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This is the future Apple so desperately wants: total control.
Must suck to be Wired.
I came across a story from ’95 on O’Reilly’s “four short links” last week that made the point that there is already too much to read. Unless the author is prepared to pay for me to read it, it isn’t important enough to read.
Now, I remember the context was probably the arguments of the day about paying postage for email as a way to avoid spam.
Curation. Editorial. PR. Freedom? Garbage reduction.
Don’t sweat it. No one has read Wired for decades.
I read it daily, along with a few million others: http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/wired.com
Riiight.
http://www.mediawiredaily.com/2015/09/wiredcom-expected-to-attract-…
Apple control freaks.
It’s ether Apple, Google or Facebook.
Right now Google controls the Internet. I doubt that Apple can take that control from Google. Apple is not an Internet company, Google is.
The only company that can get some of that control is FB.
They (all the companies) and the governments all want more control.
At first I thought maybe the Internet is still some what OK and it will be fine. But I’m starting to think she is right:
“The Internet is going to be a lot more like TV”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tjvw5fz_GuA#t=65m00s
It reminds me of the talk from more than 4 years ago by Eben Moglen:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ae8SZbxfE0g
If the freedom loving technology and policy people don’t do something about it the world will be a lot worse off.
Edited 2015-09-20 15:49 UTC
Is not simply about control but who gets first to the user.
Google tried first by embedding a dedicated search box on the browsers, then it created a very attractive custom browser, then Apple came up with the iPhone and iOS to control which apps can the user see and install on the store. Google freaked out because obviously Apple is a hardware company an so it can reach the user from the beginning, so they created (purchase) Android , a platform that any smartphone builder wannabe can use for free. Everyone gets on board thinking they can make a fortune but in fact they are fueling someone else business.
Advertising is extremely necessary but we reach a point where its becoming a bubble like the dotcom bubble. Ads have become so abundant and intrusive that the brain treats them the same way as road signs, it gets to a point where your brain simply ignores it.
I think both Google and Apple knows it, and Apple is trying to be the first to put some order into the advertising business to make it less intrusive and more effective and of course to fight its competitors.
Edited 2015-09-20 17:03 UTC
That seems unlikely, since for more than a year after the iPhone went on sale the App Store didn’t even exist.
That was actually a major complaint against it – its reliance on web apps versus native software, as was available for Windows Mobile, Blackberry, and other platforms.
Well, originally Apple was in favour of the Web standards (HTML5) so websites could easily be viewed on iOS devices. But one can clearly see Apple evolving to an apps only approach, for which is Apple in total control. It is remarkable to see that the developemnt of new HTML5/CSS/Javascript features in Safari is almost frozen the last 3, 4 years, while still being added to Chrome, Firefox and Edge
Edited 2015-09-21 06:51 UTC
Don’t see why anyone would be surprised. Apple has been a control freak from the beginning. It’s always their way or the highway with anyone that does business with them including their customers and component providers.
You’d have to be living under a rock for the past 20 – 30 years to not have seen this.
This made me recover my OSNews password; usually I’m only a loyal reader, but I can’t simply read this and walk away.
The “RMS Was Right All Along” (http://www.osnews.com/story/25469/Richard_Stallman_Was_Right_All_Al…) prediction is becoming more and more clear. Is this (an Apple or Facebook-locked network) the Internet we all want?
OS X is great, iPhone is an amazing product, but I can’t agree with such behaviour from Apple. I was planning to completely change to Apple products, but no more. My Android phone with CyanogenMod sucks. My Lenovo T440s witn Windows 10 sucks. My Ubuntu installation inside a VM sucks. But IMO this is a small price comparing to what Apple wants for our future.
Since you did, I will too. Yeah, RMS was right, though this is not the first time someone has paywalled an article and in my case at least I never seriously questioned it. I don’t find that act in itself to even really be symptomatic. It’s promotional, and not even really offensive (compared to javascript/malware ads on a platform where I can’t block them).
What internet do we want? Well that question isn’t up to us anymore, and probably hasn’t been since the app store and the 30% cut was invented (think of that when trying to rationalise MS’s behaviour eve since). Try explaining it to standard non-tech types (and more than a few tech types) and they react hyperbole; exaggeration or disbelief (much like RMS has been regarded, by “us”). Win10 itself probably brought this more to the general attention than anything else recently but that already faded (maybe until the next revelation about what telemetry actually is..).
But out of the physical window, things look the same. Yet the threads that tie everything together are phenomenally different. It’s too vague to easily explain what, and why it matters. Does it?
Clearly not, or in the name of straight convenience an internet of silo lock-in networks wouldn’t have taken over. We always had *nix emergency exit to fall on. The rest, just know what they got made to use (controlled) by IT at work. Compared to that, iOS (etc) is wide open. Just a taller, more well hidden, more insidious fence.
And I thought MS Office was bad.
I never understood what’s to great about iOS or OS X. Technologically they are pretty sub-par. They are only popular because of social / PR kind of issues, and not because they are great.
Edited 2015-09-20 21:23 UTC
Why is OS X sub-par? This is a genuine question, I’ve never used OS X. (iOS, on the other hand – I can probably see why it can be considered inferior.)
Simply because Apple doesn’t care about it much. For instance it still doesn’t support OpenGL 4.5.
The scheduler sucks and chokes up when you have more than 3-4 applications running at a time. The GUI is horrifically slow compared to GNOME, KDE, or Windows on equivalent hardware. The Unix parts have been bit rotting for years to the point that simple terminal applications will segfault for no good reason. Future versions are rumored to even lock you out of root/uid 0 entirely. After fifteen years there’s STILL no decent graphical IRC client other than experimental builds of Hexchat in the last few months.
Everything I want to do that OS X can do, Linux does better. The only advantage is if you need a native *nix shell and MS Office, Photoshop, etc. on the same system, or if you’re writing iOS apps.
or that little thing called reliability
and free support
leading to value.
Or put another way —
Total downtime caused by a mac or iOS device in my working life, in the last 20 years = under 8 hours.
No other computing device or platform even comes close to that, not with the breadth of products like apple.
Long uptime is not a benefit unless you are running some server which can’t be easily restarted.
By uptime I mean no data loss, and that is a huge timesaver in the professional world. Less corruption, less incompatibility, less lost work.
Coworkers on other platforms are rebooting, reinstalling, re-formatting hard drives, and re-creating documents and data far more than any mac i’ve come across.
Windows has gotten better in this regard, but macs have been rock-solid for many years now. You have to have grey hair to remember macs being considered unstable. Kids these days don’t even bother with Command-S all the time, the machine never dies.
Macs have gotten worse at this for pro media workers. The steady update stream Apple Inc’s finances have brought have made it tougher to use the mac for production. Too many updates, too many versions of everything flying around.
Data loss most of the time has nothing to do with OSX or other system, but with how you manage your data. You can lose it anywhere if you don’t take care of it properly.
No idea about Windows, but Linux filesystems are pretty robust and field tested under heaviest loads. But if your harddrive goes toast – no OS will help you much, unless you have data redundancy, backups and such.
Edited 2015-09-21 18:30 UTC
Yeah I agree with all that. I never ran Linux as my day-to-day OS, only for servers. Of course it’s rock solid or it wouldn’t even be in the discussion.
Apple’s Time Machine has saved my butt once or twice, but it was due to user error, not hardware/software failure.
So many people put everything in the cloud now anyway, stability of desktop OS and hard drive is less critical than in the past.
Ever gone to the website of a magazine? Ever notice how they only post a fraction of the content on their free website and the rest they “lock away” in their magazine or magazine app?
How is Apple paying for content in their News app any different?
Exactly. It’s not as if you can’t get news from anywhere else. They will see what other mags with paywalls suffer: less business. Google is successful because of their model. Yes, ads exist. There isn’t a law that says you have to click them, however. I’d rather deal with the ads than have to shell out money just to read an article online.
Oh, and to those complaining(including a certain OSNews host), why are you complaining, yet supporting such things with buying Apple products?
I agree with you.
I have been looking for a good quality replacement for my mac book pro. I have always refused to use iOS for my personal devices.
Sucks?
I guess your definition of not sucking is something that isn’t Apple – good luck finding such a limiting experience elsewhere.
I’m not normally totally willy nilly against other’s Copyright..
BUT with the caveat that if Apple News and Wired and all their co-conspirators Really Really want to post stories to Apple/iOS-only news outlets, even for a shortish preview period ….fine, that’s their game, their choice..
But please please please don’t go plastering the “Open Web” with Apple/iOS adverts barely hiding in plain site as nasty little “news” teasers..!
Until they stop this pretty insidious practice – please let some lovely soul create a new site such as http://www.apple-news-freedom-reposts.com
copyright, at least in this instance along with some others, be damned.
Big thanks in advance to anyone who does
X
It sounds like a repeat of the failed walled gardens of the 1990s.
The old walled gardens didn’t adopt standards they created their own.
This is much closer to the Microsoft playbook: embrace and extend…
and extinguish ?
Why wouldn’t Apple be allowed to pay for exclusive content? Every magazine in the world does that. Obviously Apple is not going to “close” the web as a whole. Obviously this is only going to be fluff content and not actual news.
In other words, storm meet teacup.
Any corporation will want to do that to maintain their hold on the market. The only way this wouldn’t happen is if it was a non-profit, and even then, they’d like to do something to prevent them from disappearing.
Anyone thinking Corporation X, Y or Z won’t want total control is clearly lying to themselves and ignoring the history of competition altogether.
I guess that’s why they open sourced webkit
Edited 2015-09-21 11:26 UTC
They had to open-source WebKit. It was derived from KHTML.
So Apple chose KHTML, which meant going open source route, because they wanted total control.
That’s like saying a murderer isn’t a criminal because he donated to cancer research once.
Or more like… Apple picked KHTML so they could embrace and extend and finally extinguish it.
Evidence?
Plus why would they bother – in what conceivable way did the existence of KHTML impinge on Apple in the slightest.
They utilized KHTML as an existing html web rendering engine, and then they indeed did make it act differently than KHTML, and even other webkit based browsers. I find it funny (at least the last time I tried it) Konqueror would show a website differently if you used KHTML over Webkit.
Logically, Chrome, Safari, Epiphany and Opera should all display websites the exact same, but they don’t.
Doesn’t answer my point which was why would Apple pick “KHTML so they could embrace and extend and finally extinguish it”, it makes no sense. I cannot see how the independent existence of KHTML prior to webkits impinged on Apple in such a way as they would adopt specially (as is claimed) in order just “finally extinguish it”
Apple adopted KHTML, cups and many other open source projects because there was a time when it was the underdog and did not have the resources to compete heat-to-head against MS and these projects allowed them to cut costs and take a shortcut.
The problem, so it seems to me, is that Apple is taking a very risk u-turn now, perhaps, because the current leaders have no expertise on software development dynamics and ask their developers for exclusivity even on things that may not make sense. Hope I am wrong as some projects I am very interested in are also funded by Apple (like llvm, for example).
No, they chose it because they didn’t have any other choice: Apple clearly lacked the competence to build their own browser, and the initial releases of OS X were such a debacle that no third-party was going to do it for them. So other than Gecko – another open-source engine – KHTML was their only option.
Apple has been about total control since the Lisa and the first Macintosh. They like to pretend to be on the side of the rebel, but in fact they are about as paranoid and control freaks as the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. They pretend to (but really don’t) want people strolling off their narrow path.
The difference today is money, influence and normal corporate greed since the passing of their crazy Jesus. Which is scary.
Edited 2015-09-21 12:11 UTC
Wow. Lost perspective much? When I see Apple killing people and holding fake trials and public executions, I might agree with you. Until then, that’s a bit much even for hyperbole.
I agree. Somehow the fact that Apple wants to take responsibility for the entire end user experience by making both the OS and the hardware it runs on seems to drive some people crazy. Actually its not even Apple’s drive to make integrated products that drives some people crazy its the fact that so many end users and consumers are so incredibly pleased and enthusiastic about the results. Truly, deeply weird that some folks seem so threatened by Apple’s approach to product design, especially as Apple products are not obligatory, and that there are plenty of alternatives available.
True, there is no Apple Gulag. That wasn’t my point. The point was that Apple has a vision about technology they want their users to share, and go to great length to make sure dissenders get a hard time.
The original Mac had special screws to make sure people couldn’t tinker with the hardware. There where no arrow keys on the keyboard because Apple wanted to force people to use the mouse. And so on.
Apples vision can be summed up as: we will do the visionary thinking for you. Your role is to passionately agree, and praise Apple for doing the thinking instead of doing it yourself.
What other entity had similar visions? The Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
That was my point.
What utter and total rubbish. Comparing Apple to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union is the comment of an infantalised fool.
Apple’s product design philosophy is that it wants to make products that are well designed, well constructed, easy to use and to minimise the amount of system integration or management that the end use has to do. This design philosophy result in devices that are often difficult to tinker with. They then offer these products to consumers in markets that are full of products not built using that Apple design philosophy, full of products that are complex, which often do require a high degree of end user system integration and system management, and which as a result can often be tinkered with far more easily than Apple devices.
The consumer then decides what sort of products that want to buy. Consumers decide whether they prefer the Apple products, built using their design philosophy or do they prefer products built using non-Apple design philosophies. If people didn’t like Apple’s design philosophy and the resulting products they would not buy them.
The actual result is that Apple products, and the Apple business model built on top of its design philosophy, is a sensational success because actually hundreds of millions of people do seem to prefer well designed, well made, easy to operate products that require a minimum of end user system integration and management.
Nevertheless consumers have ample alternatives to Apple products in all the markets it operates in and therefore only people who actually actively prefer Apple’s design philosophy have to use their products.
Given that you personally, and nobody else, is ever obliged to use Apple products against their will what the fuck are you moaning about? That was my point.
Apple don’t trust the end user to be able to use their products right, so they try to lock them out from being able to tinker with it completely. They call this “design philosophy”. That is of course one way to look at it.
But the result of suck lockouts is of course that people have no or few ways to make changes Apple doesn’t appove of. Like what web browser to use on the iPhone, or not being able to use Flash.
This is fine and so if you view Apple as just another tech company. It’s more problemstic if this is the company for rebels, artist and free thinkers. Because by far Apple is the most restricting tech company out there, and has been for almost it’s entire existence.
Technology is not uncomplicated and it gets less so every year. Apple are just good at hiding this fact by reducing your choices to a bare minimum. If people can’t be trusted to do anything,, less things can break down.
Sure, people can always buy something else. For now. But just remember how stupid it would sound in 1996 if you said “you don’t like Windows 95? Then get something else”. It was pretty much unrealistic then. And we may face a future where Apple has the same power.
Thankfully, it’s still not likely. But if so, it would be scary.
By why on earth does any of this bother you. Obviously hundreds of millions of people love the Apple approach to product design because they are willing to buy Apple’s products and at prices that make Apple the most successful tech company. That’s great for them as they get products they like (all surveys show Apple customer satisfaction is very high). It doesn’t appeal to you but you don’t have to buy Apple’s products.
Why does it matter to you that there is a company that has a design philosophy you don’t like but which you don’t have to participate in or experience?
Clearly Apple is successfully in addressing a large market of consumer need so why not say thats great for those people, its not your thing and that’s all there is too it. Why the need to whine and spout ridiculous hyperbole about products you don’t buy and don’t have to buy?
…says the person with more anti-Google comments than any other commenter in internet history.
I can’t stop smirking.
Because I live in this world and are affected by whats happening in it.
Apple products have been the most empowering tech product because they get out of the way and let people just do their stuff without the need to manage technology. That’s why people love the products. People who like to manage technology, or who think they are especially good at managing technology, often feel threatened by Apple’s design philosophy, disturbed by the very designs that empower everyone else.
You’re supporting your claim with screws? There is probably a very good reason for those screws: the original Macintosh was the user friendly computer that could kill you with a smile. Seriously. Unlike the Apple II and many other computers of the era, there were no user servicable or upgradable parts inside. You either required a replacement module from Apple or were using a soldering iron. On top of that, both the CRT and power supply were fully exposed once you popped off the cover. That made servicing the system more similar to servicing a TV than a computer (i.e. much more hazardous).
I read it in the Steve Jobs biography.
It was about keeping the hackers out of the machine rather than the casual users, because Jobs hated the idea that people would use the computer for stuff he didn’t like. Jobs was a control freak.
While its true that Apple wants to control the entire technology stack in its products, in order to ensure the sort of end user experience that maintains the brand that has been so enormously successful, there is something much bigger than Apple going on here. Apple are at the forefront of these changes that are coming to internet publishing but isn’t just because Apple are once again at the forefront of change? Something bigger is happening.
The rise of the internet has been steadily destroying the business model of traditional publishing by destroying its revenues. Revenues that had previously accrued to publishers were diverted to other players, notably companies like Google and Facebook. One response by publishers has been to try to build pay walls to ensure monetisation of content. This strategy has had very limited success. If you have some very high value added, and often specialist content (The Financial Times is a good example), it may work but usually consumers are just not willing to pay to view. So publishers turned to advertising, after all ads have always been a big source of revenue in traditional newspaper and journal publishing. The problem is the publishers (constrained by the reality of selling and placing ads in a digital networked media) more or less handed all control of how ads worked and how they affected end user experience to the ad industry. The result was the disaster of the last few years where usability and user friendliness of many websites have almost collapsed under the weight of a giant ad serving parasitical apparatus.
Imagine if the same way of working had operated in say newspapers. Imagine a newspaper selling a certain amount of space to an ad agency but having no control over the ads (their taste or appropriateness) and no control over how the ads were placed in their publication or how they interacted with the over all content and stye.
Consumers rebelled. Ad blocking spread and now with iOS 9 it has hit a critical mass, capsizing the ad machine revenue stream. So what can be done to create a new model of monetisation for publishers? The Apple News model (which others will replicate soon) may offer a way to do that. Payment for limited exclusive content (pay for the article today or wait until its free next week) and strong curation of far less intrusive advertising content.
I don’t know personally what to think of all this but I do know that:
a) I hate paywalls
b) I hate the current ugly and dysfunctional advertising and use ad blockers as much as I can
I don’t hate (yet) the idea of delayed content. I don’t the idea hat the way the publishers will survive will be by offering exclusive content early via funded platforms like Apple News and that i will have to wait to see it if I want to see if for free. That could turn out to be a really bad system but something has to allow publishers to make money or really good content will disappear.
Edited 2015-09-21 19:19 UTC
Speaking of trying to have total control over the web…
http://www.theverge.com/2015/9/21/9365075/french-regulator-google-r…