I see that Troy has commented on some of the latest weirdness from Apple's app store approval process. However, it looks to me like Dare Obasanjo has injected a note of realism into the debate: he makes an observation about Joe Hewitt's "heroic" removal of himself from working on iPhone apps. He pulls a lengthy quote from Hewitt:

The Internet has been incredibly empowering to creators, and just as destructive to middle men. In the 20th century, every musician needed a record label to get his or her music heard. Every author needed a publishing house to be read. Every journalist needed a newspaper. Anyone who wanted to send a message needed the post office. In the Internet age, the tail no longer wags the dog, and those middle men have become a luxury, not a necessity.

Meanwhile, the software industry is moving in the opposite direction. With the web and desktop operating systems, the only thing in between software developers and users is a mesh of cables and protocols. In the new world of mobile apps, a layer of bureacrats stand in the middle, forcing each developer to queue up for a series of patdowns and metal detectors and strip searches before they can reach their customers. ...

We're at a critical juncture in the evolution of software. The web is still here and it is still strong. Anyone can still put any information or applications on a web server without asking for permission, and anyone in the world can still access it just by typing a URL. I don't think I appreciated how important that is until recently. Nobody designs new systems like that anymore, or at least few of them succeed. What an incredible stroke of luck the web was, and what a shame it would be to let that freedom slip away.

The funny thing is, Facebook (Hewitt's employer) is nothing if not a walled garden. Or, as Dare put it:

Am I the only one who thinks the above excerpt would be similarly apt if you replaced the phrase "mobile apps" with "Facebook apps" or "OpenSocial apps"?

He's got a point. Hewitt complaining about Apple's closed system is a pretty good grab at willful blindness :)

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