readwriteweb.com
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.
Censorship counts even for "bad" things. The US has free speech, unless it is child porn, for instance.
That's how a proper counter-argument has to be structured. "just do what I want to do" is bullshit and does nothing to counter to "Apple is a private company". It has to be "what you did in case X is outrageous". Not serving people without shirt and shoes as a policy is acceptable. Not serving black people as a policy is outrageous.
"Personally, I believe the answer is to allow side loading"
The "sideloading is enough" view concedes that not approving Drones+ fails the outrageousness test above.
Apple censoring what other devices are allowed to exist outside their production-lines and what competing products customers are allowed to choose is.
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 that door on Android as well? It wouldn't hurt them, since neither consumers nor developers seem to care about independent software distribution anymore.
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".
If you control software distribution on a plaform, you directly or indirectly control every information that customers of that platform receive. I think this covers censorship.
Of course iOS does not have a dominant position in the market yet, so censorship is limited by the customers choice to switch to another device. But as I explained above, the moment to speak against the control is now, as long as there are still alternatives left.
I think this "plain old business decision" is a political issue of great importance.
The problem with tossing all these things into the same etymological barrel is that you lose the ability to communicate effectively about their differences.
Government restrictions imposed by force are not the same thing as market realities created by private decisions.
Business decisions are not the same thing as public policy crafted via the political process.
It is true that business decisions can have public policy implications and vice versa. That doesn't make them the same thing though.
[1] probably not the best link, but probably close enough to the right answer http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_percentage_of_Americans_own_a...
So I'd wager that app is nothing more than a titalating tool to fill peoples morbid curiosities. And at which point this is a conversation about culture, taste, censorship.
At that point I expect Apples well documented self protection guidelines to kick in and distance themselves from the app... leaving it up to people use other options not associated with apple to view that content i.e. creating a pseudo app by book marking to the home screen.
I love how the App's store's success is used against it here. You've been so successful with your approach you need to totally turn your back on it and be more like these relatively unsuccessful stores!
Huh, or maybe that success is partly because they curate and decided not to turn their device's third party app economy over to pirates and spammers.
Honestly, I love how Apple protects the user experience. Whether from spam, or "inappropriate content". They have created a relatively spam-free app store with pretty reliably "clean" content.
I don't even think it is an issue of free speech. I'm all for the web being open and free, but Apple has a right to manage their market the way they see fit. Just because so many people use iPhones doesn't change anything. You are FREE to choose a different phone. If you don't like their app market, go use a phone that has a market you do like.
The only way to really get full control of your device is to jailbreak, but Apple is fighting jailbreakers hard. And of course this isn't hypothetical at all: Cydia is full of apps that not only can't go into the app store, but couldn't be usefully installed on a non-jailbroken device using a developer certificate.
This is blatantly false and I'm getting sick of it. You own the device. For various reasons Apple designed the device to only work with one store. That isn't secret info not available to the buyer.
If Apple bricked my phone tomorrow I would return it for nothing less then a full refund. So yeah, you're just making things up.
"If Apple goes out of business, your iphone is worthless."
Why does my iphone stop working if Apple goes out of business? This is just silliness.
"Maybe your definition is different."
My definition is the same as the lay definition. There are radios you can buy that only tune into the NOAA Weather stations. Conversely most radios aren't able to pick up these as they are broadcast outside the normal AM/FM bands. However no one claims they don't own their radio because they can't tune into stations on a different part of the band and no one claims they don't own their weather radio because they can't tune into commercial stations. Instead people realize that when they bought a weather radio which only plays one station that was part of the purchase decision. Anyone claiming non-ownership in this context is just flat out wrong.
Not even close, sadly. You still can't install any apps that do any system-level stuff, regardless of what you pay. Apple still exerts a good bit of control over what you can do even with your own device, your own code, and your own dev program membership.
It's not a matter of censoring anything, because the AppStore is theirs, and they can do whatever they want and not even have to explain their decision.
It's about defining who is the owner of the device, and who controls what goes or not in it. This is the case you can take to court.
But let's be serious, Apple risks "consumer trust"? Not in any way that is likely to be measurable.
Or Windows Phone, looking like a stronger alternative all the time.
Same problem as with Apple.
(Granted, in all fairness, the Android Market removes apps as well, but side loading is kind of the eventuality here).
It's not preposterous to say "I'm leaving you because you do too much of something I don't want (pollute, overcharge, play bad hold music, whatever) for someone else that does a little less of that same thing that I don't want (pollute, overcharge, play bad hold music, whatever)"
If the market pressure is strong enough (I don't think it is, this is all hypothetical) then it could be something that Apple and Microsoft and Android and others actively compete on.
I am forever bewildered by consumers that have this sense of entitlement around a company and "demand" this action or that action.
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.
If Apple wanted to wall of the entire platform, they could do that. But instead they have created the biggest app market for mobile devices (from what I understand, please correct me if this is not 100% accurate, but the point remains it's huge). Does it suck that a few apps are rejected for seemingly dubious reasons? Sure, I guess it does for those developers. But I've been hearing dire warnings about mass exoduses and public outcries since the inception of the app store. Hasn't really happened besides a few edge cases that we see on Hacker News every other month or so.
To be honest, I feel that this particular app's story is only popular because it has to do with the politics of the drone program.
>> "Some consumers are already beginning to grow uncomfortable with Facebook's privacy policies, Google's targeted advertising, and other cases in which, whether justified or not, technology starts to feel a little creepy. Twitter takes protecting privacy and free speech very seriously, and even if most users don't notice or care yet, that stance will serve the company well as social media continues to part and parcel of our daily lives."
Got it. FB and Google evil. Twitter good.
Except that's not really true either. Twitter has worked with several law enforcement offices, particularly when identifying Occupy Wall Street protestors that were accused of crimes.
So I just don't find this article very credible on the facts, or the opinions persuasive at all.
Too bad Bill Gates isn't looking for a lawyer or advocate now. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft
(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.)
The "entitlement" is just my perspective of what I see as a group of individuals who align themselves with the OP's viewpoint in scolding Apple, taking shots at, and generally nitpicking it's wall-garden philosophy; A very vocal, relatively speaking extremely small minority of consumers who demand that the company change it's policies to fit their whims and philosophies.
I guess I would never be so presumptuous to think like that. To me, the company does what it wants, and when the public votes with their dollars, their business decisions are either validated or they are not.
And there is something that I just can't grasp about the hand-wringing and scolding about the app store. The iPhone is a great product, the app store is arguably one of the most successful new ventures of apple in the last decade, arguably the most successful app store for any mobile device. And by and large, the system works. So this barrage of criticism of edge cases is just...confusing to me, to say the least.
I appreciate that the writer is concerned about Apple and about consumers. But this concept that the writer's ideas are protecting Apple's long-term survival as a company in a fluid land-scape while at the same time bringing about pro-consumer changes just rings hollow to me. It feels like energy misplaced.
Businesses don't have any rights on their own, only the rights we give to them. When the interests of companies goes against the interests of the people, then we regulate. It's that simple. I'm against regulations that impose overhead for companies without good reason. Regulation to PREVENT companies from expending energy to actively keep users from doing what they want is not overhead. Forcing companies to keep their system somewhat open won't hurt them as much as it would benefit the world.
You can demand this all you want, as long as the only way you enforce your demand is by choosing what products to buy.
But if you mean "demand" as in "make laws and regulations", as it's clear you do, then I disagree.
When the interests of companies goes against the interests of the people, then we regulate.
No, we buy something else or go without.
At the end of the day, we're talking about smartphones and apps here. You do not need to have an iPhone. You do not need to have apps. If you don't like what's on offer, and all your efforts at persuasion fail, then, as I said, you buy something else or go without.
For example, I can't stand the MPAA and RIAA. I've blogged repeatedly about their stupid, shortsighted business practices and their attempts to get draconian laws passed to emasculate general purpose computers. But I have no right to demand that they make their products the way I want them to, or else we'll get the government to regulate them. If they refuse to listen to reason, as they have, I simply buy something else or go without. Which means that I almost never buy music or movies now. I do not have an iPhone, or an iPad, or any other iDevice, and have no plans to buy one, for the same reason.
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.
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 decide what they broadcast.
The App Store, for better or worse, is not a public good. I may not necessarily approve of some of Apple's decisions, but they have the right to make those decisions.
And no one's being abused. If you don't like it, leave. You're not being forced to support Apple in any way.
Why is the curated walled garden so egregious with a smartphone?
I'm not sure I recall Apple ever bragging about being an "open" marketplace past the "If you don't like our app store, build a web app" statements they've made in the past.
And as for "After an item has been sold, the former owner has no say in how the item is used by its new owner.", that depends. For commodities, sure, but there such things as sales contracts that can restrict what is done with an item that has been sold.
The point is that walled gardens have been around for a long time, but it seems like people are more likely to get their knickers in a knot when Apple does it.
Were this something happening against users' will the, yes, I might concede it's abuse. It's not; users love the app store and a large part of that reason is because the content is curated. It's Apple's store (not a public marketplace) and they know what they purchase isn't likely to be offensive and is likely to work as advertised. You may not like the App Store, but Apple is definitely not abusing users.
Apple makes it very clear: "We view Apps different than books or songs, which we do not curate. If you want to criticize a religion, write a book. If you want to describe sex, write a book or a song, or create a medical app. It can get complicated, but we have decided to not allow certain kinds of content in the App Store."
Go to Walmart and take your clothes off and see what happens. Nobody dragged you into that party and I'm guessing nobody even invited you. You looked at the market and picked what you thought was the best.
Stallman and his "free" Chinese tech are always at hand if you really feel abused.