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Apple At Its Worst: It's Time to Stop Censoring Apps

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Re: Apple At Its Worst: It's Time to Stop Censoring Apps

#21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's their company. They can do whatever they want. If you don't like it, that's great. Dissenting opinions are a foundation of this great country. But Apple also deserves the right to not care what you think, and not care if you go somewhere else. The majority of consumers have no problem with it. Too bad Bill Gates isn't looking for a lawyer or advocate now. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft

Are you suggesting Apple is a monopoly?

No, not yet (~30% share) but what you said it's not true. They cannot do "whatever they want." Eventually the Feds will start asking questions.

Re: Apple At Its Worst: It's Time to Stop Censoring Apps

#22
The standard "they're a private company/Android is an alternative" reply to this argument remains shortsighted. I'm an actor in the economy as well, and and I can apply non-monetary pressure (like editorials) just as well as Apple can (like advertising) to try to get a product that I want and a policy that I want in the same place. "Accepting it" leads to non-optimal solutions. We can disagree on what is optimal, of course.

However, the argument in this article is weak. It's not an argument to stop censoring apps, it's just saying, "continue blocking speech, except when its speech that I like". The author seems perfectly OK with some of Apple's other fairly arbitrary standards because the experience is OK so far.

All curation is "censoring". Being absolutist here isn't that insightful -- obviously there are degrees of censorship and a significant difference between "censoring" political apps and "censoring" malware -- but it is an important point to keep in mind.

Personally, I believe the answer is to allow side loading, trading a bit of pain (especially for security reasons) to allow determination on your own of what is acceptable to run on your device beyond the curated apps. At that point, the curated app store as a good thing becomes a much stronger argument for me, because everything that particular curator disagrees with is still available somewhere, even if it turns out I almost always agree with the curator.

At least (AFAIK) Apple has been less hard on the jailbreakers in the last few years.

Re: Apple At Its Worst: It's Time to Stop Censoring Apps

#23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's their company. They can do whatever they want. If you don't like it, that's great. Dissenting opinions are a foundation of this great country. But Apple also deserves the right to not care what you think, and not care if you go somewhere else. The majority of consumers have no problem with it. Too bad Bill Gates isn't looking for a lawyer or advocate now. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft

Are you suggesting Apple is a monopoly?

[deleted]

Re: Apple At Its Worst: It's Time to Stop Censoring Apps

#24
post #7

Apple censoring apps in its own proprietary app-store isn't really a big deal to society as a whole. Apple censoring what other devices are allowed to exist outside their production-lines and what competing products customers are allowed to choose is.

I disagree: Apple convinced developers that censorship is cool, and that is at least as dangerous as the broken patent system. Upcoming versions of both OS X and Windows take large steps in the same direction already. We all enjoyed a free software market for most of our lives. Now Android seems to be the only "personal computing" platform with a future. And who knows when Samsung or Google are going to shut down tha…

Apple did not convince developers that censorship was 'cool,' they convinced developers that they could make more money in a marketplace with censorship. As soon as that stops being true, or the frustrations mount, developers will change their mind. The patent system is enshrined in law, and a far bigger problem.

Re: Apple At Its Worst: It's Time to Stop Censoring Apps

#25
post #7

Apple censoring apps in its own proprietary app-store isn't really a big deal to society as a whole. Apple censoring what other devices are allowed to exist outside their production-lines and what competing products customers are allowed to choose is.

I know that this is a hopeless request but can we stop using the word "censor" when we are really talking about curation, or editorial policy, or private business decisions, etc?

Government imposed restrictions on speech and/or commerce is something entirely different from plain old business decisions and it would be nice if we didn't conflate the two things by overloading the meaning of "censorship".

Re: Apple At Its Worst: It's Time to Stop Censoring Apps

#26
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple is going to do what they're going to do. Either accept it or buy Android. That's not the only option. We don't allow property owners to randomly abuse other people as long as they're on their property. We don't tell those people, "well if you don't like it, just go somewhere else." We have laws that apply no matter who the owner is, to prevent abuse.

Abuse? I think you may be stretching there… A closer analogy is we do allow private property owners to decide what signs and other publicly visible items may be present on their property. Property owners are allowed to dictate who's allowed on premises. We also allow private organizations to decide who may join their organization. Stores are allowed to decide what products they retail. Private media are allowed to de…

Physical abuse isn't the only kind... ok let's use a real legal concept: After an item has been sold, the former owner has no say in how the item is used by its new owner. But Apple locks iPhones to only install software from their app store, and then censors the app store. This effectively limits what users can do with their devices even though Apple no longer owns them. Apple can't put legal restrictions on users (although they did try to claim that jailbreaking was illegal), and I don't see any defense for their technological restrictions.

Re: Apple At Its Worst: It's Time to Stop Censoring Apps

#27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you suggesting Apple is a monopoly?

No, not yet (~30% share) but what you said it's not true. They cannot do "whatever they want." Eventually the Feds will start asking questions.

What kinds of questions will Federal Agents be asking Apple? What kinds of illegal activity are you insinuating Apple has perpetrated?

(edit: Disclaimer I previously assumed was unnecessary: Apple can't "do whatever they want", you are correct. For instance, if Tim Cook killed a hooker, that would be bad.)

Re: Apple At Its Worst: It's Time to Stop Censoring Apps

#29
post #17

Totally disagree, its a major part of why I brought an iPhone over anything else (as a consumer). Anything hooked to me financially I want locked down, and with the near field stuff creeping in day by day I'd prefer things to be getting tighter and tighter, not looser and looser.

You bought an iPhone because you don't want the ability to be notified of drone strikes?

Re: Apple At Its Worst: It's Time to Stop Censoring Apps

#30
post #28

"Apple at its worst" is the chicanery of not letting you own the device they sold you. App store censorship wouldn't be a problem if there were other ways to get the programs you want and/or need.

For $99/year, you can put any open source program on it you like. That's all it costs to be a developer.
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