Playing their game

Apple announced a lot of new software and new features today at WWDC. This left many developers in a tricky situation. At best they’re competing with their landlord for rooms in the house, and at worst their livelihood has been wiped out by an OS update. The situation reminded me of great quotes by two of my favorite writers.

Their terms

“Writing desktop software has become a lot less fun. If you want to write desktop software now you do it on their terms, calling their APIs and working around their buggy OS. And if you manage to write something that takes off, you may find that you were merely doing market research for them.”

Paul Graham wrote this about Microsoft, in an essay titled “The Other Road Ahead” This was published in September 2001. The parallels with June 2011 are obvious.

On Gap Fillers

A good platform always has opportunities for applications that aren’t just gap-fillers. These are the kind of application that the vendor is unlikely ever to consider a core feature, usually because it’s vertical — it’s not something everyone is going to want. There is exactly zero chance that Apple is ever going to add a feature to the iPhone for dentists. Zero.

Joel Spolsky wrote about “Platform Vendors” in 2009, after the release of the iPhone 3GS rendered many many apps extinct, again with developers crying foul play.

The point being you should target verticals. Don’t try to one-up Apple by doing slightly better versions of what they do, or offering apps they’ll inevitably need to add themselves.

Apple always look out for their customers. They will always look to improve the experience. If that means adding software to their platform then so be it. If that software is in direct competition with your software, then so be it. If they roll out the software as a free update across all operating systems, leaving you for dead, then so be it.

Their ball. Their game. Their rules.

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