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He's probably correct but what is the point of having smart phones and all this high end phones if you only have few applications to run on it.

As much as I've respected Ozzie in the past, this time I think he is completely wrong about The App Store and IPhone. What they're (Apple) doing is pure eco-system development that can incorporate a range of devices that can run all the apps- not just phones and mobile devices. Unlike the Droid apps, these apps run on desktop systems and are maintained via iTunes on the desktop. While Microsoft dithers with their cloud strategy Aple has actually launched any extremely rigorous cloud strategy with the App Store. Billions of downloads of 100,000+ apps hosted in the cloud? That's where it's going...

Ray is WAY OFF THE RAILS on this one. Got me even to write a blog post about it: http://scobleizer.com/2009/11/17/ray-ozzie-is-w...

Lots of people say that Ray's comments were more nuanced than originally reported. Several of them have written comments on my blog. You might see those and also see my response. I think those are important part of this story.

Good post, Robert.

On the loss of nuance, I'll respond to Matt Mullenweg (who seems to take the most issue with my post) on your blog, but the short and boring answer is that I think my characterization is accurate.

Coming from Ray Ozzie, this is hard to believe, but understandable if A) he hasn't used an iPhone before and B) he believes the nonsense spouted by Steve Ballmer earlier this year that Windows Mobile had "market momentum".

Also, if it's so easy to develop mobile apps, why does the Windows Mobile marketplace only have 800 of them total, across all regions and devices? See http://www.thestandard.com/news/2009/11/16/wind...

Variety if not the No's of applications available for Windows mobile is far greater than what are available on the iphone app store. Sure, they are scattered on various websites, but one can easily acess them by a simple google search. Just type "ppc applications" or windows mobile applications in your Google search bar and find out for yourself.

Further most of the top games for Windows mobile are now available on the iphone so why can't the reverse be true?

Just like all the apps that made Windows special were ported to Mac, Linux, etc. What a silly comment.

They have no idea what they're doing over at Microsoft.

The iPhone App Store gets a lot of press, but the iPhone also has a second, completely open development environment in its HTML5 browser. The simple apps that Ray Ozzie thinks will be "ported to every one of them" are going to HTML5 Web apps that run on every one of them.

However, there are also more complex apps that the Web can't handle, even with HTML5. For example, I use an iPhone app called FourTrack almost every day, it's a completely multitrack audio recorder. That doesn't exist on any other mobile platform. There is also a sort of iMovie for iPhone which I can't remember the name of, which enables you to edit the videos you just shot on the phone. These things aren't happening on the Web any time soon, but are very much happening on mobile devices.

So in short, apps do matter, both Web apps and native apps. On the iPhone the Web apps are open and the native apps are closed. On Windows Mobile, both Web and native apps are closed (you have proprietary IE6 instead of open HTML5). So even if everybody stopped making App Store native apps for iPhone tomorrow, the iPhone will still run the common set of Web apps made for smartphones. With Windows Mobile, Microsoft is counting on not just developers to port native apps to it, but also Web developers to port HTML5 apps to Windows Mobile. Completely insane, but just what we expect from Microsoft.

I think many of you are missing the point. He's not saying that apps don't matter. What he's saying is that the barrier to entry is so low and the requirements to develop a mobile app are so marginal from one platform to another that what becomes popular on a given platform will inevitably be ported to other popular platforms. It's inevitable. Let's face it. The average person probably uses no more than a dozen apps. Yeah, they may download a crapload (I have), but I tend to use less than a dozen. I use the most important ones: search, movie times, news, facebook, etc. But once that core set of applications is running on other platforms, the original platform, itself, becomes devalued/undifferentiated. THAT is what Ozzie is saying.

I've seen iPhone apps that are far more complex than most Windows apps were in the mid 1990s, which demonstrates that thought process is totally wrong. If it's so easy to port apps back and forth why aren't apps ported more often? Hint: it's not easy at all.

Actually, it IS pretty easy. But not a whole lot do it well. Which is why power inevitably settles on the heads of a few well-heeled players.

"Actually, it IS pretty easy. But not a whole lot do it well."

Wait.. what?

If it's easy, why can't they do it well?

Maybe because the opposite of easy is hard? Good mobile apps are different from desktop apps and are different from web apps. And good apps *are not* easy. To just make just such an inane statement is a disservice to talented developers who rise above the fray and churn out true works of art.

Being an iPhone developer, I agree. The most popular apps can be easily ported.

Its far different than developing apps for the desktop.

My favorite games on Windows Mobile like Warfare Incorporated, Bejeweled, Asphalt, Call of duty e.t.c. not to say my favorite PIM application Pocket Informant, all have been ported to iphone. So the few applications of consequence which iphone has, why can't they be ported to Windows mobile, is hard to fathom.

Regarding complexity of applications I would like to see on the iphone CAD applications like ShortCAD or mathematical application like pocketCAS and various design softwares for beams, columns e.t.c. which are currently available on Windows Mobile, .

As far as application availibility is concerned, Microsoft seems to be in the dark, it seems from this comment they have no idea that the variety (not the numbers) of applications available on Windows mobile is far more than the iphone and most of them are now being ported to iphone; or maybe they are talking of Windows mobile-7 ?.

The diversity of apps available for the iPhone does make the iPhone special. The most popular titles may become available on multiple platforms. The apps that appeal to smaller segments but are very important to individuals within that segment will be less likely to be ported to other platforms.

Microsoft? Are they still kicking around out there? Wow!

A few comments....

First, the vast majority of you posting have never written an app to save your life. I've written MANY, and this stuff is not rocket science.

Second, Apple would like you to believe that its App Store is the only place to get apps, but Droid is coming online, it's an open platform, and since the economic model for apps is starting to wither (most apps on App Store are free -- very few people are willing to pay for more than a handful of apps), the future favors free and open source platforms.

"First, the vast majority of you posting have never written an app to save your life. I've written MANY, and this stuff is not rocket science."

To a small subset of humans, it isn't rocket science. To the vast majority the old phenomenon of the "12 O'Clock flasher" speaks volumes.

"Second, Apple would like you to believe that its App Store is the only place to get apps"

Oh please, can we stop with the "Evil Apple" meme - Apple, correctly, points out the only place to get apps *for the iPhone* is the app store. Yes, you can jailbreak - but you don't see many developers who are trying to make a living porting Apps to Cydia since piracy is pretty rampant. LIke it or not, the App store is revolutionary and never before for such a low barrier of entry have developers been able to get such exposure and sales report.

"Droid is coming online, it's an open platform, and since the economic model for apps is starting to wither (most apps on App Store are free -- very few people are willing to pay for more than a handful of apps)"

Yup, your absolutely right - App store sales volume has been going down and developers aren't making any money.

What?

"the future favors free and open source platforms."

Yup, that desktop Linux is just taking over the world by storm.

<sigh>

Look, charging money and trying to earn a profit for your work is not evil. Some things will only ever be done under commercial, closed source licensing - and *that's not a bad thing*. There is a place for open source and close source software. This whole open source argument is such a load of crap. The market has spoken and continues to speak - close source software that you have to pay for has a clear place.

"very few people are willing to pay for more than a handful of apps), the future favors free and open source platforms"

Did you read Apple's or Microsoft's last annual report? Guess not.

More or less, there's no such thing as "free", except for some hobby geeks. Somebody, somewhere is paying. What is free to you may be paid by some corporation. Or you pay by watching ads. Or you pay to get the higher level abilities you'll want. Or you pay for the installation and maintenance of your Linux intranet. Or you pay Google with your data, which they parlay into bucks with their ad network. There are many mechanisms.

Believers in the myth of free may like to read, "Google fans fail to contemplate why Android is free" at
http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2009/10/26/google.... Well, not really; they are believers. But others, including fence-sitters, may like to read that article.

let's all remember ray ozzie's claim to fame is lotus notes. 'nuff said.

"let's all remember ray ozzie's claim to fame is lotus notes. 'nuff said."

Aside from having a hideous mail template interface (which IBM *FINALLY* address in Notes 8) Notes is the most powerful product for handling unstructured data out there.

Bar none.

Notes poor reputation is 100% IBM's fault for ignoring the horrid mail interface for over 10 years, but the core product is strong and there still is nothing out on the market like Notes that combines replication, encryption (full blown PKI), field level security (including PKI), the sheer variety of ways to code, multi-lingual support, database connectivity, messaging... the sheer flexibility and power of Notes is staggering and it's really too bad it took IBM as long as it did to pay attention to the user interface it the client. And as an administrator, after having administered both Active Directory/Exchange/Sharepoint/SQL Server/Certificate Server/etc. vs Domino, I'll take Domino any day. Even Microsoft admitted Exchange is such a mess no more in-place upgrades. If you want a new version of Exchange, gotta replace your hardware. I could kind of see it with Exchange 2007 since because of the horrid "database" engine Exchange uses they require 64bit OS - but requiring new hardware for 2010 too? Unbelievable. I can upgrade a Domino server in place in 20 minutes - and that's if I make backups of critical files and do some general housekeeping as part of the upgrade. Heck, I can *downgrade* if I want to. Full forwards and backwards compatibility due to forward thinking design decisions of Ray Ozzie and Tim Halverson.

Ray is a smart guy - he knows what he is stating - it's in his best interest to marginalize the impact of devices like the iPhone. Apple isn't going after the desktop/laptop market - Microsoft has already won that. But mobile computing - that is something that is wide open. And ultimately what has a higher volume? Individual computers that only a fraction of the population has, or mobile devices combined with your cell phone that the majority of the population are carrying? Don't think MS isn't waking up to this. Windows Mobile is in shambles, even when Microsoft eventually ships Windows Mobile 7 Microsoft *still* won't have a unified platform with common API's and development tools like Mac OSX and the iPhone that Apple has.

So it's absolutely in MS's best interest to attempt to marginalize mobile devices. Nice try, but most people's BS detectors are (appropriately) going off.

Porting mobile apps over is NOT easy. They all have different GUI frameworks, they all have different screen sizes, nothing but the iPhone has multitouch right now.

Plus, the SDK for the iPhone is in Objective C/C++, the Android SDK is Java based, etc. etc.

Speaking AS someone who has a native C++ application that needs to support the mobile market -- it is not easy to just "run your code everywhere."

If porting applications is so hard then how come my favorite WinMo games like Warfare, Call of Duty, Bejewelled, Asphalt e.t.c. not to say applications like pocket informant, have all been ported to the iphone. Similarly all the features which made iphone unique like slide to unlock, kinetic scrolling e.t.c. were available for windows mobile within weeks of the launch of the iphone.

It 's not that porting is impossible. Almost anything can be done with appropriate resources. Porting apps and supporting platforms has always been a business proposition -if the returns are there, the investment and resources will follow.

The "enough apps" claim has been the Mac users' mantra since the Apple doom days, but it is only until recently that it has been taken seriously by the whole industry, but not because it is "better" than Windows, which it certainly is, but because it has gained momentum, probably because of its association with the iPod/iPhone phenomenon.

So until WinMo/Android/Maemo/YouNameIt show momentum, will they be taken seriously and be dedicated precious development resources.

Don't forget that Ozzie's mandate is to look 5-15 years down the line. So his comments are to be read in this context. I agree with Tom. Ozzie is just saying that the most popular apps will be available on all phones and therefore the winning factors will be others.
I think he has not proved himself fully at Microsoft yet, but to simply dismiss his comments because he doesn't work at Apple or Google is wrong.

Ozzie is correct to a certain extent. The most popular apps will be ported to the phone platforms *that matter*.
But phone platforms are eco-sytems that build momentum. Developers want to develop on platforms that people are on, and people are on them because developers are developing for it. A la the Gorilla Game. I see it as being similar to the OS wars in the 80s. There are only a couple, maybe 3, platforms that the development community will largely support. I see the winners as iPhone and Android. Windows Mobile is an also ran, and there is no reason to believe that in time it won’t be a has been.
I can see the point where Microsoft starts paying developers of popular apps to come out with a WinMob version, in a desperate attempt to stay in the game.

How come on the desktop the talk is about the move away from local applications to cloud based applications, and on mobiles, the talk is all about local apps. In an age where the maximum productivity is to be had with applications inoperable between dekstops and mobiles, there needs to be emphasis on mobile webapps as well.

I am currently attending PDC'09 and was at the keynote where Ozzie and Vivek showed the data.gov service mentioned in the article. One thing the reporter didn't mention was that Vivek used an iPhone (not a wimo device) to show off the app. It was a rather odd moment, specially for a Microsoft focused conference. I guess it's their way of saying they've lost this war...

Yeah, I noticed that -- my interpretation was more along the lines of, "If you get the CIO of the United States to speak at your conference, you don't get to dictate what phone he uses."

A man I respect say that "Mobile apps require very little development," is the height of absurdity. My company, Handcase has more than 350 products, between software and games for PalmOS, imagine the effort that is porting all this and more, carry this extensive catalog while launching 4 new products every month. It is best to pretend that he did not say anything about it.

Yes. The iPhone is way more that just the sum of it's applications.

The Phone + iTunes + The App Store + 3rd Party Accesories + 3rd Party Apps + a great OS ... that is what makes the iPhone better than anything else. The whole ecosystem that revolves around one great piece of hardware.

You have to understand ... Apple is an innovator. Microsoft is the imitator. Microsoft's slogan should be "What should we imitate today?"

Tweetie 2

I told Ray to say that!

Everything will be all right,I am behind you.That’s something,That's what I was thinking.Brilliant idea.iphone club