The Un-Internet and War On General Purpose Computers

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The Un-Internet and War On General Purpose Computers

Posted by timothy on Sunday January 1, 2012 @07:29AM from the insert-coin-to-continue dept.

theodp writes "Apple,' writes Dave Winer in The Un-Internet, 'is providing a bad example for younger, smaller companies like Twitter and Tumblr, who apparently want to control the 'user experience' of their platforms in much the same way as Apple does. They feel they have a better sense of quality than the randomness of a free market. So they've installed similar controls.' Still, Winer's seen this movie before and notes, 'Eventually we overcome their barriers, and another layer comes on. And the upstarts become the installed-base, and they make the same mistakes all over again. It's the Internet vs the Un-Internet. And the Internet, it seems, always prevails.' Thinking along the same lines, Cory Doctorow warns the stakes are only going to get higher, and issues a call-to-arms for The Coming War on General Purpose Computation."

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Didn't I just read about this? by cultiv8 · 2012-01-01 07:33 · Score: 5, Informative

Like 2 days ago? Unless you're in Samoa and Tokelau, then it was yesterday.

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yeah just like the IBM PC never took off by decora · 2012-01-01 08:03 · Score: 3, Informative

because after all most people preferred the simplicity of macintosh.
that is why after about 1986, the x86 and IBM PC died... as did linux.
1. Re:yeah just like the IBM PC never took off by pla · 2012-01-01 09:13 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  What new and exciting product have they come out with in the last couple of decades?
  
  You might have heard of a collection of toy apps called "WebSphere"? Really nothing, but the transaction processing industry with their crazy ol' uptime and throughput demands seems fond of it. ;)
  
  IBM has indeed moved out of the PC market for the most part, but they remain as strong as ever in the ways of Big Iron.
Re:Really? by R3d+M3rcury · 2012-01-01 08:21 · Score: 5, Informative

Name one thing Apple prevents you from doing on OS X [...] something that Apple EXPLICITLY PREVENTS YOU OR ANYONE FROM DOING.
Run a terminal server.
Re:Am I being held back somehow? by Osgeld · 2012-01-01 08:31 · Score: 5, Informative

well may I share an apple story? I own a powermac 9600/300, terribly expensive computer for its time (over 7 grand new) one day apple came out with a new operating system called OS9 and its not the worst OS apple has ever released it quickly became surpassed by OS9.2
OS9.0x was about as useful as system 7, if you wanted anything new it was 9.2 or nothing ... Video drivers for your new card, 9.2? New game 9.2, new compression utility 9.2, but my 9600 was unable to run OS9.2 ...
You know what made a 7 grand workstation into a dinosaur? Apple's control, they swapped 2 bytes in the installer so that machines with a older rom would fail the system check
Naturally apple suggested I toss this perfectly good machine in the dumpster and buy a whole new and improved model (which had darn near identical specs), Their control was nothing about the user experience (it still runs a patched version of 9.22 and OSX just fine, and fairly snappy) it was all about selling me a new machine whenever THEY thought I should have one.
Re:Free market? by cynyr · 2012-01-01 16:09 · Score: 3, Informative

$1.0B on "licenses" to the content they are selling, and $175k on severs, bandwidth, and front-end development.

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Re:Lenovo compatible by sdnoob · 2012-01-01 17:30 · Score: 3, Informative

actually, "ibm compatible" died when makers quit including BASIC in ROM. that was long before 2005.