Comments on: What Do You Own? ‘iSlate’ and Apple’s Direction

By: Stephen Luksic

Stephen Luksic — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 08:59:27 +0000

You know, since we are all living in glass houses, I think Linux Rocks.
Sometimes I wonder at the blind support of self sacrifice…
But most religions teach self sacrifice is best for everyone…

People will abandon digital and go back to reality…
Nothing beats the resolution of reality…
Maybe the new line of monitors come close… but…

We pay these clowns to screw ourselves…

Oh yea, we were talking computers… sorry…

By: Dan Gillmor

Dan Gillmor — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 09:15:56 +0000

When I buy a Mac I’m paying for the user experience — which I agree they do better than anyone — AND the ability to tweak it to my own liking. Why is that not an acceptable approach on the iPhone? Because Apple can get away with being control-freakish there, in a method that is great for the company’s profits but not, in the long run, for users.

By: Reading blogs #21 : ::: Think Macro :::

Reading blogs #21 : ::: Think Macro ::: — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 22:14:15 +0000

[...] “What Do You Own? ‘iSlate’ and Apple’s Direction” – Dan Gilmor is pondering whether Apple is stretching it with creating walled gardens with its new hardware (from iPhone to iSlate). What do you think about this? [...]

By: El final de internet tal y como lo conocemos « One Way Or Another

El final de internet tal y como lo conocemos « One Way Or Another — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 15:34:56 +0000

[...] partir de la reflexión de Dan Gillmor en su blog [...]

By: Erik P

Erik P — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 20:36:50 +0000

Apple sells UX. That is what they do and I will go out on a limb and say they do it better than anyone else does or ever has in my memory. When you pay up for Apple’s products you’re paying for the UX.

How they choose to manage that is for the market to decide and if you look at their stock price, they marketshare numbers and any other metric the market has responded with an overwhelming thumbs up.

You can’t argue with success.

By: Paula Farrington

Paula Farrington — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 18:37:08 +0000

Gene, I agree with you completely.

Apple’s iPhone ingenuity and innovation has had an energizing effect on the entire industry, and to wring hands over what they will or won’t do in the future, especially in light of Nexus having just been released, and other products aspiring to give consumers the same user benefits iPhone inspired, seems moot.

I also agree with Miguel. Why speculate doom and gloom distribution scenarios on a possible groundbreaking product that hasn’t even been released yet?

I appreciate that you want to want to get us all thinking about protecting the openness and creativity of the future, Dan, but I sincerely hope whatever device I’m using to communicate and participate in the future conversations, and their distribution systems, will be as savvy and forward-thinking and well-designed as what Apple has given us so far.

By: Riana Pfefferkorn

Riana Pfefferkorn — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 18:08:55 +0000

There are two sides (at least) to a distribution bottleneck: quality control, which is in the user’s interest; and content control, which, I dare say, is not. Managing quality (and The Brand) can be used as a misleading justification for lack of neutrality. It’s important that we not lose sight of the multiple sides of the bottleneck.

We’ll see what the tablet does. But when the drawbridge operator charges too high a toll or refuses to let “undesirables” cross at any price, start keeping an eye out for bathyscaphes and airships and trebuchets.

By: Dan Gillmor

Dan Gillmor — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 15:32:46 +0000

Gene, your logic puzzles me.

I’m not arguing for massive licensing the Mac OS or iPhone OS (though I’d pay a premium for a ThinkPad running OS X; that would be the best hardware-software combo, bar none). I’m not arguing at all for “making everything free and available” in the way you suggested.

But we do get the wonder of new platforms specifically because they’re open to innovation within their ecosystems, innovation not requiring permission of the platform creator. We got the wonder of OS X in large part because it was open as a platform; no one needed Apple’s permission to write apps for OS X, and it would have failed had Apple tried to pull this stunt with the traditional personal computer. Apple never tried to take a cut of every software developer’s revenue with OS X; the developers would have just stuck with Windows.

The second Apple found a market it could dominate, however, it moved from semi-control-freakish behavior to absolute control-freakery. I remember someone telling me a few years ago that the world was lucky Steve Jobs hadn’t ended up with the Windows monopoly, because he’d be 10x worse as a monopolist in his behavior. Gates, at least, never told Windows developers they had to get Microsoft’s permission to innovate, much less fork over a cut of the action.

Again, I’m unlikely to buy the Apple tablet if it goes in the direction I fear, because there’s still some actual competition just as there is in mobile phones. What worries me more is the trend. It’s not a positive one when the dominant player in any marketplace starts pushing that dominance into new areas that were once more open to innovation without permission.

By: Karen Ellis

Karen Ellis — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 14:34:22 +0000

Free software movement started in 1983 by Richard Stallman. Freedom and community are the moral goals of software freedom. Remember when GIFs wanted a $5000 license fee? I don’t think this is a trend I think this is considered “business as usual”. I have been alarmed about it for a long time.

By: Amy Wohl

Amy Wohl — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 07:28:41 +0000

Consumers — personally or for business — have choices. I loved the Macintosh and used it for 11 years, but gave it up in 1995 because all of the new software was being built for Windows. Now, a lot of new software is being built for new platforms (Linux, Google’s Android, and so forth).

Buyers should buy what suits them best. I don’t own an iPhone (aothough I wanted one) because I won’t ever have AT&T as my wireless carrier. They have useless customer service. Now that I’ve waited this long, I suspect my next smartphone is going to be an Android from Verizon. I don’t need 100,000 applications; I bet I cn make do with 10,000+.

Innovation requires the ability to try and add new things. Closed systems make that hard if not impossible to do. I love all the new stuff and I can’t wait to see whether I’ll like the new smartphones and smartbooks better than the netbooks I increasingly carry for convenience (one even runs Linux, Doc!) but what I’ll really like is all the choices.

We’re busy converting all the now less interesting laptops and extra netbooks into net-surfing computers for all the rooms in our condo. A little wireless and a broadband connection goes a long way at making this cheap and interesting.