Apple Now Banning Potentially Competitive Apps From The iPhone

from the pissing-off-developers dept

Yet another day and yet another odd attempt by Apple to arbitrarily control what's in the App Store for the iPhone. A bunch of folks have submitted the news of a podcasting app that's been blocked because Apple claims it competes with iTunes. This should, of course, scare of iPhone developers even more than previous bans. After all, it means that should an app get particularly popular, Apple would most likely just create its own competing version and remove the popular app from the store.

While some are decrying this as being an abuse of power, Apple certainly has the right to do it. It's just not a particularly good long term strategy -- and likely to backfire badly. Pissing off your developers or making them worry isn't going to get very many good apps written going forward. Also, limiting competition is actually going to hurt Apple, because it no longer has anyone driving them to be better. What if this podcasting app had certain features that were really cool and useful -- and not available in iTunes? Right now, Apple has no incentive to include that functionality, thus making its own software worse.

In the meantime, you've got to imagine that a number of iPhone developers may be eagerly awaiting the launch of Google's Android platform which won't have such arbitrary restrictions.

Filed Under: app store, applications, competition, iphone, platforms, podcasting

Forget Driving While Texting, Now There's Train Conducting While Texting...

from the im-nt-pying-attntn dept

As you probably heard, Friday afternoon there was a tragic train crash in California, killing a bunch of people. There were some rumors going around over the weekend, and now the press is picking up on a report that the engineer of the Metrolink train that missed a signal leading to the crash may have been text-messaging with someone moments before the accident. It's the type of story that the press loves, though there's not that much evidence other than the claims of the kid on the other end of the text messages. Just as politicians are now pushing through "driving-while-texting" bans, you have to imagine that this will also help push along those initiatives. But, once again, the same issue comes through. The problem isn't text messaging: it's people in control over big, powerful machines (cars or trains) not paying attention the way they're supposed to be paying attention.

Filed Under: collision, driving, texting, trains