Wednesday, April 7th, 2010
Fan Boys
For a company whose CEO professes a hatred of DRM, Apple sure has made DRM its alpha and omega. Having gotten into business with the two industries that most believe that you shouldn’t be able to modify your hardware, load your own software on it, write software for it, override instructions given to it by the mothership (the entertainment industry and the phone companies), Apple has defined its business around these principles. It uses DRM to control what can run on your devices, which means that Apple’s customers can’t take their “iContent” with them to competing devices, and Apple developers can’t sell on their own terms.
For years I’ve listened to Apple fans proclaim monopolies as being “bad”, yet today they seem perfectly comfortable in accepting the same model now that it’s enforced through the content and devices of their favorite company. complaint > dev/null.
Boing Boing Link
April 7th, 2010 at 12:31 pm
prophead said:
I agree. OSX was revolutionary, but I see the walls being constructed. Given that windows would be an insecure, poor choice for anyone it looks like Linux is going to be the land of the free.
April 8th, 2010 at 12:15 am
Jim Mathies said:
Some security experts are saying the most secure config these days is Windows 7, running, (ulp) Chrome. (Fx is making great progress on the whole sandbox concept though.) Generally, I think browser security risks are far lower today than they have ever been. Most browser vendors invest a great deal of resources on security fixes and turn around time on updates, so really, Id say pick your favorite, be careful where you visit, and keep up to date.
All of which has nothing to do with DRM in Apple’s products. They are the worst of all companies out there. “Lock-in” is Steve Job’s mantra. (Another term you could use to describe it would be “enslavement”.)
April 8th, 2010 at 2:04 pm
prophead said:
To be fair, the market likes it.
But the market is short sighted and greedy.