Beware the Apple iPhone iHandcuffs

Nrbelex writes "Randall Stross makes a fresh and surprisingly accurate review of one of the biggest "features" in the upcoming iPhone and the iPod in general, 'fairplay'. Stross writes, 'If "crippleware" seems an unduly harsh description, it balances the euphemistic names that the industry uses for copy protection. Apple officially calls its own standard "FairPlay," but fair it is not.... You are always going to have to buy Apple stuff. Forever and ever.' Can mainstream media coverage help the battle over DRM or will this warning, like those of the pas, continue to go unnoticed?"

Comments

Locked music? What about locked OS?

[jezor]

I read the NYT article, and this is really not a new issue, is it? The iPod has had this issue, as did Apple's previous foray into cellphones (the ROKR and now the RAZR). The bigger challenge the iPhone faces is that, according to Steve Jobs, 3rd party developers won't be able to write programs for the iPhone without Apple's blessing and distribution channels. That's a product killer, given that the most popular smartphones already on the market (especially those running PalmOS and Windows Mobile) are tremendously extensible via 3rd party offerings. It's also a huge mistake. Having a phone that plays music isn't a revolution; it's a necessity these days. Heck, the phones that are being given away by the carriers can all play MP3s at least. Rather, anyone spending as much as Apple wants for the iPhone (even before locking in a data plan from Cingular) is going to want to do whatever he or she can imagine with the iPhone in all aspects of life, not just music or telephoning. That will require 3rd party developers. Apple should embrace 3rd party development, since it will sell many more iPhones, rather than the current strategy.

Personally, I was pondering how to make the business case for an iPhone at work until I read about the current 3rd party app limitation. As someone who's used the PalmOS for 10 years, I am *not* going back to one-vendor sourced apps. {Prof. Jonathan Ezor, PalmAddict Associate Writer}