And people wonder why I hate the walled approach Apple takes.
The article makes another great point about people not being able to leave iOS devices for a competitor because all their music, movies, apps, etc are in Apple's DRM format and won't transfer to other devices.
Apple deserves to have control over their own platform, but this is getting a little crazy. The extra fee wouldn't be so bad if developers could increase fees through apps to offset it, but Apple is forcing them into a horrible position. They can't say the reason for higher prices is Apple charging them. They have to eat that cost for the customer and aren't even allowed to post links to their site in the app anymore.
Now everyone should know, if they didn't before, why Apple is no Microsoft. Apple isn't content to create a platform, they want to own everything. They want a walled garden, they want captive users, they want to be able to demand exorbitant profit margins in perpetuity.
Mostly benign monarchies may seem very attractive at first glance, but over time abuse of power is inevitable and then it's too late.
I wish that were practical, but Web apps just don't measure up for a lot of domains. Personal example: I was recently toying with the idea of porting a design program to be a Web app, but even just getting very simple typography right is pretty intractable.
Sure, not everything can be a web app, but a lot of the subscription world can easily be ported to web app, since the content will likely be delivered in HTML.
Interestingly, serving e-books over HTML would destroy the DRM models that Amazon and others have developed to "protect" their content. I can't see there being a Kindle web-based reader unless Amazon takes the same road as Apple with regard to DRM [1], and tells all their content providers to get on board.
If you're talking desktop, I agree, since the browser has become so pre-eminent there. But for mobile, Web apps are distinctly second-tier citizens. Just installing one on your home screen is voodoo beyond the ken of most iPhone users.
It's not so bad on Android. And Google is very good at Web Apps. Try viewing the web app versions of gmail and such on your phone. They're not as full featured as the dedicated apps, but they work damn well. The big thing is making them look like real apps to the end user. No one wants to have to remember a bunch of web addresses. Something like what Chrome does on the PC is good...instead of a classic link shortcut for your desktop, it makes an "app" out of it. Giving it its own icon and name like any other program on the computer.
If that's all the value you're offering your users, DRM is the least of your problems. If it's that easy for users to exhaust the content they actually want, you're going to have problems with customer retention, not to mention customer acquisition.
> I've changed my focus from iOS to web because of Apple's policies.
Bingo!
I leaned that way before as well. recent events just reinforced my decision to do the same. i've got one iOS native app in the pipeline for a startup client now. but it will hopefully be my last. there are just too many business ideas, too many features and experiences I can deliver quite satisfactorily as a desktop-friendly & mobile-friendly website, or on Android, to have to put up with this Nazi behavior on Apple's part anymore. i demand the ability to have whatever features I want, whatever content I want, do billing however I want, design my UI whatever way I think best, use whatever tools I want, and make new releases when and how I want, with no more bureaucracy, rituals or dumbass XCode quirks and mole-whacking. No more.
Apple doesn't want to own everything. They're happy being the BMW of tech and generate massive profits.
Comparing this situation to monarchies and abuses of power is stupid. It's just an in-app subscription model for a mobile OS that nobody is being forced to use.
Not all monarchies are bad, but most eventually turn worse. That's where the comparison to the iPhone platform is relevant. Apple has a lot of control over the platform, and so far people haven't been overly concerned about that. But over time people may start to realize that Apple is not as benevolent a company as they've been led to believe.
Yes, people can go elsewhere. And I think that's precisely what will happen. Apple has had the lead in mobile app development as a platform up until now, but their restrictive and short-sighted rules and policies may very well sap much of that momentum.
> all their music, movies, apps, etc are in Apple's DRM format and won't transfer to other devices.
Music on iOS devices isn't DRMed and hasn't been for some time. If your new device can't play m4a files this is a separate issue and you can transcode them just like if you had a pile of drm-free WMAs.
Apps are DRMed but even if they weren't it'd be irrelevant unless a WINE-analogue for iOS came about (and consider the time-scale this would take and performance issues, etc. UIKit is non-trivial). I can't move an Android app onto my iPhone either, despite its lack of DRM, and whether the blocker is legal or technical is irrelevant. The real problem isn't that a user can't move their 99c iOS whatever-app to their new android phone, it's that they can't find or don't know how to find or can't be bothered finding equivalent app(s) for their new phone. Leaving aside the whole question of relative top-tier application quality on the platforms.
Movies, I don't know the behaviour here. Do people collect big libraries of apple DRM-ed movies, enough to keep them stuck to a phone? TV episodes I could see, but those strike me as more disposable in any case.
What is the 'etc' in "music, movies, apps, etc"? It's not your photos. It's not your emails. It's not your calendars or your contacts. It's not even the data saved in your applications - there's a trivial API now for transferring files from an application to your desktop via iTunes; if you can't export the data from your favourite applications to transfer to a different platform, that's on the application developers, not Apple.
I suppose it could be your alarms, preferred weather cities and stocks app choices. Or your SMS database, which I bet most people don't even consider as something that should easily transfer from phone to phone (though obviously it should).
Valid points. You're right. Maybe I went a bit overboard. But you can't deny that Apple is continuously trying to prevent people from using anything but their services and goods. I don't blame them for that. What I blame them for is pushing everyone else out just because they control enough of the market to do so.
> I suppose it could be your alarms, preferred weather cities and stocks app choices. Or your SMS database, which I bet most people don't even consider as something that should easily transfer from phone to phone (though obviously it should).
Absolutely. However, those things aren't huge. Different platforms have equivelants anyway. If I go from iOS to Android (or the other way around), I have plenty to take the place of those. Setting them up again may take a little time, but not much.
> But you can't deny that Apple is continuously trying to prevent people from using anything but their services and goods.
I wouldn't even say that. I'd say "Apple focuses on making their services and goods work together painlessly." Being incompatible with other things is not the goal but it does end up being the end result some of the time. It's a subtle but important distinction.
I would agree with you were it not for what they're doing now with this whole in-app transaction thing. They're forcing other services out. It wouldn't be a problem except they don't let companies adjust their prices to reflect the cut Apple is taking and they don't let you advertise the fact you can get the same service outside the app.
> Being incompatible with other things is not the goal
Yes, a lot of the time it is. Apple went out of their way to prevent the ipod working with non-itunes software, they also went out of their way to make itunes music streaming over the network incompatible with other software.
"I can't move an Android app onto my iPhone either, despite its lack of DRM, and whether the blocker is legal or technical is irrelevant."
That's actually Apple's fault too. There is an Android runtime for iOS (http://www.xmlvm.org/android/). However, as far as I understand Apple's store rules, such a runtime must not be used for applications.
Actually that's a cross compiler, and products made with it are almost certainly allowed on the appstore (I actually worked on a J2ME->iPhone cross compiler in 2008 when the appstore rules were even stricter, and products using our compiler were allowed on the appstore (though we were living in constant fear, back in those days it was much more ambiguous)). It's only useful if you've got the source for your android application, at which point you can recompile it into an iPhone app. It doesn't run a 'bare' android app.
If an actual Java runtime was made though, that would be banned.
> Not to mention the fact that users have built up libraries of dozens of applications and DRM-laden content that won’t transfer between devices.
What you say is (emphasis added):
> The article makes another great point about people not being able to leave iOS devices for a competitor because all their music, movies, apps, etc are in Apple's DRM format and won't transfer to other devices.
Music is DRM-free on iTunes and has been for some time. TV shows and movies are another matter and have other issues (such as only one download), which is why I won't buy them from there.
But it's not Apple demanding DRM. It's the content producers, who are still until the woeful delusion that DRM prevents copying. In reality it simply annoys customers. The only reason music is DRM-free on iTunes is because Apple extracted that concession as part of a deal that gave the RIAA three pricing bands for songs ($0.69, $0.99 and $1.29, which basically means $1.29 for anything new) over the previous model, which was $0.99 for everything.
Less correct. Kindle and Netflix have DRM, but they don't have the platform lock-in of iBooks and movies. iBooks, as far as I know, is only available on iOS. DRM is bad, but DRM that's tied to a smaller range of platforms is even worse.
1) You're not locked into Apple's devices. ITunes is standard mp4 audio and plays on a variety of platforms; the DRMed video plays through itunes on windows too.
2) Amazon's VOD service provides DRMed video, too.
Amazon doesn't manufacture the device you view your content on. Amazon VOD support is available on a wide range of hardware from multiple manufacturers.
So yeah, the DRM is still there, but if you're not happy with the way Samsung is doing things, you can hop to LG or Sony just as easily.
Compare with Apple where if you bought video content on iTunes and don't like the AppleTV... well... tough.
I never said it did. DRM is a problem no matter who provides it. But Apple definitely ties it much more into their devices than other companies. There's an iTunes app built into the iPhone that can't be removed unless you jailbreak. Google has yet to do something like this with Android. You have more options and aren't tied to one specific service.
> and aren't even allowed to post links to their site in the app anymore.
whoa. first time I heard this. if this is true, it's probably straws[final+5] for me. goodbye native iOS app development, hello mobile multi-platform web apps and Android apps.
The article makes another great point about people not being able to leave iOS devices for a competitor because all their music, movies, apps, etc are in Apple's DRM format and won't transfer to other devices.
Apple deserves to have control over their own platform, but this is getting a little crazy. The extra fee wouldn't be so bad if developers could increase fees through apps to offset it, but Apple is forcing them into a horrible position. They can't say the reason for higher prices is Apple charging them. They have to eat that cost for the customer and aren't even allowed to post links to their site in the app anymore.