4 ms·

> People hate being held down, forced into one category, etc. Here's an alternative take on this (with a story). I recently saw Thomas Keller (chef and owner o

> People hate being held down, forced into one category, etc. Here's an alternative take on this (with a story). I recently saw Thomas Keller (chef and owner of Per Se here in NYC and French Laundry in CA, among others) talking about a new-ish restaurant of his in CA, Ad Hoc. Ad Hoc has no menus. They make meals and serve them family style. You take what you want from the dishes provided. You have choice only within that range. He argued that true luxury was the freedom from choice. Now in a political context, this is Orwellian and terrifying. But in the context of a meal, it made a lot of sense to me. Let a great chef do his or her magic, and I will try any damn thing they put in front of me and thank them for the privilege. For us as hackers, computer use is more like politics. We want the openness to do what we want, to dig around, to break things and fix them again, to change things. For most people, however, computer use is more like a meal. Give them some great toys to play with and they won't mind the limitations at all.

MrSartorial 17y ago
I actually agree with you 100% that people love something that's easy to play with. That's what I meant when I said that Apple's simplicity is their strength. What I'm talking about is a difference between "open" turnkey and "closed" turnkey. I love turnkey, and so do a lot of people. Who wants to fuss with installing new software, etc.? That's my perspective. Closed-systems are much easier to make turnkey, but they aren't the only alternative. Just because something is open, doesn't mean that it can't be simple. It CAN be tinkered with, but it doesn't have to be to make it work. That response is shorter than I'd like, but I have to run unfortunately.
- actf 17y ago
  Very well said - I really can't understand why so many people on HN think turnkey == closed. Sure there is a correlation, but is it just me or does it seem like everyone has forgotten that correlation != causation.
lambda 17y ago
But, this isn't about giving the users freedom from choice; with 140,000 options in the App Store, that's a lot of choices. This is explicitly about locking developers down, and not allowing them to do things that Apple does not approve of. Want to write a competing web browser? Sorry, you can't. Want to write an awesome JIT that optimizes itself for their shiny new chip? No can do. Imagine if this policy had been in place on their desktop or laptop computers. Half of the technologies that they themselves use and tout as great would not exist. LLVM/clang? WebKit? Heck, the Mach and BSD kernels that this is all built on. None of this would have been created in a closed ecosystem with restrictive policies, and yet Apple is perfectly happy to take advantage of it while not letting anyone else play in their sandbox. The hypocrisy of their policies makes me sick.
- GHFigs 17y ago
  Half of the technologies that they themselves use and tout as great would not exist. Except the ones you listed do exist and are open for anybody else to go use and build their own great products, even using the work that Apple put into them.
- enneff 17y ago
  You could see it another way: Want to write a competing web browser that will confuse people (why do I need another web browser?), no can do. It's a quality control issue. The iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad do specific things and do them well. They are not personal computers. They are web browsers, music players, calendars, etc. The customer is paying for a device that does these things. They don't want (or arguably need) a personal computer. Why would you want to develop LLVM on an iPad? Do you honestly think that Apple would junk their desktop OS in favour of an App Store-driven laptop/desktop experience? Developers write code on personal computers. Apple is not a closed ecosystem because of this fact alone. There is room in Apple's world for 3rd party innovation - it's just not on their consumer products.
  - lambda 17y ago
    How does an alternative web browser confuse people? Has Firefox been taking market share from IE because it confuses people? No, it's because Microsoft got complacent, and let their browser rot, and some open-source hackers managed to produce a product that was better enough that even many non-technical people who barely know what a browser is run Firefox because it's faster and more secure. And Apple is not immune to this sort of problem; there are alternative products that they forbid that really can improve the experience (for instance, better podcast clients, email clients that are optimized for Gmail, and the like). And given the quantity of software they have on the app store, and how crappy some of it is, it's not about quality control at all; it's about the fact that Apple simply wants control, and doesn't want any third-party developers getting too big or too powerful. The point about LLVM is not about developing LLVM on an iPad. It's about the fact that you can't use such technology on the iPad. If I want to develop a product to run on the iPad, and that product would be greatly improved by containing a JIT or an interpreter, I cannot distribute that on the iPad; it is forbidden. And this means that there is less of a market for developing such things in general. If the hardware that the consumers have and use forbids me from selling them a product with an interpreter in it, then there's a lot less of a reason for me to produce that interpreter in the first place. I write interactive educational multimedia software that's scripted in a dialect of Scheme. The iPad may be a great platform that we could port our software to; the screen is a perfect size for our type of content, it supports video, composited graphics and animation, and multitouch interaction could really improve some of our simulations. However, we cannot run our Scheme interpreter on the iPad. Writing a compiler would be prohibitively expensive for our small team, as would porting all of our content to JavaScript, the only interpreted language you are allowed to run on the iPhone/iPad. Apple is explicitly preventing me from porting the software I would like to the iPad. But you don't hear as much about people like me, who simply turn away from the iPhone or iPad and don't develop software for it. You hear about the success stories; the people who made a quick buck selling a fart app for the iPhone. The only cases in which you do hear about people being turned away are cases in which people did make the initial investment, developed the software, and then were turned down; but because most people don't want to risk that, they never bother developing the software in the first place if they think there's a high chance that Apple will reject it.
thechangelog 17y ago
> For us as hackers, computers is more like politics... For most people, however, computer use is more like a meal. Very well put.
CamperBob 17y ago
He argued that true luxury was the freedom from choice. Now in a political context, this is Orwellian and terrifying. But in the context of a meal, it made a lot of sense to me. Let a great chef do his or her magic, and I will try any damn thing they put in front of me and thank them for the privilege. Sometimes even Apple doesn't get that. There was a great example of this principle in one of the slides the Engadget blogger took during Jobs's presentation (http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/27/live-from-the-apple-tablet-latest-creation-event/?sort=newest&refresh=30 http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/27/live-from-the-apple-table...), where the 10:57AM slide shows the iBooks application allowing the user to "change the font (to) whatever you want." Um, thanks but no thanks, Steve. Book publishers hire type designers to come up with appropriate fonts, and they hire other skilled designers to select and use them. Leaving this choice up to the reader is not a feature, but an aesthetic regression at best and a dereliction of duty at worst. It's like bundling fine art with a paint-by-numbers set. This is exactly how MS Office ends up with 30 different selectable toolbars that nobody knows how to use. It was a splash of cold water to the face to see Apple making the same sort of mistake.

MrSartorial 17y ago

I actually agree with you 100% that people love something that's easy to play with. That's what I meant when I said that Apple's simplicity is their strength. What I'm talking about is a difference between "open" turnkey and "closed" turnkey. I love turnkey, and so do a lot of people. Who wants to fuss with installing new software, etc.? That's my perspective. Closed-systems are much easier to make turnkey, but they aren't the only alternative. Just because something is open, doesn't mean that it can't be simple. It CAN be tinkered with, but it doesn't have to be to make it work. That response is shorter than I'd like, but I have to run unfortunately.

actf 17y ago
Very well said - I really can't understand why so many people on HN think turnkey == closed. Sure there is a correlation, but is it just me or does it seem like everyone has forgotten that correlation != causation.

lambda 17y ago

But, this isn't about giving the users freedom from choice; with 140,000 options in the App Store, that's a lot of choices. This is explicitly about locking developers down, and not allowing them to do things that Apple does not approve of. Want to write a competing web browser? Sorry, you can't. Want to write an awesome JIT that optimizes itself for their shiny new chip? No can do. Imagine if this policy had been in place on their desktop or laptop computers. Half of the technologies that they themselves use and tout as great would not exist. LLVM/clang? WebKit? Heck, the Mach and BSD kernels that this is all built on. None of this would have been created in a closed ecosystem with restrictive policies, and yet Apple is perfectly happy to take advantage of it while not letting anyone else play in their sandbox. The hypocrisy of their policies makes me sick.

GHFigs 17y ago
Half of the technologies that they themselves use and tout as great would not exist. Except the ones you listed do exist and are open for anybody else to go use and build their own great products, even using the work that Apple put into them.
enneff 17y ago
You could see it another way: Want to write a competing web browser that will confuse people (why do I need another web browser?), no can do. It's a quality control issue. The iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad do specific things and do them well. They are not personal computers. They are web browsers, music players, calendars, etc. The customer is paying for a device that does these things. They don't want (or arguably need) a personal computer. Why would you want to develop LLVM on an iPad? Do you honestly think that Apple would junk their desktop OS in favour of an App Store-driven laptop/desktop experience? Developers write code on personal computers. Apple is not a closed ecosystem because of this fact alone. There is room in Apple's world for 3rd party innovation - it's just not on their consumer products.
- lambda 17y ago
  How does an alternative web browser confuse people? Has Firefox been taking market share from IE because it confuses people? No, it's because Microsoft got complacent, and let their browser rot, and some open-source hackers managed to produce a product that was better enough that even many non-technical people who barely know what a browser is run Firefox because it's faster and more secure. And Apple is not immune to this sort of problem; there are alternative products that they forbid that really can improve the experience (for instance, better podcast clients, email clients that are optimized for Gmail, and the like). And given the quantity of software they have on the app store, and how crappy some of it is, it's not about quality control at all; it's about the fact that Apple simply wants control, and doesn't want any third-party developers getting too big or too powerful. The point about LLVM is not about developing LLVM on an iPad. It's about the fact that you can't use such technology on the iPad. If I want to develop a product to run on the iPad, and that product would be greatly improved by containing a JIT or an interpreter, I cannot distribute that on the iPad; it is forbidden. And this means that there is less of a market for developing such things in general. If the hardware that the consumers have and use forbids me from selling them a product with an interpreter in it, then there's a lot less of a reason for me to produce that interpreter in the first place. I write interactive educational multimedia software that's scripted in a dialect of Scheme. The iPad may be a great platform that we could port our software to; the screen is a perfect size for our type of content, it supports video, composited graphics and animation, and multitouch interaction could really improve some of our simulations. However, we cannot run our Scheme interpreter on the iPad. Writing a compiler would be prohibitively expensive for our small team, as would porting all of our content to JavaScript, the only interpreted language you are allowed to run on the iPhone/iPad. Apple is explicitly preventing me from porting the software I would like to the iPad. But you don't hear as much about people like me, who simply turn away from the iPhone or iPad and don't develop software for it. You hear about the success stories; the people who made a quick buck selling a fart app for the iPhone. The only cases in which you do hear about people being turned away are cases in which people did make the initial investment, developed the software, and then were turned down; but because most people don't want to risk that, they never bother developing the software in the first place if they think there's a high chance that Apple will reject it.

thechangelog 17y ago

> For us as hackers, computers is more like politics... For most people, however, computer use is more like a meal. Very well put.

CamperBob 17y ago

He argued that true luxury was the freedom from choice. Now in a political context, this is Orwellian and terrifying. But in the context of a meal, it made a lot of sense to me. Let a great chef do his or her magic, and I will try any damn thing they put in front of me and thank them for the privilege. Sometimes even Apple doesn't get that. There was a great example of this principle in one of the slides the Engadget blogger took during Jobs's presentation (http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/27/live-from-the-apple-tablet-latest-creation-event/?sort=newest&refresh=30 http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/27/live-from-the-apple-table...), where the 10:57AM slide shows the iBooks application allowing the user to "change the font (to) whatever you want." Um, thanks but no thanks, Steve. Book publishers hire type designers to come up with appropriate fonts, and they hire other skilled designers to select and use them. Leaving this choice up to the reader is not a feature, but an aesthetic regression at best and a dereliction of duty at worst. It's like bundling fine art with a paint-by-numbers set. This is exactly how MS Office ends up with 30 different selectable toolbars that nobody knows how to use. It was a splash of cold water to the face to see Apple making the same sort of mistake.