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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.'"
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.
You're still free to use any other framework or do your own. Hell, if we make that argument then Linux would be walled garden too. But in both cases you are still free to do what you want, if you want. In true walled garden (like iOS) you are not.
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.
There's Secure Boot for that.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
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.
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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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Market power can be just as limiting as government power. If nobody's making anything else because the walled gardeners have sewn up the market, what are you going to do?
Have walled gardens killed everyone's ability to come up with new metaphors for closed systems?
- "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...
Root has never been enabled by default on any OS X that I've known of.
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
SGI? You're blaming the people who took their closed 3D programming language, and made it public and available to all as OpenGL, for being a walled garden??
Not really. I don't need to jailbreak my PC to run software created with a different framework, nor do I have trouble running different apps created with different frameworks at the same time.
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
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."
No, to use a car analogy, they don't want to have to deal with things like learning traffic rules and regulations or having to use signals or a brake.
And they don't want to go from A to B, they want to go from A to "I don't care, but entertain me!".
They want a car with a chauffeur and all their friends in it, and where they don't decide the next stop. I.e. a tour bus.
It's not about what I am free to do as an individual. It's about the herd mentality reducing innovation. But if you want to talk about individuality,ironically that is one of the double edged swords that cuts Linux all too often. Too much of either is a bad thing. I just think that the tendency towards frameworks has reached the apex of the pendulum.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
The argument that "you can always use Y if you're not satisfied with X" is a fallacy in the world of computers. The laws of market, especially in a market with high initial and near zero variable cost, contradict it. Allow me to elaborate.
The main reason why hardware has become (comparably) cheap in the last few years is the fact that the development cost, which are pretty much the whole cost of any kind of hardware (let's be blunt here, it ain't the epoxy for the board and the silicon for the chip), could be spread out over more units. Do you think CPUs could be sold at less than ten times the price if the market for computers was as big as it was three decades ago? It's even better visible in software, it's by no means ten or hundred times as much of an investment to produce specialized business software compared to some games, the market is just considerably smaller.
Saying now that if I'm not happy with X I could always use Y doesn't work out for exactly this reason. If everyone else switches over to X, forcing the maker of Y to either fold or increase the price for Y, I will be forced to use it as well or not use anything altogether. I will not have the option to continue using Y. Because I alone do not allow the development of Y to continue.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
And precisely how does that explain FreeBSD, Haiku OS or any number of other OSes that are tiny in terms of the desktop market, yet still attract enough following to be viable?
A lot of these projects are driven by precisely what you say is a fallacy. A lot of them are driven because a few developers dislike the status quo or for whom the status quo doesn't work. Firefox is probably the best example of that.
Do you really think Firefox would be the same today (for better or worse), if it had never topped a 2% market share?
What Opportunist said DOES precisely explain FreeBSD and others. If you want to make the extraordinary assertion that people who aren't using FreeBSD deliberately choose to develop apps for it instead of some other OS that they do use, go ahead. What seems to actually happen out here in the real world, is that fewer app developers are attracted to support smaller OSes and the original OS developers pick up some of the slack by also developing the core of fundamental apps, or porting apps to the OS themselves so the developers don't have to. Then there's the Debian solution, slower, stabler development so there's more time for other people to come and play in your sandbox.
Who is John Cabal?
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.
..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...
I can't believe i have to spell this out and why so many bloggers think the sky is falling i have NO clue, except maybe just whoring for page views.The iShiny is a niche folks. sure it makes apple a metric fuckton of cash and makes too many developers drool at the thought of iMoney because Apple users will happily shell out real money for things Windows and Linux users wouldn't give a cent for, but its still a niche.
As someone in retail I can tell you there are TWO reasons why the iShiny is growing like crazy while the PC is so much lower and NEITHER have to do with the death or birth of anything. 1.- The iShiny simply hasn't existed very long so those that want one may not have gotten one yet. Look at how PC sales went nuts when they first became affordable, hell stores were going through units as fast as they could get them in the store.
And the most important reason 2.- The PC is mature technology and for the vast majority of the masses has been "good enough" for several years now. Even a 5 year old laptop or desktop is frankly INSANELY overpowered for what the vast majority do with a personal computer and everybody and their dog and their dog's squeaky toy has one if not several. In just my own family we have a single core laptop, dual core laptop, a dual core netbook, and no less than FIVE desktops ranging from a 3GHz Celeron for my mom all the way up to my quad. With all the units going through the shop I could frankly add another desktop or 3 without even blinking but what the fuck would i do with them? hell I'm typing this on a 1.8GHz Sempron I keep as a nettop and downloader box. This thing is circa 2003 but you know what? for the web and downloading it is quite peppy, even plays SD flash without a complaint.
So let these guys get their panties in a wad, it isn't like Windows PCs and Linux servers are going anywhere. Ballmer will put out his abomination called Windows 8 Dumbass Edition and finally get a big fat pink slip for Xmas next year, Apple could frankly put a brick in a box and still get lines around the street thanks to branding, but what is to be afraid of? The iPad? While I've met a few people that have actually forced themselves to use it constantly just to justify the money they spent the rest I've seen basically treat it as a really expensive portable video player, Mobile Phones? They are disposable razors. Folks get a new one with contract and shitcan the previous one, everyone i know has drawers full of the things. Sure they'll spend a dollar on a fart app or some shit but other than Angry Birds there hasn't been anything worth talking about.
But I hate to break the news to this guy but at the end of the day, when it comes to actually wanting to get something done? Everyone plops down in front of their desktop or laptop and breaks out an assload of software. Everybody and their cat has frankly mountains of the stuff, from some stupid app that came with their camera they really love to Quickbooks/Quicken to a bazillion other free and pay things they have collected over the years like so much belly button lint. What are they gonna do, give everyone a free copy of every app they own? try to force them all to go buy it all over again? yeah they tried that shit with the lousy backwards compatibility of Vista and I spent a year and a half wiping the damned thing off computers for XP.
TL:DR? Appstores are a niche market for a niche product, that is all. Sure they make good money but that is ONLY because they are a NEW market and once the shiny wears off and those that want one have one the bottom will crash and crash HARD. Don't forget there was a time not too long ago when much of the same things being said about the iShiny was said about the Palm Pilot, like how it would replace everything and rule the world. Where is it now?
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
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.
Your envy clouds your judgement. It's not a walled garden and the PC is dead. It's that the driver of PC growth today is the Mac with OS X whose child, iOS is owning the next generation of personal consumption. Building the cheapest disposable PC and/or Workstation only favors Microsoft whose OEM license is paid whether HP, Dell, Lenovo, etc., sell $1000, $2000, $3,000, $4K+ systems.
No one but Apple controls the entire end-to-end solution. Not Microsoft, not anyone else. OS X sales continues to steadily expand and iOS steadily expands times ten. When Microsoft starts to dip down to 80% of the Desktop market it'll be due to Apple's OS X and it's child, iOS. It won't be due to FreeBSD, Linux, or any other UNIX flavored OS using cheap clone hardware.
You want a third big box OS for consumers to desire you'll have to control the end-to-end solution, not just the Server Market.
Nothing is guaranteed and desire to evolve into new paradigms is up to any start-up or large conglomerate to seize. If not, they'll become the next IBM who is completely out of the Consumer space.