11 ms·

I Don't Want To Be Part of Your Ecosystem

344 points by edent 14y ago

ikken 14y ago
That's the reason I really hope most of the software will be webbrowser-based in the future. I know that right now native apps give you a better overall experience but too often they pull you into the walled garden of hardware vendor. There are solutions like phonegap etc. that let you write semi-native apps that use embedded browser inside it, but with HTML5 and successors I believe it will be possible to just have everything run in a browser, setting everyone free from any vendor specific solutions.
- edent 14y ago
  Well.... yes and no. What happens if Google Docs goes down - or is killed?
  - steelcm 14y ago
    I think it all comes down to standards, as the OP mentioned in the article. Google services usually support open standards (ODF for google docs), which makes migrating your data, when the service closes, a whole lot easier. If only there was an open standard for "offline" apps that could be used on android, iphone, iOS, windows, linux...etc with the same end user experience.
    - meaty 14y ago
      There was one called java once. Oh wait...
  - adambyrtek 14y ago
    Then the Data Liberation Front comes to your rescue. http://www.dataliberation.org/takeout-products/google-docs http://www.dataliberation.org/takeout-products/google-docs
- jiggy2011 14y ago
  Still doesn't really save you unless you can export all of your data into some open data format that can be read hassle free by other services (oh and you need a guarantee that the company won't just kill their export functionality when they get bought by another company etc). You also have to ask who controls the browser, this is going to ultimately be whoever controls the OS. iOS won't allow alternative browsers, not sure if Windows RT does? So there's nothing really stopping the OS vendor with enough market share deciding they won't allow certain HTML5 / JS functionality incase it interferes with native app sales. It might seem the case that one or two big ecosystems eat up everything else and choosing which ecosystem you live in becomes a major life choice. At this point computing and media have become a natural monopoly. Of course then follows the "open" renaissance.
  - masklinn 14y ago
    > iOS won't allow alternative browsers Depends what you mean by "alternative browsers". iOS allows alternative browsers but not alternative engines (in that javascript executed on-device has to be executed through webcore). Thus Opera Mini is a completely independent implementation (all of its interpretation and rendering is done on Opera's own server), though most alternative browsers (and there are many) are UIWebView wrappers with additional features. What iOS does not allow at all is setting an other browser as default. > not sure if Windows RT does? It's unclear. It definitely does not allow JITs (WinRT doesn't expose VirtualAlloc or VirtualProtect), which iOS does not allow either, but I don't know if a JIT-less completely independent browser implementation would be allowed.
    - jiggy2011 14y ago
      If there's no way to add features to the underlying core then it's not really much better than just an alternative browser skin. A JITless browser is not going to be much good for performance sensitive applications either. This is enough power to enable the OS vendor to gag browser apps into being second class citizens effectively.
jacquesm 14y ago
It's a dilemma. For now there is good money to be made in these ecosystems, there are people that are really raking it in (and in an above-board way). At the same time you're setting yourself up with your head on the chopping block, after you've sharpened the blade with your labor. Personally I would never build something that is not as much as possible stand alone (so without reliance on some third party controlled eco-system, of course everything needs hosting, bandwidth and power but those are commodities). But I have to counter that with the fact that I realize I'm losing out on quite a few opportunities. Choices, choices. Long term vs short term.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
pretoriusB 14y ago
>Music, movies, TV, and podcast subscriptions. All tied up in Apple's little ecosystem. A very pretty noose to keep people chained to its hardware. Really? Because, last time I checked, people mostly RENTED movies and series off of iTunes -- not outright bought them (except some tiny majority of bizaros). In which case there is nothing to be "tied to". As for music, last time I checked, iTunes sells DRM-free music, something that was first achieved for major music companies there, after Job's open letter on matter. So you can move your music to Android just fine. And even if it wasn't DRM-free (which IS) you can of course use your own DRM-free music collection with iTunes, like the vast majority of people do. And podcast subscriptions? Really? Aren't they available everywhere, anyway? People buy the hardware because they like it, and bought it since the first iPod, even before there even was an iTunes Store. Heck, they bought the iPhone even before there were third party apps too.
- heymishy 14y ago
  I think he means tied up more in the sense of its 'difficult' to move it for the average user. sure you can pull out your content and sync it to android if you know what your doing (read - tech savvy-ish) but the vast majority of the users use iTunes and have never used anything else. It's these users that will have the problems of being 'seemingly' locked into an ecosystem.. mainly because they don't know (or care to learn) anything different and it becomes too hard.
  - DeepDuh 14y ago
    What's the difference on PCs then? If users don't know how to move the stuff on their smartphones, they probably wouldn't know how to do it on a PC. Plus, many probably wouldn't know how to handle all that media period, except what's available from web services - where again there is no difference. I fail to see the point.
  - w0utert 14y ago
    >> I think he means tied up more in the sense of its 'difficult' to move it for the average user. sure you can pull out your content and sync it to android if you know what your doing (read - tech savvy-ish) but the vast majority of the users use iTunes and have never used anything else. That's just BS, you can simply select all your music and videos and whatever in iTunes and drag it to a folder. Probably there's even an export function, but I'm not sure, because I've been 'locked in the Apple ecosystem' long enough I never had the urge to move my music around (it's been sitting in an iTunes library on a Linux AFS share all this time, which is also accessed by my Squeezebox. Talk about being locked in :-S). If all else fails you can just type 'iTunes' in Spotlight and it will come up with the folder that holds all your music, so you can copy it from there. As for all the other content that 'makes you part of the ecosystem' on something like iOS or Windows Phone: all these iOS and WP apps are built for their respective platforms, so you wouldn't be able to magically transport them to an Android phone (or whatever platform) and run them anyway. You can move them between different phones and tablets that run the same OS if you want though. The comparison with a DVD player that only plays discs from a single vendor is kind of stupid. A DVD player is like a fridge or a television, it simply performs one single function and that's what people buy it for. A HD-DVD never worked in a Blu-Ray player, and a VHS tape never worked in a Betamax player either. I can make up useless analogies all day. It's not really clear what the author of this article actually proposes would be better than having a few 'ecosystems' like iOS, WP or Android. A one-size-fits-all ecosystem that everybody is forced to use? Many different ecosystems that somehow all have exactly the same features so you can use all your applications and content on every device?
jasonlingx 14y ago
Wait, whose fault is this DRM thing? Device makers or the music and movie industry? http://www.apple.com/es/hotnews/thoughtsonmusic/ http://www.apple.com/es/hotnews/thoughtsonmusic/
pothibo 14y ago
I would submit to you that the reason why Apple is what it is today is because software & hardware are intertwined.
eykanal 14y ago
These kinds of posts really bug me. Users don't give a rat's left buttock whether the "ecosystem" is closed or open or anything in between. They want something which works well and lets them buy stuff they want. Simple observation of consumer behavior has shown over and over again that people simply don't care about whether their stuff is tied to Apple or Google, or whether their location is being tracked by Twitter or Verizon, or whether they'll have a difficult time moving their music to a different device later on. If this was written as another post trying to convince developers to avoid developing for closed ecosystems it wouldn't as bad; evangelists can be a good thing, even if he's fighting a losing battle. However, as this post seems to be geared towards consumers, it's almost completely pointless ranting.
- meaty 14y ago
  They want stuff that works yes, until it goes out of fashion or something that works better comes along. Then they learn th ecosystem lesson the hard way... That is the problem.
  - seqastian 14y ago
    Why is that a problem?
    - meaty 14y ago
      I suggest you think about it some more from a non-technical user's perspective: "How the shit do I get my stuff off this iPhone onto my Nexus?"
      - colin_jack 14y ago
        I suggest at some point it could also become Apples problem. They do charge a premium and they do make mistakes so they must have users moving to other platforms. Right now the move to another platform is painful, but obviously anyone who goes ahead and moves despite that pain is going to have far less chance of ever moving back.
      - 14y ago
DanielBMarkham 14y ago
There are three things I want to do with PC technology: store stuff, run programs (which may mean consuming the things I've stored), and stay connected with friends. None of these should be dependent on location, hardware, or my personal affiliations. Geesh, it's almost 2013 folks. I should be able to walk up to a panel at a store, have it recognize me, and have all of my stuff available. Do whatever I would do at home using my PC if I like. Walk away from the panel and it resets. There's no clue or trail that I was even there. We keep trying to use these metaphors about how the internet should work. It's a walled garden. It's a bazzar. It's a type of newspaper subscription. It's a club for friends. Each metaphor works okay -- for a while. But then the people making money off the metaphor start trying to make sure that we never grow past their little idea of happiness. The tech community is smarter than this. Location-free, hardware-free, non-walled technology is the goal. Let's start going there.
- meaty 14y ago
  The tech community is cleverer than this yes, but the consumers aren't and businesses still will use any tactic possible to milk their accumulated crop of consumers dry and protect them from other wolves. Better start listening to stallman if you want all that (I certainly do).
  - crusso 14y ago
    Better start listening to stallman if you want all that Why? Stallman has written some software and posited some interesting ideas, but his philosophical bent lacks any kind of holistic approach to problem solving in the real world. When Stallman tries to extend his ideas to larger contexts (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Hurd http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Hurd), he fails because he's not a big picture guy. He's a laser-focused ideologue. If you want that Star Trekky future, you're better off listening to the words of those who built business models (Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, Walt Disney, etc.), not operating system libraries and software licenses.
    - meaty 14y ago
      I think you missed his point, and mine. His solution is simply that the real world is broken and needs fixing, which it sorely does. If you want that Star Trekky future, throw the corporations out who want to partition everyone into markets like cattle. Then build stuff for the good of humanity, not for cash. Oh wait - there's GNU already in that space. Jobs, Bezos, Disney just worked out how to sell shit, not respect our freedoms or improve the world.
mykosmos 14y ago
Agreed. This is exactly why I don't buy "new" hardware like a tablet.
- seqastian 14y ago
  you are missing out
  - meaty 14y ago
    That's purely a matter of opinion.
    - seqastian 14y ago
      everything is
      - meaty 14y ago
        Apart from mathematics, most of science, a little bit of philosophy and a fair bit of common sense...
  - dualogy 14y ago
    See, this I'm not getting about tablets. What am I missing out on? Basically just when Laptops had hit a critical milestone of being thinner than ever, light(weight)er than ever -- MBA and Ultrabooks and so on -- at that crucial point tablets "happen" (iPads first, sure) and everybody is totally into them. It's been a few years and their value proposition is the same as as a few years back: yay, vastly less power/performance, lower resolution, crappier sound, no keyboard, and just about equally painless in terms of weight or form-factor. Sure they're a bit smaller and lighter but just at a point in time where the weight and size of current-gen netbooks/ultrabooks/notebooks simply isn't an issue anymore anyway. Smartphones, I get them. Neat to have a Maps app with a phone attached in your pocket. And commuters can play Sudoku on them, fine. But tablets? What's the big appeal about them? Why have they become such a popular gadget for all their shortcomings compared to same-generation net/ultrabooks? I don't think I'll ever get it... But since we're on Hacker News... what exactly is a Hacker Newser missing out on by forgoing a tablet?
paulsutter 14y ago
Stream or rent media. "Buying" songs in an online service is as quaint as maintaining a collection of 8-track tapes. The "buy" option for movies and TV shows exists purely to extract extra money from anal retentives (what percentage of "purchased" shows ever get watched a second time?)
- voyou 14y ago
  Yeah, there's no chance I'll want to listen to a song in ten years when the record label that owns the copyright has gone out of business and so can't license it to whatever streaming service is new and trendy. No chance of that at all.
- gurkendoktor 14y ago
  You are underestimating the WTF factor of the iTunes store. Apple stopped renting series (not selling them - that I would have understood!) - and movies are often only available for either renting or selling. And you are overestimating the availability of unlimited internet (I guess). Buying DRM free music off iTunes is the absolutely most painless way for me to have my favorite songs on my laptop.
janus 14y ago
Don't you know there's an app called Doubletwist that syncs your itunes collections to android phones? That music bought from the iTunes store is DRM-free?
dschiptsov 14y ago
Why now? All this was obvious at a time of first iPods..)
mchanson 14y ago
I'm annoyed that its difficult and time consuming to move to a new house in a new city. I mean you have to hire movers, pack up all your stuff, and find a new place to live.
- jiggy2011 14y ago
  Well yes, but those are physical barriers that society has strived to solve by inventing transportation etc. The author is complaining about more arbitrary restrictions such as in certain countries where you must fill out paperwork to inform the government that you intend to move.
zerostar07 14y ago
The same thing that happened when vinyls and cassettes went bust. Content is ephemeral (except for books!)
- DanBC 14y ago
  And some e-books are now ephemeral because of the DRM or licensing. That's a weird idea to me.
adamgravitis 14y ago
My brain had trouble parsing the headline: I don't want to be part of your fucking (ecosystem) -vs- I don't want to be part of your (fucking ecosystem)
- edent 14y ago
  Well, we're all born out of an ecosystem of fucking - and I've no desire to leave that :-)
- JulianMorrison 14y ago
  Fear not, it has been Bowdlerized for your convenience.
PaulHoule 14y ago
The odd thing is that people who hate walled gardens also hate systems like Ultraviolet which are meant to brdige them. You could criticize Ultraviolet for being a DRM system, but if you look closely at it, you'll see they've worked pretty hard to build a system that prevents casual copying while being pretty fair to the consumer
- Riesling 14y ago
  How is that odd? Replacing a walled garden with a walled park does not improve the situation a lot for people who do not like walls at all.
irahul 14y ago
> On a mobile phone network in the UK, you can use any phone you want. That's the same in India. Standalone iPhones aren't affordable to a vast majority. If they come in tied with an operator where you walk in a store and get an iPhone with a small payment, and a monthly plan which covers your calls, data and phone installment, many people will happily buy it. A separation of service provider and phone is good, but the customer has other data points to evaluate as well. I was wondering though. From the way author emphasizes the separation of service and hardware, can't you buy an iPhone in US which isn't linked to a provider? You don't have buying phones and buying sim cards separately anymore?
- edent 14y ago
  I'm the author. I'm UK based, so I can't speak for the USA. Over here, you can buy the iPhone and SIM separately - or you can get them in a bundle.
nicholassmith 14y ago
I'm pretty invested in apps for iOS. I'm okay about this, I don't begrudge being locked into an ecosystem as I made a choice to be in that ecosystem. I bought a piece of software on a Windows machine a while back, which was a PC, but because it was Windows software it's not usable now I use a Mac. It's locked to an ecosystem. We can all look back at that shiny, lovely past with our rose-tinted glasses, but it's a fallacy. For the most part you were as locked to an ecosystem then as you are now. There's plenty of people who bought music from Microsoft in DRM protected WMA files that ended up being locked in. And games. And books. And software. And movies. And x. And y. And z. Smartphones are a microcosm of the exact same thing from the PC days, we just get fancy and call it an ecosystem and pretend like it's a new, bad thing that's been invented by Apple to horsewhip us.
- MatthewPhillips 14y ago
  > I'm pretty invested in apps for iOS. I'm okay about this, I don't begrudge being locked into an ecosystem as I made a choice to be in that ecosystem. That would be great, if it were easy or even feasible to be a member of no ecosystem, but it's really not.
  - sbuk 14y ago
    There are always web apps. I'd argue that they are as close to a non-ecosystem as you can get...
  - pdonis 14y ago
    Why not? I'm not a member of any of these ecosystems. What's stopping you?
  - nicholassmith 14y ago
    As long as there's software and media content you'll always have to be in some ecosystem. Getting out so there's no ecosystem is pretty much impossible.
flyinglizard 14y ago
Agreed, and much of this would not have been possible without the draconian government protection of DRM (such as in DMCA). I could totally see some kind of PC application that would liberate all your iTunes, Kindle etc. material (which you legally own, mind), but it's illegal under the current laws.
dade_ 14y ago
Media is what ties the uninformed to an eco-system. There are more options for paid DRM-Free media today and several DRM systems are trivial to break. I remember people that had an iPod and MP3 player because they thought that their Napster music couldn't work on their iPod and didn't know how to add them to their library. More telling is the author's complaints about the complexity of integrating his Android device to a NAS, etc. It is the pre-built integration between Apple devices that sell their ecosystem and keeps people coming back for more. All of the integration in the world is meaningless if it doesn't work when your friends are over or it crashes halfway though a movie (Windows Media Center anyone...)
colin_jack 14y ago
Amazon is a bit of worry for me, I like the Kindle software especially being able to use the Web version, but only being able to download (some of?) my books in AZW3 format is a PITA that is making me think twice about buying books from them in future.
- mtgx 14y ago
  I hear that in the new Kindle Paperwhite you can't even add other type of books anymore. Only Kindle ones.
  - colin_jack 14y ago
    Looks like it does still support mobi, and i'm guessing you can still use an app like Calibre to load them onto it?
tomelders 14y ago
So in a nutshell, Some chap doesn't seem to know the history of how music and movies became available online. So it's Apple's fault.
rmrfrmrf 14y ago
Ohhhh, you are just sooooooo edgy saying 'fuck' in your headline.
bambax 14y ago
The worst offender is actually Amazon. I just bought a Kindle Fire HD and boy am I disappointed! The only apps it runs are from Amazon App Store... but only the local one in your country. I can't access the US Amazon App store from France!! And of course one can't transfer Kindle books from one account to another. The answer is jailbreaking and de-DRMising; it's a pain of course but it's very much worth it.
- pkorzeniewski 14y ago
  I've recently bought for the first time an DRM protected ebook, from Kobo. Never again will I make this mistake, it's just ridiculous that I can't download a simple PDF file and read it on any device I want using any software I want, without having to install a stupid, bloated app. No, I don't want to notify people on FB or Twitter about books I'm reading. No, I don't want to see achievements. No, I don't need personal stats. No, I don't want to join a club. I just want to read the damn book I just bought!
  - teeja 14y ago
    Great choice. There's software to remove the DRM from books, of course ... but the best way to remove it is to shop at places that don't use it.
burriko 14y ago
This is one of the reasons I love services like Spotify and Netflix. They have no devices in the race, and tend to have client software for almost every platform. I can switch between phones, tablets and operating systems and still access to the same music and movies. I could even drop Spotify and switch to Rdio if I wanted, and all I would lose are my playlists (not a big deal to me, but may be to some). These services don't lock me to devices, and I also don't feel locked into the services.
- MatthewPhillips 14y ago
  Don't hold your breath on that staying the case. We're going to start seeing those services get temporary exclusives on artists, because ultimately it's the only way to get an edge on their competitors.
- manaskarekar 14y ago
  > This is one of the reasons I love services like Spotify and Netflix. They have no devices in the race, and tend to have client software for almost every platform. I can switch between phones, tablets and operating systems and still access to the same music and movies. You're joking right? Netflix? Only recently have we seen murmurs of having some hacky way of getting Netflix to run on Linux. Microsoft Silverlight lock in was, IMHO, a huge slap to Linux. They're as bad an example of "services that support every platform" as can be. http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/09/netflix-no-change-in-our-plans-for-linux http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/09/netflix-no-change-in-our-...
wting 14y ago
I think Google Wave is an undeserved mention in the list of killed off DRM services. First of all, Google supported data export from Google Wave[1]. Additionally, Google open sourced the project and it's available as Apache Wave[2] or as a protocol[3]. [1] http://googlewave.blogspot.com/2010/11/multiple-wave-export.html http://googlewave.blogspot.com/2010/11/multiple-wave-export.... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_Wave https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_Wave [3] http://www.waveprotocol.org/ http://www.waveprotocol.org/
- MatthewPhillips 14y ago
  Like most Google open source projects, the open-sourcedness of Wave was open-washing, nothing more. To my knowledge there aren't a lot of Wave services floating around out there, and Wave's codebase was highly coupled, making it difficult for anyone to create a server.
- takluyver 14y ago
  I'm still amazed that almost everyone just laughed at Wave. We're still trying to break the hold of a proprietary document format (.doc), and now platforms like Google Docs have a proprietary protocol for real-time changes. Google offered us an open, federated version of that protocol - I think we should have seized it with both hands.
aklemm 14y ago
Yes! Sounds awesome. Of course, it's unclear how such a system would produce beautiful and easy-to-use products so that users clammer to use them.
thatusertwo 14y ago
Not to suggest breaking the law, but pirated music, movies and books are not locked into any device or ecosystem.
npsimons 14y ago
The only thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history. -- Hegel I know guys can't learn from yesterday ... Hegel must be taking the long view. -- John Brunner, "Stand on Zanzibar" Does anyone else remember this little thing called "the PC wars", where you couldn't use floppies from a Mac on a Wintel machine, and you actually had to care about what version of whichever word processor you were using because it might not be compatible? And then some crazy weirdo with a beard starts warning that hey, maybe user choice is important enough to be elevated to a freedom? And everyone predictably laughs him down. But he was right, and he continues to be right, all while the fools forget history to their own detriment.
toddh 14y ago
Resistance is futile.
- zxcdw 14y ago
  So sad but so true. Forever with GNU!
delwin 14y ago
I haven't really had problems with this. I have an Android phone, an iPod, and dual boot Ubuntu and OS X. Google Music syncs iTunes to my phone via the cloud just fine; the iPod naturally syncs with iTunes. On Ubuntu I just use Google Music via the browser, or Pandora. The tech community is _already_ smart enough to deal with their stuff. And the consumer community doesn't seem to care much about being locked inside a brand; they don't know any better, for some reason, to most people, it makes sense that if you have a Mac, you need an iPad, not a Kindle Fire. Or if you get a Kindle Fire, you simply adjust your expectations accordingly. Obviously it's unethical for companies to do this, but when was the last time megacorps operated with any higher morality than economics demanded?
hcarvalhoalves 14y ago
The truth is that only the illuminati care about inter-compatibility and data freedom. Most people (myself included) value more something that works, not a hodgepodge of solutions from 15 different vendors where nothing integrates with nothing. Provide both inter-compatibility and a good user experience and you win everybody. Android promised that, but failed.
ChristianMarks 14y ago
I work in scientific programming for environmental science. Whenever I see or hear the word 'ecosystem' used to refer to a technology platform, I wonder who is eating whom.
- teeja 14y ago
  There are predators in the works, aren't there? The term is somewhat subjective, but not very much so to the people who feel like they're lunch.
michaelfeathers 14y ago
As long as it is available I will buy physical media.
iamtherockstar 14y ago
You may not want to be part of an ecosystem, but every business ever wants you to be in their ecosystem exclusively. If Amazon can keep your credit card on hand, it makes it easier for you to buy things from them, whether they be physical goods (how they hooked me) or digital goods (how they are trying very hard to keep me). I lobbied for a long time against DRM, and then I gave up, because I did want some of the content that was only available via DRM. I'll probably regret that the day Amazon decides to change the way their purchased movies work, or iTunes decides that it's streaming only (like Amazon is currently). But the fact is that unless I want to only consume Louis C.K. standup shows, it's really hard to not have DRM. I still buy physical media a lot of the time. I would assume Sony would still make money on the Bluray licensing, the cost is passed on to me, but then I have a copy of the movie with which to watch on any of my TVs or loan out to someone else.
- abecedarius 14y ago
  Contrary data point: the only DRM I regularly pay for is Netflix streaming, and I could drop that without too much pain. (I do wish I could buy ebooks more often instead of paper books.)
damian2000 14y ago
For a lot of apps these days, you're only forced to use Android/iTunes to actually pay for it initially, but then you can access your data from either; I'm thinking of apps which store their data in the cloud - evernote, dropbox, etc.
geuis 14y ago
I live in the Apple ecosystem for one simple reason. Out of every other collection of technology items I could use for both work and entertainment, Apple products are the least frustrating ones to use. I value my time above everything else. I used Windows for years. Built, repaired, and maintained Windows systems for work. Setup and ran email servers. Even did some initial web development on IIS servers. I am 32 and visibly grayer than I probably should be. If you know me in person, you can see it in my beard and in my hair when I let it get longer. Getting nearly anything done with Windows has always been an exercise in frustration for me. Tools, user interfaces, etc. Even their best products always had something wrong, something just wasn't built right. One more little speed bump to slow down what I want to do. Eventually I switched to Macs about 6 years ago. I had used them as a kid and it was easy, from that exposure, to switch back. Anything that needed terminal tools to get done, just works. Lots and lots of open source projects that run on Linux almost always just work on Mac OS. For the ones that don't work off to bat, its usually easy to fix. In terms of phones, I've stuck with iPhones since they came out. For the first couple years, it was because there were no comparable products on the market in term of fit and finish. Android was a swamp of sorrows for the longest time. Any hardware companies made and slapped Android onto were just sorrows layered onto junk devices that were a miserable experience to use. I had the joy of working with various Android handsets and tablets a few years ago for testing. It was good exposure that reinforced the simple "it works" of the iPhone. When the iPad came out, I was excited by it like millions of other people. Oddly, while I still have my first-gen iPad and while I love it as a device, it turns out its never been a form factor that I have really been able to incorporate into my life. It wasn't that the iPad is a bad device, but rather that it hasn't been a tool that I really needed. But its a great tool that millions of other people have found to be very useful indeed. Any other Android tablets just couldn't compare in usability or hardware fit, which is why the earlier ones fell so flat. More recently, I found the Windows Phone OS to be intriguing. A good friend that works at MS showed me the first ones that came out. I rather liked the fresh new take on a phone OS. Loved the interface. I seriously considered switching over to one for a while. But then as I used it, the rough bits showed through. Subpar hardware. Bad battery life. Random crashes. Oddly incomplete UI choices that made some simple tasks frustrating to complete. So, I kept my iPhone 4 for a long time. Very recently, Windows 8. Metro UI. Looks great on a tablet, same nice looking interface. A couple years had gone by and more than enough time had passed for Microsoft to work out some of the early kinks. I excitedly bought a new copy the day it came out and installed it on a spare machine at the office. The installation went really smoothly. But when I started using it, it was literally only a couple of minutes before the "wtf" moments started. The biggest issues I saw immediately was that too much of the UI is hidden away. I got very frustrated trying to do things like switching between apps, using IE 10, getting away from the completely anachronistic Desktop app. I tried installing some apps and some went to Metro, others went to Desktop with no clear indication why. When I needed to make some adjustments to system settings, it took me over 5 minutes to figure out how to even get to the settings. I'm also still really pissed with my nice long complex password being chopped to 16 characters on Windows, Live, etc. Its fucking annoying. Anyway, while I like the direction that MS is going, they still haven't gotten their stuff together. Its not the same as it used to be, but the frustration level is still there. I've had an Xbox for years too. In its simplest form, I put a game disk in and it loads up, and I play the game. But in the last few years, they've added all of this extra stuff. New UI, music services, movie services, constant updates, Kinect, etc. And while it all looks shiny, none of it really works together that well. So, I almost never use my Xbox anymore because its just gotten too complicated to do what I want, which is to simply play games. Ugh. The non-Apple tech I use and love: Gmail, Ubuntu for servers, Dropbox, github, Audible, Rdio, Netflix, torrents, Google Maps (PLEASE release an iOS app for this!), and others. Notice that at no point in this ramble do I mention Music or Movies as keeping me with Apple. It literally has nothing to do with an "ecosystem". It just has to do with building superior products that have the least frustration to getting shit done. That's the sole thing you need to worry about when building a product that people will love. Be less frustrating than your competitors, and you have a good edge. Lots of companies make individual products that are well polished. Only a few make lots of products of high quality.

344 points by edent 14y ago

ikken 14y ago

That's the reason I really hope most of the software will be webbrowser-based in the future. I know that right now native apps give you a better overall experience but too often they pull you into the walled garden of hardware vendor. There are solutions like phonegap etc. that let you write semi-native apps that use embedded browser inside it, but with HTML5 and successors I believe it will be possible to just have everything run in a browser, setting everyone free from any vendor specific solutions.

edent 14y ago
Well.... yes and no. What happens if Google Docs goes down - or is killed?
- steelcm 14y ago
  I think it all comes down to standards, as the OP mentioned in the article. Google services usually support open standards (ODF for google docs), which makes migrating your data, when the service closes, a whole lot easier. If only there was an open standard for "offline" apps that could be used on android, iphone, iOS, windows, linux...etc with the same end user experience.
  - meaty 14y ago
    There was one called java once. Oh wait...
- adambyrtek 14y ago
  Then the Data Liberation Front comes to your rescue. http://www.dataliberation.org/takeout-products/google-docs http://www.dataliberation.org/takeout-products/google-docs
jiggy2011 14y ago
Still doesn't really save you unless you can export all of your data into some open data format that can be read hassle free by other services (oh and you need a guarantee that the company won't just kill their export functionality when they get bought by another company etc). You also have to ask who controls the browser, this is going to ultimately be whoever controls the OS. iOS won't allow alternative browsers, not sure if Windows RT does? So there's nothing really stopping the OS vendor with enough market share deciding they won't allow certain HTML5 / JS functionality incase it interferes with native app sales. It might seem the case that one or two big ecosystems eat up everything else and choosing which ecosystem you live in becomes a major life choice. At this point computing and media have become a natural monopoly. Of course then follows the "open" renaissance.
- masklinn 14y ago
  > iOS won't allow alternative browsers Depends what you mean by "alternative browsers". iOS allows alternative browsers but not alternative engines (in that javascript executed on-device has to be executed through webcore). Thus Opera Mini is a completely independent implementation (all of its interpretation and rendering is done on Opera's own server), though most alternative browsers (and there are many) are UIWebView wrappers with additional features. What iOS does not allow at all is setting an other browser as default. > not sure if Windows RT does? It's unclear. It definitely does not allow JITs (WinRT doesn't expose VirtualAlloc or VirtualProtect), which iOS does not allow either, but I don't know if a JIT-less completely independent browser implementation would be allowed.
  - jiggy2011 14y ago
    If there's no way to add features to the underlying core then it's not really much better than just an alternative browser skin. A JITless browser is not going to be much good for performance sensitive applications either. This is enough power to enable the OS vendor to gag browser apps into being second class citizens effectively.

jacquesm 14y ago

It's a dilemma. For now there is good money to be made in these ecosystems, there are people that are really raking it in (and in an above-board way). At the same time you're setting yourself up with your head on the chopping block, after you've sharpened the blade with your labor. Personally I would never build something that is not as much as possible stand alone (so without reliance on some third party controlled eco-system, of course everything needs hosting, bandwidth and power but those are commodities). But I have to counter that with the fact that I realize I'm losing out on quite a few opportunities. Choices, choices. Long term vs short term.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

pretoriusB 14y ago

>Music, movies, TV, and podcast subscriptions. All tied up in Apple's little ecosystem. A very pretty noose to keep people chained to its hardware. Really? Because, last time I checked, people mostly RENTED movies and series off of iTunes -- not outright bought them (except some tiny majority of bizaros). In which case there is nothing to be "tied to". As for music, last time I checked, iTunes sells DRM-free music, something that was first achieved for major music companies there, after Job's open letter on matter. So you can move your music to Android just fine. And even if it wasn't DRM-free (which IS) you can of course use your own DRM-free music collection with iTunes, like the vast majority of people do. And podcast subscriptions? Really? Aren't they available everywhere, anyway? People buy the hardware because they like it, and bought it since the first iPod, even before there even was an iTunes Store. Heck, they bought the iPhone even before there were third party apps too.

heymishy 14y ago
I think he means tied up more in the sense of its 'difficult' to move it for the average user. sure you can pull out your content and sync it to android if you know what your doing (read - tech savvy-ish) but the vast majority of the users use iTunes and have never used anything else. It's these users that will have the problems of being 'seemingly' locked into an ecosystem.. mainly because they don't know (or care to learn) anything different and it becomes too hard.
- DeepDuh 14y ago
  What's the difference on PCs then? If users don't know how to move the stuff on their smartphones, they probably wouldn't know how to do it on a PC. Plus, many probably wouldn't know how to handle all that media period, except what's available from web services - where again there is no difference. I fail to see the point.
- w0utert 14y ago
  >> I think he means tied up more in the sense of its 'difficult' to move it for the average user. sure you can pull out your content and sync it to android if you know what your doing (read - tech savvy-ish) but the vast majority of the users use iTunes and have never used anything else. That's just BS, you can simply select all your music and videos and whatever in iTunes and drag it to a folder. Probably there's even an export function, but I'm not sure, because I've been 'locked in the Apple ecosystem' long enough I never had the urge to move my music around (it's been sitting in an iTunes library on a Linux AFS share all this time, which is also accessed by my Squeezebox. Talk about being locked in :-S). If all else fails you can just type 'iTunes' in Spotlight and it will come up with the folder that holds all your music, so you can copy it from there. As for all the other content that 'makes you part of the ecosystem' on something like iOS or Windows Phone: all these iOS and WP apps are built for their respective platforms, so you wouldn't be able to magically transport them to an Android phone (or whatever platform) and run them anyway. You can move them between different phones and tablets that run the same OS if you want though. The comparison with a DVD player that only plays discs from a single vendor is kind of stupid. A DVD player is like a fridge or a television, it simply performs one single function and that's what people buy it for. A HD-DVD never worked in a Blu-Ray player, and a VHS tape never worked in a Betamax player either. I can make up useless analogies all day. It's not really clear what the author of this article actually proposes would be better than having a few 'ecosystems' like iOS, WP or Android. A one-size-fits-all ecosystem that everybody is forced to use? Many different ecosystems that somehow all have exactly the same features so you can use all your applications and content on every device?

jasonlingx 14y ago

Wait, whose fault is this DRM thing? Device makers or the music and movie industry? http://www.apple.com/es/hotnews/thoughtsonmusic/ http://www.apple.com/es/hotnews/thoughtsonmusic/

pothibo 14y ago

I would submit to you that the reason why Apple is what it is today is because software & hardware are intertwined.

eykanal 14y ago

These kinds of posts really bug me. Users don't give a rat's left buttock whether the "ecosystem" is closed or open or anything in between. They want something which works well and lets them buy stuff they want. Simple observation of consumer behavior has shown over and over again that people simply don't care about whether their stuff is tied to Apple or Google, or whether their location is being tracked by Twitter or Verizon, or whether they'll have a difficult time moving their music to a different device later on. If this was written as another post trying to convince developers to avoid developing for closed ecosystems it wouldn't as bad; evangelists can be a good thing, even if he's fighting a losing battle. However, as this post seems to be geared towards consumers, it's almost completely pointless ranting.

meaty 14y ago
They want stuff that works yes, until it goes out of fashion or something that works better comes along. Then they learn th ecosystem lesson the hard way... That is the problem.
- seqastian 14y ago
  Why is that a problem?
  - meaty 14y ago
    I suggest you think about it some more from a non-technical user's perspective: "How the shit do I get my stuff off this iPhone onto my Nexus?"
    - colin_jack 14y ago
      I suggest at some point it could also become Apples problem. They do charge a premium and they do make mistakes so they must have users moving to other platforms. Right now the move to another platform is painful, but obviously anyone who goes ahead and moves despite that pain is going to have far less chance of ever moving back.
    - 14y ago

DanielBMarkham 14y ago

There are three things I want to do with PC technology: store stuff, run programs (which may mean consuming the things I've stored), and stay connected with friends. None of these should be dependent on location, hardware, or my personal affiliations. Geesh, it's almost 2013 folks. I should be able to walk up to a panel at a store, have it recognize me, and have all of my stuff available. Do whatever I would do at home using my PC if I like. Walk away from the panel and it resets. There's no clue or trail that I was even there. We keep trying to use these metaphors about how the internet should work. It's a walled garden. It's a bazzar. It's a type of newspaper subscription. It's a club for friends. Each metaphor works okay -- for a while. But then the people making money off the metaphor start trying to make sure that we never grow past their little idea of happiness. The tech community is smarter than this. Location-free, hardware-free, non-walled technology is the goal. Let's start going there.

meaty 14y ago
The tech community is cleverer than this yes, but the consumers aren't and businesses still will use any tactic possible to milk their accumulated crop of consumers dry and protect them from other wolves. Better start listening to stallman if you want all that (I certainly do).
- crusso 14y ago
  Better start listening to stallman if you want all that Why? Stallman has written some software and posited some interesting ideas, but his philosophical bent lacks any kind of holistic approach to problem solving in the real world. When Stallman tries to extend his ideas to larger contexts (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Hurd http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Hurd), he fails because he's not a big picture guy. He's a laser-focused ideologue. If you want that Star Trekky future, you're better off listening to the words of those who built business models (Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, Walt Disney, etc.), not operating system libraries and software licenses.
  - meaty 14y ago
    I think you missed his point, and mine. His solution is simply that the real world is broken and needs fixing, which it sorely does. If you want that Star Trekky future, throw the corporations out who want to partition everyone into markets like cattle. Then build stuff for the good of humanity, not for cash. Oh wait - there's GNU already in that space. Jobs, Bezos, Disney just worked out how to sell shit, not respect our freedoms or improve the world.

mykosmos 14y ago

Agreed. This is exactly why I don't buy "new" hardware like a tablet.

seqastian 14y ago
you are missing out
- meaty 14y ago
  That's purely a matter of opinion.
  - seqastian 14y ago
    everything is
    - meaty 14y ago
      Apart from mathematics, most of science, a little bit of philosophy and a fair bit of common sense...
- dualogy 14y ago
  See, this I'm not getting about tablets. What am I missing out on? Basically just when Laptops had hit a critical milestone of being thinner than ever, light(weight)er than ever -- MBA and Ultrabooks and so on -- at that crucial point tablets "happen" (iPads first, sure) and everybody is totally into them. It's been a few years and their value proposition is the same as as a few years back: yay, vastly less power/performance, lower resolution, crappier sound, no keyboard, and just about equally painless in terms of weight or form-factor. Sure they're a bit smaller and lighter but just at a point in time where the weight and size of current-gen netbooks/ultrabooks/notebooks simply isn't an issue anymore anyway. Smartphones, I get them. Neat to have a Maps app with a phone attached in your pocket. And commuters can play Sudoku on them, fine. But tablets? What's the big appeal about them? Why have they become such a popular gadget for all their shortcomings compared to same-generation net/ultrabooks? I don't think I'll ever get it... But since we're on Hacker News... what exactly is a Hacker Newser missing out on by forgoing a tablet?

paulsutter 14y ago

Stream or rent media. "Buying" songs in an online service is as quaint as maintaining a collection of 8-track tapes. The "buy" option for movies and TV shows exists purely to extract extra money from anal retentives (what percentage of "purchased" shows ever get watched a second time?)

voyou 14y ago
Yeah, there's no chance I'll want to listen to a song in ten years when the record label that owns the copyright has gone out of business and so can't license it to whatever streaming service is new and trendy. No chance of that at all.
gurkendoktor 14y ago
You are underestimating the WTF factor of the iTunes store. Apple stopped renting series (not selling them - that I would have understood!) - and movies are often only available for either renting or selling. And you are overestimating the availability of unlimited internet (I guess). Buying DRM free music off iTunes is the absolutely most painless way for me to have my favorite songs on my laptop.

janus 14y ago

Don't you know there's an app called Doubletwist that syncs your itunes collections to android phones? That music bought from the iTunes store is DRM-free?

dschiptsov 14y ago

Why now? All this was obvious at a time of first iPods..)

mchanson 14y ago

I'm annoyed that its difficult and time consuming to move to a new house in a new city. I mean you have to hire movers, pack up all your stuff, and find a new place to live.

jiggy2011 14y ago
Well yes, but those are physical barriers that society has strived to solve by inventing transportation etc. The author is complaining about more arbitrary restrictions such as in certain countries where you must fill out paperwork to inform the government that you intend to move.

zerostar07 14y ago

The same thing that happened when vinyls and cassettes went bust. Content is ephemeral (except for books!)

DanBC 14y ago
And some e-books are now ephemeral because of the DRM or licensing. That's a weird idea to me.

adamgravitis 14y ago

My brain had trouble parsing the headline: I don't want to be part of your fucking (ecosystem) -vs- I don't want to be part of your (fucking ecosystem)

edent 14y ago
Well, we're all born out of an ecosystem of fucking - and I've no desire to leave that :-)
JulianMorrison 14y ago
Fear not, it has been Bowdlerized for your convenience.

PaulHoule 14y ago

The odd thing is that people who hate walled gardens also hate systems like Ultraviolet which are meant to brdige them. You could criticize Ultraviolet for being a DRM system, but if you look closely at it, you'll see they've worked pretty hard to build a system that prevents casual copying while being pretty fair to the consumer

Riesling 14y ago
How is that odd? Replacing a walled garden with a walled park does not improve the situation a lot for people who do not like walls at all.

irahul 14y ago

> On a mobile phone network in the UK, you can use any phone you want. That's the same in India. Standalone iPhones aren't affordable to a vast majority. If they come in tied with an operator where you walk in a store and get an iPhone with a small payment, and a monthly plan which covers your calls, data and phone installment, many people will happily buy it. A separation of service provider and phone is good, but the customer has other data points to evaluate as well. I was wondering though. From the way author emphasizes the separation of service and hardware, can't you buy an iPhone in US which isn't linked to a provider? You don't have buying phones and buying sim cards separately anymore?

edent 14y ago
I'm the author. I'm UK based, so I can't speak for the USA. Over here, you can buy the iPhone and SIM separately - or you can get them in a bundle.

nicholassmith 14y ago

I'm pretty invested in apps for iOS. I'm okay about this, I don't begrudge being locked into an ecosystem as I made a choice to be in that ecosystem. I bought a piece of software on a Windows machine a while back, which was a PC, but because it was Windows software it's not usable now I use a Mac. It's locked to an ecosystem. We can all look back at that shiny, lovely past with our rose-tinted glasses, but it's a fallacy. For the most part you were as locked to an ecosystem then as you are now. There's plenty of people who bought music from Microsoft in DRM protected WMA files that ended up being locked in. And games. And books. And software. And movies. And x. And y. And z. Smartphones are a microcosm of the exact same thing from the PC days, we just get fancy and call it an ecosystem and pretend like it's a new, bad thing that's been invented by Apple to horsewhip us.

MatthewPhillips 14y ago
> I'm pretty invested in apps for iOS. I'm okay about this, I don't begrudge being locked into an ecosystem as I made a choice to be in that ecosystem. That would be great, if it were easy or even feasible to be a member of no ecosystem, but it's really not.
- sbuk 14y ago
  There are always web apps. I'd argue that they are as close to a non-ecosystem as you can get...
- pdonis 14y ago
  Why not? I'm not a member of any of these ecosystems. What's stopping you?
- nicholassmith 14y ago
  As long as there's software and media content you'll always have to be in some ecosystem. Getting out so there's no ecosystem is pretty much impossible.

flyinglizard 14y ago

Agreed, and much of this would not have been possible without the draconian government protection of DRM (such as in DMCA). I could totally see some kind of PC application that would liberate all your iTunes, Kindle etc. material (which you legally own, mind), but it's illegal under the current laws.

dade_ 14y ago

Media is what ties the uninformed to an eco-system. There are more options for paid DRM-Free media today and several DRM systems are trivial to break. I remember people that had an iPod and MP3 player because they thought that their Napster music couldn't work on their iPod and didn't know how to add them to their library. More telling is the author's complaints about the complexity of integrating his Android device to a NAS, etc. It is the pre-built integration between Apple devices that sell their ecosystem and keeps people coming back for more. All of the integration in the world is meaningless if it doesn't work when your friends are over or it crashes halfway though a movie (Windows Media Center anyone...)

colin_jack 14y ago

Amazon is a bit of worry for me, I like the Kindle software especially being able to use the Web version, but only being able to download (some of?) my books in AZW3 format is a PITA that is making me think twice about buying books from them in future.

mtgx 14y ago
I hear that in the new Kindle Paperwhite you can't even add other type of books anymore. Only Kindle ones.
- colin_jack 14y ago
  Looks like it does still support mobi, and i'm guessing you can still use an app like Calibre to load them onto it?

tomelders 14y ago

So in a nutshell, Some chap doesn't seem to know the history of how music and movies became available online. So it's Apple's fault.

rmrfrmrf 14y ago

Ohhhh, you are just sooooooo edgy saying 'fuck' in your headline.

bambax 14y ago

The worst offender is actually Amazon. I just bought a Kindle Fire HD and boy am I disappointed! The only apps it runs are from Amazon App Store... but only the local one in your country. I can't access the US Amazon App store from France!! And of course one can't transfer Kindle books from one account to another. The answer is jailbreaking and de-DRMising; it's a pain of course but it's very much worth it.

pkorzeniewski 14y ago
I've recently bought for the first time an DRM protected ebook, from Kobo. Never again will I make this mistake, it's just ridiculous that I can't download a simple PDF file and read it on any device I want using any software I want, without having to install a stupid, bloated app. No, I don't want to notify people on FB or Twitter about books I'm reading. No, I don't want to see achievements. No, I don't need personal stats. No, I don't want to join a club. I just want to read the damn book I just bought!
- teeja 14y ago
  Great choice. There's software to remove the DRM from books, of course ... but the best way to remove it is to shop at places that don't use it.

burriko 14y ago

This is one of the reasons I love services like Spotify and Netflix. They have no devices in the race, and tend to have client software for almost every platform. I can switch between phones, tablets and operating systems and still access to the same music and movies. I could even drop Spotify and switch to Rdio if I wanted, and all I would lose are my playlists (not a big deal to me, but may be to some). These services don't lock me to devices, and I also don't feel locked into the services.

MatthewPhillips 14y ago
Don't hold your breath on that staying the case. We're going to start seeing those services get temporary exclusives on artists, because ultimately it's the only way to get an edge on their competitors.
manaskarekar 14y ago
> This is one of the reasons I love services like Spotify and Netflix. They have no devices in the race, and tend to have client software for almost every platform. I can switch between phones, tablets and operating systems and still access to the same music and movies. You're joking right? Netflix? Only recently have we seen murmurs of having some hacky way of getting Netflix to run on Linux. Microsoft Silverlight lock in was, IMHO, a huge slap to Linux. They're as bad an example of "services that support every platform" as can be. http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/09/netflix-no-change-in-our-plans-for-linux http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/09/netflix-no-change-in-our-...

wting 14y ago

I think Google Wave is an undeserved mention in the list of killed off DRM services. First of all, Google supported data export from Google Wave[1]. Additionally, Google open sourced the project and it's available as Apache Wave[2] or as a protocol[3]. [1] http://googlewave.blogspot.com/2010/11/multiple-wave-export.html http://googlewave.blogspot.com/2010/11/multiple-wave-export.... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_Wave https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_Wave [3] http://www.waveprotocol.org/ http://www.waveprotocol.org/

MatthewPhillips 14y ago
Like most Google open source projects, the open-sourcedness of Wave was open-washing, nothing more. To my knowledge there aren't a lot of Wave services floating around out there, and Wave's codebase was highly coupled, making it difficult for anyone to create a server.
takluyver 14y ago
I'm still amazed that almost everyone just laughed at Wave. We're still trying to break the hold of a proprietary document format (.doc), and now platforms like Google Docs have a proprietary protocol for real-time changes. Google offered us an open, federated version of that protocol - I think we should have seized it with both hands.

aklemm 14y ago

Yes! Sounds awesome. Of course, it's unclear how such a system would produce beautiful and easy-to-use products so that users clammer to use them.

thatusertwo 14y ago

Not to suggest breaking the law, but pirated music, movies and books are not locked into any device or ecosystem.

npsimons 14y ago

The only thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history. -- Hegel I know guys can't learn from yesterday ... Hegel must be taking the long view. -- John Brunner, "Stand on Zanzibar" Does anyone else remember this little thing called "the PC wars", where you couldn't use floppies from a Mac on a Wintel machine, and you actually had to care about what version of whichever word processor you were using because it might not be compatible? And then some crazy weirdo with a beard starts warning that hey, maybe user choice is important enough to be elevated to a freedom? And everyone predictably laughs him down. But he was right, and he continues to be right, all while the fools forget history to their own detriment.

toddh 14y ago

Resistance is futile.

zxcdw 14y ago
So sad but so true. Forever with GNU!

delwin 14y ago

I haven't really had problems with this. I have an Android phone, an iPod, and dual boot Ubuntu and OS X. Google Music syncs iTunes to my phone via the cloud just fine; the iPod naturally syncs with iTunes. On Ubuntu I just use Google Music via the browser, or Pandora. The tech community is _already_ smart enough to deal with their stuff. And the consumer community doesn't seem to care much about being locked inside a brand; they don't know any better, for some reason, to most people, it makes sense that if you have a Mac, you need an iPad, not a Kindle Fire. Or if you get a Kindle Fire, you simply adjust your expectations accordingly. Obviously it's unethical for companies to do this, but when was the last time megacorps operated with any higher morality than economics demanded?

hcarvalhoalves 14y ago

The truth is that only the illuminati care about inter-compatibility and data freedom. Most people (myself included) value more something that works, not a hodgepodge of solutions from 15 different vendors where nothing integrates with nothing. Provide both inter-compatibility and a good user experience and you win everybody. Android promised that, but failed.

ChristianMarks 14y ago

I work in scientific programming for environmental science. Whenever I see or hear the word 'ecosystem' used to refer to a technology platform, I wonder who is eating whom.

teeja 14y ago
There are predators in the works, aren't there? The term is somewhat subjective, but not very much so to the people who feel like they're lunch.

michaelfeathers 14y ago

As long as it is available I will buy physical media.

iamtherockstar 14y ago

You may not want to be part of an ecosystem, but every business ever wants you to be in their ecosystem exclusively. If Amazon can keep your credit card on hand, it makes it easier for you to buy things from them, whether they be physical goods (how they hooked me) or digital goods (how they are trying very hard to keep me). I lobbied for a long time against DRM, and then I gave up, because I did want some of the content that was only available via DRM. I'll probably regret that the day Amazon decides to change the way their purchased movies work, or iTunes decides that it's streaming only (like Amazon is currently). But the fact is that unless I want to only consume Louis C.K. standup shows, it's really hard to not have DRM. I still buy physical media a lot of the time. I would assume Sony would still make money on the Bluray licensing, the cost is passed on to me, but then I have a copy of the movie with which to watch on any of my TVs or loan out to someone else.

abecedarius 14y ago
Contrary data point: the only DRM I regularly pay for is Netflix streaming, and I could drop that without too much pain. (I do wish I could buy ebooks more often instead of paper books.)

damian2000 14y ago

For a lot of apps these days, you're only forced to use Android/iTunes to actually pay for it initially, but then you can access your data from either; I'm thinking of apps which store their data in the cloud - evernote, dropbox, etc.

geuis 14y ago

I live in the Apple ecosystem for one simple reason. Out of every other collection of technology items I could use for both work and entertainment, Apple products are the least frustrating ones to use. I value my time above everything else. I used Windows for years. Built, repaired, and maintained Windows systems for work. Setup and ran email servers. Even did some initial web development on IIS servers. I am 32 and visibly grayer than I probably should be. If you know me in person, you can see it in my beard and in my hair when I let it get longer. Getting nearly anything done with Windows has always been an exercise in frustration for me. Tools, user interfaces, etc. Even their best products always had something wrong, something just wasn't built right. One more little speed bump to slow down what I want to do. Eventually I switched to Macs about 6 years ago. I had used them as a kid and it was easy, from that exposure, to switch back. Anything that needed terminal tools to get done, just works. Lots and lots of open source projects that run on Linux almost always just work on Mac OS. For the ones that don't work off to bat, its usually easy to fix. In terms of phones, I've stuck with iPhones since they came out. For the first couple years, it was because there were no comparable products on the market in term of fit and finish. Android was a swamp of sorrows for the longest time. Any hardware companies made and slapped Android onto were just sorrows layered onto junk devices that were a miserable experience to use. I had the joy of working with various Android handsets and tablets a few years ago for testing. It was good exposure that reinforced the simple "it works" of the iPhone. When the iPad came out, I was excited by it like millions of other people. Oddly, while I still have my first-gen iPad and while I love it as a device, it turns out its never been a form factor that I have really been able to incorporate into my life. It wasn't that the iPad is a bad device, but rather that it hasn't been a tool that I really needed. But its a great tool that millions of other people have found to be very useful indeed. Any other Android tablets just couldn't compare in usability or hardware fit, which is why the earlier ones fell so flat. More recently, I found the Windows Phone OS to be intriguing. A good friend that works at MS showed me the first ones that came out. I rather liked the fresh new take on a phone OS. Loved the interface. I seriously considered switching over to one for a while. But then as I used it, the rough bits showed through. Subpar hardware. Bad battery life. Random crashes. Oddly incomplete UI choices that made some simple tasks frustrating to complete. So, I kept my iPhone 4 for a long time. Very recently, Windows 8. Metro UI. Looks great on a tablet, same nice looking interface. A couple years had gone by and more than enough time had passed for Microsoft to work out some of the early kinks. I excitedly bought a new copy the day it came out and installed it on a spare machine at the office. The installation went really smoothly. But when I started using it, it was literally only a couple of minutes before the "wtf" moments started. The biggest issues I saw immediately was that too much of the UI is hidden away. I got very frustrated trying to do things like switching between apps, using IE 10, getting away from the completely anachronistic Desktop app. I tried installing some apps and some went to Metro, others went to Desktop with no clear indication why. When I needed to make some adjustments to system settings, it took me over 5 minutes to figure out how to even get to the settings. I'm also still really pissed with my nice long complex password being chopped to 16 characters on Windows, Live, etc. Its fucking annoying. Anyway, while I like the direction that MS is going, they still haven't gotten their stuff together. Its not the same as it used to be, but the frustration level is still there. I've had an Xbox for years too. In its simplest form, I put a game disk in and it loads up, and I play the game. But in the last few years, they've added all of this extra stuff. New UI, music services, movie services, constant updates, Kinect, etc. And while it all looks shiny, none of it really works together that well. So, I almost never use my Xbox anymore because its just gotten too complicated to do what I want, which is to simply play games. Ugh. The non-Apple tech I use and love: Gmail, Ubuntu for servers, Dropbox, github, Audible, Rdio, Netflix, torrents, Google Maps (PLEASE release an iOS app for this!), and others. Notice that at no point in this ramble do I mention Music or Movies as keeping me with Apple. It literally has nothing to do with an "ecosystem". It just has to do with building superior products that have the least frustration to getting shit done. That's the sole thing you need to worry about when building a product that people will love. Be less frustrating than your competitors, and you have a good edge. Lots of companies make individual products that are well polished. Only a few make lots of products of high quality.