Apple is evil? Yes, but it's not news...

Paul Graham recently looked at Apple's iPhone app store approval process and concluded they're becoming evil. His conclusion is correct, and it's a solid article, but this isn't a recent change for Apple. (Android also isn't as neglected as Paul thinks it is, but there's less buzz around it because Google isn't a marketing organization like Apple is. They grow their projects more organically and more out in the open. In a year or two we'll have a better idea what the prospects for Android are.)

But really, I wanted to talk about Apple. They have a long history of being actively hostile to developers. I spent a while dabbling in the Mac indie development scene around the turn of the century and got to enjoy such marvels as Apple giving Arlo Rose the finger with Dashboard and Apple giving Karelia Software the finger with Sherlock 3. Despite their huge and growing wad of cash, they seemed allergic to doing the ethical thing and buying out solid developers. I don't know how Apple's been behaving lately since I haven't used MacOS X since 10.3 or so, but I'm obviously not the only one who was disgusted by this behavior.

It's also hard to forget the way Apple killed off support for tens of thousands of legacy applications (many of which were single-platform applications specifically designed to run on the Mac) by deciding to drop support for the classic environment when they finally moved to x86 about 10 years after they should have. Microsoft actually has a far better track record in terms of maintaining backwards compatability.

Apple thinks its main business priority is to optimize its users' experience, and if that means pissing off a few developers, well, that's just unavoidable collateral damage. And maybe they're right; maybe that is the best strategy for them. But here's the thing: most users aren't really that invested in their platform, and they'll switch to whichever one is most trendy or shiny when they're in the market for something new. Maybe they'll buy an iPhone this year, and an android phone when they renew their contract in two years, and whatever Apple's brand new thing is 2 years after that.

Developers are different: they have to invest large amounts of time becoming familiar with APIs and conventions, and their livelihoods are tied to the prospects of their chosen platforms. If the company behind a platform might screw us over, it matters, and we pay close attention. Developers don't forget a company's bad behavior as quickly as users do, either. I remember, Apple. I remember.