Sure, because consoles being locked down doesn't have much of a negative impact. Yes, I should be able to run arbitrary code on my Xbox. But even if I could, that wouldn't give me any capabilities beyond what I can already do with a Mac mini hooked up to a TV.
And what, exactly, capabilities are impacting you on the iPhone that can't be solved by an Android phone replacing your iPhone, at less cost than a Mac mini most likely?
On the other hand, mobile computing introduces a whole new set of capabilities, so it's a much bigger deal when devices are deliberately crippled.
Except "mobile computing" isn't being crippled. Specific mobile computing products are. 99% of users don't care. Geeks can buy something else, just as they can buy a Mac mini.
Me thinks the real reason is cross platform tools decreases Apple's ability to derive revenue. If you can get Apps that run on iPhone and Android then inter-platform price competition becomes an issue.
Except Apple is spending a lot of money developing HTML5 compatible Webkit and dev tools for cross platform apps based on HTML5. Why are they doing that if this is all about breaking cross platform apps?
If developers are stuck developing for one platform then the number of apps Apple derives income from goes up.
By "derives income from" what do you mean? Apple makes very little on app sales, running the whole show at only a slight profit as a way to sell more hardware.
Developers are locked in because the cost of development for multiple platforms is high while margins are low.
But Apple is only a chunk of the market, what 21% of smartphone sales. If Apple is breaking the ability of apps to be cross platform, they sure aren't leveraging market share to hurt others. Such a move is most likely to hurt Apple sales more than others, unless it brings significant other benefits, such as making those apps better.
Frankly I think this is about exactly what Apple claims it is. They want to be the only ones that can hold up their platform with regard to new features, security, stability, and performance. They want no third party toolkits that target everything holding back apps for the iPhone to the same level of functionality as competing platforms. I mean look at cross platform apps on OS X. Apple builds an OS chock full of features not available on other OS's and developers ignore those features because they're writing cross-platform apps using dev tools that don't take advantage of the tech. OS X built in a grammar checker for all apps, but even apps as popular as Firefox completely fail to provide that functionality to end users... functionality that is provided by default to all apps created with Apple s development tools. How can you expect Apple to gain a competitive advantage if the cool stuff them make never reaches end users? So with the iPhone Apple is making sure that doesn't happen by requiring developers to use one of the approved development kits. When Apple adds cool new stuff, a recompile will make a new, better app in many cases and Apple's work actually makes things better so Apple can profit from that work.
Neither is Coca Cola a monopoly, and yet they have been restricted from anti-competative actions for decades.
Some competition laws effect companies with lower market share... mostly in Europe. You might note, however, the recent competition law actions against Coca-cola were in the EU where they do dominate the market with over 80% share in some EU countries.
That's like if you walked into a bar and said "man, my three friends tag-teamed my mom last night". Sure, assuming it was consensual, it was legal. That doesn't mean they are not shitty friends, and that doesn't mean that you shouldn't bitch to the bar.
Why do you hate your mom and not want her to have fun? Why do you complain about your mom's sex life at the bar?
People are claiming it's evil and should be illegal.
Only the 95% of people who have no understanding of antitrust law, competition, and economics.
My problem is with them restricting 3rd party installations.
Hey, to a lot of people, people sick of dealing with constant security headaches from non-vetted apps this is a feature. It may not be for you or me, but we can always jailbreak or install Android on our iPhone or just buy a different phone in the first place. Just because you don't want them to do it does not give you any more right to dictate what Apple does with iPhone OS than you have the right to determine what they carry in their store.
This is tantamount to you being told that you can only purchase MP3s from iTunes despite the fact that your device is perfectly capable of handling music from a variety of sources.
I's say it is similar to that in some ways, but quite different in other ways, both legally and technologically.
Jobs is simply afraid that if he gives consumers a choice it will undermine the lock-in that he is trying so desperately to complete.
This is simply speculation. There are many, many potential motives and I don't see the support for this one either in the financials or in the way Apple is handling the technology going into the iPhone.
The main problem here, is Apple is offering a locked in service that provides real benefit to end users. Some vendors are copying them and some are ignoring them. No one is taking the time and investing the money to make a service that provides those benefits without the lock-in.
Just imagine the outcry if Microsoft banned all other development environments than Visual Studio and.NET from Windows. It would be hit with lawsuits and there would be tons of stories and tens of thousands of comments dissing MS on slashdot.
Absolutely true... but why? Why is it a problem for people on Slashdot if MS were to ban other dev environments for Windows? We can all just buy and code for alternative platforms right? Wrong. Microsoft has monopoly influence in the desktop OS market so like it or not computer OEMs pretty much have to ship for Windows, developers have to make Windows versions of popular apps, and peripheral makers have to make Windows versions. As a result, any action to restrict dev tools on Windows would be illegal and it would artificially retard the progress of innovation and lowered prices for development tools. But what if MS only had 20% of the desktop OS market? Well, then such an action would be legal and the competitive free market would simply move further away from Windows as a desktop OS and innovation would continue at a normal pace as driven by a competitive environment.
You see, I think you have your cart an horse backwards. You seem to think people on Slashdot hate MS, so anything they do is bad. And we like Apple? So what they do is good? In truth, people on Slashdot love computers and love innovation and progress and the next cool thing. We don't hate MS, so much as we hate that MS's illegal actions are slowing progress and making computers less cool and innovative and awesomely cutting edge.
So here;s the thing with Apple. A lot of people don't like what Apple is doing because it isn't what they want to buy. But we don't dislike Apple for blocking innovation and stopping us from getting cool toys because, for the most part, Apple is driving a lot of that innovation with the iPhone, making cool things and getting Google and RIM and even MS to dump piles of cash at making smartphones better in order to compete with Apple. And that is exactly what computer geeks like to see, rapid innovation driven by competition.
People also always cry about how consoles are locked down.
Really? I bet someone can write a script to show just how many times people here have complained about consoles being locked down compared to the iPhone being locked down. I bet the people complaining about the iPhone are orders of magnitude larger.
But suddenly when it's Apple it's all ok. Why the hell?
When Apple locks down the iPhone a lot of us shrug and are a little disappointed because it makes the device less suited to us. I'm probably never going to buy one. But we have a lot of other options and those options are rapidly getting better because we have a competitive and fairly free market for smartphones. I have a lot more complaints about Sprint and AT&T with regard to slowing progress in the smartphone market than complaints about Apple, who seems to have been a driving force in this revolution.
The short answer to your question is, we're not mindless fanbois for a particular vendor. We like or dislike what companies do because of those actions, not because of a logo. I'm sorry if this means you have to actually think about and understand the issues before you can make useful commentary, but oversimplification is not helpful.
I think the question is not that certain words are evil, but that profanity can be valuable. This value is lost from overuse.
I agree, but I don't think this is a bad thing. Rather, I think it then requires people to become more creative to get the same value, resulting in a plethora of new expletives and expletive phrases. The art of cursing is dying because everyone falls back on taboo words like "fuck". Even if everyone overuses the word "motherfucker", they'll still pay attention and get the point when you say, "Listen here you puss dripping infected goat bladder!" and really isn't the latter a lot more fun and unique?
I live in rural Texas. What you have here is a buncha people who are independent and are tired of government encroaching on civil liberty and forcing "help" on us.
This is more of a speaking point than a real assessment. Are these people who are tired of the government helping are willing to have the government stop medicare, medicaid, and military spending? For the most part the "conservative" movement just differs as to where they want the government aid spent. They certainly elect officials regularly that vote for increases in the size and scope of the federal government and in government spending.
To paint the generalization of all Texans as nutjobs is a slap in the face to these hard working people who for the most part just want to be left the hell alone.
I don't think Texans are nutjobs for the most part. I do think they are ignorant, perhaps even more so than most of the nation. It certainly has below average test scores. Maybe many Texans do believe in personal responsibility, but they sure don't elect government representatives based upon those criteria. Continuing the fight in Afghanistan was the single largest political issue among Texans polled on what issue they will vote on, and our government as a whole interfering in foreign countries is directly opposed to the philosophy of personal responsibility. So basically, I think you're wrong that "personal responsibility" is truly the virtue they consider most important. Rather, I think that is a convenient excuse for politicians to cite when looking for excuses to fight against the public good in particular issues.
Nice of you to leave out the Declaration of Independence. Or just who is this "their Creator" person?
Umm, that wasn't a document establishing our government. It was a statement of rebellion against England. We even had a government established after the war and before our current government.
As for who the creator is, you'll notice he makes other reference to "the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them" with "nature's god" being a phrase heavily associated at the time with the deist movement that believed in a god, but not necessarily the same one the christians did. That's not to say he did not have some christian leanings as he did write his own version of the christian bible where he emphasizes the philosophy of Jesus but removes all mention of the supernatural and all references to Jesus being divine.
Entertaining this claim as being true, we see that TWO highly liberal states (California and New York) are also warping what goes into text books.
Except you're missing an important point. Neither New York nor California passed laws telling history book writers what version of history they were allowed to include nor what religious or political slants were required by the state. Texas did, forcing California to react in order to put an equal and opposite pressure on textbook publishers, to prevent Texas's slant from being pushed into their state by the new Texan law and their large influence on the market. Now other states have to decide if they're going to follow suit one way or another in order to try to have an unbiased or specifically biased version of history taught. It sets the stage for textbooks not written primarily by the best info of historians, but instead by political bodies as political game pieces. It will almost certainly result in less accurate textbooks in many places along with higher prices for those books.
Now, you were saying about Texas being a problem? Its only a problem if you want to maintain the bias.
Textbook publishers were not required by law to have a bias prior to the Texan law. You can claim they did, but you need to support that hypothesis with real evidence. We know textbooks are being forced to have a slant now, because a law was passed requiring specific things determined by politicians, not historians.
Its not a problem if you want things to be more centrist.
Are you so blindly partisan? I don't want centrist textbooks. I want accurate textbooks based upon the best info historians have and the best supported interpretations of that info.
We as a nation benefit if Texas gets changes made, and are harmed if California blocks those changes.
We as a nation have less well informed children if Texas gets it's changes made and less well informed children everywhere if other states pick up this trend. We also have less economy of scale and so more expensive textbooks for kids. That helps no one.
They take all our tax money and return nothing. They dumb down the rest of the nation, and they are also probably largely responsible for most of the failed mortgages.
Wow... just fucking WOW... there is absolutely nothing correct about any part of that entire statement. Get a clue.
Actually, there is something correct about that assertion, because the conservative "red" states use more social services, all while having have higher rates of rape, murder, etc.
It's too bad this is modded as flamebait since it is, more or less, both relevant and in need of discussion. With regard to the "take all our tax money and return nothing" statement, however, Texas is actually a donor state according to the most recent numbers I've seen. It pays less in federal taxes for what it receives than most, but still only gets about $0.94 for every dollar they put into the federal budget. So Texans contribute less than most, but it's just incorrect to say they contribute nothing.
There is still some question as to the legality of jailbreaking.
While true, Apple has done nothing to go after people who do it or even people who build the tools to make it easy for others. Further, jailbreaking is only an issue for people who insist on using both an iPhone and Apple's default OS on it. You don't have to do either of those things. All this hyperbole about Apple holding a gun to your head makes no sense to me. Apple doesn't control what apps I run because I don't own an iPhone. Strangely they haven't come to my house and forced me to buy one at gunpoint yet.
It's an attempt for the networks to get a foothold on the Web as a cartel, instead of through their separate Web presences.
You don't have any workable facts to back that up.
Umm "workable facts"? Are you a script? Are you a human? Your words aren't even meaningful, like you're just stringing them together pseudo randomly.
Why did you omit my quote...
Umm, dude, I quoted your whole post in my last post, so I don't know what the hell you're talking about. How about rather than referencing some random quote you claim to have made, you actually copy it immediately if you're going to make reference to it. I have no idea what you're babbling about.
At least in a universe where acquisitions never happen and present owners always define the creator's intent.
The present owners define the intent of the owners... you know the networks that own and run Hulu and have the power to make the decisions. It doesn't matter if Hulu was founded by Martin Luther King Jr. as a non-profit to feed orphan amputees... so long as the networks bought shares in it jointly put their content up and are acting in concert with one another... that's a cartel.
Spurious, indeed.
I referred to your flawed comparison as spurious, which it is, but you don't seem to mention it again in this post at all. For that matter you don't address any of the points I made or answer any of the questions I directly put to you. Your attempt to present a coherent argument is a complete fail.
Your use of the word is rather strict. The original intent was always for Hulu to be a joint venture. The current partners didn't 'collude to create' Hulu any more than Warner Brothers did to create Netflix.
Umm, when competitors work together instead of competing against one another, that's called collusion (in economic terms). Warner brothers and Netflix are not competitors so, yes the networks "colluded" a lot more than your spurious example. Are you simply not understanding what competitors are?
Their CEO isn't from any of the TV networks, but from Amazon.
He's the guy the networks hired to run the company. Just because he used to work for Amazon does not mean Amazon has anything to do with it. It's owned by the networks, jointly. Would you expect a cartel to appoint a CEO who has a vested interest in helping one cartel member over another?
They are, first and foremost, a 'web 2.0' company. Their ownership is clearly secondary to their idea, rather than being central to it.
How is who owns a company "secondary" to it being a Web company? Those are completely separate attributes. Is being a Web company "secondary" to being an English speaking company? It's an attempt for the networks to get a foothold on the Web as a cartel, instead of through their separate Web presences.
Because it messes with Apple's copy control mechanisms they have contracts with the RIAA to protect in order to get music sales content?
Apple could do the same thing to Hulu if they wanted--you never know, that's the thing.
There's a big difference between "probably" and "possibly". Apple could possibly reject Hulu's app for some reason. There's no reason to think that is probable though (as "jaryd" claimed), unless you have some evidence to the contrary. It's the same as selling through any other store... maybe they'll want to carry your product, maybe not. Since Apple has approved a slew of other, commercial apps that provide video subscriptions though, it does not seem probable.
You're comparing Netflix/Blockbuster collusion when the apt comparison would be Netflix/Warner Brothers. Why?
Because that isn't an apt comparison. Fox, ABC, and NBC were colluding together and creating a joint venture called Hulu. Fox, NBC, and ABC are all competitors in the TV programming market. Similarly, Netflix and Blockbuster are competitors in the mail order movie rental business.
Did you fail to notice the bruhaha over release dates and the new Netflix-branded versions of the DVD's?
No, but I don't see how it is relevant. Netflix is a competitor in the TV programming business since they own Starz, but that's not really relevant to that particular deal. It's not collusion to come to an agreement with a provider in a different market.
Broadcast TV is essentially dead, outside of local news and programming.
Largely true, but this does not lessen the power of four companies that control anywhere from 35-70% of TV viewership collectively. The big networks on Cable are also the big networks for Web viewing.
The description you're offering could be applied to any online business venture. Netflix is 'conspiring' to be the 'only' online movie rental outfit, too.
You don't seem to understand the meaning of the word "conspiring" which you misuse, or the word "collusion" which I use. You don't conspire or collude with yourself. It's prefectly legal for Netflix to compete with Blockbuster in the market and attempt to gain control of the market. It's illegal for Netflix to collude with Blockbuster to jointly control the market for mail order DVD rentals and profit more than they would in a competitive market. The same goes for the RIAA which is a cartel convicted of jointly negotiating prices (also known as price fixing). The same laws apply to joint ventures of TV show producers like the big four collectively bargaining with advertisers for the Web.
Thanks for the reply. It is as I assumed, then. You're making a huge generalization
There is an attempt, somewhat stalled, to use Hulu to control Web TV to a large extend by consolidating the efforts of the major networks and allowing them to (probably illegally) collude on mainstream TV's display on the Web. That's not really a generalization as a rather ubiquitous analysis of the market by many many different news and industry groups.
ave left out at least one major television network, if not several, in your 'single' descriptor.
Hulu failed to get buy in from CBS because CBS had already launched a competitor and was getting better advertising revenue than they wanted to offer. The others hoped the success of Hulu would pressure CBS to get on board, but it has failed so far and with ABC bailing out the venture might be a lost cause (Note that Steve Jobs sits on the board and is the biggest shareholder of Disney which owns ABC). That covers all of the "big four" of broadcast TV. There are smaller players, of course, many of which Hulu had signed on but which are not really very important in terms of the industry, which is remarkably consolidated right now.
RealPlayer, Windows Media Player and Flash are the only players that have the suite of features that are required to stream live and on-demand video properly.
Have you heard of YouTube? I think providing HTML5 and Flash content side by side, depending on the device entered the mainstream when they implemented that option.
The "Flash is dead!" people have no idea what they're talking about.
Clearly Flash is not dead, but it is stillborn for a large set of mobile users. As such any professional offering video on the Web has to be looking at it as one of the very few options they have going forward.
What 'single locked down channel' are we discussing here? There is presently more than Hulu alive on the web now, is there not?
Hulu is a joint venture of Fox, NBC, and ABC (now pulling out). The idea was they could maintain a singe front for providing mainstream TV, even as users moved way from cable and towards the internet for entertainment video. They were scared by YouTube and the like and wanted to make sure they could be the gatekeepers controlling the content as a cartel (like the RIAA has done with radio). That way they could extract more money in subscription fees going forward and at the same time reduce the threat of independent TV programming from being a more democratized source of content. Fox (for example) doesn't want to have to sell programs to users. They want to be able to sell subscriptions to all their content at once and so get paid just as much by people who think 90% of their content is crap.
Please do clarify, dear submitter.
Does that clarify my somewhat vague submission? I sort of assumed Slashdotters knew the history behind Hulu and the network's strategy with it.
It's probably more along the lines that Hulu isn't interested in rushing out an HTML5 app that will cost X to develop while their current client works perfectly well for the majority of their customers.
This is probably true. It will be more cost effective in the short term, but you're missing the big motivation. Hulu does not want to provide open video. They want to provide subscription services, which they're moving to on the Web right now for a portion of content. They can make more money by only providing content to Apple devices that pay a subscription fee via an app, especially since those users won't be able to just use a Web browser for some content. Remember, Hulu is run by the networks.
Rather than retooling their website it is more logical to do what they are actually doing and code a standalone app that will probably get rejected from the app store.
Why would it get rejected from the app store? It will be trivial to provide the same content in different containers in a simple Web app using almost completely code provided in Apple's toolkits. Netflix has done it and they use Silverlight on the Web. Your assertion that it will probably be rejected is just your bias showing.
I hope that this Chrome OS features a toggle for Desktop Effects. It seems silly to have a low-power, battery dependent device dedicating resources to window management ballet.
I'm not as convinced as you are that it would result in significant battery savings. I don't even know if those effects are run on the CPU or GPU for given hardware or how much power they consume. Often I see people wanting developers to "strip down" OS features for power or CPU or RAM savings in cases where such modifications are not even noticeable in terms of performance benefits.
What I hope is that Google and Acer work together to do real testing to find the best battery life and overall usability for end users of the device.
I see where you're going with this and it makes sense. For this particular case are you proposing something where apps that have not been vetted, may be malware, or which could kill your battery quickly only appear to user who toggle their system to an advanced mode?
So the Just Works crowd can Just Work, while you might get some support tickets for "I went to Advanced but screwed it up". But at least they knew it was their fault for taking the training wheels off. It's not "the computer is stupid".
While I see how companies might like this as a way of not having as much of a blemished image from mishaps, I think this fundamentally the wrong approach for security. Already we have security focused on shifting the blame for problems to the "stupid user" instead of preventing the problem in the first place. In some instances software now makes problems worse and more prevalent in a quest to shift blame away from themselves. Real security does not care about blame, just results.
Another problem with this approach is that the source of problems may not be evident. How many users install random software knowing there is risk, but don't associate that random software they installed with why their computer is increasingly slow or why an update makes their system unbootable? Those are the kinds of problems where having an advanced mode still results in users blaming the vendor and tarnishing the vendor's brand, despite it being the result of actions taken in "advanced mode". Yet another problem is software vendors who are lazy and will only do what is necessary to get the software to the user in the easiest way possible. I see a glut of "please switch to advanced mode to install this software" leaving users in the unenviable position of having to choose between not having access to software they need and want versus giving up on security. Many of those users today have that choice and do blame OS and device vendors for not shepherding a better ecosystem. In fact the iPhone App store is partially a response to that.
Don't get me wrong. I'm all in favor of making sure the end user has control of their device and can override the OS and knowingly install malware. I just think it needs a lot of work and other components so they know that is what they're probably doing and it is made clear to them that such an action may result in problems with the whole OS and experience. And most importantly for OS vendors and end users, normal users never, ever are confronted with such a choice.
You can make the choices for the end users just fine, without taking away their ability to make different choices. Ubuntu is a good example of this: you can get the streamlined desktop experience that Canonical provides by just going with the defaults, or you can adapt the environment to your liking, starting with things like changing desktop backgrounds and installing packages from the main repositories, and continuing all the way to running a custom kernel and third-party software completely independent from the repositories.
This is the difference between a closed source OS and a partially open source OS where you don't have everything you need to rebuild it in a custom fashion. I think the former is a better model going forward, but I don't see why you think it would be in Apple's best interest today.
And I think Ubuntu is a good example. Ubuntu does not today, but is working on building an app store for commercial apps into the package manager. Canonical will be deciding what does and does not go into it, just as Apple decides with regard to the iPhone store. You will be able to bypass the store, but then you can do that with iPhones via jailbreaking. It will void your support from Apple. I don't know if installing apps outside the Ubuntu store will do the same for desktop support.
But really, that's a false dichotomy - your ability to deviate from it does not impact the ease of use and reliability of the default configuration.
No, but Apple does not prevent you from deviating from the defaults on iPhones except in ways designed to protect their intellectual property from being used by competitors. They don't care if you hack up your iPhone and have done nothing with regard to people jailbreaking iPhones or making tools to do so. They just patch security holes and don't provide support for nonstandard systems.
The thing you have to realize is that there is real end user benefit (and drawback) to curated computing. I believe a system can be built that is more open and brings the benefit without the drawback, but that would take real work and innovation and frankly there aren't very many innovative OS and services companies these days, with Apple driving a lot of the real state of the art.
Ok, I know I am playing devil's advocate but if the slashdot headline was "China develops computing model where users have reduced choice but increased reliability, with the choices made by the State Education Department", I know the word censorship would be bandied around pretty quickly.
There's a difference between censorship and choosing what to sell. When the government says you can't sell Catcher in the Rye, that's censorship. When Barnes and Noble decides not to sell Catcher in the Rye, that's just choosing what they want to sell. The former is an act of the government and the latter is just competition on what to carry. You can always go to another book store. You have no right to force a non-monopolist to carry a given product. When they don't do so... that's not censorship. To be perfectly clear, if China was controlling what choices a user has, that is censorship. If Apple only offers some choices, that's not. You can always use a different phone, or install Android on your iPhone and use a different App store, or jailbreak it and use a different App store.
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Sure, because consoles being locked down doesn't have much of a negative impact. Yes, I should be able to run arbitrary code on my Xbox. But even if I could, that wouldn't give me any capabilities beyond what I can already do with a Mac mini hooked up to a TV.
And what, exactly, capabilities are impacting you on the iPhone that can't be solved by an Android phone replacing your iPhone, at less cost than a Mac mini most likely?
On the other hand, mobile computing introduces a whole new set of capabilities, so it's a much bigger deal when devices are deliberately crippled.
Except "mobile computing" isn't being crippled. Specific mobile computing products are. 99% of users don't care. Geeks can buy something else, just as they can buy a Mac mini.
Me thinks the real reason is cross platform tools decreases Apple's ability to derive revenue. If you can get Apps that run on iPhone and Android then inter-platform price competition becomes an issue.
Except Apple is spending a lot of money developing HTML5 compatible Webkit and dev tools for cross platform apps based on HTML5. Why are they doing that if this is all about breaking cross platform apps?
If developers are stuck developing for one platform then the number of apps Apple derives income from goes up.
By "derives income from" what do you mean? Apple makes very little on app sales, running the whole show at only a slight profit as a way to sell more hardware.
Developers are locked in because the cost of development for multiple platforms is high while margins are low.
But Apple is only a chunk of the market, what 21% of smartphone sales. If Apple is breaking the ability of apps to be cross platform, they sure aren't leveraging market share to hurt others. Such a move is most likely to hurt Apple sales more than others, unless it brings significant other benefits, such as making those apps better.
Frankly I think this is about exactly what Apple claims it is. They want to be the only ones that can hold up their platform with regard to new features, security, stability, and performance. They want no third party toolkits that target everything holding back apps for the iPhone to the same level of functionality as competing platforms. I mean look at cross platform apps on OS X. Apple builds an OS chock full of features not available on other OS's and developers ignore those features because they're writing cross-platform apps using dev tools that don't take advantage of the tech. OS X built in a grammar checker for all apps, but even apps as popular as Firefox completely fail to provide that functionality to end users... functionality that is provided by default to all apps created with Apple s development tools. How can you expect Apple to gain a competitive advantage if the cool stuff them make never reaches end users? So with the iPhone Apple is making sure that doesn't happen by requiring developers to use one of the approved development kits. When Apple adds cool new stuff, a recompile will make a new, better app in many cases and Apple's work actually makes things better so Apple can profit from that work.
Neither is Coca Cola a monopoly, and yet they have been restricted from anti-competative actions for decades.
Some competition laws effect companies with lower market share... mostly in Europe. You might note, however, the recent competition law actions against Coca-cola were in the EU where they do dominate the market with over 80% share in some EU countries.
That's like if you walked into a bar and said "man, my three friends tag-teamed my mom last night". Sure, assuming it was consensual, it was legal. That doesn't mean they are not shitty friends, and that doesn't mean that you shouldn't bitch to the bar.
Why do you hate your mom and not want her to have fun? Why do you complain about your mom's sex life at the bar?
People are claiming it's evil and should be illegal.
Only the 95% of people who have no understanding of antitrust law, competition, and economics.
My problem is with them restricting 3rd party installations.
Hey, to a lot of people, people sick of dealing with constant security headaches from non-vetted apps this is a feature. It may not be for you or me, but we can always jailbreak or install Android on our iPhone or just buy a different phone in the first place. Just because you don't want them to do it does not give you any more right to dictate what Apple does with iPhone OS than you have the right to determine what they carry in their store.
This is tantamount to you being told that you can only purchase MP3s from iTunes despite the fact that your device is perfectly capable of handling music from a variety of sources.
I's say it is similar to that in some ways, but quite different in other ways, both legally and technologically.
Jobs is simply afraid that if he gives consumers a choice it will undermine the lock-in that he is trying so desperately to complete.
This is simply speculation. There are many, many potential motives and I don't see the support for this one either in the financials or in the way Apple is handling the technology going into the iPhone.
The main problem here, is Apple is offering a locked in service that provides real benefit to end users. Some vendors are copying them and some are ignoring them. No one is taking the time and investing the money to make a service that provides those benefits without the lock-in.
Just imagine the outcry if Microsoft banned all other development environments than Visual Studio and .NET from Windows. It would be hit with lawsuits and there would be tons of stories and tens of thousands of comments dissing MS on slashdot.
Absolutely true... but why? Why is it a problem for people on Slashdot if MS were to ban other dev environments for Windows? We can all just buy and code for alternative platforms right? Wrong. Microsoft has monopoly influence in the desktop OS market so like it or not computer OEMs pretty much have to ship for Windows, developers have to make Windows versions of popular apps, and peripheral makers have to make Windows versions. As a result, any action to restrict dev tools on Windows would be illegal and it would artificially retard the progress of innovation and lowered prices for development tools. But what if MS only had 20% of the desktop OS market? Well, then such an action would be legal and the competitive free market would simply move further away from Windows as a desktop OS and innovation would continue at a normal pace as driven by a competitive environment.
You see, I think you have your cart an horse backwards. You seem to think people on Slashdot hate MS, so anything they do is bad. And we like Apple? So what they do is good? In truth, people on Slashdot love computers and love innovation and progress and the next cool thing. We don't hate MS, so much as we hate that MS's illegal actions are slowing progress and making computers less cool and innovative and awesomely cutting edge.
So here;s the thing with Apple. A lot of people don't like what Apple is doing because it isn't what they want to buy. But we don't dislike Apple for blocking innovation and stopping us from getting cool toys because, for the most part, Apple is driving a lot of that innovation with the iPhone, making cool things and getting Google and RIM and even MS to dump piles of cash at making smartphones better in order to compete with Apple. And that is exactly what computer geeks like to see, rapid innovation driven by competition.
People also always cry about how consoles are locked down.
Really? I bet someone can write a script to show just how many times people here have complained about consoles being locked down compared to the iPhone being locked down. I bet the people complaining about the iPhone are orders of magnitude larger.
But suddenly when it's Apple it's all ok. Why the hell?
When Apple locks down the iPhone a lot of us shrug and are a little disappointed because it makes the device less suited to us. I'm probably never going to buy one. But we have a lot of other options and those options are rapidly getting better because we have a competitive and fairly free market for smartphones. I have a lot more complaints about Sprint and AT&T with regard to slowing progress in the smartphone market than complaints about Apple, who seems to have been a driving force in this revolution.
The short answer to your question is, we're not mindless fanbois for a particular vendor. We like or dislike what companies do because of those actions, not because of a logo. I'm sorry if this means you have to actually think about and understand the issues before you can make useful commentary, but oversimplification is not helpful.
I think the question is not that certain words are evil, but that profanity can be valuable. This value is lost from overuse.
I agree, but I don't think this is a bad thing. Rather, I think it then requires people to become more creative to get the same value, resulting in a plethora of new expletives and expletive phrases. The art of cursing is dying because everyone falls back on taboo words like "fuck". Even if everyone overuses the word "motherfucker", they'll still pay attention and get the point when you say, "Listen here you puss dripping infected goat bladder!" and really isn't the latter a lot more fun and unique?
I live in rural Texas. What you have here is a buncha people who are independent and are tired of government encroaching on civil liberty and forcing "help" on us.
This is more of a speaking point than a real assessment. Are these people who are tired of the government helping are willing to have the government stop medicare, medicaid, and military spending? For the most part the "conservative" movement just differs as to where they want the government aid spent. They certainly elect officials regularly that vote for increases in the size and scope of the federal government and in government spending.
To paint the generalization of all Texans as nutjobs is a slap in the face to these hard working people who for the most part just want to be left the hell alone.
I don't think Texans are nutjobs for the most part. I do think they are ignorant, perhaps even more so than most of the nation. It certainly has below average test scores. Maybe many Texans do believe in personal responsibility, but they sure don't elect government representatives based upon those criteria. Continuing the fight in Afghanistan was the single largest political issue among Texans polled on what issue they will vote on, and our government as a whole interfering in foreign countries is directly opposed to the philosophy of personal responsibility. So basically, I think you're wrong that "personal responsibility" is truly the virtue they consider most important. Rather, I think that is a convenient excuse for politicians to cite when looking for excuses to fight against the public good in particular issues.
Nice of you to leave out the Declaration of Independence. Or just who is this "their Creator" person?
Umm, that wasn't a document establishing our government. It was a statement of rebellion against England. We even had a government established after the war and before our current government.
As for who the creator is, you'll notice he makes other reference to "the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them" with "nature's god" being a phrase heavily associated at the time with the deist movement that believed in a god, but not necessarily the same one the christians did. That's not to say he did not have some christian leanings as he did write his own version of the christian bible where he emphasizes the philosophy of Jesus but removes all mention of the supernatural and all references to Jesus being divine.
Entertaining this claim as being true, we see that TWO highly liberal states (California and New York) are also warping what goes into text books.
Except you're missing an important point. Neither New York nor California passed laws telling history book writers what version of history they were allowed to include nor what religious or political slants were required by the state. Texas did, forcing California to react in order to put an equal and opposite pressure on textbook publishers, to prevent Texas's slant from being pushed into their state by the new Texan law and their large influence on the market. Now other states have to decide if they're going to follow suit one way or another in order to try to have an unbiased or specifically biased version of history taught. It sets the stage for textbooks not written primarily by the best info of historians, but instead by political bodies as political game pieces. It will almost certainly result in less accurate textbooks in many places along with higher prices for those books.
Now, you were saying about Texas being a problem? Its only a problem if you want to maintain the bias.
Textbook publishers were not required by law to have a bias prior to the Texan law. You can claim they did, but you need to support that hypothesis with real evidence. We know textbooks are being forced to have a slant now, because a law was passed requiring specific things determined by politicians, not historians.
Its not a problem if you want things to be more centrist.
Are you so blindly partisan? I don't want centrist textbooks. I want accurate textbooks based upon the best info historians have and the best supported interpretations of that info.
We as a nation benefit if Texas gets changes made, and are harmed if California blocks those changes.
We as a nation have less well informed children if Texas gets it's changes made and less well informed children everywhere if other states pick up this trend. We also have less economy of scale and so more expensive textbooks for kids. That helps no one.
They take all our tax money and return nothing. They dumb down the rest of the nation, and they are also probably largely responsible for most of the failed mortgages.
Wow ... just fucking WOW ... there is absolutely nothing correct about any part of that entire statement. Get a clue.
Actually, there is something correct about that assertion, because the conservative "red" states use more social services, all while having have higher rates of rape, murder, etc.
It's too bad this is modded as flamebait since it is, more or less, both relevant and in need of discussion. With regard to the "take all our tax money and return nothing" statement, however, Texas is actually a donor state according to the most recent numbers I've seen. It pays less in federal taxes for what it receives than most, but still only gets about $0.94 for every dollar they put into the federal budget. So Texans contribute less than most, but it's just incorrect to say they contribute nothing.
There is still some question as to the legality of jailbreaking.
While true, Apple has done nothing to go after people who do it or even people who build the tools to make it easy for others. Further, jailbreaking is only an issue for people who insist on using both an iPhone and Apple's default OS on it. You don't have to do either of those things. All this hyperbole about Apple holding a gun to your head makes no sense to me. Apple doesn't control what apps I run because I don't own an iPhone. Strangely they haven't come to my house and forced me to buy one at gunpoint yet.
It's an attempt for the networks to get a foothold on the Web as a cartel, instead of through their separate Web presences.
You don't have any workable facts to back that up.
Umm "workable facts"? Are you a script? Are you a human? Your words aren't even meaningful, like you're just stringing them together pseudo randomly.
Why did you omit my quote...
Umm, dude, I quoted your whole post in my last post, so I don't know what the hell you're talking about. How about rather than referencing some random quote you claim to have made, you actually copy it immediately if you're going to make reference to it. I have no idea what you're babbling about.
At least in a universe where acquisitions never happen and present owners always define the creator's intent.
The present owners define the intent of the owners... you know the networks that own and run Hulu and have the power to make the decisions. It doesn't matter if Hulu was founded by Martin Luther King Jr. as a non-profit to feed orphan amputees... so long as the networks bought shares in it jointly put their content up and are acting in concert with one another... that's a cartel.
Spurious, indeed.
I referred to your flawed comparison as spurious, which it is, but you don't seem to mention it again in this post at all. For that matter you don't address any of the points I made or answer any of the questions I directly put to you. Your attempt to present a coherent argument is a complete fail.
Your use of the word is rather strict. The original intent was always for Hulu to be a joint venture. The current partners didn't 'collude to create' Hulu any more than Warner Brothers did to create Netflix.
Umm, when competitors work together instead of competing against one another, that's called collusion (in economic terms). Warner brothers and Netflix are not competitors so, yes the networks "colluded" a lot more than your spurious example. Are you simply not understanding what competitors are?
Their CEO isn't from any of the TV networks, but from Amazon.
He's the guy the networks hired to run the company. Just because he used to work for Amazon does not mean Amazon has anything to do with it. It's owned by the networks, jointly. Would you expect a cartel to appoint a CEO who has a vested interest in helping one cartel member over another?
They are, first and foremost, a 'web 2.0' company. Their ownership is clearly secondary to their idea, rather than being central to it.
How is who owns a company "secondary" to it being a Web company? Those are completely separate attributes. Is being a Web company "secondary" to being an English speaking company? It's an attempt for the networks to get a foothold on the Web as a cartel, instead of through their separate Web presences.
Why did this app [macrumors.com] get rejected?
Because it messes with Apple's copy control mechanisms they have contracts with the RIAA to protect in order to get music sales content?
Apple could do the same thing to Hulu if they wanted--you never know, that's the thing.
There's a big difference between "probably" and "possibly". Apple could possibly reject Hulu's app for some reason. There's no reason to think that is probable though (as "jaryd" claimed), unless you have some evidence to the contrary. It's the same as selling through any other store... maybe they'll want to carry your product, maybe not. Since Apple has approved a slew of other, commercial apps that provide video subscriptions though, it does not seem probable.
You're comparing Netflix/Blockbuster collusion when the apt comparison would be Netflix/Warner Brothers. Why?
Because that isn't an apt comparison. Fox, ABC, and NBC were colluding together and creating a joint venture called Hulu. Fox, NBC, and ABC are all competitors in the TV programming market. Similarly, Netflix and Blockbuster are competitors in the mail order movie rental business.
Did you fail to notice the bruhaha over release dates and the new Netflix-branded versions of the DVD's?
No, but I don't see how it is relevant. Netflix is a competitor in the TV programming business since they own Starz, but that's not really relevant to that particular deal. It's not collusion to come to an agreement with a provider in a different market.
Broadcast TV is essentially dead, outside of local news and programming.
Largely true, but this does not lessen the power of four companies that control anywhere from 35-70% of TV viewership collectively. The big networks on Cable are also the big networks for Web viewing.
The description you're offering could be applied to any online business venture. Netflix is 'conspiring' to be the 'only' online movie rental outfit, too.
You don't seem to understand the meaning of the word "conspiring" which you misuse, or the word "collusion" which I use. You don't conspire or collude with yourself. It's prefectly legal for Netflix to compete with Blockbuster in the market and attempt to gain control of the market. It's illegal for Netflix to collude with Blockbuster to jointly control the market for mail order DVD rentals and profit more than they would in a competitive market. The same goes for the RIAA which is a cartel convicted of jointly negotiating prices (also known as price fixing). The same laws apply to joint ventures of TV show producers like the big four collectively bargaining with advertisers for the Web.
Thanks for the reply. It is as I assumed, then. You're making a huge generalization
There is an attempt, somewhat stalled, to use Hulu to control Web TV to a large extend by consolidating the efforts of the major networks and allowing them to (probably illegally) collude on mainstream TV's display on the Web. That's not really a generalization as a rather ubiquitous analysis of the market by many many different news and industry groups.
ave left out at least one major television network, if not several, in your 'single' descriptor.
Hulu failed to get buy in from CBS because CBS had already launched a competitor and was getting better advertising revenue than they wanted to offer. The others hoped the success of Hulu would pressure CBS to get on board, but it has failed so far and with ABC bailing out the venture might be a lost cause (Note that Steve Jobs sits on the board and is the biggest shareholder of Disney which owns ABC). That covers all of the "big four" of broadcast TV. There are smaller players, of course, many of which Hulu had signed on but which are not really very important in terms of the industry, which is remarkably consolidated right now.
RealPlayer, Windows Media Player and Flash are the only players that have the suite of features that are required to stream live and on-demand video properly.
Have you heard of YouTube? I think providing HTML5 and Flash content side by side, depending on the device entered the mainstream when they implemented that option.
The "Flash is dead!" people have no idea what they're talking about.
Clearly Flash is not dead, but it is stillborn for a large set of mobile users. As such any professional offering video on the Web has to be looking at it as one of the very few options they have going forward.
What 'single locked down channel' are we discussing here? There is presently more than Hulu alive on the web now, is there not?
Hulu is a joint venture of Fox, NBC, and ABC (now pulling out). The idea was they could maintain a singe front for providing mainstream TV, even as users moved way from cable and towards the internet for entertainment video. They were scared by YouTube and the like and wanted to make sure they could be the gatekeepers controlling the content as a cartel (like the RIAA has done with radio). That way they could extract more money in subscription fees going forward and at the same time reduce the threat of independent TV programming from being a more democratized source of content. Fox (for example) doesn't want to have to sell programs to users. They want to be able to sell subscriptions to all their content at once and so get paid just as much by people who think 90% of their content is crap.
Please do clarify, dear submitter.
Does that clarify my somewhat vague submission? I sort of assumed Slashdotters knew the history behind Hulu and the network's strategy with it.
It's probably more along the lines that Hulu isn't interested in rushing out an HTML5 app that will cost X to develop while their current client works perfectly well for the majority of their customers.
This is probably true. It will be more cost effective in the short term, but you're missing the big motivation. Hulu does not want to provide open video. They want to provide subscription services, which they're moving to on the Web right now for a portion of content. They can make more money by only providing content to Apple devices that pay a subscription fee via an app, especially since those users won't be able to just use a Web browser for some content. Remember, Hulu is run by the networks.
Rather than retooling their website it is more logical to do what they are actually doing and code a standalone app that will probably get rejected from the app store.
Why would it get rejected from the app store? It will be trivial to provide the same content in different containers in a simple Web app using almost completely code provided in Apple's toolkits. Netflix has done it and they use Silverlight on the Web. Your assertion that it will probably be rejected is just your bias showing.
I hope that this Chrome OS features a toggle for Desktop Effects. It seems silly to have a low-power, battery dependent device dedicating resources to window management ballet.
I'm not as convinced as you are that it would result in significant battery savings. I don't even know if those effects are run on the CPU or GPU for given hardware or how much power they consume. Often I see people wanting developers to "strip down" OS features for power or CPU or RAM savings in cases where such modifications are not even noticeable in terms of performance benefits.
What I hope is that Google and Acer work together to do real testing to find the best battery life and overall usability for end users of the device.
Yes. It's called Difficulty Levels in software.
I see where you're going with this and it makes sense. For this particular case are you proposing something where apps that have not been vetted, may be malware, or which could kill your battery quickly only appear to user who toggle their system to an advanced mode?
So the Just Works crowd can Just Work, while you might get some support tickets for "I went to Advanced but screwed it up". But at least they knew it was their fault for taking the training wheels off. It's not "the computer is stupid".
While I see how companies might like this as a way of not having as much of a blemished image from mishaps, I think this fundamentally the wrong approach for security. Already we have security focused on shifting the blame for problems to the "stupid user" instead of preventing the problem in the first place. In some instances software now makes problems worse and more prevalent in a quest to shift blame away from themselves. Real security does not care about blame, just results.
Another problem with this approach is that the source of problems may not be evident. How many users install random software knowing there is risk, but don't associate that random software they installed with why their computer is increasingly slow or why an update makes their system unbootable? Those are the kinds of problems where having an advanced mode still results in users blaming the vendor and tarnishing the vendor's brand, despite it being the result of actions taken in "advanced mode". Yet another problem is software vendors who are lazy and will only do what is necessary to get the software to the user in the easiest way possible. I see a glut of "please switch to advanced mode to install this software" leaving users in the unenviable position of having to choose between not having access to software they need and want versus giving up on security. Many of those users today have that choice and do blame OS and device vendors for not shepherding a better ecosystem. In fact the iPhone App store is partially a response to that.
Don't get me wrong. I'm all in favor of making sure the end user has control of their device and can override the OS and knowingly install malware. I just think it needs a lot of work and other components so they know that is what they're probably doing and it is made clear to them that such an action may result in problems with the whole OS and experience. And most importantly for OS vendors and end users, normal users never, ever are confronted with such a choice.
You can make the choices for the end users just fine, without taking away their ability to make different choices. Ubuntu is a good example of this: you can get the streamlined desktop experience that Canonical provides by just going with the defaults, or you can adapt the environment to your liking, starting with things like changing desktop backgrounds and installing packages from the main repositories, and continuing all the way to running a custom kernel and third-party software completely independent from the repositories.
This is the difference between a closed source OS and a partially open source OS where you don't have everything you need to rebuild it in a custom fashion. I think the former is a better model going forward, but I don't see why you think it would be in Apple's best interest today.
And I think Ubuntu is a good example. Ubuntu does not today, but is working on building an app store for commercial apps into the package manager. Canonical will be deciding what does and does not go into it, just as Apple decides with regard to the iPhone store. You will be able to bypass the store, but then you can do that with iPhones via jailbreaking. It will void your support from Apple. I don't know if installing apps outside the Ubuntu store will do the same for desktop support.
But really, that's a false dichotomy - your ability to deviate from it does not impact the ease of use and reliability of the default configuration.
No, but Apple does not prevent you from deviating from the defaults on iPhones except in ways designed to protect their intellectual property from being used by competitors. They don't care if you hack up your iPhone and have done nothing with regard to people jailbreaking iPhones or making tools to do so. They just patch security holes and don't provide support for nonstandard systems.
The thing you have to realize is that there is real end user benefit (and drawback) to curated computing. I believe a system can be built that is more open and brings the benefit without the drawback, but that would take real work and innovation and frankly there aren't very many innovative OS and services companies these days, with Apple driving a lot of the real state of the art.
Ok, I know I am playing devil's advocate but if the slashdot headline was "China develops computing model where users have reduced choice but increased reliability, with the choices made by the State Education Department", I know the word censorship would be bandied around pretty quickly.
There's a difference between censorship and choosing what to sell. When the government says you can't sell Catcher in the Rye, that's censorship. When Barnes and Noble decides not to sell Catcher in the Rye, that's just choosing what they want to sell. The former is an act of the government and the latter is just competition on what to carry. You can always go to another book store. You have no right to force a non-monopolist to carry a given product. When they don't do so... that's not censorship. To be perfectly clear, if China was controlling what choices a user has, that is censorship. If Apple only offers some choices, that's not. You can always use a different phone, or install Android on your iPhone and use a different App store, or jailbreak it and use a different App store.