TECHNOLOGY

A Killer Product

Will closed devices like Apple's iPhone murder the Web?

By Brian Braiker | Newsweek Web Exclusive

May 2, 2008 | Updated: 1:56 p.m. ET May 2, 2008

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Discuss

Posted By: Eraserhead @ 05/08/2008 4:02:52 PM

Comment: Apple having a closed platform for native applications doesn't make any difference for the web at all. The web is accessed in a browser and Apple has no control over the "freedom" of the internet.

The closed platform does have advantages however, it is what will keep malware off it, it also makes it easier for developers to distribute applications.

To be honest that would be a better model for Windows PC's too, 1 million pieces of malware doesn't make a good user experience. Now it'd be ideal if there were multiple stores not all controlled by Apple, but still...
Posted By: Eraserhead @ 05/08/2008 4:02:16 PM

Comment: Apple having a closed platform for native applications doesn't make any difference for the web at all. The web is accessed in a browser and Apple has no control over the "freedom" of the internet.

The closed platform does have advantages however, it is what will keep malware off it, it also makes it easier for developers to distribute applications.

To be honest that would be a better model for Windows PC's too, 1 million pieces of malware doesn't make a good user experience. Now it'd be ideal if there were multiple stores not all controlled by Apple, but still...
Posted By: Amuh @ 05/05/2008 7:44:02 AM

Comment: Its hilarious. Publisher on one side publishes an interview by an intellectual on the killing effect of Facebook and iPhone and at the same time advertise Alcatel - Lucent that's taking 1/3 of the space.
Posted By: Amuh @ 05/05/2008 7:42:18 AM

Comment: its hilarious. Publisher on one side publishes an interview by an intellectual on the killing effect of Facebook and iPhone and at the same time advertise Alcatel - Lucent that's taking 1/3 of the space.
Posted By: alasdair.allan @ 05/04/2008 11:58:00 PM

Comment: There isn't a problem. Proprietary devices can usually be hacked if you know what your doing and people care enough, look at the iPhone the poster child of the closed platform, and how fast every revision of the firmware has been broken within days of release. To the people that are pointing towards proprietary protocols as the harbinger of the death of the Web, so what? The Web isn't the Internet, those of us that have been around long enough can remember that. When the web stumbles, something else will be there to fill the gap.

http://www.dailyack.com/2008/05/death-of-desktop-end-of-internet.html
Posted By: jameskatt @ 05/04/2008 4:07:19 PM

Comment: The problem with the web is not proprietary devices. You can always chose another device. For example, if you don't want the iPhone, you can always choose something else such as the Blackberry and Nokia devices.

The problem of the internet is the rampant use of proprietary protocols and formats. For example, numerous sites use the non-standard and proprietary Flash format. YouTube uses the Flash format for most of its videos. Numerous sites are lazy and use Flash for much of their interface. This locks in most people than any device. How many blind people can't use a site, for example, because of its use of Flash - which is not readable by text web browsers.

The iPhone is not killing the net because it relies on open standards.

Anyone can build a device - such as the Linux based Android platform.

Any developer can choose their platform.

But no one is free to use the internet so long as large parts of the internet are dependent on proprietary technology such as Flash and Microsoft's Active-X. Certainly I can't see sites that use these formats on my iPhone. That is limiting.
Posted By: jameskatt @ 05/04/2008 4:07:10 PM

Comment: The problem with the web is not proprietary devices. You can always chose another device. For example, if you don't want the iPhone, you can always choose something else such as the Blackberry and Nokia devices.

The problem of the internet is the rampant use of proprietary protocols and formats. For example, numerous sites use the non-standard and proprietary Flash format. YouTube uses the Flash format for most of its videos. Numerous sites are lazy and use Flash for much of their interface. This locks in most people than any device. How many blind people can't use a site, for example, because of its use of Flash - which is not readable by text web browsers.

The iPhone is not killing the net because it relies on open standards.

Anyone can build a device - such as the Linux based Android platform.

Any developer can choose their platform.

But no one is free to use the internet so long as large parts of the internet are dependent on proprietary technology such as Flash and Microsoft's Active-X. Certainly I can't see sites that use these formats on my iPhone. That is limiting.
Posted By: jameskatt @ 05/04/2008 4:00:52 PM

Comment: The problem is not the platform, the problem with the web is the use of proprietary protocols. For example, YouTube is the most popular video site. Yet it uses the ultra-proprietary Flash format. The same with numerous other sites. So long as proprietary formats such as Flash are used, then the Internet is not truly open.
Posted By: PixelNurse @ 05/03/2008 10:05:45 PM

Comment: This is patently absurd, the iPhone and Facebook are systems that sit on-top of the internet, they do not replace the internet. It's akin to trying to argue that it's bad that I can't post content on the front page of Newsweek, or that I can't sell my old clothes on target.com. With the iPhone it also seems to completely ignore the fact that it has a web browser that is able to access anything on the internet that you want to.

I support the authors general aims and philosophy, but his arguments in this regard really don't hold water. Very surprising and disappointing that it comes from an Oxford professor.
Posted By: omniscience @ 05/03/2008 7:49:52 PM

Comment: This is just sensationaiism to sell the author's book. Really, there is no new information here, just a new spin - which actually ignores a huge part of the drive to closed systems - the issue of security. Hackers - whether for mischief (game cheating, showing off technical ability) or for nefarious intentions (identity theft, etc.) is one reason for closing systems. How many viruses are there for Windows vs. Macs?
Second reason is for content control - basically DRM. It's not Apple pushing this - its the record labels who demand DRM in exchange for iTunes sales.
This whole article is like arguing that the Wild West with no policing is freer than the west is today. Duh! People demand accountability, support and stability. The only way to achieve this is with closed systems with an authority or gatekeeper. Do you want your iPhone to get infected with viruses, or have spyware or crash in the middle of an important call? MS Xbox was plagued with lots of hackers cheating on online games - so they were forced to tighten security and police xbox live better.
Really, liberty without limits is just chaos. The early days of PCs was chaos. I remember - I was there. Software and hardware conflicts all the time.
Evolution to "closed" systems is just that - people in general value predictability, stability and security to chaos.
- Posted By: Warden @ 05/03/2008 20:17:46
  
  Comment: Oh REALLY, they demand DRM. Then why does Amazon have a deal with all major record labels to sell DRM-free 320 kbps MP3's for 99 cents?
  - Posted By: macbrett @ 05/04/2008 05:22:24
    
    Comment: The record companies would like to earn more for popular hit singles (driving the online price to perhaps $2.50). However, Steve Jobs is on record as being opposed to variable pricing of music tracks, saying that variable pricing will only confuse customers and that 99 cents is the right price for an impulse purchase. Because currently the iTunes Music Store is by far the most popular online music store, Apple has the leverage to insist on uniform track pricing (much like Wal-mart puts the screws to it's suppliers to cut costs).
    
    Contrary to the claims, the iPod's success has little to do with DRM lock-in, and everything to do with superior styling, ease of use, and availability of accessories. In fact, most songs on iPods are ripped from CD and are therefore DRM-free anyway. The only reason the iTunes music store initially sold DRM'd music at all was at the insistence of the record companies. In spite of the fact that Steve Jobs has, in an open letter, made it abundantly clear that they wish to offer DRM-free music, most major record companies have decided to withhold that from Apple and instead give the DRM-free advantage to Amazon in hopes of boosting Amazon's market-share. When and if Amazon becomes a formidable threat to the iTMS, the music companies can clamp down and insist that online stores support variable pricing or they don't get to sell the tracks at all. Under these circumstances, Amazon would happily pass the extra cost on to consumers. Apple will then probably have to do the same.
    
    So it's all about propping up Amazon for the short term.
Posted By: Warden @ 05/03/2008 3:51:01 PM

Comment: I've been saying this forever. Apple is EVIL. Few remember the early days, when you had to have a license from Apple to develop software for any of their machines. When they released a new machine, they pulled all the old licenses so that nothing could new be released for the old machine ever again. They forced you to upgrade by cutting you off.

Then there's Apple's lax security culture. They repeatedly sit on known vulnerabilities for over a year before they do anything (remember, in Pwn2Own, the Mac was hacked first). Then there's their tendency to call what are really service packs "New versions" of OSX and try to charge you for it. If Microsoft did that, we'd be paying $150+ every time we installed a service pack on our computers. When you buy an OS, you're paying for support as part of the cost, but Apple tries to charge for basic support while continuing to ignore security problems. Add to this the DRM hell of Apple's iPod, linked to their proprietary iTunes service. Hello? Wake up, people! Apple is screwing you!
Posted By: CorbinB2 @ 05/03/2008 9:23:07 AM

Comment: Everyone wondered how Mac could stay alive with it's limited amount of users Worldwide. Well I'll tell you, The same way MSFT did, proprietary practices. Bill and company were just in the lead at the time it became and issue and were knocked off the pedastal first. Apple's and Steve Jobs' day is coming. You simply cannot release a consumer product with the magnitude of the iPhone and then say you can only use it with AT&T, then there is the whole developer scenario where by all newly developed software that Jobs has recently allowed to be written, has to be done through the 'Apple Store' so they can get a piece of it.

This is all very reminiscent of the early days of the MSFT brew-ha-ha when everyone was trashing them for their proprietary practices. I believe that eerily similar to how Bill Gates stepped down shortly after the proprietary issues had been brought to full light, that Steve Jobs will also step down and hand the reigns over to someone else.

The truth is that more people use Microsoft products everyday then Apple products, including all the latest gadgets. This is squarely because Microsoft products work across multiple devices (at least in most cases) and Apple products do not. (again at least in most cases) Microsft learned as did IBM, that if you have something good, let the world work with it and take advantage of the un-ending knowledge of people outside your company doors. Apple has yet to heed this lesson and will pay a price for it at some point.

Let me clarify that I am not always a huge Microsoft fan, but I do believe that the key to successful 'computing' in general and now the Internet is an open society whereby standards can be built upon. This often clashes with corporate policies of profit and loss, but ultimately all succumb to the consumers who buy their products.
Posted By: chinese tibet @ 05/03/2008 9:17:52 AM

Comment: Oppose France, England, Germany, Japan ,USA???
Oppose CNN is not actual report to China!
CNN's Jack Cafferty is a ignorant garbage???

Sustain the Beijing Olympics!
Tibet is inviolable territory in China from time immemorial, China never relinquished control of Tibet.
Dalai Lama is Chinese splittist.

France, Germany, England, Japan, American people does not understand reality of Tibet!
Occidental news is inauthenticity for China.
China is amity, but China is unconquerable come from threaten for fremdness !

Please see the following Web address in the concerning the photo that true of China Tibet:

http://blog.ifeng.com/706796.html
Posted By: chinese tibet @ 05/03/2008 9:13:30 AM

Comment: Oppose France, England, Germany, Japan ,USA???
Oppose CNN is not actual report to China!
CNN's Jack Cafferty is a ignorant garbage???

Sustain the Beijing Olympics!
Tibet is inviolable territory in China from time immemorial, China never relinquished control of Tibet.
Dalai Lama is Chinese splittist.

France, Germany, England, Japan, American people does not understand reality of Tibet!
Occidental news is inauthenticity for China.
China is amity, but China is unconquerable come from threaten for fremdness !

Please see the following Web address in the concerning the photo that true of China Tibet:

http://blog.ifeng.com/706796.html
Posted By: chinese tibet @ 05/03/2008 9:12:42 AM

Comment: Oppose France, England, Germany, Japan ,USA???
Oppose CNN is not actual report to China!
CNN's Jack Cafferty is a ignorant garbage???

Sustain the Beijing Olympics!
Tibet is inviolable territory in China from time immemorial, China never relinquished control of Tibet.
Dalai Lama is Chinese splittist.

France, Germany, England, Japan, American people does not understand reality of Tibet!
Occidental news is inauthenticity for China.
China is amity, but China is unconquerable come from threaten for fremdness !

Please see the following Web address in the concerning the photo that true of China Tibet:

http://blog.ifeng.com/706796.html
Posted By: chinese tibet @ 05/03/2008 9:12:10 AM

Comment: Oppose France, England, Germany, Japan ,USA???
Oppose CNN is not actual report to China!
CNN's Jack Cafferty is a ignorant garbage???

Sustain the Beijing Olympics!
Tibet is inviolable territory in China from time immemorial, China never relinquished control of Tibet.
Dalai Lama is Chinese splittist.

France, Germany, England, Japan, American people does not understand reality of Tibet!
Occidental news is inauthenticity for China.
China is amity, but China is unconquerable come from threaten for fremdness !

Please see the following Web address in the concerning the photo that true of China Tibet:

http://blog.ifeng.com/706796.html
Posted By: chinese tibet @ 05/03/2008 9:12:02 AM

Comment: Oppose France, England, Germany, Japan ,USA???
Oppose CNN is not actual report to China!
CNN's Jack Cafferty is a ignorant garbage???

Sustain the Beijing Olympics!
Tibet is inviolable territory in China from time immemorial, China never relinquished control of Tibet.
Dalai Lama is Chinese splittist.

France, Germany, England, Japan, American people does not understand reality of Tibet!
Occidental news is inauthenticity for China.
China is amity, but China is unconquerable come from threaten for fremdness !

Please see the following Web address in the concerning the photo that true of China Tibet:

http://blog.ifeng.com/706796.html
Posted By: chinese tibet @ 05/03/2008 9:11:54 AM

Comment: Oppose France, England, Germany, Japan ,USA???
Oppose CNN is not actual report to China!
CNN's Jack Cafferty is a ignorant garbage???

Sustain the Beijing Olympics!
Tibet is inviolable territory in China from time immemorial, China never relinquished control of Tibet.
Dalai Lama is Chinese splittist.

France, Germany, England, Japan, American people does not understand reality of Tibet!
Occidental news is inauthenticity for China.
China is amity, but China is unconquerable come from threaten for fremdness !

Please see the following Web address in the concerning the photo that true of China Tibet:

http://blog.ifeng.com/706796.html
Posted By: fritzdekatt @ 05/03/2008 8:17:37 AM

Comment: This dude's totally right on. Proprietary megalomaniacs like Jobs can't be the future of communications. It's an oxymoron as it stands: proprietary communications. It means we can't all communicate, unless we adopt a foriegn set of procedural structures and rules forced on us arbitrarily by a party acting only in his own self-interest. This is counterproductive on the face of it, whether you're a Mac fanboy or not.
Posted By: EffYou @ 05/02/2008 9:39:14 PM

Comment: ITT: Mac fanbois whine about how M$ stole everything from Apple.

The Truth: MacOS is nothing more than BSD for people too stupid to use a real *nix. Get a real *nix you 'tards! That doesn't mean Ubuntu either. Ubuntu is Debian with training Wheels. Face the facts Bill Gates and Steve ballmer are beetr businessmen than Jobs and Co. could ever dream of being
Posted By: Chris Paris @ 05/02/2008 8:06:18 PM

Comment: It is utterly shocking that a "professor of internet governance and regulation" would find time in his busy schedule to be able to discuss the terror of Mac gadgets. Really, is it not a bit clumsy for MSNBC to be bashing Apple this way? The lawyers from Harvard will fix everything, just give them your money.
- Posted By: EffYou @ 05/02/2008 21:33:19
  
  Comment: Apple Bashing? Are you reading the same article that I am? It sounds to me like if Steve Jobs walked in on the interview Mr. ZitTrain would be scambling for his kneepads
Posted By: getzel @ 05/02/2008 8:04:09 PM

Comment: You said something, perhaps you know what you said?
Posted By: mykel1 @ 05/02/2008 8:01:35 PM

Comment: It's all about information and who controlls *how* it is accessed. Remember that when reading these sorts of articles. Invest wisely. Look at the whole picture from devices to actual transport infrastrucure. Who is doing what to support the ravenous demands of consumers (bouyed by tech companies' ad campaigns) that want, "richer content."

You have to unravel that to know what that really means. Content is what people take into their brains via the visual cortex and thier EARS. The "richer" it is, the more people will want it - meaning, animation, floating buttons, animated icons, slick interfaces, streaming video and audio.

What the "war" is about now is how that gets presented AND consumed by the market.

Watch for Applie to make huge inroads and set a lot of new information technology standards.

Microsoft better think of something quick. Buying Yahoo won't help them. They should save their 42 billion dollars and put their engineering brains into better software and products. Interesting role reversal - Microsoft is going to be what Apple was 15 years ago and vice versa. Very ironic, considering Gates saved Apple from doom 10 years ago by "loaning" Jobs 100 million to operate. But Gates had to or else he would have been crushed under the popular scrutiny of the time that Microsoft wanted to control the universe and steamroll over everyone its path. How wrong they really were.
Posted By: mykel1 @ 05/02/2008 8:00:44 PM

Comment: It's all about information and who controlls *how* it is accessed. Remember that when reading these sorts of articles. Invest wisely. Look at the whole picture from devices to actual transport infrastrucure. Who is doing what to support the ravenous demands of consumers (bouyed by tech companies' ad campaigns) that want, "richer content."

You have to unravel that to know what that really means. Content is what people take into their brains via the visual cortex and thier EARS. The "richer" it is, the more people will want it - meaning, animation, floating buttons, animated icons, slick interfaces, streaming video and audio.

What the "war" is about now is how that gets presented AND consumed by the market.

Watch for Applie to make huge inroads and set a lot of new information technology standards.

Microsoft better think of something quick. Buying Yahoo won't help them. They should save their 42 billion dollars and put their engineering brains into better software and products. Interesting role reversal - Microsoft is going to be what Apple was 15 years ago and vice versa. Very ironic, considering Gates saved Apple from doom 10 years ago by "loaning" Jobs 100 million to operate. But Gates had to or else he would have been crushed under the popular scrutiny of the time that Microsoft wanted to control the universe and steamroll over everyone its path. How wrong they really were.
Posted By: mykel1 @ 05/02/2008 8:00:33 PM

Comment: It's all about information and who controlls *how* it is accessed. Remember that when reading these sorts of articles. Invest wisely. Look at the whole picture from devices to actual transport infrastrucure. Who is doing what to support the ravenous demands of consumers (bouyed by tech companies' ad campaigns) that want, "richer content."

You have to unravel that to know what that really means. Content is what people take into their brains via the visual cortex and thier EARS. The "richer" it is, the more people will want it - meaning, animation, floating buttons, animated icons, slick interfaces, streaming video and audio.

What the "war" is about now is how that gets presented AND consumed by the market.

Watch for Applie to make huge inroads and set a lot of new information technology standards.

Microsoft better think of something quick. Buying Yahoo won't help them. They should save their 42 billion dollars and put their engineering brains into better software and products. Interesting role reversal - Microsoft is going to be what Apple was 15 years ago and vice versa. Very ironic, considering Gates saved Apple from doom 10 years ago by "loaning" Jobs 100 million to operate. But Gates had to or else he would have been crushed under the popular scrutiny of the time that Microsoft wanted to control the universe and steamroll over everyone its path. How wrong they really were.
Posted By: david hill @ 05/02/2008 7:54:57 PM

Comment: I love how newsweek chooses to run a story with an inflammatory, sensational headline, but then neglects to actually discuss the actual threat apple supposedly poses to the web... You have to stoop pretty low to lure in readers I suppose...
Posted By: getzel @ 05/02/2008 6:46:08 PM

Comment: You said something, perhaps you know what you said?
Posted By: Medge @ 05/02/2008 5:59:37 PM

Comment: The iphone is much too expensive to knodk off the web .
Posted By: carouselmaker @ 05/02/2008 4:51:02 PM

Comment: Just interesting that it was so free and easy to code for the mac. I was a long time developer for the 2 series, and I know what the costs were. $5k US for the box, $5k us for the SDK if you wanted to code, and then start fresh since nothing you had written before would work. The option, $1200 for an inexpensive PC Box (brand not important) $150 for a service bureau to convert all of the apple disks into PC readable format, $200 for a pascal package, and 2 days changeing some minor coding to get all of the software ported from the DOMINAT platform of the day (80 percent market share) to one of the minor ones which looked like it was the way things were going. This in a day that a 1200 BPS connection was sold at a premium of, IIRC 2.5 times the 300 BPS connection cost. Mac killed and Steve Jobs killed apple, not Bill Gates or IBM. At the time IBM compatiable was used because IBM had name recognition, nothing more. Since the MS OS of the day was open and easy to work with, the mac took its place with a small single digit market share which has remained largely unchanged since. Good advertising, and love how they spin the bad marketing decisions made (not spending just half the mac budget on the 2GS, which had most of the features that would not show on other platforms for another 10 years) into just the little guy being opressed by the open to development platform. My 2 cents, since the youngers ones dont seem to know that this even occured
Posted By: carouselmaker @ 05/02/2008 4:48:28 PM

Comment: Just interesting that it was so free and easy to code for the mac. I was a long time developer for the 2 series, and I know what the costs were. $5k US for the box, $5k us for the SDK if you wanted to code, and then start fresh since nothing you had written before would work. The option, $1200 for an inexpensive PC Box (brand not important) $150 for a service bureau to convert all of the apple disks into PC readable format, $200 for a pascal package, and 2 days changeing some minor coding to get all of the software ported from the DOMINAT platform of the day (80 percent market share) to one of the minor ones which looked like it was the way things were going. This in a day that a 1200 BPS connection was sold at a premium of, IIRC 2.5 times the 300 BPS connection cost. Mac killed and Steve Jobs killed apple, not Bill Gates or IBM. At the time IBM compatiable was used because IBM had name recognition, nothing more. Since the MS OS of the day was open and easy to work with, the mac took its place with a small single digit market share which has remained largely unchanged since. Good advertising, and love how they spin the bad marketing decisions made (not spending just half the mac budget on the 2GS, which had most of the features that would not show on other platforms for another 10 years) into just the little guy being opressed by the open to development platform. My 2 cents, since the youngers ones dont seem to know that this even occured
Posted By: carouselmaker @ 05/02/2008 4:48:01 PM

Comment: Just interesting that it was so free and easy to code for the mac. I was a long time developer for the 2 series, and I know what the costs were. $5k US for the box, $5k us for the SDK if you wanted to code, and then start fresh since nothing you had written before would work. The option, $1200 for an inexpensive PC Box (brand not important) $150 for a service bureau to convert all of the apple disks into PC readable format, $200 for a pascal package, and 2 days changeing some minor coding to get all of the software ported from the DOMINAT platform of the day (80 percent market share) to one of the minor ones which looked like it was the way things were going. This in a day that a 1200 BPS connection was sold at a premium of, IIRC 2.5 times the 300 BPS connection cost. Mac killed and Steve Jobs killed apple, not Bill Gates or IBM. At the time IBM compatiable was used because IBM had name recognition, nothing more. Since the MS OS of the day was open and easy to work with, the mac took its place with a small single digit market share which has remained largely unchanged since. Good advertising, and love how they spin the bad marketing decisions made (not spending just half the mac budget on the 2GS, which had most of the features that would not show on other platforms for another 10 years) into just the little guy being opressed by the open to development platform. My 2 cents, since the youngers ones dont seem to know that this even occured
Posted By: carouselmaker @ 05/02/2008 4:10:51 PM

Comment: Just interesting that it was so free and easy to code for the mac. I was a long time developer for the 2 series, and I know what the costs were. $5k US for the box, $5k us for the SDK if you wanted to code, and then start fresh since nothing you had written before would work. The option, $1200 for an inexpensive PC Box (brand not important) $150 for a service bureau to convert all of the apple disks into PC readable format, $200 for a pascal package, and 2 days changeing some minor coding to get all of the software ported from the DOMINAT platform of the day (80 percent market share) to one of the minor ones which looked like it was the way things were going. This in a day that a 1200 BPS connection was sold at a premium of, IIRC 2.5 times the 300 BPS connection cost. Mac killed and Steve Jobs killed apple, not Bill Gates or IBM. At the time IBM compatiable was used because IBM had name recognition, nothing more. Since the MS OS of the day was open and easy to work with, the mac took its place with a small single digit market share which has remained largely unchanged since. Good advertising, and love how they spin the bad marketing decisions made (not spending just half the mac budget on the 2GS, which had most of the features that would not show on other platforms for another 10 years) into just the little guy being opressed by the open to development platform. My 2 cents, since the youngers ones dont seem to know that this even occured
Posted By: carouselmaker @ 05/02/2008 3:46:59 PM

Comment: Just interesting that it was so free and easy to code for the mac. I was a long time developer for the 2 series, and I know what the costs were. $5k US for the box, $5k us for the SDK if you wanted to code, and then start fresh since nothing you had written before would work. The option, $1200 for an inexpensive PC Box (brand not important) $150 for a service bureau to convert all of the apple disks into PC readable format, $200 for a pascal package, and 2 days changeing some minor coding to get all of the software ported from the DOMINAT platform of the day (80 percent market share) to one of the minor ones which looked like it was the way things were going. This in a day that a 1200 BPS connection was sold at a premium of, IIRC 2.5 times the 300 BPS connection cost. Mac killed and Steve Jobs killed apple, not Bill Gates or IBM. At the time IBM compatiable was used because IBM had name recognition, nothing more. Since the MS OS of the day was open and easy to work with, the mac took its place with a small single digit market share which has remained largely unchanged since. Good advertising, and love how they spin the bad marketing decisions made (not spending just half the mac budget on the 2GS, which had most of the features that would not show on other platforms for another 10 years) into just the little guy being opressed by the open to development platform. My 2 cents, since the youngers ones dont seem to know that this even occured
Posted By: carouselmaker @ 05/02/2008 3:43:52 PM

Comment: Just interesting that it was so free and easy to code for the mac. I was a long time developer for the 2 series, and I know what the costs were. $5k US for the box, $5k us for the SDK if you wanted to code, and then start fresh since nothing you had written before would work. The option, $1200 for an inexpensive PC Box (brand not important) $150 for a service bureau to convert all of the apple disks into PC readable format, $200 for a pascal package, and 2 days changeing some minor coding to get all of the software ported from the DOMINAT platform of the day (80 percent market share) to one of the minor ones which looked like it was the way things were going. This in a day that a 1200 BPS connection was sold at a premium of, IIRC 2.5 times the 300 BPS connection cost. Mac killed and Steve Jobs killed apple, not Bill Gates or IBM. At the time IBM compatiable was used because IBM had name recognition, nothing more. Since the MS OS of the day was open and easy to work with, the mac took its place with a small single digit market share which has remained largely unchanged since. Good advertising, and love how they spin the bad marketing decisions made (not spending just half the mac budget on the 2GS, which had most of the features that would not show on other platforms for another 10 years) into just the little guy being opressed by the open to development platform. My 2 cents, since the youngers ones dont seem to know that this even occured
Posted By: carouselmaker @ 05/02/2008 3:37:00 PM

Comment: Just interesting that it was so free and easy to code for the mac. I was a long time developer for the 2 series, and I know what the costs were. $5k US for the box, $5k us for the SDK if you wanted to code, and then start fresh since nothing you had written before would work. The option, $1200 for an inexpensive PC Box (brand not important) $150 for a service bureau to convert all of the apple disks into PC readable format, $200 for a pascal package, and 2 days changeing some minor coding to get all of the software ported from the DOMINAT platform of the day (80 percent market share) to one of the minor ones which looked like it was the way things were going. This in a day that a 1200 BPS connection was sold at a premium of, IIRC 2.5 times the 300 BPS connection cost. Mac killed and Steve Jobs killed apple, not Bill Gates or IBM. At the time IBM compatiable was used because IBM had name recognition, nothing more. Since the MS OS of the day was open and easy to work with, the mac took its place with a small single digit market share which has remained largely unchanged since. Good advertising, and love how they spin the bad marketing decisions made (not spending just half the mac budget on the 2GS, which had most of the features that would not show on other platforms for another 10 years) into just the little guy being opressed by the open to development platform. My 2 cents, since the youngers ones dont seem to know that this even occured
Posted By: carouselmaker @ 05/02/2008 3:36:50 PM

Comment: Just interesting that it was so free and easy to code for the mac. I was a long time developer for the 2 series, and I know what the costs were. $5k US for the box, $5k us for the SDK if you wanted to code, and then start fresh since nothing you had written before would work. The option, $1200 for an inexpensive PC Box (brand not important) $150 for a service bureau to convert all of the apple disks into PC readable format, $200 for a pascal package, and 2 days changeing some minor coding to get all of the software ported from the DOMINAT platform of the day (80 percent market share) to one of the minor ones which looked like it was the way things were going. This in a day that a 1200 BPS connection was sold at a premium of, IIRC 2.5 times the 300 BPS connection cost. Mac killed and Steve Jobs killed apple, not Bill Gates or IBM. At the time IBM compatiable was used because IBM had name recognition, nothing more. Since the MS OS of the day was open and easy to work with, the mac took its place with a small single digit market share which has remained largely unchanged since. Good advertising, and love how they spin the bad marketing decisions made (not spending just half the mac budget on the 2GS, which had most of the features that would not show on other platforms for another 10 years) into just the little guy being opressed by the open to development platform. My 2 cents, since the youngers ones dont seem to know that this even occured
Posted By: carouselmaker @ 05/02/2008 3:36:37 PM

Comment: Just interesting that it was so free and easy to code for the mac. I was a long time developer for the 2 series, and I know what the costs were. $5k US for the box, $5k us for the SDK if you wanted to code, and then start fresh since nothing you had written before would work. The option, $1200 for an inexpensive PC Box (brand not important) $150 for a service bureau to convert all of the apple disks into PC readable format, $200 for a pascal package, and 2 days changeing some minor coding to get all of the software ported from the DOMINAT platform of the day (80 percent market share) to one of the minor ones which looked like it was the way things were going. This in a day that a 1200 BPS connection was sold at a premium of, IIRC 2.5 times the 300 BPS connection cost. Mac killed and Steve Jobs killed apple, not Bill Gates or IBM. At the time IBM compatiable was used because IBM had name recognition, nothing more. Since the MS OS of the day was open and easy to work with, the mac took its place with a small single digit market share which has remained largely unchanged since. Good advertising, and love how they spin the bad marketing decisions made (not spending just half the mac budget on the 2GS, which had most of the features that would not show on other platforms for another 10 years) into just the little guy being opressed by the open to development platform. My 2 cents, since the youngers ones dont seem to know that this even occured
Posted By: carouselmaker @ 05/02/2008 3:36:23 PM

Comment: Just interesting that it was so free and easy to code for the mac. I was a long time developer for the 2 series, and I know what the costs were. $5k US for the box, $5k us for the SDK if you wanted to code, and then start fresh since nothing you had written before would work. The option, $1200 for an inexpensive PC Box (brand not important) $150 for a service bureau to convert all of the apple disks into PC readable format, $200 for a pascal package, and 2 days changeing some minor coding to get all of the software ported from the DOMINAT platform of the day (80 percent market share) to one of the minor ones which looked like it was the way things were going. This in a day that a 1200 BPS connection was sold at a premium of, IIRC 2.5 times the 300 BPS connection cost. Mac killed and Steve Jobs killed apple, not Bill Gates or IBM. At the time IBM compatiable was used because IBM had name recognition, nothing more. Since the MS OS of the day was open and easy to work with, the mac took its place with a small single digit market share which has remained largely unchanged since. Good advertising, and love how they spin the bad marketing decisions made (not spending just half the mac budget on the 2GS, which had most of the features that would not show on other platforms for another 10 years) into just the little guy being opressed by the open to development platform. My 2 cents, since the youngers ones dont seem to know that this even occured
Posted By: Shooshie @ 05/02/2008 2:59:11 PM

Comment: This has got to be one of the most bizarre and silly theories I've ever read. I've been on the internet for 20 years, before there was even a www, much less a browser. It was wild and freewheeling, but all internet clients of the day had limitations and rules which were inherent in their design or implementation. Even UseNET, as notoriously "free" as it was, always struggled with the dichotomy between unmoderated groups and moderated groups. The moderated groups had a higher quality level, since the moderator could boot the troublemakers and spammers, but moderators more often than not began loving their power over their fellow netizens and often wielded it maliciously. iPhone is little more than a client with clients. You write for iPhone, you obey the rules of its moderator. This is hardly killing the internet. It's adding to the diversity and richness of its clientele.

Maybe Jonathan Zittrain is a deep thinker who simply let his iPhonephobia get the best of him, but I have to say something this silly sounds like part of an orchestrated disinformation campaign by competing interests. The Internet is free. Free for Jonathan Zittrain, free for me, and free for Steve Jobs. You want to kill the iPhone? Make something better.

Shooshie
Posted By: olderwiser @ 05/02/2008 2:15:39 PM

Comment: So, you have to sort of forgive them, "for they know not what they claimed", more or less as the guys on the beach who claimed a lot more than they could walk across.
Posted By: olderwiser @ 05/02/2008 2:13:14 PM

Comment: People like to own things. Think of the audacity of Europeans landing on the shores of America, planting a flag and claiming all that land and all of its resources for the Queen of Spain. Ownership of whole continents is a heady thing. So is owning the internet. But, planting a little flag in the internet and claiming it for the King of Computers might not do much more than Queen Isabella's little flag. We've still got a lot of arrows in our quiver here.

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