3rd party websites that do this instead aren't really the point, either.
Regardless, I think your exhibit is more easily explained by Apple understanding exactly who is likely to spend money and making them want to be their customers. I'm a huge Debian fanatic, but I have to admit that the linux users are the most tight-fisted demographic I've ever seen.
This seems to suggest the exact opposite of what you just said: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/28471/Humble_Indie_Bundle...
2) There is not much commercial software for sale for Linux at all, so I guess there is a chicken and egg problem.
3) Of course you will sell less Linux copies of a piece of software. There are less Linux users.
But to say Linux users are comparatively tight-fisted compared to users of other OSes, I'm not sure how you come up with that, Personnally, I'd buy a lot more games if they simply worked in Ubuntu... And if iTunes worked on Linux I'd buy more music there.
It's slightly different from the iTunes situation, but the same case can be made for Mobile me services. On any iOS device you won't be able to access mobile me (mail, calendar, address book, gallery) through the browser, you have to set it up locally and use the native applications.
Mobile me is for people who by definition spent money upfront on the service, and people using iOS devices are the customers. So far it's been a pita to deal with their lack of support for mobile safari access.
My daughter got an iPod touch for Christmas and I was shocked that it's just a useless brick until connected to a computer. I had to bring her laptop to Christmas (and hide it) so she could use her shinny new toy once it was out of the package.
Can you not download podcasts on the iPhone over the cell network? I have 3rd gen iPod touch and it lets me download podcasts over wifi.
Part of the reason so much online activity shifted to the web in the web 1.0 era was that the browser sidestepped the problems of distributing and updating client applications.
With its app stores, Apple has solved these problems, and put applications back on an equal footing with web apps.
Whether or not this is is the winning strategy over the long term remains to be seen, but I think it's hard to make the case that Apple doesn't understand the internet.
Just as Google has tried to do with its search engine, Apple is building a system that makes it easy to find quality content. Content that is legal, age rated and doesn't harm your devices. A lot of families value those qualities over 'absolute freedom'.
I'd say that Apple doesn't just not understand the Internet, but at a higher level, it doesn't understand communication. Look at the iOS notification system: it is, and always has been, fundamentally broken. It assumes you'll only get a single notification, and that that notification is so important that it should interrupt your current app to get it.
Apple have been selling computers in phone formats. Android, Microsoft, and especially Palm, are selling you communicators, that pulls in data from all over your communication space and centralizes it. Apple doesn't seem to know how to do this (or assumes most people don't have an online persona in various locations, which I think most people really do).
The article was about Apple trying to control how people interact with content on the internet. The author feels that that's against the nature of the internet, hence: "Apple doesn't understand the internet".
Microsoft is (or was) really good at backwards compatibility (and making it easy to import other formats into their own). This is their weakness: they are focused on getting content into their own formats.
Facebook's strength is to get people to impart information into their system. Their weakness is in always trying to make it public (or at the least visible to anyone you friend)
Microsoft is very good at understanding the median user. Their sweet spot is good enough to justify paying rather than reassuringly expensive, and they impress users with feature lists and [sometimes illusory] choice over usability and extensibility. As a result their products can be pretty horrible for beginners and power users alike, and their blindness towards early adopters leaves them paying catchup in markets like smartphones
Facebook's strength is addictiveness; they understand how to get eyeballs in. Their weakness is a failure to add much value to users' lives beyond voyeurism and distraction.
Has anyone ever actually said this? Between the logo doodles, April fools jokes, and bright colors, Google is one of the funnest companies around.
Pretty sure people have been working on this problem for a while, and it won't be solved anytime soon.
The data is not the problem, the communication medium is not the problem, the issue is the control over the distribution channel.
Personally, my strategy is to create my product as a REST web service and provide some kind of default web interface, but let native clients use the REST interface to provide a nicer experience where applicable. I.e. the HTML interface is just one possible "view" to the service.
Why does my native app have to be the completely generic web browser native app when it could be a specific "web browser" custom tailored for my specific service?
It's not that Apple doesn't understand the internet, it's that many geeks want "native" apps, rather than having web apps on mobile devices. Apple tolerates these apps, but just barely, and offers the web as the way out of their walled garden.
Geeks wanting native apps, and Apple reluctantly going along may have been the case when the iPhone & App Store first began, but Apple has long since realized that the app channel is very valuable to users and to the platform, and that control over that channel will be hugely profitable.
If Apple really wanted to have webapps be first class iOS citizens, they would provide Phonegap capabilities standardized in the native browser (http://www.phonegap.com/).
The app store didn't get to be a huge success by appealing to geeks. Native apps really do have significant advantages over web apps (and vice versa).
Apple have made huge contributions to the internet, such as Webkit, promoting web standards, the iPhone and yes, even the iTunes store - still the biggest internet-based media distribution channel.
I think the OSX/Mac overall experience is the best out there, beating Ubuntu 10.10 and W7. (Reliability, programmer-friendliness, 'normal' programs).
If Facebook succeeds in social, at least in part because of its attention to order and organization, why is this fatal for Google?
Microsoft is really good at B2B.
Facebook has a great email replacement because it does not fill your inbox with your friend's vacation photos, but still provides the opportunity to view them.
For Microsoft its simple. They understand customers, and they understand that avg customer never needs over-excellence in product. So, they would never be creative like apple, or tech-savvy like google. Its sad, but the software giant will never be upto the mark when it comes to driving technology and innovations.
But, iTools was great when it was around. Way ahead of its time and free! When they went to subscription model I think most early adopters had a hard time justifying the price when you could get hotmail for nothing.
Honestly, I think Apple's attitude towards the Internet is not because they don't like it. I think they just don't know what to do with it, certainly aren't willing to partner with companies that do, and they're letting their market get chipped away little by little. I've felt like Apple have been resting on their laurels for years, software-wise. Jonathan Ive is producing great hardware, but year on year competitors are catching up or surpassing Mac OS X and iOS, and Apple doesn't seem to notice/care.
Just for example, you cannot create a new entry in Google's Calendar app without adding a Google account for syncing.
It further seems that Google has even restricted the APIs beneath so the third-party developers cannot populate the calendar app using data from Outlook. You must have a Google account added to the Calendar app.
Because of this limitation, developers have to build their own app for calendar to support Outlook sync without Google account.
Likewise, I have found it often difficult to add apps to Android without using Android Market (which requires signing into Google Account). ADB works fine, but then it is generally hard to find APK file to begin with.
Besides, it's a charity. I was talking about commerce.
Come on, we all know this, we don't need a page of citations to prove to us that Apple is the biggest non-Exxon company in world history, and it's not by accident or some mysterious means.
Some of this stuff is in 'HTML5', like geolocation, but much of it isn't. Apple could have provided custom APIs to the camera and so on and allowed people to access it from their iOS-specific web apps.
The way that an API gets to be a standard is that someone implements it and people use it - if Apple had included a camera access API in Mobile Safari, it probably would have found its way into a spec and been implemented by other browsers.
Your last question seems confused: HTML/CSS rendering and JavaScript processing is part of the device's OS (in the form of its web browser). No browser does everything that's in the standard, and most browsers do things that aren't in the standard. Just adding it to the spec for HTML5 wouldn't be directly meaningful.
To give the curious an idea of what that might look like: http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/complete/c...
I wonder how long before iOS development is like WebOS development?
Yes, HTML is a big part of the internet, maybe even the biggest, but its not the only one.
If this were really the case — not just in a spec-sheet way but in a user experience way — why are all these companies making apps?
Steve Jobs even started extolling the virtues of Apple's ability to "bring subscribers" to digitl publishers, and going by their latest announcement, Apple themselves regard their platform as being worth 30% of the value of the content, even to those who would rather process payments themselves.
It remains to be seen how far consumers and creators agree.
If webapps had the same payment/installation procedure, they'd take off like a rocket too. (Given HTML5's local caching and the like.)
For instance, Chrome Web Store offers a payment/installation for web apps, and it doesn't seem to be taking off like a rocket.
That and the fact that the device hides the existence of a file system. Even unsophisticated computer users understand and use the concept of folders and files.
What were you expecting to happen? Did it involve an omnipotent Deity?
It's just surprising that a device with so many capabilities (other than playing music) cannot do anything without that initial connection. You can't even just play around with the home screen icons!
Transferring an average music collection, say 10 gig, over USB2 is a much better way to do things than using WiFi. In addition, of course, although it seems you're mostly interested in being difficult and dishing out random pettiness, using WiFi would also involve making a connection to (gasp) your computer, where your music was likely residing before you purchased the mobile device in question.
So yes, Zero, I have "heard of" the Internet. I've also heard of plugging a cable in when it's much faster to do things that way, and when you have to plug the device in to charge it anyway, usually at least once daily.
I'm not saying that the users of Apple products and those of Linux distributions don't differ in their purchasing habits (and I'm not saying they do, either)--I'm just pointing out the flaw in this line of reasoning.
And I don't know why you keep repeating this "biggest non-Exxon company in world history" argument, too. It's sensationalist and by two of the most common metrics, false:
* By market capitalization they've been the biggest in only three quarters in history (most recent), all of which are smaller than other companies in history: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_corporations_by_market_...
* By revenue there are many, many non-Exxon (i.e. oil?) companies bigger than Apple: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companies_by_revenue
As an aside, it would appear that Linux now has an exciting new path to earning money: winning Jeopardy!
As for the actual point, you still seem to think, despite the other answer, that an iPod Touch is only used for large, purchased music collections. That's not really true any longer with music available via Youtube, Spotify etc. and a variety of other diversions available (web, gaming, email, netflix, iPlayer) basically none of which require a(nother) computer to be involved.