Why Apple did what they did

Why Apple did what they did: to hurt Adobe, to hurt Android.<p>Why they're not concerned about the collateral damage: because they really don't care whether small developers have access to the platform or not, they're more interested in having more AAA titles.<p>I'm pretty sure everyone who thinks it was arrogant, hostile, and stupid of them to do such a thing understands <i>why</i> Apple did it. Everyone also understood <i>why</i> Microsoft spent a great deal of time forcing OEMs to offer only their software.

The author hints that apps built on third-party compilers are of lower quality, without explaining how/why.<p>This blog is a commentary on the high number of apps in the app store and Apple's desire to try to maintain quality, with a few opening sentences about the current TOS changes as link-bait.

Apple risks driving away anyone who was considering iPhone development as their primary source of income; it's pretty risky to put all your eggs in one basket when the owner of that basket has a habit of spilling a large portion of its contents.<p>What I think I'd do if I was Apple is to provide a two-tier app store. Tier 2 apps would be only be checked to see that they're not malicious or destructively buggy. Tier-1 apps would be strictly reviewed for quality and performance, and would presented to the user as such. There would be a submission fee to get an app verified as Tier-1.

It would be a better post if you explained how each piece of your advice would help the situation for apple.<p>For example - the $100 per year fee means that a lot of the most useless apps will disappear from the store if their authors don't want to keep paying for them to exist.

Author's points would have been valid if Apple didnt charge developers for App approval process.<p>But there is a developer fee, which obviously go towards approval/rejection of submitted apps. Apple's existing app approval process is more than enough to not let in crappy apps.The fee will cover extra cost arising from influx of new developers.

One thing I do not understand. The graphic design crowd is the biggest force behind Mac popularity. And "graphic design software" and "Adobe creative suite" are synonims. So Adobe has the power to inflict huge damage to the OS X platform if it wants. Isn't Apple even slightly scared of this?

When you submit an iPhone app for approval, do Apple techs look at the code? Because this restriction would make their job much easier.<p>I wonder if someone submits obfuscated C code, will they reject it?

I would actually like to know if there is a real difference in performance between the apps compiled from flash and those written in objective-C ?

If it was about quality, why allowing C++ ? Why disabling GC ?

Apple's approval process makes the apps worse because they circumvent the iteration cycle. Companies cannot change their product to their customers' wishes without approval from Apple.<p>Besides, there are other solutions to the quantity/quality problem. For example, user feedback seems to work very well, and it scales!!!

Unlike the raging Adobe employee and his blog post we all debated two days ago, this guy has his head straight on, managing to see farther than his own nose and managing to keep a perspective covering more than just his own interests.