This is, literally, incoherent. The iPhone is a "fad", because:
most of the attention being paid to it has to do with applications and games, not telephony.
A few paragraphs later, under the list of "dead technologies", we have... "telephony".
Meanwhile, on his list of hot technologies is: alternative interfaces (where the guy actually cites the iPhone as an example!), portability, location-specific apps, intelligent recommenders, and sensor networks. All of which are being explored on the iPhone platform.
Maybe he means the general glut of wholly worthless iPhone apps that merely translate some web app or some gimmick onto the device. As an iPhone developer, I agree that most of what is going on falls into the fad category. If that's what he is talking about, then he's right. Don't sink time into building such-and-such for the iPhone when you could be exploring any of the other worthwhile areas he outlines in the list.
And since when providing 'fadware (for lack of a better term) is an inherently bad thing? People are having fun with theire device, for a couple of bucks. Are we geeks critisizing anyone for /that/? C'om on.
By "telephony," he is referring to "in particular, dedicated lines and switched services."
Note that he isn't saying that mobile devices are a fad, but that the iPhone in particular is a fad. He is recommending not to develop apps for it. As we have seen on countless articles on HN, betting on a single app's success is like playing the lottery.
Do you mean the first time he used the word "telephony", or the second time? ;)
This seems to be what he meant the second time. But then what did he mean the first time? What does he think the iPhone should be for, if not for nearly every single thing on his list of up-and-coming technologies?
Meanwhile, I can respect the argument that the iPhone's app store is so crowded or so oddly designed that no matter how good your app is it's unlikely to find an audience. And I can respect the argument that, in many cases, something like Android is a better choice of platform than iPhone because Apple might veto you at various points. These, however, are not arguments that were made by the original submitter.
And I have very little sympathy for the "oh, it's just a passing fad" argument. Our entire field may be a passing fad, every existing mobile platform is a passing fad, people used to claim that the web was a passing fad, and my entire life is, if not a fad, quite definitely passing. If you want to experiment with a portable, location-specific app that has an alternative interface, what should you do? Deploy on a platform with no installed base and make all three of your users very happy? Raise N million dollars to market the thing that you stapled together in your basement, taking on an enormous risk? Sit around theorizing until the perfect platform with a perfectly-sized userbase with perfect demographics is presented to you by your fairy godmother?
Certainly a platform that sits squarely in the middle of your vision for the future of technology shouldn't be dismissed out of hand. It might even be worth working with for a while. Technology careers are all about brachiation: You stick with one thing long enough to spy something else to grab onto.
Here's my opinion on fads -- you gotta take a risk BEFORE they're ultra-popular and make sure that some of the first apps available for them are yours.
Then, as the apps market becomes more saturated, either: (1) diversify by developing LOTS of apps or by congregating other apps under your brand, or (2) become a freelance developer for that platform, advertising your first-app-to-market experience.
If you're a latecomer to the market and didn't take that initial risk, your chances of success don't seem to be great -- the market is saturated, and you don't have the platform experience to attract the highest hourly wages. (And now, getting experience by making apps won't be as profitable since the market is saturated.)
The type of risk that you propose to take has a fundamental issue for startups. As a startup, you can't do anything to make a platform itself ultra-popular. Say, you develop a new hip location-based service for Palm Web OS, but Palm Web OS never passes a few million users. You can do nada about it.
But what is worse, during that time, you don't learn much about your own service, because your biggest problem is to get any users for it. When you then decide to port it to more successful platforms, you still don't know what works, what gets people excited about your service etc.
In a contrast, on an ultra-popular platform, if your service goes unrecognized, you can do something about it and you can learn from your efforts. You try out different marketing techniques, maybe they don't work, but all the time you are learning and getting feedback of your effors.
I agree, but if you wait until a platform gets to be ultra-popular before developing, the chance of great success is much lower. It's classic risk vs. reward.
Apps aren't that difficult to make, so taking early risks on platforms like Facebook (with already a large userbase) and the iPhone (backed by Apple) aren't that bad, even if the platform fails.
"Don't build a framework ... It's advice the Perl Parrot and Radaku [sic] projects should probably have heeded ages ago, advice the Ruby on Rails people should keep in mind today."
Why does he cite open source projects as examples of things not to build in a startup context? The fact that Awesome Project X isn't (a) going to make lots of money right off the start, and (b) isn't currently the most popular project in its area doesn't mean it shouldn't be worked on at all...
most of the attention being paid to it has to do with applications and games, not telephony.
A few paragraphs later, under the list of "dead technologies", we have... "telephony".
Meanwhile, on his list of hot technologies is: alternative interfaces (where the guy actually cites the iPhone as an example!), portability, location-specific apps, intelligent recommenders, and sensor networks. All of which are being explored on the iPhone platform.