7 ms·

It is a bit easy on Apple to blame not them but the "app store" model they created for their devices and control completely. Apple has been a leader in this ind

by jkn 14y ago

It is a bit easy on Apple to blame not them but the "app store" model they created for their devices and control completely. Apple has been a leader in this industry shift. Also it is not a question of physical media vs. downloaded software. Even physical media software now routinely call home to check for a valid license. So I suppose it is indeed legislation that we need, to prevent companies from revoking licenses.

gbog 14y ago
That is a weak workaround. There real solution is to fully recognize that information is power, and to have a separation of powers similar to the three powers of Montesquieu's. Hardware companies should no be allowed to make or sell or control software. Software companies should not be allowed to produce, sell or control hardware. The same way we, user, citizen, forbade our physicians to sell us the drug they prescribe, we should forbid information processing companies to sell us the devices where this information is processed on. I'm looking at you, Google, Apple and contenders. Everyone belived 1984 was targeted at totalitarian government, but maybe the dark prophecy is being fulfilled under our eyes. If I were a good pamphletist, I would write a punchy call for arms on the topic.
- adrianN 14y ago
  Where does hardware end where does software start? Is the code in your BIOS still hardware? How about the driver for your graphics card? Is it still hardware if the processor only executes code signed by its manufacturer? Forbidding hardware companies like Apple to sell software is not sufficient to prevent them from only running things they approve. And besides, a law like that would likely cripple a large part of the industry and stifle innovation.
  - gbog 14y ago
    I am sure there have been many objections against separation of executive, legislative and judiciary powers, also in the name of efficiency. > a law like that I don't see it as a law. I think it should be to the constitutional level. Laws, if necessary, would get into details on how to enforce the constitution, and these details may vary with place and time. > would likely cripple a large part of the industry and stifle innovation On the opposite, I think it would in long term be better enforced by such a separation of (information) powers. One of the reason could be that it would require open formats for any communication between hardware and software. Then any other company could compete in the field, and innovate in directions either not allowed or not deemed interesting by the bigger companies. > not sufficient to prevent [Apple] from only running things they approve I do not think Apple or any other hardware provider is the least entitled to prevent me, the owner of the device I bought, from using any software I like. In my mind, current users of these devices when not unlocked do not own them, they rent them really, and should be aware of this.
    - jopt 14y ago
      Apple aren't legally preventing you from running anything. If you're clever enough to do it, go nuts. If you think they're making it too hard, tough luck. Their products aren't built to spec; you're not entitled to a product that works any differently than the one they sold you. If you buy a microwave and you want to run custom software on it, that is your problem, not the microwave manufacturers.
      - nathan_long 14y ago
        >> you're not entitled to a product that works any differently than the one they sold you. Right, because you knew what you were buying. However: >> Apple aren't legally preventing you from running anything. They tried to, though. >> Apple's request to define copyright law to include jailbreaking as a violation was denied as part of the 2009 DMCA rulemaking. - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IOS_jailbreaking#United_States_legal_status http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IOS_jailbreaking#United_States_... There's a big difference between "we're not going to help you do X with your purchased item" and "we legally forbid doing X with your purchased item." The only thing keeping companies like Apple from doing this is our insistence that they don't.
      - LinXitoW 14y ago
        I take it you're fine with UEFI Secure Boot, then?
        jopt 14y ago
        I don't consider it my right to have Microsoft produce anything else for me.
    - RichardButler 14y ago
      Apple wouldn't exist if a Montesquieu like separation of powers had been applied to the industry. Apple has always had seamless control of their product, it's what differentiates and makes them successful as a company.
- rmc 14y ago
  I would write a punchy call for arms on the topic. The Free Software/Open Source community has been banging this drum for years. Come join us and let us all make the world better.
  - rimantas 14y ago
    You mean, worse?
    - artmageddon 14y ago
      How would you argue that? Genuinely curious.
      - rimantas 14y ago
        Can you tell me the case where separating hardware from software created superior product? Anyway, I am too tired to argue with FOSS extremists touting their imaginary world with imaginary benefits and solutions for imaginary threats for imaginary users. "Users" ir the key word there. Majority of the people using software are just users, not programmers. We are not all butchers, bakers, and car mechanics. We don't have problems some imagine we have.
        jeremyarussell 14y ago
        He thought you meant that open source makes the world worse.
        Karunamon 14y ago
        >imaginary world with imaginary benefits and solutions for imaginary threats Do be careful. RMS's "imaginations" have come true more than once. It's often that you don't know what you have until it's gone...
        kamaal 14y ago
        I think this sort of thing must be open source. I am ready to contribute to such a project if it already exists.
- jopt 14y ago
  Separation of power, like Democracy and other such ideas, don't necessarily belong in every system. Politics/government is not an optional system; everyone has to take part (whether they want to or not.) Consumer technology is not enforced by police and armies, and should be free from the demands we may rightly have on our state. Besides, how would you like to buy a hardware-only car? What about a fridge or a plane without the code that makes it work? The hardware/software dichotomy is only an abstraction---the instruction set of a processor is software, but the hardware must be designed around it.
  - gbog 14y ago
    I think information is power mostly because you do not have the choice. Only few exceptions can live a life with no relation to information processing machines. However I would agree that the limit between hardware and software is yet to be defined, maybe using new names. I guess it was the same when defining political power separation.
  - cabalamat 14y ago
    > Politics/government is not an optional system; everyone has to take part (whether they want to or not.) Consumer technology is not enforced by police and armies, and should be free from the demands we may rightly have on our state. In the information age, if you want to live a full life, then consumer technology is no more optional than government and politics. This is not to say that there should be a strict separation of hardware and software. But it is an interesting idea.
    - jopt 14y ago
      It is very much more optional. Government and politics have a monopoly on the legitimate use of force. Note that I'm not referring to consumer technology as a whole; I'm saying no specific consumer technology is forced upon you. While it's hard to avoid the idea of it, I don't have to buy an iPad if I don't like it. I do have to pay property tax.
- Daniel_Newby 14y ago
  > Hardware companies should no be allowed to make or sell or control software. So if I, as an electrical engineer, design an implantable pacemaker for people with heart problems, they have to visit Joe's Software Shack and Live Bait to make it work? This is just silly.
  - rimantas 14y ago
    It is not just silly, it's the most stupid suggestion of the year. If you are happy to use half-working, half-baked products, feel free. I will choose those, where software is finely tuned to the hardware and this combination makes pleasurable experience. "If you are serious about software you should make your own hardware" © Alan Kay.
    - gbog 14y ago
      This is the problem, many people choose short term pleasure against long term safety. I hope for you that you do not apply the same reasoning when you choose between cook at home and fast food. Or maybe you'd deny obesity is a problem?
  - gbog 14y ago
    If your "implantable pacemaker" records a bunch of vital information about my heart for years, then it is not a simple "implantable pacemaker", it is an information processing device, and the sensitive information it produce and store is my own, and allowing you full control on it is a danger of potential alienation that must be mitigated. As we do not currently have a better way[1] to ensure there will be no misuse of the power brought to you by controlling the way this information is generated, processed and stored, I would much prefer this heavy responsibility to be split between three different providers (information producer, processor, storage) communicating together according to open formats. If your pacemaker is a piece of hardware with no sensitive information stored and not connected to the outside world, then I would not consider its "software driver" to be an information processing system (ie "real" software), and there would be no need to split responsibilities in this case. This should also answer to the "micro-wave" objections in other answers. And yes, I change the definition of "software" a little bit, so it do not include single-minded commodities drivers. Actually, "software" is too wide on one side, and too narrow on another. A big company like Google should be understood as a software company. For me, they do not cross the line if they build their own servers for internal usage. They do cross the line, however, when they buy Motorola. The gray area would be the Nexus line and Chromebooks, which is ok to me if these products can be considered as real-life experiment for new software concepts, but not ok if they become mainstream products sold by the million of unit and if Google installs itself in a long term hardware producing activity, in parallel with its enormous presence as the software gorilla. [1] In the same sense that "democracy is the worst regime, except for all other"
- batista 14y ago
  >* That is a weak workaround. There real solution is to fully recognize that information is power, and to have a separation of powers similar to the three powers of Montesquieu's. Hardware companies should no be allowed to make or sell or control software. Software companies should not be allowed to produce, sell or control hardware* One problem is that if that weren't allowed, we'd probably never have the app in the first place... The app was made for THAT platform, for THAT store and for THAT hardware product. Now, one can assume but we would have gotten something like the iPhone eventually anyway, but if you see what the hardware-first companies were shipping at the time of the iPhone's launch, that might have taken 5-10 more years. I don't mean it could only happen by Apple: just that it could only happen by a process of building things where hardware+software are given equal importance, and ONE entity calls the shots for both.
primitur 14y ago
>Apple has been a leader in this industry shift. Actually, Apple has been a follower. Ubuntu and the Linux world in general has had app-stores long before Apple came to the party. The Apple app-store is nothing more than a Sony'fied software repository. Where Apple have succeeded while "The Linux scene" has floundered is, Apple have put the app-store, physically, in peoples pockets. Sony/Sharp could have done it sooner, if they'd made better hardware and been cohesive with their late-90's/early 21st-century Linux/e-Tron strategies, but make no mistake, Apple are a newcomer to the vendor-supplied online software repository scene. Albeit, a very powerful, sexy, one.
- smacktoward 14y ago
  > Ubuntu and the Linux world in general has had app-stores long before Apple came to the party You're kidding, right? The difference is that software in Linux distro repositories (which is what I assume you're referencing) is both free as in beer and open source. Which kind of makes it the opposite of what most people think of when they say "app store." (Pre-emptive nitpick: it's true that Canonical has recently started offering commercial software via the Ubuntu Software center, but that came many years after Apple's App Store launched.)
  - primitur 14y ago
    I'm talking about the appstores/repo's as technical features of an installed operating system base. We in Linux have had the ability to easily access app-store catalogs for years; Apple have built theirs relatively recently in comparison. And the fact that there has been free as in beer, and open source 'walled gardens' is exactly the point I'm making: Sharp could've had an app store in the 90's, they already had the repository and just needed to add a customer element; this is the only new thing Apple has added to the game. Repo's were old hat until it morphed into Appstores.

by jkn 14y ago

gbog 14y ago

That is a weak workaround. There real solution is to fully recognize that information is power, and to have a separation of powers similar to the three powers of Montesquieu's. Hardware companies should no be allowed to make or sell or control software. Software companies should not be allowed to produce, sell or control hardware. The same way we, user, citizen, forbade our physicians to sell us the drug they prescribe, we should forbid information processing companies to sell us the devices where this information is processed on. I'm looking at you, Google, Apple and contenders. Everyone belived 1984 was targeted at totalitarian government, but maybe the dark prophecy is being fulfilled under our eyes. If I were a good pamphletist, I would write a punchy call for arms on the topic.

adrianN 14y ago
Where does hardware end where does software start? Is the code in your BIOS still hardware? How about the driver for your graphics card? Is it still hardware if the processor only executes code signed by its manufacturer? Forbidding hardware companies like Apple to sell software is not sufficient to prevent them from only running things they approve. And besides, a law like that would likely cripple a large part of the industry and stifle innovation.
- gbog 14y ago
  I am sure there have been many objections against separation of executive, legislative and judiciary powers, also in the name of efficiency. > a law like that I don't see it as a law. I think it should be to the constitutional level. Laws, if necessary, would get into details on how to enforce the constitution, and these details may vary with place and time. > would likely cripple a large part of the industry and stifle innovation On the opposite, I think it would in long term be better enforced by such a separation of (information) powers. One of the reason could be that it would require open formats for any communication between hardware and software. Then any other company could compete in the field, and innovate in directions either not allowed or not deemed interesting by the bigger companies. > not sufficient to prevent [Apple] from only running things they approve I do not think Apple or any other hardware provider is the least entitled to prevent me, the owner of the device I bought, from using any software I like. In my mind, current users of these devices when not unlocked do not own them, they rent them really, and should be aware of this.
  - jopt 14y ago
    Apple aren't legally preventing you from running anything. If you're clever enough to do it, go nuts. If you think they're making it too hard, tough luck. Their products aren't built to spec; you're not entitled to a product that works any differently than the one they sold you. If you buy a microwave and you want to run custom software on it, that is your problem, not the microwave manufacturers.
    - nathan_long 14y ago
      >> you're not entitled to a product that works any differently than the one they sold you. Right, because you knew what you were buying. However: >> Apple aren't legally preventing you from running anything. They tried to, though. >> Apple's request to define copyright law to include jailbreaking as a violation was denied as part of the 2009 DMCA rulemaking. - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IOS_jailbreaking#United_States_legal_status http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IOS_jailbreaking#United_States_... There's a big difference between "we're not going to help you do X with your purchased item" and "we legally forbid doing X with your purchased item." The only thing keeping companies like Apple from doing this is our insistence that they don't.
    - LinXitoW 14y ago
      I take it you're fine with UEFI Secure Boot, then?
      - jopt 14y ago
        I don't consider it my right to have Microsoft produce anything else for me.
  - RichardButler 14y ago
    Apple wouldn't exist if a Montesquieu like separation of powers had been applied to the industry. Apple has always had seamless control of their product, it's what differentiates and makes them successful as a company.
rmc 14y ago
I would write a punchy call for arms on the topic. The Free Software/Open Source community has been banging this drum for years. Come join us and let us all make the world better.
- rimantas 14y ago
  You mean, worse?
  - artmageddon 14y ago
    How would you argue that? Genuinely curious.
    - rimantas 14y ago
      Can you tell me the case where separating hardware from software created superior product? Anyway, I am too tired to argue with FOSS extremists touting their imaginary world with imaginary benefits and solutions for imaginary threats for imaginary users. "Users" ir the key word there. Majority of the people using software are just users, not programmers. We are not all butchers, bakers, and car mechanics. We don't have problems some imagine we have.
      - jeremyarussell 14y ago
        He thought you meant that open source makes the world worse.
      - Karunamon 14y ago
        >imaginary world with imaginary benefits and solutions for imaginary threats Do be careful. RMS's "imaginations" have come true more than once. It's often that you don't know what you have until it's gone...
        kamaal 14y ago
        I think this sort of thing must be open source. I am ready to contribute to such a project if it already exists.
jopt 14y ago
Separation of power, like Democracy and other such ideas, don't necessarily belong in every system. Politics/government is not an optional system; everyone has to take part (whether they want to or not.) Consumer technology is not enforced by police and armies, and should be free from the demands we may rightly have on our state. Besides, how would you like to buy a hardware-only car? What about a fridge or a plane without the code that makes it work? The hardware/software dichotomy is only an abstraction---the instruction set of a processor is software, but the hardware must be designed around it.
- gbog 14y ago
  I think information is power mostly because you do not have the choice. Only few exceptions can live a life with no relation to information processing machines. However I would agree that the limit between hardware and software is yet to be defined, maybe using new names. I guess it was the same when defining political power separation.
- cabalamat 14y ago
  > Politics/government is not an optional system; everyone has to take part (whether they want to or not.) Consumer technology is not enforced by police and armies, and should be free from the demands we may rightly have on our state. In the information age, if you want to live a full life, then consumer technology is no more optional than government and politics. This is not to say that there should be a strict separation of hardware and software. But it is an interesting idea.
  - jopt 14y ago
    It is very much more optional. Government and politics have a monopoly on the legitimate use of force. Note that I'm not referring to consumer technology as a whole; I'm saying no specific consumer technology is forced upon you. While it's hard to avoid the idea of it, I don't have to buy an iPad if I don't like it. I do have to pay property tax.
Daniel_Newby 14y ago
> Hardware companies should no be allowed to make or sell or control software. So if I, as an electrical engineer, design an implantable pacemaker for people with heart problems, they have to visit Joe's Software Shack and Live Bait to make it work? This is just silly.
- rimantas 14y ago
  It is not just silly, it's the most stupid suggestion of the year. If you are happy to use half-working, half-baked products, feel free. I will choose those, where software is finely tuned to the hardware and this combination makes pleasurable experience. "If you are serious about software you should make your own hardware" © Alan Kay.
  - gbog 14y ago
    This is the problem, many people choose short term pleasure against long term safety. I hope for you that you do not apply the same reasoning when you choose between cook at home and fast food. Or maybe you'd deny obesity is a problem?
- gbog 14y ago
  If your "implantable pacemaker" records a bunch of vital information about my heart for years, then it is not a simple "implantable pacemaker", it is an information processing device, and the sensitive information it produce and store is my own, and allowing you full control on it is a danger of potential alienation that must be mitigated. As we do not currently have a better way[1] to ensure there will be no misuse of the power brought to you by controlling the way this information is generated, processed and stored, I would much prefer this heavy responsibility to be split between three different providers (information producer, processor, storage) communicating together according to open formats. If your pacemaker is a piece of hardware with no sensitive information stored and not connected to the outside world, then I would not consider its "software driver" to be an information processing system (ie "real" software), and there would be no need to split responsibilities in this case. This should also answer to the "micro-wave" objections in other answers. And yes, I change the definition of "software" a little bit, so it do not include single-minded commodities drivers. Actually, "software" is too wide on one side, and too narrow on another. A big company like Google should be understood as a software company. For me, they do not cross the line if they build their own servers for internal usage. They do cross the line, however, when they buy Motorola. The gray area would be the Nexus line and Chromebooks, which is ok to me if these products can be considered as real-life experiment for new software concepts, but not ok if they become mainstream products sold by the million of unit and if Google installs itself in a long term hardware producing activity, in parallel with its enormous presence as the software gorilla. [1] In the same sense that "democracy is the worst regime, except for all other"
batista 14y ago
>* That is a weak workaround. There real solution is to fully recognize that information is power, and to have a separation of powers similar to the three powers of Montesquieu's. Hardware companies should no be allowed to make or sell or control software. Software companies should not be allowed to produce, sell or control hardware* One problem is that if that weren't allowed, we'd probably never have the app in the first place... The app was made for THAT platform, for THAT store and for THAT hardware product. Now, one can assume but we would have gotten something like the iPhone eventually anyway, but if you see what the hardware-first companies were shipping at the time of the iPhone's launch, that might have taken 5-10 more years. I don't mean it could only happen by Apple: just that it could only happen by a process of building things where hardware+software are given equal importance, and ONE entity calls the shots for both.

primitur 14y ago

>Apple has been a leader in this industry shift. Actually, Apple has been a follower. Ubuntu and the Linux world in general has had app-stores long before Apple came to the party. The Apple app-store is nothing more than a Sony'fied software repository. Where Apple have succeeded while "The Linux scene" has floundered is, Apple have put the app-store, physically, in peoples pockets. Sony/Sharp could have done it sooner, if they'd made better hardware and been cohesive with their late-90's/early 21st-century Linux/e-Tron strategies, but make no mistake, Apple are a newcomer to the vendor-supplied online software repository scene. Albeit, a very powerful, sexy, one.

smacktoward 14y ago
> Ubuntu and the Linux world in general has had app-stores long before Apple came to the party You're kidding, right? The difference is that software in Linux distro repositories (which is what I assume you're referencing) is both free as in beer and open source. Which kind of makes it the opposite of what most people think of when they say "app store." (Pre-emptive nitpick: it's true that Canonical has recently started offering commercial software via the Ubuntu Software center, but that came many years after Apple's App Store launched.)
- primitur 14y ago
  I'm talking about the appstores/repo's as technical features of an installed operating system base. We in Linux have had the ability to easily access app-store catalogs for years; Apple have built theirs relatively recently in comparison. And the fact that there has been free as in beer, and open source 'walled gardens' is exactly the point I'm making: Sharp could've had an app store in the 90's, they already had the repository and just needed to add a customer element; this is the only new thing Apple has added to the game. Repo's were old hat until it morphed into Appstores.