The most interesting thing about this is that it's the first app store that will be available across devices. You could (potentially) own an Android phone and an iPad; but today you need to buy two copies of the app. With Facebook, you only need buy it once.
It's not a store. There is no purchasing through Facebook (except for I guess apps that run on Facebook, rather than Android or iOS). It's just a user review site like hundreds of others except for the scale.
Wonder how Apple will treat FB apps purchased via the FB iOS app running on iOS device? iirc there's been some controversy in this area regarding Apple taking a cut of the sales.
Also wondering what Google will think of the FB Android app helping users side-step the Chrome store or whatever it's called.
Think it's time for FB to get a device of their own ;-)
Mobile native apps are not cross platforms so if you download the app in Android, I don't think it will show up in your iPad. The documentation from Facebook Developer says: "If a mobile app requires installation, they will be sent to download the app from the App Store or Google Play."
Your argument is valid, but barely so, which is where it becomes a moral or ethical issue. It's like saying that Microsoft can assert a copyright claim and distribution rights over any presentation made with Powerpoint, simply because their bullet point image is Microsoft material and any presentation, no matter how original, is a derivative work. Technically valid, but if they tried to enforce that I'd wouldn't be supporting them.
I use the keyboard quite a lot, for writing notes. It's amazing how reading a non-fiction book is so much more rewarding if you make highlights and notes. If you're thorough, you can read just your highlights and notes and effectively re-read the same book a year down the line in about 10% of the time; and still refresh your memory well.
Looks like there's not enough news these days, so tech journalists dissing other tech journalists (Arrington-Swisher or Marco-BI) is what keeps the news sites going.
I quit Netflix streaming because I didn't want to pay more for a selection that has become smaller. I will rejoin if and when they bring a bigger selection.
A step backward is hardly the way I'd put it. Consumption-related technology as well as production related technologies are improving dramatically; we perceive the pace of consumption technology as being faster because consumption technology is far more applicable, and affects more users, and so it's more on the news. This is not a problem, there have always been more readers than writers, movie watchers than movie producers, software users than software creators.
There isn't too much discussion when there's a new version of Photoshop, or VIM, or Django, or Wordpress, or countless other technologies (e.g. http://www.asciiflow.com/) and platforms that help with content creation. One reason I read HN is that these items usually make it here. It's easier to create content now than at any time in the past.
How many people built software before iOS and Android? A few folks scattered across huge companies that either built consumer products or provided services for those companies. Today, iOS has half a million apps -- somebody produced them. Arguably the 'consumption-only' device that you think has taken us a step backward has given tens of thousands of people incentive to produce something. Amazon's vision is for authors to be able to self-publish without going through the hassle of publishers, giving more incentive for people to produce. Whereas making movies was once a task for multibillion dollar studios, Youtube has enabled something like the Khan Academy to start earning money by producing content.
You cannot have better and better consumption oriented devices in a vacuum. Someone has to produce what the masses are consuming.
How many people built software before iOS and Android? A few folks scattered across huge companies that either built consumer products or provided services for those companies.
Nonsense. Pre-2008 (iPhone App Store launch) there was loads of software aimed at the residential market. There was also the open source movement, which had created a whole operating system from scratch. Yes, the App Stores have made it much easier to sell software, but to think that all software was made in megacorps is silly. This isn't the 1980s!
I guess the way it looks to me is that the last dramatic production advancement for lay people was the advent of blogging. The two major advancements after that have been social networking and tablets, which both somewhat degrade production signal.
The observation that an optimized consumption experience gives producers a bigger audience is an interesting one. But I think what I'm objecting to is the further distinction between those classes. The PC and blogging revolutions were profound to me in that they closed the gap between the producers and consumers. Tablets, on the other hand, make the distinction more overt. Same with the Kindle.
You cannot have better and better consumption oriented devices in a vacuum. Someone has to produce what the masses are consuming.
While this is true, my point is about who has the means for production. I would rather see that power distributed than concentrated.
Who has the means for production? Everyone has the means for production! It doesn't take some special equipment to write a book and publish it to the Kindle. People's ability to publish long-form writing is at an all-time high thanks to e-readers. The fact that the device used to create the content is different from the one people prefer to use to consume it doesn't really matter if everybody has both — which they do.
If the urge, desire and instinct to communicate is universal, but only the means of production have been democratized since the advent of blogging, then I wonder: fifty years ago, what were the people who are most likely to be blogging today doing to express themselves?
I suspect that they were much more locally focused. Writing letters to the editor (because people still read the paper), aligning with community social organizations, being more actively involved in their communities.
So now we're able to form narrowcast tribes across geographic (and even temporal) boundaries. Are we better off? En masse, such connections may leave whole societies better off (Arab spring) but I think that perhaps we won't realize the full benefits until the focus returns to the local. And that won't happen until there's a rise in the locality of the internet.
Think reinvention of the local paper; or maybe a craigslist for the issues of the day.
And that can't happen until the technology is in the hands and power of EVERYONE. Think Kindles (or iPads, or whatever) in a rack at your McDonalds, literally replacing the local paper. Perhaps the biggest advancement here is the price point; but we need to cut that iPad cost in half perhaps 5-8 more times for this access to happen.
When that day hits--the day of the ubiquitous $1 Kindle--then I think we can claim democratization, and we will see a return to locality and the strengthening of our communities.
But my point is that if tablets, which people refer to as "post-PC" devices, in some significant measure replace PCs, then they only have consumption devices.
One reason for the popularity of these devices is that people are producing more content. Folks aren't watching CNN/BBC on an iPad but self produced Youtube videos and they're reading more than NY times bestsellers on a Kindle.
There is an assumption here that people with a PC will automatically become producers which I think is wrong. For people to become producers they need incentive and opportunity. These devices and the ease of content creation is means the opportunity bar is much lower (e.g. you don't need to get a publisher to agree on a manuscript to publish); and the incentive is higher (you can monetize content you produce whether its apps, books or videos much more easily).
But, if you spend much time on YouTube, it is surprising the range of people who have become content producers. To give just one example, my wife is fascinated by all the people doing makeup tutorials. These are people who might have explained things to a few friends, maybe, and now they have audiences of hundreds or thousands. Most of them are made with webcams on their laptops, and there is no reason they couldn't do the same thing on iPads or iPod Touches.
But post-PC devices are only partially replacing the PC - in those areas where they're better than PCs. We're not losing anything, only gaining something new.
I wonder if production is not more inherent to the human being than you give it credit for being. How, otherwise, did we get from TV-land to the internet? Was it not a case of frustrated need for self-expression and response to new stimuli?
What is missing here is actually a perspective on how consumption is a form of production itself– of perspective. Better access, and new forms and content for consumption, will create (that word!) new forms of consciousness, which are fed back in production.
Consumption today seem to me more of a form of networking of sources and producers, production of perspective. There's so little that we yet know about our still new internet reality. Polishing consumption may very well be necessary in order for us to make sense of our current social/technological stage, to produce new forms of social networking/organization and ultimately new every-other-form of content/artifacts.
To dive in at the deep end: consuming stuff on a tablet, with the accompanying delights and frustrations - is part of the networking of the device itself into the cycle of human content consumption-production. There's no reason to believe that the tablet as an object is finished, and that it won't evolve to fit the 'expressive needs' of people – your own frustration/pessimism are a part of this cycle, both leading people to not use tablets, to look for different desktop paradigms, new forms of interaction with tablets, improving tablet ergonomics and on and on. You're surely not alone.
The cycle won't stop. We must not get down when there's so much great work to be done! Yet, again, also our negative feeling in this regard is ultimately productive, if we let it.
With respect to app development, which has been incredible in how widespread it's become, it's possible it's just an extension of what the Web started: incredible democratisation of creation.
Great point! Illustrates just how we're still living with the implications of just how the first extremely undemocratic reality of 'code as content' – first encapsulated in program devlopment, then going through a slight democratization route regarding computer usage through the Macintosh, and moving on through the html web – still is playing out.
One can at least see that the path-to-market of content has been democratized with the web over time… and the App stores/'App paradigm' are also helpful in making it possible for more to program.
I think a big part of our dilemmas have had to do with how isolated and abstract programming and development have been compared to mainstream society. A relative 'mainstreaming' of programming is still an incredible thought – yet it is happening right now!
Whatever happens to our present jobs, I can't help but think that the infusion of new programming talent is about to create a new reality – a wave that could lift a great number of us – given appropriate channels for us all to contribute so much more than regular business logic programming - and us people practicing and getting ready to catch it!
