[Openmcl-devel] Mac App store: will CCL apps fly?

[Sudhir Shenoy]

On Oct 23, 2010, at 9:36 AM, Ron Garret wrote:

> On Oct 22, 2010, at 4:35 PM, Sudhir Shenoy wrote:
> 
>> 
>> On Oct 23, 2010, at 2:58 AM, Ron Garret wrote:
>> 
>>> Exactly.  The simple fact of the matter is that Apple does not care about its developers.  It has never cared about its developers.  It doesn't need to.  It cares about its retail customers.  It serves the needs of its retail customers.  By doing that it creates a market in which enough developers are willing to put up with Apple's shit to produce more than enough product to keep the app store well stocked.
>> 
>> I think this is really unfair to Apple. For years, they've been providing a nice development environment for the Mac (Xcode etc.) along with a wide variety of programming languages (including Java, Python, Perl, Ruby etc.) installed with the developer tools. This was all done at no cost so hobbyists like me could continue to write code with no commercial objectives in mind ...
> 
> Oh dear.
> 
> Do you know what a feedlot is?
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feedlot
> 
> The cows that inhabit the feedlot probably think they're getting a sweet deal.  Free food, no obligations.  XCode is a feedlot.  Developers are the cows.  The app store is the milking shed.

Hyperbole, much? (BTW, I didn't know what a feedlot was. I had to read the Wiki article).

If this was Microsoft doing it, there could be some reason to fear such a future. But as I said in reply to Rafel, Apple simply does not have the market share to entice developers to write solely for their platform if the conditions for doing so becomes overly onerous. It is not a new market like the iphone/ipad where there is a lot of money to be made.

If you really believe this is what Apple intends then it follows directly that you believe Apple wants to get out of general purpose computers (and stick solely to appliances) ... in which case the entire argument is moot anyway.

Cheers
Sudhir