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The coming civil war over general purpose computing

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Re: The coming civil war over general purpose computing

#51

Post by ekianjo »

parasubvert wrote: post #41
veidr wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple's restrictions have little to do with controlling device owners I would think you were making a joke if not for the earnest tone of your post. But, come on, that is a ridiculous statement to make. We had free as in freedom, free as in beer, and then Steve Jobs came up with free as in "freedom from porn". You appear to buy into that doublespeak redefinition of freedom without irony. The Soviet Union made a sim…

You seem to be under the impression that phones once were free & loose, and then Apple locked them down. Phones never were free - carriers controlled what went on them, and what features were used. Apple opened devices up to a level never before seen - no more carrier crap pre-loaded, and a serious push to improve data pipes and 3G availability throughout North America. Not to mention an app marketplace NOT controlle…

"Phones were always locked down heavily ?"

Ah, you must not have lived through the PDA-phones age. That's a good 5-10 years even before the iPhone came out.

Re: The coming civil war over general purpose computing

#52

Post by dbaupp »

nirvana wrote: post #28
fmstephe wrote: post #7

When I read articles like this my fears always move straight to a future where it has become harder to program for play. I appreciate that this concern is somewhat superficial compared with some of the issues raised in this article, but I feel profoundly grateful to be able to tinker with computers in my spare time. I feel this more deeply than the fear that my music collection might not survive a computer upgrade or…

This is one of the reasons I'm such a fan of Apple, despite all the misguided gruff they get here. Apple always ships free (or near free) development tools with their systems. In the Apple II days it was built in to the ROMS. Nowadays on the Mac AppStore you can download Xcode, for free. (though at one point I think it was $5 for some reason.) You can develop any mac apps you want, and run them to your hearts content…

Surely this argument implies you should be a larger fan of linuxes and BSDs? (And of things like Mozilla's mobile platform.)

Re: The coming civil war over general purpose computing

#53

Post by gizmo686 »

ekianjo wrote: post #49
nirvana wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is one of the reasons I'm such a fan of Apple, despite all the misguided gruff they get here. Apple always ships free (or near free) development tools with their systems. In the Apple II days it was built in to the ROMS. Nowadays on the Mac AppStore you can download Xcode, for free. (though at one point I think it was $5 for some reason.) You can develop any mac apps you want, and run them to your hearts content…

There's no such thing as "near free". Free is a boolean variable, either it is free or it is not free. Apple does not distribute any free tools to develop and run software for their systems, period. If you want to be a free hacker, it's Linux or Windows, currently. And as another person responded to you, you cannot use the UI elements via javascript and all. Get some docs, seriously.

Windows hacker? Finding information about system internels is more often then not an easter egg hunt on google.

Re: The coming civil war over general purpose computing

#54

Post by blub »

parasubvert wrote: post #41
veidr wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple's restrictions have little to do with controlling device owners I would think you were making a joke if not for the earnest tone of your post. But, come on, that is a ridiculous statement to make. We had free as in freedom, free as in beer, and then Steve Jobs came up with free as in "freedom from porn". You appear to buy into that doublespeak redefinition of freedom without irony. The Soviet Union made a sim…

You seem to be under the impression that phones once were free & loose, and then Apple locked them down. Phones never were free - carriers controlled what went on them, and what features were used. Apple opened devices up to a level never before seen - no more carrier crap pre-loaded, and a serious push to improve data pipes and 3G availability throughout North America. Not to mention an app marketplace NOT controlle…

There are ways to offer predefined paths for those people that don't care about choice without taking away choice from everyone. Apple has completely failed at providing this because they're hungry for control and want to impose their will upon their customers. Ideally all people that use computers.

>Firstly, you do realize that you have political freedom -- people are completely free to jailbreak their phones, no police will come after you

Apple wanted to make jailbreaking illegal and were stopped by the USG. They wanted police to come after you, but apparently you don't remember that part.

> Secondly, none of the software you use, that you haven't written, is owned by you

There's a huge difference between not owning software and still controlling it because it's your machine and not owning software and being out of luck because Apple can remote-delete it.

Re: The coming civil war over general purpose computing

#55

Post by blub »

parasubvert wrote: post #17
batgaijin wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA. How is it improving my experience when they ban apps that turn the device into a wifi hotspot? Oh right, they prefer money to letting users have the freedom to choose such a thing.

Has nothing to do with Apple's money. The carrier's money, sure. And things like trust, battery life, etc. But that's everywhere.

Some really scary thought processes in these replies...

Apple put functionality in their phones that blocks an EXISTING Wi-Fi hotspot feature for their customers at the will of the carriers. The carriers that I have already paid to get internet access. In my case I had a 5yr old feature phone that I could use to connect to the internet (wired) while the iPhone would not allow that because the carrier (EU, not US) completely disabled the option, not even allowing it for a fee. I fail to see how that was helpful to me.

Thankfully that's not everywhere, that's only in Apple-verse and Windows Phone-verse. My phone is capable of creating a wifi hotspot without requiring permission from anyone. And while it's very thoughtful of you, let me worry about battery life.

Re: The coming civil war over general purpose computing

#56

Post by blub »

fmstephe wrote: post #7

When I read articles like this my fears always move straight to a future where it has become harder to program for play. I appreciate that this concern is somewhat superficial compared with some of the issues raised in this article, but I feel profoundly grateful to be able to tinker with computers in my spare time. I feel this more deeply than the fear that my music collection might not survive a computer upgrade or…

Programming for play should be the least of your worries when there's a risk of having to ask for permission to do anything some corporation doesn't want you to do on your device.

Or just being prevented from doing it period.

Re: The coming civil war over general purpose computing

#57

Post by rdl »

ekianjo wrote: post #51
parasubvert wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to be under the impression that phones once were free & loose, and then Apple locked them down. Phones never were free - carriers controlled what went on them, and what features were used. Apple opened devices up to a level never before seen - no more carrier crap pre-loaded, and a serious push to improve data pipes and 3G availability throughout North America. Not to mention an app marketplace NOT controlle…

"Phones were always locked down heavily ?" Ah, you must not have lived through the PDA-phones age. That's a good 5-10 years even before the iPhone came out.

Those were still basically locked down on the phone/baseband part, with a PDA glued on. They weren't anywhere near as closely coupled as today's smartphones.

Re: The coming civil war over general purpose computing

#58

Post by ekianjo »

rdl wrote: post #57
ekianjo wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Phones were always locked down heavily ?" Ah, you must not have lived through the PDA-phones age. That's a good 5-10 years even before the iPhone came out.

Those were still basically locked down on the phone/baseband part, with a PDA glued on. They weren't anywhere near as closely coupled as today's smartphones.

I think we were talking about applications when we say "locked down"...

Re: The coming civil war over general purpose computing

#59

Post by chao- »

gizmo686 wrote: post #53
ekianjo wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no such thing as "near free". Free is a boolean variable, either it is free or it is not free. Apple does not distribute any free tools to develop and run software for their systems, period. If you want to be a free hacker, it's Linux or Windows, currently. And as another person responded to you, you cannot use the UI elements via javascript and all. Get some docs, seriously.

Windows hacker? Finding information about system internels is more often then not an easter egg hunt on google.

Say what you will about Windows (and I will even join you), but Microsoft can put out some alarmingly competent docs. I say "can" and not "always do", because where they are lacking, I agree it can be frustrating. That said, in one such scenario the solution for me was to get in touch with a PM at MS and say:

"You designed [system #42]. I'm trying to accomplish [nifty goal] that is an obvious extension of what you suggest that [system #42] should be used for. You said some examples are included with the most recent Windows SDK. After downloading it, I found no such example and the problem seems a little intractable. What gives?"

The response contained an attachment of the overlooked/unincluded examples, and some clarifications about the system I was working with and even explained that some of what I was doing was explicitly NOT possible, for very good reasons (for the record, an earlier version of Windows Search).

I say this as a desktop Linux user, where at times my only recourse for "Why won't [application x] properly fullscreen?" is to go and do just what you suggest: an easter egg hunt on google. Furthermore, the end-all-be-all solution is the same as it is with our Windows example: get in touch with someone at the project and ask for clarification. The difference lies in that with one case, it's someone's job to provide clarification for the system they designed. In the other case, the possibilities are too varied to speculate on (e.g. unmaintained project, antisocial developer).

Re: The coming civil war over general purpose computing

#60

Post by runn1ng »

nirvana wrote: post #28
fmstephe wrote: post #7

When I read articles like this my fears always move straight to a future where it has become harder to program for play. I appreciate that this concern is somewhat superficial compared with some of the issues raised in this article, but I feel profoundly grateful to be able to tinker with computers in my spare time. I feel this more deeply than the fear that my music collection might not survive a computer upgrade or…

This is one of the reasons I'm such a fan of Apple, despite all the misguided gruff they get here. Apple always ships free (or near free) development tools with their systems. In the Apple II days it was built in to the ROMS. Nowadays on the Mac AppStore you can download Xcode, for free. (though at one point I think it was $5 for some reason.) You can develop any mac apps you want, and run them to your hearts content…

To even be able to sign your application to run on OS X, you need to pay 99 dollars. And agree to Apple's terms.

You have to agree to pages of Apple's terms if you want to let anyone to run your thing on iOS.

"You only need a $99 membership, which is pretty affordable, compared to the past when it cost $500-$5,000 for such suites of software." - where do you get these numbers? You can put your software for free on sourceforge (AFAIK); also, Debian's software repositories work almost like App Store, but FOR FREE. If you are more commercial, you can use any of other solutions which do not cost "$50-$5,000", you just made that up.

YOU are the one doing distortion field, as I read your comments on Hacker News. Compare how simple is to download source codes and SDKs to Google Android, how simple is to hack the application and run it on your device, how simple is to put it on the market - and how convoluted is it with Apple. You actually can't download the source code to most of iOS.

Personal note: if commenters like you will be more frequent on Hacker News, I will stop reading the comments alltogether.

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