Re: [NTLK] iPhone & 3d-Party Apps

On 1/14/07, Apostolos Koutropoulos <der_admiral@mac.com> wrote:
> Steve does have some valid points
>
> [QUOTE]
> And to make the product that Jobs wanted, he wants control. He told
> MSNBC that "You don't want your phone to be an open platform. You
> need it to work when you need it to work. Cingular doesn't want to
> see their West Coast network go down because some application messed
> up."
>
> Jobs doesn't want to see the iPhone overloaded with third party apps
> that fill the iPhone memory to capacity, slow it down with badly
> written applications that take too many resources, or in any way
> impede the iPhone from working when you want it to.
>
> [END QUOTE]
>
> Having used PalmOS phones and PocketPC/WindowsMobile phones I know
> first hand that smartphones are destabilized when third party apps
> are thrown in (heck sometimes even when there are no third party apps
> the phone crashes!) I would say however that I have also used S60 and
> UIQ phones and I have never had problems with the symbian platform -
> and that is open - so open platforms can be done well.

Saying that they want to control what apps is on the phone makes sense
if they talk about consistency, or to be sure the apps aren't buggy.
But saying 3rd party apps would be able to crash Cingular network is
preposterous.

Anyway, we'll see how it works. I think/hope they'd autorize 3rd party
apps, perhaps with a conformity test, but that's it. They even have
iTunes as a ready to use applications shop ! But if they want to
handpick themselves developers (like what they do for iPod games) it
will suck :-/ -- I'm sure all current cocoa developers want to play
with the iPhone...

The nokia 770 is actually a good example; while there is a lot of new
apps from many developers outside nokia, you can't say that all apps
are bug-free :D so, yes, Steve Jobs has a point. But a simple
conformity test, or some kind of "apple label" would be enough to
ensure for most users a good user experience, and yet keep the
platform accessible for developers..

-- 
Nicolas Roard
-- 
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