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Not to give any more attention to the pretty girl at the party (and since Nick was relatively complementary to them yesterday), but what were they thinking? Every single developer I know is mystified by Apple’s lack of an API for the iPhone. As gorgeous as it is, even at the lower price point, I won’t consider buying one – at least until I see the Google phone, which won’t be half as pretty, but will surely have an easy-to-implement API.

Hacked Anyway

Perhaps the most standard objection to an API-less system is that it will be hacked anyway, which has been proven time and time again. Nothing will stop a sixteen year old, hyped on new-fashioned energy drinks, from having their way with your device. The guy who is going to take down the entire AT&T network when he turns all the iPhones into voice-spam spewing zombies is going to do it anyway. The rest of the development community (any device’s biggest fans and earliest adopters) is incidentally criminalized, which doesn’t breed goodwill. Don’t taint your relationship with your biggest product evangelists.

Giving in to a Better Experience

So, what’s a better business strategy given the inevitability of the hack? There’s only one course of action (you probably guessed it from the title of this post). You must accede and provide an API.

Daniel Quinn in Beyond Civilization provides this bit of wisdom (albeit about the problem of homelessness, but perfectly applicable here):

Engineers can’t afford to fail as consistently as politicians and bureaucrats, so they prefer accidence to resistance (as I do). For example, they know that no structure can be made rigid enough to resist an earthquake. So, rather than defy the earthquake’s power by building rigid structures, they accede to it by building flexible ones. To accede is not merely to give in but rather to give in while drawing near; one may accede not only to an argument but to a throne. Thus the earthquake-proof building survives not by defeating the earthquake’s power but by acknowledging it – by drawing it in and dealing with it.

With your newly minted API in tow, you can court the developer community (again, arguably the single most powerful voice in determining the success of your device, aka the earthquake), working closely with them to make sure all the crazy things they want to do are done in a way acceptable to you.

In this way, you avoid getting lumped into the defective-by-design category (and if you can name me one def-by-design product that has succeeded long term, I’ll buy you a cherry soda).

You also get billed as a people-friendly company. People really do fall in love with companies, but love is fickle, and will fade if corporate interest seems to trump consumer satisfaction.

Free Killer Applications

Most importantly, the most popular applications, indeed probably the application that tips people’s wallets over the edge, will come from outside developers.

I have faith in Apple. It’s quite likely AT&T killed an API advocated by Apple (pure speculation here). But if Apple or AT&T ever doubted, look at Facebook. The time, attention, and money devoted to their API are far beyond my meager imagination. Of course, only a small percentage of these applications will be worth anything, but the time and attention paid to Facebook in the process are invaluable and one of the major reasons Facebook is the fastest expanding social application. I can’t even imagine what iPhone sales would have looked like with an API on day 1, but I hope to find out on day 101.