Tag: apple

Apple flexing its “control freak” muscles

John Gruber’s recent post to Daring Fireball theorizes exactly why Apple has decided to crack down on sex apps in the App Store. While the explanation is plausible, it does not excuse Apple’s censorship and draconian control over the iPhone’s users and developers.

In summary, John explains the move as Apple protecting its brand image, inasmuch as the App Store is part of that brand image. While that’s understandable, Apple’s move still comes down to playing nanny and acting as final arbiter of what iPhone users can legally put on their iPhone. It’s an awful lot of control to exert on customers after they have already purchased a rather expensive device.

If there were legal alternatives to the App Store this would be less of an issue. (I’m assuming many, if not most, iPhone users are unwilling to enter the risky world of jailbreaking since this voids the warranty and Apple still asserts jailbreaking is illegal under the DMCA, and will always be officially unsupported.) If Apple is worried about its brand image, how about letting other companies run their own App Stores for the iPhone? That way, Apple keeps its brand clean, the porn freaks get their fix, and everyone’s happy.

Most of my beef with the iPhone would disappear if the following were the situation instead:

  1. An individual iPhone user has every choice available when deciding what apps are on that device, even those that Apple has not given its “iPhone nanny stamp of approval” to;
  2. Developers are able to approach alternative venues to sell applications where Apple denies approval in its store; and
  3. There is no longer a need to “jailbreak” an iPhone to accomplish either of these.

For Apple to let other companies run their own App Stores, or even individual software authors being allowed to offer apps direct to the public, would mean Apple gives up some degree of control. I think control is what this is really about and brand image is only a contributing factor. The lesson is clear: iPhones never really belong to you. You never really buy an iPhone; as far as being able to control what applications are allowed on it, it’s still Apple’s. “Purchase” is kind of meaningless when all kinds of digital locks are in place to prohibit the purchaser from exercising freedom of choice. I stand behind my analogy that it’s really more like a rental.

Too hot for the iPhone: Apple censors sex apps

The Unofficial Apple Weblog writes on what appears to be the imminent removal of some or maybe even all sexual content from the iPhone’s App Store. Now, on any other smartphone, this wouldn’t be that big of a deal. But this is the iPhone we’re talking about, and the App Store is the only Apple-approved channel for iPhone applications. So in essence, this is Apple playing “nanny” and censoring content they don’t like.

The particular app in question may well set a relative low in taste. I’m not going to judge that. What I am going to judge, is Apple’s utterly senseless and arbitrary censorship of iPhone content, specifically applications.

I was asked by my mom recently what I thought of the iPad (which will have similar restrictions to the iPhone and iPod). I’m not including the full text of my response here, but regular readers should have some idea how it went. (You may want to do some catch-up reading if you are new to this blog.)

When it comes down to it, I’d really rather not have anything bad to say about companies like Apple or their products. But dubious and arbitrary decisions like this do not sit well with me as a sworn opponent of censorship. And as long as Apple and other companies continue to make dumb moves like this, I’ll likely keep calling them out as I find them. I’d let TUAW do it instead, but it appears its author(s) will more than happily cave and essentially pat Apple on the back for a clearly censorious move.

Submarine software licenses: the “gotcha” of video codecs

Ben Schwartz wrote a very nice piece about proprietary video codecs, in particular H.264, MPEG-2, and MPEG-4. In essence, those who have purchased software like Final Cut Pro with the idea of using it to make commercial video have fallen into either a carefully laid trap by the patent holders or a simple oversight on the part of companies like Apple who bury things like this well within the fine print.

Ben’s commentary below the relevant license portions says it all:

Noticing a pattern? You have a license to use their software, provided you don’t make any money, your friends are also all correctly licensed, and you only produce content that complies with the MPEG standard. Using video for a commercial purpose? Producing video that isn’t within MPEG’s parameters? Have friends who use unlicensed encoders like x264, ffmpeg, or xvid? Too bad.

But it gets even more troubling for free software users (Ben here uses the term “open-source” but it applies equally):

This last thing is actually a particularly interesting point. If you encode a video using one of these (open-source) unlicensed encoders, you’re practicing patents without a license, and you can be sued. But hey, maybe you’re just a scofflaw. After all, it’s not like you’re making trouble for anyone else, right? Wrong. If you send a video to a friend who uses a licensed decoder, and they watch it, you’ve caused them to violate their own software license, so they can be sued too.

This is probably one of the strongest cases against software patents I have come across. Thankfully the EU rejected software patents as of last time I checked, and hopefully will continue to do so. The US seems to be the only place where one can patent a computer program, clearly outside the scope of what patents were intended for.

Patents should be restricted to physical inventions. It’s absurd to be able to patent not just a computer program, but an entire class of computer programs which do the same thing.

To be fair about it, those who hold the patents have a strong disincentive from chasing down everyone who infringes on the patent. In addition to being cost-prohibitive, it is an almost certain PR disaster. This does not excuse what amounts to legalized extortion.

The problem runs even deeper than “just don’t use H.264 or other patented codecs.” The rather low level adoption of patent-free codecs like Theora and Vorbis in consumer electronics equipment often makes the idea a no-go. Most digital audio and video players will not play Theora or Vorbis files. (Vorbis was designed as an MP3 replacement.)

Making a DVD or Blu-Ray disc that plays in most off-the-shelf players simply cannot be done without infringing upon the patents. Troubling here is that the Blu-Ray standard (and not that it matters now, but HD DVD as well) easily could have been written to allow the use of Theora or even Dirac. The decision to not standardize on a patent-free codec was almost certainly driven by greed; the same corporations which make the devices get most of the patent royalties on H.264, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, etc.

Apple’s squabble over Google’s user interface

The Blade has a recent entry on the Google Voice application for the iPhone. The FCC inquired about the rejection to all three companies involved: Apple, Google, and AT&T (which has an exclusivity arrangement with Apple for the iPhone in the US market). The interesting part here is the reaction from each company.

AT&T denies any involvement in the rejection of the application.

Apple claims they have not actually rejected the application, and is “still pondering at this time.” What is surprising–or not, if you read this blog on a regular basis–is the following quote from the letter:

The application has not been approved because, as submitted for review, it appears to alter the iPhone’s distinctive user experience by replacing the iPhone’s core mobile telephone functionality and Apple user interface with its own user interface for telephone calls, text messaging and voicemail.

I gather that that’s almost the entire point of the Google Voice application. What I take away from this: If Apple can do this to Google, they can damn sure do it to any other iPhone developer–and in fact, in a couple of cases, they pretty much already have.

Ron Schenone (author of The Blade) certainly signs off with a telling question
or three:

When I first read this I wondered why the FCC even cared? Why did the FCC even ask the companies to comment? Doesn’t Apple have the right to accept or reject any application that runs on their iPhone?

In an ideal world, Apple would let anyone write any application they wanted to run on the iPhone without having to play a high-stakes game of “Mother, May I.” It’s entirely backwards to take hundreds of dollars from a customer, and then still claim some kind of ownership on the item being sold to that customer. If Apple still considers the iPhone theirs after it leaves the factory, there needs to be a warning label to that effect on each box.

I’d like to think that would do some good. In the end those warning labels may be scarcely more effective than the ones on cigarette cartons. But that is a whole ‘nother rant for a different day.

Absolutely shocking iPhone privacy holes

Following on the heels of the Writing for the City Brights blog, Yobie Benjamin pens a very damning attack against the iPhone from a privacy advocate standpoint. His article is an easy read even for those relatively unfamiliar with concepts such as cookies.

The single most horrifying thing I have yet to read about Apple or the iPhone, however, is summed up by this quote from the article:

I know what these tracking tools can enable iPhone developers and it’s pretty powerful and devious. If you’re privacy advocate, it’s bad. It’s really very bad.

Why is it bad?

For the most part, if you like your privacy – there is no opt-out feature unless you have a jailbroken/unlocked (more later on this) iPhone.

Combine this with the fact that jailbreaking is something Apple really doesn’t want you to do (from their point of view, the iPhone still technically belongs to them in a way because of the OS on it, another reason to condemn the use of the misleading and loaded term “intellectual property”), and all of a sudden, Apple doesn’t look a whole lot better than many other large corporations when it comes to concern for the privacy of their customers.

Yobie goes on to give a specific example using TwitterFon in which the iPhone’s UDID (serial number) is sent no less than three times to three different places. And unless one is willing to roll the dice and jailbreak one’s iPhone, there is no way to opt-out of this.

There is no “privacy” menu on a standard iPhone; this is something added by those who made the jailbreaking programs. The single most responsible thing Apple can do to regain some of my respect–and the respect of just about anyone with any significant concerns about their privacy–is add this option to the stock iPhone OS.

I’d like to think Apple hasn’t grown too big to give a damn. Especially in light of the fact Apple charges a premium for their hardware and software, I think Apple should be held to a higher standard than most similar companies. Not surprisingly, I think they have fallen far short of it.