Jimmy Wales Declares App Store Models a Threat

An anonymous reader writes "Wikipedia's chief says models such as the App Store on the iPad are not only a dangerous chokepoint to internet freedom, but that this is a real and immediate problem that's of more concern than the overblown what if's of the net neutrality debate."

Comments

Ugh

[Anrego]

I’m personally not a fan of the whole “app” thing. Feels like we are going backwards.

You had specialized viewers and clients for various data, then gradually the web became more mature and more and more data was simply put on a website. Now we are gradually going back to the specialized viewer mentality.

OS integration and a few features like GPS and multi-touch are one justification, and there are certainly cases where it does make sense to have a specialized client vice a web app to view content from the web, however I think a lot of it has to do with money.

You can’t sell a subscription to a website (unless you’ve got some really damn good content), but you can sell a little app that pulls data off your website and displays it in a different manner.

We had a shitty but effective standard going here.. and I fear this whole “app” craze is going to put us back in the “dark ages”.

Re:Ugh

[drinkypoo]

We had a shitty but effective standard going here.. and I fear this whole “app” craze is going to put us back in the “dark ages”.

Give a little more time for HTML5 to become common, and you'll see whole sites popping up to provide web-delivered "Apps" which cache and remain local via HTML5. People are still getting a handle on it. There's loads of apps which are so simple they can be replaced in this way.

Hopefully as HTML continues to add in features, more and more of the lame apps will disappear and be replaced. But apps offer persistence; you don't have to reload them every time you want to use them. Again, you can offer this through HTML5, but developers don't know or aren't interested (yet!) in replacing their apps with non-App versions because they like to get paid. Someone will eventually do it just for giggles, though. And many of the apps are already available on this basis, but usually not cached.

You can’t sell a subscription to a website (unless you’ve got some really damn good content), but you can sell a little app that pulls data off your website and displays it in a different manner.

And if it adds substantial value then it will be used. And if it doesn't then someone else will come along and offer a website that works without your app and eat your lunch.

Re:Ugh

[Moryath]

"Specialized viewer mentality" has always been there.

Sony loves it. They only put DVD players in the PS2 because they were part of the consortium that owned the patents. They put Blu-Ray in the PS3 because... they own the patents. They used their proprietary memory card tech in the PSP and PS3 because... you guess it... they own the patents. In the early days of MP3 players, they were trying to shove minidisc and ATRAC down everyone's throats because, guess what... THEY OWNED THE PATENTS.

We now have Amazon Kindle Store, B&N Nook Store, etc because everyone wants to try to lock their customer into their devices. Want to switch to Kindle? Ok, but you can't take all the Nook books you bought with you (without cracking the DRM, being accused of "piracy", etc etc).

Every corporation loves the idea of the specialized viewer because it locks the customer in to their store. Every consumer with a brain hates the idea, but has nowhere else to turn to except "piracy."

Re:Ugh

[XxtraLarGe]

But apps offer persistence; you don't have to reload them every time you want to use them.

One thing most apps also offer that the web browser doesn't is they work when you don't have internet access.

Re:Ugh

[darjen]

Most apps that I find useful rely on having an internet connection. Games might be the only exception.

Re:Ugh

[icebraining]

http://html5demos.com/offlineapp

Re:Ugh

[Jugalator]

and I fear this whole “app” craze is going to put us back in the “dark ages”.

On the other hand, since we're going this direction and the users like it, that means there is a widespread problem with the traditional way of thinking and marketing software.

Re:Ugh

[drinkypoo]

and I fear this whole “app” craze is going to put us back in the “dark ages”.

On the other hand, since we're going this direction and the users like it, that means there is a widespread problem with the traditional way of thinking and marketing software.

It's worth mentioning that Ubuntu offers an "App Store" sort of experience for Free and free software downloads through the Software Center, and that users cite the ease of software management in modern Linux distributions (which substantially predates Ubuntu) as one of the features that they find indispensable. It certainly beats the hell out of having update processes running on my machine from Oracle, DVDFab, Adobe, Microsoft, et cetera. To me, this is just the world cashing in on what the nerds figured out.

Re:Ugh

[jollyreaper]

I'm personally not a fan of the whole "app" thing. Feels like we are going backwards.

You had specialized viewers and clients for various data, then gradually the web became more mature and more and more data was simply put on a website. Now we are gradually going back to the specialized viewer mentality.

I'd like to think that the whole app thing is a short-term phenomenon that will die out.

Why the specialized apps versus web pages? I haven't taken a look at the traffic but I would suspect that it takes less bandwidth to populate the data in an app that's running natively on a handheld than it does to fill a web browser. You have to feed it not just the data but the design info on every page load. Reading message boards on an iphone is ok but highly interactive stuff like a facebook runs more smoothly with the app versus doing it in safari.

I look back at the early webmail examples and they were dreadful. The early hotmail was an exercise in tedium and I asked why anybody would want to use that over a nice, native mail client. Fast-forward to today and something like gmail is a breeze to use and offline mail applications seem archaic in comparison. As another comparison, my very first experience with electronic banking involved a proprietary application installed from floppies that required dialup access to the main bank. And this was right at the cusp of the internet becoming big-time. It was a tremendous pain in the ass to use and proper internet banking with nothing more than a mainstream browser was a whole new world of practicality and convenience.

I think there's plenty of room for apps that really need to be apps, things that are really programs. But stuff that should really just be a webpage should be done in web pages. I think it's just a matter of the technology maturing a little more. Early hotmail sucked, current gmail is great. In another five years we'll see people extolling the virtues of the next twist on html5 that will save us from the horror of the customized app store. And then someone will talk about the era of the thin-client finally being at hand.

Of course, there's also the school of thought that says the app store concept is a way of putting the toothpaste back in the tube, trying to lock things down so corporations can go back to making money hand over claw. We'll see.

Re:Ugh

[drinkypoo]

You're right, but on the other hand Ubuntu will run on almost any hardware. Can you say that about any "app"?

Android on x86 is getting better all the time, and it's only a matter of time before it is credible. So sure, Android apps will run pretty much anywhere soon enough.

Re:Ugh

[anyGould]

I’m personally not a fan of the whole “app” thing. Feels like we are going backwards.

And I was thinking we were finally moving forwards. One of the best features of Ubuntu in my mind is the repository system (which I would consider the prototypical "app store"). I need an application? Click the easy button on my desktop, get a nice sortable list of programs, click one, and it nicely installs. Unclick the box, it uninstalls.

The one thing that iPod/Pad/Phone/Widgets are missing is the built-in ability to install outside the store - but jailbreaking has become so terribly trivial that it's hardly an obstacle anymore (i.e. if you really need to get an off-brand app onto your device, you're already savvy enough to know how.)

Re:Ugh

[awyeah]

Lots of sites did the whole "app-in-browser" thing when the iPhone first came out, because you couldn't download applications to it. And a lot of them were pretty damn good because the browser lets you do things that really make them feel very close to applications running natively. They're a little laggy and don't have quite the same feel to them, but very close.

This includes things nice GUI effects (things sliding around, the screen "flipping" to go to the settings page, etc).

I'm hoping that the offline stuff gets off the ground.

Re:Ugh

[Ryvar]

The basic issue at hand is that the majority of people don't have time for anything more than "it just works." What they want is appliance computing, and that's what App stores enable. This is the reason Apple has had so much success lately, and why they won't ever be loved by Slashdot. Personally, I'm happy to roll my own OpenBSD kernels for my media server and firewall at home, but when it comes to my phone I'll take Steve Jobs' walled garden. I don't have the time for anything else, and I really need my phone to "just work".

True general-purpose computing exists on the desktop and will continue to do so - but the consequences of that model will be continued security issues far in excess of the walled garden's, compatibility issues due to a functionally infinite number of hardware configurations to support, and abandonment by any developers unwilling to tolerate piracy/off-label usage of their applications [some might say 'good riddance' to the latter, but there's an awful lot of money and talent in that pool that will be spent making the walled gardens more attractive].

As far as the open source and freedom-to-code communities go, they can either approach this with ineffectual wailing and gnashing of teeth, or they can resolve to make this work for them. How? By building compelling services that are free-as-in-speech on general-purpose computers, and charging nominal fees for viewers targeting closed platforms, the proceeds from which are used to fund further development. I suspect we're about to witness a period of brutal natural selection in which the greater software ecosystem culls out those who refuse to embrace and leverage the new environment.

We'll find out, either way.
--Ryv

Re:Ugh

[timeOday]

You had specialized viewers and clients for various data, then gradually the web became more mature and more and more data was simply put on a website. Now we are gradually going back to the specialized viewer mentality.

I agree, but I am hopeful, because apps are almost certainly a transitory phase.

There's been a lot of innovation in wireless handhelds in the last few years. There was a valid need to "break the mould" and explore new ways of doing things. Standardization comes later, once things settle down. As new UI idioms settle in, developers will notice increasing redundancy in all the apps and start developing standards that capture the commonality. In the end, just as how the web matured for PCs, you won't have to contend with a dozen slight variations on readers or players (or whatever end up being the killer apps), and there will be a way for most content producers to just focus on their content and not have to program applications. That said, it won't be a return to what the web circa 2007, either, it will be something that incorporates the best innovations of the apps.

Re:Ugh

[DinDaddy]

We now have Amazon Kindle Store, B&N Nook Store, etc because everyone wants to try to lock their customer into their devices.

It seems pretty clear Amazona and BN want to sell you ebooks more than lock you into their devices, or they wouldn't offer reader apps for iOS and Android.

Re:Ugh

[AdamThor]

Even the most locked-down Android devices are eventually hacked wide open and you can install your own APKs, and many of them come with this functionality open to begin with.

The very fact that they must be hacked indicates the direction things are going. Of course, it's not there yet.

Re:Ugh

[IronSight]

I agree with you Anrego. Soon though people will see with chrome os that you don't need 100 pointless apps to do the same things. 1 small linux kernel and chrome browser, and you can do all the same things without bogging down your memory storage with a bunch of junk, and still getting everything done (at least that's the goal). The way chrome is doing their web apps seems pretty smart to me (it feels more or less like a bookmark, but it does have offline capabilities). So don't give up all hope on computing yet :)

Re:Ugh

[Americano]

Here's what I've seen:

For small devices, i.e., the iPhone, or an Android phone, I actually find I generally prefer the "app" version, because it generally makes better use of the screen space than the web pages for the services the app connects to.

For something larger (e.g., iPad / Android tablet), the browser and screen size are good enough that I prefer the familiarity of the web interface to the single-purpose app.

HTML5 may get there, and perhaps the web sites aren't really taking the time to develop webapps or proper style sheets for mobile devices, but the small-screen format does lend itself to a customized viewer; larger screen devices, it's less of an issue.

Re:Ugh

[Palshife]

The ApplicationCache object's cache host is associated with an application cache whose application cache group's update status is idle, and that application cache is the newest cache in its application cache group, and the application cache group is not marked as obsolete.

Wow. English major?

Re:Ugh

[DragonWriter]

We now have Amazon Kindle Store, B&N Nook Store, etc because everyone wants to try to lock their customer into their devices.

Nope, wrong. Nook books can be read in nook apps on a variety of platforms (PC, Android, iOS, etc.) Kindle likewise. The real product being sold here is the content, the dedicated stores and the devices that have the store integrated (though they can import content from other sources) are designed to encourage purchases from the stores. The stores do not exist to lock people into the devices, otherwise, they wouldn't provide access to the stores and content purchased from them on other devices.

Oddly, having made that mistake above, you get it right later:

Every corporation loves the idea of the specialized viewer because it locks the customer in to their store.

Right. The specialized viewer promotes the store (which is why the viewer technology is as widely distributed among "open" devices as possible as well as being available in dedicated devices), the store doesn't serve principally to lock people into the specialized viewer device as you claimed previously.

Re:Ugh

[0xdeadbeef]

There is no "yet". It will never be, because Javascript + HTML will never be as good as the tools available for developing on the native platform.

It is madness that people think the whole world should standardize on a typeless scripting language and a klunky markup language for graphical layout, running on a VM that is always embedded in a window that allows the user to do things that will break your application.

Re:Ugh

[ZERO1ZERO]

Yo dog, we heard you like cache so we put a cache on your cache so you can cache while you cache.

Re:Ugh

[JohnG]

Clearly this person is trying to get the phrase 'application cache' into google's cache.

Sure, like the one on the iPad

[drinkypoo]

But not like the one on Android, since you can still install apks from other sources, or use third party app stores.

The only problem with app stores is when it is inordinately difficult to install software from another source. People have been buying stuff from non-recommended sources since time immemorial to upgrade anything and everything.

Re:Sure, like the one on the iPad

[Gr33nJ3ll0]

Mod parent up! It's all in the implementation. A central point is only a problem when it's the ONLY source, and there are no viable alternatives, like the iPhone App Store.

Re:Sure, like the one on the iPad

[metrometro]

Agree that easy unofficial sourcing of apps is important.

That said, I think the rise of "apps" as a term for pay-to-play web page is still a problem. Nearly all the Apps out there are just web pages that do things on small screens and can access some system resources like the GPS. The whole paradigm is bullshit, even without the Apple nannys running the App Store(TM). I use the World Wide Web. I LIKE the World Wide Web. Quit fucking with it.

My mother keeps asking me if her favorite websites are going to start charging for access. I tell her, uh, sort of.

Re:Sure, like the one on the iPad

[Low Ranked Craig]

Problem for who? I'm not trolling, but seriously ask yourself what exactly is the problem? Is it a problem for people are for the most part completely computer illiterate and just want to get a few games on their device? I don't think so. I've watched my mom and my stepfather try to figure out how to set up their iPhone and iPod with iTunes and it was a challenge for them. iTunes may be bloated and slow, but one thing it is is easy. There is no way they would be able to manage with an Android device. The iPhone app store is locked down. If that is a problem for you, then don't use it. I can assure you that it's not a problem for a large number of people.

Reality check regarding Apple.

[i_want_you_to_throw_]

Apple is a publicly traded company and as such here's what's important to them.....

Making money for their stockholders.

That means sucking you into a proprietary app system. That means sweatshops for iPods and doing things like heading down the dangerous path of closing off the Darwin source for development so that OSS geeks can't find a way to make OS X work on commodity boxes.

Apple is going to do what is best in their corporate interest.
Surprised? Don't be. It's business

Re:Reality check regarding Apple.

[Desler]

That means sweatshops for iPods

The same sweatshops making your beloved Android phones as well.

Re:Reality check regarding Apple.

[snookerhog]

news flash

Google has shareholders too.

Re:Reality check regarding Apple.

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

That means sweatshops for iPods...

See, this right here is what pisses me off. Offhanded comments about sweatshops in relation to Apple. So Apple is one of the very few companies going out of their way to do something about sweatshops. They voluntarily audit and review humans rights practices at the third world plants they do business with, have standards of behavior, require changes at those plants, and openly publish their audits. This puts them right at the top of the list for responsible electronics manufacture. Moreover, Steve Jobs tried the experiment of all US manufacturing with Next, but people decided automated manufactured computers in the US were too expensive and he had to sell out to Apple and go back to asian manufacturing.

So what pisses me off about your comment is that if people like you are spreading crap about one of the most responsible companies (presumably out of ignorance), what motivation do they have to continue with responsible practices? Seriously, if they get just as much shit as other companies doing business with the same factories, but who don't do audits or require changes or publish the audits, why should Apple do anything in that regard? The last time Apple published an audit, the press immediately jumped on it and reported on human rights abuses by Apple (not that Apple had discovered problems, ordered them fixed, and then told everyone) just that abuses were happening at "Apple" factories.

Thanks ever so much for being part of the problem and spreading crap that will pressure companies to do less due diligence and be less open and proactive about sweatshop conditions.

Re:Tablets?

[tepples]

As we move toward tablets with full functioning web browsers that will display anything you throw at it, then you will see the end of the app store era.

This would require standardized JavaScript APIs for every input device on the hardware, including multitouch and any built-in camera, accelerometer, and GPS. It would also require a kickass JavaScript JIT engine, WebGL, and full support for HTML5 offline features (CACHE MANIFEST and localStorage). As far as I know, current tablets aren't entirely there yet.

I thought we had something special, Jimmy.

[dr.newton]

All those hours spent gazing fondly at your picture at the top of every Wikipedia page. Installing the Jimmy Wales extension for Chromium, so I could see you everywhere. Knowing that you were looking just at me...

You have betrayed me, Jimmy, with your false generalization of software distribution systems. Words cannot express the anger and shame I feel.

I want my $2.50 back.

$99 annual fee

[JSBiff]

"people who make free apps should not have to pay"

Just because the app is free, doesn't mean that Apple has no costs associated with hosting the app on the download server, verifying the app doesn't have viruses/etc, and bandwidth to allow customers to download the app.

Now, I'm no Apple fanboy - I own an Android phone, because I don't like the level of control that Apple exercises over their products after sale, but I also recognize that having a small annual fee for hosting the app is not unreasonable. On the other hand, what is unreasonable is that you can't host the app yourself, or with some other service.

Wikipedia is "free" but they just raised something like $10 Million to fund their operations this year. If you are offering a 'free' app that other people find useful, you should have no problem getting $99 in donations to pay the annual hosting fee. That is an absolutely paltry sum, in the big picture. But, you should also have other hosting options, which Apple does not allow.

It's Always Apple

[CyberLife]

Seems like it's always the App Store which gets all the credit for being bad for society. Why don't we ever hear about the PlayStation Store, or the Xbox Marketplace, or the Wii's Shop Channel? These also sell screened, platform-specific software, some of which you cannot get any other way. Oh, but they're just games, right?

Re:It's Always Apple

[sgt scrub]

actually i think those are not on peoples list because people that buy games are used to going through a bunch of shit to get to the start of the game. me being one of them. note: the last line is of course for those shit heads that are stupid enough think this post is meant to be flamebait.

Depends...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

"App Stores" are quite arguably a good thing. I know that I say a few words of thanks every time I type 'sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade' and everything automagically pulls from the repositories and does its thing. It absolutely curb-stomps the experience of a zillion separate updaters, obsolete library versions, and so forth.

On the other hand, an implementation where my apt-sources are cryptographically signed, and the BIOS refuses to boot if the list has been modified, would be a dark day indeed. That, to my mind, is the actual threat.

Although they haven't been called "app stores" in the past, package management systems kick ass, and are generally far superior in user experience to just grabbing random stuff off the internet and installing it. However, any entity who would restrict you exclusively to their own package management system fancies themselves your master and will soon be your rent-collecting landlord.

Re:Your phone is not the internet

[SirWhoopass]

As long as the browser works, I don't see how the app store model has any impact on "internet freedom".

Don't discount the impact of the masses. If all the kids and Grandma switch primarily to using apps on their phone, then it is not unreasonable to think the web would begin to stagnate and languish. Certainly people could continue to operate web sites, but the significance might be greatly diminished. Gopher is still around.

Back in the 1990s I remember that people used to cry that corporations wanted the internet to be "tv with a 'buy now' button". The app model seems to be much more in that direction.

yeah.

[unity100]

i still use wikipedia to great extent. the fact that one of your edits have been shunned does not make it a less valid source. take your whining elsewhere. the complaint wales puts forth is valid and important. you may choose not to use wikipedia. but if a few corporations close the internet as we know it, as their fenced gardens, all of your freedom goes away.

learn to sort your priorities.

Re:yeah.

[m50d]

the fact that one of your edits have been shunned does not make it a less valid source.

Actually it does. Wikipedia was supposed to be the free encyclopaedia that anyone can edit, but it has long since lost its neutrality.

if a few corporations close the internet as we know it, as their fenced gardens, all of your freedom goes away.

You don't have that freedom on wikipedia either. That it's people doing it for their own self-importance rather than material profit in some ways makes it worse; they're harder to predict and work around.

Re:yeah.

[icebike]

Or more to the point, when did apt, or rpm restrict your access to some package you wanted to install.

Perhaps we should agree not to feed the trolls.

Re:yeah.

[NevarMore]

Or more to the point, when did apt, or rpm restrict your access to some package you wanted to install.

Perhaps we should agree not to feed the trolls.

You must be younger than your UID indicates. Older versions of most of the popular package managers could wind up in a dependency deadlock that made it difficult to add or remove certain packages.

Re:yeah.

[icebike]

the fact that one of your edits have been shunned does not make it a less valid source.

Actually it does. Wikipedia was supposed to be the free encyclopaedia that anyone can edit, but it has long since lost its neutrality.

Actually when you start with a patently obvious untenable premise (that anyone can edit an encyclopedia) it should come as no surprise that you will fall short of that goal.

The Abuses within Wikipedia's controlling board are well documented. Challenges to their political views are simply not allowed.

Wiki is a good resource, but it should never be a source.
You can start there. Just never end there.

The more controversial the subject, the less trustworthy Wiki is. And the more the gatekeepers abuse their powers.

And don't expect the Wikipedia "Mod Army" to treat your post (or mine) kindly.

Re:yeah.

[icebike]

But this was never a form of censorship. There was no Steve Jobs dictating that you could not make an RPM available.

It was simply an immature tool.
And you could always compile from source. Even if it took the better part of 18 hours on your 286.

In Other News...

[Frosty Piss]

Jimmy Wales and RMS register as a domestic partnership...

Re:It's basically the same as the *nix repositorie

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

...you can't open a private "App Store" for OS X

Sure you can. In fact, I think it might even be a viable business model. Clone the app store right down to using the same formats to make things easy. Roll your own payment and update system (preferably identical to Apple's but independent). Make a huge, public promise to never, ever, ever reject any app for any reason other than it being malware. Do actual due diligence on the apps, target both apps in the app store and apps that can't get into the app store. Make a deal with Adobe and Microsoft both of whom want Apple to have less power. Charge less than 30%, say 25%, what have developers got to lose by putting their apps in your store too? Build in features Apple is lacking, like demo/trail versions of software.

What's stopping you?

Re:It's basically the same as the *nix repositorie

[Americano]

Bodega (http://www.appbodega.com) called, and wanted a word with you, but it appears as if you've just FUD'ed them out of existence. :(

that is why there is competition

[sgt scrub]

fortunately the iphone isn't the only game in town. if a google app is yours, 1) create key, 2) sign file, 3) load to machine, 4) install through manager. if it isn't yours you do steps 3 and 4. imho an app store, even apples, is a good thing. some people that want to look for applications that do what they want to do but are not able to do it themselves. if that was the only way someone could get an app on their device, yes, it would suck royally.

Re:I get it but...

[TheSync]

I do not want, and therefore to not have, any sort of walled garden type device.

I do want a walled garden device - if it aids in me not getting a virus or spyware on my cell phone!

Facebook too.

[Xoltri]

Facebook is starting to become a 'chokepoint for internet freedom' as well. What ever happened to just putting the information about your product on the internet? Now a lot of companies are putting their stuff on facebook.com/stupidproduct, and often times you can't get to the page unless you log into facebook. I don't have a facebook account so it cuts me off from seeing it. I doubt it will happen but it would suck if in the future you'd have to first log into facebook or it's future equivalent to access the new closed off version of the internet.

Re:traditional

[TaoPhoenix]

I don't really think so - I am treating this as shareware 2.0. We saw 15 years of diffusion when everyone had to do their own marketing, now the App Mall just does Marketing by Aggregation. Apple caught on to the power of curating. Sure they get a bit heavy handed, but Users Like This.

I'd say the difference is in the legal framework. I never even heard of the DMCA until about 2005, and suddenly by about 2007 everyone started invoking it left and right.

If we're talking about App content vs Web Content, I think it's the battleground of Paid vs Ads. For $4, people don't have as much of the javascript / tracker silliness. (I have a couple of the privacy addons for Firefox, and some sites have 12 trackers! There's always a few stories about data leak from apps, but it can't be that bad.

Why Mobile Safari doesn't cut it

[tepples]

I'm not familiar with the details, but your list of required things sounds remarkably like the current feature list of, say, Mobile Safari.

I haven't been able to find any evidence that Mobile Safari supports WebGL (tried Google mobile safari webgl) or the camera (tried Google mobile safari camera). I checked for how big a web app could be (tried Google mobile safari offline limit), and it appears to be limited to 5 MB. The localStorage object is likewise limited to 5 MB (tried Google mobile safari localstorage limit). Nor does Mobile Safari appear to JIT compile the JavaScript due to iOS's especially strong flavor of W^X (tried Google mobile safari javascript jit). Even accelerometer support wasn't added until iOS 4.2 (came up during the camera search), which wasn't jailbroken until this week (per Wikipedia).