The Sparrow Acquisition Is A Good Thing

Selligy Weblog: “This is not a good trend for Apple. Apple is depending on apps like Sparrow to make the iOS platform shine. Excellent apps like Sparrow cost a lot of money to build and maintain. Apple should be working hard to ensure independent app developers can earn even more than top salaries at Google, or they will all be poached away.”

Why should, or would, Apple care about keeping developers around? If someone walked up to me with a big pile of cash and wanted to acquire my popular, or unpopular app, and I felt it was a good thing, I’d do it in a heartbeat. So would a lot of people. This is the American Free Market at its best. A company puts together a group of talented people, creates a product people love, and gets the attention of a bigger company. That bigger company comes along and gobbles up the talent. Sure, as a user of Sparrow you may be a bit bummed, but it won’t last for long. As a little guy just getting started this is an opportunity. It means if I wanted to, I could pick up where Sparrow left off and create a great email client that looks and acts just like it. Filling that hole. Heck, maybe I’ll do something MUCH better. It will happen.

I have a feeling there is a company, or individual, out there today, slinging code in hopes to bring a new Sparrow-like client to life.

That’s pretty exciting.