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Comment by alextgordon | Hacker News Reader

It's neither. It's that the only supported method of distribution is via the App Store.

If, in addition to the App Store, developers were able to distribute apps themselves, there would be no problem. People would grumble whenever Apple introduced another asinine policy, but there wouldn't be such an outcry. Some restrictions in return for extra visibility and use of Apple's distribution system is a fair trade.

This isn't what we have though. It isn't just Apple's store they're locking down, it's the whole device. A store that you can't freely put software on is unfortunate but understandable. A computer that you can't freely put software on is just wrong.

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Agreed, and it's amazing how quickly Apple has been able to shift the terms of the debate on this. It's now apparently an extreme position ("abolitionist" in Gruber's post) that if Alice creates a program and wants to send it to Bob, they should be able to accomplish that without begging for permission from the computer manufacturer.

In some sense, the shift in debate came as soon as DRM became acceptable to most people. Apple has capitalized on this shifted ground, to be sure, but I think that the iPad debates are reflective of a much more general struggle and debate.

Exactly. I keep hearing App Store being compared to physical stores. Something like: "Walmart gets to choose the items they place on their shelves, so why should the App Store be any different?".

In fact, Walmart is fairly picky about what they put on their shelves, especially when it comes to music CDs. We can argue that Walmart's control on the CDs it distributes might have a stifiling effect on the type of music that gets released. However, Walmart is not the only place allowed to sell CDs. Yes, it might suck that you have to make a Walmart-specific release of your album, but that doesn't prevent you from releasing a more explicit version elsewhere.

This is not the case with the App Store.

How is that neither? That is the control part. They control what software gets on the device, period. If that is what bothers you then you should be just as upset with Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo. They all run their own stores and they tightly control the retail channel. Their devices are computers you can't freely put software on too.

Where's your indignation about them?

I personally do not buy game consoles for exactly this reason.

I think there's less outrage because there's a sense that they are just for games. They are not intended to be general purpose computing devices, though these days they pretty much are. It becomes more outrageous when a device that you use for your private life, for your business, and for other things that really matter to you is controlled by someone else.

Personally, I only buy these kind of devices when there's a hack available. I will not let a corporation decide what I can and cannot do with a piece of hardware that I paid good money for.

To me they're just the producer of the device and that's where our relationship ends no matter what idiotic, lobbied for, legal rules say (and please don't bring murder and rape into this debate, it's a whole different ball park).

Sony did in fact earn some nerdrage when they disabled linux mode, and therefore indie games.

Games consoles have only recently become viable for anything other than games and they're still not quite there yet. I do think their closed nature will be a problem in the future.

Much more elegantly put that I was able to say. I believe they should have the freedom to do what they want with their property and I expect the same for my property. Exploiting contract law to restrict what I can do on my own property is bull.

The App Store as a single point of distribution is one of the great advantages of the iPhone line, removing that would be a massive mistake, even if it would appease some techies and developers.

This isn't what we have though. It isn't just Apple's store they're locking down, it's the whole device. A store that you can't freely put software on is unfortunate but understandable. A computer that you can't freely put software on is just wrong.

Wrong? For most of the world it's exactly what they need. Allowing people to freely put software on their computer leads to a lot of bullshit. Hell, even experienced people will put themselves through a lot of bullshit because they're allowed to change things.

The regular people in the world want and need someone to man the gates of software. It may not be good for FSF or FOSS, but guess what? A whole fucking lot of people (And I mean a shit load) don't care about programming languages, kernels, drivers, or any other of that crap.

(Sorry if this comes off ranty, I have a cold and I get heated really easily when sick)

Why not just have a "happy normal person mode" and a "dangerous geek warrior mode" for devices? Why do the two have to be mutually exclusive? In normal mode, all apps are certified, the device is guaranteed to be almost foolproof, etc.

To switch to geek mode, the user has to solve a math problem involving SI units, answer "Do you really want to forgo ease of use for flexibility?" a dozen times, or some other ritual to prevent normal users from accidentally entering geek mode.

The core firmware of the device has a switch to do a factory reset to normal mode no matter how much damage has been done to the software. Look at the OLPC XO for an example of how that can be implemented. That way, if a geek ever sells their device, there's no need for the buyer to worry about the device being all "geeked out."

Inevitable result:

* Sites start publishing easy how-to guides for entering GWM

* One-click tools to enter GWM are released

* Apps that use private APIs that require GWM are released

* Apple support has to deal with customers who fucked up their devices in GWM

* Apple has to deal with bad press when some malware spreads through GWM devices

* Any new iPhone OS release would have to deal with breaking however many GWM-oriented tools there are that rely on private, changing APIs. More bad press for little reward.

* The App Store is a huge win for end-users, and the benefit of that would go out the window with alternate sources of apps sprinting up. Where do you go to get an app? Where do you get the latest version? What happens if a non-App Store app gets really popular? You're back to having to manage your phone like it's a computer, which is a non-starter. You don't manage an iPhone, you use it.

You end up with a lot of phones that look like your computer-illiterate co-workers Windows XP machine from 5 years ago. But hey, people who like to tinker with their phones would be happy, so it's totally worth it.

My final paragraph addresses this issue: there's an easy-to-use, unalterable reset switch (either software or hardware) that will restore the device to factory settings, and a clause in the service agreement that says tech support will not help you if you refuse to remove your device from geek mode.

Non-app store apps getting popular hasn't been a problem on other mobile devices.

Isn't the "dangerous geek warrior mode" for the iPhone called "joining the iPhone developer program"? That does allow you to compile and install any app you want, right?

You can only ad-hoc install apps that have been signed for your device specifically. So if Alice and Bob want to exchange apps in this way, they can, but it prevents them from distributing their apps to just anyone.

"Dangerous geek warrior mode" is much more akin to Jailbreaking.

Few significant achievements come without putting yourself through a lot of bullshit. The closed model is really only valuable for a toy. A real tool has to be a little dangerous to be properly useful.

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