Apple’s notorious closed-platform, that some call the iPhone, is inching itself open, if only a bit. July 23 promises Apple developers a crash course on writing effective apps for the oh-so-hot handset, without giving up too much of Jobs’s control.
While we’d rather see the actual open platform that it could be (the interface begs for one-touch app launches), it’s a step in the right direction. We see Cupertino as the USSR and the developers as President Reagan: they’re locked in an ideological conflict, one pressing for quality and happy masses through control, the other through power-to-the-chosen Democracy. And we all know how this story turns out.
All political metaphors aside, it’s a step in the right direction towards a happier iPhoneosphere (I’m trademarking that, don’t try it) that will further the iPhone as a Web 2.0 and Mobile 2.0 convergence device. With trickle down economics.
Apple To Hold iPhone Workshop on July 23 [TechCrunch]