‘Apple’s devices are like beautiful crystal prisons’ | Hacker News Reader

‘Apple’s devices are like beautiful crystal prisons’

bgr.com

12 pointszacharye12 comments

There are a large number of microprocessor-based devices in my home, on and about my person that I can't program (without a great deal of difficulty). A dishwasher, a microwave, a thermostat, a landline telephone, a router, car computers; the list goes on.

The iPhone isn't a 'device', it's an appliance. Apple are happy with it being that way. If you don't like it, buy an Android. I thought we'd all had this discussion already?

Great parallel drawn between the iPhone and appliances — it really is the microwave of the smartphone world.

What people always miss when making the "open" argument with regard to the iPhone is this: What functionality is "missing"?

There are a billion things that the iPhone can't do, and much of this "missing" functionality would be achievable if iOS was open source (and is achievable if you jailbreak). But Apple builds products for the mass market, and all of this amazing functionality the iPhone is "missing" is functionality the mass market can live with or without.

As new apps bring cool new functionality, great. As new features come along in future versions of iOS, even better. If some cool stuff is left out though, so be it. 90% of iPhone owners probably won't know or care.

Personally, I do know and I do care, so I use an Android phone.

Not to be a contrarian or anything, but having been using both an Android and an iPhone for the past 3 years, I don't see a single feature on Android that would classify it as such a superior/better "computer" than the iPhone. They're both very complete and versatile little computers, just suited for different tastes. If the iPhone is a microwave, so is Android...

And why can't we program those "appliances" too? We live in a microprocessor enchanted world. To treat the world as dumb and unconnected is wasteful and disrespectful.

For every person complaining that iOS is restrictive, there are hundreds of people for whom it's genuinely liberating.

Take my parents-in-law. They have laptops, and they have an iPad. As far as they're concerned, the iPad is a much more capable device. This is because it's got apps that can do a lot more different things installed on it. Sure, technically there's actually a wider variety of software for the computer. But many long years' worth of getting burned by viruses, Bonzai Buddy, and Yahoo Toolbar have taught them that installing software on a computer is a dangerous thing that they should avoid doing without the assistance of someone like me.

The folks who can't see the garden for the wall need to come up with an answer to that. Otherwise all their kvetching is going to continue to fall on deaf ears.

Very little added here, mainly a summary of the EFF blog post at https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/05/apples-crystal-prison-... discussed here previously at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4036596

Ignorance is Strength? or Freedom is Slavery?

Look what freedom has brought us? Spyware. Google tracking. Cookies. Shared objects. Worms. Trojans. Viruses. Key loggers. Registry hax. Unauthorized bandwidth usage. Real Time Virus scans. Software that's hard. Having to configure. flaky hardware.

Apple liberates us from freedom and we love them for it.

It's a false dichotomy and a broad generalization to assume that non-free software is somehow more polished or of higher quality. Quality software and free software are two very broad categories which are generally not correlated.

There is plenty of awful non-free software just like there is plenty of awful free software.

its not that non-free software is more polished, its just that Apple software is more polished. I don't care for the freedom that much as long as I still have my linux servers and mac laptop on which I can literally install anything, but I really can't bear the lack of polish of an Android device. each time I have to touch any of those makes me cringe. its not that apple if without problems, but after using apple for a while its really hard to go back. you kind of expect the level of polish not found anywhere else.

The difference is that you're not free to leave in an actual prison.

"And I shall not be dark, but beautiful and terrible as the Morning and the Night! Fair as the Sea and the Sun and the Snow upon the Mountain! Dreadful as the Storm and the Lightning! Stronger than the foundations of the earth. All shall love me and despair!"

An apt comparison of Microsoft and Apple as any, I think.

America itself is like a beautiful crystal straightjacket. You can make a billion dollars, but just try stabbing someone in the face.

Living with restrictions has its pros and cons. You can move to Russia, where I hear you can do anything you're physically able to do, and deal with the consequences yourself.

In this case "moving away" is actually a lot easier.

In the analogy: not everyone living in America ever chose to live there - i.e. anyone who didn't immigrate as an adult. And it's a lot of work to move. So the default is living in a situation most people didn't choose themselves, with a very high barrier to changing anything.

But in the story: the easy alternative is buying an Android instead of buying an iPhone, or developing for Android instead of developing for iPhone. They're "just" phones and literally have the same functionality and anyone can use whichever one they want. It's not even like most people get their iPhone from their employers. People chose to enter this ecosystem as consenting adults in a competitive market, and it's one small purchase of a PHONE. If you made a mistake, it's one of the easiest things to replace. It's not like a car or a house or even a laptop. It's a phone.

I simply don't see why Apple shouldn't have the right to do things exactly as they want. I choose to "live there", and so do loads of other people.

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