

The Decade-Long Campaign to Lock Down Your Computer - mindcrime
http://feeds.dashes.com/~r/AnilDash/~3/2ZnCyz_odlY/the-decade-long-campaign-to-lock-down-your-computer.html

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drats
Apple didn't invent the GUI or the mouse, which were all taken from Xerox who
in turn took them from earlier people. They leaned heavily on open source for
their comeback but did quite a lot to obstruct return contributions or
fostering a proper open source eco-system. They also relied on funding from
Microsoft for their return. They borrowed extremely heavily from old products
for their re-invention [1]. Jobs delusionally claimed the iPhone technology
was somehow "stolen", when there were tons of tablets and smart phones before
the iPhone and people had bolts on their physical doors which were "slide to
unlock". This instigated a wave of patent attacks, including Jobs getting his
personal friend the CEO of Oracle to attack Android on facetious Java issues
that resulted in them getting spanked in court. And now, as the private
Samsung design images show, the claims about the similarity of the Samsung
models are just laughable. But nevertheless they don't want to compete on
merit against products that look vaguely similar (in a world of rectangles...)
but have "SAMSUNG" in large lettering on the box and the back. They try to
claim that customers would be confused by this entirely different branding and
even got a number of temporary injunctions against competitors. In addition to
this they run the App store like dictators, and small developers are cast to
the wolves at a moments notice. They have horrible customer service in many
places outside of the USA (and even there they've be sued numerous times in
the USA for dodgy practices like selling phones with dodgy reception). They
are not God, they are just a publicly traded company looking for profit.

Gatekeeper confirms that it's not special and just another public company with
a legal duty to make profit for shareholders in spades. Imagine a desktop as
locked down as an iPhone, with "dev boxes" that let you run your own apps for
a few hundred more, it's positively stomach churning even at the most basic
level, then you have to factor in that they will cave in to all sorts of
special interests (and perhaps security services). As I understand it, those
in the app store gold rush already have to pay for all sorts of development
licence and software stuff as it doesn't come with the OS. But what if the TSA
doesn't like your TOR app because it's exporting munitions to terrorists? We
used to laugh at that law back in the 1990s because it was unenforceable, now
it looks like we are headed for a future where the app would just silently
disappear from people's desktops. But you paid extra for the dev kit version
right? But as you had illegal apps which were detected on your desktop your
commercial bread-and-butter ones are now suspended, under review, or taking
longer to review for updates.

Steve Jobs' pathological lying about Apple's inventiveness always struck me as
unsettling, but there is much worse coming in the future I fear.

[1][http://gizmodo.com/343641/1960s-braun-products-hold-the-
secr...](http://gizmodo.com/343641/1960s-braun-products-hold-the-secrets-to-
apples-future)

~~~
philwelch
> They leaned heavily on open source for their comeback but did quite a lot to
> obstruct return contributions or fostering a proper open source eco-system.

Webkit is the premier cross-platform browser engine.

> They also relied on funding from Microsoft for their return.

No they didn't. Apple's immediate cashflow problems were solved by a debenture
sale in 1996. The stock purchase by Microsoft was intended to align incentives
and was really a minor concession. The major benefits for both parties were,
on Apple's side, an assurance that Office would still be released for
Macintosh, and on Microsoft's side, an assurance that Apple would not pursue
IP lawsuits against Microsoft, up to and including stealing the source code
for QuickTime: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Canyon_Company>

> Imagine a desktop as locked down as an iPhone, with "dev boxes" that let you
> run your own apps for a few hundred more, it's positively stomach churning
> even at the most basic level, then you have to factor in that they will cave
> in to all sorts of special interests (and perhaps security services).

And now we've taken off straight into fantasy.

If your comment illustrates anything, it's that when you mix truth, lies,
half-truths, and outright fantasy, you can come up with a good flame against
any business, be it Apple or the local corner store. Reality is always more
slippery than that.

~~~
drats
>Webkit is the premier cross-platform browser engine.

Taken from the KDE guys, who had to make a lot of noise to get contributions
back from Apple. And if the KDE guys hadn't done tons of work before, why
didn't Apple just start from scratch? If the bad press about it hadn't forced
their hand, I doubt they would have done anything. And, at this point, when
you count KDE at the start and Google at the end, Apple wouldn't even have a
majority share of the reasons for Webkit's success. Good to see your only
point on this issue is a weak drowning not waving one. That's the best you've
got?

Regarding Apple getting help from MS, $150million is actually a lot in those
days. And even more than that was having MS Office and IE on the Mac. I accept
if MS hadn't done it though it's likely anti-trust would have come sooner and
they would have been broken up. But it's a pretty minor point in argument, so
I don't mind refuting your refutation that it was "minor" but then defeating
my own argument with a better more contextualized one (MS needed to do it for
anti-trust), as it's not a central point. Besides that helped the monopolist
by getting in bed with them, seems they will do anything to survive.

>And now we've taken off straight into fantasy.

The key point here, is I don't actually believe it is true right now (like
Jobs believed his lies, or at least his fans did and do), I just propose it as
a likely future. Anyone with a passing knowledge of computing history knows
Apple is neither a hardware or a software company, they are a lifestyle
marketing company that has invented very little indeed. On top of that, the
pattern of their actions says "big corp/profits".

So in summary, you have used a lame-duck Webkit argument which actually proves
my point about how little open source they do whilst helping themselves to as
much as they can. You then attack a minor point about the MS investment but
nothing on the GUI or design issues, customer service, or lawsuits. Then you
finally accuse my plausible projection of being a fantasy. It's not really
much of a fantasy to say that it looks like the trajectory of the "remove two
buttons from the Xerox mouse we invented because our users are stupid" public
company in search of profit that lies constantly about itself and engages in
near fraudulent legal proceedings against competitors will at some point
decide that their desktops should run like their phones.

All my points show they aren't any different to any other corporation, and how
in many cases they are worse, and they already have a device which is locked
down like that with many App store scandals. Now they are developing in a very
similar direction on the desktop, so we just complete the trend-line and we
have 1984-lite (which they notoriously abused for profit in their ads along
with many other historical figures in the cynical attempt to tie their bottom
line to things people care about, Orwell must truly be turning in his grave to
be associated with such saccharine ingenuous phonys).

~~~
philwelch
I don't have to refute all of your points, because I never said you were wrong
about _everything_ , just that you mix truth, half-truth, lies, and outright
fantasy to draw a tendentious picture that contributes practically nothing to
the discussion.

I don't want to argue with you because it's unlikely either of us will gain
from the experience. You will simply take it as an opportunity to continue
flaming, which I will learn nothing from, and I will try to keep reiterating
that you aren't contributing anything useful to the discussion, which you will
ignore and respond to with even more useless flames.

------
sounds
It's possible Apple and Microsoft are pursuing the same goal.

But I don't think Apple has that in mind. iOS devices are jailed. OS X devices
are relatively open.

When Microsoft announced UEFI Secure Boot, the first articles were about
desktops. A "surprise" announcement later about ARM devices being locked and
not unlockable should be the proof of what Microsoft wants.

When Apple introduced locked software on the iPod Nano, it was ostensibly to
prevent clone makers. Apple can of course always betray their user base, but
they haven't done it yet. Cut them some slack.

~~~
drats
Why should we cut a publicly traded legal entity notorious for lying about
their inventions and being extremely litigious any slack? Have you seen how
ridiculous their lawsuits over the Samsung stuff are? It's quite obvious they
are prepared to resort to any filthy tricks to stop competitors. They also
have a long history of screwing people who develop software for their
"ecosystem", most recently in the myriad app store horror stories. Why should
anyone believe a single word Apple says?

~~~
sounds
I'll try to respond logically, but I'm not motivated to engage in a debate
with you. This will, therefore, be my last response to you after which I plan
on ignoring anything you post.

My post doesn't quote anything Apple said. I am reasoning solely from their
actions.

I don't use a Mac - I think they're overpriced and the latest OS versions
haven't introduced anything of interest to me. I admit, their hardware is
beautiful, but I am frustrated by the lack of high-resolution screens anywhere
else in the industry and I intend to vote with my wallet.

In the meantime, feel free to review my comment history. I have tried to
contribute links to <http://coreboot.org> as often as possible. I'm never
going to give up the ability to compile my OS from source, which means I won't
need an apple laptop. You can pry the kernel source code from my hands when
I'm dead.

The only "slack" I propose we give apple is to not claim they are backing
Microsoft's Trusted Computing initiative without evidence. Essentially, my
argument is exactly the same as yours: why should we claim something about
apple that is not backed by evidence?

------
Herring
Suddenly I'm a lot less indifferent about my ipad's inability to run torrent
apps.

~~~
taligent
You can always jailbreak to run Bittorrent apps.

