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Sorry, but you're wrong. The iTunes DRM was ridiculously easy to circumvent even in iTunes itself. No mad leet hackzor skillz required. Since you could trivi

Sorry, but you're wrong. The iTunes DRM was ridiculously easy to circumvent even in iTunes itself. No mad leet hackzor skillz required. Since you could trivially turn aac files into mp3 files in iTunes your quote: "Sure you were free to get ANY other mp3 player in the world, as long as you were ok with losing all your music" Is completely wrong. I can only assume you are one of the vast throngs of Apple haters who hate Apple and their products because it is trendy to hate trendy things. I know the iPad supports pdf format, and I think also the epub format(?), which I believe is the big open standard that everyone 'should' be supporting? How is that bad evil and wrong? Apple has great adoption of standards for its web browsers (please don't complain about Flash, for starters it isn't a standard, for seconds its horrible, for thirds it is used mainly for adds which are also horrible, for fourths it violates usability and accessibility for fifths its one good use is dinky little free games, of which let me assure you I have it on good authority there are quite a few of those on the iOS). Apple is by no means perfect nor lily white, but to attack them on standards when they do so well in that area compared to most other companies is ... bizarre. The only 'entertainment' companies that I can think of that do better at supporting a wide range of open formats are the small indie music and movie makers. Why doesn't Apple work with the indies to help them bring their content to a wider audience? That would be awesome. That you could legitimately complain about. But no, you pick something that Apple are actually good at to complain about. Why is it that when someone rants about Apple it is always opposites day??? The hilarious thing about your complaint is that all of the examples you give are obviously wrong, but there is a much better example: apps. Apps for iOS don't run on any other device. ... The problem is, if you complained about that, you'd look silly, because as a general rule apps for one platform don't run on other platforms. So anyway, to sum up the actual state of Apple 'lock-in': (a) Open formats are supported on Apple products. (b) Some (e.g. music) closed formats are trivially easy to convert to open formats. (Turns out there are many converters for books that are cheap but not free, go figure) (c) iOS specific stuff is iOS specific (spot the tautology) Would I prefer to be able to write apps for iOS in any language I wanted to? As a developer yes yes, OMG yes. As a consumer I would ask whether that means giving up the protections I currently enjoy. What protections? Surely Apple's only purpose in life is to sell me sufficient numbers of these devices is to enslave my will to that of Skynet? Not so! On my desktop I hardly download anything unless from a very highly trusted source. I especially distrust the free stuff. On the iOS devices I go wild and crazy, knowing that my private information is private, my data is safe. So are you complaining about the walled garden? Why? There are a great many alternatives, none with gardens so nice. Leave the Apple lovers alone, the chains that bind them are so nice and shiny and make such pretty bracelets. Maybe if you're nice to them, one of them will bring you a drink of ice-water in your 'warm cosy place'.

bad_user 16y ago
I especially distrust the free stuff I use free stuff all the time, it's just a "sudo aptitude install" away. On the iOS devices I go wild and crazy, knowing that my private information is private, my data is safe Tell that to Aaron Barr :) Or to the people that cooked up http://jailbreakme.com http://jailbreakme.com Or to the dozens of apps in the App Store that use your unique device ID.
- Stormbringer 16y ago
  Wasn't there an article on Slashdot not so long ago where some researcher had done a random sample of Android apps, and 50% of them were phoning home (sic) your private info? -- The big Linux code repositories are an interesting case in point. I'll straight up give them the benefit of the doubt that there is no spyware or malware on them. But isn't there again this tension between the custodial and the wide open? I recall people complaining about the more tightly guarded ones being hard to get new stuff onto them, everything was out of date. Whereas on the more chaotic free for all ones you would often encounter problems with different apps requiring different versions of shared libraries.
  - bad_user 16y ago
    Yes, that's why all data is not safe. About Linux repositories: Debian's is tightly guarded indeed (although you can find the newest stuff in Sid, and usually install it without problems, even though you're using stable or testing, since only the dependencies need to be upgraded, not the whole OS to Sid). The difference between Linux distros and Apple's App Store is that you can add third-party repositories whenever you want. And many of them are trustworthy anyway, since they are maintained by reputable community members. Also, Debian packages are just zip archives. You can download and check out the contents of every available update. Can you do that with OS X or Windows? So yes, walled gardens are fine, but let users choose to get out of them. Let users jailbreak their phones. Sure, void their warranty, put warnings in iTunes, but give them a device-specific way to do that instead of playing games of wack-a-mole. The majority wouldn't go for the jailbreak anyway, since most people go with the defaults; but I'm kind of pissed that I have to wait ages before new kernel or other exploits are found and that are untethered, such that I can safely upgrade. Even with a jailbreak, I still buy stuff from iTunes and I'm still an iPhone user. So why does Apple hate me so much? (not that the same thing can't be said about some Android phone makers, but we're talking about Apple).

bad_user 16y ago

I especially distrust the free stuff I use free stuff all the time, it's just a "sudo aptitude install" away. On the iOS devices I go wild and crazy, knowing that my private information is private, my data is safe Tell that to Aaron Barr :) Or to the people that cooked up http://jailbreakme.com http://jailbreakme.com Or to the dozens of apps in the App Store that use your unique device ID.

Stormbringer 16y ago
Wasn't there an article on Slashdot not so long ago where some researcher had done a random sample of Android apps, and 50% of them were phoning home (sic) your private info? -- The big Linux code repositories are an interesting case in point. I'll straight up give them the benefit of the doubt that there is no spyware or malware on them. But isn't there again this tension between the custodial and the wide open? I recall people complaining about the more tightly guarded ones being hard to get new stuff onto them, everything was out of date. Whereas on the more chaotic free for all ones you would often encounter problems with different apps requiring different versions of shared libraries.
- bad_user 16y ago
  Yes, that's why all data is not safe. About Linux repositories: Debian's is tightly guarded indeed (although you can find the newest stuff in Sid, and usually install it without problems, even though you're using stable or testing, since only the dependencies need to be upgraded, not the whole OS to Sid). The difference between Linux distros and Apple's App Store is that you can add third-party repositories whenever you want. And many of them are trustworthy anyway, since they are maintained by reputable community members. Also, Debian packages are just zip archives. You can download and check out the contents of every available update. Can you do that with OS X or Windows? So yes, walled gardens are fine, but let users choose to get out of them. Let users jailbreak their phones. Sure, void their warranty, put warnings in iTunes, but give them a device-specific way to do that instead of playing games of wack-a-mole. The majority wouldn't go for the jailbreak anyway, since most people go with the defaults; but I'm kind of pissed that I have to wait ages before new kernel or other exploits are found and that are untethered, such that I can safely upgrade. Even with a jailbreak, I still buy stuff from iTunes and I'm still an iPhone user. So why does Apple hate me so much? (not that the same thing can't be said about some Android phone makers, but we're talking about Apple).