[OT] Mac App Store

[Peter Alcibiades]

To most people, this has never had anything to do with OS choice or with
Apple's stock price.  It has to do with corporate conduct.  It has to do
with the following:-

1)  Do you want a society in which your access to applications and thus
increasingly to media is in the control of a few corporations who make the
platforms?  Or do you want a world in which you buy the platform, install
what you want from where you want, buy, read and watch and listen to what
you want from wherever you want?  Its the CD model versus the iTunes model.

2)  Do you as developer want to have one route to market, an App store run
by the device manufacturer, and have him able to eject your stuff instantly
on a whim?  And then let it back in again on a whim, who knows for how long?

The reason the debate now comes up with OSX has nothing to do with that OS
in particular, it is that people think, reasonably enough based on the track
record, that Apple is starting to move OSX to the iPod and iPad model.  They
don't trust it.  And they think it has serious societal implications.  Once
again, reasonably enough, given the track record.  These are the guys who
ban apps based on what you can, but do not have to, use them to download,
when the material you allegedly might download is perfectly legal in your
jurisdiction, but for some reason, the guys at Apple do not approve of it. 
They banned Matlab, for Heaven's sake!  A version of Ulysses!

Corporate control of what you can do with your computer or your ebook reader
or your tablet is a threat, probably in the West now emerging as the main
threat, to intellectual freedom.  This is not OS wars.  This is corporate
conduct wars.  The same or very similar points can be made about Amazon and
its ebook format and sales methods.

It is perfectly possible that being on the wrong side of that debate may be
very profitable for Apple and lead to rising share prices. I doubt it, I
think the probable effect of these efforts at control will be to promote
hacking and piracy.  But even were it a good route to rising profits and
stock prices, doesn't make it any righter.  And the problem is, Apple always
has been evil in this way, but it used not to matter because it was too
small for its example to matter.  Now it is getting bigger, its a real force
in society.  So you can no longer say, you don't like it don't buy it.  You
buy it or not, its influence is profound.
-- 
View this message in context: http://runtime-revolution.278305.n4.nabble.com/OT-Mac-App-Store-tp3004425p3008464.html
Sent from the Revolution - User mailing list archive at Nabble.com.