There can be no FUD
Ben Darlow accuses Bruce Schneier of spreading FUD about the iPhone.
This isn’t lock-in, it’s called choosing a product that meets your needs. If you don’t want to be tied to a particular phone network, don’t buy an iPhone. If installing third-party applications (between now and the end of February, when officially-sanctioned ones will start to appear) is critically important to you, don’t buy an iPhone. It’s one thing to grumble about an otherwise tempting device not supporting some feature you would find useful; it’s another entirely to imply that this represents anti-libertarian lock-in. The fact remains, you are free to buy one of the many other devices on the market that existed before there ever was an iPhone.
Ben, I’m not sure how it’s possible for “lock-in” to exist, if that’s your necessary condition for it. That’s got nothing to do with iPhones. Don’t like how Microsoft lock you in with Exchange and Outlook? You should have chosen different mail programs. Don’t like how you’ve been locked into the iTunes Music Store because you’ve got an iPod? You should have bought a different music player. Don’t like how you’ve been locked in to anything? Shoulda bought something else, dude. Lock-in doesn’t exist. We are never forced to do anything. We have always been at war with Eurasia.
Your iPhone comes with a complicated list of rules about what you can and can’t do with it. (Schneier)Now I’ve been looking through the exquisitely arranged packaging that mine came in and I’m still struggling to find that list! Perhaps it’s written in black smallprint on the underside of the lid? You know, the lid that’s black?
Nope, it’s better than that. It comes with a complicated list of rules about what you can and can’t do with it and you’re not allowed to see the list. For one example: you can use your Bluetooth headset to make calls but not listen to music. That’s a rule: I’d actually prefer it if it said that on the box, but it doesn’t. You get to buy it and then find out that it doesn’t work, or you get to research all the things you might want to do online first. Don’t get me wrong, the iPhone’s a lovely device; it’s pleasurable to hold and enjoyable to use, which is not something you can say about very many bits of electronic equipment at all. For 90% of the people who want it and don’t want anything more, it’s perfect; it’ll read their email, browse the web, and make phone calls. The complaints that people who complain about it have pretty much boil down to how arbitrary-seeming the restrictions are. What was all that crap about how iPhone-native apps might overwhelm the cell network, eh? Since the iPod touch also needs jailbreaking, that was clearly bullshit. Still, apps are coming, so perhaps that’ll make it all better. There are plenty of people who hate the iPhone, and Apple, way more than they deserve, but there are equally plenty of people who flat-out refuse to hear a word against the device or anything else that comes out of Cupertino. If you’re somewhere in the middle ground on this, like most people are, and you’re prepared to put up with the restrictions that Apple put on you to get the good experience they provide, you go for it. If you get fucked, then that’s the way it is, but hey: sometimes being fucked is nice. That’s why the human race still exists, after all.
Calling arbitrary restrictions on use “vendor lockin” is silly though, you have to admit. Insofar as you can get data back off the thing in documented formats, the iPhone doesn’t lock one in any more than any other mobile phone.
And you can’t play N64 games in a Playstation. I don’t see that there’s a particularly valid distinction here. It’s got a general-purpose OS on it and you can do lots of things with it. I don’t think bundling the device with an exhaustive list of things one can and cannot do with it would have been practical.
- Chris (who has never owned an Apple product)
83 minutes later
I’m not sure if this has any impact on your main point, but it does illustrate the subjectivitiy of “lock-in”:
You state that owners of the iPod are locked into the iTunes Music Store, when in fact it was the other stores that were locking out the iPod via the use of DRM. (Similarly users of the iTunes Store were/are locked into the iPod for labels that still require DRM on their tracks)
And that ignores non-DRM’d music sources such as Emusic and also includes almost all CDs (and illegal downloads too).
2 hours later
Dave: that’s my point. Whether you see iTMS as locking in the iPod or the iPod as locking in iTMS, it’s still lock-in, even though you could always just go and buy a different music player. Other music stores, using different but just as proprietary DRM, are just as bad.
2 hours later
If you’re in prison you’re technically not “locked in” because you could have chosen not to commit a crime in the first place. Right?
Ian
11 hours later
That’s a pretty asinine comparison.
- Chris
15 hours later
IF you buy music from iTMS instead of burning from CD or dragging in mp3s from elsewhere, AND IF the music you want isn’t already in iTunes Plus (non-DRM) format, AND IF the horrible limit of 5 active computers and N iPods (don’t remember how many now) is too few for you, YOU CAN STILL burn your DRM’d AAC’s to CD, re-rip them, and get un-DRM’d music.
There is no lock-in, there is only people who didn’t RTFM.
4 days later
YOU CAN STILL burn your DRM’d AAC’s to CD, re-rip them, and get un-DRM’d music.
Yeah, and your already crappy mp3 will lose even more info as you re-rip it, re-applying the compression algorithm.
Mark, I can see Apple as being slightly less evil than others, but hardly worth the fanboyism.
5 days later
FWIW, I agree with Schneier. Ben Darlow compares the “bricking” to refusing to honour a warranty on a modified car; I see it more like seizing the modified car from the owner the first time you go and have a MOT test. Yeah, it’s not lock-in, you are completely LOCKED OUT FROM SOMETHING YOU PAID FOR.
5 days later
They’re not crappy MP3s, they’re AAC, which encodes significantly better and doesn’t destroy the high and low frequencies of your music like MP3, even at lower bit-rates. MP3 was designed and tested mainly for encoding Suzanne Vega’s “Tom’s Diner”, and for anything outside of similar folk rock, it sounds like crap.
You will still lose some quality by burning and re-ripping, but it’s not the audio catastrophe it is with MP3.
And that’s the end-state, least-probable situation. If you don’t like DRM’d AACs, don’t buy them, and you can still use iTunes, the iPod, and even (with some care to only get iTunes Plus tracks), the iTunes music store.
The thing you poor design-starved people who haven’t switched yet never get is, we’re not fanboys. Every time you say that, you’re just admitting that you have no clue what’s going on. Us Mac users actually have stuff that works, and doesn’t suck, that’s why we’re happy. I know, you will never experience joy as long as you continue using a PC, so you can’t understand that concept, but it’s true.
5 days later
Mark, do you still own a Newton? :)
You clearly don’t belong to this conversation, as you would NEVER try to use something that is not produced by your demi-god company.
Being “design-starved” would be “social death” for sure! Total control is so good for the economy! Look at all those millionaire Mac developers! Oh, wait…
8 days later
You wrote:
That’s a rule: I’d actually prefer it if it said that on the box, but it doesn’t. You get to buy it and then find out that it doesn’t work, or you get to research all the things you might want to do online first.
Doing some research online before buying any product, especially tech products, is the least you can do today. A couple of months ago I bought a LaCie portable DVD burner, and on the box it did not say it was Mac compatible — it appeared to be “made for PC”. But a bit of deduction (the requirements mentioned a “USB-equipped computer”) and research, and I bought it with confidence. There was some risk, but it was worth the attempt.
Back on the iPhone. There may be a lock-in, but I think it’s all in the eye of the beholder. A developer or any geek who feels compelled to hack and customise any device he owns (often for the sake of it) will only see limitations and hindrances and lock-ins. The man of the street who is a little design-aware and loves things that work, will find a great product in the iPhone or iPod and won’t mind what other programmers/developers/assorted geeks consider flaws, limitations and whatnot.
For the record, I am a long-time Apple user but have always used my head and criticism before buying the next Apple product. My friends and clients know I’m not a Mac zealot and that I utterly dislike to be labelled as one. Having said that, I’m going to buy an iPhone as soon as it’s available in my country. Why? Because it meets my needs. I’m having a good preview of what I’m going to buy, since my wife has been given an iPod Touch for Christmas. The applications currently available are more than enough for what I need in such a device. I’m well aware that the possibility of installing third-party applications would exponentially increase the already high potential of the iPhone platform. I think that Apple is well aware of this fact, too. And I think that there must be reasons behind Apple’s choice not to open the iPhone to developers as soon as it was shipping. I tend to believe that the iPhone was still not ready for that when it launched, and during these past months Apple engineers have been working behind the scenes to make the iPhone inherently more robust.
Many users, I daresay the majority out there, do not really mind lock-ins when the products and/or services they buy “just work”. That’s the thing with Apple: the iPod is the best selling “MP3 player” because its model and interface have worked and work. The iTunes Store is hugely successful because the system is well-thought and designed. Despite lock-ins, limitations, etcetera. The iPhone is going to be as successful (it already is) for the very same reasons.
I have great esteem for Mr Schneier (I’m responsible for the Italian translation of his Cryptogram newsletter), but I admit I was as puzzled as Ben Darlow when I read that sentence about “a list of complicated rules”. I immediately thought that Schneier may simply be unfamiliar with the product. I think it’s not that difficult to understand what can and cannot be done with an iPhone. Since its introduction, the volume of electronic ink spread throughout the Internet is encyclopedic.
Cheers,
Rick
11 days later
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