Hewitt is Right, Ament is Wrong

This argument sets up a false dichotomy. Comparing the internet to the app store and claiming that just because the internet is a free for all, every service that is built on top of it 'should' also be a free for all is simply illogical.<p>Because the internet is as free as it is, we have the fortune of being able to choose between a heavily curated store - the apple app store, and some competitors who claim they will be more open - e.g. the Android Market.<p>This is analogous to what happens in the high street. I could rent a retail space, and then allow anyone who wants to come in and set up a table selling any legal goods, or I could rent the same space and carefully choose products that I think my customers will value.<p>Some people will prefer the trading hall, and others will prefer the department store.<p>The point is that it's a good thing that Apple can provide this more curated option for those of us who want it, and that others can provide alternatives for those who don't like Apple's approach.<p>The real tyranny would be if Apple were forced to stop being the gatekeeper for the iPhone - that's when a choice would be lost to us.<p>For right now, I think Apple has the best model by a long way, even though it's not perfect.<p>I'm quite prepared to believe that I'll be buying an Android phone in a couple of years if the more open ecosystem turns out to be better at producing useful applications, but I'd like to see that determined empirically - by allowing both approaches to be tested, rather than having the App store torn down or undermined because of ideology.

What the author misses is phones present dangers and costs that PCs don't. So his philosophy of "we've gotten by in the past and our PCs never had a review process" doesn't hold up.<p>In fact, it ignores the fact that a large percentage of the computers out there are part of one botnet or another. On the desktop it isn't that big a hindrance since high speed connections are cheap and unlimited. But if we open cell phones up to the same risk you're going to see serious consequences.<p>Forget bots pushing spam, forget monstrous phone bills, imagine a cell phone trojan that actually launches calls. It's a lot easier to create an effective DoS attack against phone lines.<p>There's a reason why even open leaning Google has a review process for their app store.

Really, we're not talking about being the gatekeepers to the iPhone, Apple is the gatekeeper to the App Store, nothing more. It doesn't seem that big of a deal for Apple to continue to review applications for the App Store, but allow another method (short of jailbreaking) to add non-reviewed apps to your phone too.

The bad press about App Store polices play big here, and elsewhere in the tech press, but in the general press? People don't care about a developer's woes unless they themselves are developers. Only a few people care about apps they aren't getting access to due to Apple's policies.<p>On the other hand, if there were rogue apps out there, that would be nightly news material. Even just the words "rogue apps" should tell you that.

Yes, that's how the internet should work and that's how personal computers should work, for everyone but people like us.<p>Closed platforms rock. The mythical End User just loves himself a closed platform. It means there's some company out there betting their reputation and their bottom line that no malicious, harmful, or otherwise undesirable software will find its way on their device. And that's a guarantee that sells devices. Look at what the "Official Nintendo Seal of Quality" did for video games, for instance.<p>The future of development is closed source on a closed platform. That's where customers' attention, and money, will be focused.

This article will get upvoted because people hate the app review process, but the logic in the article is flawed, as was Hewitt's. Whatever they may say about the "sandboxing", the iPhone is running native code on a little box that can listen to your phone calls, access your voice mail, and probably log in to your email account. When the little box goes crazy, it can disrupt the GSM network.

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