Imagine a country run by Steve Jobs -- it would be China.
Things like the .xxx proposal and opposition to net neutrality are steps towards the same kind of 'clean, curated experience' you get on the iPhone today.
Thankfully they seem to be getting knocked back every time they try, but only with great expense and effort from groups like the EFF. And they keep on trying new ways to ruin the Internet all the time.
See how well they're doing stopping piracy of normal media? They'll do even worse stopping pornography. There's nothing to fear from a .xxx domain.
But how much harm could they do in trying? That is the question you should ask. Look up Anthony Comstock if you want an example.
How certain are you of this? Would you be able to successfully defend every photograph or email you have ever produced against obscenity charges? I think, if it came down to it, the courts could find a hell of a lot of inadvertent pornographers out there.
Note I said 'could': Selective enforcement of over-broad laws is a boon and a horrible threat, because it implies everyone is guilty of something, so the government could pound anyone who bothers them if it chose to.
At first glance, it seems like a great idea, but as soon as you get into the details it's a nightmare. What .xxx and similar proposals mean is that someone, somewhere, possibly in another country and with values wildly at variance with yours, gets to censor the Internet for you. It's not a service I consider worth having.
Smarter people than I have written about this before: http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3675
No-one is forcing you to use an iPhone or an iPad; if you disagree with Apple's policies then walk down the street and buy an alternative product, or don't develop apps for the App Store.
Apple can dictate policies that irritate developers and content publishers because they have a better product offering to the consumers plus a critical mass of app offerings in the App store and they know it. If Microsoft had a superior tablet offering that everyone was raving about and an Android-based phone was kicking Apples ass in terms of iPhone sales, then perhaps Apple's stance would be more lenient.
A little perspective please.
If you are a hacker (and not an app developer) who has a major problem with Apple's policies, then you are absolutely corrrect; it would be highly hypocritical to both own an iPhone/iPad and hold that view simultaneously.
"Ankh-Morpork had dallied with many forms of government and had ended up with that form of democracy known as One Man, One Vote. The Patrician was the Man; he had the Vote."
I suppose Steve doesn't like satire...
The are no bullshit rules and laws, just thought out recommendations to make the city run as well-oiled machine.
"The Patrician could not tolerate mime artists. It was a strange aversion, but there you are. Anyone in baggy trousers and a white face who tried to ply their art anywhere within Ankh's crumbling walls would very quickly find themselves in a scorpion pit, one wall of which was painted the advice: Learn The Words."
For the Patrician it was mimes, for Jobs presumably Flash, bikinis and now also satire ;-)
To the Jobs list, add non-ObjC languages, VMs and everything that allows the proles to tarnish the things of beauty his company produces.
Many car analogies are often wrong. Perhaps you can explain to me the benefit of that metaphor. From what I gather, the insinuation is that Steve Jobs has a restrictive grip on the App Store. Now, comparing Apple to China is a pretty inflammatory statement, so the metaphor must have a substantial point to make in order to justify the hyperbole. From what I see, this is just another snappy Apple-bashing one-liner (which contribute practically nothing to the discussion). Perhaps I'm wrong, but in that case I'd really like to be filled in.
And really, do we want to go there? Did several million people die during the cultural revolution, several hundred die during Tianamen, and the continuing abuse of human rights, just so we could crack jokes about Jobs? It seems a bit in poor taste. Otherwise, let's just go whole hog, call him Hitler, paint a moustache on his portrait, and Godwin the whole thing.
However, this is not necessary for the statement "If Steve Jobs ran a country, it would be China" to be accurate. It need merely be shown that the general principles Jobs abides by match up in some general way to the philosophy of China. Whether his current company is similar in any way to a country is irrelevant — just whether his actions could lead one to believe he'd run a country that way.
Even if we do make such a simplification, I generally see Apple as a benevolent dictatorship, based on their impressive track record of making life better for the average person, despite occasionally questionable behavior.
Sometimes I wish the United States was a benevolent dictatorship, if only so that Obama could be more productive.