Tag Archives: App Store

Google’s Chrome Web Store: “Open” or “Closed”?

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Google is reminding us all that “apps” can and should run on the open web, and not just in closed, vertically integrated and controlled environments like the iPhone/Pad/Touch.

via battellemedia.com

Is that what they’re reminding us of? Since Apple’s devices have a compliant web browser in Safari we’ll find out soon enough.

If the Chrome Web Store is truly about supplying apps that “should run on the open web” you’ll be able to use it on an “iPhone/Pad/Touch”. If not, then Google has just created a “closed, vertically integrated and controlled” environment of their own. If the latter, I wonder if the “open” zealots will call them on it.

Apple and the Politics of Phoney Outrage

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People seem to think it is their right to have every Apple product be what they want it to be whether or not that’s the intended design of the product.

via thomas-fitzgerald.net

Nice piece by Thomas Fitzgerald.

I’m still waiting for someone to explain to me how a “closed” system having 200,000 apps to choose from hurts the consumer. When the so-called wall around your garden is only a few inches high, there is no practical difference between it and “open” to consumers.

Apple and the Politics of Phoney Outrage

Posted on by

People seem to think it is their right to have every Apple product be what they want it to be whether or not that’s the intended design of the product.

via thomas-fitzgerald.net

Nice piece by Thomas Fitzgerald.

I’m still waiting for someone to explain to me how a “closed” system having 200,000 apps to choose from hurts the consumer. When the so-called wall around your garden is only a few inches high, there is no practical difference between it and “open” to consumers.

Fraser Speirs Is Back In

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When I first wrote  about my feelings towards the App Store, it was in the  arrogant and vain hope that it might have changed something. The direction of the iPhone OS ecosystem is now clear. To stick to an opinion regardless is to see the world as you would like it to be, not as it actually is.

Down that road lies the Free Software Foundation, and I have zero interest in finding myself in 2020 a bitter forty-something man fighting the battles of a decade ago.

via speirs.org

This is great news. How can you not want someone writing for the iPhone OS who so clearly gets it?

Android can have all the angry political and philosophical developers. I want developers who understand the platform for which they’re writing, and also understand the user doesn’t give a damn about their causes; they just want a product that kicks ass.

Apple to xplatform developers: We’re no longer suicidal

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I don’t ever recall an Apple competitor signing off a diatribe with a “Go screw yourself Apple” in print then. But today I’m not interested in commenting on Adobe’s naked attempt to agitate its developer base to browbeat Apple in public, but in exploring what choices App Store developers currently have beyond Apple’s “walled garden.

via counternotions.com

Great article. The discussion of Apple customers’ demographics is particularly apt.

I keep hearing about Apple’s “walled garden”, but intelligent analysis reveals a wall pretty easy to step over. How else to explain 185,000 apps, so many of which Apple’s critics claim are “garbage” anyway?

Apple against the world

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Apple doesn’t want apps that don’t feel like native iPhone apps on the iPhone. It doesn’t want Adobe to aid developers in creating a world where App X for iPhone and App X for Android are indistinguishable from one another. Apple doesn’t want to introduce new iPhone features and then watch as nobody takes advantage of them because Adobe hasn’t updated its development system yet. Or, worse, watches as Adobe refuses to adopt them because the other operating systems don’t support those features.

via macworld.com

Excellent write-up by Jason Snell at Macworld. It doesn’t just cover the Adobe/Apple situation, but other aspects of the iPhone OS 4.0 announcement as well.

The iPad as a tool

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And my iPhone? It’s even more stable than my laptop. It’s crashed maybe twice in the last three years. The iPad is similarly solid. Why? Because these two devices use the same “closed” approach that has served the video game console makers so well…

For me, all I care is whether a device makes my life easier. I could give a shit about whether the hackers love or hate it, or how much hype something has. The iPad filled my needs seamlessly, with only minor hassles. It was better than a laptop, allowing me to travel more efficiently.

via dailykos.com

A nice read. Good observations about “open” vs. “closed” systems, and about his experience using the iPad as a traveling tool.