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Apple's Crystal Prison and the Future of Open Platforms

158 points by Garbage 14y ago

st3fan 14y ago
"Two weeks ago, Steve Wozniack made a public call..." I stopped reading after they spelled the name of one of the most important people in the PC revolution wrong.
- moldbug 14y ago
  Indeed.
mbq 14y ago
Great post -- I hope this will eventually trigger some serious discussion about hardware openness. People should realize it is (at least!) a serious freedom of competition issue, not only an odd fetish of weird bearded men.
- Udo 14y ago
  While I share your hope that posts like these will one day trigger serious discussions about hardware and software openness, my rational side is far less optimistic about the future. So far the normal everyday user doesn't seem to care for openness, in fact I believe a huge portion of that demographic would assert that computers are too powerful right now ("confusing", "difficult", "full of nerd jargon", "I don't want to learn how to do these things") and they'd welcome any development that made their MacBooks work exactly like a smartphone - including heavy-handed censorship and everything. I am convinced that the computers of the future will be severely limited devices and people will love it.
  - ttt_ 14y ago
    There's no reason both ways cannot coexist. Just put a gateway out of the walled garden so people can come and go as they please.
    - taligent 14y ago
      If only it was that simple. Those "people" who come and go as they please include those "people" who are trying to run bots, steal information, spam etc.
      - maxerickson 14y ago
        Doesn't the ongoing creation of jailbreaks make this difference mostly hypothetical?
      - mbq 14y ago
        What about a law-enforced, sealed jumper under the battery? You break it with a screwdriver and a gadget permanently enters "open" mode in which original, proprietary OS performs suicide and decodes the bootloader. Hostile jailbreak is hard and won't get unnoticed, producer software is safe and advanced users can't be ignored.
  - jiggy2011 14y ago
    The problem with that is there is no way to compare it to what could have been. Let's assume that one or two manufacturers get a monopoly on computing and control everything that can be done with bits and bytes, of course people will be happy whenever there is a major improvement to these platforms.
Terretta 14y ago
It bothers me when these articles pretend you cannot let users install fully open source apps on their iPhones: http://sixrevisions.com/web-development/html5-iphone-app/ http://sixrevisions.com/web-development/html5-iphone-app/ Your users can't install closed binaries except through the app store, but you're all about open source, right? So make your app using HTML5 like LinkedIn or Facebook, and simply bypass the app store.
- ChrisLTD 14y ago
  HTML/JS aren't first class citizens on iOS when it comes to API access. You can't take pictures, get reliable sound playback, create notifications, etc.
  - tsieling 14y ago
    Can you do those things on Android via HTML/JS? (Not bait I honestly don't know).
    - ChrisLTD 14y ago
      According to this Quora thread, the answer is Not Yet. http://www.quora.com/How-can-a-HTML5-web-app-access-Camera-in-mobile-phones http://www.quora.com/How-can-a-HTML5-web-app-access-Camera-i...
    - rmc 14y ago
      I'm not sure and I suspect not, however you can do these things on Android with your own app and not requiring app approval from Google.
      - saurik 14y ago
        Of course, there are other things you cannot do on Android even if you are an app. We will actually have lost this battle if all we get is the right to install any app we want (and then everyone loses interest and goes home, which is likely to be what happens at that point): what we need is the right to install any software we want.
mxey 14y ago
The post claims that Mountain Lion will by default only allow apps from the Mac App Store, where Apple takes a 30% cut. That is not true — Mountain Lion also allows signed apps by default, and getting a certificate for signing is free.
- moylan 14y ago
  app development on symbian used to be a chaotic affair till nokia brought in signed apps. after that the apps started to dry up. it became a hurdle for lone developers that wasn't worth the effort. i'm sure apple would organise it better but it is still another hoop to be jumped through to get an app developed. as to openess i still have an iphone 3g. i had the cash saved up for a prepay iphone 3gs and was to go and pick one up the following weekend when apple banned google voice. it was an indicator of control so i spent the cash instead on android. the iphone 3g will be my last purchase from apple thank you very much.
  - taligent 14y ago
    The hour spent organising the certificates is nothing compared to the months spent designing, developing and marketing the app. And ALL developers would be happy to see less malware around.
    - moylan 14y ago
      i'd rather a platform were i have to be careful to avoid malware rather than a platform were there is a single 'gateway' to what apps can be installed. how can that gateway ever be considered impartial in a for profit system?
      - pooriaazimi 14y ago
        If that's what you prefer, it's your choice: don't use OS X Mountain Lion (or use it, with Gatekeeper turned off). You (and I) can understand FlashBlock.app is a malware and wouldn't install it, but ordinary computer users don't, and that's the market Apple is after.
mellis 14y ago
Doesn't Gatekeeper allow you to sign apps that aren't distributed through the Mac app store and avoid the warning mentioned in the article? That makes it a feature that's explicitly intended to improve the security of the Mac _without_ requiring that all apps be bought through the Mac app store (i.e. the opposite of the EFF's argument). Also, there's more to the iOS story than the small amount of money that Apple makes from the app store. Apple has over $20 _billion_ in revenue per quarter from the iPhone [1], making Cydia's $10 million / year about a hundredth of a percent of Apple's revenue. Tim Bray has an interesting estimate [2] of how a small a fraction of iPhone revenue goes to software developers - $12 vs. $350 for the hardware - making Apple's cut an even smaller ~$5. I would argue that user experience and control are a much larger part of the motivation for locking down iOS than the additional revenue. There's a good argument to made about the problems with closed platforms but, by being misleading about Apple's technology and motivation, the EFF does a poor job of making it here. [1] http://images.apple.com/pr/pdf/q2fy12datasum.pdf http://images.apple.com/pr/pdf/q2fy12datasum.pdf [2] http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2012/03/04/Mobile-Money http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2012/03/04/Mobile-Mon...
- ChrisLTD 14y ago
  Apple is pushing people to the App Store to create a better user experience, but they also have made decisions that protect their 30% cut at the expense of that same experience (for recent examples, see the Dropbox API rejection and the inability to buy a book through the Kindle app). If the money wasn't at all important to them, they'd drop their cut down to a level closer to a payment processor.
  - st3fan 14y ago
    You think they are just a payment processor? How about all the services that you have access to when you put your app on the store? Distribution, in-app purchases, notifications, game center, iCloud sync and storage.
    - throwaway64 14y ago
      they are happy to provide this without your app supporting in app purchases, and they get no extra money at all.
chj 14y ago
Begging is not going to make things better. The best weapon is to actually leave the platform (not threatening to). I believe eventually someone can build an equally good device. At the same time, developers should publish their apps on other platforms as soon as iOS versions come out. Otherwise Apple will always have your balls -- the customers -- in their hands.
- gawker 14y ago
  I think it's easier said than done. Sure, with more users on Android and the potential of making money getting higher by the day, there's hope. But as we've seen, Android's really fragmented and as a developer, providing support to all your users on so many different devices is absolutely brutal.
  - ajross 14y ago
    Have we actually seen that? I've seen a lot of meta-argumentation here about "fragmentation", but almost no use cases of "providing support on android is absolutely brutal".
    - anextio 14y ago
      I've experienced it first hand at my previous company. It's not unmanageable, but it's certainly a lot harder than supporting iOS.
- mxey 14y ago
  We can talk again once that equally good device exists.
TwistedWeasel 14y ago
When did a small quote from an interview... "I think that Apple could be just as strong and good and be open, but how can you challenge it when a company is making that much money?" he [Wozniak] said. turn into "made a public call" for Apple to open up it's platforms?
nicholassmith 14y ago
Other people have picked up on factual inaccuracies so I'll pick on the commodore 64 one. It was blocked for the BASIC interpreter, then Apple review it's rules and guidance again, and allow people to include interpreters. So yeah, Apple blocked it, carefully reviewed it's policies, admitted they made a mistake and rectified it. I'm not saying I disagree with the crux of the argument, if people want it to be open then I think Apple should at least allow some mechanism, but lets look at it objectively. Can I currently install non-App Store apps on my phone/access at a root level? Yeah, sure, I jailbreak it and open it up. Can I install a non-iOS release on there? Sure, if I have an iPhone 3G I can. Should Apple honour a warranty for hardware failure if my phone is jailbroken? They should, but I wouldn't expect they would if they can't guarantee it wasn't something in the software. That's unlikely, but if Apple can save the repair costs well, they're a business and that doesn't stun me. It's open to the people who want it open, by exploring the boundaries and pushing people forward. Imagine if Apple opened the platform up, they'd give the Dev Team nothing to do. They'd be sad, all the joy of exploring the edges and adding another point on the score board gone.
- saurik 14y ago
  This argument makes about as much sense as claiming that in practice a minority of slaves already have reasonable lives if (a big if) they are tending to a benevolent family (remember that most people simply don't have an iPhone 3G: the iPhone 4S is a vastly different story with respect to the exploits we have; even most of the 3GS's in the wild don't have permanent untethers), those that don't can always escape (as if it were a simple process to do so, or there aren't other tradeoffs and risks), and that giving people general civil liberties would be a sad day as it would deny freedom fighters something to do while playing what is trivialized to a board game (ignoring that there are either other front-lines they could then moving the battle to, and forgetting that there are things more valuable to do in life than spend all of your time and energy fighting for something that should already be true).
  - nicholassmith 14y ago
    (I'll preface, I'm a big fan of your work and think you're a super clever guy). Equating it to slavery is pushing us towards a Godwin-esque territory. You, as a person, as an individual, as a consumer have the right to pick and choose what device you want. If you want an open platform it is your right to pick it, it's not your right to expect it, yet anyway. You, as a slave, as private property, as owned goods would not have a choice. You're defined by a lack of choice. I'm all for giving people civil liberties, and I think it'd be nice for Apple to open their platform. But they don't need to, or have to, and as far as we can tell don't want to. This isn't a strict case of it being a civil liberty as Apple hasn't taken away your right to choose, they've simplified it. You want low-level access, the ability to go outside our App Store, you can have it by fighting against us or going elsewhere. Like I say, I'm a big fan of the work both you and the Dev Team do, and I think everyone would be sad if you all went 'we've had enough' and moved on and the platform was shut down to it's initial state, but unless Apple has a massive change of heart they'll always say 'we're not actively pursuing jailbreaking as a crime, but we're not going to make it easy' and then we're always going to have a situation where a dedicated group want access, and will do anything to have it.
JackC 14y ago
I'm glad the EFF is working on this -- their bill of rights at the end is a great proposal. It is so deeply frustrating for Apple to promote a vision of the next generation of computers (i.e., iPhones) where the hardware maker gets to decide what kind of software you're allowed to run. The other day Gruber posted two consecutive stories that really brought this into focus: (1) Apple has stayed true to Woz's vision from 1977 for personal computers. [1] (2) It's not surprising that Apple decided to unpublish software that used a "non-public streaming audio format," because it violated the spirit of section X.Y.Z of their rules of what kind of software you're allowed to run on your iPhone. [2] Thinking about Woz's actual vision for personal computers, the second story is really a punch in the gut. No one should have that kind of arbitrary control over our computers. [1] http://daringfireball.net/linked/2012/05/24/woz-apple-ii http://daringfireball.net/linked/2012/05/24/woz-apple-ii [2] http://daringfireball.net/2012/05/more_on_airfoil_speakers_touch http://daringfireball.net/2012/05/more_on_airfoil_speakers_t...
Morg 14y ago
In the end, while the author makes interesting or even compelling points for those who jailbreak phones, most consumers do not give a flying duck about all that and that makes it unlikely to change.
greggman 14y ago
I understand the positive arguments for keeping so many things about iOS closed. Examples: It provides a more consistant user experience. It lets Apple control more of the over all quality. Etc.. I also understand some of the negative arguments for keeping it closed. Apple makes money on the app store and media sales so why would they let a different bookstore, music store or app store in. But I think there's a bigger picture argument. It goes something like this Imagine it's say 1982. Imagine all the popular computers at that time were as ridged and closed as iOS is now. Imagine it stayed closed for 30 years. You're allowed to make apps but nothing that Apple says no to. How many innovations would we be living without? Would mp3s and music services even exist? If I remember correctly the first mp3 player I ever used was Winamp in 1996-97. It came out long long before iTunes. If the lead computer companies never allowed anything other than the music apps that existed in 1982 would we have downloadable music now? How about web browsers and the internet? Back in 1982 there were things like Compuserve. If the lead computer companies didn't allow any generic net browsing would the internet have ever even happened? Would we still be using terminal emulators as the only way to access the internet? Would we even have internet at all? iOS doesn't allow external gadgets to connect directly to it that are usable by any apps. In 1982 personal computers didn't have networking. Networking was added over the course of the next 10-15 years mostly by 3rd party hardware. If computers has been as closed as iOS would networking on computers ever have happened? How about browsers? Browsers didn't exist in 1982. Let's assume Apple decided to implement a single browser. Would it be anywhere near as powerful as today's browsers? Looking at the history of browsers it was the competition of IE, Netscape and then Firefox, Safari and Chrome that have brought us modern browsers. But arguably that would never have happened if, like iOS, all those computers banned making a browser. How about all these languages. Perl, Python, C++, Java, Lua, Ruby. None of those languages existed in 1982. Yes, iOS allows you to use any language you want to make an app BUT....iOS does not allow you to make a programming environment. Imagine the computers for the last 30 years didn't allow you to make a programming environment. How would any of these languages even have come into being if they were outright banned as iOS bans them? That's the problem with iOS's closed eco-system. It stifles innovation and prevents competition. We've seen how well that's worked in the past. Hint, it hasn't worked well. Now, I certainly don't want an OS that's buggy with a crappy user interface and a poor experience. But I don't think that's a trade off Apple needs to make. I believe they can be open AND have the best user experience. Let's hope they step up and embrace creativity. Even their co-founder thinks Apple needs to do this.
perlpimp 14y ago
That is the trouble with allowing multitude of choices that they in the end break the "experience" one would come to expect from the device. Apple is an experience company and that is what they are selling. And people do like and vote with their money. Just because some a subset of mindful users think that they should do otherwise, they should start a company and sell their own product - if they think that what people would want in the end. Most people's lives are complicated already and adding some geewhiz feature into their phone that would make them pause and think for a second - would not win any favours. Liberty is great but when I am tired and going back home last thing I want to do I trying to figure out a best way to look up directions to a restaurant, make call or check messages. I've had android and iOS devices previous one android now an iPad. It is just that much easier to work with these devices when on the road. Perhaps if google will get their act together and tighten the leash on OEMs and make them use a uniform and usable interface across the board - that would be a step in the right direction. There's just too much dissonance in Android community it seems to me.
- saurik 14y ago
  When ~10% of the people who buy an iPhone are willing to go to extreme lengths, following complex instructions from sketchy people (like me) on the Internet, voiding their warranty in the process, to get it open, you simply must assume that the real number of people who want to do it (even if they cannot verbalize that, as they are currently stuck on other scary steps that they feel are intrinsic to the experience) would in a world where it was even slightly more supported and not actively trodden on.
  - CountSessine 14y ago
    How many of them want to do it for the freedom of installing apps that aren't available in the App Store, versus how many want to just install App Store apps without paying for them? Of all the people I know who've jailbroken their iPhones, I know exactly one who wanted to extend the system capabilities of his iPhone (he has some cool mods that let him make wifi and bluetooth adjustments from the home screen). The rest of them just wanted to get software without paying the developers for a license.
mitjak 14y ago
I'm glad the issue is getting an increasing amount of attention. One has to keep in mind that at the end of the day, all the corporations care about is increasing their profits.
pnathan 14y ago
I categorically agree that this idea of restricting what software should be run based upon someone else's whim is wrong, as a moral wrong. It ought not to be that Apple can tell you what you can do with your iP\, or MS with your W8 phone. Or, for that matter, present chilling effects on actually using your computer to its fullest extent. E.g., "Don't use this open source app, it didn't Get Trusted". That's a racket! An iP\ is a computer, and it ought to be considered to have all the freedoms that PCs have had for thirty years.
jsz0 14y ago
If people want to buy a managed platform that is their choice. No organization with the word 'freedom' in their name should be actively trying to take choices away from consumers. That's just bizarre. It's like arguing StarBucks shouldn't sell me a coffee because it takes away my freedom to make my own coffee at home. Of course it does not. Just because you like to make coffee at home doesn't mean you should be able to force me to do it.
- saurik 14y ago
  If people want to buy an unmanaged platform, that should also be their choice, but sadly there are almost no options for that, and they all put the user at a severe disadvantage for having made that decision (of course, and to be clear, along axes that have nothing to do with it being unmanaged). The reason government exists is that sometimes the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few (or the one). Laws take away people's choices because we consider some choices to be dangerous, whether in the short term (direct damage to others) or in the long term (the relevancy in this context would be our laws against monopolies and trusts).
- zem 14y ago
  there are certain things that ought to be user rights, but which there is no financial incentive for any manufacturer to provide (in large part due to the apathy of insufficiently-informed users). for a good parallel, think about things like wheelchair accessibility - it would be very easy for a business to simply write off that minute percentage of its users who are wheelchair bound, but the law has decreed that being accessible to disabled people is a right they want to enforce as a basic cost of doing business.
- chimeracoder 14y ago
  > No organization with the word 'freedom' in their name should be actively trying to take choices away from consumers. What organization are you talking about? The Electronic Frontier Foundation wrote this article. On the off chance you're referring to the FSF, the Free Software Foundation wasn't even mentioned in the original article, only in an update about a tangential issue.
api 14y ago
A lot of Apple's power here comes from the fact that they have a near-monopoly: not on any protocol, technology, or format, but on good industrial and UI design. The situation with good design and usability today is similar to the situation with formats and OSes with Microsoft in the 90s.
neuroelectronic 14y ago
Apple will never open iOS, although they may "open" it. They've spent half a decade refining the protections and hardware/software against jailbreaks, they're not just about to throw away all that infrastructure.
nikster 14y ago
The only thing the EFF should demand is that Apple provide an official way to jailbreak. That's it. The rest of the policies are fine. They can show 100 warning messages, remove any warranty, et cetera - it's their stuff, why would they support it if you hack it? Of course Apple will never do that. They will not officially provide a way to get the device into unsupported territory. Not because they're evil, or want the money, but because that's against Apple's entire philosophy. By and large I think the locked down app store is a really good idea - I like it as a user, even. While I can't get some things I'd like to have, it also protects me from the kind of crap that happens on the Android app store. The locked down app store is the reason I don't need to install "Anti Virus" software from dubious peddlers of scareware. That's something I appreciate to no end.

158 points by Garbage 14y ago

"Two weeks ago, Steve Wozniack made a public call..." I stopped reading after they spelled the name of one of the most important people in the PC revolution wrong.

moldbug 14y ago
Indeed.

mbq 14y ago

Great post -- I hope this will eventually trigger some serious discussion about hardware openness. People should realize it is (at least!) a serious freedom of competition issue, not only an odd fetish of weird bearded men.

Udo 14y ago
While I share your hope that posts like these will one day trigger serious discussions about hardware and software openness, my rational side is far less optimistic about the future. So far the normal everyday user doesn't seem to care for openness, in fact I believe a huge portion of that demographic would assert that computers are too powerful right now ("confusing", "difficult", "full of nerd jargon", "I don't want to learn how to do these things") and they'd welcome any development that made their MacBooks work exactly like a smartphone - including heavy-handed censorship and everything. I am convinced that the computers of the future will be severely limited devices and people will love it.
- ttt_ 14y ago
  There's no reason both ways cannot coexist. Just put a gateway out of the walled garden so people can come and go as they please.
  - taligent 14y ago
    If only it was that simple. Those "people" who come and go as they please include those "people" who are trying to run bots, steal information, spam etc.
    - maxerickson 14y ago
      Doesn't the ongoing creation of jailbreaks make this difference mostly hypothetical?
    - mbq 14y ago
      What about a law-enforced, sealed jumper under the battery? You break it with a screwdriver and a gadget permanently enters "open" mode in which original, proprietary OS performs suicide and decodes the bootloader. Hostile jailbreak is hard and won't get unnoticed, producer software is safe and advanced users can't be ignored.
- jiggy2011 14y ago
  The problem with that is there is no way to compare it to what could have been. Let's assume that one or two manufacturers get a monopoly on computing and control everything that can be done with bits and bytes, of course people will be happy whenever there is a major improvement to these platforms.

Terretta 14y ago

It bothers me when these articles pretend you cannot let users install fully open source apps on their iPhones: http://sixrevisions.com/web-development/html5-iphone-app/ http://sixrevisions.com/web-development/html5-iphone-app/ Your users can't install closed binaries except through the app store, but you're all about open source, right? So make your app using HTML5 like LinkedIn or Facebook, and simply bypass the app store.

ChrisLTD 14y ago
HTML/JS aren't first class citizens on iOS when it comes to API access. You can't take pictures, get reliable sound playback, create notifications, etc.
- tsieling 14y ago
  Can you do those things on Android via HTML/JS? (Not bait I honestly don't know).
  - ChrisLTD 14y ago
    According to this Quora thread, the answer is Not Yet. http://www.quora.com/How-can-a-HTML5-web-app-access-Camera-in-mobile-phones http://www.quora.com/How-can-a-HTML5-web-app-access-Camera-i...
  - rmc 14y ago
    I'm not sure and I suspect not, however you can do these things on Android with your own app and not requiring app approval from Google.
    - saurik 14y ago
      Of course, there are other things you cannot do on Android even if you are an app. We will actually have lost this battle if all we get is the right to install any app we want (and then everyone loses interest and goes home, which is likely to be what happens at that point): what we need is the right to install any software we want.

mxey 14y ago

The post claims that Mountain Lion will by default only allow apps from the Mac App Store, where Apple takes a 30% cut. That is not true — Mountain Lion also allows signed apps by default, and getting a certificate for signing is free.

moylan 14y ago
app development on symbian used to be a chaotic affair till nokia brought in signed apps. after that the apps started to dry up. it became a hurdle for lone developers that wasn't worth the effort. i'm sure apple would organise it better but it is still another hoop to be jumped through to get an app developed. as to openess i still have an iphone 3g. i had the cash saved up for a prepay iphone 3gs and was to go and pick one up the following weekend when apple banned google voice. it was an indicator of control so i spent the cash instead on android. the iphone 3g will be my last purchase from apple thank you very much.
- taligent 14y ago
  The hour spent organising the certificates is nothing compared to the months spent designing, developing and marketing the app. And ALL developers would be happy to see less malware around.
  - moylan 14y ago
    i'd rather a platform were i have to be careful to avoid malware rather than a platform were there is a single 'gateway' to what apps can be installed. how can that gateway ever be considered impartial in a for profit system?
    - pooriaazimi 14y ago
      If that's what you prefer, it's your choice: don't use OS X Mountain Lion (or use it, with Gatekeeper turned off). You (and I) can understand FlashBlock.app is a malware and wouldn't install it, but ordinary computer users don't, and that's the market Apple is after.

mellis 14y ago

Doesn't Gatekeeper allow you to sign apps that aren't distributed through the Mac app store and avoid the warning mentioned in the article? That makes it a feature that's explicitly intended to improve the security of the Mac _without_ requiring that all apps be bought through the Mac app store (i.e. the opposite of the EFF's argument). Also, there's more to the iOS story than the small amount of money that Apple makes from the app store. Apple has over $20 _billion_ in revenue per quarter from the iPhone [1], making Cydia's $10 million / year about a hundredth of a percent of Apple's revenue. Tim Bray has an interesting estimate [2] of how a small a fraction of iPhone revenue goes to software developers - $12 vs. $350 for the hardware - making Apple's cut an even smaller ~$5. I would argue that user experience and control are a much larger part of the motivation for locking down iOS than the additional revenue. There's a good argument to made about the problems with closed platforms but, by being misleading about Apple's technology and motivation, the EFF does a poor job of making it here. [1] http://images.apple.com/pr/pdf/q2fy12datasum.pdf http://images.apple.com/pr/pdf/q2fy12datasum.pdf [2] http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2012/03/04/Mobile-Money http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2012/03/04/Mobile-Mon...

ChrisLTD 14y ago
Apple is pushing people to the App Store to create a better user experience, but they also have made decisions that protect their 30% cut at the expense of that same experience (for recent examples, see the Dropbox API rejection and the inability to buy a book through the Kindle app). If the money wasn't at all important to them, they'd drop their cut down to a level closer to a payment processor.
- st3fan 14y ago
  You think they are just a payment processor? How about all the services that you have access to when you put your app on the store? Distribution, in-app purchases, notifications, game center, iCloud sync and storage.
  - throwaway64 14y ago
    they are happy to provide this without your app supporting in app purchases, and they get no extra money at all.

chj 14y ago

Begging is not going to make things better. The best weapon is to actually leave the platform (not threatening to). I believe eventually someone can build an equally good device. At the same time, developers should publish their apps on other platforms as soon as iOS versions come out. Otherwise Apple will always have your balls -- the customers -- in their hands.

gawker 14y ago
I think it's easier said than done. Sure, with more users on Android and the potential of making money getting higher by the day, there's hope. But as we've seen, Android's really fragmented and as a developer, providing support to all your users on so many different devices is absolutely brutal.
- ajross 14y ago
  Have we actually seen that? I've seen a lot of meta-argumentation here about "fragmentation", but almost no use cases of "providing support on android is absolutely brutal".
  - anextio 14y ago
    I've experienced it first hand at my previous company. It's not unmanageable, but it's certainly a lot harder than supporting iOS.
mxey 14y ago
We can talk again once that equally good device exists.

TwistedWeasel 14y ago

When did a small quote from an interview... "I think that Apple could be just as strong and good and be open, but how can you challenge it when a company is making that much money?" he [Wozniak] said. turn into "made a public call" for Apple to open up it's platforms?

nicholassmith 14y ago

Other people have picked up on factual inaccuracies so I'll pick on the commodore 64 one. It was blocked for the BASIC interpreter, then Apple review it's rules and guidance again, and allow people to include interpreters. So yeah, Apple blocked it, carefully reviewed it's policies, admitted they made a mistake and rectified it. I'm not saying I disagree with the crux of the argument, if people want it to be open then I think Apple should at least allow some mechanism, but lets look at it objectively. Can I currently install non-App Store apps on my phone/access at a root level? Yeah, sure, I jailbreak it and open it up. Can I install a non-iOS release on there? Sure, if I have an iPhone 3G I can. Should Apple honour a warranty for hardware failure if my phone is jailbroken? They should, but I wouldn't expect they would if they can't guarantee it wasn't something in the software. That's unlikely, but if Apple can save the repair costs well, they're a business and that doesn't stun me. It's open to the people who want it open, by exploring the boundaries and pushing people forward. Imagine if Apple opened the platform up, they'd give the Dev Team nothing to do. They'd be sad, all the joy of exploring the edges and adding another point on the score board gone.

saurik 14y ago
This argument makes about as much sense as claiming that in practice a minority of slaves already have reasonable lives if (a big if) they are tending to a benevolent family (remember that most people simply don't have an iPhone 3G: the iPhone 4S is a vastly different story with respect to the exploits we have; even most of the 3GS's in the wild don't have permanent untethers), those that don't can always escape (as if it were a simple process to do so, or there aren't other tradeoffs and risks), and that giving people general civil liberties would be a sad day as it would deny freedom fighters something to do while playing what is trivialized to a board game (ignoring that there are either other front-lines they could then moving the battle to, and forgetting that there are things more valuable to do in life than spend all of your time and energy fighting for something that should already be true).
- nicholassmith 14y ago
  (I'll preface, I'm a big fan of your work and think you're a super clever guy). Equating it to slavery is pushing us towards a Godwin-esque territory. You, as a person, as an individual, as a consumer have the right to pick and choose what device you want. If you want an open platform it is your right to pick it, it's not your right to expect it, yet anyway. You, as a slave, as private property, as owned goods would not have a choice. You're defined by a lack of choice. I'm all for giving people civil liberties, and I think it'd be nice for Apple to open their platform. But they don't need to, or have to, and as far as we can tell don't want to. This isn't a strict case of it being a civil liberty as Apple hasn't taken away your right to choose, they've simplified it. You want low-level access, the ability to go outside our App Store, you can have it by fighting against us or going elsewhere. Like I say, I'm a big fan of the work both you and the Dev Team do, and I think everyone would be sad if you all went 'we've had enough' and moved on and the platform was shut down to it's initial state, but unless Apple has a massive change of heart they'll always say 'we're not actively pursuing jailbreaking as a crime, but we're not going to make it easy' and then we're always going to have a situation where a dedicated group want access, and will do anything to have it.

JackC 14y ago

I'm glad the EFF is working on this -- their bill of rights at the end is a great proposal. It is so deeply frustrating for Apple to promote a vision of the next generation of computers (i.e., iPhones) where the hardware maker gets to decide what kind of software you're allowed to run. The other day Gruber posted two consecutive stories that really brought this into focus: (1) Apple has stayed true to Woz's vision from 1977 for personal computers. [1] (2) It's not surprising that Apple decided to unpublish software that used a "non-public streaming audio format," because it violated the spirit of section X.Y.Z of their rules of what kind of software you're allowed to run on your iPhone. [2] Thinking about Woz's actual vision for personal computers, the second story is really a punch in the gut. No one should have that kind of arbitrary control over our computers. [1] http://daringfireball.net/linked/2012/05/24/woz-apple-ii http://daringfireball.net/linked/2012/05/24/woz-apple-ii [2] http://daringfireball.net/2012/05/more_on_airfoil_speakers_touch http://daringfireball.net/2012/05/more_on_airfoil_speakers_t...

Morg 14y ago

In the end, while the author makes interesting or even compelling points for those who jailbreak phones, most consumers do not give a flying duck about all that and that makes it unlikely to change.

greggman 14y ago

I understand the positive arguments for keeping so many things about iOS closed. Examples: It provides a more consistant user experience. It lets Apple control more of the over all quality. Etc.. I also understand some of the negative arguments for keeping it closed. Apple makes money on the app store and media sales so why would they let a different bookstore, music store or app store in. But I think there's a bigger picture argument. It goes something like this Imagine it's say 1982. Imagine all the popular computers at that time were as ridged and closed as iOS is now. Imagine it stayed closed for 30 years. You're allowed to make apps but nothing that Apple says no to. How many innovations would we be living without? Would mp3s and music services even exist? If I remember correctly the first mp3 player I ever used was Winamp in 1996-97. It came out long long before iTunes. If the lead computer companies never allowed anything other than the music apps that existed in 1982 would we have downloadable music now? How about web browsers and the internet? Back in 1982 there were things like Compuserve. If the lead computer companies didn't allow any generic net browsing would the internet have ever even happened? Would we still be using terminal emulators as the only way to access the internet? Would we even have internet at all? iOS doesn't allow external gadgets to connect directly to it that are usable by any apps. In 1982 personal computers didn't have networking. Networking was added over the course of the next 10-15 years mostly by 3rd party hardware. If computers has been as closed as iOS would networking on computers ever have happened? How about browsers? Browsers didn't exist in 1982. Let's assume Apple decided to implement a single browser. Would it be anywhere near as powerful as today's browsers? Looking at the history of browsers it was the competition of IE, Netscape and then Firefox, Safari and Chrome that have brought us modern browsers. But arguably that would never have happened if, like iOS, all those computers banned making a browser. How about all these languages. Perl, Python, C++, Java, Lua, Ruby. None of those languages existed in 1982. Yes, iOS allows you to use any language you want to make an app BUT....iOS does not allow you to make a programming environment. Imagine the computers for the last 30 years didn't allow you to make a programming environment. How would any of these languages even have come into being if they were outright banned as iOS bans them? That's the problem with iOS's closed eco-system. It stifles innovation and prevents competition. We've seen how well that's worked in the past. Hint, it hasn't worked well. Now, I certainly don't want an OS that's buggy with a crappy user interface and a poor experience. But I don't think that's a trade off Apple needs to make. I believe they can be open AND have the best user experience. Let's hope they step up and embrace creativity. Even their co-founder thinks Apple needs to do this.

perlpimp 14y ago

That is the trouble with allowing multitude of choices that they in the end break the "experience" one would come to expect from the device. Apple is an experience company and that is what they are selling. And people do like and vote with their money. Just because some a subset of mindful users think that they should do otherwise, they should start a company and sell their own product - if they think that what people would want in the end. Most people's lives are complicated already and adding some geewhiz feature into their phone that would make them pause and think for a second - would not win any favours. Liberty is great but when I am tired and going back home last thing I want to do I trying to figure out a best way to look up directions to a restaurant, make call or check messages. I've had android and iOS devices previous one android now an iPad. It is just that much easier to work with these devices when on the road. Perhaps if google will get their act together and tighten the leash on OEMs and make them use a uniform and usable interface across the board - that would be a step in the right direction. There's just too much dissonance in Android community it seems to me.

saurik 14y ago
When ~10% of the people who buy an iPhone are willing to go to extreme lengths, following complex instructions from sketchy people (like me) on the Internet, voiding their warranty in the process, to get it open, you simply must assume that the real number of people who want to do it (even if they cannot verbalize that, as they are currently stuck on other scary steps that they feel are intrinsic to the experience) would in a world where it was even slightly more supported and not actively trodden on.
- CountSessine 14y ago
  How many of them want to do it for the freedom of installing apps that aren't available in the App Store, versus how many want to just install App Store apps without paying for them? Of all the people I know who've jailbroken their iPhones, I know exactly one who wanted to extend the system capabilities of his iPhone (he has some cool mods that let him make wifi and bluetooth adjustments from the home screen). The rest of them just wanted to get software without paying the developers for a license.

mitjak 14y ago

I'm glad the issue is getting an increasing amount of attention. One has to keep in mind that at the end of the day, all the corporations care about is increasing their profits.

pnathan 14y ago

I categorically agree that this idea of restricting what software should be run based upon someone else's whim is wrong, as a moral wrong. It ought not to be that Apple can tell you what you can do with your iP\, or MS with your W8 phone. Or, for that matter, present chilling effects on actually using your computer to its fullest extent. E.g., "Don't use this open source app, it didn't Get Trusted". That's a racket! An iP\ is a computer, and it ought to be considered to have all the freedoms that PCs have had for thirty years.

jsz0 14y ago

If people want to buy a managed platform that is their choice. No organization with the word 'freedom' in their name should be actively trying to take choices away from consumers. That's just bizarre. It's like arguing StarBucks shouldn't sell me a coffee because it takes away my freedom to make my own coffee at home. Of course it does not. Just because you like to make coffee at home doesn't mean you should be able to force me to do it.

saurik 14y ago
If people want to buy an unmanaged platform, that should also be their choice, but sadly there are almost no options for that, and they all put the user at a severe disadvantage for having made that decision (of course, and to be clear, along axes that have nothing to do with it being unmanaged). The reason government exists is that sometimes the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few (or the one). Laws take away people's choices because we consider some choices to be dangerous, whether in the short term (direct damage to others) or in the long term (the relevancy in this context would be our laws against monopolies and trusts).
zem 14y ago
there are certain things that ought to be user rights, but which there is no financial incentive for any manufacturer to provide (in large part due to the apathy of insufficiently-informed users). for a good parallel, think about things like wheelchair accessibility - it would be very easy for a business to simply write off that minute percentage of its users who are wheelchair bound, but the law has decreed that being accessible to disabled people is a right they want to enforce as a basic cost of doing business.
chimeracoder 14y ago
> No organization with the word 'freedom' in their name should be actively trying to take choices away from consumers. What organization are you talking about? The Electronic Frontier Foundation wrote this article. On the off chance you're referring to the FSF, the Free Software Foundation wasn't even mentioned in the original article, only in an update about a tangential issue.

api 14y ago

A lot of Apple's power here comes from the fact that they have a near-monopoly: not on any protocol, technology, or format, but on good industrial and UI design. The situation with good design and usability today is similar to the situation with formats and OSes with Microsoft in the 90s.

neuroelectronic 14y ago

Apple will never open iOS, although they may "open" it. They've spent half a decade refining the protections and hardware/software against jailbreaks, they're not just about to throw away all that infrastructure.

nikster 14y ago

The only thing the EFF should demand is that Apple provide an official way to jailbreak. That's it. The rest of the policies are fine. They can show 100 warning messages, remove any warranty, et cetera - it's their stuff, why would they support it if you hack it? Of course Apple will never do that. They will not officially provide a way to get the device into unsupported territory. Not because they're evil, or want the money, but because that's against Apple's entire philosophy. By and large I think the locked down app store is a really good idea - I like it as a user, even. While I can't get some things I'd like to have, it also protects me from the kind of crap that happens on the Android app store. The locked down app store is the reason I don't need to install "Anti Virus" software from dubious peddlers of scareware. That's something I appreciate to no end.