Why Steve Jobs hates the iPhone App Store

Chris Messina has posted a rather interesting perspective on ‘Why Steve Jobs hates the App Store.’

If this is even half interesting to you, pop along and have a read. Chris has laid out the strategy he reckons Jobs would take if he really hated the App Store platform… the stimulating point being that, every point Chris makes has actually already happened.

Chris ends his post by suggesting that Jobs, first looking like Neo from the Matrix, is now looking a lot like Agent Smith.

I particularly appreciate these ending paragraphs:

Steve Jobs hates the App Store for the same reasons I do: development for the iPhone platform is a distraction. It’s taking our eyes off the ball, and ignoring the bigger shift that’s happening beneath our feet. Developing iPhone apps now means postponing a better and more capable web until later, because so much energy is fixated on the cool whiz-bang effects in the iPhone platform that just haven’t been implemented in browsers… yet.

and this one:

We’ll look at this period as a great Dark Age that preceded the real next leap in computing — the age when we moved away from the stale metaphor of applications and moved to a world of ad-hoc connected identity agents living and feeding on a mesh of interwoven open data.

I think you’re right, Chris.

Yesterday a few friends were asking me about whether Apple will continue to dominate the mobile phone industry. I explained my view: Apple has pointed the way ahead. But they’re looking like they’ll continue to always be a bit-player, leaving the mass-market open for the likes of Android.

Apple will continue to punch above their weight for some time; but the mass market will catch up. Nokia’s management will, finally, be removed or reprogrammed. The mobile operators will have a say.

We are in the Dark Age, most definitely. It’s been a necessary step though, it really has. Only a few years ago, the thought of the might of Silicon Valley turning its attention to the mobile/wireless marketplace was a glint in the proverbial milkman’s eye, at least a decade away.

I think we’ll continue to be fixated on the ‘cool whiz-bang effects’ of the iPhone simply because the experience is, in many cases, wondrous.