
Serving at the Pleasure of the King - tmcdonald
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/10/serving-at-the-pleasure-of-the-king.html
======
cstross
_If Microsoft added a feature to Windows that duplicated a popular
application's functionality, developers would be screaming bloody murder and
rioting in the, er, blogs and web forums_

Utter rot.

This used to happen all the time in the 1980s and 1990s, before the DoJ anti
trust lawsuit really got rolling.

It was most obvious in office apps (ever wonder where the third-party spelling
checkers and grammar checkers went? Or the standalone mailmerge applications?
Microsoft added their functionality to Word and killed an entire add-on market
at a stroke each time they did so), but a load of that stuff happened in
Windows too (the graphical shell that became an OS in its own right). The most
flagrant late example was web browsing; the most recent one I can think of
(not being a Windows user) was their antivirus/malware add-in.

(Honestly ... young 'uns these days ... _wanders away mumbling into beard and
waving walking stick in the air_.)

~~~
tsotha
>This used to happen all the time in the 1980s and 1990s, before the DoJ anti
trust lawsuit really got rolling.

Yes, and the reason for the DOJ anti-trust lawsuit? Developers were screaming
bloody murder.

~~~
latch
Your parent's point is that the reason Microsoft doesn't do this as much now
isn't because they are more benevolent, it's because they were so over the top
tyrannical that they've been forced to stop.

~~~
redthrowaway
Not really. Microsoft really _is_ far less evil under Ballmer than Gates. It's
also less effective, less farsighted, and slower, but it is less evil.

~~~
0x12
I think it is just as evil, just less successful at implementing the evil
because Ballmer isn't half as smart as Gates was.

Even evil suffers from poor execution.

~~~
redthrowaway
I dunno. They've (more or less) embraced web standards, made overtures to the
OSS community with a bunch of commits to the linux kernel, and have generally
been a whole lot less monopolistic. Granted, Ballmer may want to be Gates and
lack the ability, but the end result is a far less scary beast.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
The commits to the kernel were to make it run in their VM, even if you
consider that a good thing (I'd say it's neither good nor bad) the patents
they're claiming to hold on Linux, and the patronising language they use in
connection with that, about people making use of their innovation is as evil
as anything they used to get up to.

------
sjs
What a long winded, and hyperbolic, story of doom.

Marco needs to get over his fears[1] and store the offline data in Documents.
It is user generated and is absolutely not transient nor re-downloadable given
that a core feature of Instapaper is offline reading.

Apple will get a deluge of bug reports and questions from all app devs that
make apps that need to cache content for offline use - but not back it up or
store it in iCloud - and will rectify the situation in some way. (I don't
think Instapaper is in that camp but that's kind of beside the point.)

I know that most people hold Apple to a higher standard than many other
companies but let's not forget Hanlon's Razor: "Never attribute to malice that
which is adequately explained by stupidity." This is merely an oversight.
Apple is never this hostile to the user experience, and the current guidelines
make for a positively horrid user experience. It will be rectified. Is there a
short-bets website? I'll make that bet any day.

[1] I think he was correct not to take chances in getting the first iOS 5
version out, but I hope that the minute it was "Processing for App Store" he
had a build ready for submission that stores content in Documents to feel out
the review team's reaction to it.

------
raganwald
Did I really just read Jeff complaining that Apple shipped something that
duplicates third-party behavior and compare them unfavorably to Microsoft in
that regard?

I won't excuse Apple for acting like a King, but I think Jeff should find
another poster boy for benevolent dictators. Microsoft is famous for
steamrolling third-party developers, both from their applications group and
their systems group.

I think this rant would read better if it complained about ALL proprietary
platforms and used Apple as an example, rather than disingenuously implying
that they are the rotten fruit in the barrel.

p.s. Joel Spolsky once said that companies always try to "Commoditize their
complements." If you as a developer can create something that adds value to
the platform in a broad way, it's inevitable that the platform owner is going
to want to commoditize it, either by giving it away or making it easy for your
competition to drive prices down to negligible levels.

Building it into the platform is the ultimate commoditization.

~~~
bcl
I don't think he was implying that Microsoft was any better than Apple in this
regard. He was pointing out that the complaints from developers has been
relatively mild compared to the outrage when Microsoft does the same thing.

~~~
raganwald
The complaints from Apple developers have been around forever. Waxing
nostalgic, I remember threads on the old Mousehole BBS about Apple and its
love-hate relationship with developers. The reaction to Apple steamrolling
Panic is classic, and there was a major furor over the dashboard and the way
it steamrolled third party widget frameworks.

I suspect that Jeff is in a Microsoft-centric culture, so he simply doesn't
spend as much time talking to Apple developers as he does Microsoft
developers, so of course he hears more from them. Likewise, there are way more
Windows developers than OS X developers, so you'll always hear more about
anything from them.

iOS is popular, so there ought to be plenty of developers out there in the
long tail. Maybe that's the real problem: Most developers are trying to grab a
little tiny piece of the pie with a niche side-project, so they don't have the
same perspective as someone who has employees and a big marketing budget sunk
into their business.

If this supposition is correct, you'll see the same dynamic with other walled
gardens from Microsoft and Google and whomever else gets into the "curated app
store" business.

~~~
glassx
> The complaints from Apple developers have been around forever.

I have a theory. Apple developers and users are as angry and outraged when
things break or their freedom is restricted, and they do complain (just look
at the support boards for Logic, Final Cut, Lion), but they're not as loud to
outsiders, because EVERY problem with Apple's ecosystem gets amplified 10x.

I still feel that after 10 years Apple still feels like an underdog to lots of
users and developers, and, despite occasional problems, people still love it
and want to protect it. Actually, I think the word is 'believe', and that's
crucial to Apple success. I mean, who else has such a huge community with so
many common goals today?

Funnily, I get the same vibes from the GNU/Linux community (oh, in both cases
in a very positive way, btw).

------
DanielBMarkham
It's tragically ironic that the very thing Microsoft would have been very
happy to do -- lock down windows and control all apps on it -- is what is
taken for normality everywhere else but windows.

I'm not trying to defend Microsoft. It's all too clear they have been very
anti-competitive. But if windows had the controls on it that apps on iOS had
we'd be hearing folks call for criminal prosecutions.

I understand the gee whiz factor of Apple. I own a bunch of Apple stuff and I
love their design. I also understand that if you don't control your garden,
all kinds of weeds grow in there. But geesh, folks, Jeff is correct. Perhaps
this is the best future we could hope for, but it is an extremely sub-optimal
destination compared to where we thought we were going.

------
programminggeek
He's right and certainly more levelheaded about these kinds of issues than
most, but what most don't realize is that many of the software platforms we
love have had worse policies for years. Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, and Sega
all have/had extremely rigorous review process that was even worse than
Apple's if you want to be on their game platform. Phone companies had all
these build processes if you wanted to write Java ME apps to work on feature
phones. And so on and so forth.

The problem is, as devs we are spoiled by the web, where you can just push out
new code that says or does whatever you want it to without any consequence
because the web is a "relatively" safe runtime, so nobody cares.

We are like children who grew up with a silver spoon in our mouth and we've
been asked to endure plastic. Sure, it's still a spoon, but it's not silver
and that pisses us off.

~~~
gbog
> Phone companies had all these build processes

Well, yes, and that's why we had crappy phones for years before iPhone and
Android arrived, as noted by Jeff Atwood. I think it shows again that, not
unlike the first PCs and their open slots for third-party cards, openness is
the right move.

Many people here seem to renounce to this, mostly because Apple's walled
garden is currently at a pinnacle, but in my opinion it is an accident.
Apple's products manage to grasp most of the attention around for emotional
reasons, and some forget that the future is not built on closed formats,
closed markets, etc. I am surprised that it is not so obvious, especially for
US citizens. The Web builds on open protocols. The PC-era built on the fact
that you could open the box and plug things of your doing in it. Wikipedia,
which everyone uses constantly and forget, is an open community task.

My two years-old kid is learning a lot, but it is not linear, he sometimes go
backward a bit. I think we are in this backward pulse, with everyone suddenly
dissmissing the possibility to open, change, modify softwares, in exchange of
a (temporary) slightly better user experience.

To the Apple lover crowd: please feel free to downvote, and check my past
comments to downvotes them also if you didn't already. I'm used to it now, I
don't care about my karma. Anyway, I'll loose some more re-upvoting all those
perfectly acceptable comments I find grayed in some threads, apparently
because they are not respectful enough to the King.

Oh, and I like Apple, I learnt computing on an Apple ][, I applauded to the
very smart Unix move for MacOS, many of my colleagues and friend own a MPB or
A, but none would be enough of a zealots to try to hide out comments
expressing concerns about walled gardens.

~~~
VMG
If you really didn't care about karma, you wouldn't have the need to mention
it.

~~~
gbog
I don't care about karma. You are free to not believe me, I don't care about
that either.

However, I care a lot about HN, and the possibility to have reasonable
discussions here. I am not the only one to have sensed the impact of a the
Apple lover crowd trying to bury down other thoughts or any slight criticism.
Gosh, even the respected and respectable Fred Wilson did notice this issue on
his blog (avc.com).

~~~
VMG
My only point is I prefer HN without meta-talk about karma and comment scores.
Your disclaimer paragraphs probably do nothing to soothe the apple fanboys and
can be annoying to those who actually agree with you. (Enough with the meta
from my part)

Edit: brainfart

------
Vivtek
1\. Windows has always done this. Occasionally people complain; usually they
don't. Honestly, I normally consider it a good thing - the Windows
functionality is usually bland and relatively feature-free, but works
perfectly. There was a time when TCP/IP support was a purchased add-on, after
all. I think we all agree that's better to have built in from the get-go and
consistent on every aged uncle's machine we're asked to fix on Thanksgiving.

2\. The cleanup feature doesn't really support his point. If I store data on
my phone and the phone deletes it all without warning when it thinks I have
too much, that's not protecting me at the expense of the app developer -
that's just plain screwing me and the developer at the same time. Honestly, I
find it incomprehensible that any professional could possibly have considered
it a good idea, and I think it's indicative of Apple's manic secrecy that it
wasn't headed off early instead of being ignored until release.

I know Apple's doing really well in the market lately - by innovating quicker
than anybody else, which has been fantastic for everyone. But in the long run,
this arrogance is not going to be good for them. It shot them in the foot for
two decades with the Mac, and it's going to bite them now.

~~~
MatthewPhillips
I disagree with point number 2. From Apple's perspective, it's deleting
temporary storage (after all, they're called Caches and tmp. You wouldn't
store anything important on /tmp on your desktop, would you?)

The "correct" place to put user data on iOS 5+ is any place that syncs with
iCloud. That's the crux on this issue: iOS 5 is Apple's assertion that App
Store users are their customers, not the app developer's customers, and they
want to handle the backup and security around their customers data.

~~~
Vivtek
Ah, I see - well, chalk that up to my having very little knowledge about the
iOS ecosystem. I think my larger point still stands, that Apple's arrogant
assertion of ownership of _everything_ is going to bite them; arguably this is
just telling everybody where they _have_ to store their data. With Apple.

And honestly, if /tmp were the only filesystem I were allowed to touch, then
yeah, I'd try to do something with it. That's kinda screwed up.

~~~
thomasjoulin
That's not the only folder. There's the Documents folder, but the whole drama
is that this folder is backed up on iCloud, which is not necessary for offline
data. Not a big deal in my opinion. Apple should and probably will add an
Offline folder and all of this will be over like the Antena gate

------
dsr_
Even ordinary users are beginning to understand this. My sister was upset at
Amazon because the Kindle app on her iPod would not let her buy books
directly. After she found out that Apple was demanding a 30% cut of those
sales, she changed her mind. Now she's unhappy with Apple.

I understand the impulse to look at however many millions of IOS devices and
to immediately want to get into that market, but the long tail is not a
comfortable place to be in a land of 99c standard prices. Having an arbitrary
and capricious landlord makes it worse.

~~~
vacri
Why is she unhappy that a retailer gets their cut for supplying the MITM
service?

I don't like Apple philosophy in the slightest and don't own any apple gear
(old ipods excepted), so I'm not a fan of theirs in the slightest. But this
30% thing is just a non-issue. They're a retailer providing content. 30% is a
boringly normal number for the retailers cut.

If amazon wanted to share their profits with the retailer (like book
publishers have to with brick and mortar stores) then those books would be
available. If Apple allowed those purchases for free, then they don't get
_any_ benefit for providing the service.

~~~
dsr_
Why is she unhappy?

At a basic level, it's because her mental model of How Things Work broke. She
thinks that it's reasonable that using the Amazon Kindle application _on any
platform_ she ought to be able to buy books from Amazon as part of that app.
After all, she's signed in, Amazon knows who she is, at most they ought to ask
for a password confirmation to let her spend her money.

And that doesn't work.

So she was unhappy with Amazon. Reasonable. She was so unhappy, she posted on
Facebook about it, where a dozen of her friends pointed out that Apple wanted
a 30% cut of content sold on their device.

Their device. Not her device. She paid for it, but now she sees that it isn't
hers.

She thought that an iPod was like a computer: you use it, you select software
to put on it, you use the software.

Her mental model breaks AGAIN, because she thought she owned the iPod. Now she
finds out that it's actually an Apple-owned store that doesn't like
competition.

Apple got their benefit when they sold her a device. They got more benefit
when they sell her software to go on the device. Why should they get more
benefit for interfering in a transaction between her and Amazon?

She knows what rent-seeking means, and she doesn't appreciate it.

~~~
vacri
Does she also have a problem that Amazon takes the lions share of the
remaining money, instead of it going to the authors? Amazon is just another
MITM - a facilitator of getting product to consumer.

Same argument with the kindle, right? "Amazon got their benefit when they sold
her a device"?

Perhaps she doesn't realise that the App Store is the same kind of service
that Amazon provides - after all, the Kindle is also locked down. You have to
do Frowned-On things to read your other ebooks on it.

Perhaps you should inform her of this, and watch her mental model break yet
again.

------
nickpp
That post rings true. But then it is true about every single platform provider
and 3rd party external dependencies on the market: Windows, Mac OS X, iOS,
Facebook, Twitter

Even big apps will eventually include features initially provided by plugins.
See Photoshop or Jira.

Not to mention the strategy of web giants like Google who will purchase
existing successful commercial companies and the offer their product for free,
thus crippling entire markets. See Google Analytics, Earth and Sketchup.

------
AndrewDucker
This is one of the reasons that I hope Metro apps crash and burn - if the only
way to get hold of them is through the MS store, with all the same issues that
the Apple store has, then I just don't want anything to do with them.

I know that the Android equivalent has problems (piracy, for instance), but
I'd rather have that than something completely locked down.

~~~
frou_dh
I can't imagine how MS would save face if Metro crashed and burned. Seems like
it would be tantamount to checking out of the consumer market.

~~~
slowpoke
Seeing as Metro/Win8 is MS last desperate push to enter the market for tablets
that in the near future will replace the market where they currently hold
almost all their monopolies (the desktop), that's a very accurate description
of what will most likely happen.

And seeing as Windows is not and never was an OS for power users, they will
lose the remaining desktop niche - which will be populated by exactly those
power users - as well once the tablet will be our primary multimedia
communication device.

~~~
frou_dh
A lot of Windows users do consider themselves power users even if they have
minimal knowledge of other platforms. For example, it's quite frustrating to
participate in PC building or gaming communities where every schmo thinks
they're an authority on computing.

~~~
slowpoke
I think this too will fade with time as gaming moves to the tablet/other
platforms. My prognosis is that the only people using desktop machines in the
future will be scientists, professions performing heavy computing and
programmers/developers.

------
michaelfeathers
About a year ago, someone asked me why I don't write apps for the AppStore. I
told them I have too much self-respect.

------
Androsynth
So Apple pushed out it's browser sync feature at the same time it pushed out
the cleanup feature which effectively broke the competition? How
Microsoftesque.

~~~
jpxxx
That is absurdly limited thinking. Ponder that iCloud was invented to ensure
the following scenario: that a typical user could not, in any reasonable
scenario, irrevocably lose the user-state associated with their purchased
applications.

Apple is gunning hard for a market worth one trillion dollars, not Marco
Arment. He is inconsequential collateral damage in Apple's race to a 100%
managed computing experience.

~~~
Androsynth
Thats no different than Microsoft in the 90's. The business goals are
different but the strategy of getting there is the same.

~~~
jpxxx
I don't feel this situation is the same.

Microsoft didn't win for two decades by nibbling small potatoes off of
everyone else's plate, they won by persecuting swallowing entire industries
that were evolving rapidly. Word processing, fileserving, WWW access,
telephony, video gaming, SQL, e-mail, ad infinitum...

Instapaper is not an industry of this scope - it's a single webbrowsing
feature.

~~~
Androsynth
Go read the top comment in this thread, cstross did a pretty good job of
explaining it.

------
0x12
When you are developing for a platform that is active on multiple layers (say,
both OS, GUI or APP) then you are essentially validating the market for
whatever you come up with. You have to calculate that in, if you are
successful you will have competition, and if you are very successful the
entity controlling the market will re-implement what you have already proven
works.

If you develop something that is just an 'add on' or a missing feature you are
setting yourself up for eventual trouble.

Such products have a life cycle and you can't reasonably expect the situation
to continue unchanging forever.

------
mechanical_fish
Did Apple really once provide a direct link to Instapaper as the inspiration
for their new built-in features?

If so, did they actually ask Marco before they took that link out?

If so, did Marco ask them to take it out?

And, if he did - which, having heard Marco speak on this topic, I do _not_
assume, but merely suppose - was that the right call?

My understanding was that an App Store developer might kill for that kind of
free publicity. Could it be, for example, that Apple stopped linking
Instapaper so as to avoid playing favorites? Might one of Instapaper's
_competitors_ have complained about that link?

------
DodgyEggplant
He is a bit unfair. Good platforms vendors paved the way for everybody. And
they ALWAYS do it THEIR WAY (ask Netscape, Novel and Real). One can argue that
Instapaper is actually a missing browser feature.

But Apple is pushing the envelope: they are the first platform to break the
"specific device limit". Android competes on phones, Windows on the desktop,
Amazon with content, Samsung on hardware. But Apple is everywhere. And they
are not the underdog anymore. This is Tim's Cook real challenge, and we wish
him luck.

------
ugh
So Apple can never ever implement bookmark sync in their browser? Because
that’s what they did and there is nothing whatsoever wrong with that. It’s a
minor obvious feature, not some big complicated thing.

You know what I also don’t understand? What this has to do with the big open
vs. closed debate. Apple implemented a new feature in their own browser.
Google can just as well implement the exactly same feature in their browser.
Open vs. closed doesn’t figure into this. At all.

That whole cleaning behavior of iOS debate is just stupid. Apple screwed up.
So what.

~~~
ethank
The telling thing is: it's existed for years with Mobile Me. Reading List
isn't new.

------
jp_sc
I guess Jeff doesn't remembers "After Dark" anymore.

------
praptak
It is just the most recent (I wanted to write _last_ , but I'm sure it is not
the last) of many similar stories and articles, which can be summed up as "Do
not be a sharecropper." Some previous ones:

[http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2003/07/12/WebsThePla...](http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2003/07/12/WebsThePlace)
[http://weblog.raganwald.com/2004/11/sharecropping-in-
orchard...](http://weblog.raganwald.com/2004/11/sharecropping-in-orchard.html)

~~~
akmiller
True, but didn't it used to be that sharecropping mainly meant building
plugins to existing applications (i.e. adding a plugin to Microsoft Word).
Suddenly sharecropping is broadened to writing an application on someone
else's Operating System! This is extremely scary that we now consider that
sharecropping as well.

~~~
praptak
> Suddenly sharecropping is broadened to writing an application on someone
> else's Operating System!

Yes, because operating systems have been written that make you a true
sharecropper - not only you do need permission from the liege to distribute
your app, but the permission can be revoked at any time, whenever your lord
feels like it.

This was not the case with the proprietary systems of the past. Even
Microsoft, being criticized as the evilest of evil did not try to stop you
from distributing your Windows apps.

------
nestlequ1k
Funny how Android Instapaper (a 3rd party app) is infinitely better than the
iPhone version (the official version) since it plugs right into the browser.

------
dbkbali
I think some good ant-trust regulatory lawyers would have a field day with
this. But one would have to have deep enough pockets to pay the legal bills!

------
ethank
Reading List doesn't have an API, so for the moment it doesn't come close to
what instapaper provides in terms of instapaper and third party apps.

------
mikerg87
Nobody has a monopoly on ideas.

~~~
marshray
I guess you've never heard of patents.

------
andrewcooke
the final image is wonderful. where did you get it from?

~~~
ranebo
<http://www.bernardpras.fr/>

Courtesy of Google search by image:
<http://www.google.com/insidesearch/searchbyimage.html>

------
nirvana
It strikes me that this is exactly the position every web developer has with
google.

Google can arbitrarily and capriciously exclude them from their index. When
google excludes you from the index, there is no appeal, there is no
explanation, and, unlike Apple, google will not publish a set of (reliable)
rules. (It gives a lot of advice but is inconsistent.)

Also, like Apple, if you are not able to get in the big leagues for
distribution, you can distribute your product thru other, less popular
channels that are more of a hassle.

Unlike Apple, however, which give you explicit feedback on the feature that
was the problem (with screenshots if needed) and always cites chapter and
verse from the handbook for the exclusion, google will not tell you why, or
give you any way to resolve it.

With Apple, you can resolve the issue and resubmit it. Your app will be on the
store in about 7 days. With google, even if you figure out what the problem
is, and you resolve it, you have no way of knowing if you'll ever be let back
into the index.

~~~
blauwbilgorgel
>> Google can arbitrarily and capriciously exclude them from their index.

As a web developer on SEO forums, I hear of these cases all the time, but when
you analyze these sites, usually 1 of 3 things is happening:

\- Web developer(s) made a mistake, causing a (search engine) accessibility
problem.

\- The site is in violation of the Google webmaster guidelines.

\- The site lacks (unique) content, or otherwise doesn't contribute at all to
a healthy search engine index.

I never read of a case of Google arbitrarily or capriciously excluding sites
from their index, offering them no way to appeal. In general, I also think the
advice Google gives is far from inconsistent.

This could be a popular position for a web developer who got a site de-
indexed, but maybe apply Occam's razor first. A mistake? A trend? An algo
change? Worthless content? Blackhat SEO? Bad architecture? Got hacked?

Or do you want to jump immediately to Google arbitrarily removing well-
intentioned sites from their index? I guess then you can blame bad luck of the
draw.

~~~
bostonvaulter2
While Google may not currently arbitrarily remove a site/app from its index,
it is obvious that they could do that at any time.

~~~
slowpoke
Just look at the removable of co.cc a while ago. While they had some reason
(malicious subdomains etc), it was still highly arbitrary and kicked out a lot
of legit sites too.

------
dos1
These are the exact reasons that I decided to quit developing for iOS. I loved
the APIs, I enjoyed the platform and access to millions of users. In the end
though, I just wasn't willing to bend the knee.

------
adabsurdo
I think the Apple app store policies is the bigger problem, because Apple is
using it to control not just quality, but content, and forcing applications to
use its payment gateway; which in itself, wouldn't much of a problem if they
didn't take this gigantic 30% cut (10x more than other payment gateways), and
prevented you from knowing your customer.

This is truely unprecendented. Microsoft could screw you by cloning your app,
but they never blocked third-party applications, nor tried to be the commerce
gateway to the internet.

If Apple succeeds in making webapps obsolete, and competition cannot be strong
enough to force it to be fairer and more reasonable in its app store policy,
than to me an ipad/iphone app world sounds like a regression from the webapp
world.

And this is why I never understand why so many Apple users want Android &
Windows to fail. As a customer, you should want other platforms to be
succesful, so that we don't end up again with a monopolistic platform that
screws us all. Didn't we try this before??

~~~
ryanhuff
The AppStore isn't just a payment gateway. It's essentially a retail store.
You would be hard pressed to get to keep 70% from many other retailers.

~~~
vacri
70% is about right, give or take. Depends on the industry. But retailers
certainly don't ever take only 3% like payment gateways do.

This whole 30% thing comes from a new demographic that has never had any
previous experience with business, who don't really understand the value of
distribution channels and middlemen.

------
earl
I _love_ that the iphone and ipad are locked down. I gave ipads to family
members and I'm finally done with tech support. My parents, girlfriend, and
brother were bit by endless amounts of spyware, spam, and trojans because they
used windows. I had to reinstall windows on my gf's laptop 3 times because
adobe are useless worthless fuckwits who fill flash and pdf with security
holes and her computer was repeatedly infected. Every time I went to my
parents house I had to clean endless amounts of crap off their computer. My
brother's laptop was infected with a virus that tried to get into bank
accounts. He owns a pair of pizza stores and does his accounting on his
laptop, and he accesses bank accounts with significant funds in them. Using
ios fixed all the above.

While in theory it's nice that people can run any application they wish, in
practice, it sucks. People end up having to be experts on computer security.
As a group of computer professionals we've pounded on this for twenty years
and it simply isn't fucking working. If telling people to be careful what
programs they run or what websites they visit worked, it would have worked
long ago.

Instead, I give them ipads for casual browsing and they're finally secure. My
parents don't need my help to get pictures off their camera. There finally is
a way for non experts to securely use the internet and applications -- just
buy stuff from the app store. It won't spam you, it won't steal information,
it won't install spyware, and it will most likely do what it claims to do. If
not being able to run arbitrary apps is the price we pay... well, we tried
doing it the other way for 20+ years and it didn't work.

~~~
slowpoke
>While in theory it's nice that people can run any application they wish, in
practice, it sucks.

While in theory it is nice that people enjoy essential liberties, in practice,
they suck.

Franklin sends his regards.

> it won't steal information

So, it's okay if Apple collects your personal data instead of some criminal?
Sure is hypocritical.

>well, we tried doing it the other way for 20+ years and it didn't work.

You know why it doesn't work? Because we let people use computers, but don't
require them to learn how to use them. I still don't get why people think they
are entitled to use a computer. It's the same as demanding to drive a car
without knowing how to operate it, in addition to having no clue about traffic
rules. We're not attacking the root of the problem, we're simply slapping the
symptoms around.

~~~
earl
> So, it's okay if Apple collects your personal data instead of some criminal?
> Sure is hypocritical.

Criminals: steal tens of thousands of dollars from your bank account. And you
may well be stuck with the losses. Apple: knows a bit of your personal
information. So yeah, those are comparable.

And computer training? Another stupid idea that demonstrably doesn't solve the
problem. People have been trying that since at _least_ the windows 95 era.
Strangely, there are still bot nets, viruses, malware, spyware, electronic
theft, etc. But I'm sure it's going to really work any day now.

~~~
slowpoke
Congratulations on not getting what I was saying. But carry on, I'm out.

