Eye on Apple: More Apple Dissatisfaction and Dangers to Freedom

Dr. Roy Schestowitz

2010-11-27 12:51:21 UTC
Modified: 2010-11-27 12:51:21 UTC

Summary: Links to news about Apple

● Wipeout: When Your Company Kills Your iPhone [via] (recall the 1984 Amazon incident)

A few weeks ago, Amanda Stanton's iPhone suddenly went black.

She had been talking on it and navigating with a GPS app during a work trip to Los Angeles. Then, without any warning or error message, the phone quit.

Everything was gone — all her contacts, photos and even the phone's ability to make calls.

It was only after she got home to Silicon Valley that she found out that her phone had been killed by her employer, a publishing company.

● Issuu Gives Up on App Store After Three Rejections

Issuu, a popular document sharing service that may have provided some competition for Apple’s planned digital newsstand, has abandoned plans to release an iOS app after Apple rejected the company three times. The New York-based firm isn’t divulging many details, but hinted in its blog that its openness was the cause of its rejection by Apple. “Based on the latest rejection, we don’t think it’s realistic that we can get it approved,” Issuu co-founder and spokesman Martin Ferro-Thomsen told me in an interview. ”We would have to make some changes we’re not comfortable with. We would have to restrict the community more than we’d like to. It’s really a sad day for us, because we love Apple, but it’s their platform and App Store, and we just live in it.”

● The App Store model faces disruption from HTML5

Today's Wall Street Journal features an article by Christopher Lawton that talks about the difficulty independent app stores face when competing with Apple and Google for developer and consumer attention. Paul Reddick, chief executive of third-party app store HandMark told WSJ that he couldn't simply bet the whole company's fate on independently distributing apps with a presence like Google to compete against.

It may not even be a prudent bet to be in the app store business at all.

SPIL Games, a Dutch company that built its audience of more than 130 million gamers on browser-based Flash games, has found that the behavior of casual gamers doesn't translate well to the app-based distribution model.

● Apple – The Competent Danger to Free Software – Part Two

A while back I wrote an article titled Apple – The Competent Danger to Free Software. It got a lot of hits. It also caused a few people to send me emails, one of which called me a traitor to Free Software.

The problem that everyone ignores, is that if you are a musician, you haven’t really got a lot of choice. Apple’s products are the best available for musicians. Sure, there’s some software available for the Windows platform, but really it’s not all that good. There’s some software available for Linux too, but it’s limited.

"We've always been shameless about stealing great ideas."

--Steve Jobs, Apple

Comments

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2010-11-27 22:11:05

The remote email/device wipe, in this case, was actually a Microsoft problem but it is general to all non free software. According to Slashdot coverage,

the problem was her iPhone's integration with MS Exchange automatically gives the server admin access to do remote wipes. All you have to do is configure the phone to receive email from an MS Exchange server and the server admin can wipe your phone at will. The phone wasn't bricked, even though absolutely all of its data was wiped, because the data could be restored from backup, assuming that someone had remembered to make one. But this also works on other devices like iPads, Blackberry phones, and other smartphones that integrate with MS Exchange.

This is a good description of the problem but it is far too kind to the malicious companies at fault. Most people would consider a device that can no longer make calls "bricked" with or without a backup someplace. NPR did the right thing and called out Microsoft and the immediate cause of the problem is well presented there too. What both fail to do is call out non free software as the root cause nor do they note the futility of it. I doubt Evolution or Kmail would respect the remote delete call. Non free software always has this power over users and this is why people should avoid non free software. Only fools trust non free software.

The wiping of employee email is a cruel and stupid because copies of that email still exist in backups and ISP databases. Companies betraying their employees in this way should know that Apple, Microsoft and telephone companies can betray them too. People and companies that want real privacy and data security should turn to free software. Companies that use Exchange and iPhone might as well deliver electronic copies of all of their email to Microsoft and Apple.

Eye on Apple: More Apple Dissatisfaction and Dangers to Freedom

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