Everybody’s lining up for this new way to install applications where corporate bureaucrats decide what you’re allowed to see after consulting a lengthy blacklist about file sharing, drinking, RSS reading (?), Chatroulette and Russian roulette (just in case!), easter eggs, pr0n, gambling, ‘inflammatory’ religion, and anything else fun.
“Explain that to your ancient forebears, chipping away at the blades of their stone axes. These tools, as purchased, are too pristine to bear the touch of people using them.”
— AppleCare: Nighthawks at the Genius Bar
“Apple has conceded. They have essentially rescinded all of the madness associated with 3.3.1. This is an amazing turn of events. It is exceedingly rare for Apple to capitulate, and it can only mean that pressure from the popularity of the far more open Android has taken its toll.”
— Apple Blinks. Flash Tools Now Allowed
“Unlike the fortress-like atmosphere of an iPhone, the Android OS suggests that if you can think of something to try, it might just work. For example, I browsed to a website offering an mp3, and clicked on the link just to see what would happen. The song started downloading! It showed up in the music player!”
— Why AT&T Deserves To Fail
Sadly, he learned nothing from the experience:
There is no alternative platform, despite what others may say about Android, it’s immature and their app store(s) are a wild west nightmare. It really is Apple’s way or the highway, and that really stinks.
Often in history the powerful have confounded the weak with a false dilemma: that the alternative to absolute power is chaos. Just give Mr. X ultimate authority and he’ll use it to improve your little life. But dictators once empowered never seem to rule as benevolently as their admirers expect. They’re self-interested and cruel. They are terribly human.
Even and especially the most devoted followers of a personality cult find themselves among its collateral damage. Ruined, some take refuge in their faith—a belief in the ruler’s divine appointment or perhaps his dedication to the mystery known lately as user experience. Others snap out of this spell by invoking an older one: WYSIWYG.
We’re lucky, at least in computing, to still have choices.
“A long time ago … AT&T sold phones also, and other people were coming in and trying to sell phones. AT&T argued to the FCC and others that these phones were going to ruin AT&T’s transmission system. That’s the basic idea. The FCC rejected that argument, but it’s that kind of argument that gets made.”
— US government jealous of other unaccountable, overreaching authority
“After all of the above, you might think that I am very anti-Apple, anti-iPhone, anti-iPad. I’m not at all. I am anti-bullshit though.”
— Apple, Flash, and The Truth
