XML Co-Founder Joins Google, Blasts iPhone 628
XML co-founder Tim Bray has taken the job of 'Developer Advocate' at Google. Don't other companies call that position 'Evangelist?' Because he sure doesn't mince words against the iPhone in his first sermon: 'It's a sterile Disney-fied walled garden surrounded by sharp-toothed lawyers. The people who create the apps serve at the landlord's pleasure and fear his anger.
XML vs iPhone (Score:5, Insightful)
XML vs. iPhone. I can't think of a better metaphor for "open but convoluted" vs. "closed but useable."
He Can Vote With His Wallet (Score:4, Insightful)
We're all adults here and if he doesn't like Apple's rules about software of the iPod/iPhone/iPad then he can choose not to get one. It's as simple as that.
The government isn't requiring us all to get iProducts
Re:He Can Vote With His Wallet (Score:1, Insightful)
But then again, apple fanboi's will always try to herd a stray iSheep back to the iFlock. There's even an app for that!
The bird still sings in its gilded cage (Score:2, Insightful)
Another way to look at it is that iPhone provides a solid single platform that developers can concentrate on features rather than UI and input differences.
Re:He Can Vote With His Wallet (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, as Developer Advocate for Android, part of his job is trying to change people's viewpoint on whether they ought to develop for the iPhone or Android.
wrong. (Score:1, Insightful)
The people who create the apps serve at the landlord's pleasure and fear his anger.
i create the apps... i fear nothing.
the employees of google are presumptuous AND wrong.
Re:Lack of credibility (Score:4, Insightful)
Er, if it were his *first* smartphone, how could it *not* be the best he'd ever owned?
He's right. (Score:5, Insightful)
With the iPhone and iPad, Apple has become the Big Brother it railed against in the Superbowl ad of 1984.
As an owner of many Apple computers from the Apple ][ all the way to today, it's thoroughly depressing to have watched this happen. But I guess Apple's always been schizophrenic about opennness. One one hand you have Woz distributing schematics, the developer's signatures burnt into the Mac's first motherboard, embracing of open-sourced software & development tools, lack of copy protection on their OS, replacing drm music with watermarking, etc. But then you've got them suing Franklin & Pystar, suing HTC, their absurdly paternalistic App market, a closed-down iPad, etc. I guess there's always been a bit of hypocrisy and self-contradiction [youtube.com] with Apple.
But when push comes to shove, I'm growing more convinced with the iPhone/iPad they really do see the future as being closed & proprietary. Google is the athlete running in swinging the hammer. And maybe it's Jobs' face on the big screen?
I guess Apple II isn't forever.
Re:To be fair (Score:5, Insightful)
Not only is it a walled garden, but everybody seems to forget that Apple is doing exactly what the slashdot community rallied against Microsoft for doing, i.e. the digital wallet, multiple music stores, music players (at least they opened it up to other vendors besides themselves), etc, all crying out that this would be bad for the consumer. Well, Apple has done exactly what Microsoft was doing 10 years ago, it's just that since it was Apple, it was ok (don't mod me down, I'm not trying to troll here). There's some traction in the tech media about Apple doing to developers what slashdotites claimed MS would do, but since Apple isn't the (or wasn't) 800 lb gorilla most people let it slide. Well now Apple owns the market segment (or at least a good portion of it) and ceding Poland to Apple is showing it's downside. Google's approach is definitely better, but right now the fact of the matter is that Apple's DRM system is just as bad as Mircosoft's has been in the past.
XML... (Score:4, Insightful)
He's right, though...
Re:Surprising? (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm pretty sure you mean Nokia, not RIM.
Re:To be fair (Score:2, Insightful)
Although I don't condone their abuses of corporate power, Disney has made a lot of money by being "Disney-fied".
Re:He Can Vote With His Wallet (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:To be fair (Score:5, Insightful)
everybody seems to forget that Apple is doing exactly what the slashdot community rallied against Microsoft for doing
Yup, very few posts on /. critical of Apple lately. It's not at all the dominant meme when talking about smartphones.
Seriously - do you actually read /. ? Half the posts in a thread about Apple are criticising it for exactly the things you mention, and the other half are defending it.
Re:Lack of credibility (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Surprising? (Score:2, Insightful)
Of course he's going to blast the iPhone. Google needs to de-trone the iPhone as the market leader in advanced phones otherwise they run the risk of becoming irrelevant
Haha. The market leader in advanced phones remains the blackberry, which has had an open SDK and documentation freely available for years. You don't need RIM's blessing (or even RIM's knowledge) to sell your blackberry apps.
Google is trying to dethrone the market leader in coolness.
Re:He Can Vote With His Wallet (Score:2, Insightful)
That whole anti-trust thing just went over your head, eh? I can see how the stories from remote locations like the US and EU would be hard for you to spot. It's not like there was any coverage around here or on any tech enthusiast site.
Re:Opinion of Google is Changing... (Score:5, Insightful)
My opinion changed when they stopped releasing text-only copies of public domain works through Google Books.
I am rather concerned about Google and Apple, and primarily support alternatives.
I won't buy Apple products though and only grudgingly do business with Google these days.
Re:He Can Vote With His Wallet (Score:5, Insightful)
Probably the best thing he can do is crack the whip and make sure the various companies that want to create Android based products do so in a competent way and discourage carriers from behaving like the dicks they tend to be. As in not doing all that stupid adjustments and customizations that hurt usability.
Re:Lack of credibility (Score:3, Insightful)
I've never actually had a "smart" or otherwise fancy phone before, so this is by far the nicest I've owned.
What kind of technologist bought his first smartphone a little over a year ago? And declares his very first one, The Best! It makes me question his methodology for making decisions, at the very least.
Do you ever read smartphone related websites like Boy Genius Report [boygeniusreport.com], for example? These people live and breath smartphones, and actually carry and use the devices they review and blog about. There are numerous people that are infinitely more qualified on smartphones than Tim Bray will ever be.
I'm sure Tim is a fine fellow otherwise, and would make an excellent neighbor, who if he borrowed your rake, would return it promptly in good condition.
Re:He Can Vote With His Wallet (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll agree that Apple makes Disney Land. It's all highly controlled and polished to look exactly how they want it to, and to keep "undesirable" elements out.
There's still quite a lot of choice in the market. In fact, whatever you think of the iPhone it's self, we've certainly seen a bigger improvement in the cell industry in the last 3 years (post iPhone) than we did the in 3 or 4 years before. Today, there are numerous phones out with interfaces that aren't abysmal. You can get a game like Bejeweled without having to pay $3 or $4 per month (as carriers liked to charge).
I like the Apple experience, and I love my iPhone. Daniel Jalkut put up a post on his blog today called Surfing in Antartica [red-sweater.com], which really resonated with me on why I think the iPhone is so great, and why I'm really interested in what the iPad might bring.
Apple does some stuff I don't like. Disney does a lot I don't like (and I know many /.ers agree with me). But there are large segments of the market that love the way those companies do things. There are people who happily pay a large chunk of money to get to live in Disney Land for a few hours a day, a few days a year.
What are they doing again? (Score:1, Insightful)
Apple is doing exactly what the slashdot community rallied against Microsoft for doing, i.e. the digital wallet, multiple music stores, music players
Can you explain this point a little more? None f it made much sense to me.
1) You could always use non-DRM music from other stores on the iPod, from launch.
2) There has never been an Apple "digital wallet" like the points system MS uses on Live (though MS is not using that for Windows Phone 7 Series).
3) Multiple music stores??? Why is that even a problem...
The difference between Apple and Microsoft is that Microsoft had to have utter control of standards, and only begrudgingly worked with anything open. While Apple has worked beside and on top of many open technologies, which has benefited a ton of people (ZeroConf, Webkit, CLANG, etc.).
I'm sorry but the parallels between Apple and Microsoft are weak at best, because in general Apple's approach strengthens the technology sector for everyone. Would HTML5 video really be pushed as hard as it has been without Apple helping to shove?
Re:He Can Vote With His Wallet (Score:5, Insightful)
Not only can he vote with his wallet, but he's free to express his opinion to others who might vote with their wallets in the future. He's not forcing you or anyone else to do anything.
Re:To be fair (Score:2, Insightful)
Its not OK because its Apple. Its OK because Apple makes it usable. It wasn't OK for Microsoft, because their implementations sucked. People are willing to forgive Apple because it works well for them.
Re:He Can Vote With His Wallet (Score:1, Insightful)
Sadly, this argument assumes that free markets remain free in the face of the massive success of a given good or company. Let's face it, for all that it's touted to be pragmatic, the foundation of capitalism is idealistic. It assumes that the "almighty market" will always promote competition. While it does so at first, in reality, the moment that a given brand/company/product dominates the market sufficiently, there is often the aftereffect that competitors die off. If the number of people who exercise their choice to buy elsewhere is too small, those people eventually see their freedom of choice denied by the masses who chose otherwise, becasuse competitors disappear from the market. Hence the complaining on sites like Slashdot, because if we can't get enough people to excercise their freedom of choice elsewhere than the dominant flavour, we all run the risk of being denied the choice in the future. It's all about critical mass.
Re:What are they doing again? (Score:5, Insightful)
You've always been able to play MP3s on all digital music players. That's a key bullet point in the PPT presentation on how you even get funding to design and a digital music player. I'm not even going to argue about that.
Apple has had absolute control of their standards (Quicktime, proprietary audio formats/encryption, device lockin (itunes only works with ipod, and will update itunes to break compatibility with any other device)... Apple has always been very aggressive about vendor lockin, and only uses "open" standards when it serves their purpose to break into a market, and quickly lose interest once they have a substancial market share (see also: embrace, extend, extinguish).
I'm not trying to say Apple is completely evil, but they act more like Microsoft than most people realize, and only use open technologies enough to ease the paranoia of the technical community, knowing that their acceptance of products/technology is crucial to widespread consumer uptake (see also: Vista Failure).
Re:To be fair (Score:1, Insightful)
Microsoft was and is a monopoly. This is apparent in marketshare and the fact that many application are Windows-only without a good Mac/Linux counterpart (for instance, no good comprehensive ebay listing software equivalent to blackthorne).
It has alleviated the past years, seen by how no longer are many websites IE-only, but it's still entrenched in many areas. Basically, Windows had a monopoly on its API.
Apple has no such monopoly. Music Players? You can get many alternatives in the very same windows Walmart showcases iPods. Itunes? Amazon sells tracks, along with many other vendors. Smartphone, droid. Does the iPhone have a monopoly on smartphone apps? I don't think it does but may be wrong.
I don't think Apple is the nicest company around, but they dickish moves have much less impact than Microsoft did in the 1990s.
Re:To be fair (Score:2, Insightful)
And the part defending Apple are not only consistently and intentionally wrong[1], they are actively advertising Apple, just because they follow the company as if it were their favourite football team. Of course there had to be a back-lash against them, since that kind of fraudulent PR can't go unchallenged.
[1] Examples: That the iPad is crippled because it's simplified for grandmothers (it's not, it's designed for internet addicts who already have at least one computer); that the walled garden is for security (it's for profit and lock-in); that solutions that are prohibited by Apple (tethering the iPad to the iPhone, for instance) are there because Apple always need to design things so lusciously simple (they don't, and that's not the reason why: it would compete against their otherwise prohibitively expensive 3g version of the iPad). All of these claims are creative excuses proposed by freelance advertising agents, a.k.a. fanboys; they are wrong, and they are repeated ad nauseam, and most people who read this site are fed up with them.
Re:What are they doing again? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:To be fair (Score:1, Insightful)
but everybody seems to forget
No. No they don't. Perhaps you have some kind of blind spot or other cognitive impairment that keeps you from noticing the rather high number of comments on Slashdot that are not only generally critical of Apple, but specifically critical of Apple's lock-down policy w/regards to Cocoa Touch devices, but they're still there.
that Apple is doing exactly what the slashdot community rallied against Microsoft for doing, i.e. the digital wallet, multiple music stores, music players (at least they opened it up to other vendors besides themselves), etc, all crying out that this would be bad for the consumer.
Microsoft had a uniquely powerful monopoly, a hold over the computing desktop for about two decades, and abused that not just through their own product standards but through their market power over OEMs.
Apple's control issues can be a pain, but they've simply never done anything like that. The fact that music players and associated file formats are frequently cited as one of the most high profile issues shows how weak the comparison is: even at their absolute worst in terms of lock-down, iTMS and the iPod have been quite usable with non-Apple products and systems, and most of the time, Apple's competed on their product merits and marketing skills rather than market pressure.
If you decide Apple's practices aren't for you, more power to you. But that's part of the point, really. You've never faced any segment of any industry in which Apple's produced a device or piece of software you might be *forced* to work with, in which their mindshare and market power are so completely dominant you can't just choose something else if you want to. Cranky about their music store? There were other options. Didn't like the iPod? Buy another mp3 player. Don't want to bother to code for Safari as a web dev? Code the standards and chances are you can ignore it. Or use Chrome. Never want to use OS X? You're in luck. Never want any of your money to go to Apple for any reason? You're pretty safe as long as you don't buy their products.
Now, can you say the same thing about Microsoft? Unless you're new to Slashdot, chances are you're aware that for a good long period of time, it was pretty difficult to buy a prebuilt computer without paying the Microsoft tax. You can't be ignorant of the fact that it's pretty much impossible to do client-side web development and not test with (3 versions of) IE. And in many corporate environments, you're still essentially forced to use Windows. Thankfully, Microsoft as been pretty crappy about extending their monopoly outside of the desktop. But even in a world where Apple does brisk business, where Linux is starting to make inroads, where OpenOffice and other tools mean that for most common tasks you don't *always* have to have MS Office to exchange work-related documents.... Microsoft still actually has an incredibly strong near-monopoly grip on the desktop/applications experience.
And that's why statements like this:
Apple's DRM system is just as bad as Mircosoft's has been in the past.
Are flat out, 100%, simply wrong . Apple's product decisions may make their platform less vital and products less appealing to some customers. But they don't ever really try to bend the whole industry that direction, and the only reason they have as much influence as they do is the same reason anybody who comes up with a good idea or a successful model does. Not because they're threatening OEMs with raised license prices if they don't do what they want.
iDIOT antI-fanboiIs (Score:5, Insightful)
But then again, apple fanboi's will always try to herd a stray iSheep back to the iFlock. There's even an app for that!
Or maybe they just get tired of anti-fanboi idiots making statements that seem to equate:
"Um, you're not forced to buy it. You're perfectly free to buy, enjoy, and develop for something else."
with
"Apple fanboi's will always try to herd a stray iSheep back to the iFlock."
For some reason, for a lot of geeks, it's never enough to just like something else that's not Apple. They have to LOUDLY TELL EVERYBODY ELSE THAT THEY SHOULD NOT LIKE APPLE TOO and this despite the fact that nobody's ever been forced to buy Apple.
Re:What are they doing again? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:XML vs iPhone (Score:5, Insightful)
Comparing XML to the iPhone is like comparing a fighter jet with a celebrity cooking show on television.
No, comparing XML to the iPhone is like comparing fiberglass insulation to a Toyota car. One is a technique the other is a brand of hardware products.
Re:XML... (Score:4, Insightful)
Hint - Tim designed it as a markup language, you know - that's why it's right there in the name. For that sort of thing, it's pretty good (and keep in mind that "sorta looks like SGML" was a requirement, just as Java had to look "sorta like C++", to get existing developers to learn it).
The fact that it has since been used not for markup, but as a general-purpose tree and even graph description language (configs, SOAP packets, etc) isn't his fault.
Re:What are they doing again? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:To be fair (Score:3, Insightful)
I think it's a sign of my age. I never liked MS much. I liked google for a while. I almost trusted them. Then I switched to Apple - google seemed a little too eager for all my personal information.
When you realize that they are all ruthless corporations out to make a buck of you, you have to admit that open source is the only non-evil option. It's not always the best option (and I'll use the best option even if it's evil, as long as there's a way to port my data), but it's the one I root for.
I still use google for search and mail, and I like my Macbook, and I like Microsoft's ... em, no wait I never liked anything Microsoft (though I might duel boot one day and play some games, and the .net runtime looks like it might inspire some useful developments) but I don't like or trust the companies.
Re:To be fair (Score:4, Insightful)
The iPad seems a nice device. It's not for everyone, but there's nothing inherently wrong with it. It may not be for you, but again, there's nothing wrong with that.
I find the backlash you mention exactly as bad as the breathless fans you berate and to be honest I'm just as tired of either side of the pundits on this one. Extremes on both sides are misrepresenting the truth, either intentionally or not, and I see some of that in the little squad of straw-men lurking in your post.
The only people that matter in this are the people who will buy the device. If there aren't enough of them, it'll fail. If there are, it'll succeed. All this back-and-forth garbage is a waste of electrons.
Nothing you or I say will make a jot of difference on that, and judging by the posts on /. this is a good thing.
Re:He Can Vote With His Wallet (Score:2, Insightful)
From a user perspective, the Android advantage goes a little further than that, the marketplace is a convenience, not the exclusive way to install apps on the phone.
From a developer perspective, having a friendly filter is probably better than having an annoying filter (but hey, you can market stuff outside of the filter on Android, if you think it is worth your time).
Re:To be fair (Score:4, Insightful)
everybody seems to forget that Apple is doing exactly what the slashdot community rallied against Microsoft for doing
Microsoft was sued by 20 State Attorneys General for violating antitrust laws. http://news.cnet.com/2100-1001-238758.html [cnet.com]
I don't think there's much of a comparison between Apple and Microsoft.
Re:Opinion of Google is Changing... (Score:5, Insightful)
Interesting way to spin Apple's accomplishment... that it was somehow evil to unlock iTunes. Wow, how could anyone win with this kind of logic?
What actually happened was that Apple dominated the music business because of the popularity of their HARDWARE and the way it worked seamlessly with their SOFTWARE (iTunes). They made a music store that SELLS MUSIC, in an environment where it was almost as easy to anonymously steal the same stuff.
Steve Jobs wrote an open letter to the music industry where he essentially said, why don't we eliminate this DRM bullshit, because it doesn't work. One by one, they eventually relented, and now most music stores sell music without DRM. You can now buy music from iTunes that plays on any modern music device.
Yet you're convinced Apple only did this because they somehow are now "safe" with this iPod monopoly. Does this make any sense? They removed one factor that might lock someone into their iPod the most -- their music library's portability -- and decimated it. Yet, in your mind this was just a crock of shit or something?
Wow.
Re:To be fair (Score:4, Insightful)
We also see in real estate that walled gardens are valued. People seem perfectly willing to pay huge amounts of money to live in controlled gated community. I do not believe that they provide any additional security, I have never needed to live in one and an perfectly safe, but I do not see AGs going after them for fraudulent PR.
I am not going to say any Apple product is superior to any non apple product. I like the laptops because I transfer video through firewire, and I can do so with no additional drivers. Same thing for cameras. Same this for mass storage. I expect people to buy the machine they need, not the machine they are told to buy to look good.
Re:To be fair (Score:3, Insightful)
Microsoft was never and is not a monopoly.
I don't care what the courts say. I'm not usually a defender of the "let the market sort everything out" mentality; but by the time the court ruled, Linux already had some pretty useable desktops, and OS X was not far behind. Defining "PC" as "IBM clone" was a travesty. Whoever prosecuited MS was smart, and got away with that. I remember joking at the time, "so an iMac's not a Personal Computer, eh?".
Also, the MS "monopoly" is far less problematic than what would happen if Apple's way of doing biz took hold. It was MS that forced hardware vendors to be open. No PC clones, no open BIOS, and arguably NO LINUX. I don't think that's an exaggeration.
If a proprietary hardware business model dominates, it's much harder to break than a "monopoly" in software. After all, a rather small core of hackers demonstrated that very fact. Developing an open competing *hardware* platform would be an order of magnitude more difficult, I think.
Hopefully we don't end up with a choice of iPhone-like lockin, or homebrew Arduino-based machines 10 years from now.
Re:To be fair (Score:4, Insightful)
It's funny, you know. I can't remember one single occasion where Microsoft actually used its control of Windows to specifically prevent a competitor's product from functioning on a PC. Yes, they pushed their own stuff. But I could always install Opera or Mozilla or Lotus or whatever I wanted, and nothing built into the OS could or would prevent that. Likewise MS never attempted to 'protect' me from 'objectionable' material or otherwise impose its value judgments on me.
My memory loss must be pretty bad, because I also can't remember this fabled golden age when ipods and itunes were "quite usable with non-Apple products". What I can remember, though, is Apple changing the way files are written to an ipod over and over again to deliberately break compatibility with non-Apple software. I can remember my frustration that my ipod wouldn't let me simply drag music files on and off in via a file browser. I can remember Apple selling DRMed music through itunes which wouldn't work with my Creative Zen MP3 player. Funnily enough, I also remember Apple forcing me to install the bloated monstrosity that is quicktime on my system, and both itunes and quicktime then breaking my perfectly functional GUI standards almost as though they never existed.
As for your underlying thesis, it is immensely naive. "ipod" and "mp3 player" are more or less synonymous for most non-tech people I know. Apple is moving aggressively into video and text. And to me, control over our society's collective cultural record is far more significant than which web browser I use when I install a pre-2000 version of Windows.
Re:Gotta love freetards (Score:4, Insightful)
Just gonna burn some karma here since you've unfortunately been modded 0 flamebait:
As much as I enjoy tinkering w/ open source and recognise its massive contribution, why is it so hard for freetards to grasp the key issue:
For normal users (or even geeks who don't have the time/energy to care), walled garden that "just works" beats open solution that "sorta works" (even 'mostly') 10 times out of 10
You sir, are absolutely right, no matter how much we people who read slashdot, we denizens of the extreme right hand tail of the user bell curve, wish it weren't so.
Re:To be fair (Score:2, Insightful)
you have to admit that open source is the only non-evil option.
And then people like RMS start spouting off about how no one should be able to sell software commercially, and that the job that I have writing software to put food on my table shouldn't even exist, and you realise that maybe OSS isn't all that "non-evil" to begin with.
I wish I lived in that perfect world where everyone worked in harmony and unicorns fart rainbows. But we don't. Fact is we need money to live. I write software for money. If the open source movement thinks I'm the evil one for trying to pay for things, maybe they've got some learning to do about the real world.
Re:To be fair (Score:5, Insightful)
You can't be ignorant of the fact that it's pretty much impossible to do client-side web development and not test with (3 versions of) IE.
You also have to do testing with several versions of Firefox. Damn that Mozilla! We should all hate them!!! (More seriously: what's your point? If you don't suck at your job, you have to test with all currently-supported somewhat-popular browsers.)
And in many corporate environments, you're still essentially forced to use Windows.
That's because your corporation chose Microsoft products, because Microsoft products generally are much better than the competition in corporate environments. Apple's always ignored corporations, and Linux solutions are disjointed and disorganized.
Did your company have a choice? Of course, they could have gone with some other solution. They chose not to... that's not Microsoft's fault.
But they don't ever really try to bend the whole industry that direction, and the only reason they have as much influence as they do is the same reason anybody who comes up with a good idea or a successful model does.
Sure they have. Look what they did with the record companies... remember when Amazon was fighting to price music at less than $0.99, they were fighting against Apple and the record companies Apple had brainwashed into selling all tracks for at least $0.99.
I suppose you could argue (using the loophole you helpfully included) that Amazon's music store wasn't "a good idea or successful model."
But let's back up a step... Windows (Windows Mobile if you like) ecosystem vs. iPhone ecosystem:
Has your Windows computer ever stopped you from downloading and installing a program because that program contained a feature the OS already had?
Has your Windows box ever prevented you from paying for software that contained pictures of titties?
Has Microsoft done anything, ever, on purpose to break compatibility with older or competitive software? (Apple does this about every week, BTW.)
No, no, and no.
Oh, and here's something else to think about: why do I have to install a gigantic application that sells music and movies so I can update the *firmward* of a cellphone? Why does that gigantic application also install a media library I don't want or need? Why does it try to stealthily install a web browser I didn't fucking ask for? Why do I now have some strange zero-config service running beyond my firewall? Apple's software situation sucks-- it's the worst "software taking over your computer" experience since RealPlayer circa 2004.
Re:To be fair (Score:2, Insightful)
What are your qualifications that makes your insights about the issue better than the courts' opinions?
Re:To be fair (Score:5, Insightful)
This isn't like global warming, where a relatively small group can fuck it up for everyone; if people didn't like the iPhone, they just wouldn't buy it. And it's great that there are other options out there.
Re:What are they doing again? (Score:3, Insightful)
And that Palm silliness is ridiculous. They didn't have any brilliant technology, they had their device identify itself as an iPod, which is in violation of USB standards. Apple's updates just helped enforce the standards. It's easy enough for third parties such as Palm to make their own app that interfaces into the iTunes library via the easily parse-able XML file that drives the program; there was no reason for Palm to break the USB standard.
Your other points are reasonable enough, but again, Apple is not Microsoft. They may become that bad one day. It's always possible. But there is, as of yet, no comparison.
Re:Lack of credibility (Score:1, Insightful)
One who was waiting for a high-tech non-crippled phone to hit the market? Phones that don't suck are extremely new; waiting until a year ago is a sign he is a technologist. If you have used personal computers, you're going to want a phone that is at least as good as a 25 year old personal computer. Non-technologists are the kind of people who were waiting in line to buy Windows 95 and the iPhone, and the techies were the guys who looked at those and decided to not take a step into the past.
Pragmatism Pragmatism Pragmatism Pragmatism! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:To be fair (Score:5, Insightful)
It's funny, you know. I can't remember one single occasion where Microsoft actually used its control of Windows to specifically prevent a competitor's product from functioning on a PC.
You apparently weren't involved in the industry in the late 1980's and early 1990's. Lotus 1-2-3 and DR-DOS are among the (then) highly discussed cases. Proving intention is a difficult thing, but with all the fuss over time that Microsoft's come to make over backward compatibility, it's a pretty big stretch to claim that they didn't test against what was at the time fairly popular software.
I also can't remember this fabled golden age when ipods and itunes were "quite usable with non-Apple products".
I've never had a problem putting music I didn't buy from Apple on an iPod. I've never had a problem getting music I bought from Apple out of their ecosystem, as they included a "burn to CD option." That's before you consider some of the various hacks out there that will let you move whatever you like on and off an iPod w/o having to use iTMS (or even replace the iPod software entirely) and/or crack their DRM.
But again, that's beside the point. Apple's never used whatever market power they've had to ensure that you didn't have an alternative to their music player, or their music format, or their music store.
As for your underlying thesis, it is immensely naive. "ipod" and "mp3 player" are more or less synonymous for most non-tech people I know.
But not because they threatened anyone or made deals to eliminate competitors. Largely because they're good at marketing campaigns and producing products most non-tech people like to use.
Re:What are they doing again? (Score:2, Insightful)
iTunes works as long as Apple says it's ok, not if anything actually knows how to interact with iTunes. Palm does know how and kept programming to make it work. It was Apple that kept altering iTunes to purposely break that connection to wall out Palm since they didn't want to jump through Apple's hoops.
Eh... Palm was connecting to iTunes by faking its usb vendor id, imposting as a genuine Apple device. This technique is heavily frowned upon by the USB Implementers Forum, no matter how noble the cause. It's like the usb equivalent of identity theft. So i'm afraid Palm is no saint either.
Re:To be fair (Score:4, Insightful)
You either are too young to remember, or you have a short memory.
Microsoft went out of their way to maintain compatibility with their own older software. But until recently they always tried to block competition intentionally. Although Windows 3.1 ran perfectly on DR-DOS http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DR-DOS [wikipedia.org], it was returning an non-fatal error message, in effect convincing users there was something wrong with DR-DOS. Eventually Novell gave up on DR-DOS and sold it to Caldera (now called SCO). The ensuing lawsuit was settled out of court sometime in 2000 for $155 million, with Novell and Caldera sharing the profits. This is just one example.
When they couldn't outright deny competitors access, Microsoft's policy was embrace, extend, extinguish. Internet Explorer 4 and 5 were NOT standards compliant. I remember running Mozilla M18 and encountering sites that would only render in IE properly, that is if Mozilla wasn't blocked outright. How is that not purposely blocking competing software? Only after FireFox started gaining traction did Microsoft release standards compliant browsers.
The point is today Microsoft is a better company because the competition forced them to open up and listen to their clients. Remove competitive pressure and I promise you they'll revert to their old policies.
Re:To be fair (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:To be fair (Score:2, Insightful)
You hit the nail on the head... What developers need to understand is that they [users] don't care about "openness" "extensibility" and all of the metaphors that developers like to throw around.
Users care about one thing... Can I use the product? Which interestingly is not one of the questions that developers seem to raise.
Re:To be fair (Score:3, Insightful)
Funny you mention automatic transmissions...
Have you looked at the transmission of a Ferrari? Or an Alfa Rameo? Drum roll...
Its an automatic! Ok, Ok, its a choose your gear automatic. Even in Formula 1 the days of clutching and shifting are long gone. These days most high end cars have something called tiptronic. My Mercedes has this. It is quite impressive actually. Its an automatic when you are lazy, but can be shifted when needed.
Thus this slagging of Apple is pretty pointless. Since if we were to mince our metaphors, Linux would have an automatic transmission by now...
The first law of Slashdot (Score:4, Insightful)
Slashdot as a group is ALWAYS against what you are for.
Slashdot is filled with hippies/gun nuts.
Slashdot is filled with rabid republicans/demented democrats.
Slashdot is filled with MS apologists/BSD freaks/Apple fanboys. They are all seen as silly by the enlightened linux users who are well above this kind of shameful name calling what are after all their fellow human beings even if they are obviously less evolved.
Slashdot is filled with Trek nerds/People that hate Trek for being nerdy/Hate trek for not being nerdy enough.
Slashdot is filled with virgins/people who lie about having had sex.
Oh and the best way to make a claim that slashdot is against you? Claim you are going to be modded down for saying it. Then when you are modded up, don't change your mind.
Re:To be fair (Score:2, Insightful)
"Microsoft was never and is not a monopoly."
Show me your JD in law, please, just so I know a person with REAL FUCKING AUTHORITY IN THE FIELD IS SPEAKING. Also, read the NYT Analysis United States vs. Microsoft.
Re:To be fair (Score:3, Insightful)
If these Apple products become very successful, the landscape changes. Others will follow. Let's say at some point a majority of devices will be closed media devices. Now people like Steve Jobs control the Net. For example, say you are a small company from Israel with the idea for the next killer app. You release the app and see what is going to happen. This is innovation. The app is called ICQ. Wait, that already happened, not ICQ, but a new killer app. But now Steve Jobs, Rupert Murdoch and friends control the Net, and simply say "no" to its release because it fuzzes with their universe. Innovation died, freedom died.
Re:To be fair (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, there is something inherently wrong with it. Are you intentionally ignoring everything that's being said? Here's a brief refresher: Lock-in, crippleware, no multitasking, iTunes.
Re:To be fair (Score:3, Insightful)
Dude, that was his point!
Compare this,
>> It wasn't OK for Microsoft, because their implementations sucked. People are willing to forgive Apple because it works well for them.
with this,
>> The root hatred of Microsoft is that they kicked everyone's ass with arguably inferior products like DOS/Windows3, VisualBasic, MS-Access and so on.
-dZ.
Re:What are they doing again? (Score:3, Insightful)
And that Palm silliness is ridiculous. They didn't have any brilliant technology, they had their device identify itself as an iPod, which is in violation of USB standards. Apple's updates just helped enforce the standards. It's easy enough for third parties such as Palm to make their own app that interfaces into the iTunes library via the easily parse-able XML file that drives the program; there was no reason for Palm to break the USB standard.
I'm considered an Apple fan among my friends. But that whole paragraph is so stupid -- particularly the sentence I marked up -- that it bears repeating. RDF/Stockholm Syndrome in action. If MS pulled shit like that (and I'm not sure they have) I doubt anybody would be in a rush to defend them.
Sad propaganda from the Chief of the Nerd Police (Score:3, Insightful)
All you need to ask yourself is why did he even say the word "iPhone" at all? He just got hired by Google. WTF has iPhone got to do with anything? Seriously, ask yourself that. None of the answers are good for Google.
The misinformation was also very sad, since he is someone who has contributed mightily in the past. He should at least have the standards of a Gizmodo review. It was sad to see him say the Internet is locked down on iPhone when it is clearly not in any way locked down, nor is it proprietary like Microsoft or Adobe. It was also sad to see him say that iPhone has limited the conversation on the Internet when it's clearly drawn an even larger audience to the conversation, providing many people with the first Internet device that they could master, causing many people to discover text messaging or Twitter and so on for the first time. Not only that but these are the very first native app purchases and installs for many users. Also sad that he thinks the successful, popular, and malware-free iPhone App Store should change to be more like the fragmented, unpopular, malware-serving Android Market. And he clearly doesn't understand that App Store is not the only place to get iPhone apps, it is only 1 of 2 app platforms on iPhone ... App Store is entirely optional. The other platform is totally open, totally unmanaged, totally unmediated, uses open API's, and apps are installed from any arbitrary HTTP server. The alternative is there already if App Store is not for you. Why does it bother the Nerd Police so much that users on iPhone have their own choice of either managed or unmanaged apps? With all that has happened with Windows malware and botnets, why is it so important that *phone users* should be exposed to a native malware risk?
But this is the guy who said he would never type on a virtual keyboard and how awful iPhone was for having that, how stupid the users were for not being able to type on the device (he imagined) until he got a G1 with a much worse virtual keyboard than iPhone and said it was OK, he could live with it. So it's actually not surprising to see him talking out of his ass rather than actually trying the gear, learning about it, finding out about it.
Imagine if Google had hired a hardware chief instead, and announced they were making a "true Google phone" like so many have asked for. I think that would have been a much more interesting move, and they could have done it without saying "iPhone." Well, maybe not. Too bad.
Re:To be fair (Score:2, Insightful)
It's very much like global warming. There's a very loud group that don't seem to care that it doesn't affect them yet, and (if true or not) will make everyone pay for it now.
There, fixed that for you.
Re:What are they doing again? (Score:3, Insightful)
The fact is that the iTunes Client is the only interface to the iTunes Store, and iPod's and other Apple devices enjoy the special status of being the only ones with integrated syncing via that iTunes Client.
If Microsoft got a big hit in the MP3 player market first, with its own big hit store, with its own DRM and non-interoperability with competitors, people would be still be bitching about it a decade after Microsoft got fined for anti-trust.
If Microsoft then produced a big-hit client for their competitors operating systems that ninja-installed several other unrelated products when it updated, one of which was so unstable that it caused kernel crashing and even when functioning properly eats up CPU and spams the local network with traffic, you would never ever hear the end of that.
But its Apple, so people welcome these things with a big fat "Bonjour!"
Re:To be fair (Score:2, Insightful)
Sorry, I'm not buying into the paranoid conspiracy theory. The fact is that the release version of the software did not have the bug, so stop getting your panties in a knot over a fucking minor fucking bug that happened 20 fucking years ago.
Get the fuck over it already.
Re:To be fair (Score:3, Insightful)
I find this post interesting. You claim to know all the answers, and they're just what they should be to support your emotional claims.
The iPad is simple. We're thinking of getting iPads for my son's grandmothers, since it's about at their level of computer acumen. Exactly why it was made that way is open to question (and you provide no sources, just blatant assertions), but it really doesn't matter for the end effect.
The walled garden provides security, regardless of what it was intended for. Nor have I seen evidence that Apple makes significant profit from the iTunes store; Apple financial reports (which are probably reasonably accurate) say otherwise, and it's really hard to make much money off a 30 cent cut when you're handling a credit card transaction. Therefore, it's very likely that the iTunes store is, oddly enough, what Apple claims it is: a way of making Apple hardware more attractive, and not there for profit. I don't know why you claim it's for lock-in, since Apple's idiosyncratic use of Objective-C and Cocoa already makes it difficult to write cross-platform phone apps.
Your argument as to why Apple didn't implement tethering is patent nonsense. The iPhone had the physical ability to tether from the start, long before Apple came up with its pricing strategy for the iPad 3G. Moreover, Apple would be better off if I bought an iPhone and a base iPad rather than no iPhone and an iPad 3G. Nor does Apple prohibit tethering in all markets; I'd think the people responsible for banning it are AT&T (if you're going to try to tell me that cell phone providers are sweetness and light, you'll owe me a new keyboard).
And, despite all this, you claim that those who disagree with you are consistently and intentionally wrong.
And, despite all that, you're showing a (4, Insightful) right now. There's irrationality on Slashdot, but methinks it isn't what you claim it is.
Re:To be fair (Score:3, Insightful)
Interestingly enough you've summed up the whole Flash debacle in two sentences.
Some users like me - want Flash and Java, but the developer of the iPhone decided they didn't want me to have it.
Apple apologists turn around and try to convince me I don't need either of those technologies to be happy.
Which in turn - I end up getting an android phone because they do support both.
Apple in turn wonders why Android is the largest growing phone platform last quarter (which it was).
Re:What are they doing again? (Score:3, Insightful)
They could do what The Missing Sync does - funnily enough, the software that came about because Palm abandoned the Mac platform in the first place, so a 3rd party piece of software was needed to sync your Palm device.
http://www.markspace.com/products/pre/mac-features.html [markspace.com]
They didn't need to write an iTunes replacement - they just needed to go the proper route to write a piece of software that would allow the Pre to sync, but spoofing Apple's vendor ID was cheaper that either writing their own software to interface with iTunes (and iCal/Entourage/Address Book etc), or bundling copies of The Missing Sync with Palm Pres that they sold.
There are documented ways to sync on the Mac. None of the are of the form "1. spoof Apple's vendor ID, 2.?????? 3. Profit". Interoperation exists, it's just not seamless unless you write an interface - iTunes doesn't do it all for you like it does with the iPod/iPhone.
Re:To be fair (Score:1, Insightful)
and that serve absolutely no other purpose
Or maybe you're too stupid to think of a purpose? Heh, another data point of the fantastic stupidity of anti-ms trolls.
Seriously, tell me *that* is just a bug!
Learn to use google. This has been explained over 5 years ago.
http://blogs.msdn.com/larryosterman/archive/2004/08/12/213681.aspx [msdn.com]
Re:To be fair (Score:4, Insightful)
This whole "if you don't like it that's your opinion" crap is getting ridiculous.
Yes, we realize that products are made for diverse markets, and people have different priorities. But if we can't call bullshit when we see it what's the point of having a forum of discussion.
Back to the topic:
The iPad is a nice device. But there are a lot of things inherently wrong with it. And I find it worrying that Apple, otherwise often a pioneer in technology is capable of ruining an otherwise good device and wants to severely restrict what I do with it. I think there's something very wrong with that. Even if I'd never contemplate buying an iPad.
Re:To be fair (Score:3, Insightful)
It's easy to name something that users should care about: If Apple decides what applications are allowed, they're free to prohibit applications which implement the functionality of Apple applications in a better way. If competitors can't improve the system, that's something that I care about both as a user and a developer.