Steve Jobs is not an idiot
I keep thinking back to 1989. Apple had just introduced the Macintosh II. This was way back in System 6.x days. A long, long time ago. But why did that year matter? Well, Apple was way way way ahead of the rest of the industry. I remember being in a computer science class back then where they forced us all to use DOS. In the journalism department we had just gotten brand new Mac IIcx’s. I think that’s one reason I went into journalism rather than trying to please my dad and become an engineer or a computer scientist.
Anyway, back then I thought Apple was going to take over the world. Apple’s equipment was just so brilliantly designed. They had the best printer, the best network, the best GUI, the best applications. Remember, back then Microsoft’s apps on Macs were WAY ahead of Microsoft’s apps on DOS and Windows was still a joke.
So why didn’t Apple win?
Well, go back to Rich Cameron’s classroom and look again. He wrote a ton of Hypercard applications for his journalism classes. That’s how we learned how to cover press conferences and all sorts of other things. Many of his tests were done in Hypercard too.
But Apple didn’t realize the power of developers. They ignored Hypercard. Never really improved it. Never gave developers really great tools. I remember meeting software developers who worked on Apple applications and they were always complaining about how hard they were to use, or how many rules they had to follow to make sure their apps were “Apple compliant.”
Many people think Apple didn’t win because Apple didn’t go Microsoft’s route of licensing the OS to clone manufacturers. I’m not so sure about that.
Look at what Microsoft did for developers between 1990 and 1995 and you’ll see that THAT was a huge reason that Microsoft became dominant with Windows 95. I remember when Visual Basic came out that lots of Apple developers would look over at it and say “that’s what Hypercard should have become.”
In 1989 Apple was in charge. By 1995 Apple was a second rate company and by 1999 people were thinking that Apple was going to disappear. Of course we all know the rest of the story, right? Steve Jobs.
So, why do I say that Steve Jobs is not an idiot?
Because he’s had to learn the lesson of 1989. Give developers tools to build apps easily and extend your product or else they, and the market, will go somewhere else.
Anyway, right now Apple is acting a lot like Apple did in 1989. Apple is miles ahead with its iPhone. It’s pretty. The folks I’ve talked to who’ve had their hands on one say it pushes the experience of using a cell phone ahead a mile and is way ahead of, say, my little Nokia N95 that’s sitting next to me right now.
But, why is Steve Jobs telling iPhone developers to pound sand? Dave Winer posits that Apple isn’t opening up the iPhone because they don’t have to.
Oh, but 1989 reminds us that chosing to remain non-friendly to developers will work for a while, but long term will doom you to second rate status.
Steve Jobs isn’t an idiot.
So, what do I think will happen? Oh, I can see the Steve Jobs keynote in 2008 right now. “We’ve sold eight million iPhones, more than we expected” and “remember how I said iPhone apps needed to be done with JavaScript and HTML? Well, we heard from all of you that you wanted to play games on Pogo.com so we added Flash. And we’ve been working on our own iPhone applications for more than a year now and we’re sharing the developer tools we use internally.”
Go back to 1989. What if Apple HAD invested in developer tools? What if Apple, instead of Microsoft, had released Visual Basic? What if Apple, instead of Microsoft, had taken the “consumer coolness” that they had in the Apple II line and made it so that a geek working inside some big company could make a business justification to use Macs instead of Windows machines? (Hint: a big part of that is how easy it is to make business applications).
Maybe Apple is happy with its 5% market share, but I doubt it. Steve Jobs is not an idiot.
Watch him open up the iPhone next year. Until then at least Dori Smith should have a job (she’s one of the world’s experts on JavaScript and is out looking).
Or, do you think Apple will keep the iPhone closed and tell developers to pound sand forever?
Steve Jobs is not an idiot.
June 14th, 2007 at 12:23 pm
I got the iMac in our office weeks ago. I still have no idea how to develop Desktop applications for it. I only installed Eclipse and Komodo on it.
So I don’t think it’s changed very much since 199X.
The Apache and GNU software that comes bundled with OSX tiger is SO old, that it makes me wonder why I should use it instead of Linux to develop web apps. The freaking apache is 1.3 for god’s sakes. None of the recent modules compile.
As for using Cocoa, I’m still trying to figure that one out.
Where is Apple Visual Studio?
Let me know and I’ll download it. Right now all I see is far outdated GNU packages that look like they belong on Debian Sarge.
June 14th, 2007 at 12:25 pm
You mean like he’s opened up the iPod and AppleTV platforms? I’ll bet you a nickel you’re wrong.
I’m an Apple Select Developer and I STILL don’t have my 9A466 distro of Leopard. All the in-person attendees have it tho.
Nah, they’re paying lip service to the us b-list and below developers. The ONLY sanctioned place developers have to yak about emerging stuff is at WWDC. There’s no place online we can discuss things (even under the watchful eye of Apple). That’s sad and tells me they don’t REALLY value the developer the way they should.
June 14th, 2007 at 12:28 pm
Robert,
“Eat like a bird, poop like an elephant.” With this phrase Guy Kawasaki like to summarize the downfall of Apple. Yes you are right, software to everyone was the main problem. Also the connectivity of the hardware was also part of the same problem.
The large part of the big success of iPod is because they can use in PCs too. iPhone is having the same business model. It will have a dozen of third party applications in few weeks.
You are right, Jobs one of the smartest people in the business.
Mario Ruiz
http://www.oursheet.com
June 14th, 2007 at 12:29 pm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xcode
Nevermind. It wasn’t installed by default. I have to pull the DVDs back out of the little apple box and install it.
Sorry Steve Jobs. My bad. my bad.
June 14th, 2007 at 12:37 pm
Robert, why you think, THIS is the biggest obstacle. I think the biggest obstacle is that only handful (globally I mean) people can buy iPhone. I’m not talking about the price, I’m talking about Steve’s decision to sell only through one operator, with contract and with iTunes account. Is there iTunes in China or India or Russia, or Turkey?. There is no on BIG operator in Europe, if he chooses just one for Europe then 99% whole Scandinavia (area with biggest penetration of moble phones and home of Nokia and Ericssson) will pass. Steve is freaking busy of thinking ways how NOT to sell those iPhones. What next? Probably Steve will accept only American Express.
June 14th, 2007 at 12:38 pm
You left the door open, so… Having Silverlight and perhaps a full fledged .NET CLR on the iPhone (and on the Mac) would be even better. But then, that would take Jobs and Microsoft to realize once more that it is not a zero-sum game.
June 14th, 2007 at 12:39 pm
Priit: breaking into the carriers is a major pain in the ass. Microsoft spent more than $500 million before they broke in. I’m sure that Steve Jobs will expand iPhone to more carriers eventually. That’s how these things work. You get one, then more come and beg to get your phone cause they notice enough of their customers are leaving.
June 14th, 2007 at 12:40 pm
Diego: .NET CLR on an iPhone? If that happens I’ll be totally shocked. Seriously. Apple putting a Microsoft platform on their phone? Gotta be kidding.
June 14th, 2007 at 12:46 pm
:) And I would be shocked too if Microsoft did it. But as I said, this would take both to get a new perspective (for Apple, that they really want the developers to come). Also, Silverlight is almost there, technically.
June 14th, 2007 at 12:48 pm
@1
Beer, Macs come with bundled with the XCode IDE. That’ll get you writing Mac apps (Cocoa and Carbon) a lot easier than Eclipse or Komodo ever will.
Force-feed Linux OSS cruft onto a Mac, and you get nothing but OSS Liunx cruft on a Mac. Use the Mac as a Mac rather than some lame Linux distro. Then you’ll see why the Mac blows away Linux and makes it look like the utter garbage that it really is.
June 14th, 2007 at 12:48 pm
@Chris:
Glad you found Xcode.
About the Apache thing: Apple seems to follow a Debianesque philosophy regarding some of the GNU apps bundled with OSX. That is, the “stable” is really really old. But it’s trivial to install a newer version if you want/need it.
You might want to check this out: http://finkproject.org/
June 14th, 2007 at 12:49 pm
If iPhone runs Safari, and Silverlight already supports Safari, then why not have Silverlight on iPhone? The only thing preventing it is Jobs’ paranoia.
June 14th, 2007 at 12:53 pm
I do think there is the possibility of an actual SDK in the future, but I don’t think the iPhone development compromise was telling developers to “pound sand.” As you said, Jobs is not an idiot. I think he may be seeing the rise of “Web 2.0″ apps and noticing that while many of these developers may love using a Mac in their work, they don’t know Mac programming and with a 5% market share, it probably isn’t worth their time to learn. So, how can Jobs get a developer community around the iPhone in this situation and without totally opening up the phone? You allow those Web app developers to do what they have been doing and leverage the connectivity of the iPhone to provide access to those apps. I actually think it is a good move on Apple’s part and may help grow the ranks of Apple developers.
June 14th, 2007 at 12:53 pm
@SuzyQ: Exactly!
June 14th, 2007 at 1:06 pm
So, you mean, if in 1989 — or better, in 1985 — Apple had released something like MacBASIC, things might all be different?
June 14th, 2007 at 1:10 pm
Greg: oh, I totally forgot about that. Nasty stuff that Microsoft did back then. Diego: read the post that Greg linked to. That might give you some insight into why Apple might not want to let Microsoft anywhere near its iPhone.
June 14th, 2007 at 1:16 pm
Stephen: the developers I talk with took what he said as “pound sand.” Telling a company like Kyte, or Radar.net, or Google, or other companies that rely on Flash or Java or .NET that they now need to use JavaScript and HTML is quite condescending, don’t you think?
June 14th, 2007 at 1:20 pm
Actually my theory is a bit different. I’m guessing that the OS of the iPhone is too close to that of the iPod, so opening up the iPhone to developers would put the iPod at risk of hack, and they can’t really have that. It’s the back bone of the corporation.
So they can’t open up the iPhone to developers, at least not until they get a chance really lock down the kernel and the OS, which they haven’t had a chance to do since they have rushed it to market.
I Predict there will be a bevy of patch and security updates to the iPhone OS this year, and then, maybe they will open it up.
I posted this theory on my blog today, but I don’t exactly ge the Scoble traffic. :)
June 14th, 2007 at 1:24 pm
Wolfman: that theory might have water if Steve Jobs hadn’t told everyone that it’s OSX underneath. If the iPhone has security problems then OSX would have had those too.
June 14th, 2007 at 1:24 pm
Yes, but business users are not going to buy iPhone v1. It is not going to happen! That’s why it is going to flop. Most of the phone marketshare is based on business users, what with the high phone cost. iPhone will not get the majority of the market. Maybe it will be like the Zune (which is a wonderful device!). Maybe iPhone will be Number 2, but it isn’t going to take over the world.
I’m not even sure that the iPhone is *lightyears* away. Remember, its the same Steve Jobs that stood on that same stage and showed “Leopard” *cough* that looked a lot like Vista *cough*. He talks about innovation like it just flows through his veins. He isn’t a developer. Thats why he doesn’t get it sometimes.
You are terribly wrong about the Flash thing, though. They aren’t just going to “Tack on Flash” like it can be done right this moment. Adobe has to write a plugin for Safari on iPhone first. For that to happen, old Stevey has to open up the iPhone.
You’re right, though. Steve is not an idiot. He knows what’s up. He is the world’s Number 1 salesman in the technology industry. That’s why his market share has been up lately (yes, I said “his” because Steve really IS Apple).
June 14th, 2007 at 1:36 pm
Robert: I think those companies you mention are a different group of developers from the ones targeted by the iPhone compromise (as an aside, doesn’t Google have a native app on the iPhone?). I don’t disagree that a full SDK should exist and I agree that it will probably come. I’m just saying that there are two worlds of developers out there (to oversimplify things), and the Web developers who build primarily HTML and Javascript apps have only recently started being targeted by the big tech companies. It is a shame that in appealing to one group, the other feels slighted. But, ultimately, there are probably more Web developers out there than Mac developers and providing a way for them to target the iPhone platform is a good move. It should not be the only means of developing on the iPhone and it will limit the kinds of apps that can be written, but if an SDK is eventually released, then we’ll have the best of both worlds. Too bad it couldn’t happen out of the gate, but I think this is better than having no developer access at all.
June 14th, 2007 at 1:37 pm
“So why didn’t Apple win?”
Because their kick-ass kit cost three times as much as the good-enough PC which we could actually afford. Duh.
June 14th, 2007 at 1:37 pm
When I first heard the Safari-as-SDK from the keynote live feeds, I thought it was actually a contradiction of what Jobs has been promoting with the iPhone. If Safari on the iPhone IS the “REAL” internet, then why bother writing new apps? Why wouldn’t I just keep going to my regular sites, do a little multi-touch zoom, and experience THE internet in its’ full glory? It just seemed like the opposite of what they are trying to promote. It seemed like a whole separate iPhone version of the internet was being promoted. I do understand that some neat functionality and interaction can be done by developing iPhone specific webapps to work with Apple iPhone apps, but it still seems overrated. I didn’t even think that Apple needed to release a full SDK. I thought that even an iPhone plugin or the like for Dashcode would have been satisfying to a degree. But like you said…Jobs is not an idiot.
June 14th, 2007 at 1:38 pm
Zack: you’re right. But no one has ever made the claim that this will get more than a few percent of marketshare. At least not in the next year.
Adobe’s Flash already works on Safari. So, it would take Adobe all of two minutes to get an iPhone version finished.
I disagree about the Zune, though. It is a wonderful device if it were out in 2002. For 2007, though, the bar is a bit higher.
That said, if Microsoft gets a widescreen Zune out before Apple that could all change around!
June 14th, 2007 at 1:47 pm
Thanks for the link to the MacBasic story. But I don’t think this is a strong reason for Jobs to be wary of Microsoft as long as he stays away of “sugared water” exectutives :)
June 14th, 2007 at 1:51 pm
John: >>Because their kick-ass kit cost three times as much as the good-enough PC which we could actually afford.
That’s not why I switched from Macs to Windows around 1993. The fact is that Windows machines started doing more than Macs did because more developers were kicking out more software. A big part of that was the better developer tools on Windows. I saw this first hand as an associate editor at Visual Basic Programmer’s Journal.
As for cost: yeah, that is a factor. Businesses don’t like paying more than they have to but if Apple had kept up their developer tools and treated developers better they would have had more market share than they do now.
June 14th, 2007 at 1:51 pm
I have shown people my Zune and most are like “Wow… this is cooler than my iPod!”. It is all opinion, however.
I thought it was determined (by who, I’m not sure) that the iPhone wasn’t really running OSX. I guess we will find out. If it is, though, then Apple would have to open up the iPhone. Then, and only then, Adobe would port Flash onto the iPhone and make it work with Adobe *magic*.
Oh, that reminds me, I saw an interview of an Apple Developer (guy who develops apps for Mac… not works for Apple) and he suggested that Apple will only open the iPhone up to “select partners”. That is sort of pointless.
You have to admit, Steve acts like the iPhone will be the biggest thing since sliced bread. Maybe he needs to try a Windows Mobile 6.0 device… maybe he can turn his photocopier on full blast! (No offence!)
June 14th, 2007 at 1:57 pm
Zack: well, it isn’t the OSX on your Mac. It’s a subset. But, who knows, I just listen to Steve Jobs and he says it’s OSX. If it’s not, then maybe we should go after him for false advertising.
As to Zune: do you have a recent iPod too? Most people have old iPods.
Anyway, what did they find so cool about the Zune? I have shown mine to lots of people too and they don’t find it so interesting.
June 14th, 2007 at 2:01 pm
Apple had the best network?
Ha! Ha Ha! Ha Ha Ha! Ha Ha Ha Ha!! LOL! ROFL!
June 14th, 2007 at 2:08 pm
Chas: Apple’s networks were easy to setup by anyone and they worked with their laser printers easily and MUCH better than the other networks that were around for small groups. Keep in mind I was putting networks into classrooms with 30 computers.
June 14th, 2007 at 2:42 pm
Apple’s problem back in the late 80s/early 90s was that they rested on their laurels. Make yourself a list of when PCs and Macs added Color graphics and Hard disk storage. I think folks would be shocked at how many years behind Apple was on what now look like must-have features. In truth, when they did add color graphics they did a good job. Apple allowed itself to be pigeonholed into graphics/publishing tools and once again it was a remarkable event when PC hardware passed Apple in Photoshop or Illustrator performance.
As for Networking, remember that AppleTalk was competing with Novell Netware and MS LanManager. All three are inferior to what we use today, but TCP/IP and 10-base-T hardware weren’t ubiquitous yet.
June 14th, 2007 at 2:48 pm
“Adobe’s Flash already works on Safari. So, it would take Adobe all of two minutes to get an iPhone version finished.”
Too many people are already forgetting how much of a challenge it is to get full web page rendering working smoothly on a phone, and are failing to understand just how much of an additional strain Flash would be.
We may well see Flash added in some form in the next year, but I reckon it’ll be restricted to a ‘click to activate’ approach where a single Flash movie can fill the screen, grabbing just about enough space and processing power to be worthwhile in some cases.
June 14th, 2007 at 2:52 pm
What applications did Apple have in 1989? MacWrite, MacPaint, MacDraw, MacProject, Hypercard, and what else?
In 1989, NeXT Computer was delivering the NextStep programming environment. NeXT was even less successful than Apple, despite delivering a better programming environment.
June 14th, 2007 at 2:54 pm
geniver: I was using Aldus Pagemaker, and Microsoft Excel and Word back in 1989. I don’t think those ever shipped on NeXT.
Matt: 200 million phones already ship with some form of Flash on them: http://www.adobe.com/mobile/
June 14th, 2007 at 3:01 pm
“Adobe’s Flash already works on Safari. So, it would take Adobe all of two minutes to get an iPhone version finished.”
Only problem with this is, while the iPhone runs OS X, there’s no mention anywhere of it being an intel processor. Let alone an x86 one. Given that, they’d need to get a plugin compiled for whatever the (RISC?) architecture is, and then of course deal with all the auto-magical scaling that Safari on the iPhone does. Maybe that side could be handled by Safari, though.
Two minutes would certainly be a gross understatement.
On the other hand, I’ll be interested to see if Google can get gears on to the thing, and if developers could get an icon in the menu. Boom you’ve got offline support, an icon to launch your app. Sure you still don’t have core animation or multitouch (and you might have to watch for things to figure out that you’ve had your orientation changed), but I’m pretty sure you could do most of the (non-multitouch) stuff with just HTML anyway. Has any one made a “coverflow in html” using javascript and canvas? Just wondering is all.
June 14th, 2007 at 3:18 pm
“Matt: 200 million phones already ship with some form of Flash on them: http://www.adobe.com/mobile/”
Yes, that’s a subset of the full plugin, used to create small standalone Flash apps separate from the browser, rather than offering a way to view existing embedded content. I was referring to the unrealistic expectation to have full Flash content within pages, and musing that some form of the full plugin may be possible somehow.
June 14th, 2007 at 3:24 pm
Jobs is not an idiot. The idiots are the brainwashed Mactards.
June 14th, 2007 at 4:11 pm
In 1989 Apple was in charge. By 1995 Apple was a second rate company and by 1999 people were thinking that Apple was going to disappear. Of course we all know the rest of the story, right? Steve Jobs.
Robert, i love you sometimes. What was Apple’s largest market share between 1976 and today? If you think Apple had anything resembling a majority market share after IBM introduced the PC, you’re wrong. Quite wrong in fact.
So why didn’t Apple win?
Because at that time, IBM/Microsoft/Novell ran IT departments, and if you weren’t that, or high end Unix, you didn’t get in. The Mac, circa 1989, was not going to be included in that outside of graphics shops. (The 68040 wasn’t introduced until 1991, and a Mac IIfx cost something like $10K, thanks to Sculley being a fucking idiot) The developer issue was very minor when compared to the influence that IBM/MS/Novell wielded at that time.
Many people think Apple didn’t win because Apple didn’t go Microsoft’s route of licensing the OS to clone manufacturers. I’m not so sure about that.
Look how long it took PC video and sound hardware to get to where they could have fully supported the Mac OS. VGA wasn’t even *introduced* until 1987, at which point, the Mac was supporting far better displays both in color and resolution. When the Mac came out, you had EGA, which was 16 color at 640×350. So while the PC had color first, it took three years to get to the resolution that the Mac had from the start. It took into the 90s for PC standard hardware to get to the level of what Apple had been shipping for years, so Apple couldn’t have cloned off the OS to generic PC hardware at that time even if they wanted to.
What, you were going to have the Mac OS running
June 14th, 2007 at 4:18 pm
Diego: .NET CLR on an iPhone? If that happens I’ll be totally shocked. Seriously. Apple putting a Microsoft platform on their phone? Gotta be kidding.
it’s going to require the silverlight plugin to need a LOT less than 30MB of space to just sit there and do nothing.
If iPhone runs Safari, and Silverlight already supports Safari, then why not have Silverlight on iPhone? The only thing preventing it is Jobs’ paranoia.
It’s still in unstable beta, it’s a space and resource pig, it requires plugins…yeah, all Jobs’ fault.
Most of the phone marketshare is based on business users, what with the high phone cost.
This history of the Razr, and it’s insanely high initial cost says you’re wrong.
Zack: well, it isn’t the OSX on your Mac. It’s a subset. But, who knows, I just listen to Steve Jobs and he says it’s OSX. If it’s not, then maybe we should go after him for false advertising.
Only if everyone else is as ignorant as you are about what an OS is.
Full flash-style support in a memory limited device is not something that’s easy to do. The long term answer is going to be a move away from plugins.
June 14th, 2007 at 4:19 pm
Robert,
Let’s look at this logically.
You start with the premise that “Jobs is not an idiot”
You follow it up with a series of events demonstrating that he is.
You follow that with the latest idiotic decision he’s made.
And then draw the conclusion that the last idiotic decision is secretly not really what was decided by your initial premise which you never demonstrated and made a good case for being false.
Face it. Jobs doesn’t like developers. He likes control.
He was the one insisting that the Mac only come in one size and format in 1984.
He was the one saying the Mac would never have color in 1985.
He was the one who thought the market in 1989 was Unix workstations for $10K sold only to college students.
He was the one who thought the “Killer App” for NeXT was a copy of the collected works of Shakespeare.
Now, why should we assume that when he told developers to pound sand on Monday he really didn’t mean it?
Seriously.
June 14th, 2007 at 4:22 pm
Mike: cause I am thinking that Steve will look back on 1989 and learn something and avoid making the same mistake. Of course, if he hasn’t learned from his mistakes, then he’s doomed to repeat them. In such a scenario Microsoft and Nokia wins.
June 14th, 2007 at 4:58 pm
Robert,
The problem is that you offer no evidence that he HAS learned from 1989. At least as far as making development for any platform a priority. And there are a lot of examples where he had the opportunity since then and didn’t show any change.
If you look at it from a recent history POV, you’d be likely to predict that in a few years what we’ll actually see is an Apple “Official” dual boot tool to let iPhone users quickly switch over to Windows Mobile…
June 14th, 2007 at 5:00 pm
Mike: I think you hang out with too many Microsofties. One reason that a lot of developers use Macs now is that OSX is based on Unix and actually is very friendly to developers. That’s why you are seeing more and more Mac apps lately.
By the way, Steve Jobs didn’t work at Apple in 1989 so what happened there couldn’t be seen as his fault.
June 14th, 2007 at 5:06 pm
John Welch has it dead on. While Apple did a terrible job supporting developers, those years Steve Jobs was running NeXT. He’s got to roll out the iPhone world wide in the next 18 months. Do you seriously believe he will jeapordize that marketing venture with poorly coded independent applications? Corporate client sales are not in his sites during the roll out. Apple hasn’t the infrastructure to cater to big business, nor does Jobs like to be told what to do. He’s going to partner with other biggies and make them provide the hooks for web 2.0 applications to utilize them in delivering services. After the initial roll out I suspect they will open it up more; but it will likely never be the kind of openness that Microsoft delivers with their pathetic Windows Mobile.
June 14th, 2007 at 5:29 pm
Robert,
I think you’ve been spending too much time in the Valley. (Next you’ll be telling us how the SUN Workstation was THE breakthrough product in computing like the displays at the museum in Mountain View would imply…)
btw: I didn’t pick 1989 as an example date, you did. I picked examples from when he WAS running the company into the ground from the top office.
Please, cite just one example when Jobs running Apple has done anything to target developers? It IS, after all, your premise and the entire basis for your, frankly wierd, prediction.
June 14th, 2007 at 6:01 pm
Robert,
Another example… Apparently those new Mac Games from EA won’t actually BE Mac Games. They’ll be Windows games running under the Cider wrapper on x86 Macs.
Looks like either EA didn’t get good developer tools or they just didn’t think a target of
June 14th, 2007 at 6:49 pm
[...] Scoble: Steve Jobs isn’t an idiot. [...]
June 14th, 2007 at 6:53 pm
Mike, here are some examples:
Jobs released Xcode for free with Mac OS X.
Jobs reduced the price of WebObjects, then made it free. (Yeah, I know you’ll say who cares?)
Jobs built up WWDC by killing off MacWorld Boston/New York. Even though the two are not targeted at the same audience, the lack of a summer event caused media and even consumer attention to switch to WWDC.
June 14th, 2007 at 7:08 pm
[...] Scoble: Steve Jobs isn’t an idiot. [...]
June 14th, 2007 at 7:15 pm
“Anyway, back then I thought Apple was going to take over the world. ”
They did. Windows is an upside down backwards carbon copy of Apple’s work.
This is news?
Apple paid for Xerox access with stock, and lots of it, they took the GUI concept and ran with it. Did MS pay for ‘access’ to Apple’s innovations?
How much of Bill Gates’ contributions to Africa are actually Steve Jobs’ money?
June 14th, 2007 at 7:53 pm
“What applications did Apple have in 1989? MacWrite, MacPaint, MacDraw, MacProject, Hypercard, and what else?” geniver asked.
Are you asking what programs did Apple itself offer or that were available for it? I studied graphic design in college, and was working in imaging service bureaus in 1989 and beyond, running Yale’s in-house facility for a year, and then later working with more advanced gear at an arm of Kodak up in Maine.
Windows in 1989 was essentially unusable. System 6 had Quark, PageMaker, Illustrator. My college paper, a weekly that started up in 1985, was PageMaker based and all Macs. We managed to produce a newspaper on deadline (our daily rival used Quark).
June 14th, 2007 at 7:56 pm
I think this whole thing is considerably simpler than most folks are making it out to be. I think Apple knows and has known from the start that the iPhone has to be open to developers, and that they very likely have had plans to make that happen since the earliest days of the iPhone. The real question is when and how.
The thin edge of the wedge is this unholy webapps compromise that no one will really be satisfied with, But I think they’re trying to thread the needle between controlling the launch and getting through the first six months as smoothly as they possibly can - and also (later) engaging a solid, committed developer community who will be able to work on a platform that will have already been established as viable and worthwhile. At least Apple hopes so.
The one lesson of the smartphone and PDA world is that even with a complete piece of junk out of date OS, Palm still competes pretty well in the marketplace - because there are tons of apps at every price point, and in some verticals it still completely dominates. Apps = success, even if you’re selling marginal stuff. Jobs certainly knows this.
Is Apple taking a risk by trying to move things along in a very measured way? Sure they are. And some of that may be due to a certain kind of arrogance and control-freakery that we’ve seen for years. Does that mean there is no plan, though? I highly doubt it - as you say, Robert, Jobs is no idiot.
June 14th, 2007 at 10:21 pm
I think you nailed it Michael. It looks to me like the plan is to get as many iPhones out in the market as quickly and smoothly as possible, while Serlet’s people are working on the SDK. Who knows … if the target becomes popular enough, they might even be able to charge for those SDKs.
June 14th, 2007 at 11:41 pm
To complete the thought that oddly got truncated in 46…
Robert,
Another example… Apparently those new Mac Games from EA won’t actually BE Mac Games. They’ll be Windows games running under the Cider wrapper on x86 Macs.
Looks like either EA didn’t get good developer tools or they just didn’t think a target of
June 14th, 2007 at 11:42 pm
OK. Completing it in sections…
…
Looks like either EA didn’t get good developer tools or they just didn’t think a target of
June 14th, 2007 at 11:43 pm
Ah, the website doesn’t like the less than symbol…
Let’s try this again
Robert,
Another example… Apparently those new Mac Games from EA won’t actually BE Mac Games. They’ll be Windows games running under the Cider wrapper on x86 Macs.
Looks like either EA didn’t get good developer tools or they just didn’t think a target of less than 5% was worth developing an actual binary for.
So, we’ve got…
an OS with a tiny user base (less people use Macintosh than believe the moon landing was faked on a sound stage).
An OS producer with lousy developer tools and even lousier developer outreach and evangelism.
An OS producer who touts that the solution to their lack of apps is that they have really good ways to run Windows apps. (See Jobs Top 10 Features speech to see just how important they think Bootcamp, Parallels and VMWare are)
Sound familiar?
Think IBM OS/2 which did the same thing with their “Better Windows than Windows” marketing. For those of you not old enough to remember it, IBM pushed OS/2 as a better platform for running Windows apps than Windows 95. And it was pretty good at it. The result was that nobody bothered writing native OS/2 apps since they were at best marginally worth the effort and since WinApps were acceptable and they were already writing them…
The results were, of course, totally predictable and thus ended the OS Wars of the early ’90s.
So, lets look at the message Apple gave their developers at their annual developer love fest…
—
“Isn’t it funny how few copies of Vista have been sold” followed by the announcement (for those who can do basic arithmetic) that OS X has, in all versions, a smaller installed base than Vista had after one month.
Hey, we’ve got a great story running apps for those of you who want to give up on OS X and write only for Windows.
So, now that you realize it’s silly to invest in OS X, perhaps you’d like to develop for out actually successful product, the iPod? Nope. That’s not going to happen.
Alright, before you decide to throw us into the Bay, we’ve decided that the new mass market product that we’re going to hype a LOT is not going to be totally closed like we threatened. And hey, despite all those stories, we’re here to tell you it runs REAL OS X. So, take all those OS X dev skills you’ve learned, take all that Carbon and Cocoa and any other C words you’ve learned, take all that C and C++ and Objective C skills and…
Toss them out.
Yes, if you want to write for our only product likely to sell in significant numbers we expect you to have NO advantage from being Apple Registered Developers. We expect you to have NO advantage for spending lots of money to come here. We expect you to have NO advantage for being loyal to Apple through good times and bad. We have decided that you can write some web pages and we won’t block the scripting. Yes, you along with every person out there who learned AJAX and JavaScript is now starting on an equal footing to develop mediocre half-apps.
Oh, and remember that they’ll, of course, have to compete against the real apps that we and a select group of partners that we trust have developed with the real SDK and tools that we used to write the bundled apps.
—
Go pound sand is a very nice way of saying what they told their Developer Partners.
Now tell me Robert, does that sound like “Not an idiot”?
Compare and contrast what Jobs and company did to their developers with what Nevet Basker and Tom Button did to build the VB 1.0 developer community back when you were my editor at BasicPRO…
Mike
June 15th, 2007 at 12:14 am
Now, on to some speculation on what’s really going on at Macintosh land. And, remember, this is only speculation…
Factor 1
Steve Jobs does not like the computer division.
It has tough competitors.
No matter what he tries, Mac is a footnote with a single digit market share.
Developers are a demanding bunch who expect their partner at Apple to help them. Year after year after year.
Factor 2
SUN announced last week that the next version of OS X would be use SUN’s Zettabyte File System (ZFS) rather than Apple’s own Hierarchical File System Plus (HFS+)
Apple had to issue a public retraction during WWDC that they were NOT using ZFS but were adding the ability to read (but not write) ZFS drives.
Know anybody with a ZFS drive on a Macintosh?
Know anybody with a ZFS drive that’s physically connected to a Macintosh?
Factor 3
SUN, on the other hand has seen:
Workstation sales drop off to nothing as consumer PCs own that market and prevent them from selling generic boxes and extreme markups.
Total collapse of their SUN-Ray smart terminals as people decided they wanted computers rather than terminals.
The collapse of desktop Unix OS sales as Linux killed the profit margin.
A reasonable answer to these enigmatic items is that Apple, Inc. (Note, no longer Apple Computer, Inc.) is planning to either sell the Macintosh division to SUN or, more likely, form a joint venture company with SUN to handle desktop systems.
This would most likely be simlar to the AIM Alliance (Apple, IBM, Motorola) that tried to produce a common platform in the 1990s. Again proving that Apple doesn’t quite learn from their mistakes.
Is this likely? Probably not. But despite all the previous attempts by SUN to buy Apple and by Apple to buy SUN, this one actually makes sense for both companies.
June 15th, 2007 at 3:32 am
Why is everyone so wow-ed by the iPhone? I’ve just upgraded to an Orange E650 here in the UK, which seems to have all the iPhone has and more. It runs Windows Mobile, so plenty of development opportunities. It runs Windows Media, and I’ve put in a 2Gb micro-SD card, so it’s not far short of an iPod. It’s got Wi-Fi, which is great in Bristol (UK) as many of the cafes have got free Wi-fi access. And it’s got a slide-out QWERTY keyboard which makes it almost as useful as a laptop - particularly as it’s already got Office Mobile installed. I don’t see what all the fuss is about.
June 15th, 2007 at 4:24 am
Apple is just a really snobby company. Up to this day, most of the hardware and software have to be Apple compliant or else it’s just crap.
June 15th, 2007 at 4:40 am
Robert, you have summarised perfectly what I’ve been thinking in the last few days. It seems to me that Apple is being cleverer than we think. It is clear to me that the SDK isn’t ready yet, hell they may not have started working on it, but I think it’s planned. Ars’s John Siracusa also believes that this is the case (http://arstechnica.com/staff/fatbits.ars/2007/06/04/the-frontier).
There is a bit of a back-door play going here too m’thinks. With AJAX/Web 2.0, the barrier of entry for any kind of development on the iPhone has been lowered substantially, meaning that (if it takes off), Apple will have lasso-ed a huge number of initial developers, whether they be Win-based, Mac-based or open source-based. Once they’re hooked, release the SDK (probably dual-platform) and watch the platform explode.
Of course, the iPhone may fail completely, in which case talk of an SDK may be completely academic…
June 15th, 2007 at 5:11 am
mike is right. The big “what-if” is “what if Xerox PARC stuff (including the 1973 Alto which Jobs saw and used for Lisa the Mac predecessor) was even semi-competently marketed?
June 15th, 2007 at 5:45 am
I am not a developer, so dont know much about it. But I am something more than a developer, a user. The biggest mistake which Apple did and is also doing, is that they dont see world outside US. For them it seems, that if world is buying their products its well and good, but Apple will somehow never move ahead and visit users doorstep in the world outside US, which is quite big. Come to India, and students in secondary know who Bill Gates is, but people in colleges dont know who Steve Jobs is. This makes a difference. There are people who can shed lots of money, if they do not know about your product, then its not their but yours fault. No matter if you arr making the most advanced product. They did same with iPod, iPod in India is only driving its sales from international media, and on other hand if you take Nokia5300, which is in no way a comparison to ipod, but can act as a pretty good music device is more visually known than iPod.
I read somewhere that one problem with iPhone can be that it is coming on just one network. They could have done same internationally… but no they didnt. If Apple is ever going to think beating MS in market share, then they must arrange some tutor for their top cadre, who can tell them about the world outside.
June 15th, 2007 at 6:07 am
There are more theories for why Wintel has beaten Apple than for the disappearing of dinosaurs.
Here’s mine: Software Piracy.
Back in the mid, early 90’s you could get any software (and games) easily for PC. You needed stupid serial # for Mac. So everyone bought PC because the software was “cheaper”.
http://agilesoftwareaddiction.blogspot.com/2005/08/why-pc-platform-beat-apple.html
June 15th, 2007 at 6:47 am
Wow, i didn’t know this, to be honest i’m one of those people who thought that the reason microsoft ‘won’ was because of the licensing of windows to be installed on third party machines.
I have to say though, fair enough apple didn’t open up the iPhone to develop native apps for it, to say, ones that would put an icon on the home screen. But maybe they never intended to do that, or maybe there is no way to do that without completely ruining the software on the phone.
It seems to me that development for the iPhone and Leopard has been far too rushed - they moved developers around and pushed release dates back, which all says to me that they’ve only done what they NEED to do in order to get the iPhone out there.
I think that once it’s out, the developers will start working on new firmware that will probably allow better ways to develop apps or widgets for the native iPhone platform, but to be honest, i’m not sure apple themselves know how they could open up the phone beyond AJAX and Javascript. Not yet, anyways.
June 15th, 2007 at 7:59 am
As long as Apple doesn’t repeat the Windows Mobile 5.x debacle that I experience daily on my PPC-6700, I’ll be happy. - Tim
June 15th, 2007 at 8:19 am
Tim,
I’ve had a 6700 with Windows Mobile 5 for a while now (with Sprint) and it’s been solid. The worst thing I’ve run into is a 3rd party app that sucks the battery dry if I use it a lot (but I can swap out batteries if need be)
What’s the problem you’re having? (I assume you have the Verizon version since you call it a PPC-6700)
June 15th, 2007 at 8:32 am
[...] Scoble says Steve Jobs isn’t an idiot, he knows that developers make a big difference in the success of a platform. He concludes that an SDK, turning the iPhone into an open platform will come at some point after the initial release, maybe as early as January 2008. [...]
June 15th, 2007 at 9:57 am
@SuzyQ - wrong. Silverlight is not the way o go. It will be Safari on Win that is the trojan horse to ensure the flow in the other directon.
Scoble - i agree. Jobs today is not going to make the same errors as in 1989. One year from now we’ll see the iPhone in a totally different light! “First Apple takes A&T, and then….”
June 15th, 2007 at 10:42 am
Mike Galos wrote: “Looks like either EA didn’t get good developer tools or they just didn’t think a target of less than 5% was worth developing an actual binary for.”
Mike, have you ever heard of Direct X? Ever hear of the Fahrenheit API project that was to unify Direct3D and OpenGL?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahrenheit_graphics_API
In a nut shell, Microsoft failed to deliver it’s part of the project since it really didn’t assign any significant amount of developer resources to produce it. Microsoft pretended to work on an open standard while, in reality, re-invented the wheel with own 3D API.
This stalled the entire project and SGI sold what it developed to Microsoft, which it rolled in to it’s own Direct 3D API. Typical Microsoft tactics.
Since most games are now use DirectX on Windows, Game developers would have to do a significant re-write of each game to run on Mac OS X using OpenGL. This is exactly the intended result that Microsoft wanted.
Using the Cider wrapper provides a simple way to work around this dependency without having to do a significant re-write.
June 15th, 2007 at 11:12 am
Scott,
The real question is why was a quick port using a 3rd party translation layer worth a key slot at the only developer’s conference? It doesn’t help developers. It doesn’t open new markets. It isn’t new tools or features. And it isn’t showing what can be done with the Mac dev tools.
It was filler to pad a feature free keynote geared toward lowering expectations.
June 15th, 2007 at 11:48 am
[...] Scoble says Steve Jobs isn’t an idiot, he knows that developers make a big difference in the success of a platform. He concludes that an SDK, turning the iPhone into an open platform, will come at some point after the initial release, maybe as early as January 2008. [...]
June 15th, 2007 at 11:53 am
Jobs simply had nothing to show at WWDC and he couldn’t bear to give a boring keynote and endanger all that free press coverage he always gets.
Apple has been trying to finish iPhone and Leopard, THAT is the reason there is no real SDK, it’s not some big thought out strategy, it’s just crunch time as the hard ship deadline for iPhone approaches. SDK sounds simple but there’s just. No. Time.
The only thing new and remotely ready to show at WWDC? Safari. They’ve been porting it to the phone and PC at likely the same time, one code base targeting three platforms (incl Mac).
So that’s what they showed — the only they COULD show. You can tell they were desperate based on all the holes in Safari for Windows.
Jobs then compounded the problem by making it sound like Safari was being released in place of an SDK. Saying AJAX is the way to program the iPhone is less embarassing than saying “we have no time to make an SDK yet, in fact we’re still learning how to code for this phone ourselves, the API is changing every minute.”
So Jobs endangered precious developer goodwill to preserve his ego and PR value. Surprise surprise.
Galos and Scoble are both right. Jobs IS an idiot in the small sense because he rolled out immature product at WWDC and alienated developers. Scoble is right that Jobs is not a BIG idiot, he’ll release an SDK eventually, I’d bet an iPhone on it.
June 15th, 2007 at 1:48 pm
Didn’t Steve say that the iPhone is running Mac OS? So just as with the AppleTV we already have the development environment on our desktops!
And just as AppleTV is a Mac running a new version of FrontRow, I believe iPhone is a Mac running a new version of Dashboard. In that case Leopard will ship with an iPhone dev environment, Dashcode!
Why else would Apple spend so much time (and hype) to create this? Just to help people develop little, seldom used widgets? I think not.
Also Leopard is jam packed with awesome developer features, no one who has looked at it would say Apple is leaving independent devs behind.
Sure they cut a mean path, but they are making all of the good code publically available (coreData, CoreImage,CoreAnimation) so writing a top notch Mac app is getting easier, not harder…..
June 15th, 2007 at 2:00 pm
Mike, as an accurate source of Apple speculation, you’re a great VB dev.
Factor 1
Steve Jobs does not like the computer division.
It has tough competitors.
No matter what he tries, Mac is a footnote with a single digit market share.
Developers are a demanding bunch who expect their partner at Apple to help them. Year after year after year.
Ah yes, the “only market share counts”. Really? care to tell us why you drive non-mainstream cars? What’s Lotus’ market share? What’s the market share of everything you own?
Factor 2
SUN announced last week that the next version of OS X would be use SUN’s Zettabyte File System (ZFS) rather than Apple’s own Hierarchical File System Plus (HFS+)
Apple had to issue a public retraction during WWDC that they were NOT using ZFS but were adding the ability to read (but not write) ZFS drives.
It wasn’t a public retraction. By definition, only Sun can do that. Apple has never publicly, outside of NDA forums, said that ZFS would be the default file system on Mac OS X, and anyone thinking clearly would have realized that ZFS is not going to work as a consumer FS. However, the fact that you get your Apple news from Sun shows how well you do there.
Know anybody with a ZFS drive on a Macintosh?
Know anybody with a ZFS drive that’s physically connected to a Macintosh?
Even if we did, we couldn’t really comment on it, since real-world ZFS/Mac OS X interop is still under NDA. But that’s rather convenient for you, now isn’t it. It’s rather convenient to be able to argue when the refuting points require breaking a contract.
Factor 3
SUN, on the other hand has seen:
Workstation sales drop off to nothing as consumer PCs own that market and prevent them from selling generic boxes and extreme markups.
Total collapse of their SUN-Ray smart terminals as people decided they wanted computers rather than terminals.
The collapse of desktop Unix OS sales as Linux killed the profit margin.
You rag on Apple’s market share, then you talk about DESKTOP UNIX SALES? Dude, you’re getting early-onset Alzheimers. Schwartz and Sun realized, rather intelligently, that they suck at the desktop, so they are now going after the Salesforce.coms of the world, because large scale reliability IS what they’re good at. Far better than WIndows.
A reasonable answer to these enigmatic items is that Apple, Inc. (Note, no longer Apple Computer, Inc.) is planning to either sell the Macintosh division to SUN or, more likely, form a joint venture company with SUN to handle desktop systems.
Only if you’re smoking a lot of Crack on your breaks from all that LSD.
This would most likely be simlar to the AIM Alliance (Apple, IBM, Motorola) that tried to produce a common platform in the 1990s. Again proving that Apple doesn’t quite learn from their mistakes.
I applaud the complicated shapes you twisted yourself into for that bit of neuron-driven silliness. Apple is going to bet the farm on a company that has nothing to do with their business model.
Tell me
Seriously
Have you been outside since 1991?
Is this likely? Probably not. But despite all the previous attempts by SUN to buy Apple and by Apple to buy SUN, this one actually makes sense for both companies.
Dude, that news is ten years old, no, wait, closer to 20. I really recommend you check out the rest of this brave new world, lots has changed since you came out of that bad trip.
June 15th, 2007 at 2:40 pm
Galos is hardly worth sweating, John. He has a badly written blog that hardly anyone reads or comments on. So, he decided to come to a blog people do read and publish piffle in the comments. I knew he was off his meds when I saw the early comment in which he claimed to have damaging information about Steve Jobs that none of Jobs’ biographers do. The other giveaway is Galos focus on Apple’s alleged failures. A company that has been around three decades and is currently taking mindshare and the stock market by storm must have done something right.
June 15th, 2007 at 2:45 pm
Podesta, Oh, I know. But it was just SO ridiculous that it begged comment. I mean, seriously, bringing up the AIM alliance? A lot of his points had nothing to DO with Steve Jobs.
LSD is not good to take when posting.
June 15th, 2007 at 3:22 pm
Mike Galos wrote: “It doesn’t help developers.”
Demonstrating that mainstream games can be cost effectively delivered on Mac OS X doesn’t help developers? When developers sell their applications, they make money, which is pretty darn helpful in my book.
Mike Galos wrote: “It doesn’t open new markets.”
The ability to run existing DirectX games with little to no modification on Mac OS X isn’t opening a new market? You’re kidding me, right?
Mike Galos wrote: “It isn’t new tools or features. And it isn’t showing what can be done with the Mac dev tools.”
I can somewhat understand your point here, but the task of writing cross platform applications is far from easy. And that’s a huge understatement.
A significant amount of up-front planning is needed to separate an application into a core platform-independent layer and multiple platform-dependent UI layers. And you need developers with the right skill sets to actually pull it off. This simply isn’t practical or financially feasible in all cases.
Yet companies such as Id and Luxology are using Mac dev tools and Apple’s OpenGL implementation to do just that. Another good example is Adobe Lightroom. It’s a cross-platform app that uses Cocoa for the UI on Mac OS X and MFC for the UI Windows. And it works.
June 15th, 2007 at 4:42 pm
Sorry but Galos was spot on with this comment:
http://scobleizer.com/2007/06/14/steve-jobs-is-not-an-idiot/#comment-609609
The personal attacks only underscore that he hit a nerve.
And since when is “mindshare” a success metric? Mindshare can be won with hype as easily as with good ideas.
June 15th, 2007 at 4:45 pm
PS And it’s not hard to fool Wall Steet with, say, fraudulent stock options accounting or, hmmm, premature product announcements that have become increasingly detached reality.
I happen to think Apple has a bright future ahead but this is not assured by the company’s longevity, nor by its stock price, nor by “mindshare.”
June 15th, 2007 at 6:19 pm
Mike,
Granted, I’m having more doubts about the iPhone, particularly when I hear that it won’t directly support MMS, but the 6700 does NOT work well as a phone. It’s a great PDA, and an acceptable pocket PC, but it’s a lousy phone.
Problems with the phone portion:
- Display virtually unusable in daylight
- Volume of the handset is very low
- Touch-screen is inconsistent when dialing numbers
- Mysterious Bluetooth problems with a Motorola H700
- Unbelievably complex EVDO setup/config procedure
- Many UI elements are virtually unusable without the stylus, which disappeared (both of them) within two weeks of owning the phone (they appear to just sling out if you’re walking at a normal pace with the phone in your hand)
- Possibly the most ignorant email-to-SMS interface ever created by man, requiring you to “know” the phone number of the gateway, and somehow “know” that you have to embed the destination email address at the beginning of your text message
For the features that it does well (PDA & Pocket PC), everything’s not perfect either:
- Possibly the worst phone-based browser in existence
- Synchronization problems with an SSL-protected Exchange Server (I’ve been told to contact a local “Exchange guru,” which seems like a dumb thing to have to do on a phone that’s using an MS OS, connecting to an MS application on an MS server, in an MS AD)
- The same thing that people slam the iPhone for (inability to add 3rd-party apps) is the opposite slam for Windows Mobile 5.0 devices… they seem to REQUIRE 3rd-party apps to do anything of substance
- Horrible limitations of built-in memory, requiring you to add a mini-SD card if you’re going to store anything other than your address book and one or two pictures
Lastly, the original list for this phone was exactly the same as the projected list for the iPhone, but nobody bitched and moaned about it. For me, it doesn’t work like a champ… it works like a chump. I want my Sanyo-8500 back. At least it worked well as a phone. - Tim
June 15th, 2007 at 6:21 pm
On the plus side, the PPC-6700 is slow. - Tim
June 16th, 2007 at 12:28 am
Tim,
I totally agree about the loose stylus but a lot of the other features I’ve never encountered. My volume is fine, EVDO was set up correctly with nothing to do on my part, sync with an SSL Exchange server worked fine by just entering the server name, user name and password.
I wonder if it’s a Verizon vs Sprint thing on a lot of it.
On the other hand, I’ve found no features except changing folders in email that require a stylus. btw: if you’re having touch screen inconsistancies it’s usually dirt caught under the edges of the screen - try cleaning under the edges with some paper.
Oh, and, no question, you need a good, fast miniSD card for data storage. That’s a given. You also shouldn’t put programs that run at startup on the card. Those are what should be put in the system storage so they’re available at boot.
June 16th, 2007 at 1:36 pm
Mike Galos wrote: “Oh, and, no question, you need a good, fast miniSD card for data storage. That’s a given. You also shouldn’t put programs that run at startup on the card. Those are what should be put in the system storage so they’re available at boot.”
And you call this a “smart phone”? Why should users even need to know anything about storage cards, boot times or system volumes? This is a red flag for bad design. People shouldn’t need to be become “smarter” just because their phone does. It’s simply ridiculous.
Users simply want to turn on their phone and use it. Whether their phone is really a computer or not is simply irrelevant. It should be just as simple to use as a “dumb” phone. And Jobs knows this.
While the current smart phone market may be willing to put up with this sort of crap, there’s a whole segment of the market that won’t. That’s the market Jobs is targeting. And it’s huge.
As such, until adding third-party apps is as seamless as syncing songs to your iPod, there will be no public API for the iPhone. And my guess is that it’s simply not ready yet.
As a developer, am I happy about this? No. But I understand that I’m not the target market that Apple is shooting for. And when the API is ready, I’ll have a much bigger market because of it.
June 16th, 2007 at 5:05 pm
Scott,
Yes. I call it a smart phone. I don’t call it one that has no flaws. See, I can do things like add actual programs and I can do things like add more memory and I can do things like replace the battery.
On the other hand Saint Steve the Wonderous’ iPhone can’t (but those aren’t “flaws” until 2.0 replaces it and he tells people they are and how could they possibly live with iPhone 1.0 with all it’s flaws and they buy 2.0 at full retail for the point release updates.)
June 16th, 2007 at 5:38 pm
Oh, and Scott?
The correct thing to do when somebody offers to help you when you can’t figure out how to use one of your toys is to say “thank you”.
If you’re a developer, I have serious worries.
June 16th, 2007 at 6:09 pm
[...] Apple’s coming up short in this regard (must look at my CoComment threads - yep, it was The Scobleizer). I happen to think that’s spot on the [...]
June 17th, 2007 at 10:13 am
Mike,
This is a perfect example of the philosophical differences between Microsoft and Apple.
Microsoft, thinks smart phones should work and act like a computer. As such, they expect users to put up with all of the complexity and problems that computers bring. Jobs thinks smart phones should simply be smarter without all the baggage. The fact that it’s a computer is irrelevant.
The fact that you even have access to different storage pools or have to think about boot sequences is the “flaw” I’m referring to. Yet, It’s quite obvious that “Wondrous” Microsoft doesn’t think this is a problem at all since it keeps cranking out versions of Windows mobile that expect users to micromanage their phone. It’s simply ridiculous. These sort of core architectural design flaws should have been ironed out along time ago.
Yet, when Apple decides to launch a smart phone without initial support for any native third-party apps at all, instead of releasing a poorly designed product like everyone else, the industry cries foul.
If Apple does allow third-party apps to be installed, history indicates you won’t have to know anything about external cards, system memory or boot processes. You’ll simply sync your apps and data to the iPhone using iTunes. In fact, unlike Windows Mobile or even Palm OS, it’s likely that none of the internal workings of the phone, except for the amount of free storage space, will be visible to the user. Period. And since the iPhone comes with 6-8GB of memory, compared to 64MB in the 6700, you really don’t need expansion cards.
In other words, for all the power users who like to tinker with the internal workings their phones, install memory management utilities, app launchers, etc., the iPhone probably won’t be a good fit - even if third-party apps are allowed. Which leaves them feeling left of out of the party.
And, In case you’ve forgotten, there are already at least 100 million users who are “smart enough” to use iTunes to sync music to their iPod. By using the same incredibly simple model for installing apps, Apple would have a huge, built-in audience that wouldn’t need to become “smarter” to use their “Smart Phone.”
Again, my guess is that the API and application management system needed to pull this off simply isn’t ready yet.
Oh, and Mike?
Tim was the one who’s “toy” wasn’t working, not mine.
And, as a developer, I’m most helpful when I design software that shields users from these sorts of issues in the first place. Sometimes that means waiting to release features until they are done right.
June 17th, 2007 at 10:45 am
Scott and Tim,
First off sorry for confusing you and Tim…
Now, back to the points you’ve raised.
If we look at the objections you raised, they’re all with extensions that iPod aren’t allowed to have.
Problem with 3rd party apps? iPod doesn’t have any. So, don’t load any and you’re no worse than you are with Apple.
Microsoft give you a choice.
Problem with added memory (btw: that’s a bug in the 6700’s driver not an inherent flaw in WM5)? iPod doesn’t have any. So, don’t load any and you’re no worse than you are with Apple.
Microsoft give you a choice.
Yes, it is a philosophical difference. iPhone is like Jobs original Mac plan. One configuration. No choices. Like it and be one of us. Don’t like it? Tough.
Now as to the rest, there’s where we get Mac Fanboism showing it’s head (both in your post and with Scoble’s conclusion)
You both assume that because a feature you want (a real SDK) isn’t in the product it must be coming later even when Apple specifically says it isn’t. And not only is it coming, it’ll be ever so wonderful and oh so much better than that nasty old Microsoft has.
You both make this assumption because you want it to be true. Jobs has NO history of catering to or supporting developers and has not only not hinted that he’ll release the SDK used by Apple and a few 3rd parties to develop the real apps bundled with the phone but has explicity said that you don’t need it and shouldn’t have it.
And, please, let’s not get into “If Apple does it it will be ever so much easier”. The real difference is that when Apple screws up their users think they did something wrong. I’ve seen Apple users send their computers back to Apple three times in one year for hardware failures and still insist that they must have done something wrong. (No, it was lousy design and quality control and if it were, say, Dell, they’ve be screaming how they’d never buy a Dell again)
This all reminds me of how, back in the old Mac vs Windows days you’d hear
“Mac is better because they don’t have 3 letter extensions”
(They have 4 letter creator codes but that’s totally different)
“Mac is better because they don’t have a CONFIG.SYS” (They have INITS and expect users to twiddle their load order but that’s totally different)
etc…
June 17th, 2007 at 10:52 am
BTW: Another parallel between the “New Apple” under Steve Jobs and IBM back in the OS/2 days…
When OS/2 had a lack of driver support and 3rd party apps their marketing department’s response was:
OS/2 - Freedom From Choice!
I suspect Apple picked up some members of that marketing department during the Taligent/Kalaida/PowerPC days…
June 17th, 2007 at 11:08 am
Now as to core philosophies, you’re right. There is a vast and key difference.
Microsoft’s key philosophy is “Everything should be flexible and a platform for growth. We know you’ll come up with ways to use our products that we’ve never dreamed of and we think that’s fantastic and we want to help you do them.”
Apple’s key philosophy is “We know better than you about what you want and what you should and shouldn’t do. Do what we say, do exactly what we say and we’ll get along fine.”
Apple does target a different user and cultivates them. It targets people who are insecure about their abilities, like a strong leader, want someone to tell them what to do and live in fear.
The difference between how they think of their users - it’s the difference between respect and arrogance.
June 18th, 2007 at 4:04 am
Mike,
I’m going to ignore your last couple of paragraphs, because they demonstrate the “MS love fest” that causes so much Apple loyalty to morph into “fanboism. I will point out, making broad generalizations about customers and companies is usually unproductive.
Back to the questions at hand (which I’m sure most everyone on this thread have lost interest in).
Sprint is my carrier. They have been uniquely unhelpful with this phone, and seem clueless about Windows Mobile in general. Oh well.
Is it a coincidence that 99% of Windows users don’t need to know the file extension anymore? Is it coincidence that the 8.3 filename limitation is now hidden from them? If this was such a necessity, why do you have to work so hard to see it? Is it because that level of geek-ism was actually *limiting* the market acceptance of Windows?
Don’t need the stylus? Let’s say I want to switch screen orientations. How do I do that on the 6700? Well, there’s a little icon in the corner of the window that will rotate it 90%. It’s about 1/16th of an inch square. The Comm Manager icon is the same size, and is right next to it. (I’m in that window all the time to start/restart Bluetooth to deal with the connectivity problems I mentioned earlier.) These are the two most obvious examples, but there are more.
No problems with Exchange Server? Did you have to load a local SSL certificate on your 6700? No? Then your Exchange Server must not be accessible to the Internet (for Web access). Adding this layer makes the entire process *very* difficult, and in my case, it doesn’t work at all. I finally gave up.
Haven’t had the problems with the display in bright light, or the volume in a noisy environment? This is not just me complaining about this. The 6700 forums are *filled* with these two complaints. Why, on a $500 device, is there not a polarized lens on the screen?
Ultimately, the extensibility of the phone is what you’re saying is a Microsoft virtue. I will not dispute that this *can* be a good thing. However, if expandability and extensibility come at the expense of usability, then Microsoft tends to not see this. The MS product space is littered with this, with the exception of the 1st gen X-Box. That product provided *limited* expansion options, looked *nothing* like Windows, and ended up appealing to a new market.
Lastly, much of this discussion comes down to the D.I.C.E. acronym that Guy Kawasaki put on paper several years ago. Products that are successful over the long haul generally have these features:
D - Deep. They have features that appeal to both passengers on a cruise ship, and the sailors. If you don’t want to mess with settings on your camera, can you use it to point and shoot? If you’re a pro, can you dive down and adjust everything under the sun?
I - Intuitive. Can you pick up the device and figure out how to use it without a book?
C - Complete. You don’t need anything else to use it, it stands by itself. (This doesn’t mean you *can’t* add something else–just that it’s not required.)
E - Elegant. This is the subjective part, but Kawasaki compared to watching Fred Astaire dance. You can’t see the thousands of hours of practice and work that went into his dancing. Instead, you were so in awe of the beauty and grace of the movement and flow… it seems effortless.
The market will decide whether or not the iPhone hits these marks. Some of them, it appears to. Others, I’m starting to have my doubts. However, I know that the PPC-6700 doesn’t. Based on what I’ve seen from Win CE (in the industrial controls market), Windows (in the consumer market), and Windows Mobile (via this phone), I suspect we’re still several versions away from something usable by the average person. - Tim
- Tim
June 18th, 2007 at 5:21 am
Actually, yes, my Exchange server was set up correctly so I didn’t need to load a special certificate to access it over the Internet. It was, literally, enter name, password, domain, exchange server URL and sync. Worked perfectly first time, every time.
Sorry your Exchange admins screwed up but that’s hardly reason to blame Windows Mobile.
June 18th, 2007 at 7:04 am
Hmmm… apparently, you’re the only person using this device who hasn’t had to install a private SSL certificate on this device when connecting to Exchange Server that is accessible via OWA. The forums are filled with Q&A’s about this. This *is* a Windows Mobile issue, and not something that the OS handles well.
One of the best summaries of the process is here, but the basic idea is the same. To be certain, our Exchange guy is very inexperienced, but the configuration on the device, even when it works, is very non-intuitive. For more hits, here’s a Google search that brings up a couple more pointers to the process. - Tim
June 18th, 2007 at 7:05 am
Here’s the first link, which was stripped:
http://blogs.technet.com/vik/archive/2006/08/29/Generating-and-Installing-an-SSL-Client-Certificate-to-a-Windows-Mobile-Device-_2800_Pocket-PC_2F00_Smartphone_2900_.aspx
June 18th, 2007 at 7:06 am
Here’s the second link:
http://www.google.com/search?source=ig&hl=en&q=%22windows+mobile%22+exchange+SSL+certificate&btnG=Google+Search
June 18th, 2007 at 7:28 am
Nope.
I’m not the only one.
Not even close.
I personally know quite a few who do plus a lot more with other brands of WM5 devices.
Logic 101: Finding other people who are like you doesn’t mean everyone is like you.
For example, I have more than one friend who has had hardware problems with their Apple laptops. By your “logic” I should be able to claim that anyone who has a working Apple laptop is “The only one” and thus imply that virtually all Apple laptops are unusable.
Hey, by that logic, I know more than one person who uses Macintosh, therefore everyone does (Despite an installed base smaller than the people that believe the moon landing was faked) Why, Steve Jobs is amazing…
June 18th, 2007 at 12:03 pm
Mike,
Doesn’t Logic 101 say that identical functionality in Microsoft products is usually achieved with similar behavior? Why aren’t there posts in the forums I quoted that say “BS… all you have to do is enter the server, username, and password”? Did MS make your Exchange Server (and your buddies’) work differently from other Exchanges Servers? Does WM5 magically (and transparently) download the private cert for you, but not for me (or apparently, hundreds of other users)?
Is that logical? Does that make sense to you?
Here’s what makes sense to me: I search for info on Windows Mobile, Exchange Server, and SSL certificates, and I get very specific instructions for copying the cert to my device. Why would ANYONE do this if they didn’t have to? That must be because Jobs is an idiot.
Another thing that makes sense to me: The problem that I have experienced appears to be very common, and the proposed solutions are all virtually identical. If the problem is that my Exchange admin is an idiot, apparently, that’s a common problem too. Does this mean that all Exchange admins are idiots? No, but it does suggest that it’s very easy to screw things up. That must be because Jobs is an idiot.
Another thing that makes sense to me: Right after we configured OWA, but before we put our own SSL cert on it, things actually worked. However, when I pointed out that our butt was horribly exposed, we installed the certificate, and things went crappy. That must be because Jobs is an idiot.
What does Steve Jobs reality distortion field have to do with any of this? I’m talking about WM5 stupidity here. The only possible relationship is that continued behavior like this on MS’s part may make Jobs look like a genius if he just screws up less.
Maybe that’s the new marketing strategy for the iPhone… “Sucks less than Windows Mobile!” - Tim
June 18th, 2007 at 2:26 pm
Hate to break it to you but corporations run different versions of Exchange, they have different settings, they have different networks, they have different firewalls, they have different VPNs and they have admins that are more competent or less.
If EAS in WM5 works out of the box on a correctly configured Exchange server and doesn’t work with a different Exchange server, the problem isn’t EAS and WM5.
Oh, and again, the same logic error shows up. Your Exchange wasn’t set up correctly so you read that as “All Exchange admins are idiots” as the only other read from blaming the part that’s working fine.
Again, you are not the entire world and what happens to you doesn’t represent the entire world.
June 18th, 2007 at 8:04 pm
Mike, rather than continue to debate the logic of this scenario, where we both see this technical issue very differently, and aren’t likely to change our opinions, I’ll leave the discussion where it is. Game, set, match… you win. - Tim
June 19th, 2007 at 9:03 am
Well, then I’ll bring it back on topic.
This side discussion summarized nicely the exact Mac vs Windows users that this thread’s really been about and is shown in the two perfect examples here:
In the “Windows” case (actually Windows Mobile 5) we had a badly configured or administered server and the user jumped to the conclusion that his Windows device was badly designed and that the error must not be with the service or himself.
In the “Macintosh” case (actually iPhone plans) we had Apple give horribly bad news to their developers and the pundit jumped to the conclusion that Apple must not have meant what they said because Apple would do what he thought was the right thing even when they explicitly said exactly the opposite.
June 19th, 2007 at 11:22 am
Mike Galos wrote:
“Problem with 3rd party apps? iPod doesn’t have any. So, don’t load any and you’re no worse than you are with Apple.”
Last time I checked, there were over 14 Games available for the 5G iPod. And they’re installed simply by syncing with iTunes. No needed to worry about system pools or memory cards. Five are from Electronic Arts and two are from Namco. In addition, there are hundreds of third-party hardware add-ons. Some, like the XtremeMac MicroMemo, with their own UI that runs on the iPod. Again, only a simple sync is required.
“Problem with added memory (btw: that’s a bug in the 6700’s driver not an inherent flaw in WM5)? iPod doesn’t have any. So, don’t load any and you’re no worse than you are with Apple.”
The iPhone has 6-8GB of memory. Since the 6700 comes with only 64MB , you need an expansion card run these wondrous third-party apps or do just about anything.
“Microsoft’s key philosophy is “Everything should be flexible and a platform for growth. We know you’ll come up with ways to use our products that we’ve never dreamed of and we think that’s fantastic and we want to help you do them.”
Right. However, not ev