Why Apple is evil: Their business model is contagious

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This isn’t news either, but I’m posting it anyway.

Many have made the argument that it’s OK if Apple makes a walled garden, because there’s always other choices.

The problem is when Apple’s walled garden is wildly successful, competing platforms may switch to a walled garden model. And, Microsoft, which is quite often accused of copying Apple at every opportunity, well, they’re copying Apple on this one.

Windows Phone 7 will be a walled garden, too. Sure, there’s some Windows Mobile 6.5 devices out there, and they’ll continue past Windows Phone 7’s release, but let’s face it – 6.5 is crap.

And, AT&T’s first Android device, the Motorola Backflip, requires some hacking to get apps from outside of the Android Market installed. Granted, they didn’t do a good job of securing it, but they did try.

Arguably, this is more of a “why Microsoft and AT&T evil,” but this points out why Apple’s walled garden is dangerous for everyone, even if you’re not an Apple customer.

Source: Engadget

Why Apple is evil: Lying to their customers about the future of their products

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Today, we’ll have a more historical look at Apple’s evil actions.

In 1977, Apple released the Apple ][, the refinement of Steve Wozniak’s engineering into a more complete computer. This machine and its wide family of descendants were extremely popular for many uses, and were used in many schools across the US.

Prior to the 1980s, computers in the hobbyist market, what Apple knew, tended to last for a couple years on the market, and then were pushed out by the latest and greatest. Backwards compatibility wasn’t understood. So, Apple figured that by 1980, they would be dead in the water if they stuck with the Apple ][, hence a project to create both a short-term and a long-term successor, aimed at the business market.

These machines were the Apple /// and Lisa, both colossal failures in the marketplace, for different reasons. However, Apple decided to actively neglect the Apple ][ while developing the Apple /// – despite the Apple ][ Plus racking up massive profits for them, and funding all of the projects meant to kill it.

That’s not what’s evil, that’s just them not knowing better.

The Mac was eventually the ultimate successor to the Apple II line, although it had to push the wildly popular Apple II out of the way first. So, again, Apple started neglecting the Apple II, not giving it upgrades or promotion that it deserved.

Here’s where it got evil. Apple, knowing they were trying to kill the Apple II, started releasing the Apple II Guide. This was a series of guides listing all sorts of information about the Apple II, with statements that Apple had no plans to cancel the Apple II, to reassure customers. Problem is, they did that in the 1992 edition, right before cancelling all Apple II projects (and knowing they were going to do it.)

Way to abandon your loyal customers, Apple.

I’ll admit that I wasn’t around for this, but I’ve read a lot about it. If I’ve gotten some of my facts wrong, please comment, and I’ll correct it.

No specific source for today.

Why Apple is evil: They’re less secure than Microsoft products

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There’s not much to report here, other than security expert Marc Maiffret claiming that Apple appears to have a lax attitude towards security, and sticking with security through obscurity to avoid malware.

Sure, there’s not much malware for OS X now, but Apple’s lax attitude towards security (including leaving major Java vulnerabilities unpatched for six months) means that there’s not much security there if anyone does ever target OS X.

Like at Pwn2Own, where every year of the contest, Apple products got pwned – and from 2008 on, they were the first to fall.

Source: LA Times Blogs

Why Apple is evil: Political cartoons aren’t allowed, they might offend someone

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Never mind that you can get to this sort of thing on Safari… apparently political cartoons aren’t allowed on the iPhone.

Ridiculing public figures being defamatory? What ever happened to parody? Also, being public figures, IIRC, the level for whether the speech is defamatory is higher.

Now, one thing I’ll say… this would be a non-issue, of Apple deciding they don’t want to distribute it, if Apple allowed external software. But, Apple has control over what runs on the iPhone completely.

Yes, they are reversing their decision on this app, but only because of the public backlash. This is actually a good sign – public backlash against their actions, such as this series of blog entries, makes them respond. But, they’re obviously willing to do something if they think they can get away with it.

Source: Slashdot

Why Apple is evil: Requiring specific programming languages to develop for iPhone

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Today’s “Why Apple is evil” entry deals with something that’s not quite news, but I wanted to cover it.

Apple is requiring that applications originally be developed in Objective-C, C++, C, or JavaScript (executed by Safari’s JS engine.)

This is intentionally used as a way to prevent certain companies from making tools for the iPhone platform.

Despite what you might think about Adobe (honestly, my opinion is that they’re the vile scum of the Internet, and Flash is worse than IE6, because at least there’s alternatives to IE6,) this is still rather troubling – the market should push Adobe out with superior solutions, not anticompetitive actions, especially when those anti-competitive actions have collateral damage, and severely negatively affect developers. Apple is now mandating the development process, not just what the program does.

Of course, in classic Apple fashion, they’re doing things horribly inconsistently – other development frameworks that clearly violate the agreement are being explicitly allowed, showing just how anticompetitive this is.

Waging a personal war is one thing. Waging a personal war using your developers and users as pawns is another.

Source: many, but I decided to post about this today because of The Register

Why Apple is evil: Banning apps for being potentially able to display objectionable content

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I’m going to start a regular series, hopefully daily, inspired by this article on OSnews.

My goal is to, every day, post a piece of bad PR, ideally sourced externally, about Apple. I intend to post other things on this blog as well – this will be in addition to my normal infrequent posting.

Let’s start this out with an app rejection. (A lot of these will be app rejections.)

Apple has rejected an app, “You Are Hot,” for containing objectionable content. Problem is, at the time of review, it didn’t contain any content. It allowed users to submit content, and that content was moderated to make sure it WASN’T objectionable.

So, by that logic, Apple should ban Safari from the iPhone. After all, it might potentially show a breast. And, by their logic, you wouldn’t even be able to slap WebSense in front of the internet connection to prevent that breast from showing – if it can show user-generated content, it’s objectionable, apparently.

Isn’t this what parental controls are for, if you’re using the walled garden app model?

Source: App Rejections

What Apple used to stand for, and what they stand for today

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What they used to stand for: Clever hacks, exploration, creativity, making stuff, freedom, designed to benefit the hacker and the user

What they stand for today: Consumerism, restriction, walled gardens, control, designed to benefit the content producer

Best symbolism of the former? The Apple II. The lid isn’t even screwed down, just pops right off. BASIC, and in some versions (depending on available space,) an assembler and disassembler in ROM. Manuals with schematics and source code.

Best symbolism of the latter? The iPad. Sealed tight, Apple doesn’t even swap the battery, they replace the entire unit. Programming is only if you pay to play, and even then, your code has to be approved by Apple. Allegedly, DRM baked straight into the CPU, so Apple can in theory control every single piece of code that you run on it.

Which would you prefer?

Scary thought of the day: Windows Mobile is the most open smartphone operating system.

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You’re probably thinking, “what? How can that be? Android has to be the most open, it’s open source, right?”

And you’d be right… until you get into actual Android devices that are for sale. Other than the Google Dev Phone 1 (which has some other restrictions,) all of the devices are locked down at least somewhat.

There is one exception to my point – in one or two ways, Palm OS is more open than Windows Mobile. However, Palm OS is irrelevant nowadays, but I’ll include it in the comparison anyway. Continue reading “Scary thought of the day: Windows Mobile is the most open smartphone operating system.”

More retrocomputing stuff!

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So, I’ve been messing around with my IIGS some more lately.

First, I got it running as a web server, using a serial connection to my server. Great. But, the fastest connection I could get that was stable was 38400 baud. Eww.

I might’ve blogged a while back about the problems the motherboard had, that it couldn’t accept any expansion cards. Long story short, I had gotten an a2RetroSystems Uther ethernet card for it, and tried it… and nothing. It wouldn’t connect. Tried everything, even tried a diagnostic software disk image that a2RetroSystems sent me, and it wouldn’t init the card.

After doing a bunch of diagnostics on the machine… I figured it out. The damned motherboard was fucked. 😡

Anyway, yesterday, a new IIGS (that was actually a year older) arrived. It had a dead power supply, but I had a good one in my old IIGS… and this machine works perfectly. 😀

Interestingly, the video signal is clearer and stronger on this one, too. Not sure what that’s about, but I’m sure as hell not complaining.

So, the IIGS is now online, with an ethernet card. Still is using floppies as the only storage, though.

It is accessible at http://bhtooefr.ath.cx:6502/index.htm in its current state, however.

But, that’ll eventually be remedied. I’m going to get a Focus IDE controller from 16 Sector (and I’ve already got a CF to 44-pin IDE adapter on the way, and I’ll be getting a 1 GiB CF card soon,) and some form of 4 MiB RAM card.

Then, I think, except for an accelerator, this system will be complete. 🙂 (And I may never get an accelerator, because they go for stupid money used…)