Quote:
Originally Posted by Sheikspeare
Harmon, contrary to popular belief technology is at its best when it's open source. When the pursuit for profits and market share constrain technological decisions, we get half-baked outcomes and silly preconditions. I mean, imagine if Steve Jobs was the guy who had invented the wheel. He'd be telling us where we could and couldn't go, and how many revolutions were permissible!
The world could be so much better if the hunt for profits could be subdued within reasonable limits. Which is why when the Amazon folk realise that they've reached a certain profit threshold, they might release some serious apps for the Kindle instead of this 2.5 crap they've been dangling at us.
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What you have written depends entirely on slippery concepts like "best" and "better" and "reasonable." These are value judgments, and people have different values and make different judgments.
The key issue in technology and market decisions, in my view, is maximizing choice. The question is, at what level does "choice" reside? If Apple could be forced to open its systems, this would actually REDUCE choice, because those of us who see value in closed systems would LOSE our ability to choose such a system.
Open systems may be "better" from the point of view of a geek for technological reasons, but from the point of view of many users, closed systems are better because closed technology is easier to use.
The simple fact of the matter is that millions of people who could choose otherwise pay a premium for Apple products. I've done it for over 20 years, and please understand that I'm the guy my friends call on when their non-Apple products fail and they can't fix them.