23 May 2010

Virginia Heffernan and the exaggerated death of the open web

Hi Jay,
 
I don't get why people think Virginia Heffernan's "open web" essay is refuted by the fact that the iPad sports a browser. Can anyone assist?
 
Heffernan's argument is that the iPad, iPhone etc only "come to life" when you download apps from the App Store. This makes users of those devices more remote from and "inevitably antagonistic" to the web. Heffernan approvingly quotes Steven Johnson saying "the App Store must rank among the most carefully policed software platforms in history." Heffernan thinks that Apple "rigorously vets every app and takes 30 percent of all sales; the free content and energy of the Web does not meet the refined standards set by the App Store."
 
As I read Heffernan's column, I kept thinking, "Did she ever use mobile devices to get online before the iPhone? Does she remember what it was like?" The iPhone and later Android and Palm are the first mobile devices to actually GIVE you access to the open web.
 
Before the iPhone it was all walled gardens, WAP sites, and badly rendered broken pages. Carriers desperately wanted to keep customers in house and so they attempted to be little Aol 2.0s, offering complete services, apps, movies etc. within their little domains. When the iPhone shipped in 2007, it was a sea change. Suddenly, we could access the actual Internet. To put that in context: dominant smartphone maker RIM finally previewed an actually good Blackberry browser in February 2010, three years after the iPhone came out.
 
Having access to a browser that fully renders all websites (I'm willfully ignoring Flash support here) is the prerequisite for any kind of open web. The iPhone, iPad, etc. ship with that functionality. Moreover, they allow you to install links to web apps on your home screen right alongside App Store apps. Remember, the App Store only came out in 2008. Before that, Apple was encouraging developers to develop applications using HTML, JavaScript and CSS. From the ground up, the iPhone and iPad are web-natives. 
 
I'm really not sure why Heffernan thinks that the availability of apps means antagonism to the web. To the same extent as the iPad, my PC only comes to life when I install applications. This is true of all computers, yet we have managed to see the web grow and thrive.
 
The second part of her argument is around the policing of the App Store. There is no question that Apple's approval process has resulted in far too many baffling and problematic rejections. However, to go from there to arguing that the energy of the web does not meet "the refined standards" of the App Store is to willfully ignore the apps that are actually available.
 
Want a sense? Here are some terms to put into the iTunes search bar: "Poop", "pick-up", "sexy", "gun", "hot dog".
 
It's a riot in there. There are tonnes of terribly designed, tastelessly conceived, joke, toy, and just plain weird apps. Poke through the free and $0.99 apps; you will be quickly disabused of the notion that the App Store is a refined gated community. If you look at the top paid and top grossing apps you will find that most of them are games. Many more are ToDo, IM, camera, GPS, and things that require the platform to work. There are few of the 'a website but nicer designed and pricy' apps that Heffernan fears (in fact as I write this, there are none in the Canadian store's top 50 lists).
 
As for the policing itself, it's worth again remembering what came before. I used to develop games for cellphones. Before the App Store, getting an application for sale was a complete nightmare. If you were a small developer, you had close to no chance of appearing on the deck at all. Publishers were required middlemen because they had relationships with all of the carriers. They took far, far more than 30%.
 
Each carrier had its own set of rules and priorities. Your product would get rejected for all sorts of reasons ranging from content to the carrier simply deciding that it already had 'enough' apps in the category. At one point, we had to refactor a version of a game based on Scarface so that it contained no blood, swearing, or references to drugs.
 
I'm not making cellphone games anymore, but I imagine this is still happening to all the companies working to get apps on platforms that don't have native stores like iPhone and Android.
 
Apple is on the HTML5 standards committee. Their WebKit layout engine powers almost every browser that runs on a mobile device. Their keynotes introducing the iPhone and iPad both emphasized the web experience (in fact it's the first thing Jobs does in the iPad demo). This is not a company that's web hostile. Nor are its products.