All programmers are playwrights and all computers are lousy actors
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Jobs argues for Soviet command philosophy
REALITY DISTORTION appears to be one possible outcome of great success because for Apple CEO Steve Jobs the sales of his Iphone 4 and Ipad have led to open source not being open and most video on the web transforming into the HTML5 format, in his mind.
An enthusiastic Jobs delivered Apple's third quarter 2010 earnings call with an attack on competitors of his big Iphone tablet and a redefinition of what most of the IT world defines as open, with respect to open source software. After CFO Peter Oppenheimer talked about record $20 billion revenue for the third quarter with $11.4 billion from Iphones and Ipads and their accessories combined, Jobs took over and waded into Apple's competitors.
In a telling comment that would probably send a shiver down many a nerd's spine, Jobs said without flinching, "We see tremendous value in having Apple rather than the user being the system integrator." Integrated is the key word for Jobs because for him Android is not an open operating system and saying that it is, is "a bit disingenuous and clouding the real difference between our two approaches".
For Jobs Android is not open software because it has many versions out in the market, making it "very fragmented", and this is a situation made worse with operators adding proprietary interfaces to it. For Apple's founder this leads to many app stores and many Android apps that won't work on Android phones. He mentioned four Android app stores Google's, Vodafone's, Verizon's and Amazon. Actually Jobs forgot to mention the app stores Archos and Toshiba have set up for their tablets.
Yet most people would imagine that a free and open source OS that has many versions on many handsets just means that it's popular. Each mobile network operator can choose the best version for its customers and many mobile users with unlocked handsets can change to whatever version they like.
Jobs gleefully mentioned that Android 2.2 'Froyo' was no good for tablets and it's true, as Google has said so. But when the tablet specific Android OS comes out, like for the phone handsets it's not a stretch of the imagination to realise that those existing tablet products will also be able to upgrade.
For Jobs these different versions for different products and the need to upgrade all leads to an unacceptable reduction in apps because his Itunes store has 300,000 and they all operate on the monolithic Iphone and Ipad operating system that is IOS. But will the fanboi who wants to spend their annual income on most of its 300,000 apps please step forward?
And of course Jobs must be right that people need a selection that would take many years to scroll through because, as he tells us, Apple has been activating 275,000 devices a day on average "for last 30 days". An average that saw activations peak at 300,000 on some days, said Jobs.
But in a revealing moment Jobs did use the word open in relation to Android saying, "Open systems don't always win", then he gave the example of Microsoft abandoning what Jobs called its play-for-sure music strategy. We're not even sure that Jobs actually knows what open source software is, based on what he talked about.
In another magical moment, the Apple founder said "I try to not predict, I try to just report," when asked about what share of his future business will be tablets or phones or something else. Yet minutes earlier he had said of his rivals' tablets, "We think the current crop of 7-inch tablets are going to be DOA, dead on arrival, their manufacturers will learn the painful lesson that their tablets are too small and increase the size next year, abandoning their customers and developers."
Jobs reason for thinking 7-inch tablets are too small is because "we think 7-inch is too small for the software people want to use". Answers on a postcard please to the question, what functions do people want to use on tablets that they don't already use on phones?
In what could become seen as a strange admission Jobs said that the Ipad was outselling Macs and that the tablet format would have an impact on notebooks. One wonders, how many Mac sales will be replaced by Ipad sales? In the third quarter Ipod sales were down by 11 per cent year on year. Is it already an Ipad victim? Will Apple's notebooks be next?
But to top it all off, Jobs made a startling statement about video on the Internet. He said "Most of the video now available on the web is in HTML5." So there you have it, according to Steve Jobs, whose world view seems increasingly like that of a James Bond super villain - his video format already reigns supreme.
So never forget that "open systems don't always win". No doubt many octogenarian former members of the Soviet Union's politburo were telling themselves the same thing about Western societies, right up until November 1989. µ
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I do agree the comparison is overwrought. Quite.
However this is The Inquirer. Even-handedness on this site would be a bit shocking, no ;-)
Naaaahhh!
Poland has only existed as an independent polity for about 20% of the past 500 odd years. It has spent most of it's history under the thumb of Russia or the USSR, or the Hanseatic League, or various Norse kings, Prussia, or various species of German princely coalitions, or the Nazis.
Google on the other hand, does not appear to bend it's knee to anyone.
Unless you *want* to drink the koolaid!
Democracy also allows people to make decisions that others think are ill advised. You seem to think going the whole-Apple route is ill advised. Good on ya! I'm not sure you are wrong either. But I ran Linux on my Macbook so... ;-)
From what I know about iTunes (not a user), it is expensive on a CD by CD basis. That is why I don't use it to buy music.
A lot of worthy podcasts post their stuff on iTunes (from CBC's "Ideas" to Astronomy Cast's excellent production). However every podcast I've found out about that I wanted to hear was available outside iTunes as well. I do not think you can claim iTunes is controlling public discourse.
You don't have to use it either. People who do use it may in time come to understand that iTunes is expensive and they may change their behaviour.
Hey - it's a free market, there are alternatives to iTunes. There is this thing called the Internet that is an alternative to iTunes. In a democracy people can choose to use iTunes or not. Where is the macro-scale problem? I don't think there actually is one.
I'm not a great fan of Mac Finder, the rest of the OS seems nice enough. An irritating file manager is enough to drive me away from Mac OS, but Apple notebooks running Linux are a wonderful thing. Apple makes nice hardware.
I just want to say this: leaving aside Jobs' weird conception of what 'open' means, Apple's combination of very seamless HW/SW platforms and it's app store are in fact a commercial success. This is not because Jobs exerts mind control but because a lot of people like Apple's product enough to buy it.
Me - I like Linux & KDE 3.5. Everyone else in my family are Mac users. None of them know what 'make' or 'g++' or 'python' or 'bash' mean. I do. So it goes. Apple products suit my siblings' and parents' level of technical skill and their expectations of their computers very well.
There are people who buy overpriced notebooks from Sony's Vaio line, and people who buy overpriced HP Envy notebooks. These, and Apple's notebooks too, are quite competent computers.
The truth of the matter is that a lot of people are willing to pay extra for superior aesthetic design. There always have been. Apple courts that market, as do Sony with Vaio, and HP with Envy (even Asus has that 'Amy Tan' netbook!)
This is the way many people are. It is OK. If these overpriced laptops were crap on technical merits then there would be a problem. But they are not crap machines, they are just overpriced.
Relax, grab a coffee or a beer or a glass of wine, fire up your Asus or Acer laptop or your white box desktop and do your thing. What other people spend their money on is not really your responsibility, is it?
FWIW I'm typing this using a mid-tower PC painted in a tasteful shade of black, it has pretty fast CPU and dual 4890's, a 2.7 TB hardware-controller RAID5 array, it weighs about 50 pounds, and I personally don't really mind that it is not carved out of a solid block of aluminum. It does what I need it to do.
However, if I could buy a case carved out of a solid block of aluminum for under $150, I'd probably get one.
Hi Deanjo. Yes the GPL imposes restrictions. Any license other than public domain does. If you write some software and want to release it into the public domain, that is your right. People who use the GPL for their software are only exercising their rights. No problem.
If you think that everything should be free for using by everyone... well... what is your address and what kind of stuff do you have that I might like to take and use?
Come on Steve don't be a jackass. Everyone know that you build your beloved operating system with help of FreeBSD and you also have/use a lot of open sourced piece of software because it lowers development costs, doesn't it?
You already know this, don't act like a fool please.
Deanjo: "And yet this exactly how Richard Stallman utilizes his FSF and the GPL. The GPL is nothing but another set of rules that sets restrictions on use. You want true freedom go public domain or at the very least a BSD style license."
The GPL is all about end-user freedom, not vendor freedom, and I don't see Stallman forbidding people from putting particular kinds of content onto their devices, either.
Keep trolling, lightweight.
robert knows his stuff
HTML5 is not a finalized standard, and it has no official video codec. Most of what people call "HTML 5 video" is simply H.264 (MPEG-4 AVC) video, which is exactly the same codec used by Flash, linked to directly from an HTML video tag. The only reason why that video is in H.264 in the first place is that Adobe included support for it in Flash some time ago.
Flash wiped the floor with Apple's own video format (Quicktime) for web distribution because it was light years ahead (even before they included H.264 support). It was Flash that made sites like YouTube, Comedy Central and Hulu possible, and it is still Flash that drives more than 90% of web video.
People who think their iPad can play all video on the web are either deluding themselves or they haven't visited the same websites (ex., Comedy Central) using a browser with Flash support. You can pay for an app that will play 1% of the videos there, or you can use Flash and watch 100% of them for free.
H.264 support in Jobs's iToys is just a way to be able to play back existing Flash video without letting consumers install Flash on their iPhone or iPad, even if they choose to. And the reason to forbid them from doing that is that installing Flash would allow those consumers to buy their apps directly from the authors, without going through Apple's store, and without Apple getting a cut of every single transaction. Apple's business model is to charge both software authors and consumers for the "privilege" of forcing them to go through the Apple store (where 90% of apps are junk, as everyone who has used it knows).
Flash is installed in 98% of web browsers; the iPad accounts for less than 0.1% of web hits. The only commercial reason to make video available to iPads (by serving the same H.264 data with a slightly different header) is if you can sell it, or at least sell an "app" to play it (because the fanbois will pay just to "prove" that their overpriced iToy can sort-of-do what every cheap netbook can do for free).
The iPad is basically a less portable iPod touch, and infinitely inferior to a MacBook (or even a cheap netbook) when it comes to actually getting any creative work done. It's Steve Jobs' triumph over Apple's own history (from the Wozniak days, when Apple actually made versatile tools for artists, not closed crippleware designed for the me-too market segment).
"History has shown that cult leaders typically feel that their will is "better" than the free will of their followers (who cannot be trusted to make their own decisions). "
And yet this exactly how Richard Stallman utilizes his FSF and the GPL. The GPL is nothing but another set of rules that sets restrictions on use. You want true freedom go public domain or at the very least a BSD style license.
I think jobs has an Ipad mini or nano on the way. Probably in a form factor around the 7" mark. Also isn't the Ipad just an Iphone with a big screen and no phone functionality? As I'll never be stupid enough to buy one I'd need one of the sheep to confirm.
I think this comparison is a bit overwrought. If Apple is the Soviet Union than Google is Poland.
We all have the option on what to buy and use. If it works for me then Steve Jobs and his crew comes to work tomorrow. If it doesn't work, they don't get paid and have to make something else I might want.
Also, in the iOS ecosystem, you have the option of HTML5 which is more open than either Android or Flash. People will vote with their feet and their wallets if Steve Jobs get's it wrong for his customers.
History has shown that cult leaders typically feel that their will is "better" than the free will of their followers (who cannot be trusted to make their own decisions).
Without batting an eye, Steve Jobs bluntly admits that he should be allowed to continue to control his users (actually, more like "usees"), and hitch them up to his monolithic Apple appliance/Itunes milking machine, "for their own good". His main argument seems to be that "millions have jumped off the cliff and abdicated their freedom to Apple...so you should, too".
He also has issued "rules" that artists using "his" Ping service MUST follow in order to communicate with and "properly" stimulate customers to use his Itunes user-impoverishment service.
Freedom -- and open-source -- is "bad" according to Jobs. Anything he cannot control is "bad". Hopefully his speech will give a sinking feeling to anyone currently "being used by" Apple products (or anyone remotely considering going that route).
Freedom of thought, freedom of choice, freedom of association are what democracy is supposedly all about. Open-source and open markets give you the right to choose who you deal with and how YOU control your use of technology (and not the other way around being advocated by the Apple-Czar).
Big Brother is alive and well at Apple HQ, and Ballmer is trying to generate a similar cash-cow for Microsoft with WP7. Thank goodness for Google, Android, Meego, and open-source.
Ironically perhaps in my EU neck of the woods I see more and more video that won't run because I don't have silverlight installed.
So so much for flash and HTML5 (and the EU commissions fines for MS for locking down stuff with propriety WMV and ASF), the new pain in town is called silverlight and lessons are NOT learned.
There's a big difference between "A big leap in the amount of video I can see on my iPhone/iPad" and "Most of the video now available on the web is in HTML5"
I've certainly noticed a big leap in the amount of video I can see on my iPad/iPhone - to the extent that it's a noteworthy event when there's one I can't. So SJ seems to be right about that. Sorry if this doesn't suit your story.