"The irony is that the ‘second Steve’ of the later Apple made and sold the equivalent of mental sugar water to all via convenient appealing consumer gadgets."
Ouch.
Ouch.
The point is that the iPhone / iOS devices could be more open (to user control and modification at the OS level, to third-party peripherals, to third-party software distribution and installation, etc)... but, due to fiat policy rather than any significant technical constraint, it is not.
Is that hard to "get"?
Are you perhaps displacing? Do you think it's actually fair to take the view that because other people may have made note of an issue repeatedly in the past, it is therefore to be frowned upon if any new person also makes note of it from their own perspective? I guess you'd also tell Alan Kay, who made the actual comment under original discussion here, to muzzle it because his thought is boring? In any case, by your own logic, shouldn't you not have replied at all because no doubt many, many other people have replied to this issue as you are here, given that it is apparently such well-trod ground? Aren't you then being hypocritical?
And do you actually think it's fair-minded to call what I specifically wrote a "complaint"?
Your complaint makes little sense, and has no foundation.
Well, maybe a little.
Just because something can be done doesn't necessarily mean it should be done, does it? This is not a commentary on the iPhone as a computer, but about products in general.
Lots of things have general purpose computer parts, but serve a very specific purpose. What did Steve Jobs pitch the iPhone as again? A phone, an iPod, and an internet communicator? I don't remember "personal computer" being one of those things.
So yes, this is the thing that Apple wants to make. And I don't think there's anything wrong with that.
Which ones?
Anyone who complains that they can't do something that Apple won't let them is a candidate. Anybody who jailbreaks is definitely one. There are plenty.
Customers, of course, don't want a trade-off - they want power and safety. IOS is an attempt to get as close to that as possible, but it only works until iphone users want to do something on their phone that Apple doesn't want to let them do - that's when the illusion comes crashing down. When this happens, Apple users don't say, "Well, I'd like to run XYZ on my phone but I understand that I can't because that's the trade-off I made in exchange for a nice app store with no viruses in it," they say, "What the hell! I should be able to run XYZ if I want, it's my phone!"
The Steve who was most passionate about starting a revolution with cheap, accessible computers was named Wozniak.
What you can't do is distribute a binary for general use without paying Apple ($100/year) to sign your code.
We have to pay $299/year to Apple just for the privilege of putting software on our own fucking devices. That's some bullshit right there.
The free option is worth exactly shit for such a large organization.
The $100/year is to get in the public app store where your app must obey every arbitrary rule that Apple invents. They actually have a clause that says they can kick you out of the store for any reason they want without justification.
Why does anyone defend that sort of behavior?
Highest quality apps, least malware.
But yes, it could still absolutely be safe. Why do you think otherwise? Does Apple hold a patent on publishing malware-free apps? No. They do not.
Your app may be malware free, but it's pretty obvious there are many others which would not be.
So that really sucks for a lot of businesses. Nothing you've said has countered that. I'm really happy that your concerns have been met. Mine and millions of others' haven't.
Exactly. It's a locked down platform.
Then OSX introduced virtual memory. Programs became a little bit safer.
Then in later versions, Application Sandboxing, code signing, etc.
Every step of the way programs can do less but are safer for the OS.
The important thing here is that it's a tradeoff, not an universal good. And a tradeoff that I personally don't like very much. Doing fun and interesting things keeps getting harder and harder because you have to jump through increasing amount of security hoops. For instance, reading and writing memory of other programs enabled you to do tweaks that are now almost impossible to perform.
I understand the need for change, now that a computer is expected to be connected and running untrusted third-party code by default. But we've lost something with that change, and I wish for a way to get it back.
Of course, Apple soon figured out that what sells is not mind amplification tools but 'appliances' and under second Steve they became really good at producing those.
There's much to be said for the concept.