Should Apple Open Source the iPhone? 379
An anonymous reader writes "Given the OpeniBoot project is just a breath away from getting Android onto the iPhone, maybe Apple should consider opening up the platform. This post has five reasons, but I think there are far more. Without open source, Apple will find itself in the same position as today's Microsoft in seven years."
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Briar Patch (Score:4, Informative)
GOOG cap $97 Billion
MSFT cap $182 Billion
Sounds good to me. I hope AAPL has twice the value of the rest of the pack.
Re:Will never happen (Score:3, Informative)
OP is not asking if the OS should be open-sourced. They're asking if the platform should be open for development.
Two vastly different things.
Re:Why the Bleep should they? (Score:5, Informative)
Really? For a complete selling infrastructure including payment processing?
Kagi charges like 16%*, and that's just for payment processing -- you still have to do your own distribution and installation. I'm not saying 30% is cheap, but it's hardly unreasonable.
* Kagi has flat fees, percentage fees, and both flat and percentage credit-card fees, so the exact amount varies from order to order. Given a $10 credit-card order it comes out to about 16%.
Re:Microsoft in 7 years? (Score:5, Informative)
Seriously. Talking about their stock price right now is an extremely dishonest way to look at it, and saying they are "ratcheting downward" seems to be totally ignoring the size of the rate.
They've lost... 1.9 points from their marketshare in the last 10 months (oh, the horrors!) and are down *only* 44% from their 52-week high. SPY is down 41% from their 52-week high. FCX (to pick a random stock) is down 82% from their 52 week high. Citigroup is down 77% and Apple is down 48%.
Given the rest of the market, MSFT is doing just fine right now.
Re:Requires a Mac computer (Score:4, Informative)
Plus you'll probably want an iPhone, which is not cheap.
But compare that to other perfectly successful mobile platforms like Windows Mobile, which requires that you buy a Lenovo-compatible PC, MS Windows, and MS Visual Studio. Even assuming you get a cheap CPU bundled with Windows it wouldn't be hard to get to $700. Plus the phone of course. And for Windows Mobile code signing is $300+ per app.
I'm not saying cheaper wouldn't be better, but people are already making good money selling apps that are way more expensive to develop.
Re:They did... (Score:5, Informative)
Not to be contentious, but you might want to review your statements before posting.
Dell market cap on 12/10/2008: $23.41 billion.
Apple cash in the bank at quarter ending Sep 08: $24.49 billion.
Apple could write a check for Dell and have a billion dollars left over. If they aren't competing with Dell, it's not because of a lack of money.
Re:Nobody cares. (Score:2, Informative)
False dichotomy. It can be open source and cool.
Nick Nerderton will code some very cool apps for the Android and Joe User will install them
Correcting another Apple Hater (Score:3, Informative)
Check any Linux repositories: thousands of applications, the top 100 lets say of a very high technical standard, many other good enough for large amounts of people, all of them susceptible of improvements that can closely follow the needs of the users.
The exact same thing can be said of both the Android and Apple App store. The apps are mostly developed by smaller developers, very sensitive to user requests.
Also, there are more open source (as in code) iPhone apps in the world today than Android apps. I see no reason why that would change, you can have open source apps on the iPhone just as easily as on Android.
Also Apple's music players are becoming more restrictive, now that finally shops and labels are realizing that DRM is an abomination the need to have an iPod to play music is going to be non existent by end of next year.
Oh gee, except that iPhones can ALSO play all that DRM free music that is starting to be sold (much of it already for years by Apple with iTunes Plus).
If music going all DRM was really a problem for iPods, why as the Amazon music store only increased sales of iPods/iPhones?
If iPods have to compete based on features only (and not in the tie in to the iTunes store) Apple may be for a nasty surprise, since there are plenty of players out there that are immensely better devices
If there actually were, people would buy them. Hell, if there actually were, *I* would buy them. But what there are are a lot of devices that function OK and have masses of checklist features that no-one really cares about.
Most people forget how close Apple was to go under
And as a died-in-the-wool-over-your-eyes Apple Hater, you have forgot *why* that almost happened.
Apple hit the jackpot with the iPod by following their typical close the door policy for iTunes
You mean opening up iTunes Plus, opening up to indie labels/bands, opening the iPhone/iTouch for development...
Yeah, real closed.
Poor Apple Hater, unable to see the future coming right at him.
That old canard? So many counterexamples... (Score:3, Informative)
Apple is fundamentally unfriendly to open source
Webkit, Darwin, BSD, GCC, Apache, etc. etc. et.c
Or just look around Google Code for iPhone projects (of which there are many).
Don't you Apple Haters feel even a tiny bit of embarassmant for making yurself look totally incapible of even the simplest Google search? I guess not, you're too focused on your Hate.