Ok, then help me to understand.
First is how does Apple keep developers from producing the killer app? Does this imply, that the Killer App™ cannot be produced with Objective-C and without built-in interpreters?
If it can, what is the evidence, that Apple did reject such an app, and for what stated reasons? (No, google voice is not a killer app).
Next, Jobs did state three reasons why app can be rejected. App does not be great, they just have to work and don't use private APIs.
Now, if majority of apps in App Store is crap, how does this compare to apps in Android Market which does not have those draconian rules. Are they generally higher quality than apps for iOS?
Then it makes even less sense: how does not allowing the Killer App™ help Apple? They sell boatloads of devices without such an app and would sell even more with it. If someone comes with the brilliant idea author talks about, how does Android having that app available and iOS not help Apple in any way? Where is the sense in this claim?
And finally: there will be no killer app for smartphone. Ever. On any platform. When almost no one owns a computer and you make Visicalc and it sells 700 000 that's an killer app. However there are almost 100 000 000 users of iDevices. They already have the killer apps which could appeal to such an wide audience: mail programs, web browsers.
You can have a killer app for the platform which is smaller than niche your app fits in. There is no niche several hundred millions people wide.
Although I can see some sense in the claim that iOS 4 is an killer app for iDevices.
The issues of language interpretation are only indirectly related to the core argument here. I think the core argument is that Apple is staying fuzzy in the rules so they can strangle any budding "killer app" in its teenage years, when the trajectory has become clear but it is not yet "THE REASON TO OWN AN iPHONE!".
Apple is afraid of becoming a client to the killer app owner. Microsoft was afraid of the some thing, which is the root reason behind "DOS isn't done until Lotus doesn't run."
You can't prove there won't be a killer app. Network effects mean something could come from the blue. It doesn't even have to be new, just something that already existed but is incrementally better enough to harness the network effects.
Apple is afraid of becoming a client to the killer app owner. Microsoft was afraid of the some thing, which is the root reason behind "DOS isn't done until Lotus doesn't run."
Surely Microsoft wasn't afraid of DOS having a killer app — they wanted to allow Excel an uneven playing field against 1-2-3.
And why is that? Because they didn't want 1-2-3 to be "the" reason to own a DOS computer, leaving them constrained to support 1-2-3 at the expense of their own loftier ambitions. Such as dominating the office automation market. Your objection is merely a smaller part of the whole picture.
If somebody else owned Office, Microsoft would have to dance to their tune.
One could argue that this is hardly a bad thing in the abstract; what company has total independence? I think some of what you're seeing here is the way that the attitude of the leadership filters down the chain and affects the company profoundly. "An abstract company" may be happy to carve out a niche somewhere and be part of a large ecosystem, but Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Larry Ellison need to be the winners in control.
An interesting point, well stated. I've always just considered the direct competition between Excel and 1-2-3, but platform control via app control certainly could have factored in too.
