Any developer knows that if you give your users a gun they will find a
way to shoot themselves with it. If users could install their own phone
apps from any source, this would eventually open the floodgates to a
whole new generation of Spyware, and other invasive and problematic crap
software. There are already ways to install spy software on certain
phones, as I understand it.
Then, we'd get into lawsuits (and phone bills that threaten bankruptcy)
and all sorts of privacy related problems, support issues, and other
assorted headaches. If it has taken years for the public to instill some
generally secure computing practices on Joe sixpack, it will take an
eternity to teach Joe sixpack how to do whatever they need to do to make
sure that their phone conversations they think are private are actually
secure. We have gone through generations of people that have grown used
to the reality/illusion of phone conversations being private. This
doesn't even touch on bandwidth and metered usage related issues.
So yes, for us it would be wonderful if the iPhone were open this way,
but in reality I think it is smart of Apple to protect users from
themselves, and smart Apple to cover their own asses - I can't fault
them for that. Whether or not it is cool of Apple to dictate what apps
get carried in their iPhone app store is a whole other story I guess,
but forcing users to go to their store at least prevents people from
downloading apps from some dude's Geocities page or from Russia or
something.
I think that unfortunately this is simply a product of the fact that
people are generally morons, and as a consequence we all suffer. Sorry
to be so dark sounding, but it seems appropriate here :)
Ben Shewmaker wrote:
> Thanks for the good info. It's always easy to get carried away with
> hype. People are developing new ways to connect people to share
> information, be it personal photos, videos, business info, what have
> you, but the technologies that, at least to me, seem the most promising
> or exciting are those that are more open. That's the one big gripe I
> have about the iphone. I have an ipod touch, not an iphone, and it's a
> sweet little piece of hardware with some really creative apps. I
> unlocked my touch, but it was far from easy and Apple is far, far from
> encouraging people to experiment with their system in wasy contrary to
> theirs. Plus I hate iTunes. Big, bloated, yucky piece of software I'm
> supposed to use to 'sync' it with my computer. But I digress. . . .
>
> On Thu, Jun 18, 2009 at 2:37 AM, Steven Black <blacks@indiana.edu
> <mailto:blacks@indiana.edu>> wrote:
>
> On Thu, Jun 18, 2009 at 01:11:41AM +0900, Ben Shewmaker wrote:
> > There seems to be some excitement over the new Opera Unite. Haven't
> > tried it yet myself, wondering if anybody else has played with it?
> > Looks cool anyways. .
>
> It looks pretty crappy once you realize how it works.
>
> * http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2009/jun/17/opera-unite
> * http://factoryjoe.com/blog/2009/06/16/thoughts-on-opera-unite/
>
> You get a super-crappy URL (which I consider a nonissue for most), and
> all your content is fed through Opera's centralized Unite proxies (big
> issue when the whole point of the thing is supposed to go decentralized
> -- it isn't at *all* decentralized). As an added bonus, they reserve
> the right to block and/all content as they see fit, and redirect pages
> to other pages. They're not freeing things for the people, they're just
> asking to be our new masters.
>
> All the excitement appears to just be folks regirgitating Opera's press
> releases.
>
>
> I think it is much more exciting to know that Google's Wave application
> has a public protocol site ( http://www.waveprotocol.org/ ) and that
> their goals for it are broader than simply another Google App.
>
> As simply another Google App it falls in to the "ultimately lame due to
> proprietary nature". Things get a whole lot different if there are open
> protocols, and random folks can have their own Wave servers. (Things
> are best if said wave servers are open-source, but with open protocols
> things can be rewritten.)
>
> Cheers,
>
> --
> Steven Black <blacks@indiana.edu <mailto:blacks@indiana.edu>> /
> KeyID: 8596FA8E
> Fingerprint: 108C 089C EFA4 832C BF07 78C2 DE71 5433 8596 FA8E
>
>
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--
Joe Auty
NetMusician: web publishing software for musicians
http://www.netmusician.org
joe@netmusician.org
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