Software should be more open
I like building software that works well everywhere for everyone, and I want it to reach as many people as possible. Almost every time, iOS users ask for an app. Sure, the web is limited in capability compared to native, but it supports 90% of what most apps need, and 90% is more than enough for me. The catch is Safari; it lags behind every major browser, and Apple is slow to add new features.
On the iPhone, there’s no way around that, because Chrome and Firefox are just Safari with different icons. On iOS, Apple doesn’t allow any browser other than their own, so if Safari is missing a feature, everyone is.
That’s what annoys me. The biggest technology company in the world should be the opposite of this.
Technology and software should bring us together and make things that were previously difficult or impossible much easier. Before phones and computers, it was impossible to communicate with someone at the other side of the world. Now, we can do it instantly for free, and we almost take it for granted.
So something went wrong somewhere. With all of our advancements, why is so much software still gated, locked down, and made worse on purpose?
One of my favorite examples of amazing software is the internet and web. Pretty much anyone can access it on any device. Despite the web’s problems with compatibility, for the most part, we can open the same website and have a similar experience on different devices.
Apple’s app store is sorta the opposite: you need an Apple device, and your app will ONLY run on apple’s software and hardware.
All of a sudden, technology creates a division. Don’t have the exact phone as your family? Great, communicating with them is slightly worse. Can’t run the same software as them. The solution is to switch away from your current device that is artificially brought down by software to another more expensive device that is also brought down by software.
I get that there are reasons: security, privacy, control over the experience, amongst other things I’m not smart enough to fully follow. The worst thing though, is that Apple is at the top because they’re closed. They locked everything down and it worked. They won.
There’s hope, though. Linux is still around, and so is the web, thankfully. Open things that nobody is forced to use, yet people use them anyway. So the closed path isn’t the only one that works.
We’re this advanced, we have all of this, and we still build barriers on purpose. We built the technology to connect everyone, but we built the walls and borders too.
Maybe it matters less than it used to. AI is making it faster and cheaper to build software, and you no longer need a big team. So the extra effort that walls like Safari force on us gets cheaper, and more people get to build and reach others in the first place. That’s great.
It goes both ways though, because more people using AI to do what they otherwise wouldn’t means fewer people complain, which means there’s less of a reason to open up the walled garden.
I don’t have the fix, and I’m not exactly innocent either. I’m writing this on a Mac, and I test everything on an iPhone. That’s what works for me and my career, so yeah, I’m standing inside the same walls I’m complaining about.
Maybe that’s the real problem. The walls are comfortable, even when you can see them. I’ll keep trying to build for max reach, but I won’t pretend I’m above it.