While I sympathise with Dan Gillmore’s attitude towards Apple, I’m not sure I can get too incensed about it.
The reason I left prompts me to hope Apple will make the kind of announcement that I’m fairly sure is not in the cards. That would be a decision to relax the control-freakery that has become one of the company’s signature traits.
Apple is far from alone in its assertion of control over its customers and “partners” – but it is among the most demanding. In particular, the company has locked down its iOS mobile ecosystem. If you buy aniPhone or iPad, you are only allowed to use software that Apple allows. If you are a software developer, you can only sell your products through Apple, which may well decide what you have created is unworthy or too competitive with Apple’s own offerings. If your app or book violates Apple’s vague morality standards, you’re out. And if you make peripheral hardware for the mobile devices, Apple will make you pay a fee (or lock you out).
The solution to all of this is the one Gillmore has already taken and one I took a long time ago – don’t buy Apple products, don’t develop Apple software and don’t produce bits of kit designed to work with their items. Simple. There are plenty of other products out there with more open systems for the developers to play with. I for one, will never buy from a company that tries to exercise control over the item once I’ve bought it, hence my refusal to buy Apple. This is in addition to the fact that the items are over-hyped and others can do the job just as well without all the fuss (or the absurd queueing outside the Apple store to get the latest piece of tat).
Still, I guess it keeps the fanbois happy..They buy the latest Apple offering and those of us who don’t want to, don’t..
My first and last experience with an Apple product was their first Macintosh.
It decided when it would yield up your floppy disc, that was enough for me!
Not to mention the exorbitant price of Apple products.
My daughter had a bloody Iphone what a piece of unreliable tat that was, even she has said when her upgrade is due she sure as hell won’t be using apple again.
I have never used anything Apple and I never will I am afraid my attitude is if it’s that hyped I will avoid it with a 10 foot barge pole, I take the same stance on any Britt rom com made by Richard Curtis.
“Not to mention the exorbitant price of Apple products.”
Personally, I think Vertu’s kit is far more “exorbitant”: http://www.engadget.com/2013/02/12/vertus-first-android-smartphone-will-cost-7-900-euros/
Vertu will also sell you blinged-up mid-range Nokias for eye-watering sums of cash too.
I’ve used computers since the very early ’80s, so I’ve seen many changes. I still prefer GEM’s drop-down menus over OS X’s pull-down ones, but I do feel Apple gets a lot of undeserved stick for their ‘gated community’ approach. After all, if I were to walk into John Lewis and demand they sold my shoddy tat, I’d be rightly thrown out on my ear. All ordinary shops are therefore curated. This isn’t “control-freakery”: it’s *normal*, for Cliff’s sake. No shop owner would let you sell anything you liked on their premises: that’s what we call a bazaar or a boot fair. That’s what Google offers.
You could argue that Apple should allow competing stores, as we see in real life, but high street shops typically sell physical, tangible goods. App and media stores do not. They’re more like an Argos shop with an infinitely large stockroom.
Hosting applications (or music, or videos, etc.) in gigantic data-centres capable of handling the demand also costs a substantial amount of money, so the only viable competitors are companies who already have massive data-centres and can therefore apply economies of scale. Companies like Amazon and Google. End users would simply get a choice of two or three vast department stores, all selling pretty much the same stuff with little, if any, difference in pricing.
Note that Microsoft have twigged to the security advantages of this curated approach, so it’s not just Apple. Even Amazon’s own Android app store is curated.
Sean,
I couldn’t agree more. I’ve used Macs since 1988:- I currently have a MacPro and an iPhone 5.
Why?
They suit me, and what I want from a computer & phone. Although currently a graphic designer (at the grand old age of 63) I was a systems programmer in the 1970’s, and a hardware engineer (also) from around 1982.
Having spent some time with Windows & MS-DOS, and the bastardised collection of spare parts on which they ran, I appreciate my Apple kit does just what it says on the tin, without my having to cajole it, sacrifice rubber chickens (can’t get the virgins anymore) or all the other esoteric mumbo-jumbo usually necessary to keep a Windows system running.
Prices are rarely any more, when you compare like for like – but what you do get from Apple is better build standards, better quality and an intuitive operating system which is basically industrial strength Unix and it just works.
I’ve had Windows machines for about the same amount of time and they have always, without exception, done exactly what I bought them to do with no problems whatsoever (unless you count a hard disk wearing out on one occasion). So, frankly, the old “Apple does what it’s supposed to and Windows is unreliable” argument holds no water with me. it is an exaggerated claim at best.
Also, Apple products and Widows ones offer a different user experience. it does not mean that one is superior necessarily. My objection to Apple is not that the kit doesn’t perform, rather that the company seems to think that it is okay to exercise control post purchase.
Actually, outside of the rarefied world of the techie, it most certainly is control freakery. I do not expect the hardware vendor to try and control how I use my item post purchase. So, for example, if I wanted to buy an erotic e-book that the ghost of saint Steve of Jobs frowns upon as being “pornographic” I expect to be able to load it and read it without Apple even being aware of my choices. Apple, however, thinks differently. Likewise with other apps of which it does not approve. With my Android machine, I can purchase such items without going through Google – who don’t care anyway and that is quite right and proper.
To draw an analogy, when I buy a BMW motorcycle, I can buy accessories and aftermarket kit either from them or from third party vendors. Those third party vendors do not have to seek permission and they do not have to pay BMW a cut. It would be disgraceful if they did. Yet Apple seems to think that this behaviour is okay. I do not. Consequently, I will not buy their products.
“I do not expect the hardware vendor to try and control how I use my item post purchase.”
iBooks will open any ePub-format or PDF ebook. And you can always install Amazon’s own Kindle app if you prefer it. No, Apple won’t *sell* such books to you, but there’s nothing to stop you buying them somewhere else. (If your ebook is in some other format, Calibre is your friend.)
I also stream videos – MKV, AVI, M4V, you name it – them off my QNAP NAS box onto my iPad to avoid having them clutter up the device, using either Air Video or VLC. No jailbreaking required. Music I can get from anywhere too. iTunes doesn’t mind.
As I said in a previous reply, the *only* limitation Apple users have is the lack of alternate *app* stores, but there’s not much you’d gain by having them. Allowing apps to be installed from anywhere leads to major malware problems, as both Windows and Android have proved, twice. Even so, you *can* install Web apps from *any* website, and they are, in fact, what the original iPhone was only originally intended to run. Go to any website and save it to your home screen: it’ll look just like any other app, with an icon and everything. Do so for Google Docs and you have a Google Docs applet right there. No need to even open the App Store at all. Nobody’s stopping developers from building web app versions of online applications. Google Docs and Apple’s recent “iWorks for iCloud” tools are web apps and show what can be done.
Furthermore, if you “jailbreak” an iPhone or iPad, Apple won’t try and have you arrested. They just won’t provide any support: brick your device and you’re on your own. Which is exactly as it should be.
A product designer has the *exact same freedom* and *right* to decide what their product should be officially capable of doing, and to implement the necessary support infrastructure to handle that. And *only* that. I’d love it if I could make my microwave oven play tunes instead of simply beeping at me, but that’s not what it was designed to do and, to make it do so, I’d definitely have to void the warranty.
Bottom line: Apple are just as free to make stuff that fits *their* design philosophy as you are to not buy it. If you are entitled to freedom of expression, so is Jonathan Ive.
(Besides, if you think Apple are “control freaks”, try buying a games console sometime.)
I buy books from Amazon for the Kindle app on my iPhone – and they are automatically downloaded to the Kindle app on my Mac. I can install and read ebooks from several other sources than Apple’s app store.
I install any app I need or want enough to acquire on my Mac – whether it’s from the app store or not.
The accusations of Stalinist control freakery are rather like the reports of Mark Twain’s death:- somewhat exaggerated.
I remember, many years ago, being vaguely discomfited by Microsoft’s total dominance over the desktop market. Not burning-Bill-Gates-in-effigy upset, but just a little turned off by the apparent lack of choice. Linux was only an option for serious comuter science types at the time, so I tended to buy second hand or end-of-line Macs instead out of sheer contrariness. It worked well enough until they released Mac OS 8, which was finally enough to cause me to switch to Windows for a while.
Nowadays though, I’m spoiled for choice and there’s just no *point* getting stressed about it. Don’t like Apple? On the desktop you have Windows, plus a wide range of now-mature Linux distributions. On tablets and phones you have Windows (again), Android and apparently soon Ubuntu Linux.
One thing about Android and Google Play: you don’t have to use Google Play to distribute your Android app, although it’s a very convenient way to do so. Never having used an iOs product I’m not sure if that’s possible with Apple.
That last point is precisely the issue. if you could buy an Apple product and freely load whatever you wanted without going through the Apple store, there wouldn’t be an issue.
Err…
You can.