[LINK] Steve Jobs: Great unwashed don't need PCs

[Richard Chirgwin]

Ivan Trundle wrote:
> On 03/06/2010, at 4:18 PM, David Goldstein wrote:
>
>   
>> So what is the difference to a business choosing not to sell a product to blocking access to it? It's the same thing. Especially when Jobs openly says he is blocking people from selling sex-related apps in the marketplace.
>>     
>
> The Apple appstore is a *store* - its owned by Apple, and it sells stuff. The chosen suppliers of the 'stuff' get a cut of what is sold, if Apple chooses to sell that 'stuff'.
>   
Yes, but it's also the sole (approved) way to buy and install iPad software.

Let's take this out of the realms of censorship for a moment. The single 
most useful - by which I mean personally profitable - piece of software 
I use is an open-source geo system called Grass-GIS. There is utterly 
zero hope of replacing it with, say, Google Earth - what I do needs 
vastly more than the "look, shiny" that GE offers.

If Apple chooses not to offer this 'stuff', I can't install it any other 
way without violating some license; at least, that's how I understand 
the iPad model. Note that this has nothing to do with machine capability 
(I can run quite decent geographic analysis on really lame machines, if 
I'm careful about how I structure the work). It's about not being 
allowed to install any software that Apple (and / or its sanctioned 
partners, blah blah blah) chooses not to offer.

A couple of other items in the iPad license.

1. Apple claims to itself the right to use location data about 
individual iPads. Sure, "this cannot identify you" is the promise, but 
we've all seen plenty of ways to glean identifiable data from fragments 
that are supposed to be obfuscated.

2. The license can only terminated in one direction - by Apple. The user 
is not granted any rights of termination within the license itself. This 
is objectionable; although it may not survive serious legal challenge, 
the intent seems to be that even if you hand back the iPad, you're still 
bound by the license.

3. The license also binds the user specifically to US law - that is, you 
must not use the iPad in any way that contravenes American law. I don't 
know enough US law to know whether I might do something that might one 
day contravene some law that the US passes. Nor, I suspect, do any of us.

The control freak-ism goes far beyond a couple of maybe-harmless quirks 
of Steve Jobs' mindset.
> Apple is not 'blocking access to [whatever]', it is merely exercising its right to choose what to sell.
>   
And preventing the user from having a "right to buy" anything Apple 
decides not to offer. "Choosing not to sell" is a different matter from 
"preventing anyone from buying".

And I suppose I'm still stuck in 1995 here - if I buy a piece of 
property, I like it to be property.

RC
> Oh, and by the way - the Apple appstore not a free and unrestricted marketplace.
>
> iT
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