Saturday, July 12, 2008

Developers: iPhone is the gateway drug to OS X

The eminent Walt Mossberg is interviewed on the iPhone 3G and really nails it.

The iPhone is not a smartphone. It is a powerful portable computer that makes phone calls.

So it does not have a builtin keyboard? There's always Bluetooh connectivity. This presents a market opportunity for an entrepreneurial 3rd party to come in and make one.

The problem with traditional handset makers is that they view their business as primarily selling hardware, and hardware design is fixed very early in the phone's product cycle. This "fixedness"; this inability to adapt, infects their very core philosophies.

Software is virtual, and can easily adapt.

What does Darwin say about adaptability and natural selection?

So how does all this figure into Apple's grand plan? iPhone developers are enticed to the platform by the sheer number of iPhone users. And the iPhone APIs are extremely similar to OS X APIs by design.

This means an iPhone developer who programs in Cocoa Touch can become an OS X developer with slightly more effort, and vice versa. So there's that recurrent adaptability theme again.

Nokia is taking steps to address this hardware-software divide by buying up Symbian but it does not have all the pieces to the puzzle. Microsoft Windows is still the dominant platform and they have no reason to give up their control to Nokia to fulfill this integrated vision. So while it is the right move it may be too little, too late.

Walt Mossberg interview 1
Walt Mossberg interview 2
Walt Mossberg interview 3

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