Summary

Gruber responds to David Pierce's Verge piece in which Pierce concluded that despite believing Android is a better OS than iOS, he still prefers the iPhone because the App Store ecosystem is vastly superior. Gruber uses this as a springboard to revisit his long-running thesis — first articulated in 2010 and expanded in 2023 — that app quality, not quantity or raw OS capability, is what sustains Apple's platform advantage. He argues that developers and users who care about design, craft, and artistry have self-sorted onto iOS, creating a cultural gulf rather than an equilibrium. But he warns this edge is eroding because Apple is squeezing developers for App Store rent rather than cultivating their loyalty. His conclusion: Apple's real goldmine isn't its transaction cut but the fact that the best apps live on its platforms, and it should treat developer relations as the protective moat it actually is.

Key Insight

Apple's durable competitive advantage is the quality of third-party apps on its platforms, and treating the App Store as a rent-extraction machine erodes the very developer motivation that creates that advantage.

Spicy Quotes (click to share)

• 6

  Apple would be wise to cultivate a further widening of this third-party software-quality gulf through radically improved developer relations, rather than attempting to squeeze additional rent from this advantage.

• 5

  The real goldmine isn't that Apple gets a cut of every App Store transaction. It's that Apple's platforms have the best apps, and users who are drawn to the best apps are thus drawn to the iPhone, Mac, and iPad.

• 6

  That edge is waning. Not because software on other platforms is getting better, but because third-party software on iPhone, Mac, and iPad is regressing to the mean.

• 6

  They should do whatever it takes to make their cut of App Store transactions feel like a beneficial bargain to developers, not an oppressive tax.

• 4

  Having the most apps matters, but having the best apps matters too.

• 8

  Either you know that software can be art, and often should be, or you think what I'm talking about here is akin to astrology.

• 6

  Most people who prioritize other things can't fathom why anyone cares deeply about design/UI/UX because they don't perceive it.

• 7

  Those who see and appreciate the artistic value in software and interface design have overwhelmingly wound up on iOS; those who don't have wound up on Android.

Tone

opinionated