iTunes is made by the same developer who used to make SoundJam for Casady & Greene. Apple now releases iTunes for free, putting a serious crimp in the market for shareware MP3 players like Audion, and other apps. iChat will also be a free AIM chat client from Apple, which threatens the markets for the developers of Fire, Adium, and others. In fact, Apple has often integrated features into the OS that were in some way introduced by third party developers.
Is there anything wrong with that? Is Apple hurting its own developer community by doing this? These are the questions posed by BusinessWeek’s Charles Haddad in his latest ‘Byte of the Apple’ column entitled "Where Apple Doesn’t Always Play Nice." From the article:
I’d argue, in fact, that many if not most of the improvements of the legacy operating system, OS 9, were cribbed from other developers. Examples include such popular features as spring-loaded folders, hierarchical menus, and tabbed windows on the bottom of the screen. The late Now Software pioneered all these features.
Apple’s imitations can be downright painful to small developers, since its knockoffs, such as iChat and iTunes, are released as free features within its operating system. That weakens the market for the original software from third parties.
Stop by BW Online and check out the rest of Mr. Haddad’s article, then stop back here to let us know what you think. He raises some very interesting points on both sides of this issues.
The Mac Observer Spin:
Sometimes it seems Apple can’t win. We remember a time when folks complained that Apple seemed to believe that if it wasn’t developed ‘in-house’ then it wasn’t worth the time. Apple was chided for not looking outside its walls for technology and innovations to include in it offerings. Now the opposite seems to be the case. That said, Apple often doesn’t reward the developers who may have inspired the original innovation. In the case of SoundJam, the developers were rewarded, but the Mac publishers of the software seem to have effectively lost their product out from under their feet.
The question of whether Apple lifts technology from others, to us anyway, is not nearly as important as whether Apple does so legitimately. To produce a competing product is a reasonable thing to do if you intend to stay in business. In fact, Apple has to do everything it can to make the Mac platform as compelling as possible, something Mr. Haddad also discusses. The idea behind iChat, for instance, is not new and at least 3 other independent chat app makers exist for OS X. When Apple does release iChat, will it have an unfair advantage over other chat apps? To some extent, of course. The difference is that we, as consumers, have a choice: if you like iChat keep it and use it, if you don’t, dump it and use something else or use something alongside iChat. It’s up to you. Unlike Microsoft, Apple isn’t trying to make it impossible for you to use alternative products.
There are other underlying issues dealing with the question Mr. Haddad poses, let us know what you think.