I do have the feeling we’re talking about slightly different things. So, not true communication and probably not very helpful for anyone involved. Carry on, I’m out.
If you go to buy parts for your car, you’ll find that you’re not always limited to those made directly by the manufacturer, in fact you can choose a lot of aftermarket parts based on price, performance or just aesthetics.
Few would argue this has not been good.
If you want to read boingboing.net, it doesn’t matter if you’re on an Iphone or Android, the standard that allows inter-connectivity is open. That’s your TCP/IP, HTTP, HTML and other technologies used for creating and browsing webpages.
But lets say you want to buy a kindle book through your Iphone kindle app, you can’t. Why?
Because Amazon would have to pay 30% to apple for allowing this.
Are there any workarounds? Yes.
Open up Safari, go to Amazon.com and buy the book.
Open up your kindle app, download it from there.
If your safari browser can connect to the amazon store and allow you place a purchase but doing the same thing on the app version implies a 30% tariff for the seller, how can this logical distinction not be viewed as anything other than an artificial limitation.
There is nothing specifically and deliberately built by apple into the app market place that enables this exchange to take place, in fact, its Amazon who has to make the app work with their store.
Is the ios experience negatively impacted by allowing one application and not another call out to amazon and make a purchase? No, they’ll let your app do that, for a price.
ios does not need this limitation to keep your ios experience pure.
My point here is that a lot of the things we use phones/computers for are already platform agnostic and inter-connectivity dependent.
The other thing is that we are living in a world where having things interconnected is becoming the norm and a feature that customers expect.
Iphones are not limited to communicating with other Iphones. They wouldn’t be as useful if they were.
Now that smartphones are expected to be the new personal computer / all encompassing communications device, certainly expecting them to connect to anything the user wants to connect with is a reasonable expectation.
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That was a better argument before the iPhones 6 and 6+ (which I notice aren’t in your diagram).
The lack of hardware fragmentation is why MacOS is usually rock solid, but the days of the iPhones all coming in one size are long over, and it sucks for developers.
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I get you. Your example is a familiar one to me, and I agree we shouldn’t have to suffer from such ecosystem squabbling at all. And everyone does it, of course. Amazon is the ‘victim’ in this example but they do exactly the same thing if you try to buy ebooks from third party sources in their own Kindle hardware. I wonder what can we do about it, apart from boycotting everyone and hoping the world follows.
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Indeed. I hope my general complexity vs. optimization point still comes across, even if not as strongly illustrated and perhaps less relevant to iPhones with every new screen size they come in.
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Some people boycott, others “hack” away at these problems. But like many things, understanding there is a problem is the first step, we’ll wing it from there. Works for parenting. 
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Of course it does, it’s a “barrier to entry”, ensuring that only those who are truly dedicated to the crafting of quality software able to part with an extra hundred bucks, American, and wade through the paperwork* can write apps.
* see the vaccination thread for a discussion of the inability of certain disabilities (that would in no way hinder programming) to deal with bureaucratic paperwork.
Guess why I hate paperwork with so fierce passion.
I like typewriters and books, I love paper.
I HATE PAPERWORK.
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As a kid I almost refurbished myself a typewriter; hauled home one thrown-away, corroded seemingly beyond repair. Spent a lot of time with disassembly, cleaning with a steel brush on a drill, and reassembly. The project was almost successful (some of the letters kept seizing), but the finishing dragged on until I decommissioned the project because of getting a computer and shifting the typing there.
I am very willing to lie and cheat and do victimless crimes to avoid paperwork. Yay for gray economy, cash and barter. And fuck begging for licenses and permits.
Edit: Also, which vac thread? There are multiple and they are all l-o-n-g.
Why are you unvaccinated? - “Closed early due to off-topicness,” said the Luck Dragon.
Early on there was a discussion of the difficulty of obtaining proof-of-vaccination paperwork for some individuals. Some other individuals met this with incredulity. Wrath ensued.
Ahh. This one.
I envy the individuals who can juggle papers apparently without the slightest issues, who always know where to look, what to search for, whom to ask what question, and how to recognize when you get a wrong answer or what to do when you are sent away without one.
I, for one, would strongly prefer replacing the vaccination proofs with a quick-to-administer assay that would take a drop of blood and yield the level of the specific antibodies. Not only it would not be dependent on paperwork, but also would give real, true answers that matter more than the paperwork, which is only a poor proxy for these values.
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Wow, after the last year of nasty arguments about gender politics in gaming & real life, not to mention gun control, it’s almost a relief to see so many people arguing about something as trivial as their choice in phones & tech. And civil, too! I’m almost dizzy at this point.
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There is standing up for ideals based on deeply important human values, then there is obsessive quibbling over technological ideologies. Cory’s rambles are not grounded in the former. Were DRM abolished and all software free as in libre, the condition of life for the vast majority of humanity would barely see any net change, let alone improvement.
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Were gay marriage established in all US states and territories, the condition of life for the vast majority of humanity would barely see any net change, let alone improvement.
Were taxes on those making less than $1 million abolished, the condition of life for the vast majority of humanity would barely see any net change, let alone improvement.
Were free universal health care in North America established, the condition of life for the vast majority of humanity would barely see any net change, let alone improvement.
Were the wars in Syria or the Ukraine concluded peacefully and without the loss of life, the condition of life for the vast majority of humanity would barely see any net change, let alone improvement.
Were the Palestinian state established with the full blessing and assistance of Israel, and the nation of Israel accepted by all in the Middle East, the condition of life for the vast majority of humanity would barely see any net change, let alone improvement.
Going back to the original analogy, were slavery in the United Stated abolished well before the Civil War, the condition of life for the vast majority of humanity would barely see any net change, let alone improvement.
Please, I beg of you – please tell us what issues we should devote our time to, so that we might receive thy blessing, and improve the condition of life for the vast majority of humanity, according to thine precepts.
Thanks, asshole pal!
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I don’t think there’s anything wrong at all with caring about tech. ideologies. Talk about whatever you like, I am not the supreme arbiter of what anyone is permitted to ought to discuss. There is something fundamentally and profoundly wrong with comparing them to human rights, though.
Ludicrously false.
Asserting that abolition would cause no good is ludicrously false.
Asserting that abolition would cause good for the vast majority of humanity is ludicrously false.
So, weighing it by that standard of “would it improve the condition of life for the vast majority of humanity,” we would have to say “no,” and look elsewhere for a cause that does not garner your scorn and opprobrium.
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I disagree completely. Abolition really was a matter of global importance, with impacts across the world, and was not some provincial concern.
You are confused on so many levels here that I’m tempted to just quit, but I’ll thrown in one last reply. I actually have strong opinions on software licensing, intellectual property, and related topics, and do think they matter, and don’t have any issue with people discussing/debating them. I just recognize the basic truth that in the grand scheme of things they aren’t nearly as important as human rights. That’s not to say they aren’t important, but it is to say that your comparison was profoundly wrong-headed, and points to a deep confusion/problem in your values.
i hesitate to step into this because, first, @OtherMichael can certainly fend for himself, and, second, i may be misinterpreting his intentions but i have to say that the vast majority of humanity at the time of the u.s. civil war knew nothing about slavery as practiced in the u.s. and was relatively unaffected by its abolition. judging a discussion by the standard of of its potential for changing or improving the condition of life of the vast majority of humanity doesn’t really leave much to talk about.
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there’s a rumor going around that Apple could diversify into cars.
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