The argument has been made that for every iphone developer that would quit making apps another (or two) would take their place. And that may be true. But a developer that has quit is not going to sit around and do nothing.
He's going to use his expertise gained on the one platform to make a go of it on the other. So an exodus of frustrated developers is really a very big problem.
Of course the customers will never know of anything like that happening behind the scenes. But they'll see their buddies with their shiny non-apple phones do stuff that they'd like to be able to do.
Where developers go, customers follow, you ignore them at your peril.
At the same time developers follow customers. ;) It goes both ways.
But yeah, I agree with you. Do it at your peril, and they tried, kept going probably thinking the pros. out-weighted the cons, and eventually after 2 years pushing it, they relented.
That's all I am saying. And yes, I admit Apple would have sticked to its guns for a little bit longer (basically until, like in today's mac, users were so familiar with the mac UI, that any rougue developer would change it at his peril ;) ).
But anyway, customers feedback or developers feedback (as you point out) is very very different from the trolls and haters you see populating internet forums. :)
He's going to use his expertise gained on the one platform to make a go of it on the other. So an exodus of frustrated developers is really a very big problem.
Of course the customers will never know of anything like that happening behind the scenes. But they'll see their buddies with their shiny non-apple phones do stuff that they'd like to be able to do.
Where developers go, customers follow, you ignore them at your peril.