Over the last year this blog has argued the case for Apple’s mobile device strategy, I think this post sums it up nicely.

However, while I and every other tech journalist and blogger have been concentrating on the hardware, Apple has been secretly (duh!) plotting its most audacious product to-date.

NB: This is simply speculation, if anyone at Apple is reading this please don’t blacklist me I have Apps to sell.

Remember what everyone said about the iPod? Overpriced, under powered. Remember what everyone said about the iPhone? Overpriced, underpowered, crappy network. What will they say about the Tablet/Slate? Overpriced! underpowered! Can you seen the pattern?

But what made people buy these slow and expensive gadgets — especially when there were obviously superior competitors? iTunes. You heard me, iTunes, I’m no fan — believe me. Even on the Mac is a painful, bloated experience and I’ve heard on Windows is enough to dive you insane. But the infrastructure is what matters.

The humble iPod (later the iPod Classic) had one competitive advantage; a simple, (relatively) cheap and legal way to buy music. The iPhone now has 100,000+ Apps many free (FREE!) and many pointless. But it has an eco-system, and Apple own the infrastructure.

How will this help the iDevice/SteveSlate/WebBook? Applications. Not Apps. Not Widgets. Applications, fully functioning multi-featured Applications. Like Tweetie for Mac or any of the excellent games form Ambrosia.

Apple is going to do for regular software what it’s done for mobile Apps. The same walled garden, with the same terrible approval process and the same $99/year fee.

And as a software developer, I can’t wait. Being listed on the iTunes App Store for Mac will be a sign of quality and a guarantee to users of no viruses or Trojans.

Developers will be able to sell more applications and make more money. Users will have access to 1000s of Apps all with a ‘guarantee’ of quality and all in one place, rated and reviewed. Apple will be happy because it will totally own the device.

The process for developers will be easy, download a provisioning profile form ADC, recompile your application, submit to Apple (wait 4 weeks) and bingo, your application is in front of 20 million people.

So, while we have all been arguing about hardware specs, Apple have been building data centres and working on iTunes X (10).

This will change the way software is sold (certainly on the Mac) and hand Apple a massive piece of the pie. Microsoft have been trying to do this for years, but Apple have almost stumbled upon it. But I can’t help wondering if Steve had this in-mind back in 2001?

Recently Phil Schiller has defended the current App Store:

“We’ve built a store for the most part that people can trust,” he says. “You and your family and friends can download applications from the store, and for the most part they do what you’d expect, and they get onto your phone, and you get billed appropriately, and it all just works.”

I think this adds weight to my argument, Apple want to build a closed, secure eco-system.

This weekend I decided to solve a problem that only existed in my head, namely that of no official (or unofficial) Stackoverflow iPhone App.

There have been some questions raised about the possibilities of an API to allow such an App but, alas no noticeable development effort.

Stack Overflow is a programming Q & A site that’s free. Free to ask questions, free to answer questions, free to read, free to index, built with plain old HTML, no fake rot13 text on the home page, no scammy google-cloaking tactics, no salespeople, no JavaScript windows dropping down in front of the answer asking for $12.95 to go away. You can register if you want to collect karma and win valuable flair that will appear next to your name, but otherwise, it’s just free. And fast. Very, very fast. — Stackoverflow

Alpha Launch

This is simply a heads-up on what I achieved in about 6 hours of design, programming and testing. I’d like top get some feedback from the community before I launch head-long into a project that’ll make me no money.

My questions are:

1. Is there a demand for this?
2. Is anyone willing to help with testing?

Testing

If you want to help with the testing, send me your iPhone/iPod Touch UDID using the form below.

Open Source? App Store?

I’ll be blogging more in the coming weeks about how (and why) I solved some of the problems with the lack of API. If the initial feedback is positive I’ll submit to the App Store early next week fore a (hopefully) early November availability – it’ll be a FREE App — ALWAYS and I’ll probably open source it at some point.

Logo Help

As you can see the logo is not great.

If anyone has a better idea of can produce a better version of this logo please contact me.

Feedback

Please post questions and feedback in the comments section — good or bad. Also feature requests will be seriously considered.

If you want to help fund this and other projects you could always buy my 59p ($0.99) Profanity App (iTunes link).

Video

Here is a short video showing the use of the Stackoverflow iPhone App.