… while Apple caused a revolution [with the iPhone], it is unlikely to become dominant in the market. It has sold just over 20m iPhones since the first device appeared in 2007; in that time more than 1.5bn phones have been shipped by everyone else. A similar thing happened with the personal computer market. The concept was championed by Apple when it launched Apple II, the worlds first personal computer, in 1977, and the first Macintosh in 1984, but other players now lead the market.

This argument — whose conclusion, for some reason, hinges strictly on unit sales of the iPhone units sold vs. the rest of the phones in the market as a metric for performance — overlooks several critical points:

1. Looking at sales numbers for all phones worldwide is meaningless; rather an examination of the so-called “smart phone” sales numbers would make for more meaningful insights.
2. The iPhone isn’t available in every market — in order to make a meaningful point about its sales performance, they ought to (at least also) isolate its relative performance in the markets the product is actually available in.
3. The rest of their competitors have been selling devices for a decade or more.

I guess it makes for a headline that gets the click-throughs, but since their conclusion is antithetical to the understanding everyone else looking at the iPhone’s market performance has, I would suggest merely that I’d like to see them support their assertion with something slightly more compelling and meaningful than comparing iPhone sales versus the rest of mobile phones on the planet.

Agreed Benefits

Even the critics of Macheist will concede to a number of upsides to participation, including:

1. Macheist is clearly a great marketing opportunity for each developer’s product,
2. any opportunity at growing their product’s user base builds upon its chances of retaining customers (and thereby capitalizing on upgrade fees for major versions later), and
3. participation with one product stands to produce sales gains on other products made by that developer

Naturally, these potential upsides are by no means guaranteed; if a product doesn’t compete well on its own merits, then its developer(s) will likely not capitalize on upgrade sales. But then Macheist can’t offer to make anyone’s products automagically good; this remains the responsibility of the developers, themselves.

Argued Problems

The basic arguments the critics have boil down to:

1. Macheist sells their apps at a [very] steep discount to their normal sale price,
2. this stands to undermine their perceived market value, and
3. general participation in Macheist may work to undermine the generally perceived value of shareware apps

As such, the critics argue that the developers may well be sacrificing more than they stand to gain in return for their participation.

These arguments, however, are missing a critically important point.

The Oversight

While it is certainly true that each developer could potentially make more money from any individual app (that is, per sale transaction), what these critics are overlooking is the fact that each of the participating developers also stand to make more money in a given time span than they would have if their apps weren’t part of the Macheist bundle.

As a quick aside, I would note that the Macheist sales are also final; even users that aren’t happy with any one app won’t demand their money back, which might well happen in the context of a single sale.

Consider, more importantly, the following screenshot (taken 27 Mar 2009, at ~20:15 EDT):

Note that 26,121 $39 bundles have been sold to date. Since 25% goes to charity, we’re talking $764,039.25 in gross sales.

Even if each developer takes just 1% of the pool, and if no more sales are made in the 11 days that remain, each participant would stand to take a $7,640.39 slice. I’m willing to bet that they’ll land a few more sales, and that developers may well make more than just 1% (anyone have any details?).

This, however, in the span of two weeks.

So, the question I’ll now pose to critics is: what are the chances these developers will have made this much cash in the given time period, without Macheist?

Of course it’s very possible for a piece of software to achieve better sales performance without Macheist. Many pieces of software do. I’m looking squarely at many of the OmniGroup‘s products. I’m willing to bet those developers happily avoid participation in Macheist.

For products have low sales (or even no sales yet), their income potential dramatically increases. Developers with multiple products stand a great chance to get their non-Macheist products on the radar of potential customers.

And so it’s really difficult to argue that the developers participating in the promotion actually lose.

The Shareware Community

Even so, there remains the argument that bundles such as Macheist — as well as similar ones organized by MacUpdate, and others — wind up harming the independent developers participating in the shareware market by undermining the perceived value of shareware apps as a whole.

In short, I would disagree.

My view here is that the shareware market is a commercial space like any other, and that such bundles are essentially yet another element of competition that’s simply part of the game. New entrants need a means by which to get their products noticed on the playing field, and everyone on the field must continually compete against each other to remain in the game.

Through it all, customers will continue to pay whatever price they feel is a good value. We are, after all, talking about a consumer demographic that choose to buy Macs over commodity PCs.

The piece kicks off with this gem:

…BusinessWeek asked me about Apple potentially open sourcing the iPhone over a year ago. Since then: nothing out of Apple, despite mounting pressure from projects like Android that are vying for Apple’s throne.

I guess I missed the part where Apple has any incentive or desire to concern itself with a question Business Week asked this guy. Then, I missed the part where Android is applying “mounting pressure” on Apple’s iPhone.

Continuing:

I’m not asking them to completely open source the iPhone. I’m just asking them to crack the door and let the breeze in.

I thought I was about to embark on reading about 5 reasons Apple should Open Source the iPhone.

At this point, and in the absence of any true guidance from the author as to a thesis he might be driving towards, I began to wonder if he knew that the code base for Mobile Safari (WebKit) is Open Source Software. What about DTrace? I mean… these are all Open Source Software components that are in the iPhone.

Open source is becoming the default way to develop software in many industries.

What does that even mean? I’m at a loss for what even constitutes a “default way to develop software.” It’s hard enough to get everyone to agree on whether or not unit testing is a critical part of the software development process, let alone being anywhere near some sort of industries-wide consensus on whether to Open Source all software, or not.

Hurley goes on to say:

More importantly, many folks that aren’t traditional developers are starting to develop apps for platforms like the iPhone. He who satiates that audience wins the war.

Check out the post; it doesn’t carry any additional meaning when it’s experienced in its full context, either.

Choice

William contends that “Customers love choice.” On the surface, that does seem like a sensible assertion; when I’m in the market to purchase a product or service, I always appreciate having at least a handful of options from which to make my ultimate choice.

On the other hand, too much choice can be a hindrance, as it can get difficult to fully grasp all the merits and trade-offs associated with each choice.

So, there’s a balance.

Naturally, the verdict on where anyone’s threshold of “too much choice” gets drawn will depend on the number of options they are being asked to consider.

Hurley continues:

Open sourcing the iPhone gives customers a much broader selection of applications.

Of course we’re back to what exactly Hurley does or doesn’t mean by “open sourcing the iPhone.” Apart from that, he fails to demonstrate that the selection of applications will be any broader; the App Store has a pretty fucking broad selection.

It seems like the next sensible matter to consider is how a more open ecosystem, like Android, compares against the iPhone’s App Store with respect to volume of available apps.

The numbers seem to defy Hurleys predictions.

Though, to be fair — as the update appended to that link mentions — we may see more apps appear in the Android Marketplace once Google makes it possible for software developers to charge money for their apps.

And what about “all those” Openmoko platform apps out there…?

Customers faced with a plethora of attractive applications when they visit the app store will spend money.

Many developers are now worried that the sheer volume of apps available in the App Store has gotten so large that it’s becoming increasingly difficult for developers to get their apps to stand out.

Many are even calling on Apple to devise ways to let the better ones bubble to the top.

And so this may interestingly be where Apple is on the ironic “downside,” beginning to fall victim to its own success, but where — in deliciously layered irony — Hurley remains chasing a hollow argument.

An open source iPhone dulls some of Android’s luster.

And here I was thinking that Android’s luster was being dulled by the inability for developers to be able to rely on:

1. screen size
2. input capabilities
3. availability of various components

Ol’ Steve can level the playing field—he holds sway over a loyal following of diehard developers.

Last time I looked at the playing field, “ol’ Steve” doesn’t have a whole hell of a lot to gain by leveling it.

Linux on the iPhone

Hurley then goes on to argue that if Apple doesn’t open up the iPhone, then someone else will find a way to do it regardless. Why this insight seems particularly riveting to him, I can’t really know.

One might pause to wonder if he’s heard of jailbreaking and rockbox; this happens.

Then, he drops this bomb:

Earth to Apple: if the iPhone had been open sourced, [Linux on the iPhone] probably wouldn’t have happened.

Let’s take a step back. I think we can all agree, at this juncture in history, that if a device has a microprocessor in it, somebody is going to try to get Linux running on it!

So, my alternate-reality wager is that Linux would have been ported to iPhone regardless of whether Apple were more “open” with it or not.

Besides, here we have iPhone Linux and Apple didn’t have to spend a dime on its development. And they won’t be spending any money on supporting it, either.

This is perfect for Apple: nothing to engineer, nothing to QA, and no responsibility to field support calls for it.

If anything, it seems like the teams at Apple have been struggling to keep up with QA issues on their closed and tightly-controlled platform; does anyone really think it makes any sense for Apple to take on the additional resource burden acting on this idea would incur?

The OSS route, however, is finally here.

Now, anyone can install Linux as an alternative OS for their iPhones, and even switch back and forth between iPhone OS; let’s see how many people actually have enough interest to install this.

Perspective & Respect

So, what I want to know is: how many folks with Macs out there are running the Nautilus file manager via X11, instead of dealing with Finder?

Now, I use open source every day.

I’ve been an occasional contributor to a handful of projects (most recently, I’ve submitted a number of patches to plugins for a PHP MVC framework called symfony).

I even published two projects of my own to Sourceforge.

I love, respect, and regularly participate in the phenomenon that is OSS in various capacities, including software development and community support.

That said, I personally can’t bring myself to find any fault with Apple for not having any interest in “open sourcing” the iPhone. At least, not without a compelling economic incentive.

And, let’s face it, all the data points to Apple’s economic model playing out reasonably well, for the time being.

15 Dec: Apple has tweaked the iTunes App Store, in response to some developers’ mounting distress that their for-pay apps were getting buried by the popularity of the free apps, by better showcasing the most popular for-pay apps.