reverie said:
Actually 5 million is only iPhones and only what they've sold on the first 6 months. There's also the iPod Touch and Apple has a 10 million forecast for calendar 2008. There will be 20 to 30 million Touch devices in consumer's hands by the end of 2008.
Problems I see that haven't been mentioned before:
- Short hardware cycles. A console/handheld system is usually sold for 5 to 10 years, while Apple so far has replaced iPods year after year. This gives less comfort to both developers and consumers.
- Touch feels great, but it is unprecise and blocks your view. |
I'm really glad you brought that up. Apple will release a new iphone every year, probably with a faster cpu. How can apple avoid the mess that the PC got itself into? I think what apple needs to do is mandate that 3rd party developers have all their apps run on all iphones within 2 years of its discontinuation. 2 years is the necessary amount so that even if a consumer buys an iphone right before that model is discontinued, he/she will be able to run every app there is until his contract expires. the problem will be that developers will need to both develop for multiple hardware models, as well as update their previous apps to run on newer models. Apple can ease this by giving developers access to the hardware months before it is commercially available, an make sure that the new model is sufficiently similar to the old one.
Note that this doesn't mean that developers can't take advantage of the new hardware. EA can make a game that runs on 2 year old iphones, but has better graphics on the newest model. Developers do this for the PC all the time. that's why the PC gaming market can exist at all. What makes the market suffer is when Developers ignore the old hardware and focus just on graphics. By mandating that all devs develop with old hardware in mind, this problem will be avoided.
