First off, you are making assumptions as if they were facts. Relative of Stella?
You have no evidence that, across the board, Apple is treating its developers with disrespect. That inference is simply childish and does not port to a mature and ubiquitous relationship between business partners. Since there are enormous 3rd party applications for OSX, it is highly unlikely that the companies are in a constant contentious relationship with Apple.
I don't see that he made that assumption in the way that you suggest, I just see that he said Apple is treating developers poorly by leaving them out in the cold with some BS Web 2.0 SDK crap. Something along the lines of "hey, we're trying to stabilize this platform. Right now, all we can guarantee is that our own apps work on it. Our SDK isn't ready for you, but wait 6-8 months and we'll get you something." that would be nice. Whatever APPLE thinks, that would sell some units, both now and in 6-8 months.
You're assumption that half-arsed applications are good for the consumer is probably based on the input you are getting from the complainers here, a vast minority of iPhone users. Properly designed 3rd party apps would be great and here the assumptions are more compelling.
Of all the apps I put on the iPhone only iToner worked as it should. The others, were, by and large, buggy and incomplete, including the dictionaries, which could have been useful but were a drag on the system and were very buggy.
...?
These applications are the only thing these people have to debug the iPhone. They aren't half-assed, they are the definition of great work given the situation. Half-assed is what I would say about an application like Mail on the iPhone. It is developed in-house at Apple, with all their great debugging tools and great interface developers, and it's crummy. It's missing core email features--the textbook definition of a half-assed application. Many of the iPhone 3rd party hacks were lacking features, BUT they were getting feature additions
literally on a weekly basis. And as far as bugs go, that's what happens when your debugging tools are all but non-existent. It's a tough road to be on--those developers are still figuring out how the API works.
What is needed is a careful deployment of 3rd party apps that have Apple's blessing. They will work and will be professional. That is not to say that the huge amount of work by the "dev" team won't produce some great programs in the future but so far that has not been the case-- save the famous unlocking efforts.
I don't know where you come off saying that, especially after accusing the guy of being "a relative of Stella." Apollo IM was getting really nice. several of the games were extremely good-looking and pretty darn stable. I have to admit, I stuck with only the most professional-looking apps, but I did have several on there, and I must admit that I have not noticed any "stability improvements" in 1.1.1 (which I am running now) over 1.0.2 with my 6-8 third-party apps. It's still crashing now and then for me for no apparent reason.
Further, I hope you won't be disappointed to find that unauthourised 3rd party apps that crash the iPhone, will leave it a brick and that neither ATT or Apple should be responsible for fixing it. Indeed, you should expect that to be the case and so, without complaint, enjoy the mantelpiece ornament you have have just created!!!
Well, that is, indeed, how it goes. I don't think that's what the argument is really about, it seems like we're well past that argument (whether it's ok/bad/awesome/whatever for Apple to brick/lock phnes) and it's irrelevant to the topic at hand.
This is just what's going to happen, the old cat and mouse. Hackers will hack the update within a couple of weeks, get their apps running again, fix them for the API tweaks/changes, and 2-3 weeks later Apple will release yet another update that breaks it all. And, contrary to all those silly people that said that hacking was slowing down the update cycle, it will actually speed it up like nothing else, because Apple can't afford to release updates once a month with a feature list like:
- Bug fixes.
- Security updates.
- Breaks third party software.
