We all had an exciting day of shutting the curtains and encapsulating ourselves from all sources of news. No tabs open with digg. NetNewsWire officially closed. You know, completely cut off from the world, or the world of tech. Ok, maybe you don’t know this feeling, but then you’re not a true fan-boy. After impatience set in, it was hopeless. But finally, around 8-ish, Apple put up the stream of the WWDC keynote, and we could all enjoy our Steve Jobs bliss for an hour and a half.

You probably are well aware of what was (and wasn’t) announced at this year’s WWDC, but the one thing that did interest me was this:

Apple has incorporated that old metaphor of the “Stack” into Mac OS X Leopard. Basically, you have folders on your dock, and when you click one, it fans out and displays all the items in that folder. The “fan-out” effect they use is very cool and is all thanks to the beauty that is CoreAnimation. When you have a lot of items in a folder, instead of making a giant fan, it arranges the documents into a grid using a darkened black rounded rectangle as the background. You can see this in the image above. A useful application of Leopard’s “Stacks” is to put all your applications into a stack. Now, simply click the stack and see all your applications displayed as a grid on a darkened rounded rectangle black background. Convenient, and it is really cool.

Now, before I start talking about this next part, let me state that I am not so ignorant to think that anything I have designed is so revolutionary to merit anything near patents or such, and let me also state that I fully understand Apple’s reasoning and know that their development team is not heartless or vicious. Simply what happened is that in improving their operating system, Apple has removed and, I humbly say, killed many applications that just yesterday were useful, unique, important and innovative.

The application this time, and mine is not the only one suffering from basic uselessness (many backup applications have been rendered inept by Time Machine), is my application: Todos. This is not the first time we have seen things like this. Let us not forget the big upset to Konfabulator that Tiger (Dashboard) caused. So instead of turning this post into some sort of hate article about how Apple is killing its developer market, I wanted to examine this and ask why this happens.

As a company Apple is most interested in its own survival. In this realm its competitor is really only Windows. Apple needs to stay ahead of the curve and offer an operating system boasting features that far outshine any of those in Vista (which it does surprisingly a lot). So in this limited mind set, one would think that Apple has every right and every inherent need as a company to incorporate any cool or necessary features into its OS regardless of whether 3rd party developers depend on these external applications. For example, you do not expect Apple to forfeit rights to create a search engine into it’s operating system (Spotlight) simply because LaunchBar or QuickSilver had relatively achieved this previously. Nor would you say that Apple creating its own web browser (Safari) was unfair to the IE team at Microsoft.

What we learn from this is that inevitably there will be 3rd party developers that create revolutionary software that reinvents how users interact with their machines. And in some cases, depending on the idea, it might be strategically required by the 1st party (like Apple or Microsoft) to either buy or create their own application that completes this goal or idea. A good example of this would be Cover Flow. I remember downloading this app and testing it out for my iTunes library well before Apple purchased it. I recall enjoying the experience of leafing through my iTunes art, but the incomplete integration with iTunes left is relatively useless. Apple, noticing how awesome this technology is, how attractive it is to users, and how widespread its adoption could be (see Cover Flow inclusion into the Finder), made the strategic decision to acquire Cover Flow (or at least I assume they bought them. Being how they used the exact same name). The original developer probably landed a fat check or even a gig on the iTunes development team. Either way Apple and the 3rd party developer did what was necessary and both benifited.

We must notice, however, that this way does not always come up. We can’t always appease both the 1st party and the 3rd party. Although it looks good to mac users when Apple purchases a company instead of copying a company, we do not hold them to that very firmly. Let me just mention again Konfabulator and Dashboard. About 2 years later, we have basically forgotten Konfabulator’s existence and are content with what Apple provides us in Dashboard.

So basically a company has two options when it finds that a 3rd party has created either a very cool feature or a necessary utility for its product. The company can A) spend a little bit of money and acquire said 3rd party as well as garner good PR from users for “doing the right thing” or B) copy the 3rd party’s implementation and hope the user base does not get too upset. Option B does save a little money, but does that makeup for the hurt the company has caused the developer community and more specifically the individual developer?

Returning to my personal feelings for a second, as I watched Steve Jobs demonstrate the new Stack feature, which was basically ending all production I had been doing on Todos 2.0, I first didn’t really comprehend what was happening. Then as friends IMed me and talked about how “there goes Todos,” I was filled with a sense of anger and betrayal. All I had done was create an app for free that 50,000+ Mac users had downloaded and enjoyed. And this is how Apple repays me?

In essence, Apple truly depends on its developers. Without a solid 3rd party development community many products are dead, even more so for Operating Systems. Imagine if you bought a Mac and all the software you got on installed on it orignally was all you could ever use. You couldn’t download other apps because no one made other apps. Would you buy a Mac?

For this very reason, Apple must (both ethically and strategically) embrace its developer community not only in discounted hardware and early beta released but also with respect. If no 3rd party felt compelled to program for Apple, Apple would be thrown into bankruptcy. The very reason Apple is doing so well is the thriving developer support it is receiving. Just hours ago, Steve Jobs announced that more than 5,000 developers were attending WWDC this year, more than any other year. Also note that almost a million developers had registered as ADC members. The reason so many people are developing for Mac is that Apple has always had profound respect for its developers. Go back to the days where Kawasaki and others were pitching the first Macintosh to database companies and other large software developers. From the very beginning, Apple recognized the importance of its developers and has always treated them very well, not only in providing amazing development tools, but in time and money and effort to ensure that all its developers are well suited and well equipped to create their applications.

How then can I explain Apple’s treatment of Todos or Konfabulator. My guess on the Konfabulator issue is that either it was too costly for Apple to purchase Konfabulator (however unlikely that would be) or that Apple felt strongly in doing Dashboard in a drastically different way then Konfabulator (under the hood). For an application like Todos, I completely understand why they followed option B instead of option A. First of all, the implementation of Todos was not exact to what they had in mind. 2nd, the developers at Apple are more than qualified to create Todos or any implementation they had in mind. What I created was nothing impossible for any developer over at Apple. 3rd, I have to admit that they probably never had even seen Todos (I may be incorrect since Apple placed Todos as a featured application on the Productivity section on their downloads page, but either way). What this really boils down to is not some blatant rip-off copying that only Microsoft would go so low as today. It was cheaper for Apple to have their own developers program the Todos features into OS X by themselves and to not use or purchase Todos. We are not dealing with complex code that takes years to write. Todos is a very simple application with a very simple implementation. Apple simply could do it on their own perfectly fine and would gain absolutely no benefit through either association or purchase of Todos.

So what we can say is that 3rd parties must be realistic. If you’ve created something useful and Apple incorporates that, be flattered (even though they probably haven’t had any inspiration from you *wink*). Do not take it as an insult or any unethical behavior. Apple simply could use their resources better by creating it themselves and implementing it differently. They meant you no harm as evidenced by how important you are to them. As I said, developers are #1 on Apple’s priority list. They don’t want to purposefully tick you off or kill your spirits.

What we as 3rd party developers need to realize is that unless we’ve created something no one in the world has thought of, it’s not unfair for our 1st party to copy or implement ideas similar to ours. Its simply part of the evolution of their product. I sincerely believe that seeing the stack of applications look very much like Todos is a big compliment. It meant I was envisioning something that Apple, too, thought would be the future. My interface was where Apple thought the interface should be, and that should count for something. As a 3rd party, you have to at least agree that it’s very cool if you and Apple’s development team were thinking on the same track.

So in conclusion, I’d like to just reaffirm that “No, Apple I am not mad at you. In fact, I am flattered. And secondly, I will be developing for your platform for many years to come. So don’t worry. Just send me a 5 million dollar check next time ;)”

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