Why is Apple Restricting Third-Party iPhone Apps?

I had an epiphany last night about why Apple (AAPL) is restricting third-party software applications for its soon-to-launch iPhone:

It's about power.

No, this isn't about some conspiracy within Apple to control all development for the iPhone. It's about power as in, "How do we get decent battery life out of a complex smart phone that's also a music/video player and a Wifi-enabled Internet communicator?" Consumers haven't exactly been forgiving when Apple's batteries don't live up to their expectations. And the iPhone poses a big challenge in this regard.

The problem is that the iPhone is a blend of a phone and a full-fledged Mac OS X computer. Most developers don't give a whit about how much power their software consumes. After all, the processor is running anyway; why not use it? The result: most developers are happy to burn processor cycles to get their jobs done, since they view them as having no cost. You can see that in Dashboard widgets available for the Mac today that poll endlessly for everything from the weather to updates of YouTube and Facebook pages. Yes, they are useful, but they both burn processor cycles and require an open Internet connection to work.

But unlike full-fledged Macs, phones don't really have a sleep mode. As long as they are on, they need to be able to do routine housekeeping matters like beaconing, cell handoffs, and listening for incoming calls. So any software that runs on the iPhone has to do what it needs to as quickly as possible, and then retreat into a low-power-consumption mode. Think of it like the type of cooperative multi-tasking that was done in the Mac OS before version X, and you have the idea. This is made even more important by the inclusion of power-hungry WiFi networking in the iPhone. No matter how clever you are, keeping up a 100 Mbit/sec WiFi link is going to drain a phone battery in hours, not days, unless there's careful management of its use.

Now Apple can enforce this type of behavior easily in its own user-driven programs like Safari and Mail. Cooperative, well-power-managed software should yield an iPhone battery life similar to other smart phones on the market. But without control over what the software does and how it does it, all bets on battery life would be off. With arbitrary software, the iPhone could easily get a reputation as a power-hungry beast that just doesn't have enough battery power to succeed. After all, John Dvorak has already claimed as much in a podcast earlier this month; Apple has too much invested in the iPhone and its success to allow such unintended consequences to spoil the launch of this flagship product.

Do I think this is a permanent state of affairs? No. I bet that we'll see an Apple World-Wide Developer conference track in 2008 that addresses how to develop software for the iPhone to meet its power profile requirements. But the iPhone has to be a consumer success first for developers to succeed in this market. And that means creating a great consumer experience in every dimension including battery life -- even if it means keeping outside developers waiting for their shot at the market Apple is creating.

UPDATE: MacScoop had a story yesterday citing someone who has worked with the iPhone saying that the iPhone battery life may be better than advertised, although they don't have any particular reason. I have a theory though: my belief is that Leopard power management improvements and better power management tweaks in the bundled applications are now making their way into the iPhone builds, thereby improving the battery life results.

Comments

[Tom B:]

Even the iPod had battery issues on its 1.0 release. We can't expect instant perfection, but AAPL has been good in recent years about getting TO perfection ASAP.

2007 Apr 20 08:57 AM

[jbelkin:]

Whatever the reason, the no third party apps seems to send people into a tizzy - why? Sales of smartphone PDA's are not exactly setting the world on fire - if anything sales are trending downward so being able to load 3rd party apps is clearly not driving the smartphone PDA market.

Then when you look at what people are adding - it's PRODUCTIVITY & UTILITY apps to replace the crappy productivity and utility apps - what's the point again? Touting that you can add a third SYNC software is really not saying much of anything.

Sure, there are apps for in-field inventory, prescription medication DB or forest logging but does Apple really compatbility with those apps to drive sales. Do any of those apps work with 99% of cellphones - no. Clearly the much, much bigger market is the "general" user - if you can read emails, look at phones, play music, video and snap a few pictures AND you can surf the web - what can't you do on the web now? What more do you need? Do you really need a 3rd party Adobe Reader when Preview works better? Do you need to a $39 Excel spreadsheet viewer when you can use a web page?

People sometimes only can see the 2 feet in front of them and parrot whatever they've always parroted but like the Mac or the ipod, be careful of sounding like Steve Ballmer who is clueless about anything not in the past.

2007 Apr 20 11:25 PM