Geeks and enthusiasts wearing Wordpress t-shirts, using laptops covered in Data Portability, Microformats and RSS stickers lined up enthusiastically on Friday to purchase a device that is completely proprietary, controlled and wrapped in DRM. The irony was lost on some as they ran home, docked their new devices into a proprietary media player and downloaded closed source applications wrapped in DRM.
I am referring to the new iPhone – and the new Apple iPhone SDK that allows developers to build ‘native’ applications. The announcement was greeted with a web-wide standing ovation, especially from the developer community. The same community who demand all from Microsoft, feel gifted and special when Apple give them an inch of rope. When Microsoft introduced DRM into Media Player it was bad bad bad – and it wasn’t even mandatory, it simply allowed content owners a way to distribute and sell content from anywhere.
Apple has wrapped the iPhone SDK in enough licensing, security controls and right management that it would make the Microsoft Active Desktop team blush. The phone and platform that is certain to soon take second spot behind Symbian in the smart phone market is also the most restricted and closed. Applications can only be installed from a single source, iTunes, and open source applications and distribution is near impossible. How do you install an iPhone application without iTunes? Where are the community advocates arguing for a standard interface, openess and free code?
What is more worrying is what the next move could be. Now that there is an AppStore with applications in iTunes, why wouldn’t Apple move next to distribute all applications through iTunes – both desktop and mobile? There is no reason for them not to – the response to AppStore has been so enthusiastic that it is almost assured that you will start seeing desktop apps distributed in the same way. As soon as users are ground into looking at everything through iTunes, distribution of software in the traditional manner would be near impossible. Apple would become the gatekeeper, and both developers and users will enthusiastically pay the toll in exchange for pretty devices with pretty applications.
Apple has a very strong following in the open source community, and I can no longer understand it nor justify my own support (I am writing this on a Macbook). They built OS X on FreeBSD (a project I have enthusiastically supported, contributed to and been a user of for 10 years or more), they built Safari on KHTML, and are now using libraries such as SproutCore in MobileMe. They have taken open source and everything it built and leveraged it to get to market faster – yet they have now, with iTunes and the new SDK, built a layer on top of it that excludes others. For Apple, open source is great when it furthers their own goals, but not when using it with Apple software where it may further the goals of others.
The solution is simple. If you truly believe in open standards, open source and the good that it has created, then don’t accept it. The spirit of open source was about building on the work of others in a transparent fashion, as the gains further the common good of all. Despite not taking over the desktop market, the philosophy and its resultants have destroyed the old enterprise market and many others. Open source and standards keep Microsoft and other big companies on their toes, the movement as a whole and the philosophy is very real. The solution isn’t to adopt new licenses to try and prevent this, as it results in the mess that is GPL v 3.
It should be very possible to attach a simple BSD license to code, and if a large company utilizes the effort from others in a way that is unacceptable – the market should be able to sort that out, we simply wont buy it. The community needs to do more than just wear their support for openess and standards on their sleeves (and on their laptops). The problem with Apple is that the blind demand is driven by a distorted reality, so those same developers who poured thousands of hours into the BSD kernel now turn around and purchase an iPhone running that code, but it is now tied up in DRM, licenses and restrictions placed there by others.
Ah, who cares. It’s an amazing product.
Wow, someone has put into words the vague sense of uneasiness I’ve had over the past few days. You’re spot on!
I couldn’t entirely articulate why, but yesterday I decided I need to revert from being 100% Mac to a more 50/50 mix between the Mac and Linux (that is, an “open” OS on “open” hardware) to stay sane. My reasoning for this was that Apple has totally forgotten about their old customer base and is only focused on being all shiny and hip to extend marketshare.. that reasoning still stands to a point, but what you are saying is true.
One thing that’s extremely odd, and has raised complaints from many fronts, is the lack of any SSH type app on the iPhone. Surely someone would have attempted to port one.. it’s a rudimentary job. Seems Apple probably don’t want one on there.
Nik – I am glad someone is cutting through the crap on this issue. The biggest open advocates are also the biggest Apple advocates and it’s just ironic and silly.
Great post mate.
For what it’s worth, the provider Apple chose in the UK messed me around enough with not getting me my iPhone 3G that I canceled the order. On reflection, I think I had a lucky escape, and probably won’t be getting one in future. The fact that Apple has no interest in satisfying their old customers who’ve spent tens of thousands of dollars with them in front of newcomers who see “ooh, shiny!” demonstrates a significant change in Cupertino. Apple is no longer a brand with a hardcore of supporters, but a brand that’s trying to be everyone’s best friend.
Actually, people *might* care once there’s an alternative. It’ll be interesting to see how the Linux/Android stack evolves. And of course part of the problem — part of what might keep Android from wide distribution — is all of this crap the carriers love, which apparently Apple either caved into or signed up for. But until there’s a strong alternative (ahem, sorry Windows Mobile), or more stuff happening in open mobile browsers (ahem, Mozilla), it’s kind of moot … which I think explains the lack of criticism. People don’t see a choice. If another “amazing product” did the same stuff AND was open, I think we’d have a different discussion going.
Gah- you’re right.
I hope that work on the third party Jailbreak app continues so that we will see a way to install iphone apps outside of iTunes and the app store.
Why don’t you buy a puppet to ridicule Apple and bend them to your will. Isn’t that how you TechCrunch guys get your way?? :-)
If open source could ever build something as polished and easy to use as Apple has in all their platforms and could come up with something original we may have some competition and they may be considered. They didn’t, they aren’t, they probably won’t. Sorry, I’ll take the closed Apple till things change. Most, even the geeks, don’t care.
If you don’t like the DRM apps, you are not under any obligation to use anything from the App Store – some don’t care about the apps. And you can always rip your own DRM free MP3s from your own CDs if you haven’t already torrented the music – no need to buy music from iTunes.
My phone calls are not wrapped in DRM. Remember that first and foremost, it’s a phone.
@9. Ernie, DRM apps is fine. So is DRM music – developers should have a choice. But don’t take all this open source code and then built a platform on top of it that makes it mandatory.
Im not anti-DRM, just pro-choice.
incredibly well put. while apple is designing cool products (not all of them) their approach is putting it all at risk to implode in a few years IMO. Jobs is making some of his old mistakes and while the market appears to be rewarding them right now, instead of building a great long haul company he will only invoke the ire of the developer community and ultimately negative reaction from consumers as well. someone will strike the right balance of openness and quality and design and will clean their clock….
A well made point.
I think the crux of the issue is that Apple has built upon OSS in multiple instances. Is there any gauge as to how much they’ve contributed back? Anecdotal evidence suggests it’s been little.
i feel a little guilty for explosion of apple back in the early 2000. When i switched over from windows to mac i was instantly convinced that windows was only here to make my life a living hell. My experience with a mac made me tell everybody that uses a windows machine to switch, i would tell them there are no bugs, no crashes and no viruses. Till this day im still on a mac and ironically i want more mac stuff. Maybe because i don’t have nothing else besides a computer and i have never owned a ipod. What is keeping my intrest with a ipod touch is that it will allow me to be mobile and still blog without having to buy a actual laptop. i know for a fact i could not afford a iphone so it doesn’t bother me that i will never get one.
never…criticize…apple…
Ex-squeeze me but I seem to remember an entity with a name made up of “teeny” and “flacid” which was on ummmm, was it 95 FREAKIN’ percent of all computer devices. I seem to recall Mr. Dell, scoffing at AAPL and the masterful one with the disdain of a ronin about to play samurai. After destroying most of its competition, then allowing Apple to Live, Redmond is somehow blameless that its innovative opposite, yang to its yin, might grow to be its equal. This is not a walled garden. It’s a fort.
Funny, the phone has already been hacked and a “how to” is up on the web. If some device is created by a specific team within a certain overall vision, is that object not patentable? I would think Mr. Jobs’ anal retentive, obsessive, control-freak genius deserves some monetary reward for its continuing compulsive excellence. We call it capitalism and the marketplace. You suck; you lose. You excel, you win! Go play Linux. Do not begrudge a company a few security and management rights when they are relentlessly attacked by hackers round the clock -
Apple’s put a lot of work in building and extending the open source WebKit which is actively being used by some of Apple’s competitors in non-Apple iPhones.
Or does that not count for some reason?
Er, I meant “non-apple phones”, not “non-apple iPhones” obviously. Nokia uses the open source WebKit stuff from Apple in their own phones for instance.
@8 Firefox is the gold standard for polish and quality, a standard most open source software does not reach, but a standard that for me is just as good or even better than Apple’s.
Open source software has undergone a shift in innovation from simple commoditization of existing tools to creating new innovations unseen and unreplicated. I do not just meant the dominance of Apache, I mean wikis, which Ward Cunningham invented and open sourced as a new software category unseen before.
And I think the best is yet to come, even though the change in perceptions takes time.
I am holding out for the Google phone precisely because of the reasons outlined in this (excellent) post. I am writing this post on an Apple iMac because I enjoy Apple’s products the most when they embrace open standards – Firefox web browser, PDF support baked in, and built on top of Unix BSD. As soon as Apple starts acting as a primar donna with proprietary standards (iTunes DRM music anyone) I start pining for Bill Gates whose operating system was more open than Apple’s before Apple adopted open source software.
@16 I’m all for capitalism and the market. I just disagree with you as to who will win through them. But let’s have this argument in a year’s time with a few more data points behind us :-)
Apple let Microsoft relase vista and delayed the Leopard launch to take advantage of the crappy user exprience upgrade MS was offering pulling in a whole bunch of pissed of users.
Is google doing the same with the gPhone? Wait until 2 or 3 million shlumps are stuck with the DRM laden iPhone and serious complaints start to flood the net and then they release the magnificent and open gPhone for all to love and enjoy… ok wishfull thinking but who really knows. I will wait a bit to see what happens.
Bitch, moan, whine, complain.
But…but….Apple took “our” open source code and made something USEFUL with it. OMG!
Look, if Apple was violating the source code licenses for the projects they are using then say that. But dont bitch because they took work that was freely given by others and used by Apple’s engineers to make something new and cool possible.
Your entire argument is basically bitching about how Apple has made a DRM platform on top of or with the help of Open Source projects. Yet you completely fail to see the argument that the whole point of Open Source was so that PEOPLE COULD USE THE SOURCE TO DO WHATEVER THEY SAW FIT WITHIN THE LICENSE.
Seriously, stop pissing in the cheerios man.
@Daniel – thats not my argument. I think its fine for them to do whatever they want, its why I support BSD over GPL. My argument is lets call it what it is and not delude ourselves.
If they gave me the *option* to do what I would like on the platform I would be happy, for now, I am not buying into it
Hi Nik,
Don’t buy the iPhone. Then again, if you’re pro-choice, why are you lamenting those that do? Typical “open source”, “free software” thinking. You sound like those that want everyone to have free speech, as long as they’re saying the right things…
The iPhone is amazing, I’m excited to start writing apps for it. That’s the first time I can say that about any mobile device. The reason I’m excited is because the hardware and the software are designed so well to work together. The reason that is so is precisely because of the tight control Apple maintains over what they produce.
If you don’t like it, fine, wait for Android. But please, spare me the outrage. What a joke. I thought this was a new site for IT folks. This is Slashdot re-hashed, I guess I can slide you out of Google Reader now…
BTW, I’m no Apple flunkie. During work, I write nothing but Perl, C#, and Java. I’ve never written a line of Objective-C. I have a Mac at home and PCs at work. But the iPhone — it’s no shit. This is hands-down the coolest device I’ve used in 25 years.
Man, I just re-read this article. What a waste of 10 minutes.
I can boil the article down in two sentences:
You think you like BSD. You really like GPL, but don’t realize it.
No vendor could get away with what Apple has gotten away with. Closed hardware, closed OS, proprietary format for music, taking revenue on each and every software sale for the iPhone.
I’m with Nik — what bothers me is the hypocrisy of people who claim to believe in openness, then slavishly buy everything Apple ever offers. I agree with the folks who say “if you don’t like it, don’t buy it.” But if you spend time criticizing ANY vendors for lack of openness, don’t do it with an iPhone peeking out of your pocket and a PowerBook slung over your back.
Well, I am a Mac user, and I care about usefulness and features. Open Source, in many aspects, failed in providing strong solutions to consumers. When I do find a good open source product I use it – Firefox and neo office are great examples.
Yes, Apple is strong on the walled garden approach. However, 99% of the users are only interested in things that work, and not in philosophical issues surrounding software.
“But don’t take all this open source code and then built a platform on top of it that makes it mandatory.’
Why not? They’re doing exactly what the software licenses allow them to do. Why do open source fanatics get all twitchy when others do exactly what they want: reuse their code? Personally, I would be insulted by a company that didn’t take advantage of this for themselves.
” I think its fine for them to do whatever they want, its why I support BSD over GPL. My argument is lets call it what it is and not delude ourselves.
If they gave me the *option* to do what I would like on the platform I would be happy, for now, I am not buying into it”
Who’s deluded? Seems like you. You think Apple must cater to you and your politics. That’s delusional.
@Tim – they don’t have to at all, and im fine with that, they can do what they want. Lets just not kid ourselves about what they are doing and supporting them over better vendors.
People commenting here who dont agree with me will probably bash microsoft in some other thread tomorrow somewhere for not being open enough.
There is a very very bad bias towards Apple and against other companies, and I am calling bullshit on it – because thats what it is
oh and on the politics of it and the philosophy – there are very good reasons why I have the beliefs that I do, post coming up on it.
Nik, I’m just curious who you think is fooling themselves. I don’t know anyone who foolishly believes Apple is a paragon of Stallmanesque values. I don’t know anyone who is stridently, militantly open source but secretly using Mac products.
The delusion to me is thinking people actually care about what you think they care about. The Valley’s crowd of hipsters and pundits like stickers, talking politics, criticizing based on values rather than technology because it’s easier. That doesn’t mean they actually care. They want the best, coolest poduct. That’s the delusion: that people actually care about your open source politics.
Tim F: Your right, I might be fooling myself that these guys ever actually cared and they are wearing the openess stuff on their sleves only. Infact, if I think about it, I can’t explain it any other way. Free source does work though, and so does user choice.. the path we are going down now will just lead to another Windows + IE + control the web situation but this time with Apple in the drivers seat.
I guess that it might all seem kosher now, but give them 2-3 years of control and their natural instinct wil be v different, and then it will be too late.
Being concerned about monopolistic control is not the same thing as supporting free software.
Rather than an upcoming post on the politics, I’d rather see a post enumerating the free software products in Apple’s market segments that “does work though,” who are the “better vendors.”
Right now, it sounds like confused whining.
Geez . . . lighten up buddy! Look, Apple has achieved the success they have because they are masters of designing great hardware with an aesthetic appeal and integrating it with very good software/UI. All the things that you are complaining about are the reasons that Apple products “just work.” Break these things up and you end up with the Intel/Microsoft blunders. Personally, I prefer having one company master all aspects of a product like the iPhone. If you don’t, then simply abandon Apple and move on, but quit trying to create an issue out of good business!
This meme that Apple is the new Microsoft—check that—that Apple is worse than Microsoft is getting pretty tiring, because it’s not true.
Unlike most companies that do open source, Apple contributes back to community with little fanfare. For example, Apple has contributed tons of fixes to GCC, but you won’t see a press release about it. That goes for dozens of other projects as well.
Lets not forget that companies can distribute custom apps for the iPhone and iPod Touch internally without using the App Store—just a web server is required. You can even do ad-hoc distribution of apps to 100 people–no App Store required. I would not be surprised to see other distribution methods in the future.
Right now, Apple is just so much better than everyone else in terms of design and execution that pundits are looking for reasons to slam them, because that’s what they do, even if it means leaving out facts and distorting things. AAC isn’t proprietary to Apple; your iPhone can be full off DRM-free music and video if you want. You can play MP3s from Amazon and watch YouTube to your heart’s content.
Apps are different. I don’t mind that apps are vetted and signed by a certificate issued by Apple. We all have sensitive information on our phones; it shouldn’t be a free-for-all at that level. Having a central location to distribute apps is pure genius. I’m sure Microsoft and Palm wished they’d implemented it; Google certainly will.
Apple doesn’t waiver from attempting to create the best user experience it can and doing what’s necessary to make that happen. Apple uses the best of open source and their secret sauce to make that happen. I have no problem with that.
The fact that the open source community loves the iPhone really is an admission that at the end of the day, usability, functionality and coolness trumps ideology. Lots of these folks are developers; the fact that the App Store is on every iPhone and they don’t need to worry about hosting, a merchant account, credit card fees, etc. for an app that takes advantage of all of the goodies in the iPhone isn’t lost on them.
Wow now I would like MS to do the same….I wish them(MS) good luck with Justice Dept….Apple is become a bloody sucker….It now just deserves to die.
Wow now I would like MS to do the same….I wish them(MS) good luck with Justice Dept….Apple has become a bloody sucker….It now just deserves to die.
It’s amazing the extent to which anti-Apple brigade doesn’t quite appreciate the risks Apple took with the iPhone:
iPhone: The bet Steve Jobs didn’t decline
http://counternotions.com/2008/07/16/bet-iphone/
This post is spot on! Apple is being naughty. They made a great product/platform but also locked it very well, even for web applications (mandatory Darwin server for streaming for example).
By not allowing processes to run in the background they locked out all potential competition on the core phone functions and silently forced app developers to adopt their push mechanism.
Apple OS always was a locked platform and I don’t think this will change any time soon :(
The minute you buy an Apple product….bang that’s it big Steve got you by the nuts!!!
if you wanna take a leak?? you gotta do it through i tunes!!!
and you know how they got away with it for so long????
its because they always portray themselves as a victim of an evil empire that is Microsoft!!
look at their ad campaign about switching to mac, saying that its liberation for users.
Is it really?? everything apple 24/7 ? Use their “approved” software, their “approved” hardware.
Apple product is some of the beautiful on this planet. and i admire their product.
But I’m having none of it, if it means Steve J will get me by the nuts!!
As a consumer I ideally support open source but I buy Apple – for the time being. Apart from their products being great, I think it keeps MS on their toes. It also promotes cross platform development. Finally, I think stepping from OS X to open source Unix/Linux is an easier jump than from Vista et al.
In short, OS X is the first island on the trip to open source paradise.
I would have bought a new iPhone were in not for the fact I’d have to use iTunes. No way. Not on my computer. Ugh. Nice to know I’m not alone.
The majority of people don’t buy ideologies, licenses, technologies, gadgets, … they buy LIFESTYLE.
You telling we should not buy Apple products but support open products is also suggesting a certain lifestyle. The question is: is this the kind of lifestyle people will choose? I doubt it. They all like the shiny Apple logo at the back of their phones.
First off all, this is way too simplified. You’re ignoring that Apple has formed an alliance with giants, the telcos, who typically like the walled garden idea. And Apple can’t give iTouch users complete freedom and iPhone ones none, as that would be very bad PR for the iPhone and it’s stakeholders.
Second, removing freedom is like a price-raise, it’s pretty hard to do. So don’t expect there to be any less freedom on the OS X platform anytime soon, as people will simply not upgrade to the next OS with that specific “feature.”
It’s really exhausting that 98% of Techmeme-media is doom-sayers.
Microsoft Acive Desktop ~ Microsoft Active Desktop
If open-source phone applications were a good idea, then somebody would have succeeded by now with them. There’s a reason that closed-source applications and platforms exist, and it’s because, in general, they *work*. Sure, it would be great to be able to install open-source applications on my iPhone, but frankly, I’m not going to sit and wait around for a decade for that to happen. I purchased a 3G iPhone on Friday and I’ve been stunned at the quantity and quality of a lot of these apps (and disappointed at the quality of some of them). If you compare them to the apps available within the jailbreak community, you can see a vast difference in quality. Open source is great, but it’s not the end-all be-all.
Oh, and your comments about why not distribute desktop applications the same way is a complete pile of FUD. There already exist systems to distribute apps this way (notably Steam), and they can work, but in an environment like desktop OS’s, these niche distribution models just aren’t applicable in the general sense, nor will they ever be. It works on the iPhone because the iPhone is a (relatively) small, tightly-controlled platform. This is not the case at all for the desktop.
If you truly want to support Open Source over having a usable, well-designed platform + apps, maybe you should wait until Android finally starts hitting the market. And I guarantee that your experience with Android apps is going to be significantly worse than your experience with iPhone apps.
Doh!
I just ordered one today. It’s a very cool device. It cannot be denied. And it syncs with my Free iTunes on XP. I just wish the sdk was c++ – what’s objective c? Time to learn I guess. I guess the store is to protect users from virus’ (virii?) and phishing apss, etc – so it kinda makes sense. Otherwise it would be in the paper every day “iPhot hacked again…” That’s boring. For app developers it’s probably more profitable then buying adwords to get customers. If you want to give your apps away you can do that too. Their stuff works well together – that cannot be denied either. It will certainly kick my E-61’s arse – and it’s SDK sucks the biggest!
Is this really all that different than how the video game console industry works? After all, you need to have Microsoft’s, Sony’s or Nintendo’s “blessing” in order to get your third-party applications to work on their hardware. Why should Apple be any different?
I started asking myself these questions last year and I came up with an answer that works for me. Open Source is idealism. It appeals to my libertarian heart, but I’ve yet to see much come out of Open Source that embodies the elegance of Apple hardware or software. Firefox 3 provides as elegant an experience as I’ve ever had with an Apple application and I switched from Safari to use it.
For me, it’s about priorities. At the top of my list is elegance and after that comes idealism. When Open Source creates solutions that are better than solutions provided by Apple’s closed system, I’ll choose it.
About the old customers, of course Apple doesn’t care about them, unless they buy the new stuff that’s coming out. I mean, they are charging for firmware upgrades, for crying out loud! Whereas 99% of other companies release them for free. Apple significantly lowered the price of the first-gen iPhone just a few months after its initial release. No, Apple doesn’t give a damn about existing customers; extending existing customer’s mileage is the last thing Apple wants to do. The only thing Apple wants from existing customers is that they shell out more money to get their stuff.