The Nasty Side of the Tiger

The other side of the story below, as Alwin among others have already pointed out, is how Apple continues to take the best ideas of the independent developer community and roll them into their operating system. This is nothing new; they've been doing it since I had my MacPlus. But now that we have the blogosphere at our disposal, we can hear the immediate reactions of the developers that have been, shall we say "appropriated."

This is where it gets interesting...Brent, who is the author of NetNewsWire, the best aggregator on the Mac, has what has to be the best reaction post ever. Sure, he could have gone into crash and burn mode and wrote a crazy diatribe about how evil Steve Jobs is, but he didn't. He took a deep breath and saw that Apple's entry into the RSS world will be a net positive. And as long as he keeps creating a product that is as easy to use and useful as NetNewsWire there's enough air in the room for everyone to breathe. The reaction from the Konfabulator dudes is also fairly measured, although I think they probably have a bit more to be angry about. Depending on what sensationalistic Mac web site you read, you may think that they are angry or "slamming Apple's theft", but if you actually read this entry on the Konfabulator site, they too seem to be staying positive and feeling good about the future. Good job, guys.

Comments

[alwin]

One of the dangers, of course, is that we can lose those developers. Some survive, like Kaleidoscope did, because it offered much better functionality than Apple's Theme Manager in OS 9.

Some move on to other platforms, like Watson just did. Frontier/Manila/RadioUserland became bi-platform, but leveraged Windows technologies better than the Macs. Ask Winer about his history with Apple, if you have an hour of your life that you don't care if you can't get back.

And some dry up and blow away, like the folks who made Liteswitch and the like.

As I said, Apple has to be careful when incorporating these new features not to destroy the people that created them. Watson will go, and Konfabulator may follow if Apple integrates the technology too tightly, but Brent has nothing to worry about - NNW is already too feature rich to be impacted much.

Oh, and TANSTAAFL - There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch. In other words, don't bitch because you have to register; it's the cost of using a 'free' service.

[Steve]

AHHH...TANSTAAFL. I think I'll start using that one on my kids. ;-)

And, yes, I'm familiar with Dave's history, and this episode seems to be giving him very intense flashbacks...unforutnately.