I'm a fan of free markets when they're beneficial to all involved, and in certain cases even when they're not. Even though Apple's model isn't free, I still see it as beneficial to all involved.
Apple's "tax" provides resources and a revenue stream to cover everything from documentation to hosting the free applications. It could also play a part in driving the prices of the phone itself down. It also gives it clear bragging points which it's used quite successfully.
The user benefits from the applications, and one could assume the lack of clutter/meaningless/duplicative applications within the store itself. They also benefit from the "full product" phone->store->apps->payment ecology.
The developer wins because they get to develop towards a product that has a great feature set, an ecology with paying customers and momentum in the product itself.
Windows, Blackberry, Palm et all have all had ways to work with previous products before the IPhone without issue, under the free market approach. No true central registry, no payment ecology, and hasn't gained anything from it directly. Now android is in the mix, and as far as the payments goes, it's not looking too pretty from what's being put out there so far, but it's early yet we'll see.
I'm not defending Apple, I don't even own an Iphone (BB user, contract about up, going to N900). But when someone sits as a developer and continues to blast Apple because it's not open enough (when it's never been "open enough" & when you look how "open" phones before it were...) - it honestly baffles me. If they don't want the Apple "tax", don't play. Through Itunes/Ipod Apple has done something no one else has really done on the web, got users to pay. When the other companies can do the same thing, then we'll see how they do down the road.
Essentially I keep thinking of this. The Texas State Fair rivals as one of the biggest in the United States and doesn't look to lose that anytime soon. It operates in the same persona as Apple does. It selects by committee through applicants on who can be there, you pay a tax (rules, and fees) on how to operate. However, there's a ton of paying people there, so you deal with the rules at hand, because you're getting "fed".
It may not be free in the purest of sense, but griping after going in knowing full well it isn't is idiotic IMO.
I think the implication may be swaying over into the box store segment. Meaning, while they may not be battling other online entities, they are doing a lot of pushing against the online presence of several box retailers.
It's one of the better articles that Tim has put out as of late.
I still don't get the angst against Apple and their approach though. If you don't care for it, don't use it - what's the big deal?
Apple has went out of its way to complete a infrastructure and effectively trained it's customers to make purchases in small amounts. From music and etc content, to anything in the App store. That's their ecosystem.
In what other market can you go inside and and just start putting products on their shelf and that be ok? I mean, I'd _love_ to walk into Wal-Mart and put a whole stock of pull-my-finger novelty gifts in aisle 9.
Sarcasm aside, I can't see how developers can bitch about an ecosystem that they're wanting to exploit. Otherwise they'd be building little j2me applications for the RAZR, or apart of the Blackberry ecosystem, or... .
But every other day there's someone new on a blog griping about something they well and truly signed up for. Android is about to be out en mass with the upcoming phones, Blackberry already has a mass of phones.
Teach those users to make purchases in an ecosystem that isn't going to be easy to do so and then leverage it. But to soapbox against Apple just doesn't make sense to me.
If someone were so inclined to write an audit application that did nothing but watch processes (I'm assuming, unless there's a better way) of paid applications they'd have a viable business.*
I don't know about the experience of others, but I've been in several situations where I've been given a large amount of software, some per desktop, some seat based that I never ever used. It wasn't even as if I purposely dodged the applications. They were paid for, but just sat there.
No inclination to look and see if one already exists.
I've been side developing one of those "for me" projects for some time, there's 4 other competitors out there which leads me to conclude that it could be a "for them" project as well.
and while I've been developing, I've been on a monitoring blitz, using their project, etc. looking for things that they're having issues with that either I can take care of, or make sure to leave out so I don't have the same headaches.
To also add, since you're going through the whole media side of things with their product, you'll be well prepared to defend approaches/features/etc within yours since you had to critique it against them.