There's plenty to say on this topic, but I'm going to keep it brief.
Long story short, I will always, always prefer open standards and community driven moderation of quality over proprietary mediums who have their content governed by a single entity. However, a commentator on NPR this morning drew up an apt analogy that makes me understand, to an extent, why some people are perfectly happy using the knee-capped system Apple has in place. He noted that using an iPhone/Pad is much like belonging to a gated community. Standards are put in place to ensure that your perfect little existence remains as unblemished as possible; and if you're willing to deal with the inconveniences and the isolation, that can be a fine life. It's just certainly not for me.
It's also worth noting that, in most gated communities, the residents are either allowed to be part of the decision making or at least have the possibility of becoming part of the board that makes the rules. No such luck here. As so many have noted, Apple has seemingly become the Big Brother it pretended to be rebelling against in the (in)famous 1984 ad; going so far as to tell us which generally inoffensive, scientific words cannot go in our book descriptions. Nobody really cares, though. Apple is doing it for The Greater Good (The Greater Good).
Oh well, I just hope that there are enough of us who aren't willing to sacrifice free access to information that the market will continue to count us as worthwhile and that Apple doesn't get big enough in the field of pervasive computing to kill Net Neutrality in a way that service providers never dreamed possible. Long live Google.
1 comment:
This isn't really about software or hardware, though. Android isn't any slicker software-wise than the iPhone, and I'm sure that the iPad's UI will trump the WePad and the Adam on many accounts. What upsets me about Apple is almost entirely ideological, and I'm frustrated to no end that it's apparently necessary to wage this war of ideology is on the proxy ground of technology.
It's why I'm so worried about the patent suits against HTC. People will always make sacrifices for convenience, even if unwittingly; and if Android powered devices are legally prohibited from providing the conveniences consumers have grown to expect, then Apple gets to interpret their increased sale margins as a unanimous endorsement of their highly regulated, entirely proprietary mindset.
I, for one, will make the sacrifices needed to have open standards for as long as the market makes it an option.
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