iPhone is not a platform or platform is a vendor thing
Tim Bray recommended Confused of Calcutta blog and especially The Customer is the Scarcity post. I also read The Death of the Download. (I wonder if LiveJournal/XJournal automagically turns URLs into links. That would mean that simplest way to refer blog posts wowuld be URLs.) Reading the question "What If Microsoft Had to Approve Every App on Windows?" after that got me to the point on the title.
I didn't actually read the article, but I think that is beside the point. I do believe it makes very good points about open platforms being good for innovation. That's all true, but it is vendor specific point of view. Customer only cares that product has features he needs. I do think that only allowing software installation through App Store made things easier for the user as well as Apple. And I don't think that anyone would argue that Apple should accept any application uploaded to store. Like Windows applications or just 20MB of random data. And it's not like competition is that much more open. As far as I know in US smartphones are pretty much locked down by operators. In theory you may have an open platform, but in practice you must negotiate deals with every operator to actually get the software on the phone.
So far I haven't seen anything that would sway my belief that iPhone is the Mac of mobile computing. It sets standards what a mobile computing device should look like, but in 5-10 years there will be a more open device that will (eventually) control 90% of the market. Apple makes products for premium market and somebody else has to take care of mainstream. Timeframe is anyone's guess. Ten years is nice figure that also is close to the time between mac and Windows 95.
I didn't actually read the article, but I think that is beside the point. I do believe it makes very good points about open platforms being good for innovation. That's all true, but it is vendor specific point of view. Customer only cares that product has features he needs. I do think that only allowing software installation through App Store made things easier for the user as well as Apple. And I don't think that anyone would argue that Apple should accept any application uploaded to store. Like Windows applications or just 20MB of random data. And it's not like competition is that much more open. As far as I know in US smartphones are pretty much locked down by operators. In theory you may have an open platform, but in practice you must negotiate deals with every operator to actually get the software on the phone.
So far I haven't seen anything that would sway my belief that iPhone is the Mac of mobile computing. It sets standards what a mobile computing device should look like, but in 5-10 years there will be a more open device that will (eventually) control 90% of the market. Apple makes products for premium market and somebody else has to take care of mainstream. Timeframe is anyone's guess. Ten years is nice figure that also is close to the time between mac and Windows 95.