I had a very interesting chat with one of our new bloggers (who shall remain nameless until she introduces herself. *ahem* *ahem*) about how cool some of the new android applications are. She said she might be “over” the iPhone. It got me thinking a little bit. Considering there is a kill switch built in to the android phones as well as the iPhones, why the heck does their need to be an application approval process? I mean, if something is wreaking havoc on the infrastructure for the carriers, it’ll be pretty quick to remotely kill it. The application approval process has pretty much become another name for stymying innovation. I’d much rather an application that could scan bar codes and give me price comparisons than two hundred flashlight applications.
Opera has become the last victim of Apple’s approval process. Something about javascript interpreters being against the SDK. Now, I am as big of a fanboi as the rest of you guys, but this is getting to be ridiculous. This whole thing has shades of the antitrust case that was launched by the Department of Justice against Microsoft back in 1998. I have a very hard time seeing how Apple is going to be able to avoid a similar lawsuit if this keeps happening.
Stymieing innovation isn’t apple’s catch phrase, and thinking different is. Please Apple, show us you’re not the Microsoft of 1998 all over again. The iPhone is awesome, but, it can be uberawesome if you let developers do their thing.
