Yes, of course. Similes are a way of making complicated issues seem simpler.
And... this is one particularly complicated issue. The deal seems pretty solid. In exchange for 30% and _significant restriction of liberties*_ you get to sell your apps into a platform that's renowned for stability, with quite a bit of free marketing to boot if you can finagle your way into the top 25 lists. That very stability appears to be dependent on the restrictions and so seems quite allright. This has a parallel to sharecropping, where getting into the sharecropping game was far, far simpler than buying your own land. And for a time it was good. In fact, the entire model isn't inherently designed to end up as racket for the platform owner, but it does appear to be heading that way over time. It went all pear shaped with share croppers and it might, too, with apple's deal. When the next enormous app comes along for the iPhone, on the scale of for example a facebook, what would happen? Apple could claim some new obscure interpretation of the rules and simply ban your app and you'd have absolutely no recourse**, which instantly means that the truly large valuations for companies based around iOS apps simply cannot occur, because that risk is far too high. Apple changes the goal posts all the time (just like the sharecropper business!), for example, with these new rules regarding buying subscription content and eBooks off-site. The internet thrived, and AOL died. *) Hyperbole? Hardly. One can argue these restrictions aren't being forced upon you, you're accepting them with open eyes when you sign up to put an app in the app store, but what you sign up for includes significant restrictions, I hope we don't have to quibble on this point, but we can, if some aren't convinced. **) Well, there's making a stink on the web, but this system doesn't scale, is unfair (the famous can far more easily air their grievances, except in such a system only the already famous stay famous. It's fairly well known that an economic system where only the wealthy can be wealthy will degrade into irrelevance very quickly. This is no different), and rewards twisting of facts and being a loudmouth. A bad system if ever there was one. -- 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.
