I didn’t intend to write consecutive blogs about Apple, but with all the rethinking going on over there, it’s hard to resist. This time I am focused on “how” they ensure application safety on their mobile devices and why that’s very high on the list of what customers like me value.
Worth noting at this point is that I bought an iPad for my son and we both love it. It makes my iPhone seem so tiny and much less useful.
But despite the early huge success of the iPad, Apple is now in a very dangerous dance, no matter what their real motivations are.
Last week Apple announced that they are tightening their already firm grip on the applications that run on the iPhone and the other mobile devices. Apple is requiring people to develop the applications using their programming tools, appearing to be a competitive move against Adobe Systems who just announced a new set of developer tools on April 12 (yesterday). Beyond this, developers can no longer use outside services to measure how their applications are performing.
There is a long list of companies that have failed by keeping a product in a proprietary environment, Sony’s BetaMax being sort of the poster child example of that, ceding almost overnight the home video market at the time to a lesser format, VHS.
But I can’t help but think that Apple’s tight-fisted control isn’t just about market share. Many of us have had bad experiences on the social networking site, Facebook, for the very reason that Facebook had no controls to speak of over what kind of apps were accessible on Facebook and as a result a lot of us got viruses downloading apps, and I for one will never again download an application on Facebook. On the internet, trust is king.
Whether Apple is too restrictive right now is something I can’t judge, but I do think they have to have enough controls in place so that people don’t have the same experience with their products. Right now I totally trust Apple, I buy books and applications from their online store often. But the first time my credit card data is compromised via an Apple-related application, it will be the last, and I expect I am not the only one who feels that way.
I have blogged before about trust and security and how some companies strike the wrong balance between trust and security and what their customers value (like Qwest foolishly preventing me from paying my phone bill online because I couldn’t remember my password), but this is different and for me at least, I think the controls do have to be pretty tight. The other side of the coin is that if Apple didn’t do this, given the thousands of applications being developed, think of how many quality control people they would have to hire to verify the apps that get done? Controlling the tools, testing, and reporting platform may seem onerous, but I would like to hear a better alternative that works for Apple and doesn’t risk losing customer trust.
So bravo to Apple for keeping things safe for us (and keeping our trust intact), but don’t choke the development community to death. Please.
-Ric
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