This is a docking, charing, and connection port which includes support for USB3 and DisplayPort (which is easily converted to HDMI). It is like the non-proprietary equivalent of Apple's dock connnector.
Like you I am sad that this thing doesn't just give us a USB port, but a PDMI port will be a very good thing once they catch on and become widely supported, and if a lot of these Android tablets have PDMI ports then they will catch on soon.
The worst thing that could happen would be for each Android manufacturer to create their own proprietary and incompatible docking port. And it must have been tempting because then they get to make extra money charging crazy amounts for accessories.
Native BB apps have already dried up AND they don't scale to tablet or even mini-tablet. Their app platform is based on Java ME which is quite old and limiting technology.
RIM has no choice but to hurt their developers and begin the transition to a new app platform. (And this is very mild, and expected, compared to what Nokia has just done to their developer community.)
I believe this is a good, and necessary, strategy. The mix of RIM's business platform and services plus Android will make a powerful combination. Let the other Android manufacturers distinguish themselves with their GUI skins, RIM will have better ways to distinguish themselves.
"Or do they plan to keep Qt but just use Windows as the underlying OS?"
No.
That would have been feasible if they had gone with Android, but not with WP7. If they had gone with Android they could have provided some platform and developer continuity, and they would have a phone/tablet strategy instead of just a phone strategy.
I really feel for the loyal Qt/Meego/Maemo/Symbian developers who stuck it out with Nokia. I really believe that Nokia could have executed major changes without abandoning everyone.
I understand that there are real practical reasons that Nokia went with MS - MS is desperate now and presumably gave great terms - but this really feels like a sell out of Nokia brand, employees, customers, and developers.
I agree with some of your points, but you wrote a few crazy things...
You dismiss the enormous success of Android phones to a few negative causes even though the many advantages of Android are widely discussed and reported. These include things like diversity of hardware, integration with Google services, ability to customize the software. My personal #1 is the openness, and I'm not talking about code here. My favorite app is Google Navigation, which I use every day, not just because it is free but because of the integration. I didn't skip the iPhone due to my carrier or my wallet.
The next silly thing you did was to insist that Android NEEDS a "curated app ecosystem" in order to compete. Let me remind you that Apple has totally abused its power over it app store. Not only to advance its strategic interests and block competition, but to stifle criticism and free speech. If you are a big friendly corporation like News Corp you will get pushed to the front, if you make fun of some politicians (the Pulitzer guy) or show too much skin (Esquire magazine) you get blocked.
The upside of the "curated app ecosystem" appears to be that the marketplace isn't cluttered with crap. I'm sure the crap is there in the Marketplace but I think you have be digging to find it - using the same criteria of stars and download numbers that helped me find good apps has also prevented me from encountering that crap. And, for the record, the Marketplace does have strict rules, but they are fairly simple, they are written out, and they are for the good of the users, not Google.
It's one thing that you are willing to accept the abuses of Apple's app store in order to have a clean Marketplace, but it's a bit much that you think that Google must adopt this to succeed.
Thanks you! It is good to see a comment that is more sophisticated then the "all UBB are bad" comments I'm seeing in much of the Canadian activism.
It is a serious problem that the current, very low, usage caps were put in place to prevent services such as Netflix from effectively competing with the incumbents TV services, but that doesn't mean we should get rid of UBB entirely.
We need either (a) real competition, which is not going to happen in Canadian telecom as the current alignment is too entrenched, or (b) government mandated caps that are much higher then the current ones.
With app stores having hundreds of thousands of apps, and with Google already having tons of loyal and enthusiastic developers, it seems unlikely that they would now decide to start hiring developers to write miscellaneous apps for their app store.
They know that the best way to get good apps into their store is to attract developers with a great platform, good sales figures, good dev tools, a good app store, etc. They are well aware of their weaknesses, including some aspects of their app store and platform fragmentation, and they are working on these issues.
These new app developers that they are hiring are probably going to work on some of the Google specific apps that needs (lots of) work. For example, their finance app still only supports U.S. exchanges (how do you think the rest of the world feels about that), and their Listen app has all sorts of problems and hasn't been updated in a long time. These Google apps have suffered as resources have been shifted to the core platform; now Google needs app developers to bring their own apps up to speed.
It is getting a bit sickening, isn't it: seeing this same story repeated over and over again with minor variations for every district.
And every time we see this story it seems to get more confused and inaccurate.
Someone I know got outraged upon reading a recent version of this story. Since they were seeing yet another story they assumed this meant that Google had been caught again - that Google was refusing to stop doing it. I was barely able to convince them that all of these stories were from the original incident and that Google had stopped the program entirely long ago.
My understanding is that there are tons of nuisance, class action lawsuits against Google over this (on top of the legit privacy suits). The purpose of those suits is to create as much bad publicity as possible for Google in order to induce them to settle out of court, and let the lawyers take the majority of the settlement. Apparently this is a common scenario. Promoting the same story many times, like theodp is doing, is an important part of what these guys do, so it is quite possible that theodp is simply doing his job.
There is no one definition of open. Rather, there are many different ways that something can be open. The more open something is the better.
For example - Least open would be something like Fairplay. - WMA/WMV is a little better cause it is licensable under published terms. - H.264 is better still cause it is also open-source. - Ogg codecs/WebM are better yet for being freely licensable and not patent encumbered.
I feel that Mozilla and Opera have made a very strong case that the incremental openness of the Ogg codecs/WebM are very important for the Web and are consistent with the openness of the rest of the web standards, but they aren't suggesting that it is as simple as "ogg open, h264 closed".
Actually, I believe that the Android app store would be acceptable even if you couldn't get apps from other sources.
The Android app store is governed by a set of written rules, like a constitution. These rules are pretty much as you would expect: they give Google some legal protections and they allow Google to block apps that would objectively harm consumers, e.g. apps that break the law or that have malware. Google has never engaged in the sort of arbitrary blocking and abuse of power that Apple has.
Sometimes people write about the Google Market as if were a wild west, without rules. In fact, it is like a constitutional democracy with written rules that limit the state's powers.
So, the problem is not app stores in general. It is the Apple style of App Store that is the problem.
The facts that he confirmed have already been reported in about a million news articles. This information was first reported by the French authorities last Spring. Google themselves confirmed it in the fall.
Come to think of it, I think we've probably had about 10 articles on/. about exactly the same thing. If we assume that/. will run this item for every single country that 'discovers' the problem then I guess we have about 90 more/. articles to go.
I'm not singling out 'e-publication' as uniquely vulnerable. I think that e-publication could be great.
The problem is Apple's current model. If a few prominent publishers were to stand up to Apple then the problem could be solved, but I haven't seen much evidence of this yet.
On the whole I am shocked that people don't seem to care about freedom of speech anymore. Witness that my post has not been modded up but your response has been.
Another reason that digital newsstands stink is censorship.
I am amazed that people are so accepting of the idea that this platform being touted as the future of publishing includes arbitrary censorship.
Apple has a well documented history of preventing their users from accessing apps that conflict with Apple's interests. This is not just about apps that add technical capabilities, like Google Voice, but also apps with editorial content. Apps that mention Android or make fun of politicians have been blocked. Cartoons by a Pulitzer prize winner author were blocked until he won the prize (great for him, not so great for those of us without a pulitzer). And now we have the same with magazine: Esquire had to remove racy content from a magazine to get past the censors, a magazine about Android was blocked, etc.
Am I missing something here? Is Apple planning to create a new system for magazine and books without the arbitrary censorship? If not, where did our concern for freedom of expression go?
To clarify, what Apple is doing is completely different then the standard, law based censorship (e.g. no child porno) that publishers are already subject to.
I'm less concerned about Google's digital newsstand - it will probably be like their app marketplace: subject only to a fairly simple, published, set of rules that restricts Google from the sort of abuse that Apple practices.
Apple's explanation was that the content "ridicules public figures". Yes, I know that this guy's app was allowed after he won his Pulitzer, but what about all of the apps that aren't backed by Pulitzers?
People's phones and tablets are becoming the medium through which they experience the world, so this sort of censorship does matter.
Steve Jobs explanation for why iOS is better reminds me of some of the reasons that the communists thought that their central planned economies were going to crush the inefficient and disorganized Western economies!
But seriously, there are many types of open. Even though the Android phones available from your local carrier have been locked down, making them far from ideal for the open-source purist or the tinkerer, they are still very 'open' in a way that I believe is critical for all consumers: the Android Market.
Though the Android Market needs a lot of work the fact that it is only minimally and consistently censored is very significant. The way that Apple is managing its App Store - killing apps that provide undesirable competition to Apple or its buddies, that criticize the wrong politicians, etc. - will harm the platform, not to mention its users. Not to mention the fact that it is simply insulting to its users.
iPhone users can jail-break their phones at this time, but that ability seems to come and go and is certainly not a feature of iOS, either philosophically or practically.
So 'open' has many different meanings, and while one type of openness is gone by the time Android reaches your phone, others are still there.
Apple rarely backpedals or admits they were wrong.
I think the FTC is to thank for this one. They are being investigated for anti-competitive actions in relation to the app store. Their problem is that anti-competitive behavior has been one of the app store's most important function.
For them, it is much better to backpedal on their own and hope to end the investigations rather then going through the humiliation that MS and Gates went through.
The website/organization behind this ad doesn't even mention those links.
You think MS gives you options like this? Facebook?
I'm a big supporter of legit consumer organizations, like the BBB, but this one is clearly bogus. By supporting and giving attention to an organization like this we undermine the legit ones.
While Google's myriad diverse products are either ignored for convenience or brushed off as incremental, the author doesn't seem to notice that there might be something incremental about the four Apple products he mentions. Maybe he should try putting them next to each other?
He accuses the other big companies of buying their innovations, and forgets that Apple bought the idea (and dev team) for the iPod, and bought the OS and took the browser that it need to scale the iPod up to become iPhone and iPad.
Perhaps the author just wrote this ridiculous article to stir up controversy and get attention? Perhaps what is happening here is that people who don't understand technology only value innovations that they can put in their hands (helps if they are shiny too).
I would say that it takes more innovation to create diverse products like Go, Earth, Goggles, and Wave, then it does to buy the idea for the iPod, and it is the iPod that leads directly to each of Apple's four innovations.
> Also, why is it that businesses cannot benefit from the (considerably superior) graphical, processing, and multitouch capabilities of the current crop of Android and iOS devices?
Cost.
When you look at all the high-end phones being sold you sometimes get the idea that cost doesn't matter anymore. And for many consumers that is true, but businesses are less likely to want to pay for expensive capabilities that aren't needed.
Doesn't it just use micro USB like all the other new phones?
I thought that the EU had forced all of the cell phone makers to adopt micro USB for charging and that they had complied by adopting the standard everywhere (not just in the EU).
I probably don't need to make this point here on/., but I think this is a great development. The convenience and cost saving to me as a consumer are substantial.
No, that's not a bad thing at all, but somehow that drives some companies to do reasonable or even good things, and it drives others in the opposite direction.
Consider, for example, the last time a salesperson or telemarketer tricked your naive parents or grandparents with some scam (if it hasn't happened to you yet then just wait). Well, don't judge them poorly, right - they are just in it for the money!
Sometimes they are great for consumers - competing fair and square with great prices and a great website.
Their video service is available to anyone with Flash, and while many people hate Flash (and some now don't have access to it) that seemed like a good way to allow customers to view the video they purchased across a very broad range of OS's, browsers and devices.
Then they go and do something like this, which seems to lead us to a world where different retailers control different books and have no competition in the sales of those books. This is very bad for consumers.
This avoid competition and seems to guarantee their customers higher prices. This is the sort of thing I would expect from Apple, not Amazon. I thought Amazon was prepared to compete fairly in book sales?
Have we reached the point that even on a technical site like this, the editors just accept what the Chinese government (or any gov't) says, without making the slightest effort to check it? Is that the level of discourse now?
There has generally been a lot of confusion on this issue and this is really sad. A lot of people just read headlines and a headline such as this item has would give them totally incorrect information.
It is important that Google is judged on what they really did, and not on what the Chinese gov't says they did. Otherwise, it would make more sense for them to totally sell out and spend the money controlling the message.
I'm not sure whether to be frustrated, angry, or sad.
> There is lots of outcry here about the DRM and walled garden
Please don't use those terms together like that.
Yes, Apple has used its proprietary, non-licensable, DRM to help enforce its walled garden, but DRM does not have to be used like that.
For me, DRM would be acceptable, if it were not used as a tool to lock me in to a particular vendors products or otherwise restrict my legit use of the product. I'm a proponent of open technology, but I understand and accept the content owners desire to put some restrictions on the duplication of their content.
So, you are free to hate both DRM and the wall, but please don't lump them in together like that.
High profile cases like this and the guy who won the pulitzer get reversed - what about the low profile cases?
Good thing that the author put in a plug for Apple though. I mean, when the company can make or break your business on a blind whim, you better be careful what you say.
Slashdot Mirror
It has a PDMI connector.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDMI
This is a docking, charing, and connection port which includes support for USB3 and DisplayPort (which is easily converted to HDMI). It is like the non-proprietary equivalent of Apple's dock connnector.
Like you I am sad that this thing doesn't just give us a USB port, but a PDMI port will be a very good thing once they catch on and become widely supported, and if a lot of these Android tablets have PDMI ports then they will catch on soon.
The worst thing that could happen would be for each Android manufacturer to create their own proprietary and incompatible docking port. And it must have been tempting because then they get to make extra money charging crazy amounts for accessories.
Native BB apps have already dried up AND they don't scale to tablet or even mini-tablet. Their app platform is based on Java ME which is quite old and limiting technology.
RIM has no choice but to hurt their developers and begin the transition to a new app platform. (And this is very mild, and expected, compared to what Nokia has just done to their developer community.)
I believe this is a good, and necessary, strategy. The mix of RIM's business platform and services plus Android will make a powerful combination. Let the other Android manufacturers distinguish themselves with their GUI skins, RIM will have better ways to distinguish themselves.
"Or do they plan to keep Qt but just use Windows as the underlying OS?"
No.
That would have been feasible if they had gone with Android, but not with WP7. If they had gone with Android they could have provided some platform and developer continuity, and they would have a phone/tablet strategy instead of just a phone strategy.
I really feel for the loyal Qt/Meego/Maemo/Symbian developers who stuck it out with Nokia. I really believe that Nokia could have executed major changes without abandoning everyone.
I understand that there are real practical reasons that Nokia went with MS - MS is desperate now and presumably gave great terms - but this really feels like a sell out of Nokia brand, employees, customers, and developers.
I agree with some of your points, but you wrote a few crazy things...
You dismiss the enormous success of Android phones to a few negative causes even though the many advantages of Android are widely discussed and reported. These include things like diversity of hardware, integration with Google services, ability to customize the software. My personal #1 is the openness, and I'm not talking about code here. My favorite app is Google Navigation, which I use every day, not just because it is free but because of the integration. I didn't skip the iPhone due to my carrier or my wallet.
The next silly thing you did was to insist that Android NEEDS a "curated app ecosystem" in order to compete. Let me remind you that Apple has totally abused its power over it app store. Not only to advance its strategic interests and block competition, but to stifle criticism and free speech. If you are a big friendly corporation like News Corp you will get pushed to the front, if you make fun of some politicians (the Pulitzer guy) or show too much skin (Esquire magazine) you get blocked.
The upside of the "curated app ecosystem" appears to be that the marketplace isn't cluttered with crap. I'm sure the crap is there in the Marketplace but I think you have be digging to find it - using the same criteria of stars and download numbers that helped me find good apps has also prevented me from encountering that crap. And, for the record, the Marketplace does have strict rules, but they are fairly simple, they are written out, and they are for the good of the users, not Google.
It's one thing that you are willing to accept the abuses of Apple's app store in order to have a clean Marketplace, but it's a bit much that you think that Google must adopt this to succeed.
Thanks you! It is good to see a comment that is more sophisticated then the "all UBB are bad" comments I'm seeing in much of the Canadian activism.
It is a serious problem that the current, very low, usage caps were put in place to prevent services such as Netflix from effectively competing with the incumbents TV services, but that doesn't mean we should get rid of UBB entirely.
We need either (a) real competition, which is not going to happen in Canadian telecom as the current alignment is too entrenched, or (b) government mandated caps that are much higher then the current ones.
With app stores having hundreds of thousands of apps, and with Google already having tons of loyal and enthusiastic developers, it seems unlikely that they would now decide to start hiring developers to write miscellaneous apps for their app store.
They know that the best way to get good apps into their store is to attract developers with a great platform, good sales figures, good dev tools, a good app store, etc. They are well aware of their weaknesses, including some aspects of their app store and platform fragmentation, and they are working on these issues.
These new app developers that they are hiring are probably going to work on some of the Google specific apps that needs (lots of) work. For example, their finance app still only supports U.S. exchanges (how do you think the rest of the world feels about that), and their Listen app has all sorts of problems and hasn't been updated in a long time. These Google apps have suffered as resources have been shifted to the core platform; now Google needs app developers to bring their own apps up to speed.
It is getting a bit sickening, isn't it: seeing this same story repeated over and over again with minor variations for every district.
And every time we see this story it seems to get more confused and inaccurate.
Someone I know got outraged upon reading a recent version of this story. Since they were seeing yet another story they assumed this meant that Google had been caught again - that Google was refusing to stop doing it. I was barely able to convince them that all of these stories were from the original incident and that Google had stopped the program entirely long ago.
My understanding is that there are tons of nuisance, class action lawsuits against Google over this (on top of the legit privacy suits). The purpose of those suits is to create as much bad publicity as possible for Google in order to induce them to settle out of court, and let the lawyers take the majority of the settlement. Apparently this is a common scenario. Promoting the same story many times, like theodp is doing, is an important part of what these guys do, so it is quite possible that theodp is simply doing his job.
There is no one definition of open. Rather, there are many different ways that something can be open. The more open something is the better.
For example
- Least open would be something like Fairplay.
- WMA/WMV is a little better cause it is licensable under published terms.
- H.264 is better still cause it is also open-source.
- Ogg codecs/WebM are better yet for being freely licensable and not patent encumbered.
I feel that Mozilla and Opera have made a very strong case that the incremental openness of the Ogg codecs/WebM are very important for the Web and are consistent with the openness of the rest of the web standards, but they aren't suggesting that it is as simple as "ogg open, h264 closed".
This /. article is based on an Android site that I've never heard of is quoting an unnamed person at T-Mobile (the janitor perhaps).
If we are going to stoop to discussing rumours of this calibre it's going to be a long night.
Actually, I believe that the Android app store would be acceptable even if you couldn't get apps from other sources.
The Android app store is governed by a set of written rules, like a constitution. These rules are pretty much as you would expect: they give Google some legal protections and they allow Google to block apps that would objectively harm consumers, e.g. apps that break the law or that have malware. Google has never engaged in the sort of arbitrary blocking and abuse of power that Apple has.
Sometimes people write about the Google Market as if were a wild west, without rules. In fact, it is like a constitutional democracy with written rules that limit the state's powers.
So, the problem is not app stores in general. It is the Apple style of App Store that is the problem.
The facts that he confirmed have already been reported in about a million news articles. This information was first reported by the French authorities last Spring. Google themselves confirmed it in the fall.
Come to think of it, I think we've probably had about 10 articles on /. about exactly the same thing. If we assume that /. will run this item for every single country that 'discovers' the problem then I guess we have about 90 more /. articles to go.
I'm not singling out 'e-publication' as uniquely vulnerable. I think that e-publication could be great.
The problem is Apple's current model. If a few prominent publishers were to stand up to Apple then the problem could be solved, but I haven't seen much evidence of this yet.
I have seen some mentions of the issue, e.g. this article in Canada's national newspaper, but it amazes me how little of this I have seen:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/technology/personal-tech/ivor-tossell/apple-esquire-dust-up-bodes-ill-for-the-publishing-utopia-we-pictured/article1809205/
On the whole I am shocked that people don't seem to care about freedom of speech anymore. Witness that my post has not been modded up but your response has been.
Another reason that digital newsstands stink is censorship.
I am amazed that people are so accepting of the idea that this platform being touted as the future of publishing includes arbitrary censorship.
Apple has a well documented history of preventing their users from accessing apps that conflict with Apple's interests. This is not just about apps that add technical capabilities, like Google Voice, but also apps with editorial content. Apps that mention Android or make fun of politicians have been blocked. Cartoons by a Pulitzer prize winner author were blocked until he won the prize (great for him, not so great for those of us without a pulitzer). And now we have the same with magazine: Esquire had to remove racy content from a magazine to get past the censors, a magazine about Android was blocked, etc.
Am I missing something here? Is Apple planning to create a new system for magazine and books without the arbitrary censorship? If not, where did our concern for freedom of expression go?
To clarify, what Apple is doing is completely different then the standard, law based censorship (e.g. no child porno) that publishers are already subject to.
I'm less concerned about Google's digital newsstand - it will probably be like their app marketplace: subject only to a fairly simple, published, set of rules that restricts Google from the sort of abuse that Apple practices.
Here's one example:
http://www.boingboing.net/2010/04/15/apple-blocks-pulitze.html
Apple's explanation was that the content "ridicules public figures". Yes, I know that this guy's app was allowed after he won his Pulitzer, but what about all of the apps that aren't backed by Pulitzers?
People's phones and tablets are becoming the medium through which they experience the world, so this sort of censorship does matter.
Steve Jobs explanation for why iOS is better reminds me of some of the reasons that the communists thought that their central planned economies were going to crush the inefficient and disorganized Western economies!
But seriously, there are many types of open. Even though the Android phones available from your local carrier have been locked down, making them far from ideal for the open-source purist or the tinkerer, they are still very 'open' in a way that I believe is critical for all consumers: the Android Market.
Though the Android Market needs a lot of work the fact that it is only minimally and consistently censored is very significant. The way that Apple is managing its App Store - killing apps that provide undesirable competition to Apple or its buddies, that criticize the wrong politicians, etc. - will harm the platform, not to mention its users. Not to mention the fact that it is simply insulting to its users.
iPhone users can jail-break their phones at this time, but that ability seems to come and go and is certainly not a feature of iOS, either philosophically or practically.
So 'open' has many different meanings, and while one type of openness is gone by the time Android reaches your phone, others are still there.
Apple rarely backpedals or admits they were wrong.
I think the FTC is to thank for this one. They are being investigated for anti-competitive actions in relation to the app store. Their problem is that anti-competitive behavior has been one of the app store's most important function.
For them, it is much better to backpedal on their own and hope to end the investigations rather then going through the humiliation that MS and Gates went through.
You want to opt-out of being tracked by Google? Simple:
http://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout
You change your mind about using Google and want to export all your data? Simple:
http://www.dataliberation.org/
The website/organization behind this ad doesn't even mention those links.
You think MS gives you options like this? Facebook?
I'm a big supporter of legit consumer organizations, like the BBB, but this one is clearly bogus. By supporting and giving attention to an organization like this we undermine the legit ones.
While Google's myriad diverse products are either ignored for convenience or brushed off as incremental, the author doesn't seem to notice that there might be something incremental about the four Apple products he mentions. Maybe he should try putting them next to each other?
He accuses the other big companies of buying their innovations, and forgets that Apple bought the idea (and dev team) for the iPod, and bought the OS and took the browser that it need to scale the iPod up to become iPhone and iPad.
Perhaps the author just wrote this ridiculous article to stir up controversy and get attention? Perhaps what is happening here is that people who don't understand technology only value innovations that they can put in their hands (helps if they are shiny too).
I would say that it takes more innovation to create diverse products like Go, Earth, Goggles, and Wave, then it does to buy the idea for the iPod, and it is the iPod that leads directly to each of Apple's four innovations.
> Also, why is it that businesses cannot benefit from the (considerably superior) graphical, processing, and multitouch capabilities of the current crop of Android and iOS devices?
Cost.
When you look at all the high-end phones being sold you sometimes get the idea that cost doesn't matter anymore. And for many consumers that is true, but businesses are less likely to want to pay for expensive capabilities that aren't needed.
Doesn't it just use micro USB like all the other new phones?
I thought that the EU had forced all of the cell phone makers to adopt micro USB for charging and that they had complied by adopting the standard everywhere (not just in the EU).
I probably don't need to make this point here on /., but I think this is a great development. The convenience and cost saving to me as a consumer are substantial.
Has Apple managed to avoid this?
No, that's not a bad thing at all, but somehow that drives some companies to do reasonable or even good things, and it drives others in the opposite direction.
Consider, for example, the last time a salesperson or telemarketer tricked your naive parents or grandparents with some scam (if it hasn't happened to you yet then just wait). Well, don't judge them poorly, right - they are just in it for the money!
I really don't know what to think of Amazon.
Sometimes they are great for consumers - competing fair and square with great prices and a great website.
Their video service is available to anyone with Flash, and while many people hate Flash (and some now don't have access to it) that seemed like a good way to allow customers to view the video they purchased across a very broad range of OS's, browsers and devices.
Then they go and do something like this, which seems to lead us to a world where different retailers control different books and have no competition in the sales of those books. This is very bad for consumers.
This avoid competition and seems to guarantee their customers higher prices. This is the sort of thing I would expect from Apple, not Amazon. I thought Amazon was prepared to compete fairly in book sales?
Yes, thanks for that clarification.
Have we reached the point that even on a technical site like this, the editors just accept what the Chinese government (or any gov't) says, without making the slightest effort to check it? Is that the level of discourse now?
There has generally been a lot of confusion on this issue and this is really sad. A lot of people just read headlines and a headline such as this item has would give them totally incorrect information.
It is important that Google is judged on what they really did, and not on what the Chinese gov't says they did. Otherwise, it would make more sense for them to totally sell out and spend the money controlling the message.
I'm not sure whether to be frustrated, angry, or sad.
> There is lots of outcry here about the DRM and walled garden
Please don't use those terms together like that.
Yes, Apple has used its proprietary, non-licensable, DRM to help enforce its walled garden, but DRM does not have to be used like that.
For me, DRM would be acceptable, if it were not used as a tool to lock me in to a particular vendors products or otherwise restrict my legit use of the product. I'm a proponent of open technology, but I understand and accept the content owners desire to put some restrictions on the duplication of their content.
So, you are free to hate both DRM and the wall, but please don't lump them in together like that.
Exactly.
High profile cases like this and the guy who won the pulitzer get reversed - what about the low profile cases?
Good thing that the author put in a plug for Apple though. I mean, when the company can make or break your business on a blind whim, you better be careful what you say.