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Apple and the Scalability of Secrecy
RobotsDinner writes "Anil Dash has a thoughtful exploration of Apple's notorious devotion to secrecy, and argues that not only is there a limit to its feasibility, but that recent events show Apple has reached that limit already. 'If the ethical argument is unpersuasive, then focus on the long-term viability of your marketing and branding efforts, and realize that a technology company that is determined to prevent information from being spread is an organization at war with itself. Civil wars are expensive, have no winners, and incur lots of casualties.'"
Openness where are you?
Android?
I run Linux too. I just "activated" it with a friend's Windows machine. Then you can use it completely without iTunes, including the downloading of songs/apps. Don't give up so easily, it's a good product.
While I admittedly was stretching the technical definition of "scale" when titling my original post that's linked here, the word also has a meaning in non-technical contexts, within which this made sense. I could have gone with something like "Is Secrecy Tenable?" or something like that, but for better or worse we tend to find alliteration evocative in English. At any rate, if your only quibble is with one word from the 2000+ I wrote in the article, then I think I'm pleased that the rest of the message is resonating.
You can replace the battery, it's just not simple. No need to throw it out. And all iPods use simple databases maintained by a desktop application (usually iTunes), so you can't simply copy mp3 files to them.
iPods are not open devices. They're usually not the best choice for hackers.
Apple announced that Shake was end-of-life a couple of years ago. Large users were even given the opportunity to buy a source code license of the last build so they could keep it going in house. However, talk of the replacement (Phenomenon?) product has been pretty quiet of late.
Apple has historically BOASTED about their closedness.
The original Macintosh came in a sealed box, and was dubbed 'Hacker Proof' (in the classic sense of people who like access to their stuff) at all the early Press Events. The machine was introduced as a reaction to and against, those of us with our Osbornes and TRS-80's and all the other machines that were thriving in an open community. Then Apple nailed the point down further by suing anybody else who dared adopt a GUI, wiping out all the small players and essentially creating Microsoft's monopoly for them (it took Microsoft and HP's legal heft to come out with a GUI operating system 'for the rest of us.' The small competitors like GEM were run out of the market.)