A Poke vs a Prod

As most in the iPhone/Mac world know, Apple introduced the iPhone SDK yesterday and talked about a whole bunch of new stuff that is going to be possible now that developers can write “Real Apps” for the iPhone.

Steve Jobs answered the question “Will there be limitations?” with “Of course!” This was the same man who, a year ago, said that we didn’t need real apps, and besides you couldn’t have a rogue app taking down the cell phone network. Most of us regarded that as a dumb straw-man argument. Treo devices, perhaps the #1 smartphone development platform in terms of the number of apps available, have been around for ages and no one had taken down Sprint, AT&T, Verizon, or anyone else.

The limitations that Steve described where shown on a slide: porn, malicious, illegal, or dangerous (there were a few others, equally obvious, if vague).

Apple dismissed the crowd, asking the press to stay behind for a Q & A.

Now Apple Q & A sessions are a bit like eclipses. You can expect them to happen a few times in your life, but they aren’t by any means frequent.

Ryan Block of Engadget asked whether or not an app that unlocked the iPhone SIM (i.e. so it could be used on another network) would be allowed.

The reaction across MacDom was nearly unanimous: “Ryan Block is an idiot” was the first that I saw. Comparisons were instantly made to Bob Keefe who famously (assuming you are a Mac Nerd) asked Steve Jobs why Apple doesn’t put “Intel Inside” stickers on their computers.

So imagine my surprise when John Gruber of DaringFireball wrote this:

I have to say, I side with Block on this one. Just because the answer is obvious doesn’t mean it wasn’t a fair question. I don’t have a problem with Apple serving as a gatekeeper with approval over all apps, but if that’s the role they want, their policies should be explicit. In the presentation, they only listed things like porno and “malicious” apps as thing that wouldn’t be tolerated. Clearly, something that impedes on their carrier contracts won’t either. It’s probably a moot point because of the data sandboxing (iPhone apps only have access to their own files, not the files of other apps), but would Amazon be allowed to write an OS X Touch app for buying songs from the Amazon MP3 store? Again, I’m not saying it’s outrageous if the answer is “no”, but if that’s the case, it’s only fair to get it on the record as to whether Apple plans to disallow any app that impedes on an Apple revenue stream.

Now John excels at giving us a different way to look at things. So I stopped and thought about it. Then I realized that John had proven why Ryan’s question was a lousy one.

It wasn’t a waste just because of the obviousness (someone on Twitter compared it to asking whether or not they would allow an app which displayed nude photos of Mrs. Jobs) — certainly even Ryan knew the answer, and asking the question was the nerd equivalent of asking Steve Jobs if his refrigerator was running.

It was a waste because it was a meaningless poke at Apple, accomplishing nothing more than wasting one of the “X” number of questions they would allot time for to ask a question everyone knew the answer to, and which would do nothing at furthering the discussion of Apple’s policies.

More importantly, it was a waste because there were so many other prodding questions to be asked, such as John’s own question about an iPhone app to make buying from the Amazon music possible. That would have been a clever, insightful, meaningful question. Protecting their relationship with AT&T (and other exclusive carriers) “has” to be done as part of their business partnerships. But locking iPhone users into iTunes for impulse purchases? That might hint towards the abuse of “monopoly” power that Apple is often (wrongly) accused of with the iPod-iTunes connection.

If Apple had given unlimited time to Q & A, we might have welcomed a discussion about SIM unlocking, and why Apple won’t allow it (if indeed Apple is the one who won’t allow it) given that the laws in the U.S.A. seem to make unlocking completely legal. But during what everyone knew was going to be a brief Q & A session, the question was a throw-away, a missed opportunity. The only one who should be glad that he asked it should be Bob Keefe, who can now hope that he fades back into obscurity in the minds of Mac users.