Success is relative, and it wouldn’t take much of one to make Palm look spectacular compared to their performance the past couple of years.

Just a thought.

Apple, just as deliberately, made the opposite choice — almost a “my way or the highway” message to developers, as well as far less hand-holding. This allowed for more clearly focused platform design, and arguably, a higher average application quality. But the Mac market shrunk due to this disadvantage and, especially as industry-specific one-off applications became more and more significant, the business market voted for Windows, dragging most of the rest of us along with it.

Will this be a concern for the iPhone long-term? It is not as clear that the smartphone market shares many of the same driving forces as the PC market. As long as the smartphone remains a simple, broad-based device, absolutely not — that covets Apple’s strengths, and does not strongly value Microsoft’s approach. If (or when) smartphones start to take on more and more single-purpose functionality requiring low-level customization, Apple’s SDK restrictions, and their history of less-than-stellar developer support, could very well put them at a disadvantage compared to Android, Palm, or even WinCE. Of course, even for that to matter, some person (or, more likely, corporate shop) would have to develop a fantastically useful application that is either not possible with the iphone SDK or not possible without the levels of support Apple historically has not provided.

Apple has a strong headstart with a great platform, though, and an object lesson in their own history. Hopefully, should that danger being to materialize, they can adapt accordingly before losing the lion’s share of another market.

I’ve been a fanboy over twenty years and I’m still standing. Proof that your dreams ain’t gonna happen. BWAHAHAHAHA!!!!