"And I didn’t check the source [of OpenBSD] for trojans or backdoors. Do I trust Theo DeRaadt that much? Not particularly, though I have nothing against him. Do I trust “the community”? No. Mostly I just didn’t care at all."
I agree that in practice 1) it's not practical for anybody to audit an entire OS for security and 2) you don't know everyone in the community.
However, I think it's reasonable to feel safer using software that's audited and trusted by brilliant libertarian nutjobs than software that isn't. And if you truly DID need to know that a product didn't contain back doors, and it was worth enough money to you, you could hire people to audit it and stick to the specific version that you'd audited.
Most people don't care about this stuff. But I like knowing that some people do; that push come to shove, when your government becomes a tyranny, there ARE tools that are beyond their reach. And in many parts of the world, tyranny is not theoretical.
Hard to say if just filing a patent on this is a sign of any sinister intent but I do agree with his earlier argument that Apple has placed its bets on the big content cartels and the iPad is a delivery device for the products of such. You could argue that iTunes has made self-publishing easier than before but if you actually shop in the iTunes store all you're ever going to see is Justin Bieber and American Idol and other major label garbage unless you already know what you're looking for. Don't forget that Steve is on the board of Disney.
Maybe it's slightly less user-friendly but a less centralized net is healthier and more interesting in the long run.
Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.
Isn't it a bit much to say that Apple has sided against the consumer? They certainly didn't do that with publishers when they wouldn't give up subscriber data and they didn't show it with their constant battles with the music industry and NBC.
Regarding music discovery on iTunes, it has always been the case that if you want good music you're going to have to look for it. Popular music has always been the easiest to find, be it on iTunes or your local record store. My main concern is that iOS forces you to buy music only from iTunes.
As for the patent, Apple patents anything. It doesn't mean it'll ever see the light of day. Some other ridiculous Apple patents:
Whether they'll do it isn't the point. If a patent is, by its nature, meant to restrict user and citizen freedom, why have it?
If your neighbor collects guns, that may be no cause for alarm; hunting is a legitimate activity. But if your neighbor stockpiles napalm, his saying "I wouldn't use it" isn't very reassuring. It has no purpose but to burn you to death.
The only charitable reading I can see of this patent is that Apple patented it to keep its evil competitors from using this. But that's highly dubious. If that's what they wanted to do, they could have openly said so and immediately donated the patent to the EFF or someone like that.
Apple has a lot of legitimate IP business. They have in-house IP counsel. They retain outside IP counsel. It's inevitable that this group and process has grown into a bureaucratic fiefdom that exists to secure patents and trademarks for their own purposes, regardless of their applicability to Apple's business or plans.
That they pursued such a patent and retained it is evidence of little more than the existence of a report somewhere that conflates the quantity of patents to the effectiveness of the group.
I mean, what's really easier to believe? That a corporate group is following the trajectory of every studied social construct of man [1]. Or that the only consumer-focused computer maker is conspiring to shaft their paying customers in deference to a (comparatively tiny) industry they've long treated with borderline-contempt?
[1] becoming focused on its own interests at the expense of those it was created to further
I'm sure that the Canada is not alarmed that the US is stockpiling napalm amongst other things. Whilst, it has no legitimate purpose except to burn people to death---Canada is not the enemy of the USA, and thus feels that it has nothing to fear from its neighbor stockpiling weapons.
Weapons are meant to be used against an enemy. If your neighbor isn't the sort to begin wars of conquest, then what do you really have to fear?
I don't think Apple is actively anti-consumer but it's clear to me where their primary loyalties lie. As for music, there are a half-dozen better curated specialty music stores I patronize that provide a far, far better customer experience than iTunes (check boomkat and hyperion records for example), but perhaps I'm willing to work harder to find new and interesting music than the average buyer.
And sure everybody is filing all kinds of spurious patents right now but it's hard to imagine how this one could be used defensively.
Thank you for the recommendations because I never knew of them. I may be a music connoisseur but I don't know all the spots to go which was my point. All I had the time for was checking out GorillavsBear, Stereogum and checking out reviews on Pitchfork and Spin.
I really don't know what these patents were intended for. Apple has had a history of using a patent for a completely different scenario than what is described. It may be the tech behind it that was important and not the described use.
I'm starting to really dislike Apple for a number of reasons, but I can't switch.
No, not can't, but it would be tough.
Why? Because nobody else cares about design or user experience. Apple is the only company on Earth that can design a user interface, and their products are the only well designed (read: minimal... in industrial design, minimal is a synonym for good) products IMHO.
Everything else is covered by marketing-idiot-driven pimples like the "ThinkVantage" button on ThinkPads, etc., and both Windows and Linux UIs are horrible.
Edit: to clarify, what I'm really pointing out is that Apple has a near-monopoly, and like any near-monopoly they are starting to leverage it in disturbing ways.
Their near-monopoly is on good industrial and UI design.
I've been an enthusiastic Apple user since around 1993, and I have tremendous respect for their engineering and design. But IMHO, they've long since passed the threshold for antitrust investigation. If I had my druthers, every device manufacturer (including game consoles) would be federally mandated to offer some way of sideloading software. Hell, at least let people run their own code on it without having to buy a developer certificate!
As it stands, Apple has all the same incentives to behave badly as Microsoft did in the 90s, if not more so.
I'm really worried about what happens when Jobs leaves or dies. My money is on one of:
1) Some MBA apparatchik takes over the company and does what all the Business 101 books say to do: puts marketing in charge of everything, including design. As a result, their industrial and UI design goes to complete crap.
2) Ditto the MBA apparatchik, but instead they decide to start "monetizing" Apple's leveraging opportunities in a "proactive" manner. As a result, the company becomes full-on evil and I have no choice but to dump them completely and go back to Linux on inferior-design hardware.
There's suggestions that neither (1) nor (2) will happen. Currently, Tim Cook is (generally) expected to be Jobs's successor, and he's unlikely to change things that work. But there's a recent article -- sorry, I don't remember the title or have a link to it -- which was talking about "Apple University", which is apparently an HR effort inside of Apple to figure out what it is that makes Apple, well, Apple and make it something teachable so that as new executives come on, they internalize that which makes Apple Apple.
Monopolies aren't required for antitrust, but monopolies are watched more carefully for antitrust violations. Antitrust is more about anticompetitive behaviour than market monopolisation.
My (admittedly poor) understanding of antitrust is that it's not illegal to have a monopoly, but rather it's illegal to abuse that monopoly position in anti-competitive ways. And aside from the consumer rights issues of walled gardens, there are serious conflicts of interest with Apple offering services such as iTunes and iBooks while also being the sole software vendor for competitors such as Netflix and Kindle.
>Their near-monopoly is on good industrial and UI design.
I'm not convinced that this is an absolute bad thing, because this isn't a problem with Apple. It's a problem with their competitors. Like you mentioned earlier in the post, Apple is pretty much the only smartphone and tablet manufacturer that considers UI and UX as the absolute most important part of the device. For the most part, there isn't that much of a learning curve for using their devices. They just work.
Is this something that Google, MS, or any other competitor can do? Absolutely. MS made some pretty significant moves in that direction with Windows 7 Mobile. Google has added many features in Android that I would love to see in iOS.
Google seems focused more in innovative features, which means that Android will probably always stay ahead of iOS in terms of OS features. Unfortunately, Google's drive to get it out first may hurt them in terms of UX, because Apple will take the core concept, refine the hell out of it, and then add it to iOS only when it is as polished as the rest of their features.
I think that's overstating the case quite a bit. Apple's design prowess is formidable, but they're hardly the only company with those strengths. They basically had to copy Android's superior notification system for iOS 5, for instance. And with the new task switcher and widgets in Android 3.1 I think iOS's static grid of icons is starting to look conservative and stale.
Sony and Samsung have come up with some nice hardware designs and Windows 7 is a reasonable competitor to OS X in my opinion. Apple has been held up as the paragon of industrial design for so long that we're too willing to accept whatever they do as the "right" thing. Frankly I'm a little tired of their vanilla aesthetic and things like the ridiculous Time Machine UI indicate to me that they've lost their way to some extent.
Realize, silence is interpreted as consent. If you wait until the hardware has been produced and implemented into the product before voicing concern--then it's already too late.
That much trust in the altruism of any major corporation goes beyond anything that could reasonably be called optimism. Is there any precedent in Apple's patent history for this courageous leap of faith?
When it suits their interests it has been a boon to the general public. Their refusal to 'licence' their DRM system used on iPods/iTunes, and their refusal to allow another DRM system (as well as their own) on iPods meant that if you weren't Apple and wanted to sell music, and didn't want to cut of 75% of your customers (those with iPods), you had to sell it in un-DRMed MP3s. Admitidly, the only reason Apple did this was to support the sale of iPods, but still.
Actually, since Apple's products represent a minority of smartphone users (let alone all phones, or even more to the point, all video and still digicams), I think that this is a good point. If Apple's got it patented, then I as an Android and Pentax user don't have to worry about it being stuffed into my devices.
Restrictive licensing terms for software on the iPad &c. do not indict all non-open source software. Apple's hardware based approach to limiting device function is in many important ways less conducive to misuse than one based on geolocation or device ID (not to suggest that it is a good thing) because it does not rely on receiving and processing information about specific individuals.
My wild ass speculation is that Apple's research in this area may be a result of the popularity of their devices within the US military for whom the capability to affect function at a distance would have meaningful tactical application and for whom it would make sense to fund the underlying research - it is difficult to see a significant revenue stream for Apple from the commercial market given the many alternatives to Apple's products for illicit recording of performances.
Since buildings and items can also be copyrighted, would it be a stretch to add recognition software to the photo app, so that you can't take a snapshot in front of a copyrighted building or teapot anymore?
Personally I'd say, let's blow up all the copyrighted buildings and things (and erase copyrighted videos, books and music). Since I am not allowed to process their existence in any meaningful way, I'd rather they don't exist at all.
Or a widely-available portable shunting device that broadcasts the "no video recording" code within a certain range. Attach a unique ID to each device. Create a bureaucracy to handle the registration and geolocation of such devices. Schools, libraries, govt offices, would all be equipped with them. Make possession of a jailbroken recording device in these areas a felony, of course. And equip the police with mobile versions so they can create a "cone of silence" around incidents and arrests, putting a stop to those pesky police brutality vids that keep popping up on YouTube.
[IANAL] In the US the design of buildings and other structures may be protected by copyright. However, this does not affect one's ability to photograph the building or structure and the legal precedents surrounding the commercial use of images containing copyright protected works remain unchanged.
Most consumers don't care about negative liberty, they care about positive liberty.
You want people to have more freedom? Build a better phone than an iPhone with a more convenient platform to get software and media with better support, better stores to buy them in, etc.
I haven't jail broken in a while because I don't have a need for tethering. If I go on a trip where I need it I will JB. And if Apple ever does this I will JB it too. If they somehow prevent JB'ing I will switch to another device.
The danger with this mentality is that you are still their customer, making them more powerful, giving them more control.
And when you'll switch to that other device, it may be too late to do that, as you won't be able to find a suitable device in a world where (a) Apple has a monopoly on such devices or (b) everybody else mimics them, yielding similar control over you.
Vote with your wallet, buy Android phones with unlocked bootloaders.
Is it just me or is this not a sufficient demand? If we are to live in a truly open world, we need software which is truly Free, not something which is developed on top of open-source.
Google Chrome is no more open source than is Mac OS X. It is confusing to see people count adoption of Chrome as a victory for the open-source community when frankly it seems like anything but.
According to the FSF definition, Chromium is as Free as it gets, with Chrome being a rebranding from stable releases of Chromium + proprietary codecs (which Google moved to eliminate with WebM).
Chromium versus Chrome is basically Fedora versus Red Hat.
Google Chrome is no more open source than is Mac OS X
That's bollocks and you're either trying to spread FUD or you don't know what you're talking about.
If you're going to talk about battles and victories, show me the source code of Cocoa, show me the standard it is based on, show me another platform on top of which you can use it and show me what third-party contributors does it have (and no, Cocoa is not OpenStep). Also, show me how I can install OS X in a legal manner on top of non-Apple computers.
>Chrome being a rebranding from stable releases of Chromium + proprietary codecs (which Google moved to eliminate with WebM).
It does not matter: would Stallman use Chrome? Chromium, like Darwin, is indeed as Free as it gets.
>Chromium versus Chrome is basically Fedora versus Red Hat.
RHEL is fully Free, and can be recompiled at leisure, cf. Scientific Linux and Oracle Linux. It is not quite analogous.
>If you're going to talk about battles and victories, show me the source code of Cocoa, show me the standard it is based on, show me another platform on top of which you can use it and show me what third-party contributors does it have (and no, Cocoa is not OpenStep). Also, show me how I can install OS X in a legal manner on top of non-Apple computers.
No it's not, the brand Red Hat is protected by trademarks and there's a license involved if you want to use software branded as Red Hat, a license for which you have to pay for. You also cannot redistribute RHEL, having many restrictions one would expect from proprietary software.
Also, only Red Hat, the company, gets to make releases of RHEL and only that company gets to decide what to include in that release. RHEL is commercial software and it makes no guarantees on whether you'll end up using only free software or not (unless you're paying close attention), although the process itself for the RHEL snapshot is fairly transparent and you can inspect what goes in and out of such a release.
What sets Red Hat apart from others in regards to open-source is their handling of in-house developments - they are one of the biggest contributors to Linux and they are giving back both through up-stream and through Fedora, not to mention they aren't very upset about CentOS.
Chrome to RHEL and Fedora to Chromium couldn't be more analogous, although I have to agree, Google doesn't play very well with upstream (but that's not a political issue, Google engineers are just stubborn).
At the very least we should be demanding hardware that isn't tied to a particular OS. It's bad enough that we're often legally tied a specific wireless carrier. If Apple or Samsung releases an update for my phone that I don't like or doesn't work properly, I should be able to switch to different software. And I should be able to switch without scouring shady parts of the internet for jailbreaking tools.
With Macs or PCs you can install whatever OS you'd like without jumping through hacks. Apple even makes it user friendly to install alternate OSs with their Boot Camp software.
but at least an open source version does exist. IIRC, the reason there is an open and non-open source version of chromium/chrome is that chrome contains some proprietary 3rd party software that cannot be open sourced.
"And I didn’t check the source [of OpenBSD] for trojans or backdoors. Do I trust Theo DeRaadt that much? Not particularly, though I have nothing against him. Do I trust “the community”? No. Mostly I just didn’t care at all."
I agree that in practice 1) it's not practical for anybody to audit an entire OS for security and 2) you don't know everyone in the community.
However, I think it's reasonable to feel safer using software that's audited and trusted by brilliant libertarian nutjobs than software that isn't. And if you truly DID need to know that a product didn't contain back doors, and it was worth enough money to you, you could hire people to audit it and stick to the specific version that you'd audited.
Most people don't care about this stuff. But I like knowing that some people do; that push come to shove, when your government becomes a tyranny, there ARE tools that are beyond their reach. And in many parts of the world, tyranny is not theoretical.