Apple manipulates developers...and they love it
The Guardian has published an insightful piece on Apple's odd relationship with its development community, which I'd recommend for two reasons: it demonstrates both how to and how to not build community.
What do I mean? Well, Apple stonewalled against third-party developers on its mobile devices for years, and now has the same developers drooling over the opportunity to give away a third of their iPhone revenue to Apple (even though they're inhibited from collaborating with each other by Apple's NDA).
How does Apple manage to manipulate its developer base so effectively? Why do people put up with it?
Is [Apple giving its developer community a] great deal? It doesn't matter; if that desirable date finally agrees to dinner, you don't care that they leave you to pick up the bill. Who'd have thought you could emotionally manipulate people over an SDK?
The executives at rival smartphone software companies like RIM, Palm and Microsoft must be standing around with their mouths open: Apple got developers to be happy about giving away more than a third of their revenues?...
But -- you see what has happened? The iPhone and iPod Touch are turning into a platform, and people are falling over themselves to get on board.
Why the furor to embrace this crappy deal? Because there is no other option. Apple's mobile devices provide such a rich platform opportunity that giving up 30 percent and more of eventual revenues may feel like a deal.
Not that it matters how it feels. It just is. The good and bad thing about Apple is that everyone on the developer side is treated equally. Equally poor, yes, but equally all the same. So while Application Developer X may not be happy with the deal, at least she knows that Application Developer Y is also being shafted.
An Apple spokesperson told The Guardian years ago that it kept the iPod platform closed because "Essentially, it's a music player. We don't want to spoil the experience [by opening it up to third parties]." This is the same reasoning that led to Apple's initial bout with irrelevance decades ago.
As a hard-core Apple fan, I hope it doesn't make the same mistake this time and make third-party development onerous. I love Apple's sense of style and innovation. However, I don't want to be locked into Apple as the sole provider of my Mac and iPhone/iPod-based experiences.
Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mjasay. 
At this point, it's not just about what platform these apps run on, its about the delivery service being run for you. Aside from the inital certification fee, there's no risk or investment necessary to put an app in the store. Think of it as TuneCore->iTMS for Apple mobile apps, but with a percentage instead of a flat yearly fee. You don't need a major hardware or business entity backbone to try and make things happen.
Don't think of it all as revenue for Apple. Much of it is overhead and the novelty of such a store the Apple runs.
Various forms of bad old "lock-in" seem to be the basis for much of the money to be made, and nothing in Silicon Valley nor in Redmond seems to be any exception.
I have a Blackberry, and I like it. A recent experience with tech support getting into the inner workings of it showed me how proprietary this thing is. Much of that is driven by commercial opportunity and not technical necessity. Why is FaceBook integrated so that its libraries get reinstalled every time you turn the device on...? etc.
The "control-your-platform" game has its up-side... the unified user experience, for example... assured interoperability within your ecosystem is not a bad thing.
Apple seems to take alternating steps forward and backward where openness and standards are concerned; and they are always doing what they perceive as protecting their brand and their revenue sources.
What the hell are you talking about? There were Inside Macintosh Volumes 1-3 when the Mac first came out, and developer environments to go with it.
An iPod is an appliance. Is there a (giggle) Zune SDK? Samsung? Any? Bueller? Bueller?
The original Mac was an appliance, too. Its limits forced developers into creating apps that needed to use Apple's built-in ROMS. That, combined with the Interface Guidelines tome brought the consistency across apps that makes the Mac so superior.
Oh, and last time I checked, 30% was not "more than a third".
- by aztec92154 March 13, 2008 10:04 AM PDT
- I think the comments made here are all very well thought out and valid. That being said, is it too much to ask for Apple to create a SDK which allows developers to create and load their own applications? My reasoning is that they have a revenue stream which depends on customers "monthly" cell phone bill and customer hardware costs. It would be in Apples interest to court developers who will create additional content which will use the EDGE network (Internet).
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(8 Comments)I understand that they are charging 30% for hosting, credit card transactions, ect. I dont understand why they wouldn't allow for developers to distribute their own applications.