eventually consistent

Here’s another example of Apple’s iPhone AppStore model failure – the TwitterFon example.

TwitterFon is a (great) Twitter client for the iPhone. All Twitter clients rely on Twitter’s public API. Twitter is one of the stars of the Internet social medias / social networking applications. Like most Internet application startups, they have an agile development model which involves doing lots of incremental modifications/enhancements on their platform with frequent release cycles. Also like most Internet applications/platforms, they offer a public API for 3rd party applications to connect to their platform. Note that In the case of Twitter, the bulk of their traffic comes from their API and not from twitter.com. More generally, this model is the new model for Internet applications and platforms development.

This is where iPhone app developers have a problem: they develop native iPhone apps that connect to these Internet applications through their API but can’t keep up with these because of the slow AppStore approval process.

Case in point: TwitterFon. This morning when I tried to launch TwitterFon, it crashed on startup. Tried again, no go. Tweetted about it from my laptop and received a reply of similar problems from a friend. A few minutes later, the @twitterfon Twitter user started following me so I went to check it’s user profile and tweet stream to see that it was discussing the issues and also gave a link to it’s blog, here’s a quote:

The root cause is that twitter respond JSON contents which contain unexpected values.
[...]
I have already submitted a new version which implemented a workaround to address the issue, but it will take a few days to get an approval from AppStore. Also, I reported the issue to Twitter. I hope they fix the issue soon. Otherwise, you have to wait until Apple approves the new version of TwitterFon.

Now, can you see the problem? On one side you have agile Internet application developers which move fast, release often. On the other side you have Apple’s slow, bureaucratic AppStore approval process. In the middle you have the iPhone who want to be the best mobile Internet device.

If you want to be the best mobile Internet device you have to be able to cope efficiently with the Internet speed development style, period. In the TwitterFon example, we don’t really care if Twitter introduced a bug or not in their API that killed TwitterFon: by today’s standards, everyone must be able to move fast and in our example the only one that can’t move fast is Apple with its boggus AppStore model. Fail!

The Good

First, I must say that the iPhone is the coolest device, not just mobile, to come out in many years. It is also probably the best piece of engineering ever from Apple.

I got myself an iPhone 3G when it was finally available from Rogers in Canada. It is the first Apple computer I purchased since my last Apple computer: a Mac 128K (some 24 years ago – yikes!).

I won’t enumerate all the reasons why the iPhone is such a cool device, like an actual working GPS (not like the Nokia N810), wifi, 3G, bluetooth, iPod, safari, camera, accelerometer, touch screen and a quite usable on-screen keyboard. Add on top of that the slick Apple design and their genius in the touch screen user interface and you’ve got yourself incredible device.

The Bad

These core functionalities are really missing IMOHO:

• cut & paste: They really have to find a way to integrate cut & paste in the UI. This is something that bothers me on a day-to-day basis.
• backgrounding : on two levels: why can’t the last.fm app, for example, play music while I use another app? It should be possible for 3rd party apps to run in background just like Apple’s own iPod player. Also it should be possible to run two applications concurrently and flip between them without relying on the application to save it’s own state between transitions. This is boggus and really gets me frustrated when using/switching between multiple applications.
• bluetooth A2DP (hi quality audio) : Heck, my SE K790 had it. I own a Plantronic 590 A2DP headset and I can’t use it to listen to music on my iPhone. This seems like such a low hanging fruit feature for Apple.
• bluetooth keyboard : given the possibility to use a bluetooth keyboard on the iPhone I’d have no problem considering bringing only my iPhone in travel trips to do all my online stuff. Onscreen keyboard is ok for short text but I won’t do a late-night email inbox-zero session on it, way too slow for reasonable text size.

Other stuff I’d like to see:

• offline mapping : It happened to me a few times: without connectivity, GPS is worthless, it relies on Google Maps. It will probably surface through 3rd parties sometime I guess.
• Skype/VOIP : Skype would be really cool. As for VOIP, I just found this list of top softphones for the iPhone. I’ll have to check that out.
• movie recording : There is Qik and Cycorder but they both require you to jailbreak your iPhone.
• mp3 ringtones : Ok, yeah, right, Apple? Hello? Do you really expect me to pay $.99 to create a ringtone out of a song I ALREADY PAID FOR???? You-gotta-be-kidding-me!

The Ugly

Is Apple the new Microsoft?

Below, some interesting articles on the iPhone/app store lock-in policies by Apple.

We want an open platform. Period. The idea of the app store is actually very good but the ugly part is that Apple keeps a Microsoft style lock-in control over it. It is basically the same concept as with Microsoft Xbox Live. Note that both the Xbox and iPhone security has been broken. The main difference is with the community motivation, on the Xbox its mainly for copying games while on the iPhone, users & developers don’t want to have to deal with Apple’s monopolistic behavior and just want to use or publish applications freely without Apple overlooking everything – just like with any other platform/operating system (Windows, OSX, Linux). The fact is that there is a lot of talented, motivated, creative people making applications outside of Apple’s sanctioned channels. Why can’t all iPhones users have access to this talent without going the “underground” route? Fail.

Why don’t they keep their “Apple’s sanctioned” app store but also allow 3rd party app stores for developers who want to distribute applications outside of Apple’s control?

Until then, I’ll just continue to play cat & mouse and jailbreak my iPhone (like Steve Wozniak) while dreaming about Android. Will it be the holy grail?

I simply can’t stand being locked-out of my devices: iPhone, Buffalo Linkstation, Linksys wifi, Xbox, …

In this great article Bruce Schneier clearly explains the lock-in rationale for software companies and the way they try to sell this as security benefits for the consumers.

«By confusing control and security, companies are able to force control measures that work against our interests by convincing us they are doing it for our own safety»

«With enough lock-in, a company can protect its market share even as it reduces customer service, raises prices, refuses to innovate and otherwise abuses its customer base. It should be no surprise that this sounds like pretty much every experience you’ve had with IT companies: Once the industry discovered lock-in, everyone started figuring out how to get as much of it as they can.»

The article starts by talking about the locked nature of the iPhone – not about SIM locking but about the fact that you cannot develop/install 3rd party applications. This has been really annoying me and as much as I like Apple and the iPhone I think this is a serious blow to an important part of their users base: the tech geeks. Hey! WE-WANT-OPEN-PLATFORMS! In fact all my friends with iPhones are spending a lot of energy trying to unlock their iPhones… What a waste – they should be spending this energy contributing to the platform not trying to break free out of it!