5 Reasons the Palm Pre’s App Store Can’t Beat the iPhone’s

Loads are trying their hand, but no one seems to be able to push Apple out of the #1 position when it comes to serious innovation in getting applications out onto phones. Their app store and its inherent organization and closed system are just too strong, and there are an absolute ton of great developers out there too.

#5: Planning ahead always works

You’ve got some software and hardware makers who change up their plans every few months, and bombard the market with more phone models than is ever necessary. Apple didn’t do this — they just made the one phone, worked insanely hard on making it really good, and haven’t deviated from that plan so far.

#4: Developers, Developers, Developers!

Since there is already an extremely healthy, motivated, and design-conscious community of developers out there doing work for OSX (and who have been working with macs for a long time), it means that apple’s development kits are very good, and there are already a lot of people who know how to write great software. A lot of these people are now working on the iPhone, too.

#3: The iPhone’s operating system is easily the best

This was actually the simplest, most obvious move of all: if you make the phone, and only make one of them, you can make the OS, too. Unlike all those other phone OS’es (including Google Android) that are supposed to run on dozens, if not hundreds of phones, the iPhone’s is perfectly designed to take advantage of that hardware, and the apps see an amazing jump in quality.

#2: The underdog role suited them extremely well

There were an absolute ton of naysayers out there just chomping at the bit to see the iPhone die, and because of all the other guys in the market, there was no way Apple was going to muscle in and take over. And so when the app store really took off (never mind the initial success of the phone itself), Apple could stand there and smile.

#1: When your standards are high up top, it trickles down

When you’ve got a company kicking absolute ass when it comes to their hardware, software, and all the included apps, and insisting on some of the smallest, most design-conscious decisions that make a huge difference to the end-user, these same standards trickle down to the developers and make everything great.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 7th, 2009 at 12:05 pm and is filed under iPhones. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.