Hypercritical about Hypercritical
John Siracusa was talking on episode #8 on Hypercritical today and was struggling to make an arguement that, while I think too a little to long to explain, was a very good point about the dangers of some of the decisions Apple has been making.
The basic idea is that apple has gotten big enough now that its business units have conflicting interests, most notably within the iOS universe.
It is in a position to start doing things within iOS that unfairly prop up its businesses built on that platform (ie. iBooks, GarageBand, MobileMe) could lead to two very bad conclusions.
1. It hurts the businesses because it limits competition and eventually removes the incentive to innovate
2. It hurts the platform because you have less developers working on “cool shit”
As he mentioned these are problems that lead to IE 6 remaining stale for so many years and to the eventual, if not yet fully realized, downfall of windows itself.
Is it possible for apple to avoid this fate?
