You're absolutely right, but take it a step further: Even without women, why do we put up with bullshit pseudo-macho alpha geek behaviour? It's not like it's any benefit to getting the job done, and it smacks of the same sort of delusions that young lawyers and young stock brokers fall prey to, the "go hard or go home" school of working yourself to death for your boss's sake.
Well, actually, I don't. Nearing my 40th birthday, my consultancy is screaming along, and dealing with other IT guys in their late 30s, I find we're all quite mature and professional, and don't behave in ways that women would find offputting, usually because we have wives and often daughters that remind us that keyboard commandos aren't the only or best people in the world.
It's a difficult question to answer now because I don't have a terminal illness, which I'm sure weighs heavily on one's decision to try some dodgy "experimental" treatment. But I like to think that I wouldn't lose my critical faculties, that I'd actually look at whether or not the proposed treatment had some scientific plausibility, and (most importantly) that it wasn't a scam counting on my desperation to separate me from my money. I like to think that I'd recognize that I'd be prone to grasp at straws, and that makes me vulnerable to con men or pious frauds.
Let me cast your question differently: If you had six months left to live, and someone in a lab coat said "fly to Costa Rica to visit my clinic, where I'll try my experimental treatment on you that totally works but the evil FDA refuses to certify." After doing so, you find out you have only a couple weeks to live now, thanks to the treatment, and that your family has no legal recourse because it was in a country without regulations regarding the legitimacy of medical treatment. You're also tens of thousands of dollars poorer.
She wasn't taking a chance on an experimental treatment, she was taking a chance on snake oil. Stem-cell therapies in low-regulation countries are the current version of Laetril--treating cancer with apricot pits. It has no chance of working, but someone nearing the end of their life will grasp at any straw, even if it shortens their already short remaining days. It's exploiting the vulnerable.
Now, you can argue that people have a right to be exploited, but don't pretend there isn't a human cost to this. You're basically arguing that we shouldn't do anything to prevent grifters from grifting.
American bounty hunters routinely kidnap nationals of other countries to stand trial in the U.S. They only get involved if there's bailjumping involved, but they still cross borders, kidnap someone, and show up in the U.S.
Well if they'd stop oiling the spindle with blood and pituitary glands of Palestinian babies, I'd buy from them again. Christ, it's just about impossible to get that shit out of the rug.
I can tell you from my personaly experience as an Aspy that we live an almost normal life.
That's the point: McKinnon's Aspergers is being offered as a reason why he is somehow less culpable for his crimes than a non-Aspy (fucking neuro-typicals!).
I know that Asperger's can be difficult to live with, so congratulations on finding an almost normal life for yourself.
If I'd never heard of McKinnon, and someone told me the whole story start to finish, I'm pretty sure that I'd say "just try him in Britain--you're wasting more money extraditing him than the crime is worth."
But all I've learned about MacKinnon I've learned from/., where an Aspie cracker is a demigod, and a Rorschach blot for the average/. reader to project all his lunatic fears of a fascist/socialist/totalitarian US gov't. It's like with Hans Reiser, who couldn't possibly be guilty, he's just misunderstood--right up to the point where Reiser led police to the body and said "that's where I dumped the ex-wife that I stabbed to death."
So: Fry MacKinnon, just to hear the howls of outraged geeks everywhere who imagine that they're a persecuted minority.
the right to do with it whatever you want (provided it's legal, of course)
Correct: You can do with it whatever you want. Use it as a coaster. Install linux on it. Jailbreak it. Apple can't stop you.
What you don't have a right to is Apple's continued support of the product. You don't have a right to continued access to the app store. You don't have a right to make Apple continue to service your iPhone.
Would you like your radio or TV set to ban some stations ?
No, but I simply wouldn't buy such a TV or radio. I'd buy a competitor's that doesn't ban anyone, unless I looked at the censoring TV and decided that I didn't care about losing what's banned in light of the higher quality of programming that's available. I might buy a second, uncensored TV, or just live without what's banned. What I wouldn't do is buy the TV and then complain about it banning some stations.
Neither have I, and that's not what I wrote. The software is the ongoing service, not the hardware--updates to the OS, app store, access to the network.
Does Ford have any kind of control over your car? Does Kenmore have any control over your fridge?
Yes: There are specific terms to the warranty, and if you do something that voids those terms, they won't fix your car or fridge. That's established commercial law going back decades at least. I don't see why this becomes problematic when it's a phone.
I want an actual justification beyond "controlling the user experience."
There is no profound moral or legal justification for it. From Apple's perspective, the practical justification is protecting the premium experience they're selling, and their sales figure provide more than enough evidence that their view is justified. From your perspective, the justification is that you accepted those terms when you bought the phone. You freely chose the walled garden, so you give up your right to complain that there's walls around your garden. That's all there is to it.
I'm not sure why you think that you're entitled to anything beyond what they advertise and what you pay for. They're not defrauding you.
Bundling IE with Windows was problematic just because of the Windows marketshare. If Windows had only 50% of the market, antitrust regulators wouldn't have cared. Bundling isn't illegal; bundling for the purpose of monopoly extension is.
1. It's not an issue of right or wrong. It's a commercial transaction, both buying the device and developing for it. Don't like the terms of the transaction? Don't do it.
2. Their logic has always been perfectly obvious to everyone who wasn't a/. reader. Apple provides a walled garden experience with strict controls. It's carefully limited in scope to provide a particular premium experience that Apple thinks will sell well--and it does. All of the restrictions on apps make sense in light of Apple's desire to avoid poorly written apps being on their phones--because when the app doesn't work well, Apple and the device take a hit for it.
3. No, but it makes all the whinging about it irritating because the stench of/. reader entitlement is noxious.
An iPhone isn't your only option. You can buy an Android phone, you can buy a Blackberry, you can buy a device running Windows Mobile.
Developers put a lot of time and effort into helping to build the value of the Apple platform only to be discarded in a rather random fashion.
Then smart developers won't develop for the iPhone because it's too much of a gamble.
Really, Apple's arbitrary and capricious rules for the app store are a perfect case of where the free market should rule: If Apple is too whimsical, devs won't develop; if devs won't develop, the apps won't be available, and customers will buy other phones.
Yes, Apple wants to set itself up as Big Brother, and a lot of end users like that because Big Brother provides a consistent and high quality experience. Don't like the fact that it's Big Brother doing it? Don't buy an iPhone, and start writing Android apps.
One of the most sickening things in these threads is the normally libertarian types here whinging about a private seller selling something that isn't what they want, and arguing that the seller has some obligation, perhaps government enforced, to offer them what they want.
Why does Apple get any kind of say at all as to what I put on it?
Why shouldn't they have a say, or 100% control, for that matter? It's their product to sell to you; by buying it, you accept their terms. Don't like the terms, don't buy it--get an android phone instead. The iPhone's capabilities are beside the point.
Put another way, you can run whatever you want on your iPhone if you jailbreak it, or install Linux on it, or whatever, or even if you figure out how to hack it so that you can install your own apps through iTunes, say. Apple goons aren't going to show up at your door and reclaim your phone if you do those things. You own the device itself, but the software on the phone is an ongoing service provided by Apple. You're free to reject that service at any time, but you then can't expect the service to continue to function as Apple designed it and intended it to.
Really what you're complaining about is that Apple isn't offering something else to you--an alternate channel for apps. They're offering product X, and you want product Y. I don't see why Apple has any obligation to sell you a different product than they offer.
Apple doesn't care if you put something on your phone. What they care about is not supporting you in doing so if it's not something they choose to support. The whole idea of Apple products is that you're buying a walled garden--limited and beautiful. Don't like the limits? Don't buy Apple products.
They can, but Photoshop is no longer the piece of software anchoring sales of Macs, so it's a sting, not a body blow. Five years ago, Apple stopped shipping LCDs on its MacBooks that offered true colors, which was a big reason photographers and designers stuck with them. Photoshop and Macs just aren't that tightly tied anymore. Photographers and Designers are still Mac Fanatics, but Apple no longer depends upon them for sales.
Without saying so, you identified the problem: The IRS, census bureau, FBI et al. were acting like typical squirrelly clients who don't really know what they want, they just want it now and have deep pockets. There's no shortage of private sector equivalents, such as Hershey's or Coke's attempts to implement SAP resulting in billion dollar failures (and in Hershey's case the near bankruptcy of the company).
OTOH, Newell Rubbermaid had its homegrown ERP that was of a high enough quality to be one of Walmart's top tier vendors. The difference is obvious: organizations that have software development as integral parts of their business succeed, while deep pocket clients who don't really know what they want fail with consultants. So make software development an integral part of government services.
Government doesn't need to innovate in software. The point of a GSO isn't to create new products, it's to provide secure services to government agencies. Nothing they would need to do would be more complicated than building existing functionality in approved ways--and if the NSA can do it, then a more general government department could as well.
Seriously, the IRS doesn't need innovative software, it needs to be brought up to 2005.
This is why the OP says that developers are acting like they have a right to develop apps that get sold through the app store. It's Apple's app store, it's Apple's platform, it's Apple's product--why shouldn't they get to put whatever arbitrary restrictions they want on it? If you dislike the restrictions, don't develop for the application. Maybe they're shooting themselves in the foot, but that's a business issue.
Why does Apple have an obligation not to put arbitrary restrictions upon you?
It's like going to a stadium and trying to get a Coke, and finding only Pepsi products on sale because the stadium made a deal with Pepsi that food vendors will have to sell Pepsi products. Don't like it? Don't buy a Pepsi.
You're right, sellers don't have a right to impose whatever conditions they want on purchasers. But they are free to decide what they're selling, and what they're not selling, and if you're a competing software drink manufacturer, you're SOL (absent monopoly and antitrust considerations). The alternative is the commercial version of the equal time doctrine, where if you sell X, you also have to sell their competitor Y.
Antitrust law would require some kind of monopoly on Apple's part. With Android/Nexus, Blackberries, and Motorola phones, all of which play games and run various apps, you'd have a hard time arguing that Apple has a monopoly on mobile computing.
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Abso-fucking-lutely.
You're the reason you can't have nice things.
You're absolutely right, but take it a step further: Even without women, why do we put up with bullshit pseudo-macho alpha geek behaviour? It's not like it's any benefit to getting the job done, and it smacks of the same sort of delusions that young lawyers and young stock brokers fall prey to, the "go hard or go home" school of working yourself to death for your boss's sake.
Well, actually, I don't. Nearing my 40th birthday, my consultancy is screaming along, and dealing with other IT guys in their late 30s, I find we're all quite mature and professional, and don't behave in ways that women would find offputting, usually because we have wives and often daughters that remind us that keyboard commandos aren't the only or best people in the world.
What the people say, goes! Get it?
Have you been to California lately?
It's a difficult question to answer now because I don't have a terminal illness, which I'm sure weighs heavily on one's decision to try some dodgy "experimental" treatment. But I like to think that I wouldn't lose my critical faculties, that I'd actually look at whether or not the proposed treatment had some scientific plausibility, and (most importantly) that it wasn't a scam counting on my desperation to separate me from my money. I like to think that I'd recognize that I'd be prone to grasp at straws, and that makes me vulnerable to con men or pious frauds.
Let me cast your question differently: If you had six months left to live, and someone in a lab coat said "fly to Costa Rica to visit my clinic, where I'll try my experimental treatment on you that totally works but the evil FDA refuses to certify." After doing so, you find out you have only a couple weeks to live now, thanks to the treatment, and that your family has no legal recourse because it was in a country without regulations regarding the legitimacy of medical treatment. You're also tens of thousands of dollars poorer.
How would you like that?
She wasn't taking a chance on an experimental treatment, she was taking a chance on snake oil. Stem-cell therapies in low-regulation countries are the current version of Laetril--treating cancer with apricot pits. It has no chance of working, but someone nearing the end of their life will grasp at any straw, even if it shortens their already short remaining days. It's exploiting the vulnerable.
Now, you can argue that people have a right to be exploited, but don't pretend there isn't a human cost to this. You're basically arguing that we shouldn't do anything to prevent grifters from grifting.
American bounty hunters routinely kidnap nationals of other countries to stand trial in the U.S. They only get involved if there's bailjumping involved, but they still cross borders, kidnap someone, and show up in the U.S.
Well if they'd stop oiling the spindle with blood and pituitary glands of Palestinian babies, I'd buy from them again. Christ, it's just about impossible to get that shit out of the rug.
I can tell you from my personaly experience as an Aspy that we live an almost normal life.
That's the point: McKinnon's Aspergers is being offered as a reason why he is somehow less culpable for his crimes than a non-Aspy (fucking neuro-typicals!).
I know that Asperger's can be difficult to live with, so congratulations on finding an almost normal life for yourself.
Well said.
If I'd never heard of McKinnon, and someone told me the whole story start to finish, I'm pretty sure that I'd say "just try him in Britain--you're wasting more money extraditing him than the crime is worth."
But all I've learned about MacKinnon I've learned from /., where an Aspie cracker is a demigod, and a Rorschach blot for the average /. reader to project all his lunatic fears of a fascist/socialist/totalitarian US gov't. It's like with Hans Reiser, who couldn't possibly be guilty, he's just misunderstood--right up to the point where Reiser led police to the body and said "that's where I dumped the ex-wife that I stabbed to death."
So: Fry MacKinnon, just to hear the howls of outraged geeks everywhere who imagine that they're a persecuted minority.
the right to do with it whatever you want (provided it's legal, of course)
Correct: You can do with it whatever you want. Use it as a coaster. Install linux on it. Jailbreak it. Apple can't stop you.
What you don't have a right to is Apple's continued support of the product. You don't have a right to continued access to the app store. You don't have a right to make Apple continue to service your iPhone.
Would you like your radio or TV set to ban some stations ?
No, but I simply wouldn't buy such a TV or radio. I'd buy a competitor's that doesn't ban anyone, unless I looked at the censoring TV and decided that I didn't care about losing what's banned in light of the higher quality of programming that's available. I might buy a second, uncensored TV, or just live without what's banned. What I wouldn't do is buy the TV and then complain about it banning some stations.
I largely agree with the rest of what you wrote.
I've never heard of "hardware as a service."
Neither have I, and that's not what I wrote. The software is the ongoing service, not the hardware--updates to the OS, app store, access to the network.
Does Ford have any kind of control over your car? Does Kenmore have any control over your fridge?
Yes: There are specific terms to the warranty, and if you do something that voids those terms, they won't fix your car or fridge. That's established commercial law going back decades at least. I don't see why this becomes problematic when it's a phone.
I want an actual justification beyond "controlling the user experience."
There is no profound moral or legal justification for it. From Apple's perspective, the practical justification is protecting the premium experience they're selling, and their sales figure provide more than enough evidence that their view is justified. From your perspective, the justification is that you accepted those terms when you bought the phone. You freely chose the walled garden, so you give up your right to complain that there's walls around your garden. That's all there is to it.
I'm not sure why you think that you're entitled to anything beyond what they advertise and what you pay for. They're not defrauding you.
Bundling IE with Windows was problematic just because of the Windows marketshare. If Windows had only 50% of the market, antitrust regulators wouldn't have cared. Bundling isn't illegal; bundling for the purpose of monopoly extension is.
1. It's not an issue of right or wrong. It's a commercial transaction, both buying the device and developing for it. Don't like the terms of the transaction? Don't do it.
2. Their logic has always been perfectly obvious to everyone who wasn't a /. reader. Apple provides a walled garden experience with strict controls. It's carefully limited in scope to provide a particular premium experience that Apple thinks will sell well--and it does. All of the restrictions on apps make sense in light of Apple's desire to avoid poorly written apps being on their phones--because when the app doesn't work well, Apple and the device take a hit for it.
3. No, but it makes all the whinging about it irritating because the stench of /. reader entitlement is noxious.
An iPhone isn't your only option. You can buy an Android phone, you can buy a Blackberry, you can buy a device running Windows Mobile.
Developers put a lot of time and effort into helping to build the value of the Apple platform only to be
discarded in a rather random fashion.
Then smart developers won't develop for the iPhone because it's too much of a gamble.
Really, Apple's arbitrary and capricious rules for the app store are a perfect case of where the free market should rule: If Apple is too whimsical, devs won't develop; if devs won't develop, the apps won't be available, and customers will buy other phones.
Yes, Apple wants to set itself up as Big Brother, and a lot of end users like that because Big Brother provides a consistent and high quality experience. Don't like the fact that it's Big Brother doing it? Don't buy an iPhone, and start writing Android apps.
One of the most sickening things in these threads is the normally libertarian types here whinging about a private seller selling something that isn't what they want, and arguing that the seller has some obligation, perhaps government enforced, to offer them what they want.
Why does Apple get any kind of say at all as to what I put on it?
Why shouldn't they have a say, or 100% control, for that matter? It's their product to sell to you; by buying it, you accept their terms. Don't like the terms, don't buy it--get an android phone instead. The iPhone's capabilities are beside the point.
Put another way, you can run whatever you want on your iPhone if you jailbreak it, or install Linux on it, or whatever, or even if you figure out how to hack it so that you can install your own apps through iTunes, say. Apple goons aren't going to show up at your door and reclaim your phone if you do those things. You own the device itself, but the software on the phone is an ongoing service provided by Apple. You're free to reject that service at any time, but you then can't expect the service to continue to function as Apple designed it and intended it to.
Really what you're complaining about is that Apple isn't offering something else to you--an alternate channel for apps. They're offering product X, and you want product Y. I don't see why Apple has any obligation to sell you a different product than they offer.
Apple doesn't care if you put something on your phone. What they care about is not supporting you in doing so if it's not something they choose to support. The whole idea of Apple products is that you're buying a walled garden--limited and beautiful. Don't like the limits? Don't buy Apple products.
They can, but Photoshop is no longer the piece of software anchoring sales of Macs, so it's a sting, not a body blow. Five years ago, Apple stopped shipping LCDs on its MacBooks that offered true colors, which was a big reason photographers and designers stuck with them. Photoshop and Macs just aren't that tightly tied anymore. Photographers and Designers are still Mac Fanatics, but Apple no longer depends upon them for sales.
Without saying so, you identified the problem: The IRS, census bureau, FBI et al. were acting like typical squirrelly clients who don't really know what they want, they just want it now and have deep pockets. There's no shortage of private sector equivalents, such as Hershey's or Coke's attempts to implement SAP resulting in billion dollar failures (and in Hershey's case the near bankruptcy of the company).
OTOH, Newell Rubbermaid had its homegrown ERP that was of a high enough quality to be one of Walmart's top tier vendors. The difference is obvious: organizations that have software development as integral parts of their business succeed, while deep pocket clients who don't really know what they want fail with consultants. So make software development an integral part of government services.
Government doesn't need to innovate in software. The point of a GSO isn't to create new products, it's to provide secure services to government agencies. Nothing they would need to do would be more complicated than building existing functionality in approved ways--and if the NSA can do it, then a more general government department could as well.
Seriously, the IRS doesn't need innovative software, it needs to be brought up to 2005.
I can't tell who you hate more: the U.S., or everyone else.
Why isn't it acceptable?
This is why the OP says that developers are acting like they have a right to develop apps that get sold through the app store. It's Apple's app store, it's Apple's platform, it's Apple's product--why shouldn't they get to put whatever arbitrary restrictions they want on it? If you dislike the restrictions, don't develop for the application. Maybe they're shooting themselves in the foot, but that's a business issue.
Why does Apple have an obligation not to put arbitrary restrictions upon you?
It's like going to a stadium and trying to get a Coke, and finding only Pepsi products on sale because the stadium made a deal with Pepsi that food vendors will have to sell Pepsi products. Don't like it? Don't buy a Pepsi.
You're right, sellers don't have a right to impose whatever conditions they want on purchasers. But they are free to decide what they're selling, and what they're not selling, and if you're a competing software drink manufacturer, you're SOL (absent monopoly and antitrust considerations). The alternative is the commercial version of the equal time doctrine, where if you sell X, you also have to sell their competitor Y.
Antitrust law would require some kind of monopoly on Apple's part. With Android/Nexus, Blackberries, and Motorola phones, all of which play games and run various apps, you'd have a hard time arguing that Apple has a monopoly on mobile computing.