You write "Apple is a publisher with a platform". This is where things get interesting. In the past we had publishers, companies that were free to pick and choose the content that they wanted to invest in and distribute - and we had platform builders - companies who made things like printing presses and telephones. After you sell me a telephone switch or printing press, you don't get to dictate what gets printed on the press, the conversations that can take place on my phone or the kinds of programs that I watch on my tv. Apple wants to be both a publisher and the builder of the platform and that's why they deserve heightened scrutiny. I don't have a problem with the Disney web site rejecting adult or political content - as you point out that's their business to make those choices - but I get really uneasy when the company building the hardware starts dictating what it can be used for.
Apple wants to be both a publisher and the builder of the platform
This is hardware-scarcity thinking. My hypothesis is that our industry is so entrained to think like this that it's going to take a decade to settle in to our new universe. It's going to be like when the mainframe folks had to come to grips with the PC.
We are going to be awash in tablets within a year. Within five years we will be picking them out of the trash.
Platforms are a commodity now. I can buy a Windows laptop -- not a netbook, a 15" laptop -- for a few hundred bucks from my local Micro Center. Netbooks are even cheaper, of course. As for operating systems? The Linux revolution has arrived. Android has arrived and it is open-source. If you want to run your own platform you need to download Android and pay some Chinese manufacturing firm a few hundred bucks per unit to cough out a tablet or a generic smartphone and stick your nameplate on it. And if this isn't true now, it will be true in a year or two.
I have a Flip Mino video camera. Its processing power is surely greater than that of the laptop I owned ten years ago. I am about to literally take the thing apart for parts because its resale value is too small to care and my new iPhone is going to be a factor of five more useful.
When a hardware platform was a three thousand dollar investment we had to worry a lot about the manufacturer "dictating what it can be used for", because we couldn't afford more than one. The one we bought had to support everything we wanted to do, or we would be sad. When hardware platforms cost thirty dollars the calculus will change.
What Apple has figured out is that when hardware is a commodity, editing and publishing is the name of the game. You're no longer competing to sell more hardware independent of content, just as Conde Nast is not a paper company. Your asset is taste. Design. The ability to ship hardware-software-content combos that consistently work and consistently make the customer happy.
Sure hardware is a commodity and there is no scarcity there but the issue is not hardware it's access to the OS and there is an extremely limited number of mainstream consumer platforms. Right now the only options are proprietary systems run by two giant corporations. UNIX is currently a niche player and the Google Chrome OS is an unknown.
Furthermore, the increasing market share of the Apple platform obliges developers and publishers to develop custom products (e.g. Ulysses) for the iPhone/iPad. Except that now they'll have to self-censor or have Apple play the role of nanny.
I don't understand why Apple feels that this special user experience could be shattered by the glimpse of a human body part or an unsettling political viewpoint.
Agreed. Apple of course can do what they want. But lots of us think its evil. At the least, its un-American. There's just no way Apple comes out of this looking like anything but a greedy corporation.
Uh. Where's the line, Joe? On the one hand, Highlights(r) for Children isn't can't have to publish this. On the other hand, any Creative Loafing alt-weekly should fall over itself to serialize it. And, it's not racy enough for Playboy.
Where along that spectrum would you dictate that Apple run its business?
Uh. Read my comment again. "Apple of course can do what they want". This thread is referring to the issue of both owning the channel and dictating the media content. Try to keep up.
You said Apple was "evil" and "un-American" for choosing not to publish something that contained nudity. Presumably, so is Highlights and Newsweek, then? Both of them own their channel too --- if you don't believe it, try to set up the fulfillment and distribution system Newsweek has.
