There is even a website about these two companies. Check it out :- http://theapplegoogle.com

Back in the day, this was called petit-bourgeis radicalism. It produced SDS, 3rd party politicos like Pete Camejo – people for whom their purity is a religion and therefore “you all must adopt my revelations”.

Apple can design what they wish, so can Google, so did Sun when it was managed by people like Bray – and we see how well that worked out.

The only real issue in this argument is ideals. People get upset about the fact that some certain apps arent allowed to be on the app store for whatever reasons.

What would be different if all these apps were allowed? Nothing.

You would just have more apps to choose from. thats it. nothing more.

Its not as if youre life changes in any way, because you cant look at boobs through an iPhone app. Hell, you can just do it through mobile safari instead!

My point is, when you forget all the ethics, morals, and all that crap, and think to yourself, what would happen if i opened my iphone and went into an app store with no restrictions… what would you see? youd see exactly the same thing, but with a lot more crap to sift through to find the good stuff.

Apple is by no means perfect. I don’t claim everything they do is right. I don’t like everything they do either. But they don’t hide behind the shield of “open-ness” They have enough history to understand that you’ve got to protect your turf after surviving through the Microsoft Ages. It is easy for Google, a virtual monopoly to lecture a niche player that they should play by Google’s rules. But if you play by those rules, you’ll lose your lunch, eventually.

With the App Store (particularly now that the iPad has arrived), Apple has developed a potential way for content providers to actually make money off their content instead of giving it to Google to make money off of. Instead of giving it away free on the web, you pay for it. There are both advantages and diadvantages to this approach. Right now, I see the biggest advatange being buyer empowerment. You can price your content any way you want, but ultimately buyers have more influence than traditionally and developers have more tools to find the right price. The App Store has many good deals for both users and devs. Apple has far less potential to control the future of the web than Google does. What Apple can do is hopefully keep places like the New York Times and the news business from collapsing, so that we are not left with a world covered only by blogs. Hopefully they can also make the price of books more reasonable, too, by opening up the playing field for book distribution. Google and the open web just aren’t going to save those two endeavors.

You can still surf the web freely with your iDevice. If you want smut, there’s a phlethora of XXX sites out there, specifically made for mobile devices. If you want to bypass the AppStore, go develop a web app. There’s plenty of frameworks out there, use them.

Don’t forget: When the iPhone initially came to be, Apple did not intend for it to run 3rd party applications – at all. The SDK came a lot later and is their admission to the user base, their compromise. Apple even lets you take away 70% while you have to do nothing – no thing! – to promote your app and still reach millions of potential buyers.

If you’re amont the user base that wants the degree of control over your iDevice an Android handset offers, then you’re a tech savy geek (don’t deny it!). And if you are, applying a jailbreak to your device shouldn’t be that much of a problem. Afraid of voiding your warranty? Go take out an insurance instead of buying AppleCare – you’ll have your ass covered even if you sink your iPhone in the loo, and it’s just a few bucks a month.

Sorry Mr. Bray, I don’t see your point. Except the whining of a sulking company whose Google Voice app has been axed from the AppStore.

Do no evil? Yeah, right Mr. Data Kraken.

More in:

Microsoft passes the “choice” bludgeon against Apple to Google
http://counternotions.com/2010/03/16/choice/

I take issue to not been able to distribute any apps I develop to whom I choose.

While this might seem like a small issue, it is a major draw back to the platform as a whole.

I have several app ideas that a small community of users would like to have, but because of the nature of the distribution system, I won’t write them (as they simply don’t have a place in that market place).

Think about small-medium businesses, who would like to develop a custom app that would suit their individual businesses and plugin into their existing infrastructure. These kind of apps have no place on the store, but there is simply no easy way to get around it (you need to be a company with more then 500 employees if you want the ability to follow this path).

What about 3rd party libraries? Instead of been able to purchase pre-compiled libraries (like most other platforms) and use them within your code, you have to purchase the source code (generally a much more expensive prospect) or (re-)develop the solution all over again (another expensive prospect). (Apple insists on all the source code as part of the submission process).

I’m all for apple been able to check out my code, I’d actually be really happy to have some sort of certification attached to my app, so people know at least it’s been through some sort of “check” by apple (but given the issues of the current submission process, that doesn’t actually mean lot).

All I really want to see, is the ability to distribute my own apps without the need to go through the app store. I have no issue paying for the dev libraries (although Microsoft just released there’s for free), I have no issue with having to have my code signed, I just take exception at the need to have to use apple’s market place for apps that just don’t belong there.

Open system? Google open sources andriod because it was the only way for it to compete in this market. They never do that with their search engine. Why can’t we write plugins for Google Search engine?

Anyway, I think one thing that apple could do is to officially allow the jailbreaking or something similar but, if you chose to jailbreak (or whatever apple calls it) your iPhone or iPad then you are on your own. There is not warranty and there will be not update. You are responsible for all the damages and costs that it makes. They do it all the time in hardware. If you open your computer you will lose your warranty.