Just listened to the discussion in question. I'm no Apple fan (the only Apple device I own is an old style iPod). One thing that strikes me about Apple's evilness is that one has to give credit to them for their impeccable timing when it comes to... opening up previously closed markets. Before iPod, no one I'm aware of was writing apps for music players. When iPhone came out, we had some apps around, but nothing of the quality, usefulness, and mass appeal that Apple's app store brought. Yes, Google started out from the get-go as an open (more open than Apple's) platform and I instantly thought it was a better platform to write apps for, but Android phones didn't come out in time and are now playing catch-up. Think about it, Apple single- handedly made regular consumers aware of and _expect_ availability of good third-party software for their cell phones. The only people that had that outlook before then were power users and developers. And now we have a new device coming out and there isn't even a question that it's gonna have apps written for it, available through the app store. Android phones would have been the press darlings with all the same amazingly cool apps that have been/will be written for it, had it only come out 6 months to a year earlier -- Google, instead of Apple, would have been teaching the American consumer about the possibilities of mobile computing.
In some ways, this is similar to Microsoft, who were able to bring commodity personal computing to the masses. They rolled out a platform that was open enough to developers to give users a strong incentive to stick with Windows. For the longest time, what kept users on that platform/hardware was the breadth of software available for it. There were arguably better/more open technical solutions, but timing was on Microsoft's side and they capitalized on it big time. They are both evil and revolutionary in the way we think of commodity computing. Both are valid and relevant points, if seemingly contradictory with each other from a cursory glance. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en.
