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Have Walled Gardens Killed the Personal Computer?
theodp writes "Harvard Law School Prof Jonathan Zittrain explains in The Personal Computer is Dead why you should be afraid — very afraid — of the snowballing replicability of the App Store Model. 'If we allow ourselves to be lulled into satisfaction with walled gardens,' warns Zittrain, 'we'll miss out on innovations to which the gardeners object, and we'll set ourselves up for censorship of code and content that was previously impossible. We need some angry nerds.' Searchblog's John Battelle, who's also solidly in the tear-down-this-walled-garden camp, adds: 'I'm not a nerd, quite, but I'm sure angry.'"
Same argument can be made about frameworks.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
No way, Angry Nerds will not be in the App Store!
I haven't RTFA, but the instant question is: So what?
As long as a device solves a problem to the user, that's what the device should restrain itself to do.. General use PCs have proven to become virus/worms/problem infested in the hands of "normal" users..
There will always be general use pc's for those who are willing and have to skills to handle them responsibly..
I for one welcome this new era when tech support nightmares get reduced to a minimum..
This is why we have free software and open source software.
So that we're not bound by the whims of some business model.
Last I checked, walled gardens were not legally forced by any major government (as far as I know), so you'll never be forced to use one. As long as we have open-source software, we'll never be forced to use walled gardens.
"Our country is not nearly so overrun with the bigoted as it is overrun with the broadminded." -Archbishop Fulton Sheen
With Apple, you get a walled garden where Apple controls what apps are allowed. The apps are high quality but developer control is lost. With Android, it's the "wild wild west" where anything you want to create can get sold. And it shows. I see the new apps each day for Android and most of it is pure trash. Honestly, how many bikini apps need to get released each day? The upshot here is that anyone can create anything and sell it for Android. There is always a tradeoff.
I prefer repositories. You can't really be walled in, because you can just add some other repo in and have all those packages too. It's not like it's so hard to navigate either, it's just that most package manager frontends remain very technical, maybe excepting the ubuntu software centre(?).
I'm developing an innovative synthesis program for the iPad. I wouldn't be doing this without the walled garden. I'm happy with the distributions system, the quality control rules, and the closed development environment. If the system cuts down on piracy a bit, that's also a plus.
Walls can easily be broken. The jailbreaking community is alive and well. So as far as I'm concerned, it's the best of both worlds and the op ed is a lot of FUD.
It always finds a way.
So this egg-head whose allowed apple to set up shop in his temporal lobe thinks he speaks for the millions of people world-wide that use computers for things other than maps, songs, and making fart or chainsaw noises? This is cheesecake for self absorbed children.
Simple solution: don't buy Apple.
(I honestly don't even know if I'm trolling with this statement or not anymore)
I think Apple is going to remove root access from the Mac in one or two more OS X updates, and you'll only be able to retain your root access by paying the small annual developer fee. It makes sense to cement their revenue stream from a platform that's still gaining users; the only question is when they can afford to throw the gauntlet down to Microsoft & Adobe.
Matthew @ Bytemark Hosting
They can't license their work as Free Software, because those license terms conflict with Apple's.
such ecosystems can legally and single handedly kill free software.
Read radical news here
The PC is not dead its just that common end users are driving up the shut-up-and-take-my-money model. the PC will end up being left to the geeks again which is probably the same small percentage of people (compared to the entire pc market space right now) it was back in the late 80s. the only reason common end users bought pcs was to get on the internet. they have other ways to do that now without having to learn anything. internet access has acheived the easiness of the VCR and thats what most people want who are not geeks.
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Have walled gardens killed everyone's ability to come up with new metaphors for closed systems?
The interesting thing about walls is that there's always people who are happy to help tear them down. That's why the jailbreak community exists in IOS land.
Microsoft will be bundling an app store in Windows 8. We'll see how open they stay. I can't see how they could wall off W8, businesses would simply not upgrade, which would kill the franchise...
- "open gardens" have caused far more trouble then the enemies of walled gardens care to admit. And i'm not talking about trojans, virii, rootkits or whatever. Just the HUGE mess they allowed to be made in terms of API and backwards compatibility. Fuck that shit. If walled gardens can keep things "just working", well there is a BIG pro argument you're ignoring.
- web apps are still around. I don't think apple will kill mobile safari any time soon. So there. Here's your open garden you can play in and make a big fucking mess off. Now leave the people who want to GetThingsDone alone please with your whining. Go play and shut up.
- hack your fucking phone if you really want to break things and bother tons of people with software that relies on dependencies that are no longer supported. But then don't start complaining how apple broke your app.
- DONT BUY IT. If you're having such a monumental issue with walled gardens, stop buying stuff from them. But oohhhh shiny steam app... must buy... and all those achievements... ohhh... must have... and those hats... groovy... and the whole fucking world needs to see my status update. But facebook sucks ! That's right. It sucks and still you want to have it. For free.
goddamd kids...
Did you like the sermon?
</worst case of preaching to the choir I've seen in a while>
The majority of people now needs "Walled Gardens" to hate Personal Computers like they always did?
Damn... that is like.. news... probably..
They all made a deal with the Devil. They all hated Microsoft so very, very much that they stopped caring exactly how they beat Microsoft. They only cared that they beat Microsoft.
Many of Apple's practices are far worst than Microsoft ever dreamed of being. Many things Apple has gotten away with would have been slammed down by courts had Microsoft made the same move. Sometimes I think Slashdot is stuck in the 90s with their MS borg pictures for MS stories and a normal corporate logo for Apple stories.
Look at how many software walled gardens have failed: IBM, DEC, SGI, and AOL, to name a few. If Microsoft ever had a walled garden (more likely poorly fenced), it is failing. Apple's garden walls, no matter how thick or high they are built, will eventually fail.
TFA is baseless paranoia and speculation.
It's not the Walled Gardens per se, it's the fact that apps for iPad typically cost anything from $1 to $5. Just contrast that w/ what a PC software title costs, and you have your answer. Sure, it's convenient to just get things from the app store and have them automatically install in seconds, but even aside from the ease of use is the fact that most applications & games, when not free, typically cost less than a visit to Burger King or Wendys. If they were priced like $30, $100, $200, etc, people would balk @ buying them, no matter how easy they are to download & install.
While PCs should by no means adapt tablet UXs, even though Metro, Gnome3 & Unity may be forced on users, they could certainly use a Walled Garden approach of clicking an App Store (or a Windows or Android equivalent), picking the titles they want, pay peanuts for it, and get it downloaded on their systems. In fact, it would be even better for Linux PCs than Windows. And if an app is huge that it's not feasable to download it like that, it should be an orderable option along w/ a PC - things like Office, Quicken and so on. Do that, and laptops may after all hold their own against tablets.
Think about the phrase "personal computer."
How many people do you know who really need a completely general-purpose computer that they own and control personally?
How many "PCs" are actually nodes in a centrally controlled system, and not "personal" at all?
Because of the economics of making "PCs," we have the illusion that hundreds of millions of people buy and use "personal computers" each year. In reality, a minority, possibly a small minority, of those people actually take advantage of anything those "PCs" do that would require personal control over a general-purpose computer.
This is the reason mobile devices that are not quite "personal computers" are rightly popular. They serve the actual need. Hopefully, it will be possible to use mobile devices as if they were personal computers, so that the potential of personal computers can be applied to a networked, mobile world.
I wrote parts of this stuff
stores and there is a lot of stuff on that side.
First computers were effectively designed, built, programmed and used by their end-users.
Then specialized companies designed & built computers, and users would write all the software for it.
Then mass-produced computers came along (often with some sort of OS built in), and users would write & share software for it.
Then masses of software would be available, and most users would just use pre-written software, on pre-built computers. Leaving perhaps system configuration / maintenance as extra tasks.
And now software repositories, appstores, and companies like Apple make that so easy that most users feel comfortable to hand off even system maintenance to a 3rd party. Basically: reducing most computers to an appliance, something that's just used (and not programmed, built, modified, or maintained). This is called progress. Which (at least for most users) is a good thing.
Of course there will always be some % of folks that prefer to do things their own way, mod the hardware, write their own programs, etc. Apple helping to make that impossible? Don't think so. Apple helping to reduce options for that? In the long term: quite possible (which is a reason you won't see me spending much money on Apple hw). YMMV...
They want to make it's like the phone company where you have to rent or pay fees to use stuff that you own.
The vast majority of people don't want a "computer". They want a convenient device to play games, listen to music, look at photos, read email and browse the web. Having to understand and deal with firewalls, anti-spyware, operating system updates and security is not something they care about. And these people are the main customers, so this is the way the market will go.
To use a car analogy, most people would prefer a car which they got in and travelled from A to B, without having to know anything about oil levels, brake pads, shock absorbers or what a cam shaft is for. Petrolheads would say "But you can have so much fun by tinkering with the engine!", to which the majority of car drivers would reply "But I don't care about any of that, I just want to get to my destination. Give me a zero-maintenance car please."
One again, some Harvard yuppie intellectual impresses their narrow insight from their yuppie campus life on the global cosmos of technology. As if gamers would give up their quad-core 64-bit monoliths with pre-loaded polygon GPU power sucking video cards, for a tiny yuppie IPad or Honeycomb plaque. Considering the wide popularity of WOW and PC versions of games like Battlefield, I don't think there's a danger for a snowball affect of the app store model (At least not from anyone who is cognizant of technology other than Apple). App stores comprise only one aspect of a computer users' lifestyle. What is the population of gamers, compared to iPad/Tablet owners? For those that are both, how many would give up their computer at home, their workstation at work, their server in the cage, for only their mobile device? Though portable computing is gaining popularity, there will always be a need for a heftier box at home that will allow you to drive your digital home, crunch that code, make that source, or blast that bad guy. Until my tablet can immerse me in a virtual 3-dimensional world, with hovering CLI consoles, and visual representation of my programmatic objects, I really don't think his opinion is valid.
Just like the web made Windows obsolete by offering a true cross-platform application layer, web apps are also not effected by the restrictive nature of walled-off app stores.
These are the reasons why web apps are important. You may laugh at the technical limits of the web, but at least nobody can prevent anyone from using it.
Pretty good is actually pretty bad.
Sure, sites like Maczot are at times offering apps that appear in the App Store (or even bounce people to the app store) but as long as merchants have options (however good or bad) like PayPal and others independent developers are free to not use walled gardens. Will it reduce the amount available? I'm sure it will (at least until enough people get pissed off and move toward whatever less-restrictive, third-party option opens and offers an alternative) but it won't kill it.
Bark less. Wag more.
Nobody's killing 'Open Computing' - just there are now some very nice walled gardens, if you prefer it this way.
Provides a nice, safe, stable starting point for a lot of people who were previously scared shitless of technology (if the iphone didn't exist, do you think they'd all be using Android?). If they're happy, they stay there, if they eventually find it limiting, they can move on.
As the recent recipient of "Microsoft called me, asked me to load teamviewer, I left them on my laptop for 2 hours, uninstalled AVG for them as it was 'conflicting' and oh paypalled them £75" call from an elderly late-joiner to the world of IT - I think some people should be locked into walled gardens for their own good.
All of this will happen again.
In the 1980s and early 1990s, online services were walled gardens. There were of course minor exceptions - BBSes who all exchanged information with each other via FidoNet. But the big names were CompuServe, GEnie, MSN, and (what would eventually become the 900 lb gorilla) America Online. They had their day, until the Internet tore down those walls. Today, all those services are pretty much gone. MSN is no longer a subscription service. AOL is still hanging on, mostly due to monthly service revenue from old people who don't know that they can get their Internet without having to pay AOL.
I think what happens is that when a new type of service/product is created, the initial creators and early copycats end up with most of the market share. Then they try setting up walls to protect their gardens and preserve their market share. Eventually an open alternative comes along which works better and/or is as easy to use, and the walls fall. Arguably, something similar happened in the 1970s/1980s with computer operating systems. Each computer maker had their own OS with its own ecosphere and apps. Eventually, MS-DOS ended up winning the market not because it was the best, but because it (and the PC platform it ran on) was open.
I suppose it's possible that, eventually, some company could "get it right" and preserve their walled garden in perpetuity. I'd argue Facebook is much closer to this than Apple.* But based on history, the safe bet is against any company managing to pull this off. Eventually something bigger and better comes along which consigns the original giant to a niche, if not irrelevance. *(Google is open enough that they allow you to extract the data stored in their services - their walls rather porous.)
The one market where I haven't seen this happening is gaming consoles. But I think that's because the nature of game compatibility/hardware and the refresh cycle forces the entire industry to "reboot" every few years. First it was Atari, then Nintendo, then Sony, and currently it's split between Nintendo (Wii) and Microsoft (Xbox). The amount of time between these reboots is short enough that an open platform can't develop. But the reboots also mean that each company has to start over from scratch every few years to maintain dominance.
1. the price of the apps makes the 30% cut a real killer.
2. the app stores are not setup up for 1 app not a group of 4-5+ apps.
3. At least MS plans to be better at this lack of / lock down of plug in's (photo shop has lot's of them some even are paid ones)
4. Limits on opening data files used by other apps in pro work flows this is needed to get work done.
5. lack of being able to save files owned by other users and admin / systems files (in apples store apps can't even ask with a password pop up)
and so on.
as the app stores are braking the law by locking them out.
As long as there is a need for performance computing, tinkering, people who build their own systems, and old-school hacking, there will be the PC. The PC has survived everything thrown at it so far and will survive well into the future. The article seems to mostly be whining about Apple turning OS X into another iDevice. If Apple is the problem, don't use Apple's products. Use a Windows machine or a Linux box. I hear tell that BSD is still alive and kicking. Solaris still has a community as well. There are other less used platforms that be switched to as well.
The problem is not that the PC is dying, the problem is that it is becoming a niche. Most people just want to check Facebook, email, and play some crappy games. They are not writing papers, presentation, or programs. They do not use SPICE, MATLAB, MAPLE, GCC, or any other in the other long list of programs and tools that many of us take for granted. A smart phone or a tablet is good enough.
For those of us who do have to do any type of creative work, the PC will still be needed. Even if Microsoft decided to take the route of Apple's locked down operating systems, there are and will be alternatives. There are dozens of hackers who do nothing but try to port Linux and BSD to other platforms just because they can. There are also people who love jail-braking these devices for the same reason. It might evolve to smaller form factors in the future but the PC will be around for a long time. As long as there is a need for power computing, PC's will live.
Slow Down Cowboy! It's been 1 hour, 47 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment
steam is an apps store for video games. it also is getting into console market.
The author makes his article sound like it is about innovation, but all his examples of "innovation" that have been excluded from the garden are related to Free Speech (like bashing homosexuals). There is nothing innovative about that, it's been around for a couple thousand years.
Nothing is dead. Maybe if he had done some real work instead of tapping on colorful clickables and writing stupid blog texts, he'd notice that it's impossible to do any actual work on one of those gadgets with their walled gardens.
Also, the whole concept of the "app store" is
1. just a crappy remake of the package management systems the Unix/Linux world has known for decades, with the key change being
2. that they brought the deliberate "intellectual property" lie into it, by falsely calling it a "store", when you can't buy anything there, but just get to make contracts to not pass on information (software) that you receive, so they can continue their fraudulent model of asking money infinite times for the same work they did only once.
The whole thing is part of a tiny subset organized crime (that is actually smaller than the real Mafia!), and will die with it. Even if I have to stab it to death with my own hands and a spoon! (Why a spoon? Because it hurts more!)
That is open to all types of apps (must pass quality checks)
No content blocks
no cost for free apps or only a small fee say $50 / year or less to cover costs.
small cut less then apples 30% of payed apps to cover costs of ruining store.
apps open to user maps / mods and so on games on steam have user mods.
Does that even apply to public domain, BSD and LGPL, or only GPL software? How about beer-free software?
Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
Interesting theory. Show you work...
What do you know I wrote a novel
Compleatly false, only gpl licensed software has ever been "pulled" and that was due to the "owner" said that the app store system was in breach of the gpl, not apple refusing it!!! any non GPL poisoned open soured can enter.
Microsoft said it doesn't want to require established programs to rewrite their licensing models and payment systems just to fit into Microsoft's new Windows store--a comment clearly aimed at Apple's Mac App Store. Instead, it will provide what is basically a free listings service for non-Metro apps.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/239994/windows_8_app_store_what_we_know_so_far.html
You guys are too paranoid. If the major companies lock down all hardware, the coding community can afford to make its own computer on a chip. If you have cash, the fabs would built it. Licenseable ARM processors are now powerful enough for general desktop usage. Licenseable graphics designs are as well. It can run Linux or BSD software. Gone are the days that only intel and AMD could make hardware powerful enough for the Desktop, so why worry about an improbable doomsday that can be overcome?
The 1984 ad wasn't a warning, it was a promise.
In my household, the general purpose PC still outnumbers walled garden appliances by a factor of infinity to one. Or 9 to zero if you prefer that measurement.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Or it can legally and single handedly kill iOS. Just don't buy Apple products, and port your FOSS apps to Android.
AccountKiller
I don't think PC's or open source software will die from cheap hardware. They'll all thrive.
I don't think walled gardens can be imposed in a world of $100 PC's any more than you can pay force people to pay for OS's when the machines are so cheap. Tablets and smart phones are new. Of course they are dominated by for-profit companies. When the phones get cheap enough, phone companies won't have that leverage to get you into contracts.
And when the tablet/smart phone OS war is over, open source phones will be developed pretty quickly and will probably take over quickly. After all, people don't do much serious work on their tablets/smart phones. So a GNU phone can easily be made and all popular software can be made for it. And there will be another company like HTC, that will be happy to start making them.
Democracy Now! - your daily, uncensored, corporate-free
yes it is and this why it can't be in todays apples app store.
Perhaps, If you say it enough times people will adopt it as an original and viable concept and it's path to reality will be paved. Or, people will eventually lose interest in both the parrots and their toys once they grow tired of them.
FUD...if you cease to react, the tactic is no longer useful
Imagination drew in bold strokes, instantly serving hopes and fears, while knowledge advanced by slow increments...
laws for a start.
Everybody wants to collect rent, because rent doesn't require one to add value.
Yes, I am...
I was around since the dawn of SX-80, and coded my very first game on Commodore-64 in assembly code, there wasn't any games available to purchase, and I was forced to make my own. Little did I know that was to become a blessing for me in the future, no - I did not get rich by becoming a game developer, I was only 12 and very VERY naive, had NO idea that I could make money out of making video games. I just loved my computer and my artsy pixels on the screen.
Today I'm all grown up - sorta - I own my own house, fully paid and all, and it's filled with all kinds of gadgets, millions of components and retro stuff as well, yep - you guessed it - I can't possibly be married.
But that's it - I'm in control of what I do, as I type this - I'm on my own compiled Linux kernel, I'm by no means an expert, I just like to be in control, and the Personal Computer - is ALL about control. I'd rather be dead and buried before anyone controls anything of mine, unless I chose for them to do so...usually for practical reasons. Personally I believe the OpenSource movement will take over more and more, and color me wrong if you can, this has only increased by time, I made my first dollar on Open Source 10 years ago...now I own my own property, have a high paying salary, and still - ALL Open Source, baby!
So all that "wallet-gardens" did for me was - NULL. It may have lulled the laymen into a steady stream of cash-flow-drainage from their wallet, good for them (the wallet-garden owners, that is)...I'm not going to protest, they can be a part of the darn thing for all that iCare dot com...
The point I'm trying to make, if you didn't read between the lines, is that the personal computer is FAR from dead, 1000000's of hackers all over the planet have and WILL make sure of that, from here to eternity. Don't worry :) Every single gadget they come up with, essentially came from a hacker, and will be taken over by a hacker.
And guess who the hacker is? It's either you, or your kid, or someone in your family...
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
Bear in mind that I bought the Humble Indie Bundle, for more than the average for other users of my platform (linux):
My principles dictate that I never expose myself to a walled garden. Jailbreaking being irrelevant to this.
I hope the 'reduction in piracy' outweighs locking all people like me out as possible customers, who may have used your app given a consumer friendly distribution platform.
Can't one just install Metro apps by installing Visual Studio? Or will Microsoft be doing the same $99 per year to run your own compiled programs on your own hardware garbage that it already does on XBLIG and Windows Phone 7 and that Apple copied for the iOS App Store?
And can't one just use desktop applications that fake a Metro interface instead?
Sure, if you have written all of it yourself. Most free software projects have more then one contributer. It is somewhere between a hassle and impossible to find all of them and get them to agree on a license change.
Copyleft licenses grant Freedom 2 to all people who obtain a copy. The App Store-only model, in which users can't "squirt" applications to other users even if the publisher allows it, is incompatible with Freedom 2.
Authors are not bound be the license of their own software
Except to the extent that their work incorporates contribution from other authors. If a computer program has over, say, a half dozen authors, it's impractical to get them all to agree to waive the copyleft provision just because Apple declines to provide for Freedom 2 on its platform.
I think an important thing people are overlooking is that not having walled gardens allows curious people to learn a few things. I for one knew just about nothing about technology when I had my first computer back in around 2000 (yes I'm young), but it was very interesting poking around the Math Blaster directory editing files in paint and being like O: this actually changed how things look in the game! Such things are hardly even possible (for people who don't know about extraction methods) in big games even on Windows since they compress everything into a few large binaries, and I'm sure having everything "just work" would dampen a lot of learning. Sure it's nice that things just work but things already seem to be dumbing children down enough with TV and schools as it is...
Uh Steve Jobs is dead. Give it 5 years and Apple is dead. My best friend, an Apple fanboy all his life has decided to finally build his own PC. It's like Hell froze over and now with Google and Facebook also going after mobile platforms, I think there's still plenty of competition. I am much more Angry at Congress than what these tech companies are doing. Choose your battles...
The problem here is that some applications are available only for the proprietary locked-down Android platform (OHA Android as configured by certain carriers), not the free and open Android platform. For example, a Chase representative confirmed to me over the phone that Chase's check deposit application for Android is available only on Android Market, not on SlideME, Soc.io, Amazon, or AppsLib.
If need be, we will reboot the revolution by hand-soldering logic circuits out of regular transistors.
Good luck getting such circuits to communicate over any public network.
If the TOS of the platform (for instance Apple's) get in the way, that is the fault of the platform.
So when the TOS of the platform and all comparable platforms (for instance Sony's or Nintendo's) get in the way, how should end users work around the fault of the platform?
Like fighting censorship, criminal governments (like yours Mr. Harvard Law School Professor), government surveillance, abolishment of free speech etc. ... So if you don't like walled gardens, pick up the hammer and f...ing DIY.
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_Network_outage
Sure, take all that talent and energy for granted, it's not like us geeks know the difference. We're just a bunch of shit-bags glad to lap up dandruff flakes of appreciation from 6.9 billion free-riders.
Did you notice how the Catholic church squeaked in just under 400 years in fessing up a mea culpa in the Galileo affair? Another view of the story is that technologies are quickly subsumed into existing social institutions of subjugation, except for the free-rider escape hatch (see above).
Zittrain's giant heap of manure is that generativity is an essential sphincter relaxant in the natural course of human social institutions: the bigger the hat, the tighter the sphincter. Generativity is to human freedom as vitamins are to Krebs cycle. But this vitamin theory makes your head hurt, and you have better things to do. Angry Birds wait for no man.
Their thought pattern seems to be: if people want to mess around with a platform, let them go invent their own.
And then they go and sue someone who does invent their own for an injunction against importing their own.
Pretty disturbing that "freedom" from corporate control could be relegated to obscurity. After all, what's the fucking point of Free Software if none of your users can actually take advantage of it even if they wanted to?
Price their products so high, everybody cries for cheaper prices, so they wall them into a subscription model and if you stop, bye bye app. Even if you pay MORE over time for the same app on a disc that you CAN use after purchase anytime.
Computing as a service, keep paying or get bricked.
Its here, now, and going to get WORSE.
We need the vast capabilities of a PC to make these tailored hardware devices for consumers.
Right now, you don't need a video game console devkit unless you're making mass-market commercial video games for a video game console. Likewise, people have speculated ways in which it could become the case that one doesn't need a PC unless one plans to design and then mass-manufacture hardware devices. Such a situation would result in loss of economies of scale, making it cost prohibitive for the general public to source a PC and enter the market.
angry nerds. New video game to go viral just like angry birds
I like to refer to [closed systems] as "paying for your own lube".
And a lot of people do pay to get their car's oil changed at a Jiffy Lube or similar shop instead of doing it themselves.
The interesting thing about walls is that there's always people who are happy to help tear them down.
And law enforcement officers who are happy to put people who help tear down walls behind stronger walls.
"Rent" in common usage has come to mean "paying to use while not owning", a normal commercial provider/customer relationship.
"Monopoly rents" has the classical meaning:"you have no choice: 'rent' from me, or starve."
As one who bought, renovated, and leases a home to my customers, we *totally* had to add value. The alternative was to pay a bunch of money for a house, then lose a bit of the investment each month because we could only collect low "rent"....
Your statement is true, though. Everybody wants to collect "monopoly rents" which exist in a context that does not require the rentier to add value.
This is why Mozilla is still important today - their mission is to make sure that web stays open, that users aren't forced to live in one of these walled gardens.
PCs [...] could certainly use a Walled Garden approach of clicking an App Store (or a Windows or Android equivalent), picking the titles they want, pay peanuts for it, and get it downloaded on their systems.
That's the Steam/Impulse/GOG model, and it has shown itself to work well on Windows. The "walled garden" model, as people refer to it on Slashdot, is like being restricted to Steam only (no Impulse, no GOG) and not being allowed to install GCC or a Python interpreter that runs scripts that haven't been digitally signed by the operating system publisher.
The amount of time between [video game console generations] is short enough that an open platform can't develop.
Of course it can develop: just build a gaming PC in a home theater PC case, and preload it with a 10-foot launcher and a couple game stores (Steam, Impulse, and GOG), along with a button to exit to the standard desktop. Add VGA and HDMI outputs, and make a VGA to composite adapter available for people who still use a standard-definition TV. But whether it will develop is a separate question entirely. People appear to have some sort of mental set against connecting anything that looks like a PC to the living room TV.
"Walled gardens" wont kill the PC. Creating a more desirable product will "kill" the PC.
And if its more desirable by consumers, who actually pay the bills, is that a bad thing?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
He jailbroke the IPhone and the Ps3.
Sony tried to put him in prison over the Ps3 hack. they also tried to declare that the little short sequence of numbers he posted on his blog was a trade secret.
did i mention that one of the laws against him, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, was recently 'modified' by the Patriot Act so that those who violate it are put in the same category as terrorists and mafia?
im guessing your friends are not the occupy wall street crowd... and they are the real future, just as the Indymedia people were the future back during the WTO protests.
In my view -- strictly my opinion -- Lion has leaned too far towards IOS. You want to use Lion, by all means. I'm going to hang back. I feel that IOS should come towards OSX, not the other way around, while OSX should forge on along its previous path -- that is, towards a more powerful desktop. The idea being, tablets should gain functionality as the hardware allows for it (more memory, faster cpus, more cores, more connectivity, wireless charging, nested folders, etc.) The idea of OSX embracing "one screen apps" and "sandboxes" and other IOS weaknesses... that's just not doing it for me, and I don't care to upgrade to Lion for that reason. We've got it on a new iMac, mind you -- that's what it came with -- so I'm somewhat familiar with it -- but (Snow) Leopard is sufficient for me, for now. And it's a great choice for hackintoshing.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Your point about this one piece of hardware is strange at least, nobody forces people to use Apple software and clearly there are choices to use that software that exists for Apple hardware or not to use it.
Take it or leave it.
What software are you talking about?
Software for video game consoles.
Tens of millions of people use PCs around the world
And tens of millions of people rode horses daily. Markets change, and if PCs become dramatically less popular among the non-geek general public compared to locked-down tablets, people who prefer a PC will become out of luck.
man, please do some homework. you do not 'own' any commercial software you use, you are granted a 'use license' for a period of time subject to certain terms and conditions which go on for dozens of pages.
you do not 'own' the copyright to free software either, why should you? are you some kinda communist who doesnt believe in private property and copyright law?
however, if you WRITE free software, then you bloody well do own the copyright to it (despite the efforts of MS, Apple, etc, who think they own what is actually other people's property)
and if i write free software, i give you the license to it, to modify it, redistribute it, copy it, etc. as long as you obey the terms of the license.
if i write public domain software, i guess thats 'free', but why would i do that? so some megacorp can come take my public domain software, and then claim they made it? no thanks.
I would say 95% of PCs that get shipped end up with a an office suite, an accounting package, and some web interfaces installed. As people shift more and more to console based gaming because there are fewer PC based games produced and shipped, there are correspondingly fewer people who need or want to install extra applications on their PCs.
For most individuals, the question is not whether they can find a package to do what they want, it's whether there is already a package installed that does it. Even the most basic software installer causes panic for too many of my "computer literate" relatives. The barrier to claiming literacy is now "can you surf? Can you email? Can you type with two fingers? Good -- you may now consider yourself computer literate!"
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
The Firefox add-on system has been infected with this problem. It used to be that you could write add-ons for Firefox, put them on a web site, and let users download them. Now, Firefox has what's essentially an "app store". Add-ons have to go through an approval process which takes about two months. Then they have to be hosted on Mozilla's site. Mozilla tracks how many users are using each add-on through a back channel in the browser. Because of the new policy of very frequent updates to Firefox, add-ons have to be updated regularly, and for add-ons on the Mozilla site, this happens automatically and remotely. So your add-on is now tied to Mozilla's "cloud".
Firefox itself is slaved to Mozilla's "cloud" now. It's become much more demanding about insisting that it be updated when Mozilla issues a new version.
It's still possible to host add-ons on your own site, but warning messages appear if they're loaded, and they rapidly become obsolete and break as Firefox changes. It's still possible to turn off updates of Firefox, but by default, you get nagged. The jaws are slowly closing on Firefox users.
This is what passes for "open source" today.
The personal PC will die the same sort of 'death' that radio did with the advent of television. ha ha ha.
PCs won't ever be the biggest seller they used to be, but they aren't going to fade away by any means.
*FINALLY* All the dorks vanishing into walled gardens, leaving the internet to the people who appreciate it and know how to use it.
This might actually be a good thing.
PC Sales are slower because CPUs have finally outpaced software requirements in a meaningful way. In 2006 the company I worked for purchased for me a workstation powered by an E6300 Core 2 DUO. This E6300 has run XP, Vista, Windows 7 and still runs pretty much everything except the latest block buster games. For that I use a Q9550 Core 2 Quad which I purchased in 2008.
Admittedly I've had to upgrade my video card over the years but I'm still playing the latest games at high detail in 1080p on a processor which is 3.5 years old. If I wasn't a PC gamer my 6 year old E6300 would still be perfectly acceptable.
A Pentium 2 from 1998 barely met the minimum system requirements of Windows XP which came out only 3 years later, and anyone who used a Pentium 2 (or even a Pentium 3!) with XP will surely tell you it was a painfully slow experience.
So a factor in PC sales slowing is that the hardware churn is no longer a factor, not because people don't 'want' PCs anymore.
Earlier this year, episode 88:
http://poddelusion.co.uk/blog/2011/06/10/episode-88-10th-june-2011/
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
the tool you use have a way of influencing your thinking / moral / world view.
if knowledge of how to use a tool could be liked to "being able to speak a language",
all the walled garden approach will yield is that you will encounter more people speaking
"moooooh" or "krah-krah" or "meeeeh".
: - )
have a nice day.
Keep in mind, though, that Apple did not impose that restriction until OSS folks asked for it. Apple had nothing against OSS in the App Store.
Facebook is the new AOL
There are already plenty of ways to exploit these platforms, and all the "software" is actually pretty much adware, spyware, and crapware.
..that I lived in the golden age of computer freedom, and future generations will only read about it in history books.
Walled gardens, virtual machines, signed code, app stores etc may be useful, but little by little, are removing our freedom to actually control the machine.
I fear that in the future, you will need a license to write code under constant government scrutiny. Kinda like making explosives.
But then, maybe I'm just a curmudgeon...
We already have angry nerds. Angry nerds either (a) don't develop in walled gardens or (b) do it as a paid job and complain about it. Notice, a lot of software developers aren't nerds, let alone angry ones. So, even if angry nerds were to stop working in walled gardens, it wouldn't magically solve anything. No, generally, the best way to end a walled garden is for people to stop paying for a walled garden. Now, even an angry consumer won't necessarily do the job. Look at how many consumers were/are angry with Windows in the 90s and how well funded Microsoft was. But, that's at least closer to the mark[et].
Talking to the choir about not "sinning" really misses the mark. You have to speak from the pulpit about the congregation to the congregation and make them realize they should be angry and why they have to make the tough choices. Yes, this will end up pissing off the congregation and many will not listen. But, making out nerds to be the bogey men who are the cause of the problem or magical saviors who can fix the problem they did not cause does very little to fix anything. I mean, we already have Richard Stallman, the FSF, and the GPL, and we still have walled gardens.
Clearly it's the choices of the populace at large that is the issue. Having said that, I think it should be recognized that a significant subset of the population may choose to live in a walled garden and that doesn't mean the end of the freedom that most will and do enjoy on the PC. That's just Armageddon speak that's yet to be realized. Sure, people need to speak up and tell the populace that Armageddon could occur if they don't do something. But, it's one thing to warn of a possible future and condemn those who choose a present for themselves that only effects themselves--well, to the degree anything one chooses for oneself only effects oneself.
Eurohacker European paranoia, gun rights, and h
What place does Steam have inside of another marketplace? That makes no sense. If Valve wants to sell titles in the App Store, they can, no need for Steam.
Facebook is the new AOL
There's no rent to run iOS. You have to pay for some apps, as you should, and some are free.
You mean "rent" to be a developer? This is nothing new.
Facebook is the new AOL
Apparently, the GPL being incompatible with Apple's App store is a murky issue at best. Currently, there are several apps that are licensed with the GPL, such as the iOS Wordpress App and Doom. So what is the final word on GPL apps in the App Store?
What, me worry?
The problem with all such criticism is that people have voted with their feet. They don't care about a walled garden. We can complain all we want. The truth is that computers have long been devices where it was perfectly acceptable that they often didn't do what they were supposed to. When the choice was between using a computer and not using one, most grudgingly learned to use computers. But they were never comfortable. Ever. They were things that threw up mysterious errors which made you call a 'computer guy' when you tried to print, to connect to the internet, open an attachment, click on a website link. People were scared of computers. And everyone wasted endless hours on the most pointless and mundane of tasks--reinstalling windows, managing anti virus and anti malware software, troubleshooting peripherals.
You can see the difference in the things that are so far untouched by the Apple philosophy. Home printers with their driver issues, paper jams, awful drivers and software, horrible user interfaces. Or TVs with their horrible unintuitive menus and remote controls that are basically unchanged in thirty years or more. If they work they work, but the smallest issue leaves the average user helpless. And while the average slashdot user will eventually figure out how to use them, it can still be maddening when you have to trawl through a manual to figure out a simple function.
No one of the non nerdy type ever used to be passionate about a computer. They could be passionate about things that didn't act like computers even if they were in fact interacting with an embedded computer--cars, video game consoles, digital cameras, later ipods, automatic photo printing booths, supermarket self checkouts etc. They didn't associate those things with the kind of computers that frustrated them every day. That's changed and Apple do deserve a significant amount of credit though their contribution is often overrated. Not all pre Apple ideas were awful, and they aren't the only ones innovating. The Asus transformer concept for example has huge potential. An iPad will never be a proper computing device with an awful touchscreen based text input system. Things like styluses, physical keys, small trackballs and trackpads do have their place.
But for the non power user the PC is dead. And I am not sure that is a bad thing. There doesn't seem to be a near term alternative for the PC for power use like development or photo or CAD or architectural work. So it isn't going any where. Current home computers are cheap and absurdly powerful, it would be crazy to abandon them completely hoping that all intensive computations can happen in the cloud.
anit trust comes in when you can't go to a other market.
Ford would not be able to get away some kind of DRM that locked you in to only the gas stations they want or lock you in to the going the dealer for all work even oil changes.
Sorry, but one direction things have gone in since 1980 is the requirement for computer systems to be administered. Not just large mainframe systems, but microcomputers - which today have more lines of code in the operating system than the mainframe systems in the 1980s.
Without knowledgeable administration what you have is a mess. You get computers with thousands of trojans which have been knowingly or unknowningly installed by their users. The user isn't competent to decide that MakeMyComputerFaster.exe is or is not safe to install. If it says it will do something good for the user, they aren't going to care - let's try it!
Today there are some "remote administration" services, but very few and very few that don't come with high fees. So what does the average user do? Go without, and pick up whatever is laying around for them to pick up. The end result for the users of the world is that their computers aren't working for them anymore. So every year or so they have to either take their computer somewhere for "service" or just get a new one.
The App Store model is a way out of this nightmare. It turns the computer into an appliance that is not capable of having random bits of software installed on it. With the user taken out of the equation, you can have a truely secure operating system with little or no opportunity for malware of any sort. Is this what every person on the planet needs? No, and I don't see it being forced on anyone. However, it is the only model that is going to work for 99% of the "users" out there. The alternative is likely just a continuation until the users of the world just give up on home computers entirely because they simply do not work for the user - they work for the malware writer.
so is that what you want?
more like the lock in rent the cable use to rent cable cards and other hardware needed to get the programing you are paying for.
Subject says it all! Thanks Hairyfeet :-)
To pay for software? Well, capitalism is the system we have. What alternative do you propose? "I should be able to do whatever I want for free" hasn't worked out.
Facebook is the new AOL
Operating system incompatibility is the root cause of the problem. For a long time now you you buy a Windows-based product and you can't really be sure that it will work on your computer. The same thing happened to a lesser extent in the Apple universe but there was less effort at compatibility there and the market share was always minuscule. For the customer, an app store gives the illusion of this compatibility being guaranteed.
Curiously, if you want compatibility, Linux is the one platform that seems to do it best these days.
Proprietary software makers and their users. Morlocks and Eloi.
The Eloi want to perpetuate their easy going; the Morlocks need them for survival, in ways that are horrible to the Time Travellers.
But noone wants to hear from the Time Traveller, for the truth is too hard to face, perhaps for everyone.
As long as both sides have a choice then theres no problem. Except the people who don't like walled gardens will always complain and cut down people who do like walled gardens. I remember the AOL days very clearly
Jack of all trades,master of none
Most people don't own Apple products.
Most people don't connect to the Internet. A lot of people don't have electricity.
People own multiple platforms by the way
But do people who carry a device carry at least one open device? And do people who connect a device to a living room TV connect at least one open device? Or are open platforms confined to one's desk?
and some people still ride horses today. But are you telling me that a horse beats a truck?
OK, I admit it was a bad analogy. But let me try to put it another way: People need PCs in order to create apps and works that will be used on the closed devices, and if PCs become harder to get, then it'll become harder for people to step up from viewing works to creating works.
Just because millions of people /can/ open the stupid outlook meeting request you sent to the Internet, and the power point slide that accompanies it doesn't mean you're not in a walled garden.
I read through the comments here and saw a lot of "Fuck those idiots for wanting a different type of device than me." I'm disappointed in you, Slashdot. It's up to the individual to choose what suits his needs. Maybe it's an ipad, maybe it's a dell, maybe it's a blade server running beos. Either way, it's his purchase and none of your damned business. Grow up.
There is another problem here! There are many of us who do not like X, and are not all that comfortable with Y ... but it takes a genuinely skilled person to be able to switch over and use Z; I may be reasonably good at my narrow branch of science, but am still a complete noob as a programmer. My limited skill set does not allow me the freedom to choose just any of the *nixen, unless I want to devote a major amount of time to ramping up my ability. Our time is simply too limited.
Apple's App Store is a logical result of the chaos that's been exhibited on general purpose computing platforms for the last 20 years.
When end users experience crashes, blue screens, data corruptions, poor user interfaces, hung devices, and insufficient functionality, they are not "feeling their freedom". They are feeling the results of you exercising yours. And when their "local nerd" is asking them questions which leadingly suggest that they shouldn't have been doing what they've been doing, they feel angry.
End users want computing like they want toast. Put in their bread/data, push a button, and get their toast/video. The fact that this is very hard, and in some cases virtually impossible, does nothing to limit the end users' expectations. For years they have been told these computers will make their lives better and enable them in so many ways -- which they have, but they sure don't like the hidden costs that these ecosystems have dumped on them.
You know all those arguments that have been made? If you don't like it, you don't have to use it! That's all the end user is doing.
Sturgeon's Law explains that 90% of anything is crap. If curation -- in the form of App Stores or whatever -- can change those odds, even just a little bit, end users are going to move towards them in droves.
Software engineers have squandered their freedom, and end users are increasingly acting like they don't want to have any part of it any more.
(I wrote up a much longer article on the same theme.)
you should read everything on the internet as if it had "but I'm probably talking out of my ass" appended to it.
Maybe you should try FreeY or OpenY. I, personally, advise you stay well clear of Z.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
I work as a systems engineer for a federal contractor. I used to work a help desk. One thing is certain:
I agree that a walled garden is NOT the right approach to the personal computer market (laptops, desktops)
HOWEVER...
I do realize the complexities of these IT assets. They can be complicated because of the poor support from both the user and the developer in the use of these assets. The work involved in supporting them for people like me makes sense because of their dollar value. That is not the case for a "smart" phone. There is nothing I hate more than having to "support" a phone's app because some loon billed out an app that a customer of mine wants to use only to find that the QC is amature at best.
For all the things people have poo poo'ed on with the "Walled Garden" approach I feel like the QC is better. Not just because dumb developers have a harder time doing dumb things, but also because it makes it harder for dumb USERS to do dumb things with their smart phones.
Futhermore:
With the growing popularity of Droid, I fail to see how this article isn't anything more than FUD. Bottom line, you have 3 choices:
1) Buy a Droid. Have the freedom of the market to go find your apps and assume the risk that they may cause problems with your phone because you (the casual smart phone user) can't tell legitimate, quality products from the bad stuff. But, hey, you can get *whatever* a developer can dream up for your device.
2) Buy an iPhone. Enter the walled garden, never to leave again. You may not have ALL the options of the Droid, but that's OK (because you are the casual smart phone user). As said before: you like your phone because "it just works" and you don't even realize that it is engineered to prevent you from doing stupid things.
3) Don't be smart. Go buy a flip phone or some string and a can because you (the casual phone user) are know you are only interested in the distractions a smart phone can provide. You are just as able to play Farmville and Angry Birds while you're supposed to be working anyway.
So let's take this back to the "personal computer is dead" argument:
The casual computer user is only interested in doing a few things in their digital life: social networking, email (assuming social network doesn't already cover this), and lite office productivity (finances, word processing, etc). Because their systems are so "open" relative to... say an iPhone... they are easily fooled into taking the bait on digital items that compromise the productivity of their computer (viruses, spam, etc) or the machine breaks because they did something stupid (yet again... casual user). The computer breaks and someone like me gets paid to fix it at a cost that sometimes matches the current value of the machine. That's a bad system because the only time it's worth it for such an effort is when there is when data needs to be preserved. In the mean time, productivity/enjoyment is lost.
If I told any of my customers that they could buy a machine that does EXACTLY what they want it to do and be less prone to errors, they would raise their eyebrow at me. They'd ask for more info. The cost is less so the machine is now disposable, and now it is really hard to have errors because you can only install stuff that is in this walled garden. The only other question they'd ask is, "Will I be able to do [all the aforementioned stuff]?" I would say yes and they would immediately buy one for everyone they know because not everyone wants to be a Systems Engineer.
For those of you who are "techies", great! There are more than enough of us to make sure that market perpetually exists. The market may look scary now, but that's only because it's still trying to work itself out.
Mod me down, I shall become more off-topic than you could possibly imagine.
Anger doesn't help; there's nobody to blame for this.
Instead, try to figure out how you can create something that appeals to the masses and yet still makes hacking and innovation possible.
(Also, in the short term, stop buying from companies that produce locked down hardware or software and try to control the distribution channels. This means all iOS products and some Android products.)
Didn't see this one coming. What's next: "Linux is Dead"? "Apple is Dead"? "God is Dead"? (Oblig. Nietzsche ref)
"The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes" - Winston Churchill
But then, there are no PC walled gardens
First, PCs are not walled off by cryptographic lockdown in user space, but they are in kernel space. Windows Vista and Windows 7 on x86-64 require all to have been signed by a company possessing a valid Authenticode certificate issued by a commercial certificate authority. A lot of these CAs won't even issue such certificates to individuals.
Second, even when one considers only applications, PCs are still walled off. This isn't through cryptographic lockdown but by a mental set among users against connecting them to the same kind of display commonly used with a video game console.
Third, if the PC declines far enough, a lot of companies will stop making PCs, and PCs will become more expensive to buy. Indie developers might have difficulty sourcing a PC on which to develop applications for phones and tablets. Imagine if Apple were to discontinue the Mac mini, iMac, and MacBook in favor of hardware of a similar form factor running iOS, forcing iOS application developers to spring for Pro-priced hardware.
this term in their tos :
They can't license their work as Free Software, because those license terms conflict with Apple's.
such ecosystems can legally and single handedly kill free software.
It can if iOS takes over the world. However, that doesn't appear to be happening. Android has already surpassed iOS as a phone OS, and we're finally getting some decent tablets, too. The current situation with iOS's near dominance is an aberration; just as was the case throughout the PC era, the winning platform will be the one which allows for competition among hardware vendors, and that's not an approach that fits Apple's business model.
My prediction is that Android's dominance will continue to grow and that iOS will be relegated to a highly-profitable niche, where Apple has historically lived. The bigger risk is Microsoft. If they move to a single platform across PCs and mobiles, then they might be in a position to leverage their PC platform dominance to challenge Android for the top mobile spot. Then if they go to a walled garden with anti-F/LOSS TOS, we could be in trouble. At this point, though, I'm skeptical that Microsoft will get a strong platform deployed fast enough to have any hope of ousting Android. Frankly, I think they're already too late. But they might manage to get a solid minority piece of the market, perhaps as large as Apple's.
I think a three-way battle on the software platform, plus a many-way battle on the hardware platform, will ultimately be very good for consumers. The three major players will all represent diverse approaches, too: Apple, controlled hardware & walled garden; Microsoft, open hardware & (maybe) walled garden; Google, open hardware & open software. By "open" in the previous sentence, I mean in the sense of a free market, not in the F/LOSS sense -- though a free market in software implies that F/LOSS software will be free to compete as well, and it does that pretty effectively. And, of course, Android itself is Free Software.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
So ... who's doing so badly out of these walled gardens?
Developers: They get a guaranteed 70% take on the sale price of their application (rather than 5-10% or worse with another middleman), a platform to display, market and sell same, an update delivery platform that their users easily understand, someone to vet their apps and code for quality, and a reasonably close connection with their users ... all for the 30% they pay the new middleman.
Users: They get lower prices, more choice than in the physical store ... or even most online stores, a 'one stop shop' for most applications, content and utilities applicable to whatever platform they're using, better quality (don't see too many walled garden apps falling over due to driver, OS version and other conflicts) and a relatively professional payment and accounting system that doesn't put the onus on them if things go wrong.
Sure, the 'walled garden' takes 30% off the top and won't allow core apps that compete with their own ... but there's a huge PD. shareware and OSS distribution system out there that develops and distributes scads of this type of ware (and heaps of other application types, games and the like), as well as the older disk based deliverers and specialist online platforms (like Steam, Origin and others) that deliver games and other packages (if developers are happy with development money up front and a pittance when the packages go on sale - Me? I have problems with that model.)
At the moment there is no shortage of competition ... although I'm guessing that the physical package model will disappear over the next few years, as will the big developer studio model and the like.
I see the walled garden as a low maintenance, easy to utilize, cheap alternative to other software distribution models ... and one that is increasingly favored by 'users' for its simplicity. Nothing more ... nothing less.
.. roots can indeed break through garden walls but removing them won't do much good to the (apple) tree.
See game consoles for comparison: Are they unhackable? No. But running unauthorized code on them generally requires a hardware mod, not just clicking on an malicious email.
Funny you mention this example, but http://jailbreak.me/ always freaked me out as an iPhone user. An exploit that allows a user to visit a webpage and jailbreak the system sounds... a bit ripe for malicious activity (if a site re-used the code and instead of installing Cydia and Winterboard, installed a keylogger? Would you even know it happened?). This site worked on revisions as late as 4.3.x (ie, 3 months ago).
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
Do you own any Apple products? I'm betting the answer is no.
Why? Because the true reason that the products you so dismissively refer to as "iShiny" are so popular is that they WORK BETTER.
But you don't realize this, do you? And for some reason, you can't even admit that it is possible.
Don't have any mod points, so I'll just say that you are right on with your post. I agree with every word.
Walled gardens work and sell because the people are uneducated. Educated people want more control of their lives, whether it be on the computer or off. We can bitch and moan all we want. But until we work to educate the populace then we will always get the same result.
It's amazing, FOSSies spent DECADES whining about Windows... so they said "Hey, let's throw all our support to Apple, because they totally never had a monopolistic attitude!"
And now, lo and behold, Teh FOSSies have ushered in an era even WORSE than what Microsoft would have brought.
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mobile crusher
Would you be forbidden to develop your application if the plateform you develop on (iPAD) was fully open ? No ? WHY ? Truth is , you would be able to develop the SAME application in a fully open systems. A walled garden LIMIT the scope of the application you may develop. Furthermore I would contend that the jailbreaking community is "let live" by apple hardware engineer and software. Once you control the both the hardware and the software in a very tight fashion, then you can probably kill jailbreaking.
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Has lolita killed porn?
There. Now go procrastinate elsewhere.
I wasn't turning this into a Apple/MS and anything you didn't compile yourself is evil rant.
If you want to run Linux and OSS, you can, you'll always be able to - and you'll save yourself a pile of money.
With regards to the iPad - yes. It comes locked down, if you ask Apple they'll tell you it's locked down - and should you try to unlock it, they'll try to re-lock it. It's not a secret, it's just what Apple want and what they've always wanted. You are not given the keys AND THIS IS A FEATURE/SELLING POINT. Not for you or me, which is why I'm guessing neither of us own one, but are you genuinely telling you believe every single person would be best suited being flung at a root prompt?
I own many things, TVs, Watches, digital camera - loads of things I consider appliances and just wish them work as stated on the box. I crack open the case and tinker and bad things will probably happen, so I don't. Many people just want their computer to be the same.
tl;dr: Slippery slope fallacy.
Everything will be taken away from you.
As with all of these 'sky is falling' predictions of doom this piece is looking at the wrong problem. Rather than lamenting the fact that so many people are choosing to use the latest smart device with walled-garden application stores they should look at why?
The problem is that the general purpose PC doesn't protect the users from themselves. Its too easy for them to install a peice of malware, I including IE search bars in this category, and too difficult for them to get rid of them. The easy solution to this is to restrict what people can install, the walled garden approach, the harder solution is to make it easier for users to help themselves. Rather than shout at the moon over the injustice of it people should instead work on a way of solving the harder problem.
You may think me a tired, old, cynic. I'd have to disagree about the tired bit.
You can bet there are powerful interests who want walled gardens to take over personal computing in all forms (tablet, smartphone, desktop). It's vertical integration with the potential to take control over DRM, censorship, your behavioral usage data, and all kinds of monetizable stuff. It's harder to pirate content that is encapsulated via a walled app - hence the trend to wrap media content (such as news, movies and now music like Bjork's album) in apps. At the most cynical level apps can be used to monetize previously free content.
But at their best, app ecosystems can provide consistent and much improved user experiences with sandboxing from nastyware. The above are are irresistable business propositions so it's not going away. My guess is is geeks will continue to build traditional native applications and repos on top of standard linux bases but we will find more companies only building apps so commercial support for the traditional desktop may decline.
Down at the coalface in app development houses most people are not thinking about most of this (maybe the business team is). They're just building to meet and create demand and make a buck. Will code for food.
I miss the walled gardens like AOL. In the good old days we paid $3 an hour for AOL access, AOL kept us from getting on the internet as a result....we didn't have the internet just AOL and its rich features, games, many chat rooms, nooks and crannies. This system kept us from getting viruses because we were not on the internet just on AOL.
The $3 a hour and dial up only kept us from spending too much time on the computer. We would get the news on our home page as soon as we logged in, email was instant, we knew where to find things, if it wasn't on AOL it didn't exist. If you had AOL, you knew you arrived. You felt safe, AOL took care of everything. I'd look forward to those new AOL discs that arrived every week with free offers and trial memberships...it always gave us something to look forward too. Plus we could get our friends on AOL by just giving them a free trial disc.
Now it is difficult to find the information you are looking for ..10 million replies for a Google search? To much information...Viruses, Nigerian scams, too many choices makes things difficult now a days. Simple, protected and limited was better...
Why should I be afraid of this "App Store Model" again? I've never stored an app, or even, as far as I know, visited an app store. I'm not even sure if my phone would be able to take one, or why I should care - I tried to use it to access the Internet when I forst got it, and dismissed the idea after about 10 seconds : the screen is too small. I'll stick to plugging the laptop in if I need to access the internet.
Isn't this is a direct re-quote of predictions of the death of the internet and personal computing from the early 1990s expansion of AOL and other "portals"? Oh, I well remember the way the "walled gardens" took over and protected us from the Y2K bug.
I for one welcome our new walled garden overlords, to replace our old walled garden overlords.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
as if you are going to development on a freaking tablet or phone, desktop is far from past, .. tablets will not replace computers they will just provide a cloud environment where you can call all your information from a centralized spot. Which is only as good as long if it is portable, .. what i mean by that is that it supports everything linux, windows, bsd, .. whatever if your machine can't get stuff out of your cloud then it's useless ! If a cloud is no open standard it will be monopolized, there should be an open cloud for all systems to use, .. where everyone can contribute and gain.
You DO NOT need a "use license" to use a copyrighted work you purchased for the purposes you made the purchase.
If you have to make a copy to play the game, then that copy is not controlled by copyright.
Apple's a dinosaur? Do you have any idea what Apple's growth rate is? It's like 100%. They make more in a quarter than Google does all year.
And perhaps you haven't heard of iCloud.
Wish I had a nickel for everyone who wrote off Apple the last 20 years. Fortunately, I've had something better: AAPL stock.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
Oh calm down! If you don't like it, choose differently. Get a device you can run Linux on. The market will decide. The unwashed masses never chose anything outside of commercially produced software anyway. You should be used to this by now. Every corporate network in the world is a "walled garden" - you only get to use what the gardeners allow. The only people who play outside of the sandbox are Linux nerds (I'm one too) on their own personal devices. This is not new. Nothing to see here, move along.
Declaring "X is Dead" is Dead.
"Love heals scars love left." -- Henry Rollins
Let those who wish to live within the walled gardens live there. Sure, it has a decent view, "OK" products that are easy for those who want use them use them. But the PC will always be alive because it is the tool that those of us who wish to climb the rest of the way, do the hard work and reach the top of the mountain for the better view will use.
So no need to fret, because those who wish to stay will stay, and those who wish to use the tools in this world to climb higher, will do that. So the PC will never die, but it will become more and more un-popular...
..even people from Harvard can be pretty stupid.
Depressing, I wanted have a PC for a phone, now soon I'll have to settle for having a phone for a computer.
But... the future refused to change.
ok, so how about this: a walled garden inside of the walled garden?
(imagining) Let's say that the market does reward walled garden devices and the pc does in fact whither away. Even so, the market segment that wants or needs to develop custom software without the gardner's permission probably won't go away. Perhaps the gardner would eventually say something like: "ok, ok, you nerds, go play over there. And don't bother me or anyone else."
Apps developed for the confines of an embedded walled garden could be used or tested by whomever wanted to venture in. I suspect most users would stay out, unless their 'family nerd' directed them in.
As far as the gardener refusing to ever let this happen, just remember that the gardener is motivated by profit. There could be a user group that collects enough sway (profit) to convince the gardener to allow this. Or, there could be an approved app that reaches 'critical mass' and is too popular or necessary (profitable) for the gardner to revoke. If the approved app developer decides to create a walled garden within their app, the gardner may complain, threaten legal action, or whatever, but revoking the app would be (platform) suicide.
I'm just dreaming here, but I don't think walled garden systems are the end of the world. And I can see that there are benefits for the end user.
There's a push by providers of walled-gardens to make you buy walled-garden products.
I'm sure Apple will love the idea of your new bios locking up your new machine and not giving you keys, but Asus won't be plugging that as a feature on the same mobo they sell to me or you.
People don't care and are not as stupid as you seem hell-bent on asserting. There are not lines into the Apple store from people returning ipads when they realize they can't run Apache on it. There are lines back into your local PC market when "their laptop has broken and just keeps showing them porn, but they didn't do anything"
If you want to consider multi-purpose devices, consider game consoles. It's gaming, it's facebook, it's blu-ray playback, it's netflix, it's facebook, blah blah. Sure you can mod them, but most people just simply don't want to.
If you want to look at phones, Android is flying out the door and most handsets are pretty easily rootable. What % of people do you think actually bother?
What people DO do with their phones and have done for a very long time is pop into a shop to remove the carrier lock. Do they know how this is done? No. They just know they want to change provider, or use a different SIM abroad and the stupid phone is telling them they can't.
My point is that people only get pissed when they want to do something and find they can't. If they don't hit that wall of annoyance, they don't bother.
You, I suspect, are more about the principle of the thing.
FOSS killed the PC because most of it is just a copy of existing commercial software. Take Open Office for example, it strives to emulate MS Office slavishly rather than providing some compatibility and striving to compete with it by offering features not available with MS Office. The negative effect of all this was to kill any chance of alternative competing software packages like Wordperfect and the Lotus suite from making a dent in MS Office by entrenching MS Office format as the standard and making it impossible to compete with "free" software. The average Joe does not care about GNU "freedom" or any of the other propaganda that RMS is promoting as long as they can get their software for "free".
When walled gardens came along, third party developer saw a new frontier where they could compete with the big guys on a more level playing field and because of the increasing onerous conditions of GPL there was very little chance of GPL'ed software being published on the iOS app store thereby increasing competition among software developers building original software from scratch.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
You're talking about people who are paying $100/month for their wireless contract who can't pay a one-time $1 for an app?
Yes. Unlike Google, Apple has chosen from the beginning to make its App Store available to Wi-Fi-only devices such as the iPod touch and the base model iPad. A child who receives an iPod touch as a gift may be too young to work legally.
I know there's a GPL issue with the Apple app store. I haven't heard about the other licenses but my gut tells me that the more permissive ones are probably okay.
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