arstechnica.com — Continued issues with the App Store approval process are prompting developers to shun the platform entirely. Though there are tens of thousands of other developers pumping out over 100,000 iPhone apps, will continued migration away from iPhone development result in less quality software for the platform? Worse yet, will users even care?
Nov 16, 2009 View in Crawl 4
neotechniNov 17, 2009
The irony being that the lack of quality control on Apple's side has ruined the appstore for consumers.And the developers are complaining it's ruined for them due to too much quality control...
johnnysoftwareNov 17, 2009
@crocodilexp: Didn't I digg down almost the exact phrasing you used a day for two ago, except before "niche" was spelled right. Yeah, and come to think of it I also saw the "closed" meme and the "Apple is almost as bad as Microsoft" meme tossed around a lot. And there is frequently the strong hint to buy whatever competing product sits between Microsoft's and Apple's.Just curious, does Microsoft pay you guys by the meme? Because you are not really being subtle about it. It's like you have a program spitting them out.Anyway, ere is why nobody is screaming about Apple here:1) Apple is kicking butt: 100K apps in their store, 19% market share in just 2 years compared to Microsoft Mobile which has only 4% after half a decade. If Apple has a small niche, then Microsoft has a pico niche.2) The iPhone has 0 worms or viruses spreading on non-jailbroken iPhones vs. Windows Mobile which has had viruses out for few years. Windows Mobile even has one one virus that cross-infects back and forth with Windows thru that kamakazi "autorun" feature that is like an auto-installer for malware. I guess it beat Conficker to the punch.3) Apple is checking 3rd party apps for signs of malware and malicious code and if Microsoft had done that on a timely basis MS-Windows & Windows Mobile would be far less infected.4) Apple used its object-oriented framework as the API for its phone. Windows Mobile APIs are scaled down Windows desktop APIs and those are like the old Mac APIs from the 1980's.5) Apple uses Objective-C to program its phone. Microsoft using C/C++. Did nobody in Redmond read Sun's whitepaper explaining why C++ was a bad language for consumer embedded systems?6) Apple switched from closed source - like Microsoft - to a split open/closed source model. Apple gives away the whole source code for its Unix layer. It is an actual operating system all by itself, based on FreeBSD Unix. Apple has the rendering engine (WebKit) of iPhone/Safari published as open source; Google uses it in the Droid phone now. Blackberry might soon, since they bought a company who has a WebKit-based browser.7) Apple's web browser is the first to get Smile3 acid test to work. Firefox is still barely over 9/10 there. IE is one 1/5 there. Apple is supporting HTML 5 too.
bemenakerNov 17, 2009
Maybe Apple should change their marketing strategy from only attacking competitors to praising their own products. They have built a lot of animosity all on their own with their marketing strategy. Especially, when so much of it is flat out false, sure it was true 10 years ago, but 10 years ago, the Mac OS was a freaking joke too.
timberspineNov 18, 2009
I just checked out the motorola droid that a friend of mine bought and dayummmm that's one fine phone! It's making me think about quitting the iPhone altogether!!
Closed AccountNov 18, 2009
@JohnnySoftwareAh, the Apple fanboys again... For Mr. Spelling Nazi: mistyping "niche" is no worse than mistyping "here".Apple certainly got many things right with iPhone -- it's a superb product that fills the suits most consumers well. I don't have any issues with quality of their products, but with the tight control they exercise. If internet was invented by the likes of Apple, it would have worked on a "submit-your-website-for-approval-and-better-not-compete-with-us" basis. I am hoping smartphones are not headed in the direction where they're polished, cute and provided overwhelmingly by a single company that stifles all outside innovation.Windows Mobile sucks -- I did not even mention it, as it is not even close to being a serious contender to iPhone / Android. Your point about Objective-C vs C/C++ is nonsense -- just look at the market share of each in embedded devices and systems programming. Btw, when it comes to app development, C#/.Net (WM) and Java (Android) are far better than Objective-C (no memory management, over 20-years old technology).