1) Apple doesn't care about you, personally. No one knows you exist. They don't need you to sell iPhones. Even if they needed third-party apps (which is debatable), if you left the platform, there would be a hundred thousand more people scrambling to take your place.
2) You are presumably developing for the iPhone instead of doing, oh, Enterprise Sales because you don't want to do Enterprise Sales or you are not good at doing Enterprise Sales. You are doing Enterprise Sales. The Enterprise doesn't care about the product you're selling enough to devote more than 5 minutes a week from a call center in India to the deal. If you have doubts as to whether this is a good sign, consult with your local Enterprise Sales engineer and ask what stage in the pipeline he thinks you are probably in.
3) If you stopped developing for the iPhone and started developing web applications or desktop applications or, indeed, almost any other type of software, you wouldn't have to ask anyone's permission to sell your software or improve your software.
4) It seems that you're spending an awful lot of engineering time trying to get permission to market your software to people who think it is worth $2, on the outside. Here's a thought: how about spending that time actually marketing software itself, and charge anywhere from 15 to 500,000 times as much.
If you stopped developing for the iPhone and started developing web applications or desktop applications or, indeed, almost any other type of software, you wouldn't have to ask anyone's permission to sell your software or improve your software.
Not everyone wants to write desktop or web applications.
My choice to work with the iPhone is a technical decision -- the hacker in me will stick with the platform because I love writing code for it -- at least until it's clear that it makes no sense for my business.
I'll continue to voice my concerns because I see the technical value of what Apple has created and the potential for Apple to improve.
If I were writing desktop applications, I would be writing them for the Mac, as well. I don't want to see Apple turn to the darkside, on the iPhone or otherwise.
[Edit] The downvoting to -0 on this comment and others in this thread is, in my opinion, entirely inappropriate. My argument is cogent, and if it doesn't match your worldview I might suggest that you attempt a cogent reply in return, rather than downvoting opinions you disagree into the negatives.
1) Apple doesn't care about you, personally. No one knows you exist. They don't need you to sell iPhones. Even if they needed third-party apps (which is debatable), if you left the platform, there would be a hundred thousand more people scrambling to take your place.
2) You are presumably developing for the iPhone instead of doing, oh, Enterprise Sales because you don't want to do Enterprise Sales or you are not good at doing Enterprise Sales. You are doing Enterprise Sales. The Enterprise doesn't care about the product you're selling enough to devote more than 5 minutes a week from a call center in India to the deal. If you have doubts as to whether this is a good sign, consult with your local Enterprise Sales engineer and ask what stage in the pipeline he thinks you are probably in.
3) If you stopped developing for the iPhone and started developing web applications or desktop applications or, indeed, almost any other type of software, you wouldn't have to ask anyone's permission to sell your software or improve your software.
4) It seems that you're spending an awful lot of engineering time trying to get permission to market your software to people who think it is worth $2, on the outside. Here's a thought: how about spending that time actually marketing software itself, and charge anywhere from 15 to 500,000 times as much.