4 ms·

When you run around shouting the sky is falling, you can't expect most people to take you seriously. Apple is winning (profit wise) because they just have a si

When you run around shouting the sky is falling, you can't expect most people to take you seriously. Apple is winning (profit wise) because they just have a simpler experience. IMO, they are doing everything right except adding an "advanced" mode that people who really know what they're doing can use. But I know why they don't do that: because a lot more people will think they know what they're doing than actually do. If they start turning into the locked down 1984 world you're worried about, someone else will come out with an alternative, show why it's better and most people will move over there. No one cares about moral ranting. Show people a tangible, relevant benefit to them (that is, tangible like "cheaper" not abstract like "you're more free!") and they'll buy in. Brow beating has never been an effective way to affect change.

bad_user 14y ago
There are lots of tangible benefits of openness, problem is most concrete examples do not resonate with most people, because people in general have different needs, even though those same people will run into the same problems at some point, so it's inevitable that discussions end up filled with anecdotes and philosophy, not to mention that coming up with comprehensive case-studies from our history is time consuming and soul sucking, so people that understand the issue just go on with their lives. But here, I'll give you an example - 1 and a half year ago I was literally stocked by 2 people that thought I owed them money. And so I was receiving lots of SMS messages and phone calls with threats, because that's all they could do - but it was annoying to me to have my phone ring several times per day. Then my phone number ended up on some kind of marketing list and I started receiving daily messages with special offers. So I had a problem and an iPhone 3GS (received as a gift) and being a smartphone I expected from it to solve it, because otherwise my phone number was becoming unusable and I didn't want to change it (hey, I've got a nice, memorable number). I wanted to completely block SMS messages and phone calls for certain numbers. And I'm not referring just to make my phone silent when receiving stuff from certain phone numbers - but also a cleanup of the logs. And after all, my smartphone is primarily a phone, where a phone is a device used for communications - I don't care how smart it is, if it's not smart about the most basic functionality it should provide. Imagine my surprise when I found out that Apple was actively blocking such apps from its App Store. So I jail-broke it and installed something from the Cydia store, which was a painful process. Then Apple released a major update to iOS that I wanted, so I updated the device, but my previous method for jail-breaking it wasn't working anymore. THE ONLY REASON people put up with this is because they don't know a smartphone could solve this for them, otherwise spamming through phone calls and SMS messages is a really common problem. Out of frustration I went out of my way and got a Galaxy S device. There were several apps on Android Marketplace (now Google Play) that dealt with blocking SMS and phone calls. Several were not working on my device, because the APIs for doing that are not public and so dealing with it is hard. But I found one that worked extremely well. Even in the case of Android's Marketplace also blocking such apps, it's extremely easy on Android to install apps from third-party sources, not mentioning the ease with which you can develop for it, without setup fees or bogus certificates. And I've been blocking unwanted SMS messages and phone calls ever since. Now, some day Apple will finally wake up and provide this functionality. I'm sure that it will be polished and better than all the alternatives. However, it will be several years too late for me. And if a smartphone can't provide such basic functionality that should be a no-brainer in this age of spam, then for me it's just a shiny and expensive piece of crap. And remember when they blocked Google Voice from their store because "it duplicated existing functionality?". I also own an iPad. It was a gift (for some reason people like giving me Apple products, thinking that I love them). I also have a 3G plan for it, that I got separately, so this device is not subsidized or bought from my mobile carrier. Imagine my surprise when I found out that I couldn't do tethering with my otherwise expensive 3G plan and expensive device, yet my 1 year and a half Android could - and an iPad could do better tethering because of its bigger battery. And get this ... the functionality is available, but it depends on the settings the mobile carrier are wiring to your device. So they are basically controlling your device, deciding for you what you can and cannot do. So now I'm dreaming of a Nexus tablet as my next device, because while the iPad is useful for browsing and stuff, I don't really "own" it and there's so much more it could do. And I have no doubt about it, the sky is going to fall, because the writing is on the wall. Considering our increased dependency on smart technology, if you don't "own" your devices (or your data, or the software you depend on), the service providers are owning you. You may not notice it right now, but remember that old anecdote about how you should boil a frog alive - slowly, otherwise it jumps out. And the blame will fall partly on us, the developers that supported these closed platforms. Because we helped them grow. People also like to point out how Android is more popular because it gets promoted more by carriers - isn't it funny how openness is good for everybody, including carriers and phone makers?
- flyinRyan 14y ago
  >I was literally stocked by 2 people Stalked? :) > I'll give you an example - 1 I agree that Apple should provide a "hacker" setting that lets you step outside the bounds. They don't want to do this because so many non-techies imagine themselves as highly technical so they would press this button, mess something up and then shit all over the forums about how awful apple products are. Granted, Windows got to 95%+ market saturation with the latter approach, but Apple cares about imagine even to the point of shooting themselves in the foot over it. It's their right. What irritates me are all the "they're just trying lock you in because they're evil!". There's no reason to believe they're evil. It's more likely they care about imagine to a point many might consider a fault. > Imagine my surprise when I found out that I couldn't do tethering with my otherwise expensive 3G plan iOS, and other OSes for that matter, send data back to the carrier when you use the built in tethering capabilities. Since Apple is perceived to have tight control of their market, carriers expect them to keep apps out that bipass this. Android is perceived to have a less tight market so even though the built in offering would have had the exact same restriction, you could easily pick up an app that didn't. Currently, I sold my 3G iPad and use my iPhone 4 to do tethering. It's not blocked for me and I don't pay anything for it. This changed when they changed to "wireless hotspot" instead of "tethering" in the options menu. >So they are basically controlling your device, deciding for you what you can and cannot do. This is a carrier issue. I'd love to see someone make an open carrier (dumb pipe, that's what we all want!). >because while the iPad is useful for browsing and stuff, I don't really "own" it and there's so much more it could do. The iPad concept is that it's an appliance, not a general purpose computer. If you feel that means you don't "own" it, do you also not "own" your microwave since you can't do general computing on it's embedded OS either? >And I have no doubt about it, the sky is going to fall, because the writing is on the wall. And here's where you go David Icke. What writing is on what wall? Companies are trying to exploit us and maximize profits at our expense. Just as they always have. They've had us in much worse positions in the past and we've escaped. I'm confident that if phones become to restrictive we'll break out of it again. After all, I don't have to have a smart phone. It's convenient and really helpful, but I'm not going to be the monkey trapped by a banana in a bottle. >You may not notice it right now, but remember that old anecdote about how you should boil a frog alive - slowly, otherwise it jumps out. I think if you actually try this, you'll find that the frog will jump out when it reaches the right temperature regardless of how slowly you turn up the head. >And the blame will fall partly on us, the developers that supported these closed platforms. We support them because it's most profitable for us. When it's not, we won't support them. Simple. >People also like to point out how Android is more popular because it gets promoted more by carriers - isn't it funny how openness is good for everybody, including carriers and phone makers? Haha! Carriers don't give a shit about "openness ". They'd happily used a closed OS as they have in the past, so long as they get it cheaper than any alternative and have a mechanism to put their shovelware shit on it.

bad_user 14y ago

There are lots of tangible benefits of openness, problem is most concrete examples do not resonate with most people, because people in general have different needs, even though those same people will run into the same problems at some point, so it's inevitable that discussions end up filled with anecdotes and philosophy, not to mention that coming up with comprehensive case-studies from our history is time consuming and soul sucking, so people that understand the issue just go on with their lives. But here, I'll give you an example - 1 and a half year ago I was literally stocked by 2 people that thought I owed them money. And so I was receiving lots of SMS messages and phone calls with threats, because that's all they could do - but it was annoying to me to have my phone ring several times per day. Then my phone number ended up on some kind of marketing list and I started receiving daily messages with special offers. So I had a problem and an iPhone 3GS (received as a gift) and being a smartphone I expected from it to solve it, because otherwise my phone number was becoming unusable and I didn't want to change it (hey, I've got a nice, memorable number). I wanted to completely block SMS messages and phone calls for certain numbers. And I'm not referring just to make my phone silent when receiving stuff from certain phone numbers - but also a cleanup of the logs. And after all, my smartphone is primarily a phone, where a phone is a device used for communications - I don't care how smart it is, if it's not smart about the most basic functionality it should provide. Imagine my surprise when I found out that Apple was actively blocking such apps from its App Store. So I jail-broke it and installed something from the Cydia store, which was a painful process. Then Apple released a major update to iOS that I wanted, so I updated the device, but my previous method for jail-breaking it wasn't working anymore. THE ONLY REASON people put up with this is because they don't know a smartphone could solve this for them, otherwise spamming through phone calls and SMS messages is a really common problem. Out of frustration I went out of my way and got a Galaxy S device. There were several apps on Android Marketplace (now Google Play) that dealt with blocking SMS and phone calls. Several were not working on my device, because the APIs for doing that are not public and so dealing with it is hard. But I found one that worked extremely well. Even in the case of Android's Marketplace also blocking such apps, it's extremely easy on Android to install apps from third-party sources, not mentioning the ease with which you can develop for it, without setup fees or bogus certificates. And I've been blocking unwanted SMS messages and phone calls ever since. Now, some day Apple will finally wake up and provide this functionality. I'm sure that it will be polished and better than all the alternatives. However, it will be several years too late for me. And if a smartphone can't provide such basic functionality that should be a no-brainer in this age of spam, then for me it's just a shiny and expensive piece of crap. And remember when they blocked Google Voice from their store because "it duplicated existing functionality?". I also own an iPad. It was a gift (for some reason people like giving me Apple products, thinking that I love them). I also have a 3G plan for it, that I got separately, so this device is not subsidized or bought from my mobile carrier. Imagine my surprise when I found out that I couldn't do tethering with my otherwise expensive 3G plan and expensive device, yet my 1 year and a half Android could - and an iPad could do better tethering because of its bigger battery. And get this ... the functionality is available, but it depends on the settings the mobile carrier are wiring to your device. So they are basically controlling your device, deciding for you what you can and cannot do. So now I'm dreaming of a Nexus tablet as my next device, because while the iPad is useful for browsing and stuff, I don't really "own" it and there's so much more it could do. And I have no doubt about it, the sky is going to fall, because the writing is on the wall. Considering our increased dependency on smart technology, if you don't "own" your devices (or your data, or the software you depend on), the service providers are owning you. You may not notice it right now, but remember that old anecdote about how you should boil a frog alive - slowly, otherwise it jumps out. And the blame will fall partly on us, the developers that supported these closed platforms. Because we helped them grow. People also like to point out how Android is more popular because it gets promoted more by carriers - isn't it funny how openness is good for everybody, including carriers and phone makers?

flyinRyan 14y ago
>I was literally stocked by 2 people Stalked? :) > I'll give you an example - 1 I agree that Apple should provide a "hacker" setting that lets you step outside the bounds. They don't want to do this because so many non-techies imagine themselves as highly technical so they would press this button, mess something up and then shit all over the forums about how awful apple products are. Granted, Windows got to 95%+ market saturation with the latter approach, but Apple cares about imagine even to the point of shooting themselves in the foot over it. It's their right. What irritates me are all the "they're just trying lock you in because they're evil!". There's no reason to believe they're evil. It's more likely they care about imagine to a point many might consider a fault. > Imagine my surprise when I found out that I couldn't do tethering with my otherwise expensive 3G plan iOS, and other OSes for that matter, send data back to the carrier when you use the built in tethering capabilities. Since Apple is perceived to have tight control of their market, carriers expect them to keep apps out that bipass this. Android is perceived to have a less tight market so even though the built in offering would have had the exact same restriction, you could easily pick up an app that didn't. Currently, I sold my 3G iPad and use my iPhone 4 to do tethering. It's not blocked for me and I don't pay anything for it. This changed when they changed to "wireless hotspot" instead of "tethering" in the options menu. >So they are basically controlling your device, deciding for you what you can and cannot do. This is a carrier issue. I'd love to see someone make an open carrier (dumb pipe, that's what we all want!). >because while the iPad is useful for browsing and stuff, I don't really "own" it and there's so much more it could do. The iPad concept is that it's an appliance, not a general purpose computer. If you feel that means you don't "own" it, do you also not "own" your microwave since you can't do general computing on it's embedded OS either? >And I have no doubt about it, the sky is going to fall, because the writing is on the wall. And here's where you go David Icke. What writing is on what wall? Companies are trying to exploit us and maximize profits at our expense. Just as they always have. They've had us in much worse positions in the past and we've escaped. I'm confident that if phones become to restrictive we'll break out of it again. After all, I don't have to have a smart phone. It's convenient and really helpful, but I'm not going to be the monkey trapped by a banana in a bottle. >You may not notice it right now, but remember that old anecdote about how you should boil a frog alive - slowly, otherwise it jumps out. I think if you actually try this, you'll find that the frog will jump out when it reaches the right temperature regardless of how slowly you turn up the head. >And the blame will fall partly on us, the developers that supported these closed platforms. We support them because it's most profitable for us. When it's not, we won't support them. Simple. >People also like to point out how Android is more popular because it gets promoted more by carriers - isn't it funny how openness is good for everybody, including carriers and phone makers? Haha! Carriers don't give a shit about "openness ". They'd happily used a closed OS as they have in the past, so long as they get it cheaper than any alternative and have a mechanism to put their shovelware shit on it.