On an article about a privacy flaw in the HTC Droid Incredible, some genius decided to post this brilliant series of comments:
And 13 people have fanned this guy. Wow.
One thing that’s really bugging me is how often tech pundits and blogs are misusing the word freedom in these Apple-Adobe-Google debates that have gripped the blogosphere. I see a lot of charges that Apple is destroying freedom with their restrictive app store policies.
There’s a big hangup people have over the word freedom. In these big debates about the role of platform vendors and who can block whose products, the word “freedom” gets thrown around in the context of platform vendors destroying it.
But freedom is something only governments can destroy, because only governments have the power to compel by force actions that people would not choose for themselves. If your choice is not forced and you have an alternative, then your freedom is intact.
In a free society, people are able to associate with whom they please. This includes the freedom not to associate as well. And this extends to companies and products. I am free not to buy a Maytag washer. Shop owners are free not to stock products that they don’t like. Microsoft is free to reject games from its Xbox platform that don’t meet its standards. Black people are free not to hang out with Asians.
Any individual consumer can opt not to purchase an Apple device and thus bypass the app store restrictions entirely, in the same way that consumers can buy a PS3 or a Wii if they don’t agree with the games Microsoft has let onto their platform. In the smartphone market, people can buy a device with Android on it. They can get a Microsoft Kin. They’ll be able to buy Windows Phone 7 devices soon. Choice exists.
This is freedom: the ability to choose between several options with no entity able to compel you by force to choose their own offering. If you find Apple’s app store rules stifling and controlling, then don’t buy an iPhone! It’s that simple.
So Apple is not “destroying freedom” by failing to include Adobe’s Flash in their products because it owns and controls the platform and there’s nothing wrong with that. If Apple doesn’t have the right to determine what happens on its platform, then a gay bar doesn’t have the right to keep out straight hecklers and you don’t have the right to keep out of your own house people that scare or repulse you.
Why? Because this is about property rights. Apple’s platform is their property; should they have the right to do with it as they please, including keeping out those they don’t want in it? I argue that they have as much right to this as we all have to our own property. If Apple can be compelled by force to “open up” their App store, what does that say about the sanctity of your domain should people decide they don’t like the color you’ve chosen for your veranda or appreciate that you didn’t let those hungry bikers in at 3 AM?
Choosing what one wants with one’s own property is not evil, and we should stop acting like it is. Free societies endure precisely because people can make their own decisions about their bodies, their minds, their property, their wealth, and their lives. Let’s stop being busybodies and criticizing others for their choices, and instead work on making better choices ourselves.
Yes, it’s finally released! There’s not much I’m going to say because I’ve been working on its guts for months now, and it’s unlikely you don’t already have an opinion one way or another. Either way, go check it out! Admit, it, you want one. I know you do.
Doug McCaughan at KnoxNews makes the great point that for years, schools have been trying to get more computers into classrooms, only to now stigmatize and ban them when students bring their own in the form of cell phones and smartphones.
To a certain extent, I suspect good old-fashioned technophobia, but I think there’s also a lot of the desire for control. Schools want computers under their control, with software they determine, used in ways they approve of; students circumvent this central control by using their own.
Smartphones really are just small form-factor computers these days. They can let you browse the web, send email, organize your day, and play games. Schools have to get with the picture, even if that picture isn’t the one they’d prefer to paint themselves.
http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2009/jun/09/teach-cell-phones-dont-ban-them/!