As for the rest? Maybe we geeks just like well-designed products. I know I do.

Also, the app store rejections rarely are as absolute as you seem to imply. Shifty Jelly’s ‘My Frame’ app is back in the App store. The ban on porn is real; the ban on Oscar Wilde’s “The Importance of Being Earnest” is not. The reviewers seemed to be a bit eager to reject satire, they have been corrected.

The FTC investigation is widely seen as being done at Adobe’s request, because Adobe was miffed at Steve’s “Thoughts on Flash”.

The issue that I’m most worked up over isn’t the lack of developer freedom, it’s the geek reaction to the lack of freedom (and to Apple’s other behavior). Others may be claiming that Apple shouldn’t be allowed to do this; I’m simply saying: Given that this is the way Apple behaves, why are we geeks okay with this?

Calling my emotions toward Apple “hate” is overstating the case. I am disappointed in them, and I think that even if the tight control they exert on their app ecosystem is legal, it isn’t very ethical. I wouldn’t consider run-of-the-mill app rejections/deletions to be “censorship”, but things like their bans on satire and sexuality are censorship. (Not government censorship, and so not a First Amendment issue, but very definitely a prior restraint on speech.)

Whether I can view their products in a more positive light is a side issue; I’m concerned with Apple’s actions more than its products.

But in this post, really, I was much more concerned with the geek community’s reactions to Apple’s actions. I’m calling out geeks as much as Apple itself. That’s why this was tagged with “geek culture”, among other things.

Now, I gather the issue you are most strongly worked up about here is the lack of freedom of developers to publish any and all software they want in Apple’s App store. Some recent pieces on this issue that are strongly recommended: It’s Not the Control, It’s the Secrecy and Regarding John Nack on Apple’s Control Over Native iPhone OS Software.

Labeling Apple’s strict control over apps published in Apple’s app store as “Anti-Competitive” is missing the mark. There are fundamentally two different markets involved here – one for smartphone devices themselves, which is highly competitive; and one for software that runs on the devices. Apple’s App store policies do restrain developers as to what they can publish on the app store. You need to think of the market and rules in a different mindset, since this is an Apple-created and Apple-owned marked. Apple isn’t in competition with the developers. The developers create an add-on for Apple’s product, and it is up to Apple to determine the rules for the add-ons.

It truly is a testament to the how good and compelling the iOS products are that developers desperately want to produce applications for them, and how upset they get when they can’t. The complaints usually don’t tell the whole story. Apple does not have a habit of commenting publicly on these issues, so all you hear is the story of the offended party, who tries to cast the story in a deceptive light – as in ‘freedom’ vs ‘censorship’.

Beyond this … I don’t think I can convince you not to hate Apple, and I don’t really want to try. I’m saddened and disappointed that you can’t see the products my employer makes in a more positive light.

Aside from blogs, there’s what I see happening out in the real world, on the street, in front of my face. When the iPad came out, three of them showed up at my workplace within a week of the release. That represents roughly 20% of my geek co-workers, all of whom spoke of it in glowing terms, and never felt any need to justify or defend their decisions. Compare that to geeks who used Microsoft products 10 years ago: We might have used them, but we generally felt like we had to make excuses for doing so, like it was something kind of shameful.

This morning, I saw tweets from three different geek friends, waiting in line for hours at the Apple Store in San Francisco to get their iPhone 4s, and not a hint of any acknowledgment that there’s anything dubious about that. No self-deprecating remarks about Evil Empires or selling one’s soul, no excuses like “Well, I have to use this for work…”, none of the kinds of pre-emptive blame deflection that we’d normally see from geeks supporting a corporation with such anti-freedom policies.

On a fundamental, deep-psychological level, most of the geeks I know on a face-to-face basis still consider buying Apple products an okay thing to do. Sure, some blogs may be criticizing Apple’s business practices, but where once geeks said “Don’t buy Microsoft; that’s supporting a monopolist who wants to de-commoditize the protocols that keep the Internet free and open”, they do not now say things like “Don’t buy Apple mobile products; that’s supporting a tightly closed and controlled system that upholds censorship, blocks interoperation efforts, and removes consumer choice.”

Instead, they line up for hours in the cold to buy Apple products. And they proudly display their Apple products wherever they go. The writers of the critical blog posts may not be giving Apple “a free pass”, but the folks who are standing in line to give Apple money, and who are defending Apple online, are certainly not holding Apple’s feet to the fire the way we used to do to Microsoft. And that’s what I was getting at.

And second, what sort of fallacious logic are you using to see this behavior as anti-competitive?

I don’t understand the question. The phrase “anti-competitive practices” (and variations thereof) has been all over the news in regard to this. The first sentence of the Wall Street Journal article I linked to says, “The U.S. Federal Trade Commission will investigate whether Apple Inc.’s business practices harm competition in the market for software used on mobile devices” (emphasis added). Are the FTC and the news media using “fallacious logic”? Should the FTC not even be investigating?

I’d ask what sort of logic you’re using to claim that the term doesn’t apply, but I don’t have to; you spent 5 paragraphs arguing that there’s competition in the marketplace, and that Apple’s tactics may even be harming it — neither of which negates that point that Apple’s tactics are intended to, and succeed in, keeping developers from competing with Apple’s own offerings in the market. For example, I can’t make an iPhone podcast app — it would compete with iTunes, and Apple doesn’t allow that. Shifty Jelly can no longer make a picture app; it apparently competes with something Apple’s doing or planning.

I’m reminded of Microsoft’s attempts to claim, back during their antitrust trial, that the existence of Apple and of Linux was a defense against the government’s charges that MS was engaged in anti-competitive practices. It rang hollow then, and it rings hollow now.

On the barrier to entry for developing for game consoles, versus developing for the Apple App store – I meant to say that the barrier to entry for game consoles is much higher than the barrier to entry for the App store.

On the Apple iPhone vs Google Android devices – it doesn’t help that in the US, the only carrier for the iPhone is AT&T. AT&T’s biggest competitor is Verizon, and there are people that find that Verizon works for them, and AT&T doesn’t. Hence, if they want a smartphone, they have to pick something that’s not a iPhone – and they are picking Android.

John Gruber of Daring Fireball is one of the few people outside of Apple that seems to truly grok what it is that Apple is doing. He’s got lots of good criticism of the App store approval process. http://daringfireball.net/

Tim Bray, currently a developer advocate for Google, has some strong opinions on Apple: http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2010/03/15/Joining-Google

Ars Technica’s Infinite Loop blog has good quality journalism about Apple: http://arstechnica.com/apple/

There’s many others.

You may not have heard the criticisms, but trust me – they are everywhere. You aren’t doing anyone a service by pretending otherwise, and trying to set the narrative that Apple is getting a free ride.

And second, what sort of fallacious logic are you using to see this behavior as anti-competitive?

Here’s a way to think of it – all the iOS devices are wholly produced by Apple. Apple, in it’s own selfish self-interest, operates a closed market for applications to run on these devices. Apple sets the rules for who can produce applications for these devices, and sets the rules for what can be produced for these devices. One big reason Apple does this is because the consumer – right or wrong – will see that they got the software from Apple, hence Apple is responsible for it. Consumers don’t have as discriminating judgement to tell that because an app crashed, sold their personal data to the Russians, and took pictures of them without their knowledge; that it’s not Apple’s fault that those things happened. Wether or not you believe it, Apple as a company cares deeply about what their customers think of the products that Apple produces, and goes to great effort to produce products people want.

Yes, this model is not the same as the model for software for general-purpose computing devices (as in Windows or Mac OS computers), but instead looks very much like the model for software for game consoles. This is an area where I am not an expert – but have heard enough to be convinced that the barrier to entry and standards for game consoles (and the previous generation of ’smart’ phones that has been steamrollered by the iPhone), are nowhere near as high as the barriers Apple sets.

Apple is keenly aware that they are in a highly competitive market for smartphones. Google is leading the charge with the Android platform – and Google is a smart, fierce and ruthless competitor. There is quite a bit of competition between Android and the iPhone, for many reasons – the devices being produced for Android are quite good, and Android as a software platform is very powerful. Plus, the Android market is following an ideology compatible with what you seem to want – anyone can produce anything, minimal restrictions.

The other smartphone platforms – Symbian, WebOS, Windows Mobile Marketing Name Of The Week Edition 7 – are out there too, but just don’t pose a threat.

If anything, the arbitrary rejections from the App Store that Apple does hurts Apple’s competition. It gives the developers something to criticize, and gives them a disincentive from producing apps for the iOS platform. This is a point on which I have a lot of sympathy for the developers, and agree that Apple should do better – the rules for what will and will not be allowed need to be clear, and stated up front. If developers don’t produce quality apps for the iOS platform, then what incentive to consumers have to buy those devices — especially if there’s an alternate that has devices that are as good as Apple’s, and apps that are better?

And to close – Apple is considered a “good guy” by many, because they produce devices that work, that people like, and have a company culture of customer service. Yes, there are anti-consumer aspects about some of Apple’s products and services – but in general, you will find that those are there at the insistence of media owners, and that Apple has managed to give the consumer the best deal possible.

Sounds like we both agree about the usefulness of cursor keys. It’s funny you mention using “a (ewww) stylus” with the Newton; I’ve been coming to the conclusion that ditching the stylus was one of Palm’s many mistakes with the Prē. The stylus they used from the original PalmPilot all the way through the Centro meant that the user could tap pretty precisely on any screen element that was at least, say, 10 pixels in size.

The webOS developer guidelines, by contrast, advise that touchable targets should be at least 48 pixels — nearly 5 times as large in both dimensions, let’s call it about 20 times the surface area.

That has horrible consequences for the amount of information the OS can get on the screen at one time. Even though the screen resolution is, IIRC, slightly better than my Trēo’s was, I’m lucky if I can see half as many items at a time in my calendar or to-do list.

Your point about “while you’re on the go the device is mainly intended to display information, rather than enter it” is also interesting. It leads to a paradigm that entering information is something you only do when sitting down somewhere. Which I suppose is reasonable, but… I seem to do some of my best thinking when I’m walking or pacing. (Maybe it’s the increased circulation.) I’d really like to be able to jot down information, ideas, thoughts and notes while I’m walking around. (Of course, even old-school pen-and-paper can’t handle that very well.)

It might be of interest that the on-screen keyboard in the Newton OS included left and right cursor keys–but not up and down. The external hardware keyboard included a full set of up/down/left/right keys. When I was using my Newton MP 2000 regularly I made frequent use of the cursor keys while editing text. Select/cut/copy/paste in Newton OS was also straightforward and usable–even more so after enabling the hidden system pref to allow you to have multiple “clipboards” (cut/copied text/images/etc. “stick” to the edges of the screen as a “clipboard,” so it’s easy to see which clipping you want to drag off to “paste.” Using the same double-tap “copy” gesture on clipboard objects would leave a copy behind). Even though I own two of the external hardware keyboards I never used them since the on-device text entry was actually really good. I did miss those up and down arrow keys, though. I eventually wrote a little floating “D pad” of cursor keys to get them, but rarely used it.

Also of note is how the external keyboard dock for the iPad includes a full set of cursor keys, while the on-screen keyboard still lacks any (http://www.apple.com/ipad/design/). Plus the iPad will work with any Bluetooth keyboard.

I think the message here from all of these devices is that while you’re on the go the device is mainly intended to display information, rather than enter it. When you want to do significant entry of information you’re expected to use some “old school” device, like a computer that you synch with, or an add-on hardware keyboard.

I think there’s room for an interface that in between. I personally did a tremendous amount of text entry on my Newton, but that was with a (ewww) stylus.

My hope and expectation is that improvements in mobile processing power will allow more sensing and predictive capabilities, so the context of where you are and what you’re doing can be factored in and you get supplied with a good guess at a minimal set of options for you to “assemble” the information you want to record. i.e. via image recognition your device can tell you just took a photo of a cat. You automatically get presented options to send that photo to the people you have sent photos of cats to before, upload it to your blog or personal gallery, or add it to a photo gallery of images taken in that location by other people. These options are presented to you as a head’s up display projected by your glasses/frames/contacts. Blinking your eyes makes the HUD disappear. To select one of the options you focus your eyes on it and squint. You can elect to add text to what you send before it gets sent, or after, based on a toggle control in the HUD that you focus and squint on [or not] before choosing the main action. Entering the text requires a separate interface, which you’ll probably pull out of your pocket at some point.

Similarly, when typing an email you could just start typing the message, and the device could analyze the content and present to you its best guesses at who the likely recipient(s) would be, allowing you to choose one or more before sending.