Too many whiners. OMG. Can you believe that.
Yes, but what is worse? The whining or the ones that have to continually complain ABOUT the whining? To me, they are both the same thing. Generally speaking, you either agree with something or disagree with it. If you agree, you're usually labeled a fanboy and if you disagree you're labeled a whiner. But then that's why I thought it was called discussion forum. You share OPINIONS here and they are perceived as either positive or negative, like life in general.
Personally, I was planning using an iPod Touch as a wifi controller in a whole house audio system (via either Remote Buddy + Airtunes or iPeng + Squeezebox) and I have NOT yet purchased the iPod Touch. Knowing that I will have to pay more money to update it in just 3 months is a bit disappointing. It reminds me of those that needed a Mac a couple of months before Leopard was scheduled to come out. I wondered why they couldn't include upgrade coupons after Leopard was formerly announced, especially in light of it being delayed. It seems like if they can announce the upgrade fee NOW, they should start including it in the products NOW as well plus perhaps 30 days retroactive. Then perhaps people would not feel 'ripped off' by their actions despite whether other people prefer to devalue those opinions as 'whining'. Or put another way, what incentive does Apple offer me to buy that iPod Touch NOW instead of in June when they are telling me now that I will have to pay more in June if I buy it now but not if I wait? That is a bad business move, IMO purely because it doesn't accomplish anything positive except a slight capital gain (compared to sales in general). The fact people are 'whining' indicates they are unhappy. A happy customer is a return customer. The same is not always true of unhappy customers.
Some people mentioned federal laws requiring a charge. I did not notice a post that mentioned what federal law that might be. Apple does not charge for MacOSX updates within a given class (i.e. tiger updates or leopard updates) or even various iTunes or iPhone/iPod Touch minor updates. Why should 2.0 be any different to Federal Law compared to 1.1 or 1.2? I'd like an explanation from such individuals, not just expecting me to take their word for it. Frankly, even a million users x $20 = tens of millions of dollars in pure profit. That doesn't sound very minor to me. It sounds like Apple soaking existing customers for the ability to BUY more applications for their device. Apple doesn't charge me to update iTunes because they want me to buy music and movies from their iTunes store. So why should an iPod Touch user have to pay to update their iPod Touch to be able to buy applications from the iTunes store? You're not buying functionality there (compared to the previous update which at least gave more applications); you're buying the ability to buy functionality and so you're being charged twice. I'd call that a reason to be legitimately upset, no matter how minor 'fanboys' think that charge might be. Now if that upgrade includes some new applications with it, perhaps it would not come across as quite as bad as purely creating a way to buy new applications.
As for a developer potentially having to pay $99 to publish free software, all I can say is someone who is already giving away their time and effort to make software for free should not have to pay to give it away. If there is any charge to do so (from what I read it's not entirely clear whether that $99 free applies to free publishing or not), the authors will want to recoup that $99 and will then have to charge something to gain it back and then it will no longer be 'free' software (plus Apple then gets to take 30% of that as well) so I guess I can see why Apple would want to discourage 'free' software, but that doesn't make it a more attractive platform to the consumer. The argument that the fee will somehow prevent a lot of crappy software from appearing on iTunes doesn't make sense because Apple can review/reject software regardless (if it doesn't fit their ideals or whatever) so it could easily reject a "hello world" app as malicious or a waste of bandwidth or whatever. It doesn't need a $99 fee to stop it. Indeed, the idea that paying $99 would allow someone to publish annoying/crap software like a "hello world" app isn't appealing to me either.
It might be better if there were simply another way to load free apps onto the iPhone outside of Apple's control and let the user decide to do it at their own risk and let "Apple Approved" apps on iTunes. The problem there, of course, is Apple wants to soak commercial developers for a whopping 30% of their profits for simply hosting their software on their store. That's REALLY REALLY GREEDY, IMO and might be a bad sign of things to come. What if the next version of MacOS X for their desktops and laptops requires software distribution soley on Apple's store and only at their discretion? Is that crazy? Why is it any less crazy because it's on iPhone? A platform is a platform and they're both running a form of MacOS X. IMO, Apple should stick to creating hardware and operating systems and leave 3rd party development to 3rd parties (i.e. charge for the SDK, not for each sale of the software).
Frankly, I think the only reason any commercial developer is willing to put up with Apple's greedy demands is that they are just as greedy and want to make money off a popular new platform any way they can. Furthermore, I think the only reason Apple doesn't currently do the same for their desktops and laptops (Leopard could have made that possible, after all) is that unlike iPhone, the desktops and laptops running MacOSX are NOT popular compared to PCs running Windows. If Apple had 95+% of the market share, there is NO DOUBT in my mind they would be doing EXACTLY that and Steve Jobs would be the richest man in the world instead of Bill Gates. As Macs gain more popularity, I would expect more controls all the time over the OS just like Windows did (and unlike Windows, the hardware too). It's inevitable because human nature is inevitable when it's based on purely greed. If Apple can make $200 instead of $100, they're going to charge $200, even if it hurts people financially because like most companies, they don't CARE about people, only taking their money.
Ultimately, that is why I keep rooting in the background for Linux to become more usable and user-friendly because when your core is about free and open software instead of Capitalism, you can't go down the moral tubes so-to-speak. Ultimately, neither Apple or Microsoft is your friend. If anything, they are your master. They are more and more often telling you what you can and cannot do and what you can and cannot run. "Jailbreaking" et al is the OS equivalent of software cracking, IMO. There's a real moral dilemma there created by the simple lack of something that should have been there in the first place, namely a decent and FAIR equitable solution. iTunes did prove people will pay for music if it's FAIR. But charging to host on a store is a bit different from requiring people to USE your store. There is nothing to stop a musician or music company from selling music directly to you or via another store to play on your Mac. But with iPhone, you either sell on iTunes or you don't sell at all. Heck, that sounds like a future court case waiting to happen, IMO. If Microsoft required you use their store to sell your software to work with Windows, they'd be in court tomorrow for creating a monopoly on software distribution for their own platform. I don't see where the size of the platform should be relevant, really.
Honestly, I DO believe it WILL end up in court the first time a company offers a way to bypass iTunes and sell apps directly for iPhone/iPT. Apple will sue for them not using iTunes per some agreement in the SDK and the company will counter-sue for them monopolizing the distribution method for the iPhone/iPod Touch computer platform (and it IS a computer platform now that there is an SDK and the admission it runs OSX, not some scaled-down version, but the REAL OSX). For the good of the computing world and the reduction of these nauseating software license agreements (that almost no one even reads due to sheer length and lawyer babble), I'd be rooting for Apple to LOSE such a fight. Apple is making money hand over foot from the hardware, they don't need to be control freaks about the software too or monopolize the store markets for their own products.
Imagine if I could only buy Doom3 off iTunes for this Mac computer I'm on right now instead of any number of stores/options (at Apple's insistence, not the company that made the game). Apple would be in court for certain. It's their hardware AND their OS? That wouldn't fly in court for a mainstream computer platform so why should it fly for a mainstream mobile platform? It can't and it won't the first time it's tested in court. That simply hasn't happened yet.
