The Phone and iPod apps are special, because at a fundamental level they perform tasks that cannot be duplicated in a web app. But there’s nothing any more special about Mail than there is about, say, Calendar.
He's wrong. The Mail app would be near and dear to Jobs because he wants to take over the market of Blackberry and similar devices also. Keeping a web browser open in order to receive mail pushed real-time from an Exchange server would be extremely awkward.
The problem is that the apps that are the most interesting, the most important, are the ones that take the most work to create. And the apps that take the most work to create are the ones that are most likely not even to be made in this environment, because the risk is greater.
I find this argument appealing because if Apple took it seriously, it would lead to a more open development process. Unfortunately, I'm not sure the logic is sound -- innovative or important applications aren't necessarily big, so the development cost of one needn't be much more than any other application. If innovative applications are more the product of chance and insight than long development cycles, Apple only needs to attract many developers, not big developers.
However, if you assume the logic is correct, then Android may end up helping the iPhone: If a developer has an idea for the iPhone that requires significant investment, they can develop it first for Android for some payoff, then (with development costs largely sunk) they can port to the iPhone. The net result is that the iPhone would get a large, innovative application that it wouldn't have gotten had Android not existed.
I have a feeling that porting from Java/Android SDK to ObjC/Cocoa/iPhone SDK is probably still a lot of extra effort and presents many hazards of its own...
Granted, but I'd guess the major cost of an application is coming up with the idea and working out the functionality and any user interface issues. With that cost sunk, porting -- or even rewriting from scratch -- could well be worth it, especially if you can already gauge the popularity on one platform.
Along those lines, I think we'll quickly see the most popular iPhone applications either ported to Android by their original authors or cloned outright by others.
It's a long article. Quick summary: NDA is gone, but for the App Store you still can't trust Apple in the sense that you need to trust a ladder before you'd climb it. It's not unreasonable to insist that Apple write down some rules and stick to them regarding accepting applications for the App Store.
Just because the concepts are sound, how do you know the ladder was well-constructed, doesn't have any damage that might weaken its structure, etc? You need to trust the company that built the ladder to make quality ladders, and you need to trust the individual ladder to not have any major faults.
He's wrong. The Mail app would be near and dear to Jobs because he wants to take over the market of Blackberry and similar devices also. Keeping a web browser open in order to receive mail pushed real-time from an Exchange server would be extremely awkward.