September 21, 2011 at 10:55 pm
Comments posted to this topic are about the item A Better Application Model
September 22, 2011 at 6:33 am
Trust via the distributors brand (Apple, Microsoft, EBay or whoever) is one good way, although quality may take a back seat sometimes to marketability.
Another type of approval could be obtained from organizations along the lines of Underwriters Labs or Consumer Reports, which has been working pretty well in other areas for a long time.
What it boils down to is "who do you trust?"
September 22, 2011 at 7:35 am
Those who have been in the industry for a while will recall that Apple always struggled to keep afloat for year, until Microsoft bailed them out, and they switched directions on products. They went from PCs only to iThings, and are now one of the best companies to have owned stock in. The previous failure was in refusing to price product according to market pricing, and to now allow others to make similar products.
Sony was the first with video tape for consumers. They sold the rights to VHS, since it was lower quality, and went with Betamax, but didn't price according to market and didn't allow partners.
There are numerous examples of companies making failed business decisions like this.
Is Apple doing the same thing again? Not sure. This time they OWN the market in a lot of these products, and are extremely competitive in the rest. So if they charge a little more until the market forces the price lower, and they adjust, they will be fine. If they don't adjust, who knows. You may have some of the answers on how it will play out, or given the creative juices out there, maybe something far different will come up. Who knows, maybe HP will join with Toshiba and come out with a thpPad and dominate the market a year from now! Nah.
Dave
September 22, 2011 at 7:49 am
The one thing with the apple app system is they limit NOT just by quality by by CONTENT. So if apple finds the content of your IOS app offensive you can't be in their store. I may overall agree with apple on what "I" find offensive and would not want on MY device and I would want some kind of rating system to keep porn etc out of the hands of kids, but I hate giving one closed off company so much power over free speech.
Also quality or not, I would love to have my Iphone be able to watch flash videos. Let ME decide if I am willing to deal with a buggy app in order to get a feature I WANT. Don't force me to live with what some dictator at apple thinks is best.
September 22, 2011 at 8:57 am
DMurray asked: 'What it boils down to is "who do you trust?"'
What about customer reviews of a given app - provided 'astroturfing' can be minimised? Could they be as good an indication of trust, quality, and satisfaction as anything else?
It's interesting how Amazon and other large on-line marketers have incorporated the customer review as part of the sales model. Online software markets could do the same, I think.
September 22, 2011 at 9:13 am
Craig is right - customer reviews can be another good aid to making a software decision. And there should be others, as well.
I'm not sure whether the original article is advocating more distributor competition or more distributor control over availability. If it's the former, I'm all for it, but letting a handful of distributors serve as a quality gateway to the market will only raise prices limit choices.
And sites like Amazon usually have competition for the same product. What if we could get the same app from Apple or Amazon?
September 22, 2011 at 10:16 am
djackson 22568 (9/22/2011)
Is Apple doing the same thing again? Not sure. This time they OWN the market in a lot of these products, and are extremely competitive in the rest. So if they charge a little more until the market forces the price lower, and they adjust, they will be fine. If they don't adjust, who knows. You may have some of the answers on how it will play out, or given the creative juices out there, maybe something far different will come up. Who knows, maybe HP will join with Toshiba and come out with a thpPad and dominate the market a year from now! Nah.
With all due respect - Apple might have been an early entry into several of these markets, but they "own" none of them. Lots of folks have had app-like models of distribution which frankly have been around a lot longer than iAnything has. EA and CA in particular have had such markets for a lot longer. Apple's app sotre is not the majority of the market (I don't think they're even the largest player these days, scine the Google/Android app market is now larger than theirs).
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Your lack of planning does not constitute an emergency on my part...unless you're my manager...or a director and above...or a really loud-spoken end-user..All right - what was my emergency again?
September 22, 2011 at 10:17 am
And sites like Amazon usually have competition for the same product. What if we could get the same app from Apple or Amazon?
The problem is authors actually have very little control over the price they get for their books (and this amount is very small per book) and amazon actually pays less to independent authors than some other sales channels.
I don't want to see app developers loose the ability to set their own prices and I also don't want them to stop having the majority of the money come to them.
The big problem with the Apple market today is not the pricing or distribution of Apps. It is the piratical way they are trying to use their effective monopoly to horn in on any money people are making off of content distributed over IOS devices. Of to put it another way Apple just got greedy.
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