On the App Store
Adam Lisagor discusses reasons Apple may insist that iPhone applications are available on and not in the App Store.
Let’s look at it another way: what destinations built for the trade of goods would the word “on” apply to? I could say I bought a song on iTunes, but when I speak of it like that, I think of iTunes as more of a network for content rather than an outlet, much in the same way I’d say I saw 30 Rock on NBC or heard my favorite song on my favorite radio station. So does this mean that Apple likes to think of its iTunes Stores as networks? And if the iTunes App Store is a network rather than a retail outlet, what does that make the apps it sells? And herein lies the real question: is an app a product or is it content?
I’ve always thought of an iPhone app, like any other software, as a product. Perhaps this has something to do with tying my first memories of software programs to the boxes in which they were sold, on the shelves at retail outlets like Egghead and CompUSA. But clearly, Apple thinks of apps differently. Apple, it seems, thinks of apps as content created by developers in the way that music is created by musicians and movies are created by filmmakers.
