"The Internet is Rigged"

"The Internet is Rigged"

David Pell:

At the Apple event showcasing the watch, Tim Cook and team demonstrated a lot of cool apps. But none of them were mine. Don’t get me wrong. I’d do the same thing if I were Apple. Give your biggest and best partners first dibs on designing apps that will be featured. It makes sense. And some of those apps are made by companies in which I have investments. So good for me the investor. But bad for me the writer and publisher.

Back in the day, no one got a heads up on anything. No one got to develop for a platform the rest of us didn’t get to access until after it launched. No one had to be approved to get put on the web. No one had to convince anyone else to feature them in a store in order to matter. Even writing this, I worry that someone in the app store might be less likely to put my NextDraft app on the front page (where, with god — who I imagine having much the same voice as Jony Ive during the demo movies — as my witness, it most certainly belongs).

I think the so-callled “walled gardens” of the App Store are crucial to the growth of the platform, and ultimately make it a better place to be. However, there’s no question that Apple should work to make it a place for which all developers have a fair chance at prosperity.