<story><title>Daring Fireball: The Kids Are All Right</title><url>http://daringfireball.net/2010/04/kids_are_all_right</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>DannoHung</author><text>Sorry, but how do you qualify negative events?&lt;p&gt;First, let&apos;s take a look at what I suspect you think are negative events:&lt;p&gt;1) iTunes Music Store has DRM encumbered music&lt;p&gt;2) iTunes Video Store has DRM encumbered video&lt;p&gt;3) iPhone App Store has closed ecosystem with infuriating approval process&lt;p&gt;Now, let&apos;s peel back the bullshit and look at the reality of the situations:&lt;p&gt;1) Before the iTunes music store, the only way you could get music legally on the internet was a $10 a month subscription to the Real Player music store.  You did not own your music and you could only play it on a number of devices.  Concurrently, many music publishers were trying to develop technological means to prevent users from taking music from CDs they had purchased and ripping them to MP3&apos;s.&lt;p&gt;Overall, I rate that as a win for consumers.  A double win considering the later removal of DRM from iTunes music.&lt;p&gt;2) Before the iTunes video store, you could buy a few DRM encumbered videos from Amazon (pretty sure they were the only game in town at that time).  Some of the current stores for digital video don&apos;t even allow you to view video on a device different from the one you purchased it on.  There is still not a really great source of High Def video.&lt;p&gt;Overall, I rate that as a neutral to slight win for consumers.&lt;p&gt;3) Before the iPhone App store, the only way you could get an application was through a carrier approved store.  The apps themselves were 99% garbage and if you changed phones, good luck transferring them.  With the iPhone App store, there has been a cambrian explosion of mobile software.  Despite the denial of apps in several specific categories and contentious policies regarding duplication of built in software, for the most part there is an app for that.  The best part though is that applications do not depend on carrier approval for the most part and handsets are free to transfer across networks provided they are hardware compatible.  I would like to remind you again that before June 2007, this shit was fantasy.&lt;p&gt;Overall, I rate that as a win for consumers.</text></item><item><author>SwellJoe</author><text>Things have never been better for kids and technology than they are today, and I agree with Gruber that it&apos;s a bit myopic to suggest otherwise.&lt;p&gt;But, it is dangerous to ignore negative events, just because the overall trend has been positive for the past 30 years. Apple has been responsible for a number of very negative events in the past few years. Going back to more closed systems is not a good thing, even if the iPad is awesome and seems like magic and kids love it (and I&apos;m sure they do). The iPad and iPhone are more closed, more hostile to tinkerers, more hostile to adventurous users, than most other similar devices. This is a &lt;i&gt;bad&lt;/i&gt; thing. One shouldn&apos;t apologize for a company doing bad things, just because things in the industry as a whole are better than they were ten or fifteen or twenty years ago.&lt;p&gt;Open Source software has made dramatic improvements in the landscape for kids learning technology today. Apple is fighting those improvements, and they &lt;i&gt;should&lt;/i&gt; be called out for that bad behavior. Apple is behaving in ways that are bad for developers, and bad for kids who might become hackers. Just because they also happen to build awesome products, and do happen to provide an approved relief valve for their closed ecosystem, doesn&apos;t make it OK to be hostile to developers and would-be hackers.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>SwellJoe</author><text>&lt;i&gt;1) Before the iTunes music store, the only way you could get music legally on the internet was a $10 a month subscription to the Real Player music store. You did not own your music and you could only play it on a number of devices. Concurrently, many music publishers were trying to develop technological means to prevent users from taking music from CDs they had purchased and ripping them to MP3&apos;s.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;This is simply, and provably, untrue. I had an eMusic account several years before iTunes existed. It has always distributed DRM-free MP3s.&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;2) Before the iTunes video store, you could buy a few DRM encumbered videos from Amazon (pretty sure they were the only game in town at that time).&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;I don&apos;t know about this, as I&apos;m not a big movie/TV watcher. I&apos;ll leave it for someone else to debunk.&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;3) Before the iPhone App store, the only way you could get an application was through a carrier approved store.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Demonstrably untrue. There was a thriving and open application market for Palm devices, Windows mobile devices, and others, long before the App Store. The Sidekick had a similar marketplace model to the App Store and a similar approval process, and it was in place for many years before the iPhone. Pretty much all smart phones allowed installation of applications from third parties before the iPhone and App Store. The success of the App Store, for Apple&apos;s bottom line, was the primary motivation for several other vendors introducing similar markets.&lt;p&gt;But, I wasn&apos;t talking about iTunes (though there are probably things to say about iTunes, I don&apos;t really know enough about it; as I mentioned, I&apos;ve been an eMusic user for many years, and have never wanted anything iTunes had to offer; besides that iTunes doesn&apos;t run under Linux, so I can&apos;t use it). I&apos;m talking about specific negative things Apple has done for openness and creativity in the technology world with the iPhone and the iPad, which is the subject of all of these rants.&lt;p&gt;The iPhone and iPad are the most tightly controlled ecosystems in their respective niches (if we count netbooks and other tablets as in the iPad niche, which I kinda think we have to, for now). This is a &lt;i&gt;bad&lt;/i&gt; thing.&lt;p&gt;And, I was saying that the kind of apologia you&apos;re using is enabling Apple to do these bad things. One shouldn&apos;t apologize for bad things Apple has done by presenting the good or neutral things Apple has done. We know that the closed nature of the iPhone/iPad and the App Store ecosystem is bad for developers and bad for tinkerers and would-be hackers. We should call them on that bad behavior.&lt;p&gt;Praise them all you want for other behaviors, but don&apos;t use it as an excuse for the bad things they do.</text></comment>
<story><title>Daring Fireball: The Kids Are All Right</title><url>http://daringfireball.net/2010/04/kids_are_all_right</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>DannoHung</author><text>Sorry, but how do you qualify negative events?&lt;p&gt;First, let&apos;s take a look at what I suspect you think are negative events:&lt;p&gt;1) iTunes Music Store has DRM encumbered music&lt;p&gt;2) iTunes Video Store has DRM encumbered video&lt;p&gt;3) iPhone App Store has closed ecosystem with infuriating approval process&lt;p&gt;Now, let&apos;s peel back the bullshit and look at the reality of the situations:&lt;p&gt;1) Before the iTunes music store, the only way you could get music legally on the internet was a $10 a month subscription to the Real Player music store.  You did not own your music and you could only play it on a number of devices.  Concurrently, many music publishers were trying to develop technological means to prevent users from taking music from CDs they had purchased and ripping them to MP3&apos;s.&lt;p&gt;Overall, I rate that as a win for consumers.  A double win considering the later removal of DRM from iTunes music.&lt;p&gt;2) Before the iTunes video store, you could buy a few DRM encumbered videos from Amazon (pretty sure they were the only game in town at that time).  Some of the current stores for digital video don&apos;t even allow you to view video on a device different from the one you purchased it on.  There is still not a really great source of High Def video.&lt;p&gt;Overall, I rate that as a neutral to slight win for consumers.&lt;p&gt;3) Before the iPhone App store, the only way you could get an application was through a carrier approved store.  The apps themselves were 99% garbage and if you changed phones, good luck transferring them.  With the iPhone App store, there has been a cambrian explosion of mobile software.  Despite the denial of apps in several specific categories and contentious policies regarding duplication of built in software, for the most part there is an app for that.  The best part though is that applications do not depend on carrier approval for the most part and handsets are free to transfer across networks provided they are hardware compatible.  I would like to remind you again that before June 2007, this shit was fantasy.&lt;p&gt;Overall, I rate that as a win for consumers.</text></item><item><author>SwellJoe</author><text>Things have never been better for kids and technology than they are today, and I agree with Gruber that it&apos;s a bit myopic to suggest otherwise.&lt;p&gt;But, it is dangerous to ignore negative events, just because the overall trend has been positive for the past 30 years. Apple has been responsible for a number of very negative events in the past few years. Going back to more closed systems is not a good thing, even if the iPad is awesome and seems like magic and kids love it (and I&apos;m sure they do). The iPad and iPhone are more closed, more hostile to tinkerers, more hostile to adventurous users, than most other similar devices. This is a &lt;i&gt;bad&lt;/i&gt; thing. One shouldn&apos;t apologize for a company doing bad things, just because things in the industry as a whole are better than they were ten or fifteen or twenty years ago.&lt;p&gt;Open Source software has made dramatic improvements in the landscape for kids learning technology today. Apple is fighting those improvements, and they &lt;i&gt;should&lt;/i&gt; be called out for that bad behavior. Apple is behaving in ways that are bad for developers, and bad for kids who might become hackers. Just because they also happen to build awesome products, and do happen to provide an approved relief valve for their closed ecosystem, doesn&apos;t make it OK to be hostile to developers and would-be hackers.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>vorador</author><text>You&apos;re not answering the question : where is the win for the tinkerers ?</text></comment>