Is Steve Jobs Big Brother?

Is Steve Jobs Big Brother?(yglesias.thinkprogress.org)

17 points by fr0man 15 years ago | 21 comments

CodeMage 15 years ago |

At the risk of sounding like an Apple apologist

I agree, you do. Let me elaborate why.

I think it’s a stretch to say that Jobs is "deciding what content people can view on the iPhone and iPad."

If you choose to interpret it literally, then it's more than a stretch -- it's unfeasible. On the other hand, I believe Robert Wright didn't really mean it so literally. You've probably heard about Steve's (in)famous line about "freedom from porn". Please don't tell me you believe that Steve Jobs has nothing to do with decisions Apple has been making about what their users can or cannot view on their "iDevices". Sure, a lot of the stuff -- like that political cartoonist example -- can be attributed to incompetence and chaos of a typical bureaucracy, but even the most chaotic bureaucracy has someone or something to give a general direction. Implying that Steve Jobs isn't providing that direction to Apple is, well, a stretch.

You can do almost anything you’d like on the iPhone or iPad, provided you’re willing to use the browser as your main portal.

Except run Flash, for example. Or, for that matter, even know why you can't see the content of a site that serves Flash, unless you're web-savvy:

http://www.gskinner.com/blog/archives/2010/04/return_of_the_...

If you’re bothered by Apple’s decision to rely on the web and curated applications to provide content to its users, then don’t use an i-Device.

Yeah, I've heard that one before. It's a standard non-argument used by apologists and, in general, by people who want to deflect criticism. I won't bore people with repetition of what I already said about that kind of statement, you can read it here:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1395364

I think Android is a fantastic platform, if fragmented and a little unpolished

Cue the popular buzzword, "fragmentation". It's fashionable, like calling Microsoft evil. Crying "fragmentation" is getting old:

http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2010/05/on-android-co...

Not to mention that, using the criteria in the post you linked to, we can call Python fragmented, too, and yet it's immensely popular and a great platform to boot.

Google and Apple are companies looking for the best way to make a dollar

Yep. Microsoft and AOL, too. Microsoft had authoritarian tendencies and AOL promoted the walled garden. We all know that the purpose of a company is to "make a dollar". That doesn't automatically excuse or justify everything they do.

k33n 15 years ago |

First sentence:

    The short answer is…no.

Thanks for saving me the trouble of reading the rest of the article.

hugh3 15 years ago | |

Tune in next week for "Is Steve Jobs Justin Bieber?" on Adventures In Click-Whoring!

fr0man 15 years ago | | |

He's a blogger, can you blame him? He got my click from his Twitter feed with it, because I was interested to see a non-IT guy's take on the recent spate of Apple-bashing. Yglesias is usually very measured and insightful. I just didn't think so this time.

Edit: Odd, when I submitted it, I titled it with something other than his post/page title to describe it as "Matt Yglesias Asks: Is Steve Jobs Big Brother? (Matt says no)", but it didn't take for some reason.

DrSprout 15 years ago |

>If you want to implement a Google Voice solution, you’re more than welcome to, via the browser.

The browser is completely inadequate to the task. I don't even think Webkit has the audio input features implemented yet, and if they exist they're completely useless for any real-world applications, especially on a phone.

Telling people to use APIs that don't exist yet is nonsense.

mechanical_fish 15 years ago | |

the browser is completely inadequate to the task

Okay, but have you explained that to Google?

http://www.csmonitor.com/Innovation/Horizons/2010/0126/Googl...

Now, I'll concede that the HTML5 app which Google released as "Google Voice for the iPhone" might not be the app of your dreams. Maybe you should aim your ire at Google, then, for releasing a thing called Google Voice that isn't the ideal Google Voice. But you can hardly blame a pundit for believing that an app which already exists and which Google has officially announced is physically possible.

SamAtt 15 years ago | |

The whole argument of "you can use the browser" has always been a straw man that falls apart when exposed to even the least bit of scrutiny. You can't access much of the hardware via the browser (no audio, camera, etc...) You can't charge for a browser app. You can't play video with any kind of content restrictions (which Flash video offers). And so on. The whole line of reasoning is ridiculous.

I won't say this article is inappropriate for HN but I think it's unworthy of HN.

zck 15 years ago | | |

>You can't charge for a browser app.

This line jumped out at me. What definition of "browser app" are we using that requires them to be free? Obviously a browser app can't be a website, as it's trivial to put a website behind a paywall. What else are we talking about?

tumult 15 years ago | | |

That's not what a straw man argument is

stanleydrew 15 years ago | |

Well in the particular case of GV, no browser audio api is required since voice calls all run over the regular cell network, so technically the browser is adequate to the task. But your point is still valid in general for a lot of other cases.

not_an_alien 15 years ago |

I think it’s a stretch to say that Jobs is “deciding what content people can view on the iPhone and iPad.”

That made me stop reading the article right away.

pohl 15 years ago | |

I agree that it's a stretch.

Nothing prevents me from pointing the browser where I want to, or from syncing over any audio file, or movie, or ePub book that I want to.

The only thing they're curating is the contents of the shelves of their own store, and this is nothing that brick-and-mortar stores don't do every day.

Sure, I can't get my boob-jiggling app approved. But I also can't shoot amateur porn and get it on the shelves at Blockbuster.

confuzatron 15 years ago | | |

Good point. If you dont like Apple's app store policies, just shop at one of the other iPad app stores. Simple.

WiseWeasel 15 years ago |

What's so frustrating to me about the iPhone OS platform, especially in the iPad, is that as a jailbroken iPhone user, I've GOT the ultimate next generation general-purpose pocket computer already, and I know that a jailbroken iPad would be a total revolution in general-purpose computing. But the fact that I must fight my vendor at every update, and that the jailbroken platform is seen as completely marginal or even detrimental (due to the piracy it facilitates) by most developers, takes away most of the value. It's frustrating that Apple is so close, and yet it's unclear whether they will ever make the leap into a real general-purpose computing platform. That is the core of most of my animosity towards Apple's implementation of the iPhone OS platform. If they were way off the mark, I wouldn't even care.

ghshephard 15 years ago | |

Steve Jobs isn't so much big brother, as he is passionate about the user experience.

Open = Security Issues, Performance Concerns, Viruses, Battery Concerns, Piracy Concerns (resulting in poor software availabilty)

Closed = Secure, predictable performance, virus resistant (if not proof), well known power utilization, and commercially friendly.

But, the good news is we have _both_ now - Android is the open version of iPhone (minus a bit of UI polishing that will be cleaned up, soon).

I'm looking forward to seeing how this all works out over the next three-four years, particularly if the iPhone is available on a reasonable wireless provider in the Bay Area. (AT&T continues to be the bane of my existence.)

WiseWeasel 15 years ago | | |

My only problem with Android is the lack of direct syncing and backup to my own computer, rather than doing everything through the cloud.

hubb 15 years ago |

i think the author misses the point about itunes, whether purposely or not, like so many others: it's not the functional capabilities of itunes apps vs webapps, but the financial capabilities

alsomike 15 years ago |

Maybe he is Big Brother, but is that a bad thing? Today's authorities wrap themselves in "anti-authoritarianism", constantly demanding that we express ourselves creativity, think for ourselves and be unique. Far from being subversive, this reflexive self-fashioning and self-expression is harnessed to create profit for the powerful, from the simplest blog post generating page views and advertising dollars, to the creation of new tech start-ups innovating new products to periodically revitalize the aging bureaucratic global corporate status quo.

In Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman claimed that Huxley was correct and Orwell was wrong: we're being oppressed by being drowned in irrelevant, trivial entertainment, not through censorship, explicit control and regulation. For the internet age, this idea is out of date. Today's form of control isn't making us passive, instead, it makes us active in ways that further the interests of power. We're told our creativity is subversive, even radical and revolutionary and therefore deeply significant, and yet nothing really changes. What's most interesting about all this supposedly disruptive change is how in the end, it's purpose is for the exact opposite: the smooth functioning of global capitalism.

Perhaps you can argue that this is a good thing, but it's impossible to argue that anything truly revolutionary is happening. Steve Jobs and Apple are not necessarily good, but they are a kind of progress because they demonstrate that the emperor has no clothes - the supposed revolutionary, world-changing potential of technology is a sham, it's the same old capitalism as usual.

fr0man 15 years ago |

Yeah, Yglesias is a super smart guy, but he's just way off on this one.