CommunityBeliever
9th October 2011, 09:43
Dear OI members, some members who were recently discussing Apple do not fully comprehend the corporations tyrannical practices. The truth is that when you purchase an Apple device, you do not really own it because it is still dominated by sources outside your control.
Apple is putting into place restrictive practices such as DRM malfeatures in order to transform a programmable computer into a dominated device. Apple falsely claims that the iPhone, iPod Touch, the iPad, and all other products that run their "iPhone OS" were never really programmable computers, they are "mobile devices." Apple exerts completely control over these devices by restrictive practices, like the golden cage.
The golden cage
Apple has created an appstore through which it sells applications to consumers. Furthermore, through the use restrictive licensing practices Apple exerts complete control over these applications:
All Your Apps Are Belong to Apple (https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/03/iphone-developer-program-license-agreement-all)
This golden cages restricts developers from making public statements, it allows Apple to delete your app at anytime, its restricts you from reverse engineering and it prevents Apple from ever owing you more then $50. Most notably it restricts the applications you build to the appstore and it prevents you from the *creative* act of tinkering on their products:
App Store Only: Section 7.2 makes it clear that any applications developed using Apple's SDK may only be publicly distributed through the App Store, and that Apple can reject an app for any reason, even if it meets all the formal requirements disclosed by Apple. So if you use the SDK and your app is rejected by Apple, you're prohibited from distributing it through competing app stores like Cydia (http://cydia.saurik.com/) or Rock Your Phone (http://rockyourphone.com/).
No Tinkering with Any Apple Products: Section 3.2(e) is the "ban on jailbreaking" provision that received some attention (http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2009/04/latest-iphone-developer-agreement-bans-jailbreaks.ars) when it was introduced last year. Surprisingly, however, it appears to prohibit developers from tinkering with any Apple software or technology, not just the iPhone, or "enabling others to do so." For example, this could mean that iPhone app developers are forbidden from making iPods interoperate with open source software (http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/11/apple-confuses-speech-dmca-violation), for example.
Application consumers
To delve into the past, there was once a time in which everyone that handled a computer was a talented developer who fully understood the inner workings of the computer. However, with the propagation of graphical user interfaces based upon incomprehensible WIMP metaphor and founded on the defective concept of applications (see Aza Raskin's away with applications (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6856727143023456694)) distinct from instances, we begun to see a separate class of application consumers distinct from developers. These users have a concept of applications like "iTunes" but they have no conception of the basic fact that underlying the computer is actually a programmable device.
It was no less then Apple that propagated the conception of application users in the first place as part of the "PC revolution". Now their appstore is nothing more then a continuation of this process. Would be computer developers are being transformed into consumers of purchasable applications.
Since the "PC revolution" and the subsequent AI winter (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_winter), we are seeing the formulation of computer systems that are increasingly restrictive with DRM and dumbed down with the artificial stupidity (http://groups.google.com/group/comp.emacs/msg/821a0f04bab91864). Users are being transformed into mere consumers of applications, and the creative art of programming is becoming a forgotten part of an earlier age.
Computer ownership
There is another threat on the market, known as cloud computing (http://www.loper-os.org/?p=44), which seeks to totally remove any control you have over your computer by replacing it with external computers controlled by companies like Google and Facebook. What the actions of all these companies amounts to is the death of personal ownership over your computers. Computers are now being dominated not by you, but rather by private tyrannies like Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, and Google.
So now in the cloud computing age you are not a developer, or even a user, you are nothing more then an observer. You are nothing more then an observer of what private tyrannies choose to show you. And since all products are increasingly becoming computerised, we are living in a dystopia that few in the past could've dreamed off, we are truly in the midsts of a dark age. This is the natural result of the social system known as capitalism, which places the interests of groups with large sums of capital, like Apple, over the vast majority of the world's individuals.
Apple is putting into place restrictive practices such as DRM malfeatures in order to transform a programmable computer into a dominated device. Apple falsely claims that the iPhone, iPod Touch, the iPad, and all other products that run their "iPhone OS" were never really programmable computers, they are "mobile devices." Apple exerts completely control over these devices by restrictive practices, like the golden cage.
The golden cage
Apple has created an appstore through which it sells applications to consumers. Furthermore, through the use restrictive licensing practices Apple exerts complete control over these applications:
All Your Apps Are Belong to Apple (https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/03/iphone-developer-program-license-agreement-all)
This golden cages restricts developers from making public statements, it allows Apple to delete your app at anytime, its restricts you from reverse engineering and it prevents Apple from ever owing you more then $50. Most notably it restricts the applications you build to the appstore and it prevents you from the *creative* act of tinkering on their products:
App Store Only: Section 7.2 makes it clear that any applications developed using Apple's SDK may only be publicly distributed through the App Store, and that Apple can reject an app for any reason, even if it meets all the formal requirements disclosed by Apple. So if you use the SDK and your app is rejected by Apple, you're prohibited from distributing it through competing app stores like Cydia (http://cydia.saurik.com/) or Rock Your Phone (http://rockyourphone.com/).
No Tinkering with Any Apple Products: Section 3.2(e) is the "ban on jailbreaking" provision that received some attention (http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2009/04/latest-iphone-developer-agreement-bans-jailbreaks.ars) when it was introduced last year. Surprisingly, however, it appears to prohibit developers from tinkering with any Apple software or technology, not just the iPhone, or "enabling others to do so." For example, this could mean that iPhone app developers are forbidden from making iPods interoperate with open source software (http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/11/apple-confuses-speech-dmca-violation), for example.
Application consumers
To delve into the past, there was once a time in which everyone that handled a computer was a talented developer who fully understood the inner workings of the computer. However, with the propagation of graphical user interfaces based upon incomprehensible WIMP metaphor and founded on the defective concept of applications (see Aza Raskin's away with applications (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6856727143023456694)) distinct from instances, we begun to see a separate class of application consumers distinct from developers. These users have a concept of applications like "iTunes" but they have no conception of the basic fact that underlying the computer is actually a programmable device.
It was no less then Apple that propagated the conception of application users in the first place as part of the "PC revolution". Now their appstore is nothing more then a continuation of this process. Would be computer developers are being transformed into consumers of purchasable applications.
Since the "PC revolution" and the subsequent AI winter (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_winter), we are seeing the formulation of computer systems that are increasingly restrictive with DRM and dumbed down with the artificial stupidity (http://groups.google.com/group/comp.emacs/msg/821a0f04bab91864). Users are being transformed into mere consumers of applications, and the creative art of programming is becoming a forgotten part of an earlier age.
Computer ownership
There is another threat on the market, known as cloud computing (http://www.loper-os.org/?p=44), which seeks to totally remove any control you have over your computer by replacing it with external computers controlled by companies like Google and Facebook. What the actions of all these companies amounts to is the death of personal ownership over your computers. Computers are now being dominated not by you, but rather by private tyrannies like Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, and Google.
So now in the cloud computing age you are not a developer, or even a user, you are nothing more then an observer. You are nothing more then an observer of what private tyrannies choose to show you. And since all products are increasingly becoming computerised, we are living in a dystopia that few in the past could've dreamed off, we are truly in the midsts of a dark age. This is the natural result of the social system known as capitalism, which places the interests of groups with large sums of capital, like Apple, over the vast majority of the world's individuals.