Not trusting developers is kind of a problematic approach when your platform's key strategic asset is a vast library of third party applications. Apple's own iOS software is great, but the playing field for Android and Windows Phone 7 seems a lot more level without developers on Apple's side.
> but the playing field for Android and Windows Phone 7 seems a lot more level without developers on Apple's side.
The funny thing is, I bet Apple prefers that to the alternative - having the health of platform being dependent on a 3rd-party act. Love 'em or hate 'em, it's clear to me that pretty much all of the decisions Apple made over the last 10 years has been to keep them out of the position they were in in the 1990's where Microsoft and Adobe were essentially threatening to sink the Mac platform by yanking their most popular applications.
>Not trusting developers is kind of a problematic approach when your platform's key strategic asset is a vast library of third party applications.
I still don't think that's true. The key strategic asset is the unbeatable user experience and the core functionality - web browsing, movie watching, book reading, maps, stuff that comes built in.
A very large number of iPad users have never downloaded an app. Same for iPhone users. They find the core functionality to be sufficient for their needs. And they would be unhappy with ANY Android device because the user experience is sub par.
Well I have heard on a few occasions that over a third of iPad users haven't touched the App store.
I would assume it's even more for the iPhone... I know several non technical people with iPhones who have never used the app store but they're still happy with the phone.
The key strategic asset is the unbeatable user experience and the core functionality
The number of apps, which Apple mentions frequently in their ads, is one of Apple's key strategies to bring people in to make a purchase. You can't really say that the "unbeatable user experience" is as key because you don't experience that until you've made the purchase and used it for a while, and you'll never find out if it's unbeatable until you've used something else. Something like number of apps is easy to compare when making a decision among platforms, just like screen size is easy to compare, because it's a number. Unless you're in the lead on the specs, you downplay or don't mention specs because the numbers are not subjective like "unbeatable user experience" is. Number of apps is one of the few objective measurements Apple continuously uses when doing comparisons.
Most people try Apple products first, and THEN buy them.
They try them out at the store or they play with a friend's. This is the common pattern. Have you ever been to the Apple store? It's one big room full of people playing with iPads and iPhones
The user experience is unbeatable and everyone knows it, the non-techies just don't call it "user experience".
But they play with the iPad/iPhone/iPod and then they play with a few other competitors and the difference is beyond obvious. And this keeps them sticking with Apple.
Especially with phones -- everyone has tried blackberries, androids and iPhones because it's so easy to try out other people's phones. There are a few really nice android phones that are as beautiful as the iPhone but they are rare - it's rare to run into a person with one of them.
Most of the non-iPhone phones people own are ugly pieces of crap. This is negative advertising for the Android/Blackberry platform. Blackberries in particular are incredibly unintuitive on the first usage, while typical Android phones (admittedly cheap, but no one talks about the price at a party) suffer from blurry screens and clunky animation.
I use my phone as a phone, an e-mail reader, a GPS, and a web browser. I bought it for those things, and apps are a nice bonus, but a pretty negligible part of the overall value proposition for me.
