No, not that one. Atkinson. I was already thinking about him today with all this business of how Apple is handling the App Store and then I read this old Wired article that came through reddit late today. It also reminded me of Ron Avitzur. Both wanted to do something cool on the Apple platform and had to “Think Different” to get it out there.
I was also reminded of how I was driven to a Macintosh Plus because it seemed ridiculous that I would have to submit my chemistry lab results on graph paper or a craptastic DOS program. CricketDraw blew me away and I was so inspired I would attach MacPaint (thanks again Bill) sketches to my reports. Can you remember how wild it was that you could drag-and-drop graphics into Word? I bought a PowerBook 100 series on my own to use at my first job when I got frustrated with my DOS-based spreadsheet program.
So there’s a history of revolutionary hardware and software from Apple. And a history of revolutionaries that have had to confront © Apple Inc. Even Jobs got bit by his own company.
Apple does well with software and hardware, but experiences dukkha when dealing with people directly.
Funny. I just saw a Palm Pre ad as I’m typing this up.
It’s been 2 years and a month since the iPhone was launched. Happy anniversary.
Bill Atkinson’s HyperCard was my introduction to programming. To this day, there’s no match for this amazing software. It was forgotten and cancelled eventually.
Let’s hope that all this bad PR does something and Apple rethinks their actions.
I’m willing to bet that your iPhone app was removed because Google complained. When the google voice app was rejected, they went to apple and said “Why can he have the google voice app and not us?”