This is not the first time I've heard this bait and switch tactic. The critical point that is muddled is that the web is not the Internet. Furthermore, an iPhone is a general purpose computing device and not limited to web applications. I don't believe for a minute that HTML5 solves this. For example, a major selling point of the iPhone is its iPod multimedia functionality which is an application.
Because you may want to do more with the Internet than access HTTP and because you have a device that does much more than access web pages, control over the applications on that device is a freedom issue. The partial freedom of web access is not the same as actual freedom. If I give the author the benefit of the doubt and believe he isn't clueless, then his spin on reality must be considered deceptive. It's misdirection. To alter a line in the article, when he refuses to distinguish between the Internet and the web and web access freedom and software freedom, he knows what he's doing.
I understand you may freely choose to not buy an iPhone, but Apple has gained a certain leverage in the market that can't simply be ignored. As an individual I can ignore it. As a company with competitive interest in mobile applications, you could not easily ignore it.
Either the author is pretty obtuse, or he's deliberately misrepresenting Bray's comparisons between the web and the iPhone app ecosystem. I thought it was pretty clear in Bray's original post that he wasn't try to say that Apple was censoring the internet, but was using the internet as an example of the virtues of uncensored, unrestricted innovation as compared to the highly restricted environment in the App store.
And of course, as others have already pointed out, saying the mobile Safari's HTML5 support is an acceptable alternative for apps that aren't allowed into the App store is as completely stupid now as it was when Apple released the original iPhone without a local app SDK: http://gizmodo.com/267899/no-iphone-sdk-means-no-killer-ipho...
> Either the author is pretty obtuse, or he's deliberately misrepresenting Bray's comparisons between the web and the iPhone app ecosystem. I thought it was pretty clear in Bray's original post that he wasn't try to say that Apple was censoring the internet, [...]
Bray was trying to say that, I assume, but not exactly clearly. These quotes easily cause confusion about what he is describing:
"The iPhone vision of the mobile Internet’s future omits controversy, sex, and freedom, but includes strict limits on who can know what and who can say what."
"Apple apparently thinks you can have the benefits of the Internet while at the same time controlling what programs can be run and what parts of the stack can be accessed and what developers can say to each other."
Mine is not a popular opinion and I'll probably lose comment karma for stating it. But Apple wants HTML5 to succeed precisely because it is an absolutely terrible platform on which to develop apps and games. Therefore, it gives them the illusion of supporting openness while being safe from actually competing against their own dev tools.
A lot of geeks love JavaScript and I've never figured out why, having developed in it. (Yes I've read Crockford.) The logic seems to go like this: sure it has problems but functions are first class objects! This means it's like Lisp and everyone knows Lisp is the best! As far as I can tell, arguments for JavaScript being usable don't tend to go much farther than this.
Some applications work best on the web. Some applications work best natively. I don't really see this is an either/or thing.
I've been doing Cocoa programming and heavy amounts of JavaScript for some time now. Anything bad one camp says about the other is pure FUD. Objective-J is but one example of proof in the pudding. I myself work on a codebase that's nearly 25,0000 lines of JavaScript with a design heavily lifted from my experience with Cocoa. JavaScript's expressive power makes this possible, even trivial.
Yet, JavaScripts tooling support is just subpar compared to Apple's. While people complain about XCode, it makes FireBug look like a toy.
Also pretty much everything for building interfaces is just Precambrian compared to Apple's. Code generation for UI must die.
I could go on and on.
As far as the article is concerned: Android, Windows 7 Mobile, and iPhone are all lockins if you develop native apps for them. You have non portable code (unless you're writing a game) who cares how "open" the platform is.
It's too early to see how all of this will play out but I guess that doesn't stop everyone from hand-waving every chance they get.
Would like to remind fellow readers that the original iPhone was shipped without the iPhone SDK with Steve Jobs pushing for web-based applications, yet Apple was roundly criticized for it.
Have you seen Ibis Reader [http://ibisreader.com/] ? This thing installs from the web, sure, but it installs. You don’t need to be online to use it read your books.
It may well be, but I found no way to download the plug-in (with Firefox). Apparently the makers want to channel the book finding (in Feedbooks, etc.) through a login in their own site. I suppose that then the plugin gets loaded, but didn't test that.
13 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 39.1 ms ] threadBecause you may want to do more with the Internet than access HTTP and because you have a device that does much more than access web pages, control over the applications on that device is a freedom issue. The partial freedom of web access is not the same as actual freedom. If I give the author the benefit of the doubt and believe he isn't clueless, then his spin on reality must be considered deceptive. It's misdirection. To alter a line in the article, when he refuses to distinguish between the Internet and the web and web access freedom and software freedom, he knows what he's doing.
I understand you may freely choose to not buy an iPhone, but Apple has gained a certain leverage in the market that can't simply be ignored. As an individual I can ignore it. As a company with competitive interest in mobile applications, you could not easily ignore it.
And of course, as others have already pointed out, saying the mobile Safari's HTML5 support is an acceptable alternative for apps that aren't allowed into the App store is as completely stupid now as it was when Apple released the original iPhone without a local app SDK: http://gizmodo.com/267899/no-iphone-sdk-means-no-killer-ipho...
Bray was trying to say that, I assume, but not exactly clearly. These quotes easily cause confusion about what he is describing:
"The iPhone vision of the mobile Internet’s future omits controversy, sex, and freedom, but includes strict limits on who can know what and who can say what."
"Apple apparently thinks you can have the benefits of the Internet while at the same time controlling what programs can be run and what parts of the stack can be accessed and what developers can say to each other."
http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2010/03/15/Joining-Go...
A lot of geeks love JavaScript and I've never figured out why, having developed in it. (Yes I've read Crockford.) The logic seems to go like this: sure it has problems but functions are first class objects! This means it's like Lisp and everyone knows Lisp is the best! As far as I can tell, arguments for JavaScript being usable don't tend to go much farther than this.
Also, of the whole 'HTML5' stack, JavaScript, the language, is probably one of the least bad parts.
The DOM, SVG, all the XML and XML-like bits, the whole GUI paradigm (or lack of thereof) of web apps and so on are much worse.
I've been doing Cocoa programming and heavy amounts of JavaScript for some time now. Anything bad one camp says about the other is pure FUD. Objective-J is but one example of proof in the pudding. I myself work on a codebase that's nearly 25,0000 lines of JavaScript with a design heavily lifted from my experience with Cocoa. JavaScript's expressive power makes this possible, even trivial.
Yet, JavaScripts tooling support is just subpar compared to Apple's. While people complain about XCode, it makes FireBug look like a toy.
Also pretty much everything for building interfaces is just Precambrian compared to Apple's. Code generation for UI must die.
I could go on and on.
As far as the article is concerned: Android, Windows 7 Mobile, and iPhone are all lockins if you develop native apps for them. You have non portable code (unless you're writing a game) who cares how "open" the platform is.
It's too early to see how all of this will play out but I guess that doesn't stop everyone from hand-waving every chance they get.
http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2007/06/11iphone.html
Have you seen Ibis Reader [http://ibisreader.com/] ? This thing installs from the web, sure, but it installs. You don’t need to be online to use it read your books.
I thought it might be similar to the FireFox EPub reader plug-in ( https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/45281 ), but for KHTML/Webkit based browsers, and dug a bit on the website.
It may well be, but I found no way to download the plug-in (with Firefox). Apparently the makers want to channel the book finding (in Feedbooks, etc.) through a login in their own site. I suppose that then the plugin gets loaded, but didn't test that.