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The issue I have with arguments from folks such as Cory is that they presume too much in favour of openness. Many prefer to be regulated rather than have to m
by parasubvert 14y ago
The issue I have with arguments from folks such as Cory is that they presume too much in favour of openness. Many prefer to be regulated rather than have to make decisions on every little detail, that's arguably the whole Apple appeal in a nutshell vs. Linux, and why it's so productive. (Distros like Ubuntu arguably do this too at a much smaller scale.)
Cory is effectively advocating "technology survivalism", where no company will be your trusted for keeping your computers "safe" and "not lying to you". I think it's rather utopian. As far as I can tell, web-of-trust approaches only work in the software world, the hardware manufacturer ultimately has to be trusted to some level, either de facto by consumer belief or de jure by regulation.
Ultimately, his whole premise about "owner freedom" vs "user freedom" may be fatally flawed. It assumes a) Apple wants to control both owners and users to do what they want, and b) owners must be able to control what happens on devices, and this is a necessary precondition to user freedom. I would argue a) Apple just wants to help users with a better experience and b) it's unlikely owners will ever be technically savvy enough to control things, they will always want to delegate things to some degree -- even technical people do this, looking at the number of devs that use Apple laptops.
Cory also oversimplifies the ownership problem. No device owner actually "owns" the software they install, they license it - even with open source. Apple arguably has been the a great force for "user freedom", by constraining what "owners" (i.e. software developers) can and can't do on Apple devices, thus enabling freedoms to the users themselves -- freedom from malware, bad user experiences such as poor battery life, etc. They enable the end user to work around restrictions on content available on the native device by providing a completely open and high quality web browser to get at anything they want in a sandboxed environment. But they also allow the device owner to restrict user actions in the "open web" with (e.g.) parental controls.
Apple's restrictions have little to do with controlling device owners -- they're about improving the user experience.
Clearly the device owners trust Apple today, but Apple could fairly easily move to a TPM-based "certainty" approach where owners get to pick their App Store, if that's what consumers eventually want, and they lose sales over it. But, for now, the market doesn't seem to be arguing in favour of this kind of nuanced approach.
edit: typos
- batgaijin 14y agoHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. How is it improving my experience when they ban apps that turn the device into a wifi hotspot? Oh right, they prefer money to letting users have the freedom to choose such a thing.
- parasubvert 14y agoHas nothing to do with Apple's money. The carrier's money, sure. And things like trust, battery life, etc. But that's everywhere.
- novalis 14y agoSo actively enforcing a way for the carrier to exploit for further income doesn't bring preferenciality when being picked up by said carrier as a middle stage profit model enabler ? Should we all show this good will towards all brands and just call all lock downs the greatest neutral thing ever because they are clearly just the bios chips makers fault ? Who wins with stuff like that. It's not like those sorts of actions and their ramifications bring advantage to anyone else down the line...
- parasubvert 14y agoI think you're reading more into my statement than was there. The carriers in the USA, and their behaviours, are reality. They enforce restrictions. Therefore, phones are restricted. If you root your phone, and use features your carrier don't want used, they can fire you as a customer. Apple enabling features or apps that get you fired won't win them any fans other than hardcore technical folks that want to live on the edge. The way to change that is... either a) market competition, which is extremely difficult due to capital needs owing to the sheer size of the USA, or b) regulation, as in Europe.
- novalis 14y agoIn reality, whenever a brand enforces to not allow software that can use the hardware in perfectly normal expedients, it isn't just "protecting" customers from being "fired". It is simply enabling abusive carrier behaviour and that is a negative when you consider its data pseudo-segmentation those charging practices are built upon. "Apple enabling features or apps that get you fired won't win them any fans other than hardcore technical folks that want to live on the edge." <- that looks lifted from a 90's hacker movie. You have this passive aggressive streak that cuts your reasoning off just when you would be able to identify a brand/carrier plot to squeeze customers income while the tech could be used without over charging for pseudo differentiated services. But whatever rocks your boat, if you like thinking of it like a big-brand protecting you from the big bad carrier, go ahead. Let a brand that allows for this sort of thing have a free pass, it's your call.