"-What will happen if Microsoft demands 30% of all developer revenues for their products and limits the distribution of applications?"
Of course you don't mean across the board. You mean for a specific closed HW device via a specific channel right?
Sort of like games being sold on XBox live?
From three days ago: "Microsoft announced today that user-created games will be sold on Xbox Live through a new Community Games section starting this fall, with developers taking 70 percent of the revenue."
So yeah, let's see what the outraged reaction looks like. So far I think it's been happy developers. But yes, I suspect that you are being hard and unfair towards Apple. Time will tell if there is a huge user backlash and revolt toward Microsoft.
That is only user-created games, not all games. Companies still have the option of doing regular development and controlling their own marketing, distribution, revenues etc.
For your comparison to be valid, you'd have to consider the industries you're talking about. Microsoft operates within some pretty standard console industry practices - charging (relatively) small amounts for tools/licences etc. What they do is what Nintendo, Sony, etc all do and thus are neither bad nor good in this respect.
Now take a look at the smartphone market (major competitors being RIM and MS): APIs are pretty open, allow much more integration, users have much more freedom of choice, developers have freedom of distribution, speech etc.
Apple may be better than traditional cell phones, but they fail in comparison with their peers in this respect.
Just to give you an illustration, the last two projects I did had mobile components. I could not do an iPhone version of the first one for lack of background processes, and I can't do the second for lack of APIs that allow access to the phone's system settings. Meanwhile, a friend of mine is developing a horribly crippled medical device monitoring application, because the iphone allows bluetooth pairing for audio devices only.
None of these problems exist on the BB, Android and likely WinMo. So no, I am definitely not being hard on apple at all.
Comments
"-What will happen if Microsoft demands 30% of all developer revenues for their products and limits the distribution of applications?"
Of course you don't mean across the board. You mean for a specific closed HW device via a specific channel right?
Sort of like games being sold on XBox live?
From three days ago: "Microsoft announced today that user-created games will be sold on Xbox Live through a new Community Games section starting this fall, with developers taking 70 percent of the revenue."
So yeah, let's see what the outraged reaction looks like. So far I think it's been happy developers. But yes, I suspect that you are being hard and unfair towards Apple. Time will tell if there is a huge user backlash and revolt toward Microsoft.
That is only user-created games, not all games. Companies still have the option of doing regular development and controlling their own marketing, distribution, revenues etc.
For your comparison to be valid, you'd have to consider the industries you're talking about. Microsoft operates within some pretty standard console industry practices - charging (relatively) small amounts for tools/licences etc. What they do is what Nintendo, Sony, etc all do and thus are neither bad nor good in this respect.
Now take a look at the smartphone market (major competitors being RIM and MS): APIs are pretty open, allow much more integration, users have much more freedom of choice, developers have freedom of distribution, speech etc.
Apple may be better than traditional cell phones, but they fail in comparison with their peers in this respect.
Just to give you an illustration, the last two projects I did had mobile components. I could not do an iPhone version of the first one for lack of background processes, and I can't do the second for lack of APIs that allow access to the phone's system settings. Meanwhile, a friend of mine is developing a horribly crippled medical device monitoring application, because the iphone allows bluetooth pairing for audio devices only.
None of these problems exist on the BB, Android and likely WinMo. So no, I am definitely not being hard on apple at all.