Oh, jrockway. Here's to our upcoming 2-year anniversary of you being a fucker and my calling you a fucker. You've been with me since the start!
I think it's all right for me to call Apple my favorite company. If we want to be douchesnobs, they've earned their pedigree. More red dot design awards than any other company in history, more black pencils, an impressive list of advertising trophies, and business sales that shock and awe us all. As an entrepreneurial advertising major who enjoys industrial design, I think it's safe to say I've got a good excuse for liking Apple.
Your article is pretty good, but it just gets annoying when every article on HN is about how the iPad is going to solve world hunger with its super-shiny screen. It wasn't you personally that I was reacting to, but rather the onslaught of similarly-themed articles whenever Apple releases a new product. (The jizz reference reflects well on your writing ability, but not so much on Apple. The fact that your article exists proves the points your article makes. Excellent. :)
As an entrepreneurial advertising major who enjoys industrial design, I think it's safe to say I've got a good excuse Apple.
And I think it's safe to say, that as someone who makes a living from writing software, that I am not going to like devices that restrict users from running my software... even if it has a really pretty case. (I have eyes. I know Apple's stuff is beautiful.)
FWIW, I was a long-time Apple fanboi, diligently lining up to buy whatever new product they had the first day it was available. But then one night, I was debugging some software, and some debugging functionality didn't work because Apple specifically broke it to prevent someone from reverse-engineering iTunes. (Google "PT_DENY_ATTACH".) I formatted my Powerbook that night, switched to Linux, and never looked back.
Apple's not going to win me back with a nice screen or great marketing. When they stop selling music and videos with Restrictions Management and when anyone can run any code on any of their devices, Apple will be my favorite company too. But I doubt that will ever happen.
Yep! We've gotten into a lot of these discussions before. (I hope you took my comment lightheartedly, and not as a personal insult — it's more my way of saying we'll agree to disagree here.)
Usually I'm not a fan of the slew of Apple articles. This time I thought it warranted some, but even so it's very over-the-top. For whatever reason we've all decided to hate the shiny thing with the terrible name. I thought it might be fun to chip in with my opinion, which I'd written as a private blog entry a bit earlier.
I'm satisfied with the compromise Apple and independent developers have reached with the iPhone. If I can jailbreak at any time and get more freedom for my machine, then I'm fine with ceding it for the time being. Maybe some point in the future I'll turncoat and go after something more open, but I'm moderately retarded as a programmer at the moment and I've been slow to develop.
This is an aside, but, based on your last comment: Does Apple sell music with DRM anymore? Now they sell their files as unlocked m4ps with an option to convert to aac. That stopped me from downloading mp3 copies of all those albums, so I was satisfied; is there a restriction still there that I somehow missed?
(I hope you took my comment lightheartedly, and not as a personal insult — it's more my way of saying we'll agree to disagree here.)
Indeed I did :)
Does Apple sell music with DRM anymore?
As far as I know, many songs are non-DRM'd, but not all of them. But really, DRM didn't work out for the music industry, and it is gradually going away. It's videos/software/books that I am worried about now. For example, I would love to be able to buy TV episodes instead of pirating them. But they won't play on any computers I own, so I can't. DRM goes away, the content industry gets my cash. (But it's not good for Apple if I can watch the videos on non-Apple hardware, so I can't.)
As far as I know, many songs are non-DRM'd, but not all of them.
Hm. I thought that their big announcement last year was that they'd converted the entire store to DRM-free, but I could be mistaken.
It's videos/software/books that I am worried about now.
Yeah, I agree about this one. Right now, I try and treat each thing on a case-by-case basis. I never buy digital video, but I'll buy my games off Steam and I buy the occasional Kindle book because Valve and Amazon have done such a job of winning my trust. (Even when Amazon messes up, like with the 1984 thing, they're very good at realizing they were dumb and sounding convincing in their apology.) I also feel like books and games are so easily pirated that if something bad happens, I can get myself a copy anyway.
Now, video rental is something different. I'm completely fine with the idea of paying for temporary access if I'm watching a TV show or a movie. DRM doesn't matter if it'll be gone a few hours from now anyway.
Seriously though, the article is pretty good -- I can feel the stickiness of the jizz on his keyboard.