Is Apple Becoming The New AOL?
Friday, April 9, 2010 at 6:03AM 
With the iPhone OS 4.0 event, Apple added some great user features like multitasking and folder organization for apps. And perhaps the most important non-user feature (maybe even an anti-user feature) is Apple's iAds system. Apple will be providing engaging (obtrusive?) ads at the OS level, and splitting the revenue with the app developers.
Here we are with a mobile ecosystem of over 185,000 apps, and now an integrated ad system to go with it. Probably half of the iPhone apps are specialized version of content otherwise available online: wikipedia, netflix, ABC, etc. Most sites present their information in a better layout in an iPhone-specific app. While Safari will probably stay on the iPhone, at some point, if Apple eliminated the browser, would you still be able to get to all the information you want on the iPhone? (Note: we are working on our own iPhone app.)
Apple, with the help of developers, is creating what amounts to an internet replacement: a secondary, walled garden of Apple-approved information. From the everything old is new again department, this all seems like AOL all over again: a corporate-approved, sanitized world of information, serving as a subset of the entire internet.
Sure many apps use the iPhone in novel ways, but do the app store offerings replace the internet for you on the go?