[Adium-devl] Adium iPhone

[Peter Hosey]

As this sub-thread gets farther from the topic of Adium, I suggest you  
send your response to me privately.

On 2009-01-23, at 06:25, Ryan R. LaMothe wrote:
> It seems to me that you have a specific philosophical difference  
> from other developers, about commercial (ie. for pay) software  
> development, …

What would that be?

> 1) Without the App Store, there would be no supported SDK,

There could be. Nothing stops Apple from providing a supported SDK and  
not having the only App Store. (See Mac OS X.)

> centralized distribution system,

The App Store doesn't have to be the only App Store.

> centralized marketing, centralized payment system, et. al.

Those come from the one and only App Store, not the SDK.

> 2) To support #1, I have done a fair amount of J2ME development for  
> the Blackberry for commercial clients.  Since there is no  
> centralized distribution system, centralized or even standardized  
> installation system, centralized payment system, etc. development on  
> the Blackberry is a complete pain in the ass.  And terrible from a  
> user perspective, especially people who are not technical people,  
> when it comes to installing applications, updating applications, etc.

I didn't say Apple shouldn't have an App Store.
I didn't say it shouldn't come with the iPhone.
I wouldn't even mind it being the only one—*if* Apple behaved better  
about it.

Basically, you're assuming that the only alternative to the iPhone App  
Store is whatever Blackberry has. That's wrong.

> 3) The convenience of #1 to overcome to PITA of #2 costs money.  It  
> costs developers money and it costs Apple money.
>
> 4) If Apple does not make money, they go out of business.

Yes, I understand the concept of business.

>  Without Apple, there is no iPhone, iPod, etc.  So, selling the  
> application, even for a nominal fee works to support the entire  
> development and commercial ecosystem that allows any of this to exist.

Yes, selling applications on the App Store allows this system with  
mandatory DRM and a flawed review system to exist.