Often times I wonder what Jonathon Zittrain would say about the appearance of the Apple vs. The World fight that is gearing up. I have personally never seen the admiration for one company crumble so fast and to such a great degree in all my life. The reason for the whole debacle is two fold, but both parts play an equally big part.
Apple’s “handing “of their prototypes and their love of a closed system.
It seems like this cut off one of Apple’s mighty limbs more than the other, but I’ll save that for later. The way that everything has gone down in the case from the Apple employee leaving the prototype at a bar, to Apple requesting the police arrest those involve, which led to broken down doors and a fan base that quickly backed off. What are we, the consumer, to do when a company that we own products from shows just how anti-intelligence they really are?
They made the next generation of the iPhone and then let one of their engineers out with it, but things are so mixed up that more people believe that Apple engineered this whole debacle as a publicity stunt rather than it having actually happened by accident. Conspiracists love their conspiracies and no company has had quite as many in recent years as Apple. Though I have to wonder if it is only natural to speculate on the things that we are unable to touch.
Apple has such a vice grip on the control of it’s products and what it sells that they make Nurse Ratched look like the Teletubbies…though the latter could be seen as just as evil, but I digress. They don’t want their consumers adding their own parts to their shiny and sleek computers. Are you tired of yours overheating and want to put in a high RPM fan? Sorry, that’s all but impossible. Even if you were to do it, it would completely void your warranty and any Apple Care you purchased on your machine. Well if not the computers, surely you can modify your iPod? Try again. It is impossible to get music from your iPod to your computer, but of course you can put it on there. At least they allow you the small concession of being able to play music that is not bought from iTunes…
They claim that this forever-closed system helps keep their customers safe. It is true there are fewer viruses on Macs than PCs, but PC owners make up 85% of the computer world, if not more. All this really does is frustrate their users and creators who want to make something for their platform.
Apple blew up at Adobe over their latest tool that would allow users to port Flash games and applications over into a native iPhone browser, but as soon as it was revealed, Apple quickly changed their TOS to say that only apps developed in strict coding language would be allowed. They keep claiming that Flash kills battery life and lead to poor performance, but something I read last week made me truly question the validity of this statement. Yes, flash is a battery drainer, but I never used to notice it as much on my PC as I do now on my Mac. The article I read explained that on PCs Flash is able to access deeper into the machine in order to draw power from alternate sources so as to not tax the battery life.
If that’s the case, why does my Mac only last maybe an hour on a fully charged battery when watching YouTube? Answer: Mac will not allow Adobe access to the core of their machines and their processes. It is hard to develop a stable player and software that should function properly if you limit the access it can achieve. Flash developers are good at what they do, but they could be better if allowed the ability to at least try, regardless of the hype over the breeches in security that could happen.
I will fully admit that I love my Mac. It’s my best friend, but I would like to be able to modify it to meet my means beyond what Apple says I can. It is in our nature to create and modify and innovate, but that ability is suppressed in many of us today because we are not allowed to think outside of the box. The Internet has helped significantly with allowing us to generate our own content, especially visual artwork and blogs. Common people outside of the news agencies are creating the news and others are reading their words. The Internet created a culture of tinkers and ponderers. We have the right to question and to explore.
