Jiminy.
One of the most common criticisms of Daring Fireball's John Gruber is that he too stridently and uncritically defends Apple. I believe Gruber's perspective is better understood not as fanatic, but as someone who gives Apple — a company he obviously loves — the benefit of the doubt based on a history of good faith and positive experiences. Whether that's a useful perspective to you or not is something for you to decide. (For me it is. Now if I could get over his Yankees obsession.)
But Gruber's coverage of Apple's latest mistake, the banning of two completely useful, non-SDK-violating applications for the iPhone — Podcaster and MailWrangler, both axed due to purported duplication of features of Apple's own iPhone software — has been fair and critical of Apple's decisions. I've been turned off by what I felt was Gruber's borderline sycophantism in the past, but his reporting and writing the last couple of weeks have laid any doubts I might have had to rest that he's willing to call out Apple on their mistakes.
For example, as he writes about Podcaster and Apple's App Store policies:
The App Store concept has trade-offs. There are pros and cons to this model versus the wide-open nature of Mac OS X. There are reasonable arguments to be made on both sides. But blatantly anti-competitive exclusion of apps that compete with Apple’s own? There is no trade-off here. No one benefits from such a policy, not even Apple. If this is truly Apple’s policy, it’s a disaster for the platform. And if it’s not Apple’s policy, then Podcaster’s exclusion is proof that the approval process is completely broken.Outstanding.Either way, something is seriously wrong.
the latest
latest episodes
Gruber's approach only really gets my eyes rolling when it's framed by pointless, snarling attacks on other writers. There's no better way to let others ignore an intelligent and transparent analysis by letting them hang it on the author's emotional investment, a la Dilger calling these criticisms a "simplistic morality play tirade" that Gruber makes it easy for him to "laugh at."
Isn't working on Apple's closed, vertical ecosystem and then complaining that it's a closed, vertical ecosystem just a little churlish?
The entire gig seems to be set up so Apple can treat developers as unsalaried work-made-for-hire. If this appearance seems obvious to a non-developer, why are developers complaining about it? I don't buy that they didn't see the axe over their heads when they walked into the room
I think the distinction is that, while it is a closed, vertical ecosystem - Apple promised to be the benevolent dictator of the same, and one of the truths gleaned by students of history from the French Revolution is that once one claims to be a benevolent dictator, then incompetence or selfishness leads to the peasants revolting.
(Secretly I was hoping that there would be no comments so that I could post one composed entirely of the line "Title: Jiminy. Comments: Crickets." *shakes fist at Rob*)
bardfinn, it was still funny.
And here I was thinking with Apple (and their —excuse the term— fanboys) there weren't any shades of grey. Either you are a syco or ... you hate them.
Gruber in this case is being a sychophant for his developer friends.
I think you would have to be a fool to consider that Apple would possibly allow some of these apps the developers are griping about, given the terms of the developers license, and aspects of the phone app ecosystem apple may have plans of its own about, or protective concerns involving business partners.
I half suspect that these antics are merely a way to get Apple to be more public about its own interests and application plans, between itself and its partners.
There are apps we would like to see. Open the bluetooth stack, without opening the phone to social hacking, to allow pairing with external keyboards and GPS devices.
These do not have to come from the third party developer to please the end user, they just have to become available. Apple is in a vise with business partners that have plans or want control, as well as having their own plans they would rather not air.
Honestly, the functionality podcaster adds is something that I thought an iphone did, and was the reason why I was excited to buy one for my wife.
The fact that it wasn't only not built-in, but is being strictly forbidden, is totally bone-headed.
Just be glad apple doesn't have some special deal with Walmart to print photos, or they'd disable your printer drivers.