Opinion: Apple and the app future changes everything

By Jonny Evans

"We're all stars now, in the dope show."
Marilyn Manson

They say the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. When it comes to software development, you could say the route to the flame sits within over-complexity. This is the Apple [AAPL] effect in the Post-PC era: look at what the company is offering and it doesn't provide a Swiss Army knife, it offers potential. A potential unlocked by limited use apps which, in conjunction with other available solutions allow users to configure something like the solution they crave.

[ABOVE: US band, One Like Son, recorded their recent album using their iPhones and a few peripherals.]

The death of bloatware

Please stop to think about this. Take a look at the mature applications in the wider software market and you'll frequently hear the complaint, "bloatware".

Sure these applications can do everything you can possibly imagine all within one solution, but many of us only need them to operate a limited number of specific tasks. However, the current development model demands our computer system specs constantly increase, delivering limited performance for users on older machines.

If you think about it, a large, bloated software package is a set of restraints applied by a sadistic, rubber-clad captor. We know the solution can do anything, but to use it for those few things we want to do we are asked to submit to the master's will and buy not just the application but also new PCs capable of running the software.

This is the software equivalent of a street crime: if you want to live, you hand over your money, but what you end up paying for is what you already had in the first place. That's the built-in obsolescence of the old software upgrade model larger developers love so much. And while you don't need to upgrade immediately, you know that you will do so eventually, if only because older solutions compatible with your PC/Mac are no longer available.

Out with the old

The new app age changes the dynamic. It puts users in control. You want an app to add effects to images? There's an app for that. You want an app to effectively broadcast those images via your collection of social media? There's an app for that. Used together, you can select apps which will do just what you want with no major impact on device performance.

As the tablets and smartphones and other devices we use to run those apps improve, we'll see the difference between devices and PCs evaporate, and we'll be able to use our own individually-selected collections of apps to perform many of the things we currently depend on bloated software "suites" to perform.

Apple saw it coming. While the rest of the industry focused on adding features beyond sense in order to shore up sales, that company pruned its operating system of redundancy (Snow Leopard, Lion) while creating new platforms that enabled configurable apps. These moves put users first, freeing them from the bloated models of software upgrade restraint.

All aboard!

The future of software development is in apps. Developers of traditional apps (Adobe, Microsoft et al.) need to look at this change and respect it. As we become ever more used to apps-based solutions we'll begin to see less value in theirs.

An Office user won't just want the ability to buy Word for their PC, they'll expect Word's individual features (particularly the ones they don't use) to be made available as optional extras.

If all you do is use Word for writing, you'll want the basic application and a dictionary. If you do more, you'll be happier if you get to purchase extensions for the software which enable the features you need as you need them. In-app purchases of these additions will become de rigeur. Adobe can't rely on Photoshop to shore up its software sales forever, either. Particularly at the kind of prices it demands.

Big software developers can't afford to sit on their laurels. They must enthusiastically and quickly embrace this emerging software user zeitgeist before customers turn to the apps for those specific solutions they need.

Any move to limit this evolution -- through the introduction of new document or image-saving standards which are incompatible with other solutions, for example -- will spark rebellion. And users will win.

Keeping it real

Think about it: any form of submission at some point demands consent. There will come a time when the divide between the slavery implicit in the old 'one tool to rule them all' approach and the sense of autonomy of the configurable, solutions-focused app-based approach will grow too vast. Old software empires will collapse, finding their feet laid in dust, unless they move fast to where the market is going.

I'm not saying we won't still need sophisticated solutions... sometimes. What I'm saying is that these too will become trucks, just like the PCs we use to drive those bloated, system-taxing suites. As larger developers collapse, I see a future opportunity for open source developers. GIMP, anyone?

Today's application developers need to buckle up and act without fear. There's a historical analogy: I can still recall a time when Napster founder Shawn Fanning approached music labels for music distribution licenses. His argument? That if labels accepted small amounts in exchange for per-track distribution music fans would be happy to pay, and labels would see revenues rise. This didn't happen, and greedy, intellectually-limited music industry chiefs sealed the ghastly fate of what is arguably one of the most important industries on the planet. Music is universal, after all.

Denial is not an option

By refusing to move with the times and embrace new distribution models, the labels killed their own industry. This was death through fear, incomprehension and stupidity. We saw them glance up like rabbits in the glare of the oncoming juggernaut. Digging deep for a fight or flight response, they took the wrong choice and fell victim to the intellectually-challenged state of complacent corporate cant in an industry not run by creatives, but by lawyers and MBAs.

(That's the same kind of thinking which champions the utterly ridiculous SOPA legislation, by the way. This stupid censorship of the global consciousness as represented by SOPA's attempt to limit the freedom of the Internet is far too high a price to pay for protectionist laws designed to protect industries which are lazy, irrelevant and too complacent to change.)

In future we'll realize the apps economy is just as disruptive to old-time software development models as digital has been to the music industry. In time we'll see the old dinosaurs fade, or evolve.

Most of us won't feel the difference, we'll still find those configurable selections of limited-use apps which together deliver the overall solutions we need. And why should anyone be concerned at the fate of a few complacent corporations if we can still find the tools we need for the things we choose to do with our hard-evolved opposable thumbs? In time this won't be an opinion, but a historical fact. Are you ready?

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