More on Section 11
Whenever a policy change like this occurs, I ask, How does this strengthen the platform? How does this sell more iPhones? I can’t answer either of those questions, and that, to me, is the most interesting part of this whole debate.
I prefer the Apple that makes its money by creating great, high-end, high-margin products and selling them directly to consumers. I am less fond of an Apple that makes money by striking or demanding dubious business deals. Forget my personal biases - I’m just saying, the former Apple would be interested in delivering stuff I would buy with my money and put in my pocket or my living room. The latter Apple would have more to gain by fleecing the supply and shoveling whatevers at me.
Marco Arment on the Jobs SaaS e-mail:
And even if Jobs himself would take a few minutes (during his medical leave, no less) to answer these questions more verbosely for some guy in an email, it would raise a different question: Why don’t the published guidelines reflect this clarification, and what’s stopping whoever gets your submission on the App Review team from following the literal definition?
If the iPad grows like many of us expect it to, siphoning a third of the cash flow around everyday computers will create a completely different economic environment than exists today.
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"Whenever a policy change like this occurs, I ask, How does this strengthen the platform? How does this sell more iPhones? I can’t answer either of those questions, and that, to me, is the most interesting part of this whole debate."
As Mark Pilgrim, the seemingly go-to guy for understanding the Cupertino high command, said 4 years ago:
Steve Jobs doesn’t build platforms, except by accident.
Think about it. If there had never been a John Sculley and Mike Markkula coup, we would've never had a Mac platform lasting 25 years.
Steve-o can birth a child, but he can't raise a child.
[...] and appeals board tossed Chalmers around for two months, despite the fact that, as I linked to here, Steve Jobs himself said that the in-app purchase requirement was for content, not software as a [...]