[HatchedLake721]

It's very kind of you, but there's no foam coming out of my mouth. Thank you.

Was BlackBerry undone by rebuilding the platform 3 times from scratch too? And Symbian too?

> Paying developers to make apps is just fine, if done well.

Of course. But it hasn't been done well in the mobile world, has it? So why is it relevant here?

I remember pre 2008 when carriers controlled apps on phones. I also remember xda-developers days. Discoverability, distribution and quality was disaster compared to what we have today. And do you know what developers earned from their applications compared to today?

People take marketplaces and what has been done in the last 10 years for granted.

[toyg]

Should we also be happy that aristocracy has been abolished in most European countries, so the Napoleonic regime was excellent and we should have kept that? “It’s better than it was” is no argument for keeping still. Apple’s regime is more open than the previous one was, but it’s still nowhere near a really-open market.

I’m not sure why you’re trying to go through the catalogue of failures in the mobile world. Nokia afaik didn’t even pay developers, certainly not when they were spinning around trying to reboot their fossil OS - no app, paid or otherwise, could save that pile of crap. Blackberry I never followed, but I understand they also crumbled largely from within, I don’t think they ever paid developers either.

> why is it relevant here

It’s relevant in the sense that the lack of success of one particular effort does not mean the strategy is absolutely bad, as you were arguing.