A very open closed system

Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Tech pundits everywhere -- perhaps realizing there is attention to be gained by mentioning iPad over and over -- are lambasting Apple (as usual) for what they call a "closed system."

Yesterday, I listened to a pundit complain about a perceived lack of openness and a gatekeeper-mentality on NPR's Morning Edition, deriding Apple as if it were China, censoring all content and blocking dissent. And I was listening to it on NPR's iPad app. Serious irony.

Where the media falls down on this story is clear: they are only talking about apps. They ignore the fact that the iPad, iPhone and iPod all allow you to load your own content -- this has been an issue with pundits from day one of the iTunes Store, complaining that only Apple's content can be played when in fact the devices play standard MP3 and other codecs. And in the era of video, they play standard MP4 files. My iPad will let me load and read any books I create myself using the open ePub standard. Apple's products are full of open-standard support. But it seems to be the companies with an interest in their own proprietary standards which are leading the media charge.

Far from being locked down, you can load gigabytes of scifi apocalyptic porn on it if your heart (or other body part) so desires. And I can go to any website I could ever wish using my Apple devices. There's no content I can't access -- except, of course, for anything that's presented using Flash, which is an argument that's getting old. (Just for the record: Flash definitely has its uses and is excellent for some applications; the thing everyone is up in arms about is Flash being used for video, which I just detest... 'cos about the only reason you'd wrap video in Flash is to make it impossible to download or copy it. It's not about presentation, it's about control. Ironic, eh? That Apple wants to use freely open standards rather than proprietary, locked-down ones? Funny, that.)

Here's my take on all this: people are treating Apple's devices differently than those from other manufacturers for the same reason Greenpeace ignores the others and targets Apple: Apple gets attention. Pageviews. Eyeballs. I never heard complaints about the Motorola Razr because you couldn't write your own apps for it. When everyone was toting around those Sidekicks, where was the breathless media buzz about the lack of Flash support on that? In fact, how many phones from other manufacturers currently support Flash? Just asking.

The thing is, because these small devices are from a company historically known for computers, they are imbuing them with the attributes of computers. And they are, but they're not.

No one has ever complained like this that they can't break into their television set and hack the code. My car has several computers under the hood, but I'm not upset that I can't develop my own software in the car. The thermostat in my hallway has a computer in it, but I don't get pissed off because I can't install my own control program in it. My coffee maker has a computer in it. So does my digital camera, and no one is clamoring to use the camera to write programs to run on the camera.

My iPad lets me access the internet. It lets me edit spreadsheets, create presentations, and write documents. It lets me read books instantly, play Scrabble, Tweet to my heart's content, watch movies I purchased and ones I made myself, listen to my old CD collection, schedule work meetings, respond to emails from work in the middle of the night, look at photos of my nieces and nephews wherever I am, check my web server remotely, watch my bank accounts, keep on top of my project list, check the weather, sketch out some ideas, find a recipe and make a shopping list, read the New York Times, listen to NPR, watch Ugly Betty, track deliveries... and that's only in the first 3 days. Doesn't seem like this "closed, gatekeeper" platform is holding me back.

So you see, it's the thermostat, tv, car, etc. all rolled into one. But it's still just an appliance. It's time for people to make the leap: computers are no longer big behemoths in an air-conditioned room, mysterious and difficult. They're all around us, in everything.

I wouldn't worry about how "open" a device is. I'd worry about all the computers in our homes suddenly turning on us, intoning "kill all humans!"

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