Apple’s App Store and Antitrust

Story: http://loganleger.com/apple-app-store-antitrust

There is a growing concern about Apple's anti-competetive practices and the above is one of them. The author summarizes his concerns as follows

"Apple’s App Store is a target for an antitrust or civilian lawsuit because of the policies thereof. The two major issues here are: 1) Apple’s use of private APIs in App Store apps; 2) disparity on the part of App Store reviewers in application of unwritten policies."

Hit the link above for the full scoop.

The Death Grip: Apple's failure to test the very basic!

Apple released iPhone 4.0 with great fanfare and as usual the device was sold out. It would have been business as usual until significant number of users started noticing that the device would lose signal strength and would continue losing bars to the point of disconnecting when held in certain way. It would not have been a big deal if Apple acknowledged the issue and worked to resolve the issue. Instead the unexpected happened. In response to one of the customer's email to Mr.Jobs on what Apple is doing to address the issue, SJ responded with

"Just avoid holding it that way"

My jaw dropped! Why? Because Apple prides itself in making a device that you or I would want to use without needing any adjustments on our part. The sad part is that Apple marketing machine spoke highly of the new antenna design which is causing the issue.

See this video and a million others in youtube. My colleague had one and I could easily replicate the issue where the signal strength drops to zero. What good is a phone if it cannot make phone calls?

UPDATE: Apple appears to put blame on the software. But no one is buying is and neither do I. The problem clearly is about signal loss when holding certain way. How does calculating/showing the bars differently address the issue?  Consumer Reports confirmed the issue be an hardware issue and so I am waiting to see how Apple is going to respond to this.

iPhone Economics - it is bad news. And then it gets worse

Story: http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2010/06/full-analysis-of-iphone-economics-its-bad-news-and-then-it-gets-worse.html

As gigaom's summary put it, it is a losing proposition for MOST AppStore developers. Here’s the summary of summary:

• The iTunes App Store has generated 5 billion downloads and $1.4 billion in revenues, which works out to 20 cents per downloaded app for a developer, after Apple’s 30 percent cut.
• After considering that 73 percent of all apps are paid, each of the 164,000 paid apps in the App Store generate an average of $3,050 for a developer in a year.
• Although there are more paid apps than free apps, 85 percent of all downloaded apps are free. Even with an average of 94 apps installed, each Apple mobile devices only generate $14 for developers annually.
• With the low estimated development cost effort of $15,000 it can take a developer up to 22 years to recoup costs from creating a mobile app, using the median revenue of $682 annually.

The Winner: Apple ofcourse. 30% cut is not bad.

Dan Gillmor the Mac devotee is moving to Linux

Story: http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/06/20/from_mac_to_linux/index.html

He writes:

So why am I about to migrate to Linux (aka GNU/Linux)? Because Apple is pushing me away, and because I value some principles, perhaps almost religiously, that affect other decisions.

Apple is pushing computer users as fast as it can toward a centrally controlled computing ecosystem where it makes all the decisions about what native applications may be used on the devices it sells -- and takes a cut of every dollar that is spent inside that ecosystem. This is a direct repudiation of its own history, and more broadly that of the larger personal-computing ecosystem, where no one can stop anyone else from writing and distributing software that other people might want to use.

Steve Jobs says Apple is a curator, nothing more. This grossly understates the control. Jobs says Apple has "made mistakes" in being the police, judge, jury and executioner in its Disney-style world, and is working hard to perfect the system.

But this is a disconnect with reality. Central control, no matter how well-intentioned, is itself the problem, not the solution. The "enlightened dictator" is fiction. And dangerous.

I realize that I won't persuade the many people who prefer to live in gated communities, believing they can leave any time they wish. But switching costs will only get higher over time for those who choose to live in the Apple ecosystem.

Build an iPhone App and you give away the right to criticize Apple

Story: http://blog.reddit.com/2010/06/better-mobile-reddit-for-all.html

Did you know that Apple's EULA forces you to shutup when it comes to criticizing Apple? I can't really quote or provide references because anyone who signs the developer agreement is prohibited from making it public (sure a version exists but I don't see the point). And my simple mind wonders how in the world is it anyway connected to the App I am writing. A parallel would be for U.S government to demand that you give away freedom of speech right as a pre-condition to getting the citizenship.

To summarize, Reddit.com has decided to stop investing in building the App for the iPhone (or other platforms) and rather focus their energy on making their mobile web experience better on all platforms. They quoted a few reasons which echos the general theme of this blog. They are

• "...or that we had to sign a EULA to use them (that incidentally says we can't criticize them publicly -- oh well)"
• or that by putting energy to support an iphone app we are neglecting android, blackberry, and even palm users (they still exist!) let alone an ipad version.
• Mostly, dealing with the app store is a royal pain in the ass. ...As such, our development is based around the radical notion that we can deploy bugfixes to site problems in less than a fortnight. This is not the case with the app store (quite the contrary actually). We've had too many legitimate bugfixes rejected from the store because the reviewer of the patch happened to check on a day when someone made a poop joke or our thumbnailer did a particularly good job detecting the raciest image on the page. Nevermind pointing out that the content for the app comes from the web and that we didn't put the poop joke in there just for them, but all this has been said before and will be said again.

Yet Another App Rejection

Story: MyFrame App rejection

So you may ask why I am writing about yet another App store rejection when it no longer qualifies as news? I did for 2 reasons

1. In this instance, Apple did not provide any good reason for rejection. Yes Steve's mail provided some context but without that, it simply would have been construed as Apple's discretion. This is what dictatorial regimes do and I have no doubt that Mr.Steve is imposing his will.
2. What incentives do businesses have in investing on their platform? I blogged earlier pondering about the same.

Here is what the developer in the above story concluded it with

My Frame was approved by Apple 3 times (once for each version we released), and then now, at version 1.2 they decide it’s to be removed? How can a company be prepared to invest into a platform that can change at any time, cutting you off and kicking you out, with no course of action but to whine on some no-name blog.