The Decade-Long Campaign to Lock Down Your Computer

http://feeds.dashes.com/~r/AnilDash/~3/2ZnCyz_odlY/the-decade-long-campaign-to-lock-down-your-computer.html

by mindcrime • 14 years ago

32 34 14 years ago

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sounds2• 14 years ago

It's possible Apple and Microsoft are pursuing the same goal.

But I don't think Apple has that in mind. iOS devices are jailed. OS X devices are relatively open.

When Microsoft announced UEFI Secure Boot, the first articles were about desktops. A "surprise" announcement later about ARM devices being locked and not unlockable should be the proof of what Microsoft wants.

When Apple introduced locked software on the iPod Nano, it was ostensibly to prevent clone makers. Apple can of course always betray their user base, but they haven't done it yet. Cut them some slack.

drats3• 14 years ago

Why should we cut a publicly traded legal entity notorious for lying about their inventions and being extremely litigious any slack? Have you seen how ridiculous their lawsuits over the Samsung stuff are? It's quite obvious they are prepared to resort to any filthy tricks to stop competitors. They also have a long history of screwing people who develop software for their "ecosystem", most recently in the myriad app store horror stories. Why should anyone believe a single word Apple says?

sounds2• 14 years ago

I'll try to respond logically, but I'm not motivated to engage in a debate with you. This will, therefore, be my last response to you after which I plan on ignoring anything you post.

My post doesn't quote anything Apple said. I am reasoning solely from their actions.

I don't use a Mac - I think they're overpriced and the latest OS versions haven't introduced anything of interest to me. I admit, their hardware is beautiful, but I am frustrated by the lack of high-resolution screens anywhere else in the industry and I intend to vote with my wallet.

In the meantime, feel free to review my comment history. I have tried to contribute links to http://coreboot.org as often as possible. I'm never going to give up the ability to compile my OS from source, which means I won't need an apple laptop. You can pry the kernel source code from my hands when I'm dead.

The only "slack" I propose we give apple is to not claim they are backing Microsoft's Trusted Computing initiative without evidence. Essentially, my argument is exactly the same as yours: why should we claim something about apple that is not backed by evidence?

ralfn• 14 years ago

Microsoft and Apple have the same plan to push their walled gardens:

Make "open" into an expensive niche for professionals.

The low-end and mid-range of the market will be running iOS or WinRT, on ARM hardware. The professionals and, in the case of MS, corperate users will run OSX and Win8PRo, on X86 based chipsets. The ability to side-load will cost you at least 999 dollars for Apple ( price of cheapest OSX device ), and something around 800 dollars for a win8pro/x86 device.

The result will be, that those configurations wont be targetted for consumer stuff. This effectively kills of alternative marketplaces for consumer oriented products. Like, say, Steam!

orangecat• 14 years ago

iOS devices are jailed. OS X devices are relatively open.

Yes, and Apple has publicly said that iOS is for the general public, while full-featured PCs will become "trucks" only for specialized usages.

When Apple introduced locked software on the iPod Nano, it was ostensibly to prevent clone makers.

What does forbidding users from running software of their choice have to do with preventing clone makers?

drats3• 14 years ago

Apple didn't invent the GUI or the mouse, which were all taken from Xerox who in turn took them from earlier people. They leaned heavily on open source for their comeback but did quite a lot to obstruct return contributions or fostering a proper open source eco-system. They also relied on funding from Microsoft for their return. They borrowed extremely heavily from old products for their re-invention [1]. Jobs delusionally claimed the iPhone technology was somehow "stolen", when there were tons of tablets and smart phones before the iPhone and people had bolts on their physical doors which were "slide to unlock". This instigated a wave of patent attacks, including Jobs getting his personal friend the CEO of Oracle to attack Android on facetious Java issues that resulted in them getting spanked in court. And now, as the private Samsung design images show, the claims about the similarity of the Samsung models are just laughable. But nevertheless they don't want to compete on merit against products that look vaguely similar (in a world of rectangles...) but have "SAMSUNG" in large lettering on the box and the back. They try to claim that customers would be confused by this entirely different branding and even got a number of temporary injunctions against competitors. In addition to this they run the App store like dictators, and small developers are cast to the wolves at a moments notice. They have horrible customer service in many places outside of the USA (and even there they've be sued numerous times in the USA for dodgy practices like selling phones with dodgy reception). They are not God, they are just a publicly traded company looking for profit.

Gatekeeper confirms that it's not special and just another public company with a legal duty to make profit for shareholders in spades. Imagine a desktop as locked down as an iPhone, with "dev boxes" that let you run your own apps for a few hundred more, it's positively stomach churning even at the most basic level, then you have to factor in that they will cave in to all sorts of special interests (and perhaps security services). As I understand it, those in the app store gold rush already have to pay for all sorts of development licence and software stuff as it doesn't come with the OS. But what if the TSA doesn't like your TOR app because it's exporting munitions to terrorists? We used to laugh at that law back in the 1990s because it was unenforceable, now it looks like we are headed for a future where the app would just silently disappear from people's desktops. But you paid extra for the dev kit version right? But as you had illegal apps which were detected on your desktop your commercial bread-and-butter ones are now suspended, under review, or taking longer to review for updates.

Steve Jobs' pathological lying about Apple's inventiveness always struck me as unsettling, but there is much worse coming in the future I fear.

[1]http://gizmodo.com/343641/1960s-braun-products-hold-the-secr...

quonn4• 14 years ago

Gatekeeper just blocks the double-click for unsigned apps that were marked by the browser as downloads. Certificates are free. And even if they were not, users can open an app by right-clicking. And even if they could not, browsers could stop setting the attribute on downloads that triggers gatekeeper. When Flashback arrived, Apple kept updating the blocklist again and again. It's much better to just revoke a certificate. This is all about protecting non-technical users, and nothing else.

mikeash6• 14 years ago

Either Gatekeepeer is trivial to bypass or it's useful to protect against malware. I don't think you can argue that it does both at the same time, which is what you appear to be doing.

philwelch4• 14 years ago

> They leaned heavily on open source for their comeback but did quite a lot to obstruct return contributions or fostering a proper open source eco-system.

Webkit is the premier cross-platform browser engine.

> They also relied on funding from Microsoft for their return.

No they didn't. Apple's immediate cashflow problems were solved by a debenture sale in 1996. The stock purchase by Microsoft was intended to align incentives and was really a minor concession. The major benefits for both parties were, on Apple's side, an assurance that Office would still be released for Macintosh, and on Microsoft's side, an assurance that Apple would not pursue IP lawsuits against Microsoft, up to and including stealing the source code for QuickTime: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Canyon_Company

> Imagine a desktop as locked down as an iPhone, with "dev boxes" that let you run your own apps for a few hundred more, it's positively stomach churning even at the most basic level, then you have to factor in that they will cave in to all sorts of special interests (and perhaps security services).

And now we've taken off straight into fantasy.

If your comment illustrates anything, it's that when you mix truth, lies, half-truths, and outright fantasy, you can come up with a good flame against any business, be it Apple or the local corner store. Reality is always more slippery than that.

drats3• 14 years ago

>Webkit is the premier cross-platform browser engine.

Taken from the KDE guys, who had to make a lot of noise to get contributions back from Apple. And if the KDE guys hadn't done tons of work before, why didn't Apple just start from scratch? If the bad press about it hadn't forced their hand, I doubt they would have done anything. And, at this point, when you count KDE at the start and Google at the end, Apple wouldn't even have a majority share of the reasons for Webkit's success. Good to see your only point on this issue is a weak drowning not waving one. That's the best you've got?

Regarding Apple getting help from MS, $150million is actually a lot in those days. And even more than that was having MS Office and IE on the Mac. I accept if MS hadn't done it though it's likely anti-trust would have come sooner and they would have been broken up. But it's a pretty minor point in argument, so I don't mind refuting your refutation that it was "minor" but then defeating my own argument with a better more contextualized one (MS needed to do it for anti-trust), as it's not a central point. Besides that helped the monopolist by getting in bed with them, seems they will do anything to survive.

>And now we've taken off straight into fantasy.

The key point here, is I don't actually believe it is true right now (like Jobs believed his lies, or at least his fans did and do), I just propose it as a likely future. Anyone with a passing knowledge of computing history knows Apple is neither a hardware or a software company, they are a lifestyle marketing company that has invented very little indeed. On top of that, the pattern of their actions says "big corp/profits".

So in summary, you have used a lame-duck Webkit argument which actually proves my point about how little open source they do whilst helping themselves to as much as they can. You then attack a minor point about the MS investment but nothing on the GUI or design issues, customer service, or lawsuits. Then you finally accuse my plausible projection of being a fantasy. It's not really much of a fantasy to say that it looks like the trajectory of the "remove two buttons from the Xerox mouse we invented because our users are stupid" public company in search of profit that lies constantly about itself and engages in near fraudulent legal proceedings against competitors will at some point decide that their desktops should run like their phones.

All my points show they aren't any different to any other corporation, and how in many cases they are worse, and they already have a device which is locked down like that with many App store scandals. Now they are developing in a very similar direction on the desktop, so we just complete the trend-line and we have 1984-lite (which they notoriously abused for profit in their ads along with many other historical figures in the cynical attempt to tie their bottom line to things people care about, Orwell must truly be turning in his grave to be associated with such saccharine ingenuous phonys).

throwaway54-762• 14 years ago

Webkit is a fork of... wait for it... KHTML! The open source rendering engine from KDE.

redial2• 14 years ago

http://llvm.org

http://www.webkit.org

http://clang.llvm.org

http://www.trollaxor.com/2004/02/thank-apple-for-freebsd.htm...

Herring• 14 years ago

Suddenly I'm a lot less indifferent about my ipad's inability to run torrent apps.

taligent4• 14 years ago

You can always jailbreak to run Bittorrent apps.

The Decade-Long Campaign to Lock Down Your Computer

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