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Bret Taylor
How Apple Has Rethought a Gospel of the Web - NYTimes.com - http://www.nytimes.com/2010...
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"Those of us who have championed open platforms cannot ignore these facts. It’s conceivable that, had Apple loosened the restrictions surrounding the App Store, the iPhone ecosystem would have been even more innovative, even more democratic. But I suspect that this view is too simplistic. The more complicated reality is that the closed architecture of the iPhone platform has contributed to its generativity in important ways." - Bret Taylor
great article. Interesting to see how Apple is building a proprietary empire similar to AOL and CompuServe... hmm. This fact alone has prevented me from buying the iPad, even though I love my iPhone. I don't want to be locked in to the Apple empire when it comes to a tablet device. - Susan Beebe
I am all for openness but some times control is needed to manage the chaos that will result. This is often seen in applications created on the Windows platforms. I am not saying that there are no quality software on the Windows platforms, of course I'm also an alien to that platform, having chosen the Apple OS's for the past 24+ years. I also agree that Apple may have been too strict with its control of the apps in the App Store. They went a bit far when they started to restrict adult content and other Apple felt not socially acceptable content. These social standards should be left to the users. It should never be determined by a company. - Vinko
Let's see, you've never used the platform but you claim there's no quality software for it? I think Vinko's showing all the late stages of Apple fanboyism. I'm afraid it's too late for medical intervention. - Piaw Na
The open platform nature of the Atari video game platform was blamed for its failure as too many bad games flooded the market. Nintendo went the other way, deliberately limiting game releases and requiring game companies to apply for licenses to release more than 2-3 games a year. Then Sony came along and decimated that model with a much more open approach to licensing games. - Piaw Na
We've seen this movie before, Apple PC OS was original walled garden and umm evil ole MS ate them alive now in an even more open computing environment closed is a dead business model and ASUS is likely the one to write the obituary - WarLord
@Piaw, Vinko quite explicitly *didn't* say Windows has no quality software. - Andrew C (✔)
And as for Sony vs Nintendo, I would strongly disagree that Sony beating Nintendo had to do solely with being "much more open". Nintendo already opened up - Sega had gained a foothold in the US in the console market a generation earlier (with the Genesis) thanks to getting top ranked games like SF2 with a six button controller and a non-censored Mortal Kombat. In the next generation (Saturn, PSX, and N64), third party developers/publishers switched over partly due to Nintendo's heavy-handedness but also due to technological differences in platforms, most notably the difference between CD-based media vs ROM cartridge media. - Andrew C (✔)
... But even if your point was valid... Sony was still - and is to this day - much more closed, much more controlled than the PC market. (Back in the days of the first Playstation, in fact, Sony America was reviled by a certain tiny segment of the market for how it tended to reject even allowing some Japanese games to be licensed for the American market, strictly on the criteria that they wanted to cut down the number of 2D games available for the system in the US.) And yet, it was Sony's Playstation that heralded the sun setting on the PC games market. - Andrew C (✔)
It's clear that the next big challenge for open systems is to find a way to conceal the scars that make them look like a Frankenstien's monster. The price for openness cannot continue to be a degraded user experience even if it means we have to work harder to get cooperation between all the parties building on a platform. - Kelly Norton
I understand a strategy of control the core and allow a bit of chaos on the edge to drive innovation. Over time the the edge is folded into the core, the core grows, and the edge grows at an even faster rate. Trying to control the edge I don't understand. Open source shows opening the core also has problems, but the direction Apple is taking seems unnecessarily self-limiting. - Todd Hoff
@Piaw, Andrew is correct I did not say there's no quality software on the Windows platform. There are bad software on any platforms, as long as there are lazy developers. I have seen this on Mac and Windows OSs, but Windows is where I've seen the most even with the limited exposure I have for the platform. With Mac OS, Apple used to have a very explicit "guidelines" for how each application should behave and function. Therefore, Mac users to a certain extend have a justified level of expectations for Mac OS software. These expectations are not equal for Windows users. I believe Windows users should demand more from Windows software developers. This will result in better software. How many times have you hear Windows user complain to friends and colleagues about software? These are not the people these users should complain to. In the past I had seen Macintosh software developers go out of business because they did not follow Apple's application guidelines to the finite details. I think this should happen to many Windows developers, but because Microsoft does not have explicit guidelines, Windows users are simply too tolerable. - Vinko
B.S. If you want to produce good software, you have to release frequently and iterate. A model where you can't do that (e.g., iPad/iPhone) makes it very difficult to even fix bugs. - Piaw Na
The Open Market always wins, Apple can only swim upstream for so long until the current's overcomes. - manielse (Mark Nielsen)
This must be why the 3do and pc dominate gaming. - Andrew C (✔)
@andrew C um, the playstation didn't hereld the end of the PC market. The playstation beat out its console bretheren because 1) it was real 3D, contrast this to the Saturn which was still designed for 2D grunt. Basically, then market dominant Sega miscalculated the next gen. 2) Wipeout. This game blew peoples minds and really helped to push the playstation into peoples homes. The PC market at the time was really picking up steam with landmarks such as Quake, Half-Life, Red Alert, warcraft, the colossal Flight Sim franchise. Slowly, incentives to produce for consoles, increasing power of console hardware with the release of the 360 and PS3, second hand market being squashed by retailers and DRM and rampant piracy in the PC market being used as an excuse for many game companies to abandon the PC market over the past 6 years (when the real decline became noticable). However, the PC market is still going strong with indie studios and digital distribution. The PC still claims the largest install base of any gaming machine and has the largest played game by number of active players (Maple Story or Farmville, depending on who you talk to). - alphaxion
I know the PC games market isn't completely dead, but when Epic, iD, and Cryteam - all former PC first developers - are all shifting to a console-first strategy... I would say the sun has set. And as for Farmville and Maple Story, I'm still not 100% convinced. Extremely financially successful FB games like Zynga's (used to?) depend on scams, and as for freemium games, I don't think it's comparable to boxed games. - Andrew C (✔)
My contention was that the PS1 didn't hereld the death of the PC market... Tho, I agree that the PC market is no longer the powerhouse it used to be, but it still has the likes of Valve (largest independent games studio in the world) with their successful steam store, Blizzard, Gas Powered Games, Introversion, Blue Frog (recently born from former Bullfrog employees), Lucas Arts, Popcap, Bethesda, Lionhead Studios, Rockstar and on and on still producing titles for it I'd hardly say its time has set. If anything, the departure of some of the studios from the PC market is a good thing in that many other studios are getting some breathing room. After the cuntmuffin episode cliffyb had, I'm glad Epic are taking their future titles to console only since the original UT still stands as their greatest moment as far as I'm concerned! As I said, there's an indie renaissance going on right now that is well worth keeping your eyes on. - alphaxion
OK, 1 that sounds like sour grapes, and 2, Epic switching focus is important not just for Epic's own games but because the Unreal Engine is a top-tier piece of middleware and itself signals that most teams licensing UE are themselves also focusing more on consoles. My real point remains: if 'openness wins all', exactly when is that going to happen in the boxed game market? - Andrew C (✔)
It's not sour grapes, it's just being irked by someone with a massive ego talking bollocks. When he was confronted by journalists for proof of the reasons why they were quitting the PC market he refused and tried to deflect the conversation. Also, the Unreal Engine will always be available to the PC market for use - they wouldn't turn down extra money for no additional investment since they have to make it for the PC anyway, as that's where the game is created in the first place! Also I'm not arguing about an open market being the only eventual winner in this battle because the reason why many are pushing consoles rather than PC's is that consoles are simply more profitable by their very closed nature. Retailers also love console titles more than PC ones because they're a sounder bet for the second hand market - as that market is extremely profitable, since 100% of the sale will go to them. The gaming market is set to become even more closed if the transition to services like Onlive and GaiKai take off. Even then, there will always be a PC market. - alphaxion