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The Un-Internet and War On General Purpose Computers
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."
Like 2 days ago? Unless you're in Samoa and Tokelau, then it was yesterday.
sysadmins and parents of newborns get the same amount of sleep.
In a true free market there would be more closed solutions too and the one most people want will win. I'm not sure why he's upset that most people are actually computer illiterate and want something that can be easily controlled rather than the ultimate swiss army knife of computers. Open computers won't go away and there is no need to get upset because most people don't care for that.
... by competing. If you feel that closed platforms are wrong, provide open platforms.
Complaining about other people that choose a different business model that you would have is just being a donkey. Put your moolah where your food-hole is and run your business model for real.
Oh for God's sake... but something that Apple EXPLICITLY PREVENTS YOU OR ANYONE FROM DOING.
Selling a tablet with rounded corners?
Digital Millenium Copyright Act
Security Systems Standards and Certification Act
SOPA
The locked bootloader
"Approved" software
All this will end your freedoms, what are you doing to fight it?
I'm not happy with the way I see the industry going
You do realise those great minds in congress, largely funded and heavily lobbied by the MAFIAA attempted to make it legally mandatory, for your computer to not be a computer, they tried to legally mandate approved security and digital restrictions management systems in ALL electronic systems, personal computers and devices designed for your use. This would make your PC closed like an apple iPad where only the DRM compliant software could legally run, locked bootloaders would be everywhere, and it would be a crime (DMCA) to circumvent it
This would have made alot of problems for Linux too, thankfully the GPL v3 has *some* protections against DRM schemes that take away your freedoms
The interests of big business and distributors like the RIAA/MPAA are not very well aligned with the interests of end users, and they are more than happy to ride roughshod over your end user freedoms in order to gain all the control over the market for themselves and the profits that follow
I think we should be doing more to protect our freedoms
He probably did BUT
I actually don't mind the approach that Apple took with the iPhone and then the iPad.
No Flash! What a great idea.
So it is a walled garden. Well for some things I want to be sure that what I do is safe.
I had an iPhone 3gs and then a 4. Now I have a HTC Sensation.
Frankly, IMHO when compared to the iPhone 4, the HTC is a POS. If you view some of the forums, there are a number of well known issues with the device. Issues that HTC seemingly have no interest in fixing.
WIth the recent scares about printers being a security risk, it is obvious that there are people determined to exploit any opportunity to exploit the kit we use. I have to wonder how long it will be before some exploit is found in old versions of Android. Versions that the manufacturers will not fix in a year of Sundays. Exactly how is the openness of Android protecting me then? don't say 'You can root it and load some unapproved software'. How many of the phone using public could do that then? They won't. That will leave them using devices that could be part of the biggest botnet the world has seen (to use one possibility). What use is Android being open then? Naf all IMHO.
So in reality, it is not so open and shut as some may think.
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.
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.
If it were strictly a matter of user preference back in the mid to late 80's, the Mac may indeed have been the one to dominate, but at work most people had little choice but to use the computer that was given to them. They typically chose to get the same computers for their home for reasons of compatibility, price, and availability of software.
But lets look a little deeper. How did that end up working out for IBM? How many PCs has IBM sold lately? What new and exciting product have they come out with in the last couple of decades?
Apple is still selling the Mac and still innovating. PCs are basically a commodity. When Apple did license the Mac OS, it nearly wiped them out. They didn't have other lines of business to fall back on like IBM did when the clone manufactures started eating their lunch on price.
Besides, dominating the marketplace isn't the only definition of success. I'd also argue that there's plenty of room for both open and closed systems. I'd prefer to live in a world with both. While the general purpose PC may be fading somewhat in importance, I think that's just simply part of the natural progression of technology.
The Internet may be the new general purpose PC. Lots of cloud based services include APIs that you can leverage. IOS is only one platform. Android is another. So is the Internet. I don't think the latter is threatened by the existence of IOS in any way. In fact, I'd argue that its existence has promoted the Internet as a platform.
Most end users are concerned with the user experience, and little else.
This doesn't negate the legitimacy of the Free Software Movement. It doesn't mean that it shouldn't be championed and taken as far as it can. What it does mean is that the vast majority of people just want shit that works right out of the box. Free Software has yet to provide an experience many find superior to things like iOS, so iOS continues to gobble-up marketshare while people write articles about how awful it is that it's happening.
What most users want is this: Open box. Turn on computer. Search for the app they want. Hit "Install". Use app. That's it. Get shit done, and do other shit when the desire strikes.
People who don't understand this often adopt a condescending tone and claim iPhone / iPad users are just dumb sheep who buy into PR, etc. And that if users only opened their eyes and realized how they're being controlled...
But that's not going to win any converts. People want to do shit with as few hassles as possible. Years of "Grrr. If you want X, Y or Z, code it yourself!" have reenforced ideology and alienated users, while companies like Apple have been making and releasing products. And that's really the difference in the end. Dogmatic essays and arguing over the minutiae of license revisions vs. shipping products that do things people want in a manner in which they find appealing. The latter always wins.
Most end users don't give a damn about ideology, licenses or figureheads spouting the latest opinions on how things should or should not be.
They want: "Here is a new device. This is what it does. If you like it, buy it. Come back in 12 months and we will have an updated version."
They like that discovering and installing software is now about as easy as you could possibly hope to make it.
They like that they can download an application once, delete it, and reinstall it for free whenever they want, as many times as they want, on all of their devices. Simultaneously.
They like that their devices automatically backup their applications and user data while they're walking down the street.
They like that they can go into a store, buy a new device, enter their email and password, and have all of their applications and settings just appear within moments.
You can bemoan the licenses and lack of tinker-ability in each piece of hardware and software. You can talk about walled gardens and developer fees. Remind us how annoyingly arbitrary the application approval process is.
And I will probably agree with you.
But the fact remains, people want a user experience, not a license. Not an ideology or a movement.
Firefox took Internet Explorer's market share because Internet Explorer sucked, and Firefox was great. And you could point-out why it was great in ways that someone who didn't know what a compiler or license was could say "Wow, this is great!" And most of all, even if you didn't tell them, even if they had never heard of Firefox or the GPL, you could see people start using it and not stop using it. Because it was better. At the end of the day, clicking "Firefox" instead of "Internet Explorer" made things happen faster, with fewer problems. People liked that.
It was a triumph of free software. Lower case. The Free Software movement won a victory, but at the end of the day you have to write your code and release your applications and hardware with the assumption that no one will know, or care what the Big Ideas are behind the project. Anything you want to get across to the user must come out in the time spent interacting with a program. Kinda-sorta functional, pre-Beta / endless Beta software excused with a "But it's free and makes the world a better place because..." won't cut it.
If you want to fight the likes of iOS and win, look at what's appealing about the experience and improve on it. Don't you dare tell people they don't want what they're currently enjoying. Offer them a better alternative. Cut the condescension and smug sense of supe
But lets look a little deeper. How did that end up working out for IBM? How many PCs has IBM sold lately?
You say that as though it's a bad thing. That's how we want it to work: If you invent something once and thereafter decide you want to rest on your laurels forever, the market is supposed to eat your lunch. We want a market where companies have to continually innovate or they get kicked to the curb. This idea that inventing something once should give you an inalienable right to a permanent revenue stream is a disease.
More than that, it's a disease that kills the host first. Companies want control, obviously. Customers and developers also want control. If a company like Apple decides they want to control everything, they get a larger slice of a smaller pie. That can work out well in the short term in some cases, but eventually someone comes around who provides a product which is of a similar quality but which allows users and other third parties to have more of that control, which causes more people to use it. The market share of the more free product increases faster than that of the less free product, because all else equal who wouldn't want more control for themselves and less for someone else? The walled garden is a false dichotomy because you can have optional curation without mandatory curation, and the first company to get the former right will eat the latter's lunch in exactly the same way and for the same reasons that the open web defeated AOL.
about what's going to happen when 3D printing and bioscale assemblers hit the mainstream. Right now we're having trouble because the [MP/RI]AA, who represent comparatively tiny industries, are pushing to destroy open systems. Imagine what happens when the Monsanto's and Walmarts of the world jump on the bandwagon because consumers stop consuming and start manufacturing on their own.
I imagine that if we win that battle an era of unparalleled advancement, freedom, and opportunity for humanity lies on the other side; however, the powers that be will not go quietly, and there will likely be an unprecedented era of repression that will only be overcome with a great deal of trouble and not a little bloodshed.
The only way I can imagine it breaking our way without said bloodshed is if we plan it such that it all happens at once everywhere from as many places as possible, using darknets, ad-hoc mesh networks, and other ways to ensure freedom of information and clever replication schemes to make sure you, me, and everyone we know gets in on the quantum leap in capability immediately instead of the usual diffusion model that has been constant in human history. That is, we can't afford to wait the 20 years for everyone to get a computer and online to get everyone's hands on 3D printers; and that means we have to build dead-simple interfaces into those technologies from the outset to cut the learning curve to zero.
We can't give the powers that be time to react. We can't give them the chance to divide, deflect, and defeat the change.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
The IBM PC has effectively died. IBM doesn't make PCs. Windows based PCs are certainly still around and of course Windows still dominates because it has decades of software people are reliant on. That is why Linux and Macs struggle to take gain market share.
But if Windows was the superior product then MS shouldn't be struggling in every other consumer market. Their phone OS is pretty much a failure, they're a non-starter on tablets, zune is dead and their "big" success is the 360 which was blown away by inferior hardware (the Wii) and is only a few million ahead of the PS3 despite the 1 year lead, the price advantage, the fact most every game can be bought on both systems, despite the PS3 hackings, etc.
What I see is consumers use windows where they have to use it. Where they don't need to due to lack of legacy software they are going to either Android, Apple or anyone else.
Part of that success they built up on the desktop didn't come from natural consumer choice. It had a lot of help from underhanded tactics from Microsoft. I think the fact the Mac and Linux survived that is a testament to how much better their products are.
Non-technical people did not pick wintel machines because they were easier and better. They just happened to have the software people want which has nothing to do with the openness of the hardware which actually isn't any more open than a Mac. Linux is installable on Macs and has been for some time even with PPC variants.
That is my point. Most consumers simply do not care about hacking software or hardware. Just as most consumers don't want to tear apart their cars or mod them and what is wrong with that? It won't stop geeks from having what they want. Linux can't go away if Apple gains a 90% market share. It didn't go away despite Windows' huge market share even with MS actively bullying OEMs into only installing windows. You let people pick what they want and if more people want something they perceive as being safer and easier rather than what you pick then how does that hurt you?