Editorial: Apple, the FCC, and the sideloading solution

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: dewayne () warpspeed com (Dewayne Hendricks)
Date: August 24, 2009 5:08:52 PM EDT
To: Dewayne-Net Technology List <xyzzy () warpspeed com>
Subject: [Dewayne-Net] Editorial: Apple, the FCC, and the sideloading  
solution

Editorial: Apple, the FCC, and the sideloading solution
by Nilay Patel
posted Aug 24th 2009 at 2:30PM
<http://www.engadget.com/2009/08/24/editorial-apple-the-fcc-and-the-sideloading-solution/ 
>

As Engadget's resident former attorney, my first instinct when I sat  
down to re-read Apple, AT&T's and Google's FCC filings regarding  
Google Voice was to put on my lawyer hat and try to find  
inconsistencies that might shed some additional light on what had  
actually happened -- if Apple's account differed from AT&T's, for  
example, perhaps those subtle differences would reveal the actual  
truth. This proved to be much more difficult than I had imagined,  
however: not only had Google redacted the most interesting part of its  
statement, I came to a profound realization after just a few moments  
of work.

I don't care.

Each of the responses was long, dense, and polished to a high-gloss  
shine that made each company's actions seem not only rational and  
justified, but almost inevitable in a way -- as I wrote at the time,  
Apple isn't exaggerating when it says that these are entirely new  
problems, and simply reading the individual letters paints a fairly  
sympathetic picture of how this whole chaotic process ended up in such  
disarray. But that's a perspective that assumes deeply-rooted interest  
in the systems and procedure of the App Store, a perspective that  
assumes there's a good reason we should be looking to lawyers and  
government regulators to figure out what's going on with the most  
exciting and vital software market that we've seen in a long time.

I don't think that's true. I don't think there's any good reason the  
most interesting things about the App Store right now should be  
procedural details and the number of submissions each reviewer handles  
a day -- somewhere around 80, if you can believe it. I'd rather be  
talking about new and exciting ways to integrate the iPhone and other  
mobile devices into my daily life -- I'd rather be talking about apps.  
And the more I think about it, the only way Apple can get back to that  
is by doing what it should have done in the first place: allowing  
developers and users to bypass the App Store and sideload apps onto  
the iPhone themselves.

Every single App Store submission story we've covered boils down to  
the fact that Apple is the single point of control for the iPhone  
ecosystem, and it's simply not fast or flexible enough to keep up with  
the rapid pace of innovation we're seeing on the platform. Like it or  
not, what's happening on the iPhone is leading the entire tech  
industry, and Apple should be doing everything in its power to enhance  
that, rather than miring itself in scandal and regulatory  
investigation. If that means releasing some control over the platform,  
then so be it -- especially since allowing sideloading would make  
almost all of these problems simply disappear.

[snip]
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