
I Don't Want To Be Part of Your Ecosystem - edent
http://shkspr.mobi/blog/2012/11/i-dont-want-to-be-part-of-your-fucking-ecosystem/
======
DanielBMarkham
There are three things I want to do with PC technology: store stuff, run
programs (which may mean consuming the things I've stored), and stay connected
with friends.

None of these should be dependent on location, hardware, or my personal
affiliations. Geesh, it's almost 2013 folks. I should be able to walk up to a
panel at a store, have it recognize me, and have all of my stuff available. Do
whatever I would do at home using my PC if I like. Walk away from the panel
and it resets. There's no clue or trail that I was even there.

We keep trying to use these metaphors about how the internet should work. It's
a walled garden. It's a bazzar. It's a type of newspaper subscription. It's a
club for friends. Each metaphor works okay -- for a while. But then the people
making money off the metaphor start trying to make sure that we never grow
past their little idea of happiness.

The tech community is smarter than this. Location-free, hardware-free, non-
walled technology is the goal. Let's start going there.

~~~
mbesto
_I should be able to walk up to a panel at a store, have it recognize me, and
have all of my stuff available. Do whatever I would do at home using my PC if
I like. Walk away from the panel and it resets. There's no clue or trail that
I was even there._

How is it supposed to recognize you, but then have no clue or trail that you
were even there?

 _The tech community is smarter than this. Location-free, hardware-free, non-
walled technology is the goal. Let's start going there._

And who's going to pay for the platform to do all of that?

How do you keep the weeds out of your garden? Simple, build a wall. There is a
reason walled gardens work.

~~~
wildgift
That last sentence was hilarious. Weed seeds are in almost all soil. They
arrive there on the wind. What constitutes a "weed" is that it's a plant
that's not desired in a specific location. What is, and is not, a weed, is
entirely contextual.

The reason for walling a garden is to create a microclimate that protects the
garden from the wind. It's like a greenhouse. It's protection for species that
would otherwise not survive in the area.

The way to get non-walled technology is government intervention. That's how
the internet was invented. Then, as it was deployed and commercialized, it
"won out" because it was open, while services like AOL, Delphi, GEnie,
Prodigy, Apple's eWorld, CompuServe, and MSN were closed, walled garden online
services.

~~~
freshhawk
You can't write out that coherent of an argument and expect any free market
ideologues to answer you.

Cognitive dissonance is painful!

------
bambax
The worst offender is actually Amazon. I just bought a Kindle Fire HD and boy
am I disappointed! The only apps it runs are from Amazon App Store... but only
the local one in your country. I can't access the US Amazon App store from
France!!

And of course one can't transfer Kindle books from one account to another.

The answer is jailbreaking and de-DRMising; it's a pain of course but it's
very much worth it.

~~~
pkorzeniewski
I've recently bought for the first time an DRM protected ebook, from Kobo.
Never again will I make this mistake, it's just ridiculous that I can't
download a simple PDF file and read it on any device I want using any software
I want, without having to install a stupid, bloated app.

No, I don't want to notify people on FB or Twitter about books I'm reading.
No, I don't want to see achievements. No, I don't need personal stats. No, I
don't want to join a club. I just want to read the damn book I just bought!

~~~
teeja
Great choice. There's software to remove the DRM from books, of course ... but
the best way to remove it is to shop at places that don't use it.

------
npsimons
_The only thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history.
\-- Hegel

I know guys can't learn from yesterday ... Hegel must be taking the long view.
\-- John Brunner, "Stand on Zanzibar"_

Does anyone else remember this little thing called "the PC wars", where you
couldn't use floppies from a Mac on a Wintel machine, and you actually had to
care about what version of whichever word processor you were using because it
might not be compatible? And then some crazy weirdo with a beard starts
warning that hey, maybe user choice is important enough to be elevated to a
freedom? And everyone predictably laughs him down.

But he was right, and he continues to be right, all while the fools forget
history to their own detriment.

------
jasonlingx
Wait, whose fault is this DRM thing? Device makers or the music and movie
industry? <http://www.apple.com/es/hotnews/thoughtsonmusic/>

------
jacquesm
It's a dilemma. For now there is good money to be made in these ecosystems,
there are people that are _really_ raking it in (and in an above-board way).
At the same time you're setting yourself up with your head on the chopping
block, after you've sharpened the blade with your labor.

Personally I would never build something that is not as much as possible stand
alone (so without reliance on some third party controlled eco-system, of
course everything needs hosting, bandwidth and power but those are
commodities). But I have to counter that with the fact that I realize I'm
losing out on quite a few opportunities.

Choices, choices. Long term vs short term.

------
burriko
This is one of the reasons I love services like Spotify and Netflix. They have
no devices in the race, and tend to have client software for almost every
platform. I can switch between phones, tablets and operating systems and still
access to the same music and movies.

I could even drop Spotify and switch to Rdio if I wanted, and all I would lose
are my playlists (not a big deal to me, but may be to some). These services
don't lock me to devices, and I also don't feel locked into the services.

~~~
manaskarekar
> This is one of the reasons I love services like Spotify and Netflix. They
> have no devices in the race, and tend to have client software for almost
> every platform. I can switch between phones, tablets and operating systems
> and still access to the same music and movies.

You're joking right? Netflix? Only recently have we seen murmurs of having
some hacky way of getting Netflix to run on Linux.

Microsoft Silverlight lock in was, IMHO, a huge slap to Linux. They're as bad
an example of "services that support every platform" as can be.

[http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/09/netflix-no-change-in-
our-...](http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/09/netflix-no-change-in-our-plans-
for-linux)

------
ChristianMarks
I work in scientific programming for environmental science. Whenever I see or
hear the word 'ecosystem' used to refer to a technology platform, I wonder who
is eating whom.

~~~
teeja
There are predators in the works, aren't there? The term is somewhat
subjective, but not very much so to the people who feel like they're lunch.

------
eykanal
These kinds of posts really bug me. Users don't give a rat's left buttock
whether the "ecosystem" is closed or open or anything in between. They want
something which works well and lets them buy stuff they want. Simple
observation of consumer behavior has shown over and over again that people
_simply don't care_ about whether their stuff is tied to Apple or Google, or
whether their location is being tracked by Twitter or Verizon, or whether
they'll have a difficult time moving their music to a different device later
on.

If this was written as another post trying to convince _developers_ to avoid
developing for closed ecosystems it wouldn't as bad; evangelists can be a good
thing, even if he's fighting a losing battle. However, as this post seems to
be geared towards _consumers_ , it's almost completely pointless ranting.

~~~
edent
Author here. I'm sorry you feel that way. I think users _should_ care. These
monocultures we're breeding are - I think - harmful to society and the economy
- see this excellent article about predatory pricing
[http://www.engadget.com/2012/11/03/editorial-amazon-and-
goog...](http://www.engadget.com/2012/11/03/editorial-amazon-and-google-are-
undermining-mobile-pricing/)

I'm naive enough to think that we can change people's minds.

~~~
eykanal
I hear you, sorry if I came across too harsh. While you may or may not be
correct, I don't think these posts do anything to help the situation, and
particularly given that you don't propose any suggestions it comes across (to
me) as ranting. I personally think that nowadays, given where the industry is
headed and how consumers have demonstrated their interests, it's completely
unreasonable to expect the purchase of computer software to be similar to that
of durable goods (e.g., your oven), and I don't see that changing without a
sufficiently strong business model supporting whatever alternative that you
can devise.

~~~
edent
Oh, it's totally a rant. I'm just a lone blogger trying to see if anyone feels
the same way I do.

It just disappoints me that industry is trying to move to a "buy everything
from us - because that's the only guarantee it will work" system.

Good discussing things with you.

------
irahul
> On a mobile phone network in the UK, you can use any phone you want.

That's the same in India. Standalone iPhones aren't affordable to a vast
majority. If they come in tied with an operator where you walk in a store and
get an iPhone with a small payment, and a monthly plan which covers your
calls, data and phone installment, many people will happily buy it.

A separation of service provider and phone is good, but the customer has other
data points to evaluate as well.

I was wondering though. From the way author emphasizes the separation of
service and hardware, can't you buy an iPhone in US which isn't linked to a
provider? You don't have buying phones and buying sim cards separately
anymore?

~~~
edent
I'm the author. I'm UK based, so I can't speak for the USA. Over here, you can
buy the iPhone and SIM separately - or you can get them in a bundle.

------
wting
I think Google Wave is an undeserved mention in the list of killed off DRM
services.

First of all, Google supported data export from Google Wave[1]. Additionally,
Google open sourced the project and it's available as Apache Wave[2] or as a
protocol[3].

[1] [http://googlewave.blogspot.com/2010/11/multiple-wave-
export....](http://googlewave.blogspot.com/2010/11/multiple-wave-export.html)

[2] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_Wave>

[3] <http://www.waveprotocol.org/>

~~~
takluyver
I'm still amazed that almost everyone just laughed at Wave. We're still trying
to break the hold of a proprietary document format (.doc), and now platforms
like Google Docs have a proprietary protocol for real-time changes. Google
offered us an open, federated version of that protocol - I think we should
have seized it with both hands.

------
mchanson
I'm annoyed that its difficult and time consuming to move to a new house in a
new city. I mean you have to hire movers, pack up all your stuff, and find a
new place to live.

~~~
jiggy2011
Well yes, but those are physical barriers that society has strived to solve by
inventing transportation etc.

The author is complaining about more arbitrary restrictions such as in certain
countries where you must fill out paperwork to inform the government that you
intend to move.

------
janus
Don't you know there's an app called Doubletwist that syncs your itunes
collections to android phones? That music bought from the iTunes store is DRM-
free?

------
tomelders
So in a nutshell, Some chap doesn't seem to know the history of how music and
movies became available online. So it's Apple's fault.

------
pothibo
I would submit to you that the reason why Apple is what it is today is because
software & hardware are intertwined.

------
PaulHoule
The odd thing is that people who hate walled gardens also hate systems like
Ultraviolet which are meant to brdige them.

You could criticize Ultraviolet for being a DRM system, but if you look
closely at it, you'll see they've worked pretty hard to build a system that
prevents casual copying while being pretty fair to the consumer

~~~
Riesling
How is that odd?

Replacing a walled garden with a walled park does not improve the situation a
lot for people who do not like walls at all.

------
nicholassmith
I'm pretty invested in apps for iOS. I'm okay about this, I don't begrudge
being locked into an ecosystem as I made a choice to be in that ecosystem.

I bought a piece of software on a Windows machine a while back, which was a
PC, but because it was Windows software it's not usable now I use a Mac. It's
locked to an ecosystem. We can all look back at that shiny, lovely past with
our rose-tinted glasses, but it's a fallacy. For the most part you were as
locked to an ecosystem then as you are now. There's plenty of people who
bought music from Microsoft in DRM protected WMA files that ended up being
locked in.

And games. And books. And software. And movies. And x. And y. And z.
Smartphones are a microcosm of the exact same thing from the PC days, we just
get fancy and call it an ecosystem and pretend like it's a new, bad thing
that's been invented by Apple to horsewhip us.

~~~
MatthewPhillips
> I'm pretty invested in apps for iOS. I'm okay about this, I don't begrudge
> being locked into an ecosystem as I made a choice to be in that ecosystem.

That would be great, if it were easy or even feasible to be a member of _no
ecosystem_ , but it's really not.

~~~
sbuk
There are always web apps. I'd argue that they are as close to a non-ecosystem
as you can get...

------
delwin
I haven't really had problems with this. I have an Android phone, an iPod, and
dual boot Ubuntu and OS X. Google Music syncs iTunes to my phone via the cloud
just fine; the iPod naturally syncs with iTunes. On Ubuntu I just use Google
Music via the browser, or Pandora.

The tech community is _already_ smart enough to deal with their stuff. And the
consumer community doesn't seem to care much about being locked inside a
brand; they don't know any better, for some reason, to most people, it makes
sense that if you have a Mac, you need an iPad, not a Kindle Fire. Or if you
get a Kindle Fire, you simply adjust your expectations accordingly.

Obviously it's unethical for companies to do this, but when was the last time
megacorps operated with any higher morality than economics demanded?

------
dschiptsov
Why now? All this was obvious at a time of first iPods..)

------
dade_
Media is what ties the uninformed to an eco-system. There are more options for
paid DRM-Free media today and several DRM systems are trivial to break. I
remember people that had an iPod and MP3 player because they thought that
their Napster music couldn't work on their iPod and didn't know how to add
them to their library.

More telling is the author's complaints about the complexity of integrating
his Android device to a NAS, etc. It is the pre-built integration between
Apple devices that sell their ecosystem and keeps people coming back for more.
All of the integration in the world is meaningless if it doesn't work when
your friends are over or it crashes halfway though a movie (Windows Media
Center anyone...)

------
mykosmos
Agreed. This is exactly why I don't buy "new" hardware like a tablet.

~~~
seqastian
you are missing out

~~~
dualogy
See, this I'm not getting about tablets. What am I missing out on? Basically
just when Laptops had hit a critical milestone of being thinner than ever,
light(weight)er than ever -- MBA and Ultrabooks and so on -- at that crucial
point tablets "happen" (iPads first, sure) and everybody is totally into them.

It's been a few years and their value proposition is the same as as a few
years back: yay, vastly less power/performance, lower resolution, crappier
sound, no keyboard, and just about equally painless in terms of weight or
form-factor. Sure they're a bit smaller and lighter but just at a point in
time where the weight and size of current-gen netbooks/ultrabooks/notebooks
simply isn't an issue anymore _anyway_.

Smartphones, I get them. Neat to have a Maps app with a phone attached in your
pocket. And commuters can play Sudoku on them, fine.

But tablets? What's the big appeal about them? Why have they become such a
popular gadget for all their shortcomings compared to same-generation
net/ultrabooks? I don't think I'll ever get it...

But since we're on Hacker News... what exactly is a Hacker Newser missing out
on by forgoing a tablet?

~~~
usaar333
Honestly, for a typical Hacker Newser, not much.

The people I've seen using a tablet most expansively are some combination of:

A. people never fully comfortable with a full laptop (meaning they effectively
aren't losing much functionality by switching), in fact are gaining from the
simplification of features they never really got

B. People doing field work, where a tablet's weight and form factor is
strongly superior to a laptop (lighter, can operate standing up easily, etc.)

C. People who like to surf the web in bad, but find using the form factor of a
laptop too awkward and a smartphone screen too small

~~~
wildgift
D. People afraid of, or who never learned to, install applications on their
computer.

~~~
whichdan
This seems to portray them in a negative light, but I think the lack of
installers/uninstallers is wonderful.

------
ikken
That's the reason I really hope most of the software will be webbrowser-based
in the future. I know that right now native apps give you a better overall
experience but too often they pull you into the walled garden of hardware
vendor.

There are solutions like phonegap etc. that let you write semi-native apps
that use embedded browser inside it, but with HTML5 and successors I believe
it will be possible to just have everything run in a browser, setting everyone
free from any vendor specific solutions.

~~~
edent
Well.... yes and no. What happens if Google Docs goes down - or is killed?

~~~
steelcm
I think it all comes down to standards, as the OP mentioned in the article.
Google services usually support open standards (ODF for google docs), which
makes migrating your data, when the service closes, a whole lot easier.

If only there was an open standard for "offline" apps that could be used on
android, iphone, iOS, windows, linux...etc with the same end user experience.

~~~
meaty
There was one called java once. Oh wait...

------
hcarvalhoalves
The truth is that only the illuminati care about inter-compatibility and data
freedom. Most people (myself included) value more something that works, not a
hodgepodge of solutions from 15 different vendors where nothing integrates
with nothing.

Provide _both_ inter-compatibility and a good user experience and you win
everybody. Android promised that, but failed.

------
thatusertwo
Not to suggest breaking the law, but pirated music, movies and books are not
locked into any device or ecosystem.

------
flyinglizard
Agreed, and much of this would not have been possible without the draconian
government protection of DRM (such as in DMCA). I could totally see some kind
of PC application that would liberate all your iTunes, Kindle etc. material
(which you legally own, mind), but it's illegal under the current laws.

------
paulsutter
Stream or rent media. "Buying" songs in an online service is as quaint as
maintaining a collection of 8-track tapes. The "buy" option for movies and TV
shows exists purely to extract extra money from anal retentives (what
percentage of "purchased" shows ever get watched a second time?)

~~~
voyou
Yeah, there's no chance I'll want to listen to a song in ten years when the
record label that owns the copyright has gone out of business and so can't
license it to whatever streaming service is new and trendy. No chance of that
at all.

------
zerostar07
The same thing that happened when vinyls and cassettes went bust. Content is
ephemeral (except for books!)

~~~
DanBC
And some e-books are now ephemeral because of the DRM or licensing.

That's a weird idea to me.

------
geuis
I live in the Apple ecosystem for one simple reason. Out of every other
collection of technology items I could use for both work and entertainment,
Apple products are the least frustrating ones to use.

I value my time above everything else.

I used Windows for years. Built, repaired, and maintained Windows systems for
work. Setup and ran email servers. Even did some initial web development on
IIS servers.

I am 32 and visibly grayer than I probably should be. If you know me in
person, you can see it in my beard and in my hair when I let it get longer.

Getting nearly anything done with Windows has always been an exercise in
frustration for me. Tools, user interfaces, etc. Even their best products
always had something wrong, something just wasn't built right. One more little
speed bump to slow down what I want to do.

Eventually I switched to Macs about 6 years ago. I had used them as a kid and
it was easy, from that exposure, to switch back. Anything that needed terminal
tools to get done, just works. Lots and lots of open source projects that run
on Linux almost always just work on Mac OS. For the ones that don't work off
to bat, its usually easy to fix.

In terms of phones, I've stuck with iPhones since they came out. For the first
couple years, it was because there were no comparable products on the market
in term of fit and finish. Android was a swamp of sorrows for the longest
time. Any hardware companies made and slapped Android onto were just sorrows
layered onto junk devices that were a miserable experience to use.

I had the joy of working with various Android handsets and tablets a few years
ago for testing. It was good exposure that reinforced the simple "it works" of
the iPhone.

When the iPad came out, I was excited by it like millions of other people.
Oddly, while I still have my first-gen iPad and while I love it as a device,
it turns out its never been a form factor that I have really been able to
incorporate into my life. It wasn't that the iPad is a bad device, but rather
that it hasn't been a tool that I really needed. But its a great tool that
millions of other people have found to be very useful indeed. Any other
Android tablets just couldn't compare in usability or hardware fit, which is
why the earlier ones fell so flat.

More recently, I found the Windows Phone OS to be intriguing. A good friend
that works at MS showed me the first ones that came out. I rather liked the
fresh new take on a phone OS. Loved the interface. I seriously considered
switching over to one for a while. But then as I used it, the rough bits
showed through. Subpar hardware. Bad battery life. Random crashes. Oddly
incomplete UI choices that made some simple tasks frustrating to complete. So,
I kept my iPhone 4 for a long time.

Very recently, Windows 8. Metro UI. Looks great on a tablet, same nice looking
interface. A couple years had gone by and more than enough time had passed for
Microsoft to work out some of the early kinks. I excitedly bought a new copy
the day it came out and installed it on a spare machine at the office. The
installation went really smoothly.

But when I started using it, it was literally only a couple of minutes before
the "wtf" moments started. The biggest issues I saw immediately was that too
much of the UI is hidden away. I got very frustrated trying to do things like
switching between apps, using IE 10, getting away from the completely
anachronistic Desktop app. I tried installing some apps and some went to
Metro, others went to Desktop with no clear indication why. When I needed to
make some adjustments to system settings, it took me over 5 minutes to figure
out how to even get to the settings.

I'm also still really pissed with my nice long complex password being chopped
to 16 characters on Windows, Live, etc. Its fucking annoying.

Anyway, while I like the direction that MS is going, they still haven't gotten
their stuff together. Its not the same as it used to be, but the frustration
level is still there.

I've had an Xbox for years too. In its simplest form, I put a game disk in and
it loads up, and I play the game. But in the last few years, they've added all
of this extra stuff. New UI, music services, movie services, constant updates,
Kinect, etc. And while it all looks shiny, none of it really works together
that well. So, I almost never use my Xbox anymore because its just gotten too
complicated to do what I want, which is to simply play games. Ugh.

The non-Apple tech I use and love: Gmail, Ubuntu for servers, Dropbox, github,
Audible, Rdio, Netflix, torrents, Google Maps (PLEASE release an iOS app for
this!), and others.

Notice that at no point in this ramble do I mention Music or Movies as keeping
me with Apple. It literally has nothing to do with an "ecosystem". It just has
to do with building superior products that have the least frustration to
getting shit done. That's the sole thing you need to worry about when building
a product that people will love.

Be less frustrating than your competitors, and you have a good edge.

Lots of companies make individual products that are well polished. Only a few
make lots of products of high quality.

~~~
aneth4
This is pretty much my philosophy. People rant and rave about what you can
hack Linux and Android to do, without realizing that it's a hobby for them -
one that I don't enjoy. Maybe I'm too stupid, slow, or lazy, but I don't give
a shat if my phone can run apps that aren't in the app store - all the apps I
need are there.

I want stuff that doesn't cause me trouble and doesn't make me think. Every
time someone tries to tell me about all the stuff they can do in Windows or
Android that I can't do, I stare blankly and wonder why anyone cares.

------
colin_jack
Amazon is a bit of worry for me, I like the Kindle software especially being
able to use the Web version, but only being able to download (some of?) my
books in AZW3 format is a PITA that is making me think twice about buying
books from them in future.

~~~
mtgx
I hear that in the new Kindle Paperwhite you can't even add other type of
books anymore. Only Kindle ones.

~~~
colin_jack
Looks like it does still support mobi, and i'm guessing you can still use an
app like Calibre to load them onto it?

------
damian2000
For a lot of apps these days, you're only forced to use Android/iTunes to
actually pay for it initially, but then you can access your data from either;
I'm thinking of apps which store their data in the cloud - evernote, dropbox,
etc.

------
rmrfrmrf
Ohhhh, you are just _sooooooo_ edgy saying 'fuck' in your headline.

------
toddh
Resistance is futile.

~~~
zxcdw
So sad but so true.

Forever with GNU!

------
aklemm
Yes! Sounds awesome. Of course, it's unclear how such a system would produce
beautiful and easy-to-use products so that users clammer to use them.

------
adamgravitis
My brain had trouble parsing the headline:

I don't want to be part of your fucking (ecosystem) -vs- I don't want to be
part of your (fucking ecosystem)

~~~
edent
Well, we're all born out of an ecosystem of fucking - and I've no desire to
leave that :-)

------
michaelfeathers
As long as it is available I will buy physical media.

------
pretoriusB
> _Music, movies, TV, and podcast subscriptions. All tied up in Apple's little
> ecosystem. A very pretty noose to keep people chained to its hardware._

Really? Because, last time I checked, people mostly RENTED movies and series
off of iTunes -- not outright bought them (except some tiny majority of
bizaros). In which case there is nothing to be "tied to".

As for music, last time I checked, iTunes sells DRM-free music, something that
was first achieved for major music companies there, after Job's open letter on
matter. So you can move your music to Android just fine. And even if it wasn't
DRM-free (which IS) you can of course use your own DRM-free music collection
with iTunes, like the vast majority of people do.

And podcast subscriptions? Really? Aren't they available everywhere, anyway?

People buy the hardware because they like it, and bought it since the first
iPod, even before there even was an iTunes Store. Heck, they bought the iPhone
even before there were third party apps too.

~~~
heymishy
I think he means tied up more in the sense of its 'difficult' to move it for
the average user. sure you can pull out your content and sync it to android if
you know what your doing (read - tech savvy-ish) but the vast majority of the
users use iTunes and have never used anything else. It's these users that will
have the problems of being 'seemingly' locked into an ecosystem.. mainly
because they don't know (or care to learn) anything different and it becomes
too hard.

~~~
clarky07
What the heck does he want? Should Apple make iTunes work for all 50 thousand
different android devices too?

~~~
freehunter
Apple doesn't need to do anything to make iTunes work with other devices. In
fact, they go out of their way to make sure it doesn't. Palm figured out how
to make it work, and Apple figured out how to break it.

~~~
mitchty
Palm made it work? Isn't this the same hack where they advertised themselves
as an Apple device completely breaking the USB standard? They made it work by
breaking their own agreements to be USB certified.

~~~
freehunter
True. But that was Palm's decision. Apple was under no obligation to make any
changes to prevent Palm's questionable decision.

~~~
mitchty
Let me be clear here, advertising your device as another manufacturers is a
BAD precedent be setting. For any company.

It also violates the agreement companies agree to to be usb certified. What
Apple did afterwards to ensure only their devices were being advertised is
their own business. But lets be clear. Palm was in the wrong here. It doesn't
absolve Apples decisions, but I can see why they did what they did.

It also likely explains why Apple started doing drm-like authentication to its
devices.

~~~
freehunter
True. But that was Palm's decision. Apple was under no obligation to make any
changes to prevent Palm's questionable decision.

That's literally the only point I was making. Apple didn't need to do anything
to have other devices working with iTunes. Once they were, by whatever means,
Apple made the decision to make changes to further disallow it. Apple didn't
need to go out of their way to provide interoperability, but they did go out
of their way to break interoperability, no matter how the competitors achieved
it.

What Apple did wrong and what Palm did wrong are not part of my argument.

~~~
mitchty
Its a bit of a useless point then to be honest. Apple is under no obligation
to allow anyone to impersonate an iphone as a usb device with their software.

Apple making changes to disallow it were because they were breaking their usb
agreement to do it. You are not supposed to identify your devices as anything
but what they are. Explain to me how Apple is doing anything bad here because
of what Palm started doing? As mentioned elsewhere, the xml file itunes
generates is there for interoperability, Palm chose to do something they
should not have. There is a difference of "breaking interoperability" (sic),
and acting as if you are some other device to an operating system. Palm was
doing the latter, not the former.

------
iamtherockstar
You may not want to be part of an ecosystem, but every business ever wants you
to be in their ecosystem exclusively. If Amazon can keep your credit card on
hand, it makes it easier for you to buy things from them, whether they be
physical goods (how they hooked me) or digital goods (how they are trying very
hard to keep me).

I lobbied for a long time against DRM, and then I gave up, because I did want
some of the content that was only available via DRM. I'll probably regret that
the day Amazon decides to change the way their purchased movies work, or
iTunes decides that it's streaming only (like Amazon is currently). But the
fact is that unless I want to only consume Louis C.K. standup shows, it's
really hard to not have DRM.

I still buy physical media a lot of the time. I would assume Sony would still
make money on the Bluray licensing, the cost is passed on to me, but then I
have a copy of the movie with which to watch on any of my TVs or loan out to
someone else.

~~~
abecedarius
Contrary data point: the only DRM I regularly pay for is Netflix streaming,
and I could drop that without too much pain. (I do wish I could buy ebooks
more often instead of paper books.)

