There is an awful lot being written in the blogosphere about Steve Jobs and Apple right now. Much of it leans negative regarding Apples’ decision to essentially close the door on other frameworks existing on the iPhone operating system.
Personally, I agree with community, I don’t really understand this stubbornness in 2010 and it actually turns out to be a mini-disaster avoided for me. Several months ago I started investing my time into learning Objective C and Cocoa Touch so that I could build my own Apps for the iPhone. During the decision process I came really really close to making an investment in the Mono Touch Framework so that I could immediately extend my C#.Net skills to the Apple iPhone operating system. My decision to go with the native tools turns out to be the right one but it had everything to do with money. Mono sounded great and I would have mostly hit the ground running but I wasn’t about to plunk down $500 to use the framework, I felt it was just too much. So I went with “learning a new language”.
It’s not that I mind paying either, it’s just $500 seemed high for this. Comparatively, I pay approximately $800 annually for my Microsoft Developer Network renewal and with that I get an incredible amount of Applications, Tools and Operating Systems that I get to utilize to build stuff at home. I just couldn’t bring myself to invest $500 in a single framework. Heck, I get the Apple SDK for the iPhone and XCode for $99 annual. Had the Mono price been on par with that I’d be sitting here telling you how I must now flush my time down the drain.
Apple could be taking advantage of “the love”. They’ve achieved a level of consumer adoration that is unheard of. In fairness, they earned it by delivering products that people love to use. Companies that reach this level just crush it right over the center field fence while they have it. Think Amazon! Right now, they have the mojo too. They’re probably “the” most trusted brand on the web from a consumers perspective and the numbers they’re posting continue to prove it.
Amazon is quietly becoming one of the next great technology companies. I say quietly because in the living rooms across America the conversation surrounding Amazon isn’t really technology chatter, it’s e-commerce talk. Meanwhile, techie geeks realize that Amazon is really the leader in the cloud space today. Their Elastic Cloud platform is getting more mature by the day and more importantly, what you don’t see Amazon doing is messing around with the ecosystem by deciding who gets to build stuff on the stack.
Apple on the other hand has decided that it’s their stack, thus they want full control. Developers are going to create Apps with native Apple Tools and APIs or they’re not allowed to play. Perhaps it’s due to past decisions? Maybe, as others have said… Apple sees the personal computing space about to shift to mobile where they feel they can dominate the market share?
My hat is off to them for their success, they’re innovating while everyone is following in the mobile space right now. No disrespect to Android, Microsoft or Blackberry but show me thousands of people waiting outside for days to get their new products and I’ll tell you I’m wrong.
Even though I don’t agree with shutting out parts of the developer ecosystem, I’m not changing my plans. I’m committed to learning how to build things on the iPhone OS. Apples’ decision could one day soon impact the consumer love though.
How? What’s going to happen when killer apps start showing up on Android based devices, and they’re gonna… Apple consumers will be left wondering why they can’t get that App in the App Store? Answer… Apple told that developer to get out of the sandbox.