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Originally Posted by ericthehalfbee
I don't see how you can say Apple is "putting a gun to developers heads". As I said, you have no idea how the tech industry or software industry works. A lot of companies and systems have very strict rules for developers to follow. Don't like the rules? Develop for someone else.
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Who do you develop for? It seems you have no idea how this industry works.
Our company has been discussing getting into the mobile platform, yet it requires developing for Apple (26% marketshare), Blackberry (42% marketshare) and soon Android (10% marketshare and rising rapidly).
Why as a company would we want to have 3 different development streams? I'd prefer one platform to develop on that would work on all 3 mobile platforms.
Take the gaming industry as the example. Games are typically made for the XBOX or PC first, then ported to the PS since it is easier to develop for the XBOX and it has a larger audience. The games suffer on the PS cause development does not take advantage of the specific APIs that perform better, cause they have decided to port instead.
Lets revisit one of Steve Jobs arguments against Flash - he wants developers to take advantage of the Apple specific APIs to run better, faster, ... meanwhile companies that develop for multiple mobile platforms could easily decide to develop for the BB and only port to the iPhone and not take advantage of these specific APIs in the interest of getting to market faster with less development cost.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ericthehalfbee
Considering the large number of developers that are writing apps for the App Store, it seems a lot of people are deciding to work within Apple's "rules". And considering how much money many of them make, I bet they are quite happy. Flash what? Adobe who?
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They do this cause there is a market for it. If Android catches up to Apple in marketshare, expect this to start to change as Android does not force developers to use specific tools, charge a fee for a development kit, charge a fee to sell the app, or morally police the apps.
That is how the development industry works.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ericthehalfbee
Closed systems will never go away. There are too many industries that need tight control of their systems (for example, to maintain reliability & security) to allow developers to simply "roam free". This has been going on since the birth of the computer in some way or another, and is never going to change.
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Sure it will not change for NASA systems, yet for platforms with choice it will change. Google has put a lot of marketing behind Droid and it is paying off with huge increases in marketshare and lots of quality apps to download.