About Being Open

Here's an excellent post by the design firm Kontra about the iPhone vs Android. They do a great job of illuminating the myth that Google is great and Apple sucks because Android is open source.

In a nut: Google and Apple are both for-profit companies who fiercely guard their revenue streams. Apple makes money selling hardware, Google makes money selling advertisements. Google doesn't care about locking down Android, but how come they're not open sourcing AdSense? Berating Apple for not opening up the iPhone platform is akin to asking Google to open source AdSense.

I'm not saying the App Store is perfect or that Apple shouldn't be absolutely clear about exactly what gets in and what stays out, but you can't blame them for protecting their revenue, just as Google does. Just as every good company does.