iPhone is a closed, locked down computer
Author Jonathan Zittrain talked earlier this year about how Apple is worse than Microsoft in many respects. It's disturbing to see that the most important computer today, the iPhone, is also the most closed and locked down.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/135150
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Q: But Bill Gates has total control, doesn't he?
A: No he doesn't. That's the ironic thing. Bill Gates is Mr. Proprietary. But for my purposes, even under the standard Windows operating system from 1990, 1991, you write the code, you can hand it to somebody else and they can run it. Bill Gates has nothing to say about it. So it's funny to think that by moving in Steve Jobs's direction it actually ends up far more proprietary.
Jobs is notorious for creating a very closed ecosystem of products that include the iPod and iPhone.
Yeah, it's amazing to me how much the progress of Apple has tracked the trajectory that I'm concerned about. It was Steve Jobs who brought us the first PC in '77--totally reprogrammable, totally generative. It was Steve Jobs who then came out with the Mac that made it so much easier to use while retaining the generative quality and allowing everyone to write code for it. Now Steve Jobs is bringing us the iPhone, which in version one is completely locked down. And then in the most recent announcement Steve Jobs says, "OK, we're going to allow third-party apps, but you can't just hand an app to someone, you have to put it through the iPhone store, and we reserve the right to take a cut for every app. And if we don't like the app, we can kill it."
Biting the hand that feeds IT
