iPhoning at the corporate Kool-Aid counter

I’m writing this on an Apple MacBook, and across the room at my desk sits the Apple Mac desktop computer where I spend most of my waking hours. Matt carries an Apple laptop. Mike carries an Apple laptop and works most of the time in front of his Mac desktop machine. Elizabeth uses a Mac, Allan Chasanoff has a house full of Macs, my daughter uses a MacBook at college. In a world where Apple has 3% market share, I can honestly say that it feels more like a majority of my friends and colleagues are sporting Macs. I say all this to illustrate unequivocally that we are up to our necks in Apple hardware, Apple software and the so-called Apple way. I have great respect for the technical acumen of the company, and I’m sure Apple shareholders are pleased with the wealth that Steve Jobs and his team have created for them. If you are someone who cares about Apple, then please be assured I am reasonably well-versed in all the reasons why Apple is great.

But I am livid with the company – and I feel Apple has betrayed its relationship with the developer community, the group that kept the torch burning during the dark years while Jobs built his other billion dollar fortune at NeXT and Pixar. Apple’s decision to make the iPhone a closed, proprietary device simply enrages me. This device, which by all rights should be the coolest new mobile platform for developers, is instead the focus of an idiotic cat-and-mouse game between Apple and a global community of hackers. Rather than providing us with tools and examples to inspire us to embrace iPhone as a rich opportunity for developer innovation, Apple has turned a cold shoulder on developers and made clear that it could care less whether we get involved.

Some of you may say, “I told you so” and others may say “Who cares?” Well, I care, and I am disappointed that a company with the technical and engineering know-how to drive a quantum leap forward has instead chosen to drive us back to the Byzantine era by closing the door to all but the chosen few. Maybe I should just let it go, but I can’t help remembering how persuaded I was by the same Mr. Jobs telling us all something about being “insanely great” not so many years ago. Clue time, Steve, your closed platform idea is NOT insanely great! Discounts for developers, Java on the device, and distribution opportunities for the best products that emerge from the community – these are more along the lines of insanely great. You could make even more money!

Yes, the iPhone seems to stand alone at the head of the pack right now, but in less than a year the iPhone is sure to have abundant competition. Already we see cool products being shown at developer conferences and industry get-togethers, and I’m confident that some of Apple’s competitors will realize the opportunity Apple has spurned and avoid making the same mistake. When they do, I may have a hard time not deciding to turn my back on Apple as I feel they have done to you and me. What goes around comes around, and it will be a long time before I forget how poignantly Apple has expressed its desire to partner with developers to leverage iPhone as a platform opportunity. (Please don’t even bother to respond with their party line nonsense about Javascript coding within Safari providing everything we need – you don’t want to admit you drank that Kool-Aid!)

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I did buy one of these things and sign up for the requisite two-year unsubsidized service plan with “the new AT&T” (which somehow makes me think of The Who’s Roger Daltry singing “meet the new boss, the same as the old boss!”) Despite the fact that Apple has done their level best to lock this thing, they have only succeeded in spurring new levels of hacker community innovation. Thanks to the efforts of clever developers it is easy to install 3rd-party native applications, and a surprisingly rich variety of them are beginning to emerge.

If the media has not misinterpreted Apple’s recent message, then my iPhone and many others may well be iBricked by Apple’s next update. What is my great offense? Did I try to “cheat” Apple and AT&T out of their profits by switching to another cellular service provider? Did I try to bypass Apple’s cash register by making my own ringtones? No, all I wanted was to install a reasonable instant messaging client to connect with AIM, since Apple didn’t deign to give us iChat on the device. I have that chat client today, but as a result I am (along with countless thousands of others) publicly threatened by Apple’s innuendo about the “broken” software on my iPhone. For software that is “broken” it certainly seems to be working better for me than it did when I received it from Apple.

Enough of all this. Java is open. Give me my jPhone. (I just hope it doesn’t weigh 8.5 pounds and have a 13-minute battery life!)

Until next time,
Rick Ross
rick@javalobby.org
AIM or Yahoo Messenger: RickRossJL