AppleSoft is the answer. What was the question?
--Doug On Mon, May 31, 2010 at 9:48 PM, Owen Densmore <[email protected]> wrote: > I think an interesting question is "why are apps better than web-apps?". > In other words, we were all on the bus that felt the browser was the new > OS, and that web-apps were the new replacement for "old fashioned" desktop > apps. But now we find we were wrong, folks preferred apps after all. > > Why? What is the evolution we're seeing? After all, wasn't last month's > discussion about Flash vs HTML/CSS/JavaScript standards? Where in heck did > these puny little apps (not web-apps) come from? > > Is the browser not the OS of the future? Are apps back? Have we lost > platform-independence? > > What's going on?! :) > > -- Owen > > > On May 31, 2010, at 5:42 PM, Saul Caganoff wrote: > > The paragraph before your quote is pretty interesting too. Interesting > tension between developers who want to monetize their apps and consumers who > want everything free. Perhaps the App Store model is a good compromise where > $2.99 is close enough to free to suit everyone. > > Apple prefers the app model for two big reasons. First, it makes their > products stickier, since you’re not just buying an iPad, you’re buying > Apple’s whole system for delivering stuff onto the iPad. Second, it seems > that people are willing to pay for apps while they are unwilling to pay for > anything through a browser. So people will pay $1.99 for an app that plays > some game when you can already play the same game for free on a web site > somewhere. Maybe people think of apps as standalone objects that have some > value and that they can buy, while they see web sites just as destinations > that they go to and that should be free. But as long as people will pay for > apps, that means that Apple can make money by selling them to you — and by > preventing developers from selling them to you directly. > > Sent from my iPhone > > On 01/06/2010, at 5:59 AM, Russ Abbott <[email protected]> wrote: > > From: > <http://baselinescenario.com/2010/05/30/personal-computing-apple-google-2/> > http://baselinescenario.com/2010/05/30/personal-computing-apple-google-2/ > > - Sent using Google Toolbar > > Apple wants to be the new Microsoft. It wants you to buy applications that > run locally on your computer iPad, and it sees its competitive advantage > as having the most developers and the most applications (hence all those > “there’s an app for that” ads). As Microsoft showed, if you can get a lead > and become the developers’ platform of choice, you can benefit from network > effects. ... > > In April, Apple changed the > terms<http://daringfireball.net/2010/04/iphone_agreement_bans_flash_compiler>of > the iPhone developer agreement to prevent developers from using > cross-compilers to create iPhone apps. A cross-compiler is a tool that > allows you to take an application you wrote for one platform, push a button, > and repackage the application for another platform (in this case, iPhone > OS). The immediate target of this was Adobe, which was developing a tool > that would enable developers to take Flash apps, push a button, and make > them into iPhone apps. This simplest explanation for this is that Apple, as > the market leader, wants to make it* harder* for people to develop for > multiple platforms at the same time. “Write once, run anywhere” — the slogan > of Java, but also the essence of developing for the web — is *bad* for > Apple, and they want to make it as hard as possible. (John > Gruber<http://daringfireball.net/2010/04/why_apple_changed_section_331>makes > a different argument that Apple wants control over their platform and > doesn’t want cross-compilers between it and the developers, but that > interpretation is not inconsistent with mine.) In other words, if you’re > number one, then openness just helps the competition, because if developers > have to choose just one platform, they’re going to choose yours. > > So Apple is competitive; we knew that already. And they don’t want to > repeat the mistakes of the 1980s and 1990s; we knew that already, too. But I > think the important point is that they are promoting a model of personal > computing where most of the developers write for the iPhone OS, and if you > want to use their applications you have to buy an Apple hardware product. > > >
============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
