Is Steve Jobs really a benevolent dictator?
It’s not secret that Apple likes to control their platform tightly. As long as their dictatorship is a benevolent one, whether you find this objectionable or not is a rather uninteresting question.
But lately, the question seems to be less and less academic: Google’s Voice Application for the iPhone got rejected and two existing applications (GV Mobile and Voicecentral) were removed from the AppStore! This is an extremely nasty thing to do to the developers.
To make matters worse, Apple is seeking to sue users who jailbreak their phones. Yes, you can actually sue for that!
The latest WFT-Apple moment was the news of the Ninjawords dictionary application which was forced to censor naughty words out of wiktionary.
So far, Apple’s actions have mostly hurt developers. But eventually, when developers on a platform suffer, users suffer as well.
You may think Microsoft is a bloated company and that Steve Ballmer is a weirdo, but when he shouts “Developers, Developers, Developers, Developers” he understands something that Steve Jobs just doesn’t get.
So the iPhone is seeming rather unattractive now. I’m looking forward to what seems to be an Android-filled fall!
Comments:
Johannes Brodwall - Aug 6, 2009
Thanks for the link. Another story to add to my #badapple file. :-)
[viggo] - Aug 6, 2009
Another case (written in Norwegian): http://www.amobil.no/artikler/-_apple_ville_kne…
jhannes - Aug 6, 2009
Thanks for the link. Another story to add to my #badapple file. :-)