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Okay, I hate snarky replies like the one I'm about to make, but regardless, here goes... I'm a web developer, and if we were to open up the Internet, let me te

Okay, I hate snarky replies like the one I'm about to make, but regardless, here goes... I'm a web developer, and if we were to open up the Internet, let me tell you what will happen: First of all, there will be hardcore porn immediately. Boob websites will flood the Internet, because that's what makes money. If the Internet implements a flagging mechanism, then you will be one click away from opening a website to purchase hard core porn. Lots of people will create websites with 5 pictures and call it "Celebrity News". For example Britney Spears News, etc. Websites will have new content every single day so they are always at the top of Google search results. People will create websites that do nothing but just have a title people will search for. With the amount of money people are spending online, and the fact that people are looking for cheap entertainment rather than useful tools, the Internet would be a heaven for spammers and scammers. If we ever unlocked the gates, it would be the absolute end of the Internet. I have a phone number of a website reviewer and I talk to him every now and then. They get a lot of crap. The gate is not to QC a website, it's to prevent the Internet from being a crapware and spammers paradise.

mechanical_fish 17y ago
Oh, you are so close to enlightenment you can practically taste it! Or maybe you are enlightened and this is your attempt at a Zen koan. If so: pretty good. The iPhone already has a built-in free-for-all free-of-charge Transmetropolitan Interzone, where you can develop and publish whatever you want, pron and scammers run free, and nothing is controlled by anyone, for better or for worse. It's called "Mobile Safari". The rest of the iPhone experience -- the App Store -- is different from that. That may turn out to be a major reason why the App Store is worth so much money.
- jsdalton 17y ago
  Yes, the restrictions are definitely the reason the App Store is worth so much money. Asking Apple to remove them is akin to demanding that movie theater owners allow outside food and beverages and forgo their $8 popcorn. My point is that there is a kind of fearmongering in comments like the one above mind -- that if somehow Apple were to open up its platform to the wild and wooly world, it'd soon be overrun by every form of scam and debauchery known to man. Countless examples prove otherwise. There is no "reason" for Apple to maintain these restrictions other than money. (Oh, and it looks like enlightenment will have to wait after the blow to my karma I just took on that comment above.)
  - stcredzero 17y ago
    My point is that there is a kind of fearmongering in comments like the one above mind -- that if somehow Apple were to open up its platform to the wild and wooly world, it'd soon be overrun by every form of scam and debauchery known to man. It's not that you've shown that there wouldn't be "every form of scam and debauchery known to man." It's more that you've shown that there would be, but the world won't end and it wouldn't be so bad for you. But for a lot of people out there, the experience on the net is full of suckiness, because they don't have all the knowledge that you do. If someone wants to create a walled garden for those folks, why can't they? Wouldn't that be allowed in a free market? It's not like they're forcing you to buy their phone!
    - thwarted 17y ago
      The Apple marketing is that the iPhone is for everyone, not just people who want someone else to vet what they do with the iPhone. And there's nothing stopping Apple from making a device that truly is for everyone, with one mode that can be locked down completely so you can have someone else limit what you can do to do keep you safe, and another mode for people who don't need to be handheld and are adults and can make their own decisions without needing to effectively violate the DMCA or loose hardware support from Apple to do it. However, Apple is welcome to create whatever device they want if they think they can sell it.
    - bad_user 17y ago
      > But for a lot of people out there, the experience on the net is full of suckiness, because they don't have all the knowledge that you do. That's not my experience with regular-users, and I've been around such people a lot. The experience when dealing with a computer in general is full of "suckiness" ... I saw people that can't use GMail because the left-menu which contains "inbox" and "sent" plus the top search-bar is somehow counterintuitive to them. So the IPhone/IPad experience can't change that with flashy buttons / pinch to zoom, although it is somewhat an improvement to regular interfaces (for phones at least, I have yet to see a study which argues that the iPhone interface is more intuitive or productive that your average Windows PC). But other than that, the Internet experience is as good as possible ... when searching on Google for a definition, more often than not the first result is from Wikipedia (which contains articles edited by many regular non-tech users). When wanting to contact old friends, I see many people not having trouble with Facebook. Surely some may be mislead by "the Facebook of Sex" by ending up in the wrong place, but I never see people stupid enough to not figure out something's different and that's not Facebook. When wanting to read online newspapers, I never see people wondering were to find the desired newspaper, or how to click on a story-link. Surely, there are lots of wannabes out there, that's why as an online newspaper you still need marketing to grow your brand. Email / IM are also 2 services that are used a lot. I don't see people having trouble using Yahoo's IM (and in my country, everybody with an Internet connection and his dog has a YIM account). Email is kind of tricky in a way ... to send emails to multiple people, they never use the BCC field, and that's a PITA sometimes, but it's not like their end-goal isn't reached. So, when making such assertions, please provide references to studies ;)
Poiesis 17y ago
Yeah, yeah. The issue is, Apple owns the app store. They are in the business of making money, and they generally do this by being tasteful. By all accounts they seem to be doing pretty well.
- telemachos 17y ago
  Ok to everything but the "tasteful" part. Where exactly do all the fart apps and the jiggle girl apps fit into the "tasteful" aesthetic of Steve Jobs? My point being that the App Store's actual decisions seem far more random than you would expect if you assumed pure greed or pure Type A control freak issues or pure Bauhaus aesthetics were running the show.

mechanical_fish 17y ago

Oh, you are so close to enlightenment you can practically taste it! Or maybe you are enlightened and this is your attempt at a Zen koan. If so: pretty good. The iPhone already has a built-in free-for-all free-of-charge Transmetropolitan Interzone, where you can develop and publish whatever you want, pron and scammers run free, and nothing is controlled by anyone, for better or for worse. It's called "Mobile Safari". The rest of the iPhone experience -- the App Store -- is different from that. That may turn out to be a major reason why the App Store is worth so much money.

jsdalton 17y ago
Yes, the restrictions are definitely the reason the App Store is worth so much money. Asking Apple to remove them is akin to demanding that movie theater owners allow outside food and beverages and forgo their $8 popcorn. My point is that there is a kind of fearmongering in comments like the one above mind -- that if somehow Apple were to open up its platform to the wild and wooly world, it'd soon be overrun by every form of scam and debauchery known to man. Countless examples prove otherwise. There is no "reason" for Apple to maintain these restrictions other than money. (Oh, and it looks like enlightenment will have to wait after the blow to my karma I just took on that comment above.)
- stcredzero 17y ago
  My point is that there is a kind of fearmongering in comments like the one above mind -- that if somehow Apple were to open up its platform to the wild and wooly world, it'd soon be overrun by every form of scam and debauchery known to man. It's not that you've shown that there wouldn't be "every form of scam and debauchery known to man." It's more that you've shown that there would be, but the world won't end and it wouldn't be so bad for you. But for a lot of people out there, the experience on the net is full of suckiness, because they don't have all the knowledge that you do. If someone wants to create a walled garden for those folks, why can't they? Wouldn't that be allowed in a free market? It's not like they're forcing you to buy their phone!
  - thwarted 17y ago
    The Apple marketing is that the iPhone is for everyone, not just people who want someone else to vet what they do with the iPhone. And there's nothing stopping Apple from making a device that truly is for everyone, with one mode that can be locked down completely so you can have someone else limit what you can do to do keep you safe, and another mode for people who don't need to be handheld and are adults and can make their own decisions without needing to effectively violate the DMCA or loose hardware support from Apple to do it. However, Apple is welcome to create whatever device they want if they think they can sell it.
  - bad_user 17y ago
    > But for a lot of people out there, the experience on the net is full of suckiness, because they don't have all the knowledge that you do. That's not my experience with regular-users, and I've been around such people a lot. The experience when dealing with a computer in general is full of "suckiness" ... I saw people that can't use GMail because the left-menu which contains "inbox" and "sent" plus the top search-bar is somehow counterintuitive to them. So the IPhone/IPad experience can't change that with flashy buttons / pinch to zoom, although it is somewhat an improvement to regular interfaces (for phones at least, I have yet to see a study which argues that the iPhone interface is more intuitive or productive that your average Windows PC). But other than that, the Internet experience is as good as possible ... when searching on Google for a definition, more often than not the first result is from Wikipedia (which contains articles edited by many regular non-tech users). When wanting to contact old friends, I see many people not having trouble with Facebook. Surely some may be mislead by "the Facebook of Sex" by ending up in the wrong place, but I never see people stupid enough to not figure out something's different and that's not Facebook. When wanting to read online newspapers, I never see people wondering were to find the desired newspaper, or how to click on a story-link. Surely, there are lots of wannabes out there, that's why as an online newspaper you still need marketing to grow your brand. Email / IM are also 2 services that are used a lot. I don't see people having trouble using Yahoo's IM (and in my country, everybody with an Internet connection and his dog has a YIM account). Email is kind of tricky in a way ... to send emails to multiple people, they never use the BCC field, and that's a PITA sometimes, but it's not like their end-goal isn't reached. So, when making such assertions, please provide references to studies ;)

Poiesis 17y ago

Yeah, yeah. The issue is, Apple owns the app store. They are in the business of making money, and they generally do this by being tasteful. By all accounts they seem to be doing pretty well.

telemachos 17y ago
Ok to everything but the "tasteful" part. Where exactly do all the fart apps and the jiggle girl apps fit into the "tasteful" aesthetic of Steve Jobs? My point being that the App Store's actual decisions seem far more random than you would expect if you assumed pure greed or pure Type A control freak issues or pure Bauhaus aesthetics were running the show.