In recent weeks I’ve become more and more discontent with my iPhone, with the introduction of the iPad and what it does and doesn’t do, a whole slew of new skeletons have come out of the closet. Lee Brimelow is a Platform “evangelist” for Adobe. He recently posted in his Flash blog. How Apple is slapping developers in the face, by limiting what language they are allowed to program in to make applications for their devices. Now this shouldn’t come a surprise really, Apple to me has always come off as a discontent controlling child who wants to control media at large, by allowing what we do and don’t view. They do it by making people spend a ton of money for their products, which in turn people feel like they need to use it because they spent so much on it. This seems like a really ridiculous notion for this economy. Whenever I’ve pointed this out to apple enthusiasts they insist it’s worth it by saying that Apple quality is superior. Seeing I’m now on my 2nd 3G iphone which has another malfunction that I again have to replace it; so I’m inclined to disagree. I’m citing that some have good luck, and those that have bad luck, anticipated the possibility of it and bought the extra warranty and therefore aren’t inclined to argue very hard. These people are happy to go back to their old devices and methods.
In addition to that most windows freaks went into it knowing that they stepped into a possibly unreliable world. Face it. Wither or not you’re an iphone freak, or a mac head; despite the fact that Apple may have a massive chunk on the Smartphone segment, they’re still a tiny blip on the map, that only survived because of Adobe. Because Of risc Processors, because Microsoft bought most of your stock and gave you a shit ton of money, to keep you afloat so they would not become a monopoly on the market. Yes, it’s true. It happened, Mac-heads don’t like to admit it, but it’s true.
Apple has done little to the face of innovation, they’ve advanced in tiny ways that have brought out surges of others ideas, but nothing so dramatically face changing since the Apple II that it’s losing the concept of what innovation is. Steve Jobs, is a controlling, smug, self-righteous son of a bitch. Who puts out products that causes an uproar. But the uproar is what causes the drive for people to use them, or come out with a way to make it do what it is fully capable of doing. If Steve wasn’t such a dumbass he’d look at the jailbroken apps available like lockinfo, and incorporate some of these into the iPhone OS. Rather than having a blatant disregard for the open developers who push the product to the limit and embrace their ideas he ignores it entirely.
Now that I’ve completely gone off on this tangent, I’m going to get to the point.
Apple is controlling, very much so. One paragraph in Lee’s post really struck me as almost a violation of our inherent 1st amendment rights.
“I am positive that there are a large number of Apple employees that strongly disagree with this latest move. Any real developer would not in good conscience be able to support this. The trouble is that we will never hear their discontent because Apple employees are forbidden from blogging, posting to social networks, or other things that we at companies with an open culture take for granted.”
Personally, this word bothers me a lot. “Forbidden”. If he is saying that they are unable to speak for themselves without fear of retribution? I can understand Apple wanting to protect the image of the company, but my question is if Apple was such a great place to work, then why wouldn’t they want to protect the image of the company? The answer is simple. It’s not.
Isn’t that one of the reasons why the country known as the U.S.A had the revolutionary war? Freedom of speech was so important to the founding fathers that it was the 1st amendment… not the 3rd or 13th.. but 1st. So not only have the government impending our 1st amendment rights, but private companies are doing it as well. Yet, this is also okay.
Job’s own ideology is shown to the general public (and owners of iPod Touches, iPhones, and now iPads) as a gesture of their enforcing his morals of the almighty Apple. They have removed any and all apps that might have an insinuation of sex or nudity or suggestion. But it didn’t stop there, they took it one more step too far. They removed a app of the Winter games because it had one picture of the speed skaters in her skin tight uniform receiving her gold medal.
Now excuse me if I’m slightly annoyed that people are not allowed to use their devices how they see fit. I understand that apple already had a certain amount of insane and ridiculous restrictions on apps that were being created, to further this and take it that far because it’s inappropriate for children? Or because developers might have ideas of their own? Since when is it’s apple’s right to be the moral judgment for parents? Why not just put an option for a parental lock on certain apps like a widget in the configuration?
There are plenty of ideas out there that you (Apple) could use, and it would make vast improvements in the UI alone of the iPhone OS. It’s time to Shit or get of the pot.
Honestly, the android phones are so much more customizable, and I’d rather get one so I can put what I want on it without restrictions to Flash or content. Unless Apple makes some serious changes in the next year, I’m ditching my phone.
Share
