Start your engines

In the late 80’s and all throughout the 90’s it was believed that Apple had a superior product than those based off of DOS and later Windows. There was no denying that the Mac was easier to use than a PC. The main barrier for companies and consumers to owning a mac was price and later, compatibility. As less expensive PCs saturated the market in both the business world and consumer world, Apple’s product took a backseat to PC manufacturers vying for more and business with lower and lower prices. By the late 90’s and early 2000’s PCs had caught up in usability and were also must more stable to use.

It wasn’t until about 2002-2003 where OS X had matured enough that it was relatively fast, stable, and easy to use. It wasn’t until the iPod was a run-away success for years straight that Apple’s once “lack-luster” marketshare turned into a “premium-niche” market. Which now brings us to the iPhone-period.

We are now in a world where Macs can do everything and more that a PC can. The new battleground is not over laptops or desktops, but over mobile devices. What we are now seeing is that Apple learned from it’s mistakes in the 80’s. It knows it has a superior product, but it’s selling it for much less than inferior products. Why?

The App Store. Apple knows that if it can get developers, it can win the war to be the most dominant supplier of smart-phones in the world. As I think about switching to a different device I now have to think about the investment that I have made in my iPhone. Touchsports Tennis, Things, and Tweetie are just a few apps that I have purchased that I will not be able to take anywhere other than another iPhone. We now have a situation that is one-part 90’s-esque windows with one-part Apple. We have a proliferation of applications but with a vendor lock-in that prevents you from going anywhere else.

What if I want a real keyboard and use Things? I know that it won’t ever happen. What if I want to play tennis and have physical buttons? Also won’t happen. Developers and users have done this to themselves unfortunately because the iPhone is a lesser of many evils. It’s one of the most intuitive phones EVER made.

I guess this is my public statement that I probably won’t buy another app from the app store. I’m truly worried about possible lock-in where I can’t choose between anything but an iPhone or an iPhone. Companies like Palm are letting developers create applications with web standards that are far easier to port to web apps than their Obj-C counterparts. This means that most apps written for a Palm device can run on an iPhone with little modification to the underlining code.

The most amazing part of this tale is that Apple didn’t have any desire to open the iPhone to developers. It had no desire to give consumers ways to play games, manage finances, and any of the other myriad of tools you see today on an iPhone. It only did so after countless attempts by consumers and developers to convince them otherwise.