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by freehunter 4721 days ago
Competition in the market is a great thing and I welcome more competitors, but you're exactly right. The entire mobile market is completely fragmented. Whether you use iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Blackberry, or any of the other competitors, you've likely experienced an app you'd love to install but it doesn't exist for your platform. Linux users are used to struggling with a developer to try to get a port when programs were made for Windows only. Now we're at the stage where many great programs are only written for half the market. At least on Linux you can use Wine for many things, or run a VM at worst.

When we made the move to mobile devices, we took a major step backwards in the maturity of technology. Some days I miss the simplicity of only having to pick between Windows Mobile and Palm OS when choosing a mobile audience.
1 comments
gioele 4721 days ago
> Whether you use iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Blackberry, or any of the other competitors, you've likely experienced an app you'd love to install but it doesn't exist for your platform. Linux users are used to struggling with a developer to try to get a port when programs were made for Windows only.

Try being a Linux user on a PowerPC box.

I hope developers, most of which have become mobile developers by now, have now understood that open protocols are much more important than application availability.

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Pxtl 4721 days ago
Other way around, more likely. Everybody's abandoning open protocols - Google has functionally dropped RSS and their instant messaging protocol, for example. The modern approach is to avoid the protocol and offer a massive cloud-based service, first-party apps, and maybe an API for a little while when you're in the growth state (kill the API when your apps have every feature you want them to have).
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gioele 4721 days ago
I said "developers", not "businesses".

It may makes commercial sense for businesess to act like doubt (I seriously doubt that holds in the long run), but the more they do that, the more private developers understand the importance of open protocols.

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