The ability to replace the OS is the ability to run software that does what you choose. You can't possibly be unable to understand that, I think you're just continuing to argue because you like it or can't stand conceding a point.
No i'm saying your issue of 'printers spying' and such is something that applies to almost every single device and certainly applies to any software that you haven't compiled yourself, so that's certainly not a new issue here. Earlier you were saying these policies are ok for iPads but not for these Windows 8 devices, clearly that's not the case here.
People jailbreak phones for exactly this reason, to regain capability that has been removed, not always with OSS.
You've got 2 separate issues that you've introduced here, one being this need for 'tethering' which is something that is related to the carrier, not the device and if it weren't in the OS at all then it isn't something that is able to be added. The other is your issue of 'spying' which is wholly related to software you've compiled yourself from source, anything that has been pre-compiled could possibly be 'spying' on you.
I'm not going to reply in this thread again, I don't think you're serious about discussion. I don't need to "win". Go ahead, post last.
Actually it appears you aren't serious about this discussion, you've gone off-topic quite wildly now, to the point where your original point that this policy is ok for Apple's iPads but not for Windows 8 tablets no longer makes any sense, your current points apply exactly equally to both kinds of devices.
You are trying to asses the viability of a new platform design to handle a new job by looking how a platform known to not handle the job handles that job.
Wrong! See, you lose retard. It has nothing to do with the platform design whatsoever, and I never said anything of the sort that would cause any rational person to think that. It's all about platform adoption, no matter how good the platform is it isn't a viable alternative unless the publishers of the books you need actually adopt it. Are you trying to refute that? Are you a complete fool?
Of course not. Fuck off.
Awww did your feelings get hurt? Poor little angry douchebag, you're getting a bit emotionally attached to this aren't you:)
Ok that makes it quite clear, you're just ranting and have no idea of the point you're even refuting. Your responses are so ridiculous and you don't know it because you can't even tell me what you think my point is that you're trying to refute.
What's that got to do with replacing the OS? That's closed-vs-open source issue, if you're concerned about that you'd buy an unlocked Android tablet - not an iPad or Windows 8 tablet - so that you could load on an open source OS.
So what's my point that you're trying to refute then? Hrm? Oh that's right you don't know, because you're too dim-witted to understand it. You replied to me, so what is my point that you're refuting?
Which ebook format are you talking about exactly
Any, it doesn't matter, but since you don't understand the topic of the discussion you jumped so ignorantly into you wouldn't even know why. If i'm wrong then feel free to explain what the point of the discussion was before you jumped in.
No it's not. The end formatting done is generated from the layout I did by eye, into reams of horrifically complex ePub code. I certainly had nothing to do with that actual code, I just inserted text and other elements it used.
Just like in Powerpoint/Keynote or Word/Pages.
No, nor would I say the output of iAuthor should be owned by Apple. But since the output is only readable in iBooks, and as noted you can format your work in any other tool (good luck with that) I don't see any practical issue with that.
Yeah it's not like formats are ever reverse-engineered for interoperability.
Indeed, and if the manufacturers don't lock it down, the telcos try. There have been plenty of devices locked down to the detriment of the customer in an attempt to gain revenue streams for companies.
It's not really to the detriment of the majority of customers, most customers don't care about dual booting and those who do will buy a device capable of it instead. We've seen companies like Dell do Linux-based PCs (ok they weren't popular) so there's no reason to suggest they won't try it with Ubuntu-based tablets if such an offering looks viable.
I do not regard it as acceptable practice, unless those devices would be offered for rent, not sale. Devices for sale should not lock the purchaser out.
They already do, and always have. The OS on a device like this is tied to the hardware and is less like a PC OS and more like firmware, the hardware even has specific button layouts to support the OS!
Nowhere is Apple describing it as general purpose document creation application
When you're artificially tying products together you generally do avoid marketing them as such, but that's neither here nor there, the question is regarding ownership of the output.
And nowhere has Apple ever said that iBooks Author outputs epub. It doesn't output epub.
Actually it does, it just has some additional extensions, have a look at it. And that's the point, if someone interprets those extensions then you import that into another tool what happens to those distribution rights?
No. It has the wrong file extension and the wrong mime-type to be seen as epub by any other app. And even if you changed those, the other app isn't going to understand any Apple specific extensions.
Oh no, MIME type and file extensions, so prohibitive, the point is then what? What happens to that content then? What part of it is exclusive to Apple? If i change the MIME and extension then what happens to those distribution rights? What part of that file do they retain rights to?
IANAL. My point is only that there is no comparison between this task specific free tool, and a general purpose word processor.
Well drilling down from the initial question gets you here, it's the question of ownership of the output of the tool so if i change something in that output it isn't going to be consistent with the output of the tool so do i get those rights back or do they claim more than just distribution rights on their output?
No, it's you who doesn't get it. Your replies make no sense in the context of my post.
Apple convinced two of the big textbook publishers to actually publish for the new platform (and that's just at the starting point with fully finished books, at least one more publisher was mentioned at the presentation)
Great! Do they have the books Lumpy requires? You don't know do you, well neither do I, hence the reason i asked.
which they haven't published as a much simpler ebook on Kindle. What does that tell you?
Nothing that i didn't already know, that some books that aren't currently in ebook format will be in ebook format, but since i still don't know what books are required that information isn't exactly useful.
It's irrelevant. Word processors are sold (or given away) as general purpose document creation applications. iBooks Author isn't.
Sure it is, it's given away as a general purpose document creation application (there was a topic on this the other day about how its format is epub3 and that almost all of it can be read and interpreted correctly by any epub3 reader), I can download it for free and view the output in whatever I want, they're just saying they basically own its output. So of course the question is what happens if i take that output and convert it to another format and sell it?
Sure. But the word processor produces very, very little output. Most is produced by the person on the keyboard.
So you do think they should own the output? (by 'own' of course it means you cannot sell it on your terms)
It's quite simple really. You start iBooks Author, paste in your 300 pages textbook or novel, format it, and... everything up to this point is exclusively yours. Then you select "Export" from the file menu, and then choose the "iBook" option. This produces an output file. And that output file can according to the EULA only be sold through Apple, or given away for free.
Yes i get it, but that's no different from the output of any other application or tool for that matter. For example LibreOffice, Photoshop, Final Cut, Keynote, Logic, etc... Should the output of those tools be effectively owned by the tool creators?
I don't know much about Amazon, i'll take your word that their license is worse. There is the other point of view which would be looking at iBooks Author as an artificially-tied component of the iBooks product, but then artificial tying of products in that way has never been particularly popular.
Now are you upset they want to help sell the result?
I think he's upset that they want to be the sole distributor of the work, no problem with them helping to sell it and taking a cut of the sales they get for you (well some people might, but i would say that's perfectly acceptable) but if they prevent you from distributing the work you created that's a bit much.
No, the books Apple sells aren't actually available, they use an advanced form of the RDF to make buyers believe they are there.
WTF do you believe if they are available? You can buy 8 books right now, with more to come.
Wow, just wow! Way to totally miss the point entirely. Yes getting an ipad and the books on it for the price you normally pay for the books themselves is far better (IMO), if only for searching and portability, i doubt anyone would argue against that (unless it's the 'but i don't want an ipad' argument). But it's only viable if the books you need are available, and if they are available on Kindle or Nook that gives some indication (though it's not conclusive) of whether publishers of those books are open to ebooks rather than traditional books.
No what I'm saying is that your response isn't consistent with the topic, which is that they all impose restrictions on manufacturers, those who don't adhere to Google's requirements don't get Google's branding, just as those who don't adhere to MS' requirements don't get MS' branding. In both cases a manufacturer can choose to develop and sell a device without that branding if they prefer.
As i demonstrated above, MS is not doing anything new or different with the tablet market, just as with every other tablet on the market if you want to run other OSes then that is wholly dependent on the choices made by the manufacturer, and most choose not to allow it.
The contract specs for MS dictate inability to run other OS, Google is a founding member of the Open Handset Alliance
So?
I said "to the extent they succeed". WP7 does not meet the criteria of having notable success.
Then why would more Windows 8 devices mean less Android phones (or tablets for that matter)? That makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. Existing Android tablets don't run Windows 8 and tablets that do run Windows 8 not only don't even exist yet but aren't going to affect tablets that don't run it.
Trying to be evil and failing is not the same as not being evil. They are trying to restrict the ability of people to run other OS's than theirs.
Are you really that ignorant that you think they've invented the locked bootloader or something? Just about every noteworthy tablet on the market does this currently. If you want to run Android, don't buy an ipad, if you want to run iOS don't buy an Android tablet, if you want to run webOS don't buy an ipad or an Android tablet...it's really not that hard, that's the way of the tablet market, much like smartphones.
You can argue in circles as long as you like but it is in the spec.
I'm clearly not saying that it's not in the spec. The fact is they aren't taking existing devices and saying you can't run anything but W8 on them, they are saying if manufacturers want to make Windows 8 ARM devices then these new ARM devices can run Windows 8 only. They aren't forcing anything on anyone, clearly you'd like to believe they are but the fact is that no matter how much you spin this 'evil' rubbish they aren't forcing anything on anyone.
They aren't even saying you need that 'Designed for...' sticker on it, that hardware can be produced to run Windows 8 but it just can't be marketed with that specific sticker on it.
Example- school "A" might look at what Apple offers and then choose to require students to use it. That takes away freedom from ALL the students at that school.
Well really that happens whenever they require students to use anything, including particular textbooks, this would just be effectively telling them which bag to carry their books in. But yes i do see your point.
Especially disturbing when the school doesn't supply and support that platform to all the students.
I suppose it depends on whether that happens, schools have IT departments to support technology and if they tack a one-time fee onto tuition costs to cover the device and insurance that might be acceptable.
A better approach would be for the school to evaluate a set of books and ask the publisher to provide it in formats can can be used on various types of equipment, including Apple equipment.
Well yeah, if say it was in HTML5 that would be readable on just about any modern device, even if ibooks author exported to HTML5, no real reason why it couldn't?
There's another angle to "convenience piracy" on music which is that the albums always leaks days or even weeks before you can legit buy them.
That's absolutely true and also applies to the artificial delay the movie industry places between the cinema release of a film and the release of it to VoD or DVD/Bluray. Not to mention non-worldwide releases of music and movies.
I know plenty of people here who like to pirate because they DON'T want to pay for stuff.
Of course, there are always going to be people who will be of that mindset.
There are people who just don't want to pay for stuff - sadly, this "conveniency" piracy makes it too easy for most people to think "this is how things should be", and convince themselves that "free" is the only acceptable price. Piracy here is the norm, not the exception. We have VOD services, and Netflix and most people I showed netflix to just laugh at you for paying $8 a month to watch movies "you can gef for free".
There always will be those who won't pay just because they can get it for free but if it's easier or just as easy to get it legitimately, even if that means having to pay, I'd say that would win a lot of people over, or would have if it were implemented in the early days.
I think it likely has something to do with the way convenience piracy got so widespread and accepted through the time when the RIAA/MPAA thought they really could control the internet with lawyers and so didn't bother with it as a distribution medium, which means your paying customers turned to piracy for convenience and now you also have a generation of people who have only known generally-accepted convenience piracy, it's hard to turn them into paying customers.
It's just like Gabe Newell pointed out, that Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem. I believe that to be true, buying music used to be a PITA, either horrible DRM schemes or the fact that you had to physically go to a store when the technology clearly existed to make this quick, easy and convenient. Until the rise of (mostly) DRM-free stores like iTunes, Zune, etc... I used to pirate music because it was easier not because it was cheaper, i had the money and i was quite willing to pay, but they decided to make it really inconvenient for me to be their customer. Now i buy all my music off iTunes and Zune because it's so easy, I can even do it in the car, on the plane or while i'm walking down the street! Same with Steam or XBox Games On Demand or PSN, rather than going to a store these services have made it much more convenient and I'm willing to pay for that convenience because that's really what I wanted.
The RIAA/MPAA are just dinosaurs, relics of the time before the internet who are now finding themselves too far behind and too far out of touch, all they have left is lawyers.
Note how Apple contracts a lot of hw firms to build Apple iPads. LCD, CPUs, final assembly - all different companies, but all paid in full by Apple to make Apple iPad.
And Microsoft is doing the same, just one level above, to companies like Samsung to build 'Designed for Windows 8' tablets, these companies wouldn't be building these devices if Microsoft hadn't asked them to, hence the reason such devices do not exist now.
But right now they dictate "make it incompatible" to other hardware vendors.
You make it sound like these vendors have no choice, which is completely 100% false. There is no reason they have to make a Windows 8 device and there's certainly no reason they have to make a 'Designed for Windows 8' device, in fact they could just sell the device with no OS and advertise the OSes it is capable of running or sell it with Android or another OS and advertise it as being Windows 8 -compatible (doing this of course is perfectly acceptable in trademark law, hence the reason not all Android devices have to be Google-certified, only if they want that branding).
And yet they're planning to do the exact opposite: a first class treatment with certifiication and approval for vendors who lock out other OSs, and second class (or nothing) for those who don't kowtow.
Wrong, this 'first class treatment' you speak of is simply their branding, just like google only offers their branding and applications to those who adhere to their specs. There is absolutely no reason a company should have to offer their brand to another company's products and of course that has nothing to do with licensing the software anyway, the certification is a separate issue.
Slashdot Mirror
The ability to replace the OS is the ability to run software that does what you choose. You can't possibly be unable to understand that, I think you're just continuing to argue because you like it or can't stand conceding a point.
No i'm saying your issue of 'printers spying' and such is something that applies to almost every single device and certainly applies to any software that you haven't compiled yourself, so that's certainly not a new issue here. Earlier you were saying these policies are ok for iPads but not for these Windows 8 devices, clearly that's not the case here.
People jailbreak phones for exactly this reason, to regain capability that has been removed, not always with OSS.
You've got 2 separate issues that you've introduced here, one being this need for 'tethering' which is something that is related to the carrier, not the device and if it weren't in the OS at all then it isn't something that is able to be added. The other is your issue of 'spying' which is wholly related to software you've compiled yourself from source, anything that has been pre-compiled could possibly be 'spying' on you.
I'm not going to reply in this thread again, I don't think you're serious about discussion. I don't need to "win". Go ahead, post last.
Actually it appears you aren't serious about this discussion, you've gone off-topic quite wildly now, to the point where your original point that this policy is ok for Apple's iPads but not for Windows 8 tablets no longer makes any sense, your current points apply exactly equally to both kinds of devices.
You are trying to asses the viability of a new platform design to handle a new job by looking how a platform known to not handle the job handles that job.
Wrong! See, you lose retard. It has nothing to do with the platform design whatsoever, and I never said anything of the sort that would cause any rational person to think that. It's all about platform adoption, no matter how good the platform is it isn't a viable alternative unless the publishers of the books you need actually adopt it. Are you trying to refute that? Are you a complete fool?
Of course not. Fuck off.
Awww did your feelings get hurt? Poor little angry douchebag, you're getting a bit emotionally attached to this aren't you :)
Ok that makes it quite clear, you're just ranting and have no idea of the point you're even refuting. Your responses are so ridiculous and you don't know it because you can't even tell me what you think my point is that you're trying to refute.
What's that got to do with replacing the OS? That's closed-vs-open source issue, if you're concerned about that you'd buy an unlocked Android tablet - not an iPad or Windows 8 tablet - so that you could load on an open source OS.
Because unlike you I don't live in a LaLa-world.
So what's my point that you're trying to refute then? Hrm? Oh that's right you don't know, because you're too dim-witted to understand it. You replied to me, so what is my point that you're refuting?
Which ebook format are you talking about exactly
Any, it doesn't matter, but since you don't understand the topic of the discussion you jumped so ignorantly into you wouldn't even know why. If i'm wrong then feel free to explain what the point of the discussion was before you jumped in.
No it's not. The end formatting done is generated from the layout I did by eye, into reams of horrifically complex ePub code. I certainly had nothing to do with that actual code, I just inserted text and other elements it used.
Just like in Powerpoint/Keynote or Word/Pages.
No, nor would I say the output of iAuthor should be owned by Apple. But since the output is only readable in iBooks, and as noted you can format your work in any other tool (good luck with that) I don't see any practical issue with that.
Yeah it's not like formats are ever reverse-engineered for interoperability.
Indeed, and if the manufacturers don't lock it down, the telcos try. There have been plenty of devices locked down to the detriment of the customer in an attempt to gain revenue streams for companies.
It's not really to the detriment of the majority of customers, most customers don't care about dual booting and those who do will buy a device capable of it instead. We've seen companies like Dell do Linux-based PCs (ok they weren't popular) so there's no reason to suggest they won't try it with Ubuntu-based tablets if such an offering looks viable.
I do not regard it as acceptable practice, unless those devices would be offered for rent, not sale. Devices for sale should not lock the purchaser out.
They already do, and always have. The OS on a device like this is tied to the hardware and is less like a PC OS and more like firmware, the hardware even has specific button layouts to support the OS!
Nowhere is Apple describing it as general purpose document creation application
When you're artificially tying products together you generally do avoid marketing them as such, but that's neither here nor there, the question is regarding ownership of the output.
And nowhere has Apple ever said that iBooks Author outputs epub. It doesn't output epub.
Actually it does, it just has some additional extensions, have a look at it. And that's the point, if someone interprets those extensions then you import that into another tool what happens to those distribution rights?
No. It has the wrong file extension and the wrong mime-type to be seen as epub by any other app. And even if you changed those, the other app isn't going to understand any Apple specific extensions.
Oh no, MIME type and file extensions, so prohibitive, the point is then what? What happens to that content then? What part of it is exclusive to Apple? If i change the MIME and extension then what happens to those distribution rights? What part of that file do they retain rights to?
IANAL. My point is only that there is no comparison between this task specific free tool, and a general purpose word processor.
Well drilling down from the initial question gets you here, it's the question of ownership of the output of the tool so if i change something in that output it isn't going to be consistent with the output of the tool so do i get those rights back or do they claim more than just distribution rights on their output?
You still don't get it
No, it's you who doesn't get it. Your replies make no sense in the context of my post.
Apple convinced two of the big textbook publishers to actually publish for the new platform (and that's just at the starting point with fully finished books, at least one more publisher was mentioned at the presentation)
Great! Do they have the books Lumpy requires? You don't know do you, well neither do I, hence the reason i asked.
which they haven't published as a much simpler ebook on Kindle. What does that tell you?
Nothing that i didn't already know, that some books that aren't currently in ebook format will be in ebook format, but since i still don't know what books are required that information isn't exactly useful.
It's irrelevant. Word processors are sold (or given away) as general purpose document creation applications. iBooks Author isn't.
Sure it is, it's given away as a general purpose document creation application (there was a topic on this the other day about how its format is epub3 and that almost all of it can be read and interpreted correctly by any epub3 reader), I can download it for free and view the output in whatever I want, they're just saying they basically own its output. So of course the question is what happens if i take that output and convert it to another format and sell it?
Sure. But the word processor produces very, very little output. Most is produced by the person on the keyboard.
So you do think they should own the output? (by 'own' of course it means you cannot sell it on your terms)
It's quite simple really. You start iBooks Author, paste in your 300 pages textbook or novel, format it, and... everything up to this point is exclusively yours. Then you select "Export" from the file menu, and then choose the "iBook" option. This produces an output file. And that output file can according to the EULA only be sold through Apple, or given away for free.
Yes i get it, but that's no different from the output of any other application or tool for that matter. For example LibreOffice, Photoshop, Final Cut, Keynote, Logic, etc... Should the output of those tools be effectively owned by the tool creators?
I don't know much about Amazon, i'll take your word that their license is worse.
There is the other point of view which would be looking at iBooks Author as an artificially-tied component of the iBooks product, but then artificial tying of products in that way has never been particularly popular.
Apple does not want to be the sole distributor of your work. Only the output from the authoring tool.
That is your work. Would you say the output of the word processor should be owned by the creator of the word processor?
Now are you upset they want to help sell the result?
I think he's upset that they want to be the sole distributor of the work, no problem with them helping to sell it and taking a cut of the sales they get for you (well some people might, but i would say that's perfectly acceptable) but if they prevent you from distributing the work you created that's a bit much.
No, the books Apple sells aren't actually available, they use an advanced form of the RDF to make buyers believe they are there.
WTF do you believe if they are available? You can buy 8 books right now, with more to come.
Wow, just wow! Way to totally miss the point entirely. Yes getting an ipad and the books on it for the price you normally pay for the books themselves is far better (IMO), if only for searching and portability, i doubt anyone would argue against that (unless it's the 'but i don't want an ipad' argument). But it's only viable if the books you need are available, and if they are available on Kindle or Nook that gives some indication (though it's not conclusive) of whether publishers of those books are open to ebooks rather than traditional books.
No what I'm saying is that your response isn't consistent with the topic, which is that they all impose restrictions on manufacturers, those who don't adhere to Google's requirements don't get Google's branding, just as those who don't adhere to MS' requirements don't get MS' branding. In both cases a manufacturer can choose to develop and sell a device without that branding if they prefer.
As i demonstrated above, MS is not doing anything new or different with the tablet market, just as with every other tablet on the market if you want to run other OSes then that is wholly dependent on the choices made by the manufacturer, and most choose not to allow it.
The contract specs for MS dictate inability to run other OS, Google is a founding member of the Open Handset Alliance
So?
I said "to the extent they succeed". WP7 does not meet the criteria of having notable success.
Then why would more Windows 8 devices mean less Android phones (or tablets for that matter)? That makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. Existing Android tablets don't run Windows 8 and tablets that do run Windows 8 not only don't even exist yet but aren't going to affect tablets that don't run it.
Trying to be evil and failing is not the same as not being evil. They are trying to restrict the ability of people to run other OS's than theirs.
Are you really that ignorant that you think they've invented the locked bootloader or something? Just about every noteworthy tablet on the market does this currently. If you want to run Android, don't buy an ipad, if you want to run iOS don't buy an Android tablet, if you want to run webOS don't buy an ipad or an Android tablet...it's really not that hard, that's the way of the tablet market, much like smartphones.
You can argue in circles as long as you like but it is in the spec.
I'm clearly not saying that it's not in the spec. The fact is they aren't taking existing devices and saying you can't run anything but W8 on them, they are saying if manufacturers want to make Windows 8 ARM devices then these new ARM devices can run Windows 8 only. They aren't forcing anything on anyone, clearly you'd like to believe they are but the fact is that no matter how much you spin this 'evil' rubbish they aren't forcing anything on anyone.
They aren't even saying you need that 'Designed for...' sticker on it, that hardware can be produced to run Windows 8 but it just can't be marketed with that specific sticker on it.
If only one of them hadn't been so sillie.
Oh wait, $790.00 in text books last semester alone for my wife. That's an Ipad and 5 textbooks in ibook form.
Or did you fail in a epic way and not read that ibook textbooks are price capped at $16.00
I wonder if those publishers actually make those textbooks available on ibooks, have they done them for things like the Kindle or Nook?
Example- school "A" might look at what Apple offers and then choose to require students to use it. That takes away freedom from ALL the students at that school.
Well really that happens whenever they require students to use anything, including particular textbooks, this would just be effectively telling them which bag to carry their books in. But yes i do see your point.
Especially disturbing when the school doesn't supply and support that platform to all the students.
I suppose it depends on whether that happens, schools have IT departments to support technology and if they tack a one-time fee onto tuition costs to cover the device and insurance that might be acceptable.
A better approach would be for the school to evaluate a set of books and ask the publisher to provide it in formats can can be used on various types of equipment, including Apple equipment.
Well yeah, if say it was in HTML5 that would be readable on just about any modern device, even if ibooks author exported to HTML5, no real reason why it couldn't?
There's another angle to "convenience piracy" on music which is that the albums always leaks days or even weeks before you can legit buy them.
That's absolutely true and also applies to the artificial delay the movie industry places between the cinema release of a film and the release of it to VoD or DVD/Bluray. Not to mention non-worldwide releases of music and movies.
I know plenty of people here who like to pirate because they DON'T want to pay for stuff.
Of course, there are always going to be people who will be of that mindset.
There are people who just don't want to pay for stuff - sadly, this "conveniency" piracy makes it too easy for most people to think "this is how things should be", and convince themselves that "free" is the only acceptable price. Piracy here is the norm, not the exception. We have VOD services, and Netflix and most people I showed netflix to just laugh at you for paying $8 a month to watch movies "you can gef for free".
There always will be those who won't pay just because they can get it for free but if it's easier or just as easy to get it legitimately, even if that means having to pay, I'd say that would win a lot of people over, or would have if it were implemented in the early days.
I think it likely has something to do with the way convenience piracy got so widespread and accepted through the time when the RIAA/MPAA thought they really could control the internet with lawyers and so didn't bother with it as a distribution medium, which means your paying customers turned to piracy for convenience and now you also have a generation of people who have only known generally-accepted convenience piracy, it's hard to turn them into paying customers.
It's just like Gabe Newell pointed out, that Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem. I believe that to be true, buying music used to be a PITA, either horrible DRM schemes or the fact that you had to physically go to a store when the technology clearly existed to make this quick, easy and convenient. Until the rise of (mostly) DRM-free stores like iTunes, Zune, etc... I used to pirate music because it was easier not because it was cheaper, i had the money and i was quite willing to pay, but they decided to make it really inconvenient for me to be their customer. Now i buy all my music off iTunes and Zune because it's so easy, I can even do it in the car, on the plane or while i'm walking down the street! Same with Steam or XBox Games On Demand or PSN, rather than going to a store these services have made it much more convenient and I'm willing to pay for that convenience because that's really what I wanted.
The RIAA/MPAA are just dinosaurs, relics of the time before the internet who are now finding themselves too far behind and too far out of touch, all they have left is lawyers.
Gabe Newell interview
Note how Apple contracts a lot of hw firms to build Apple iPads. LCD, CPUs, final assembly - all different companies, but all paid in full by Apple to make Apple iPad.
And Microsoft is doing the same, just one level above, to companies like Samsung to build 'Designed for Windows 8' tablets, these companies wouldn't be building these devices if Microsoft hadn't asked them to, hence the reason such devices do not exist now.
But right now they dictate "make it incompatible" to other hardware vendors.
You make it sound like these vendors have no choice, which is completely 100% false. There is no reason they have to make a Windows 8 device and there's certainly no reason they have to make a 'Designed for Windows 8' device, in fact they could just sell the device with no OS and advertise the OSes it is capable of running or sell it with Android or another OS and advertise it as being Windows 8 -compatible (doing this of course is perfectly acceptable in trademark law, hence the reason not all Android devices have to be Google-certified, only if they want that branding).
Would you be prosecuted by the manufacturer for altering it? Put the strawman down buddy.
Of course not, just like you won't be prosecuted by apple for jailbreaking your iphone. Not sure what point you're trying to make.
And yet they're planning to do the exact opposite: a first class treatment with certifiication and approval for vendors who lock out other OSs, and second class (or nothing) for those who don't kowtow.
Wrong, this 'first class treatment' you speak of is simply their branding, just like google only offers their branding and applications to those who adhere to their specs. There is absolutely no reason a company should have to offer their brand to another company's products and of course that has nothing to do with licensing the software anyway, the certification is a separate issue.