Techcrunch is terribly wrong about the IPhone Store Policy

The blogpost over at Techcrunch telling developers to stop complaining about the IPhone App Store is terrible. They argue that you can either accept everything Apple says and develop for the Iphone, or simply move to another platform.

Of course, that is complete rubbish. We're living in an online world where people complain and discuss business practises in every thinkable way. If you're unhappy with a company, you complain, get a reaction, and then decides to stay or leave that company, product or service.

Smart companies appreciates this and have a very active relationship with their community, rendering happier customers and increased revenue.
Apple in particular is a company with a hardcore community where that act as Apple evangelists, and Apple nurture this relationship as much as they can.

When Dan Kimerling suddenly says that developers should stop complaining over the IPhone stores pretty strange application policies, he actually says that Apple is off limit. To me, he sounds like a dinousaur from the Mac/PC-wars of the 80's and 90's. Maybe he's defencive since Microsoft's latest ad campaign is pretty nice, or maybe he just can't cope with the fact that Apple is far from perfect. But it's weird to read this on a blog with a nice history of bringing light to high profile online customer power.

I just don't understand this. Maybe he's just trying to fill his Apple / Iphone quota.

I'm pretty tired of hearing about the IPhone. It has a nice interface and might be a great catalyst for mobile browsing, but I don't need to know every little detail on everything happening with the IPhone. Apple's done a great job promoting the phone, and Apple has created a nice Application store [although it's not that new, at least not here in Europe. I can send an sms and get ringtones, games and applications directly to my phone, and that certainly isn't anything new. The turnover of all the phonerelated sales of games, screensavers and ringtones has been considerable for quite a while now. The new thing is that they actually get early adapters to go to one central site for buying applications, and that they have a nearly perfectly closed developer/sales platform].

I like the IPhone, but as I said, I'm not excited enough to hear about it every single day and hour. I can't wait for the Google phone to enter the market, so that I at least can read about a product from a company that I not only respect (I respect apple), but also like a lot.


And last but not least - I really enjoy techcrunch, I'm reading the blog every day! This is simply my way of giving Techcrunch my feedback to them since I want their business and blog to be even better!