Ian Forrester linked me through to Jason Calacanis' Case Against Apple. 
For those among you who have not seen Monty Python, you can save yourself the bother of reading the anti-Apple rant by watching the "Help, help, I'm being repressed!" clip on YouTube. It amounts to the same thing, albeit without all the bothersome discussion about iPod synchronisation.
Some of you may think that pointing to Monty Python clips is not a valid counterargument strategy. Shame. I find a line of Monty Python to be a lot more useful than a lengthy discussion of modus tollens or circularity. I may as well point out the flaws in what Calacanis has to say.
First of all, we have a discussion about a love affair with Steve Jobs: the love affair has been wonderful, but I'm starting to look past him and back to Microsoft for a more healthy relationship that is less - wait for it - anti-competitive in nature
. So, you don't like Apple, and would rather go back to Microsoft. Surely, though, if one is making one's decisions purely on the basis of political freedom, there's a rather gaping alternative that is being left out here.
The first main argument that Calacanis presents: There is no technical reason why the iTunes ecosystem shouldn't allow the ability to sync with any MP3 player (in fact, iTunes did support other players once upon a time), save furthering Apple's dominance with their own over-priced players. Quickly answer the following question: who are the number two and three MP3 players in the market? Exactly. Most folks can't name one, let alone two, brands of MP3 players.
The reason Apple dominates the MP3 player market is partly due to marketing, but is also partly due to iTunes. There's a lot not to like about iTunes, especially if you have the misfortune of using it on Windows. But the one thing to like about iTunes is that it does synchronisation right. And it does things like podcasting right. I've tried non-Apple MP3 players. They suck. They suck because they treat all audio files as if they are three minute pop songs. If you have a one hour podcast or a nine hour audiobook with chapter markers, those are profoundly different listening experiences than three minute pop songs. Like a tape recorder, you need to be able to stop in the middle, take a break, listen to something else, turn the MP3 player off, plug it back into your computer - and have it remember exactly where you are.
No MP3 playing software than iTunes does this properly. And no MP3 portable device except the iPod family does it. Without it, they are, to my mind, completely fucking useless.
They say "Oh, we don't require you to use iTunes to manage your MP3 player. You can just drag and drop the audio you want to have on there and then when you are done, you can just drag it back off." Yeah, great synchronisation strategy, guys. Meanwhile, with iTunes, you wake up in the morning, roll out of bed, plug iPod into computer and wait one minute until it says that the sync is complete, unplug and you've got all your new podcasts and stuff to listen to.
Everyone whinges about iTunes and the iPod as if it is some kind of evil monstrosity that keeps the proletariat down. It doesn't. It's the only MP3 player process that isn't a total pile of dogshit. If Apple's competitors want to not suck, here's how they should do it: they need to come up with an open, cross-platform API that lets you plug in any device and have a way of syncing a library, iTunes-style on and off the device without having to drag files manually. Hint: I'd start with rsync. Get some free software people to help. Those guys have already made a start with amaroK and Rhythmbox and so on. Why aren't Creative, SanDisk, the non-Apple smartphone manufacturers, Microsoft Zune, Archos, Sony and iriver not contributing to amaroK/Rhythmbox/(insert Windows equivalent here) development? When Apple face Microsoft, they grit their teeth and try to build a better product. As much as capitalism has had a bad rap, these guys aren't doing as well as Apple because they produce worse products: they are more complicated, less usable and provide a worse experience for the user. If they want to fight back, they can do so by building software that's better than iTunes, coming up with a common, open API based on open standards and just bloody well getting on with it.
Complaint number 2: Apple's iPhone is a revolutionary product that has devolved almost all of the progress made in cracking - wait for it - AT&T's monoply in the '70s and '80s. We broke up the Bell Phone only to have it put back together by the iPhone. Telecommunications choice is gone for Apple users.
Complaints about the iPhone? I have a smidgen more sympathy for them. Not much though. Everyone already knows that the iPhone is a locked down platform. If you buy an iPhone - notoriously locked-down to one provider (and one who, in the US, has been a proxy for the Bush administration to break the Constitutional protections on privacy of hundreds, if not thousands, of US citizens) - and then complain that it's locked down to one provider, you are a Fucking Idiot.
If you have claustrophobia and decide to go caving, then complain when you get claustrophobic symptoms, you are a Fucking Idiot. If you know that a fence is electrified and touch it, then start whining about getting an electric shock, you are a Fucking Idiot. We all knew from the day that the iPhone was first announced that it was locked down. And yet people still bought it. I didn't. I bought an iPod touch, which is locked down. The phone I've got, though, is not locked down to any provider. But here's the thing: all phones, on all networks, are pretty damn locked down. If you are in the UK and you want to use Google's Android G1 phone, enjoy the T-Mobile branded contractual ball and chain that comes with it. If you don't want to play along with Apple's provider lock-down, don't buy the fucking phone in the first place.
This is the point of my post on Monday. It applies to all of the other points Calacanis makes about the iPhone. I do not understand why these guys are surprised.
There are a couple of possible scenarios when it comes to the iPhone and openness which a person might have.
State 1: The person has no knowledge of the iPhone's locked-down status regarding the App Store or provider choice.
State 2: The person has more than enough knowledge of the iPhone's locked-down status regarding the App Store or provider choice.
The current batch of whiners definitely fall in to State 2. They may not be rocket scientists, but they read their TechCrunch and their CNET and their MacRumors and so on. If you are blogging about why the iPhone is letting you down on the openness front, you are informed enough that you can't plausibly deny knowledge of Apple's policies up front. I know about Apple's policies with the iPhone. And that's why I don't have an iPhone but use my shitty old Sony-Ericsson.
There is a third possible state:
State 3: The person has the knowledge of the iPhone's locked-down status regarding the App Store or provider choice, but has told themselves that it's not important.
If they are in State 1, they probably shouldn't be writing about technology. If they are in State 2, then they have no good reason to whine about Apple's closedness. They knew it up front. If they valued using an open platform, their knowledge of Apple's non-openness should have given them good reason to choose not to purchase the iPhone. And if they are in State 3, they are delusional or idiotic.
Calacanis also seriously thinks that the iPhone has "devolved" (he means "set back") the process of making telephone providers like ATT more open. Oh yeah, how was that going, exactly? They were just on the brink of becoming a happy clappy, non-tyrannical giant who would play nice, sponsor BarCamps and given free hamburgers to small children - until Evil Steve Jobs turned up with his JesusPhone and reminded them to live up to their Evil Empire-like descriptions. Same for O2 in the UK, Orange France and so on. All the while, the G1 and the Palm Pre have been open and not tied themselves to any exclusive distribution partner. Oh, wait.
Let me repeat it again: if you are concerned about the iPhone not being open, don't buy one.
So, here is the case against Apple summarised:
1. They make better MP3 players than their competitors.
2. Lots of people buy iPhones despite knowing well and good that they are less open than is perhaps desirable.
A lot of people tend to go from these two premises to then saying that everything Apple do is somehow tainted. If we exclude Stallmanite/GNU premises, I'm not sure how my iPod is repressing me and I'm even less sure how my MacBook is repressing me. I use Apple's OS, which is pretty awesome. There are some fairly large chunks of OS X which aren't open source. All the bits I care about are. I have yet to have a situation where I wanted to do something in OS X and Apple's policies have prevented me from doing so. Apple's current range of Mac laptops are the best hardware I've ever bought: competitively priced for the hard-wearing bits of kit they are. Apple's support sucks about the same amount as any other laptop manufacturer.
Outside of the iPhone, Apple still serve to keep both Windows and the Linux distributors producing good software. Apple also serve an important role as a garbage collector for old technology and a tester for new ones. There's a reason why we are all using wi-fi and USB, and no longer using serial/LPT ports and floppy disks. Windows 7 sucking considerably less than Vista may be partly due to Apple slowly building up pressure with the 'switchers'.
All the complaints about Apple seem to boil down to the iPhone being a closed platform. Yes, that sucks. But are the other mobile platforms much better? Well, not really. Android has the promise of openness, but they still have an app store - and the devices they sell aren't actually the open source ones (you have to get an expensive Android Dev Phone for that). Part of the problem is that the tech press, including the bloggers, don't seem to realise that you can install apps on phones and gadgets that don't have an App Store. I've installed hundreds of apps on my Palm Pilot and my J2ME-based Sony Ericsson. No app store required. Just a computer capable of downloading files off the Internet and either an SD card reader or a Bluetooth transmitter. With my J2ME phone, I've sat down and written apps in a few hours, tested them in Eclipse and loaded them onto the phone.
As for Google Voice, I don't understand why there is particular surprise or outrage over it being rejected by App Store. No sane person thought it would actually get through approval. It's not some big drama or tragedy or anything that an app that broke Apple's rules didn't get approved. This is a bit like driving down the motorway at 120 mph, then whining about persecution when you get pulled over. If you think Google Voice had a hope in hell's chance of being approved, you are delusional. Not saying it's right or wrong. But getting all dramatic about something that was obviously never going to happen is completely ridiculous. The very fact that Apple was in a position to choose which apps get put on App Store is, itself, the problem. And, well, if that is your problem, you go to Google and type in "iphone jailbreak".
Of course, what's the completely fucking weak ass response from openness advocates to the rise in popularity of App Stores like the one on the iPhone? Something along the lines of "Oh, don't worry, web apps are going to save the day!" And, as I've said before, there's more chance of pigs flying than Call of Duty, Final Cut Pro and Vim being rewritten to run in the browser using a client-server architecture. The computing equivalent would be: "Oh, we won't bother building Linux. Just keep using your proprietary Unixes, but, you know, just SSH into my fantastic timesharing machine and do your thing there. Compiler? Who needs a compiler?" Web apps are not a magical panacea. And I say that as someone who uses a lot of web apps. Look at the iPhone again. One of my favourite iPhone apps is Byline, which is a native app that syncs up with Google Reader. You launch it up and it takes a few seconds to sync with Google Reader. And then it works reliably offline. If we want open mobile devices, we can't rely on web apps as the route to openness, any more than we could on the desktop. No, here's how you actually have openness: every user can install any software he or she wants on their device. There is a common and familiar set of frameworks to write the code in, and a completely open source compiler. This is what Android Dev Phone users can do. It's the phone networks who are making it so that Android production phone users can't.
One might think I'm an apologist for Apple. I am, to some extent. That doesn't mean I wouldn't be extremely happy if the iPhone/iPod touch platform became significantly more open. What I am though is a realist. Being a realist automatically turns me into a cynic, since everyone else in the tech game is so fucking optimistic about everything. If you are at the point where you have "love affairs" with your computer manufacturer, or you decide which computer to buy based on the manufacturer's CEO's personality, then if either of us have a problem, it's not me. And if you are using the iPhone in the hope that it'll magically become open, rather than using it reluctantly in the full knowledge of it being closed, you are deluding yourself.
