Date: Thu, 10 Mar 2011 10:56:31 -0500 From: "Daniel Staal" <DStaal@usa.net> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Apple & FreeBSD relationship Message-ID: <c44cc50a25a6348e21ae2ab5dbc0f4cd.squirrel@www.magehandbook.com> In-Reply-To: <C99E357A.F900%fsb@thefsb.org> References: <C99E357A.F900%fsb@thefsb.org>
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On Thu, March 10, 2011 8:51 am, Tom Worster wrote: > i think it's deeper than that. they know what they are doing. > > back at the beginning, os x was great. finally a decent, user-friendly gui > on top of a decent unix-like thing, which, oh joy, felt like bsd. for > years, apple improved os x and did some oss work. e.g. webkit is decent > stuff. life was good. ms word in this window, terminal in that one, mysql, > perl, > > then the iphone and the disaster of not having an sdk ready (other than > mobile safari) happened. they wised up and everything changed. > > with ios apple has a strategy to get away from all that openness. they are > steering developers away from the web and portable web apps. so they are > backpedaling on safari and os x as best they can. if they can dominate in > mobile hardware for a while longer they may achieve some serious api > lock-in. then we will be in trouble. it is the same strategy ms used after > they won the browser war with netscape -- they backpedaled on IE, got very > deep windows api lock in, and made a load of money. There's another business reason for it as well, I think: When OS X first came out, Apple was a serious underdog. Nearly out of the game entirely, really. That openness helped them by lowering the cost-to-entry of products, and bringing in any product that already supported the standards. Building on open-source technologies also meant they could pick up something that was pre-written, and well-tested. So they got goodwill, a cheap product, and support from third-parties. All of which were vitally important to a company that was battling for it's life against Microsoft. Now they have recovered, and are a solid contender on the desktop on their own, as well as being the undisputed leader in mobile computing. (iPhone/iPad level mobile, though even their laptops have a greater marketshare than their desktops do.) The only one of those reasons that still really applies is goodwill: They already have their product, and third-parties will always try to support the dominant force in the market. (Because that's where their customers are.) Openness in many ways is now a threat: It means that someone who can create a new system that supports the open standards can grab all of Apple's customers easily. Proprietary lock-in is a better bet, as it means that the customers they have will be less likely to leave. It becomes a pain for them to transfer their stuff out of the proprietary ecosystem. This is actually a typical cycle, both in the industry and for Apple itself. The Apple II series was fairly open, and the Mac series was more closed and closed off further until Apple realized they'd gotten themselves in a bad position. Then they opened up again with OS X. To me, at least, it was fully expected. Apple produces awesome, open products, when they have less than 40% or so marketshare. (Extremely random number there.) Above that level of marketshare, their products are usually awesome, but closed, and the awesomeness may or may not be something you use/want. Daniel T. Staal --------------------------------------------------------------- This email copyright the author. Unless otherwise noted, you are expressly allowed to retransmit, quote, or otherwise use the contents for non-commercial purposes. This copyright will expire 5 years after the author's death, or in 30 years, whichever is longer, unless such a period is in excess of local copyright law. ---------------------------------------------------------------
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