Locked-In, Again
Apple thinks reviews can take 8-30 days and web-capable apps need nudity warnings and the management interface can be buggy as shit and they don’t need us to be able to reach them and nobody really needs to take any of this very seriously.
Because it’s working for them. They’re making a killing taking their 30% commission on the 1.5 billion copies of $0.99 top-25 games that they’ve sold. Who cares if the App Store discourages good developers from putting serious effort into it? Apple doesn’t need to care. And, clearly, they don’t.
I’m convinced that Apple decided to open up the iPhone SDK not because they wanted us to ‘make amazing things’, but because they needed a new mechanism to provide platform lock-in for iPhone customers. I find it very interesting that just as the iTunes Store was beginning to lose steam due to decent competition finally coming online, Apple injected it with a new apparatus to keep customers on the platform.
And the kicker? They didn’t even have to do the hard part. They already knew how to do this, of course. They used music labels in much the same way as they now use app developers. In fact when you sign up through iTunes connect you use the same web app that Apple makes record labels use.
And so, a pattern emerges.
- Release mobile product
- Wait, it’s popular? Great!
- Make a content store for it
- Profit!
Much like the iPod in 2005, the iPhone is entering into its golden age of profitability. No real competition and massive amounts of alluring content. The difference this time is that unlike music, apps are the ultimate lock-in. And even worse, there’s no real pressure we (as developers) can exert. At least the massive content labels had some ability to pressure Apple.
But there’s no MP3 to Apples M4A this time. I have a feeling that this is only going to get worse.
