"Jon Ribbens" <jon+usenet@unequivocal.co.uk> wrote in message news:slrnh4h0l
o.v6q.jon+usenet@snowy.squish.net...
> On 2009-06-29, Todd Allcock <elecconnec@aNOoSPAMl.com> wrote:
>> Apps can dress up the native functions in eye-catching new ways, but
>> since, for example, the iPod APIs only support playback of format X
>> and Y, your app simply ain't gonna playback format Z, no way, no
>> how.
>
> Not inside the iPod app, no, but inside your own app you presumably
> can since you *can* get streaming radio apps etc.


Of the streaming apps I've seen or tried, they all seem to play streams in
formats (MP3, AAC) the iPhone handles natively already, at least judging by
what comes over my PC from the same sources (NPR, etc.)

>> John Dvorak joked in a recent column, that if Microsoft had produced the
>> iPhone instead of Apple, with the same restrictions, someone would've
>> started a class-action lawsuit already.
>
> Microsoft are a monopolist with convictions for abusing that monopoly
> (albeit not in the mobile marketplace). That makes a difference.

Really? You'd rather be mugged by a "nice guy" rather than a mean one?

Apple doesn't get a "pass" because they're Apple.


>> I'm not as funny as Dvorak, so I typically just ask aloud that if the
>> next
>> line of Macs and MacBooks had the same restrictions as the iPhone - a
>> centralized app distribution system preventing apps to be sourced
>> anywhere
>> else, no user-accessible file system, with files only available to the
>> app
>> that created them, media files not transferable to other computers
>> (because
>> only pirates do THAT!), and the next Mac OS preventing more than one
>> third-
>> party app from running at a time, would the Mac users all agree this was
>> beneficial to the user experience as the iPhone users seem to believe?
>
> Do you have some reason to believe that that will happen, or is that
> whole paragraph just a huge pile of FUD?

It was neither. Read it slowly: it was a hypothetical- hence the use of the
word "if". "IF the next Macs were as locked down as the iPhone, WOULD users
agree..." I'm not suggesting this a slippery slope Apple will ride up to
Macs- I'm just saying a lot of people here are defending practices employed
on the iPhone that they'd be horrified to see on a computer.


>> Apple's start-from-scratch mobile UI was a much better idea. Where Apple
>> has failed completely, however, is by showing an utter lack of faith in
>> developers to improve the product. (Or it just might be hubris that the
>> product is nearly perfect as is.)
>
> No, I think it's because they're targetting a different market.
> Which they have every right to do, and by the looks of it, was
> a very good decision!

We'll never know that. It might have been a better decision to have had a
real GPS app a year ago- maybe the iPhone would be the largest selling PND
right now!


>> Apple on the other hand, treats the iPhone developers like children-
>> Apple's laid out their toys neatly in the sandbox. If they're naughty,
>> they can't go to the app store. If they want more toys, they're told
>> Santa
>> might bring them next firmware release day. The jailbreaker underground
>> is doing their best, but rather than nudge-nudge-wink-winking them, Apple
>> is fighting and threatening them,
>
> Are they? I got the impression it was much more along the "nudge nudge
> wink wink" lines, with Apple doing the minimum necessary to keep the
> carriers happy. They rattle the sabre as required every now and again,
> but the OS upgrades have repeatedly *failed* to screw over the
> jailbreak people when they easily could have.

I'm not sure it'd be that easy to "screw them over" when they could simply
flash back to "legit" before upgrading. And Apple is fighting to make
jailbreaking illegal in the next DMCA
<http://www.copyright.gov/1201/2008/responses/apple-inc-31.pdf> That's not
sabre-rattling.


>> Upstanding iPhone partners don't soil themselves by associating with
>> the jailbreakers, or Apple won't let them play in the app store either.
>
> Do you have a reference for that?

Not at all- just observation. Sling poo-pooed the idea of a jailbroken
version when asked, as did Tom Tom when making noise in the press that they
had an iPhone version "ready to roll" a year ago. There seems, from casual
observation, to be a (perfect logical) incentive to keep a business partner
like Apple happy, and not undermine their business model. This is why a
single point of distribution is dangerous. The shake-the-baby app is FUNNY
(and I'm a father of three!); why should Apple, or anyone else, stop YOU
from buying porn if you want to? Why should AT&T have ANY say in the app
store? (AT&T is perfectly within their right to tell you not to use it on
their network, of course, and even build a technological barrier to enforce
that, but to ask for an app to modified or removed?) If logic like that
applied to computers, we'd never have seen a DVD backup app- Sony would've
asked Apple and Microsoft to "pull it from their app stores."