Im the author of the blog post, so first I wanted to thank you for your feedback.
Second, I thought a lot about what you said and it seems that I wasn't clear enough with my use of the word 'trust'. I also thought that the historic recount provided enough evidence that they do not let others control the experience of their devices. Apparently, it needed some more explanation. To be clear, I'm not talking about the App Store in general, but in the context of John Siracusa's article. I have updated the blog post accordingly, and here is what i wrote:
-------
Update:
It seems that I wasn’t entirely clear with my decision to use the word ‘trust’ . The main question seems to be,
Apple has over 400.000 apps on the App Store, then, how can they not trust developers?
The point I’m trying to make isn’t that Apple is not willing to work with developers on improving the platform, or in creating new uses for their devices. You can see their disposition every time they invite a third party developer on stage to talk about their apps, and how much money the are making from them. What I was referring to was the idea of the complete experience of a product from day one. Every aspect of the hardware has to have a counterpart in the software that can be used in a real world scenario. They would never include a hardware component without a killer way to take advantage of it in the software on day one. And for strategic reasons they have to control that software. Case and Point: FaceTime. There were videoconferencing apps before it, even on the App Store, but Apple felt that they were not showcasing the full potential of the new device, so they made their own. You may say that it’s just videoconferencing and that Skype already did everything. To that I tell you, Skype was not ready to take advantage of both cameras, they could only use the one on the back, so if you wanted to use the new front facing camera on day one, you simply couldn’t. You had to wait for Skype to issue and update. How is that a complete experience?. By contrast Motorola seems fine shipping a Barometer and even a SD card slot that have no use at all on day one, or shipping 4G support when they don’t have the hardware for it. When they announced the iPad they explicitly said that it needed to be better than a laptop and a phone on two key areas: browsing the web and reading ebooks. They already had a killer mobile browser in the form of safari, what they didn’t have was an ebook reader, so they made iBooks.
This is what I mean when I say ‘trust’. They are never going to trust a third party with a core competency of the device. Even if the software or service already exists. The only difference now, is that the device does so much, that they are stepping on everyone’s toes.
And thats the main idea behind John Siracusa’s article, they are now on both sides, and this could end up badly for Apple. The new subscription rules are just the latest expression of this internal discrepancy, as was the rule to ban apps created using Flash from the app store, and rejecting Google Voice from it altogether. I’m sure there are gonna be at list a couple more before Apple decides to or is forced to change their ways.
-----
Second, I thought a lot about what you said and it seems that I wasn't clear enough with my use of the word 'trust'. I also thought that the historic recount provided enough evidence that they do not let others control the experience of their devices. Apparently, it needed some more explanation. To be clear, I'm not talking about the App Store in general, but in the context of John Siracusa's article. I have updated the blog post accordingly, and here is what i wrote: -------
Update:
It seems that I wasn’t entirely clear with my decision to use the word ‘trust’ . The main question seems to be,
Apple has over 400.000 apps on the App Store, then, how can they not trust developers?
The point I’m trying to make isn’t that Apple is not willing to work with developers on improving the platform, or in creating new uses for their devices. You can see their disposition every time they invite a third party developer on stage to talk about their apps, and how much money the are making from them. What I was referring to was the idea of the complete experience of a product from day one. Every aspect of the hardware has to have a counterpart in the software that can be used in a real world scenario. They would never include a hardware component without a killer way to take advantage of it in the software on day one. And for strategic reasons they have to control that software. Case and Point: FaceTime. There were videoconferencing apps before it, even on the App Store, but Apple felt that they were not showcasing the full potential of the new device, so they made their own. You may say that it’s just videoconferencing and that Skype already did everything. To that I tell you, Skype was not ready to take advantage of both cameras, they could only use the one on the back, so if you wanted to use the new front facing camera on day one, you simply couldn’t. You had to wait for Skype to issue and update. How is that a complete experience?. By contrast Motorola seems fine shipping a Barometer and even a SD card slot that have no use at all on day one, or shipping 4G support when they don’t have the hardware for it. When they announced the iPad they explicitly said that it needed to be better than a laptop and a phone on two key areas: browsing the web and reading ebooks. They already had a killer mobile browser in the form of safari, what they didn’t have was an ebook reader, so they made iBooks.
This is what I mean when I say ‘trust’. They are never going to trust a third party with a core competency of the device. Even if the software or service already exists. The only difference now, is that the device does so much, that they are stepping on everyone’s toes.
And thats the main idea behind John Siracusa’s article, they are now on both sides, and this could end up badly for Apple. The new subscription rules are just the latest expression of this internal discrepancy, as was the rule to ban apps created using Flash from the app store, and rejecting Google Voice from it altogether. I’m sure there are gonna be at list a couple more before Apple decides to or is forced to change their ways. -----