> The “section 3.3.1” issue is just another in a long line of events that have the same basic shape: actions taken by Apple in what it believes to be the best interest of its platform (and, by extension, itself) that run afoul of the interests and opinions of developers. Any Apple follower can surely list others: the [lack of Flash](http://daringfireball.net/2010/01/apple_adobe_flash) on the iPhone, the App Store as the [sole gateway](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cydia_(application)) for iPhone applications, [deprecating Carbon](http://arstechnica.com/staff/fatbits/2008/04/rhapsody-and-blues.ars), and on and on. > > Apple’s decisions regarding its mobile platform in particular have been extremely protective from the very start. Cumulatively, these actions represent a huge bet placed by Apple. The proposition is this: Apple is betting it can grow its platform fast enough, using any means necessary, that developers will [stick around](http://arstechnica.com/staff/fatbits/2008/03/cant-help-falling-in-love.ars) despite all the hardships and shoddy treatment. Each time it chooses to do what it thinks is best for the future of the iPhone OS platform instead of what will please developers, Apple is pushing more chips into the pot. Siracusa misses the mark here by saying that Apple’s actions “run afoul of the interests and opinions of developers.” What he should say is that Apple’s actions “sometimes run afoul of some of the interests and some of the opinions of some developers.”

I personally know iPhone/iPad developers who are thrilled that Apple is blocking Flash apps compiled with CS5. That just saved them from competing with a boatload of crappy apps written by hack script programmers. I’m willing to bet that more Objective-C programmers than not like the new restrictions in section 3.3.1. The only reason not to like it is if you are too lazy to learn how to write Cocoa apps, or you wanted to pull the wool over the eyes of your users by developing apps that can be easily ported to other platforms. Neither of those scenarios help Apple, and they sure wouldn’t help true Cocoa developers, either.

What Apple is doing here, then, is PROTECTING its current developers from an influx of competition from less worthy programmers. It is also protecting users from confusion, while increasing the likelihood that new apps will take full advantage of new features in the iPhone OS in the years to come.

Again, the only losers here are the ones who wanted a quick and easy shortcut into the Gold Rush. There’s nothing stopping any of these Flash developers from simply learning how to use Apple’s tools instead of Flash.

The only question remaining is who Apple decides to apply this rule to, other than Flash developers. My guess is that game companies that have been using various tools to assist with development will be allowed to continue to do so. This is mainly a shot at Flash and .NET.

So I don’t see this as a game of chicken at all. What I see is Apple holding a Royal Straight Flush, while Adobe has a pair of twos. You’re supposed to bet big when you know the other guy is bluffing.

> The talks with AMD could also be part of a competitive leveraging strategy to keep Intel interested in retaining Apple’s core business, similar to how the company has been rumored to be discussing plans [to use Microsoft’s Bing search](http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/01/20/apple_microsoft_in_talks_to_make_bing_default_iphone_search_report.html) engine in preference to Google’s on the iPhone. In case you haven’t noticed yet, this is part of a pattern. Apple has never quite had full control over its destiny when it comes to processors. Just as it has always been held hostage by big software companies like Microsoft and Adobe on the Macintosh.

What Apple wants is complete control over the speed of its emerging technologies. Since it is one of the few companies out there steadily investing in innovation, it can’t afford to wait around for others to adapt to its rapid deployment of new technologies.

Hence, the talks with AMD. Even if Apple never uses an AMD chip in a Mac or iPad, talking to AMD serves as a reminder to Intel that Apple can make that change any time it likes. Same goes for Microsoft and Bing, vs. Google search.

This is also exactly why Apple wants to eliminate Flash. One more technology that Apple is powerless to control, and which Adobe has historically been lax in supporting on the Mac side.

It’s called learning from your past mistakes. Jobs doesn’t let you screw him twice. Just ask the people at Disney about that.

> The browser, media player, photo gallery, and e-mail client on the WebStation are all from “Cupcake” (Android 1.5), and work just about the same. However, every single site the browser pulls up is first rejected as an untrusted source (even Google and Gmail!). So you have to click through and accept every one. For Web services that are usually Android apps like Twitter and Facebook, this quickly becomes tiresome. I’m sure companies will come up with better “iPad Killers” eventually. But right now, this is the what is being presented to the world as an Android tablet.

And some people wonder why Apple has been so successful?

Note, this device also demonstrates perfectly what’s wrong with the Android App market, and why developers aren’t flocking to write Android apps. This is a device made in 2010, and yet it’s running Android OS 1.5, not the current 2.1. So many Android apps are incompatible with it. You can’t even use the Android Marketplace on this device, in fact. So a developer has no way to easily market his or her apps to owners of this device.

As much as most of this tablet’s shortcomings are Camangi’s fault, I blame Google for the complete lack of discipline that has led to next to no quality control in the Android universe.

> There will be two “pillars” to Twitter’s business model, Chief Operating Officer Dick Costolo said at the company’s Chirp developer conference in San Francisco. The first, announced earlier this week, is [Promoted Tweets](http://www.macworld.com/article/150571/2010/04/twitter_ads.html), which lets advertisers pay for sponsored tweets that appear at the top of search results for certain keywords. I don’t know. Seems like the classic old “bait and switch” to me. Very few companies have gotten away with giving a service away for free, and then suddenly changing it to either a paid service, or an ad-based service. It seems like they are going about it carefully, only adding ads for search results so far, but it’s only a matter of time before we all start seeing ads in all our feeds. It’s a slippery slope, and some people are bound to reject this idea.

I wonder if Twitter plans on adding ads to Tweetie, now that it has purchased the app from Atebits. I sure hope not.

The only question is what other free service will step in and take those disgruntled users from Twitter? I can hear the wheels spinning in garages all over the Silicon Valley right now.

Commercial accounts could work, provided that companies can get people to follow them. At least if the ads are “opt-in”, users won’t be so quick to feel betrayed.

This is the classic Internet Startup problem all over again. We really haven’t learned anything from the original Dot Com bubble burst.

Is there really no room left in the world for a company that simply charges a fair price for its services from the get go?

> The iPad’s Web share grew steadily from April 3 until the weekend following the launch, April 10 and 11. At that time, the number peaked at 0.04 percent both days before settling back down as users went back to work. Comparatively, NetApplications recorded an average of 0.04 percent for BlackBerry devices over the [month of March](http://www.netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx?qprid=8), while all versions of Android together came in at 0.07 percent, as did Windows Mobile. The iPad, in 10 days, has already almost caught all Android devices combined, in terms of Internet use. This isn’t total number of devices, mind you. Rather, it’s a measure of how much the device is being used for Internet tasks.

Considering Apple hasn’t sold that many of these devices yet, that number is very impressive. And it shows that when you build a good product, people actually use it, as opposed to buying it and then letting it sit idle in a corner somewhere. That leads to future upgrade sales to more satisfied customers.

Also of note: None of these devices runs Flash. The next time an Adobe zealot tries to tell you that Flash is on 98% of all computers, remind him or her that Web traffic on mobile devices needs to be calculated into that number. Give it time. Sooner or later, there will be more tablets and smart phones using the Internet than desktop computers.