It’s Not the Control, It’s the Secrecy

http://daringfireball.net/2010/04/not_the_control_the_secrecy

by mrshoe • 16 years ago

66 45 16 years ago

dkarl• 16 years ago

Part of me is hoping that the reviewer who rejected the app was fresh off the boat from some authoritarian country, and this has nothing to do with a company that is admired by millions of young Americans and accepted or respected by tens of millions more. I just can't fathom the idea of an American being able to formulate the phrase "content that ridicules public figures" without feeling sick and pretending never to have thought of it.

groaner2• 16 years ago

Considering how many of our public figures (and their rabid supporters) would love to crack down on "content that ridicules public figures" while loudly touting how "American" they are, I think you're in for a rude awakening.

patio11• 16 years ago

feeling sick and pretending never to have thought of it

Thoughtcrime has not been a major cherished feature of the American experience previously.

vetinari3• 16 years ago

The irony is that people from authoritarian countries are much more sensitive to censorship, propaganda and other totalitarian bullshit than average American.

I noticed this as someone who was born and grew up behind iron curtain.

sshumaker• 16 years ago

It's not just the secrecy, it's the fact that Apple changes the terms and applies them retroactively.

apu• 16 years ago

There's another factor: rules seem to apply non-uniformly. This is most pronounced when an app by an small-time developer is rejected, but a very similar app from a major publisher (EA, Playboy, etc.) is accepted. If this is what Apple wants (for whatever reason), then secrecy is the only way to do it while maintaining a semblance of fairness.

groaner2• 16 years ago

Why can't it be both? I, for example, oppose the Patriot Act because:

1. The government can engage in warrantless surveillance, violating my privacy.

2. The government can do so without having to justify it at all, even requiring that the act itself does not get disclosed (e.g. the much-abused national security letter).

Control and secrecy are both bad, and when combined is really staggeringly frightening.

alextgordon2• 16 years ago

It's neither. It's that the only supported method of distribution is via the App Store.

If, in addition to the App Store, developers were able to distribute apps themselves, there would be no problem. People would grumble whenever Apple introduced another asinine policy, but there wouldn't be such an outcry. Some restrictions in return for extra visibility and use of Apple's distribution system is a fair trade.

This isn't what we have though. It isn't just Apple's store they're locking down, it's the whole device. A store that you can't freely put software on is unfortunate but understandable. A computer that you can't freely put software on is just wrong.

orangecat• 16 years ago

Agreed, and it's amazing how quickly Apple has been able to shift the terms of the debate on this. It's now apparently an extreme position ("abolitionist" in Gruber's post) that if Alice creates a program and wants to send it to Bob, they should be able to accomplish that without begging for permission from the computer manufacturer.

cgranade2• 16 years ago

In some sense, the shift in debate came as soon as DRM became acceptable to most people. Apple has capitalized on this shifted ground, to be sure, but I think that the iPad debates are reflective of a much more general struggle and debate.

krainboltgreene• 16 years ago

This isn't what we have though. It isn't just Apple's store they're locking down, it's the whole device. A store that you can't freely put software on is unfortunate but understandable. A computer that you can't freely put software on is just wrong.

Wrong? For most of the world it's exactly what they need. Allowing people to freely put software on their computer leads to a lot of bullshit. Hell, even experienced people will put themselves through a lot of bullshit because they're allowed to change things.

The regular people in the world want and need someone to man the gates of software. It may not be good for FSF or FOSS, but guess what? A whole fucking lot of people (And I mean a shit load) don't care about programming languages, kernels, drivers, or any other of that crap.

(Sorry if this comes off ranty, I have a cold and I get heated really easily when sick)

DrSprout• 16 years ago

Few significant achievements come without putting yourself through a lot of bullshit. The closed model is really only valuable for a toy. A real tool has to be a little dangerous to be properly useful.

nitrogen2• 16 years ago

Why not just have a "happy normal person mode" and a "dangerous geek warrior mode" for devices? Why do the two have to be mutually exclusive? In normal mode, all apps are certified, the device is guaranteed to be almost foolproof, etc.

To switch to geek mode, the user has to solve a math problem involving SI units, answer "Do you really want to forgo ease of use for flexibility?" a dozen times, or some other ritual to prevent normal users from accidentally entering geek mode.

The core firmware of the device has a switch to do a factory reset to normal mode no matter how much damage has been done to the software. Look at the OLPC XO for an example of how that can be implemented. That way, if a geek ever sells their device, there's no need for the buyer to worry about the device being all "geeked out."

zacharypinter• 16 years ago

Exactly. I keep hearing App Store being compared to physical stores. Something like: "Walmart gets to choose the items they place on their shelves, so why should the App Store be any different?".

In fact, Walmart is fairly picky about what they put on their shelves, especially when it comes to music CDs. We can argue that Walmart's control on the CDs it distributes might have a stifiling effect on the type of music that gets released. However, Walmart is not the only place allowed to sell CDs. Yes, it might suck that you have to make a Walmart-specific release of your album, but that doesn't prevent you from releasing a more explicit version elsewhere.

This is not the case with the App Store.

wvenable3• 16 years ago

How is that neither? That is the control part. They control what software gets on the device, period. If that is what bothers you then you should be just as upset with Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo. They all run their own stores and they tightly control the retail channel. Their devices are computers you can't freely put software on too.

Where's your indignation about them?

alextgordon2• 16 years ago

Sony did in fact earn some nerdrage when they disabled linux mode, and therefore indie games.

Games consoles have only recently become viable for anything other than games and they're still not quite there yet. I do think their closed nature will be a problem in the future.

aerique• 16 years ago

Personally, I only buy these kind of devices when there's a hack available. I will not let a corporation decide what I can and cannot do with a piece of hardware that I paid good money for.

To me they're just the producer of the device and that's where our relationship ends no matter what idiotic, lobbied for, legal rules say (and please don't bring murder and rape into this debate, it's a whole different ball park).

lambda• 16 years ago

I personally do not buy game consoles for exactly this reason.

I think there's less outrage because there's a sense that they are just for games. They are not intended to be general purpose computing devices, though these days they pretty much are. It becomes more outrageous when a device that you use for your private life, for your business, and for other things that really matter to you is controlled by someone else.

tvon2• 16 years ago

The App Store as a single point of distribution is one of the great advantages of the iPhone line, removing that would be a massive mistake, even if it would appease some techies and developers.

nnutter4• 16 years ago

Much more elegantly put that I was able to say. I believe they should have the freedom to do what they want with their property and I expect the same for my property. Exploiting contract law to restrict what I can do on my own property is bull.

lukifer• 16 years ago

It's ironic that a free market can lead to authoritarian, closed market platforms like the App Store or X-Box Live Arcade (and that, hypothetically, government intervention could force these markets to be more open, whether or not you think that's a good thing).

cgranade2• 16 years ago

That's part of the whole motivation for mixed economic policies in the first place-- to correct market failures. Monopolies, trusts and other such anti-competitive behavior can undermine any good that comes out of the free market, to say nothing of doing things against the interests of the consumer. Honestly, I think that government intervention here would be a good thing, as it seems that DRM and closed platforms are symptoms of a market failure.

sjs• 16 years ago

I'm still wondering why nobody has funded a web-app store for iPhone and other modern phones. Hell, it doesn't even have to be limited to mobile devices (but supported resolutions, features, and device support should be prominent).

There's clearly a huge market for systems that make it easy for customers to find and purchase apps, and for devs to reach those customers. People shouldn't be implementing payment systems over and over again for each product they create. It gives devs exposure and a market base.

I guess the problem is bootstrapping such a market. That's no easy task and the pay-off might not come for years.

vetinari3• 16 years ago

No, the problem is that nobody except Apple has private key, that can sign applications, so the iPhone will install them. Unless someone factors it (or find it in some way), it is going to stay this way.

Have a look few threads above - Apple is the only party that can put appications on iPhone OS devices - it is not that others are unwilling to do so, but Apple locked them out and unless there is a breakthrough in asymetric cryptography, it is not going to change.

mortenjorck• 16 years ago

Sjs is proposing not a third-party app store (impossible given the code signing requirement) but a third-party web app store.

I could see this working.

nnutter4• 16 years ago

It's not the secrecy, it's the monopoly on the sale of iPhone applications.

Monopolies are OK as long as...

kprobst• 16 years ago

... Gruber justifies them?

nnutter4• 16 years ago

ugh3• 16 years ago

McDonald’s has a monopoly on the sale of Big Macs – I don’t think that’s a problem :)

All that aside, there is a problem: http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2010/01/apple-responsible-...

nnutter4• 16 years ago

How is this a valid comparison? A Big Mac is an end product not an intermediate. I suppose you could say it is an intermediate product for condiments. In which case McDonald's does not have a monopoly on what condiments you can put on your Big Mac.

Even if you did think it was a valid comparison they don't really have a monopoly on the sale of Big Macs. They have a trademark (or whatever) on the name Big Mac but there are plenty of burgers that are very similar and you are free to create a burger that is identical in form to what McDonald's sells.

Qz4• 16 years ago

Hold on a sec... does anyone else see a problem with the concept of an App for one person's political cartoons? I remain convinced that the App Store is at its core an evolutionary dead end.

wvenable3• 16 years ago

If web sites can be like apps, why can't apps be like web sites?

Qz4• 16 years ago

Because web sites have (mostly) visible source code. Ultra-specific apps are lock-in central.

blasdel• 16 years ago

The real problem with the rejections of Fiore's cartoon app or Mad Magazine's Bobblehead Federal Register app is not the App Store approval process itself. It's the same problem that underlies Apple's recent banning of auto-generated app frameworks.

The real problem is that pure content is being treated as an application.

There needs to be a separate whole section of the iTunes Store for this shit: Music, Movies, TV, Apps, Interactive. It'd come with its own Webkit-based development environment, like Apple is doing for their new iTunesLP format. The people making these pointless apps don't really give a shit about integrating with the phone, and they aren't doing anything they couldn't do in Mobile Safari -- they're in the App Store to get paid for their work.

gamble• 16 years ago

Considering how long the App Store has been like this, I think it's fair to assume that Apple wants the approvals process to be opaque.

Objective, published criteria would make it harder to justify rejecting apps that threaten their business model. (Google Voice, for example) In addition, it prevents third parties from investing a significant amount in any one app.

At this stage in the iPhone's development, Apple may actually prefer not to have highly sophisticated third-party apps. Third-party apps add value to the iPhone, but they don't supersede the core OS applications. If apps became more like proper desktop applications and users came to value them more than the core OS, it would be easier for Apple's customers to follow ports of those apps to another platform. By undermining the third-party ecosystem, Apple gives itself time find out what people want and ensure the core OS apps have an insurmountable lead.

It’s Not the Control, It’s the Secrecy

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