iPhone & iPod: contain or disengage?

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

You know, what apple does sounds just like what the net neutrality  
folks dislike.  djf


Begin forwarded message:

From: dewayne () warpspeed com (Dewayne Hendricks)
Date: September 22, 2007 7:14:47 AM EDT
To: Dewayne-Net Technology List <xyzzy () warpspeed com>
Subject: [Dewayne-Net] iPhone & iPod: contain or disengage?

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 19
iPhone & iPod: contain or disengage?

<http://wilshipley.com/blog/2007/09/iphone-ipod-contain-or- 
disengage.html>

Back when we had commies to worry about, someone came up with the  
concept of "engage and contain": eg, rather than avoid them as we'd  
been doing, we should trade and talk and travel there, and by doing  
so be able to contain their evil.

Similar ideas exist today on China and Iran (And, honestly, people --  
do we really worry about being attacked by Iran? Really? Is this even  
on our RADAR?) Google is infamous recently for installing government- 
censored Google in China, with what I think were the purest of  
intentions -- the idea that more knowledge naturally makes the  
country more democratic.

But even Google executives have recently said they think they've made  
a mistake, because by getting too close to the Chinese government,  
they've had to make compromise after compromise, until finally Google  
finds themselves an accomplice to evil instead of an adversary to it.

--

So it is with iTunes. Apple has engaged two of the most cock-thirsty  
and money-grubbing conglomerates in the United States -- the movie  
and record industries -- in what we all wanted to believe was an  
attempt to engage and contain them. And, initially, we all agreed  
Apple was doing good: they had, for the first time, made legal  
downloads more compelling than stealing music. For a single data  
point, I've personally bought 915 songs from the iTunes music store,  
and hundreds of TV episodes and dozens of movies. I own six iPods and  
have bought 18 iPhones to give away.

And we all took heart when Steve published that letter saying how  
much he hated DRM, and how he'd drop it if the labels would, and even  
if the rumors are correct and EMI was already planning to drop DRM  
and Steve just rushed in and took credit, it was still a bold stance  
for him to take; a challenge to the rest of the industry. And I  
immediately upgraded all the tunes I could to iTunes Plus, and bought  
a bunch more albums. And it was good.

--

But recently, well... the generous view would be that Apple's  
screwing up, and the non-generous view would be that they are just  
plain getting greedy.

No, I'm not talking about the iPhone price reduction. Honestly, I was  
happy to see the price go down, even though I could have personally  
saved $3,000 if I'd waited to buy the 15 phone I bought before the  
reduction. I mean, c'est la vie, it's technology, baby.

But why is the iPhone locked to a single carrier, so I can't travel  
internationally with it? There's really only one viable reason: Apple  
wanted a share of the carrier's profits, which meant giving AT&T an  
exclusive deal. Which meant, we get screwed so Apple can make more  
money. It's that simple.

And the iPhone is a closed system, like the iPods before it, so third  
parties can only develop software for it if they are EXTREMELY close  
to Apple. This is an incredibly frightening trend. As Apple gets more  
and more of its revenue from non-Mac devices, they are also getting  
more and more of their revenue from devices that simply exclude third  
parties.

I know Steve Jobs; he's actually amazingly like my old business  
partner Mike Matas. They both love closed systems, for a simple  
reason -- they both know they're smarter than anyone else on the  
planet, and they don't need anyone else mucking up their systems.  
Steve would rather have no third parties for Mac OS X if he could get  
away with it -- Apple, of course, would do a much better job on  
anything, but since customers insist on Photoshop and Office and  
other apps, he puts up with them. (Well, except, now Apple has their  
own office suite.) Steve knows that on a computer, having a broad  
spectrum of apps is more important that having them all be Apple- 
perfect.

But on iPods, Airports, Apple TVs, and now iPhones, Apple wants every  
app perfect. Which is nice, in theory. In practice, it means  
innovation only happens at Apple's pace. The marketplace of ideas is  
much smaller, and the devices are much poorer because of it.  
(Example: Why can't I stream music from my iPhone or iPod touch to my  
Airport Express?)

[snip]


-------------------------------------------
Archives: http://v2.listbox.com/member/archive/247/=now
RSS Feed: http://v2.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/247/
Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com