like .NET, so C#, VB etc. are out. So are things like Python, Perl, Pascal, in fact any application that uses any kind of scripting language or macro language is disallowed on the iPhad (even if it's Javascript, which is only allowed in their browser).

If anybody believes this is for a technical reason they're extremely deluded.

On a different day we might be having an argument about the inherent bugginess and unreliabilty of C/C++, and how the next generation languages such as Java and C# are better, inherently more reliable, that they're cross platform, etc., etc.. So the idea that Apple apps are more reliable because they're limited to C is a bizzarre one.

[snaw]

The reason for that is they control the hardware and software, why should they have to change their whole ethos so Joe Bloggs can port some dodgy 99p Flash game.

They don't, but it was that exact same ethos that lost them the original battle against windows, and one in the long run I suspect will lose them this one as well if that's how they're going to operate.

[Bunk]

Which version?

I can't remember whether I finally binned my Windows 3.0 edition.

Don't bin it! Zeity might be upgrading to Windows 3.0 any day now

[voodooflux]

If I were Adobe I'd make CS5 Windows only, or Windows + Linux in retaliation.

I was just musing over that scenario too. It's very unlikely though IMHO - they'd be cutting off their nose to spite their face, losing a lot of sales in the process.

[Incognito]

Whatever you think of Microsoft, they never sought to prevent other people from writing software for their platform. In fact, they enouraged it, which was exactly what made Microsoft as dominant as it is.

I guess I am biased, as a software developer. I'm worried that with all the trendoids lining up to praise Apple, there's a danger that Apple will ultimately win. And then we'll all be screwed. There'll be no choice anywhere, no independent software, no open source, no open standards, and we'll all just be sad old men getting together in the Job Centre once a week, and talking about the good old days of Microsoft's monopoly.

I'm sorry, but I don't see how you can make that anology. The way I read it, is that anyone can write apps for the iPhone as long as you follow some specific rules:

- Applications may only use Documented APIs in the manner prescribed by Apple
- must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++ or JavaScript
- only code written in C, C++ and Objective-C may compile and directly link against the Documented APIs

If you can't follow their rules, then tough. Apple is a more stable environment than Windows. The reason for that is they control the hardware and software, why should they have to change their whole ethos so Joe Bloggs can port some dodgy 99p Flash game.

Having worked with Windows for years, nothing annoys me more than code badly ported. The amount of enterprise apps that have been cobbled together from their original Unix iteration is astounding and inevitably crap.

If I were Adobe I'd make CS5 Windows only, or Windows + Linux in retaliation.

You do realise that Mac OS X v10.5 (and onwards) are now Registered Unix-like systems. Bit hard to retaliate just against Apple.