Of MP3 players and Apple complacency

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We have four iPods of various ages and sizes: one of the first models with the dock connector, one of the early click wheel ones, a nano with clip, and a nano with a screen. One of the classic iPods lives in the car, the other I used the rest of the time; the two nanos are rothko’s.

These four iPods appear to need at least three different charging cables. The “universal” USB cable from Apple that works with the dock iPod doesn’t work with the click wheel one, and makes it crash. The cable that came with the nano won’t power the dock iPod. The other nano needs a special tiny cable. This is crap. It’s bad enough that Apple’s audio players still need a special proprietary cable; the fact that I have three players which have the same physical connector but can’t share a single cable is utterly inexcusable. Maybe they should be compatible, but here in my reality they aren’t.

Let’s talk about iTunes too. I’m a Mac user, so I get to use the less awful version. Nevertheless, it’s clear that Apple have stopped doing user-focused design and started doing marketing-focused design.

I don’t want an app store in my music player. I will never purchase an app from it, and the work iPad can access the app store directly anyway. It’s just bloat, complexity, and irritating advertising. Similarly, I don’t need a library in my music player; I will never buy a book from Apple.

While we’re at it, even though I’m one of the rare individuals to own an AppleTV, I don’t want a movie rental store or a TV show store in my music player. I can rent shows directly on the device, which is far more convenient because it means I can start watching them immediately.

I certainly don’t want a social network in iTunes, and nor does anyone else as far as I can tell. I mean, does anyone use Ping? I’ve never heard anyone talk about using it, ever.

I know 145MB is nothing these days, but it still seems way too much for an MP3 player, which is what I use iTunes for 99% of the time. I think Apple must know it too, but they can’t give us the slimline MP3 player we want because the marketing department is in control at Apple. It’s all about the ecosystem now. The iPod has 90%+ of the MP3 player market, so everyone has to use iTunes to load music on their MP3 players. Hence Apple shoves anything into iTunes that they want to try and push people to use. The ability to hide the Store section from the left side of the iTunes window is conspicuous by its absence. The store will advertise apps at you, and even books for iOS developers, and you get no say in the matter. I was surprised that the Mac app store didn’t get shoehorned into iTunes too.

I’m someone who uses the iTunes store for music sometimes, and I still find all this spam irritating. I can only imagine how rage-inducing it must be for people who have no interest at all in buying from iTunes, and just want to sync their MP3 players or play a CD.

It wouldn’t be so bad having all the crap in iTunes if the basic stuff all worked, but it doesn’t. Our music’s all on a network music server, served up via Apple’s DAAP protocol, but as far as the “Genius” and “iTunes DJ” features are concerned, it doesn’t exist. You can’t sync network music to the iPod either, you have to copy it to your local hard disk first. When ripping CDs, cover art mysteriously fails to get written to the MP3s unless I run an AppleScript to fiddle with the metadata and leave the machine to sit and think about it for a while. The streaming from the music server broke in the last version of iTunes, too, because Apple made incompatible changes to the protocol without telling anyone. I suppose I should be grateful they didn’t just disable it entirely, like they did in the last AppleTV update.

Most of the time I keep the same music on my iPods. Every now and again I’ll take an album off that I’m not listening to, and put on a new one which I just bought. This, of course, means I need to manage the devices manually; though since I have more media than will fit on any one device, that’s a given anyway. As soon as you have to take the manual management route, iTunes ceases to be an asset and starts being a pain in the ass. You can’t just drag a bunch of music files onto your iPod; that would be much too simple. Instead you have to drag the files into the iTunes library, then go and find them in the iTunes library, then select them again, then drag them to the iPod. It’s an entire extra set of file management tasks. Deleting from the iPod is almost as bad; you may have a handy playlist with the stuff you want to delete in it, but you can’t just delete it from there. Instead you have to click on the disclosure triangle, go into the Music sub-entry, find the files via search, and then delete them. And all the time, iTunes does its best to make sure that everything it knows about is neatly arranged in folders on your hard drive, by artist then album. It’s like it’s mocking you, organizing everything so that it would be really easy to just drag-copy it with the Finder, then refusing to let you do so.

Then there’s the effect of Apple’s market dominance on the MP3 player market. What I want in an MP3 player is pretty simple: a small screen, a long battery life, and a high capacity. None of Apple’s players meet those basic needs, even if you’re willing to put up with a proprietary cable. The current iPod Nano is the closest, but that’s stuck at a maximum of 16GB with no way to expand it. Everyone else seems to have given up making high capacity MP3 players, or even given up making MP3 players altogether.

All of this is why I gave up on Apple, Sony and the other big brands in portable audio, and picked up a Sandisk Sansa Clip Zip. It’s only 8GB, but it has the all-important MicroSD slot on the side. Since 32GB MicroSD cards can be picked up for around $20 these days, you can have a 40GB flash-based MP3 player for less than the price of an 8GB iPod Nano.

If that doesn’t sound good, consider this: No more iTunes. Plug in the MP3 player via a standard micro USB cable (like the one used by my phone, my Kindle, etc) and it mounts as a disk drive on any Windows, Mac or Linux system. Drop a folder of music into the Music folder and you’re done. (Oh, and this player will play FLAC and Ogg files if you like, as well as MPEG-4 from the iTunes Store and good old MP3.)

Just one more thing: The Clip Zip can drive a full size pair of Shure DJ-style headphones and give you good sound quality doing it. Boom. Try that with an iPod.

Baby bird of a different kind

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This evening I went out for a walk; partly for exercise, partly for relaxation, and partly to take a package to the UPS drop-off. As I rounded the corner onto Oltorf Street, I walked under a large tree which partially overhangs the street. On the ground I saw the unmistakable shape of a partially crushed dead baby bird. A few steps on was a second baby bird, as dead as the first, with ants crawling over it.

I tried to put the scene out of my mind and continue with my walk. Moments later I heard a plaintive tweet to my left. I looked over, and saw a third baby bird, very much alive, in a small depression in the grass. I walked over to investigate.

I wasn’t sure how it had ended up over in the grass away from its nestmates, but that had probably saved its life. The grass was soft, and the small hole it was in had probably kept it out of sight of any predators. I crouched down to take a close look; the bird saw something moving overhead, and started tweeting and opening its beak for food. It looked like a young grackle fledgling, covered in partially-opened pin feathers.

I stood up and considered what to do next. The branches of the tree were out of reach. Theoretically it looked climbable, but not without entering the nearby property—and that was surrounded by a wall-like fence about my height, with big warning signs on the outside saying “Beware of the Dog” and “This area under 24 hour video surveillance”.

Obviously the bird’s chances of survival in its current situation were negligible. If it didn’t starve to death, it would probably be finished off by a passing cat, possum, raccoon, or other predator.

Now, it has to be said that Austin is not short of grackles. Not even slightly. Nevertheless, they are a protected species, and this particular grackle had done nothing to deserve his perilous situation. I gently scooped him up with a postcard and placed him in my courier bag. He was my problem now, at least until I could find someone who was licensed and qualified to look after him.

A couple of grackles on the telephone cables overhead became very agitated. They were obviously the parents. I looked around again, and saw the nest on the sidewalk about four meters from where the baby bird had been, back over by the two dead ones. I took one last look around to make sure there really wasn’t any way I could get the nest back into a tree, then regretfully picked up the nest and walked home.

Once I was home I grabbed a suitable size shipping box from the recycling, cut a hole in the top, and put the nest in it. I then put some soft gardening gloves on and carefully moved the baby bird back into the nest. He seemed uninjured, but tweeted anxiously. Once he was back in the nest he settled back down; I’d taken the nest because I figured it would be the least disturbing place to put him. After a minute or so he closed his eyes and started breathing in a slow, relaxed way.

I quickly searched Google for information on baby grackles, and found the site of a wild bird center in the Florida Keys. The instructions said not to give the bird any water, and I didn’t have any suitable food, so I just left him to rest. Another Google search located a licensed wildlife rehabilitator in Austin. I called for advice.

After discussing the situation, I left the bird safe at home and went back to see if I could locate the homeowners with the big fence. The plan was to ask them if they might be interested in climbing their tree and putting the nest somewhere secure, putting the fledgeling in the nest, and watching to make sure the parents stuck around to look after him. It would be significant work, but it would obviously be the best thing for the bird. Unfortunately they were quite definitely out, as evidenced by a package waiting for them on their doorstep.

Dusk was approaching, so time was short. I called the rehabber again. She mentioned that she already had a young grackle in the incubator, and could take another. I offered to bring him to her immediately, and she agreed. Pausing only to take a couple of photos, I set out.

It was a scenic twenty minute drive out west; not how I’d expected to spend my evening, but quite pleasant all the same, even with the occasional loud tweet from the passenger seat. Stephanie the rehabber weighed and inspected the fledgling and confirmed that he seemed uninjured, and a healthy weight too. The prognosis was generally good. I filled out the paperwork and left a donation.

So that was how I spent my evening. Rescuing a grackle. If all goes well, maybe this summer he’ll get to sit in the trees outside H-E-B and crap on my car.

The music of Baby Bird

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Way back in the mists of time — 1996, in fact — I was living in dear old England, pondering whether to emigrate. One Saturday I wandered into my local CD store to trawl the discount rack for anything that looked interesting. On my way there, a CD on the countertop next to the cash register caught my attention:

I had no idea what the hell it was, but the cover photo had me intrigued. “Baby Bird”, it said, “The Happiest Man Alive”. A tiny infobox at top right promised “Disturbed Love Songs” in “ALMOSTEREO”.

I picked it up and looked at the back cover. A circle of stars, each with text, presumably track titles. Three paragraphs of text in the middle, telling a story, ending:

…He wants to be someone else. The radio crackles off. All the lights go out. A bomb has dropped. Like a siren slowly starting up, the power fizzles on, with a thing by Baby Bird. The kid’s head stops shaking. He picks up the Panasonic and throws it through the window…

A note at the bottom said “Any imperfections or crackles may result on this record as the vinyl has to be reconstructed from melted down Level 42 and Queen albums”.

It was a bit Paul Morley without the pretension, and it’s fair to say that it was calling to me on the basis of the cover alone. I asked if I could listen to some of the actual music. Here’s what I heard as it started:

A few minutes later the CD was mine. And so it was that I fell into the world of Stephen Jones, aka Baby Bird.

I listened to not much else for a week or so. The album sounded like it had been recorded on a four track in someone’s bedroom, and it probably had, but that wasn’t important. Like Sparks, what grabbed me was the lyrics. Intelligent, humorous, unexpected; sometimes laugh-out-loud funny, sometimes creepy. Here’s the start of “I Didn’t Want To Wake You Up”:

I learned that Baby Bird had quietly recorded five albums’ worth of material over the course of six years, and that each one was a limited edition of a thousand copies. Now I had a mission.

It may be hard to understand now if you’re under the age of 30, but back before the Internet became ubiquitous it could take years to find a particular album. Every time I visited a new city, I’d check out the record stores, just on the off chance. I still remember the excitement of finding an album I’d been looking for for five years, in the two quid sale rack in a record shop in Beaconsfield. I won’t bore you with all the details of my quest, but I eventually found all five CDs. Five albums of gems like this, an excerpt from “Hate Song”:

Then something totally unexpected happened: Baby Bird had become Babybird, and had a number one hit in the UK singles chart, “You’re Gorgeous”. A song sung by a middle-aged man, from the perspective of a teenage girl, about being seduced into nude modeling and amateur porn — and suddenly it was on Top of the Pops and playing on the radio everywhere.

I’m not used to having music I listen to appearing in the charts. I’ve learned that what I think of as approachably mainstream can often clear rooms. In the 90s I’d read NME to find out what they were slagging off, and then listen to that because it was usually at least interesting. Now here was something good, and so bizarre I would never have thought it would appeal to anyone, and it was a hit. I just didn’t understand England any more. And I left.

Apparently there had been some sort of bidding war based on rave press reviews of the lo-fi albums, and the hit single was the start of a new Baby Bird, contracted into a single word and expanded into a full band. I was lucky I’d managed to track down the CDs, as they were fetching ludicrous prices on eBay.

A full-band Babybird album followed. Initially I hated it, but I decided I was probably being hipsterrific and resenting the fact that everyone was now listening to something I thought was my secret. I gave it a second chance, and decided I still didn’t like it as much as the lo-fi recordings. Something had been lost in the slickness and professionalism; some of the songs sounded like they had been polished and re-recorded until all the life had been squeezed out of them.

The next album, “There’s Something Going On”, was much better — and much darker. The first track, “Bad Old Man”, is a case in point:

And that’s sweetness and light compared to “Take Me Back”, which I still find hard to listen to.

Every Babybird album since then has been a delight. Apparently it just took an album or so for Stephen Jones to learn how to bend a full band to his will. It was worth the wait, for tracks like this:

But if you want the grimy lo-fi originals, which I’d highly recommend as a starting point, pick up the boxed set of the remastered versions. It’s a bit tough to find now, but well worth seeking out. Alternatively, you can buy the albums from Google Music in DRM-free 320kbps MP3. If you want to start with one of the slicker more commercial albums, my personal pick this week would be Ex-Maniac.

In the mean time, you can catch up with Stephen Jones as @babybirdmusic on Twitter. He’s got a book out. That old guy on the cover of the album that first caught my attention? His dad.

Homeless hotspots

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This week at SXSWi a Homeless Hotspots campaign has been causing debate. It seems there are plenty who approve of the scheme, so I thought I’d come up with a few more ideas for next year.

  1. Homeless Coffee Tables. It’s hard to juggle a Starbucks latte and an iPad. Let one of our homeless hold the coffee for you while you Tweet what you just overheard.
  2. Homeless Umbrellas. The weather’s been pretty bad, so why not make use of our special mobile umbrellas? While you focus on your conference program, a homeless will hold an umbrella over your head so you don’t get wet.
  3. Homeless Bike Racks. Place your front wheel between his legs, he’s been trained to grab hold of it. We’ve given him a six pack of Lone Star so he’s not going anywhere.
  4. Homeless Ashtrays. Some of you still smoke, but for cost-saving reasons we don’t have ashtrays everywhere in the convention center. Instead, we’ve equipped several homeless with asbestos-woven T-shirts with a pouch at the bottom.

Hey, get off your high horse, they’re employment opportunities don’cha know?

Technology and morality

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The New Republic recently carried an interesting article about Apple (the full text may be available via Readability). The piece started out as a review of the Steve Jobs biography (ho hum), but soon diverged into a discussion of the morality of design. It helped me to crystallize some thoughts.

There’s a famous anecdote about how Steve Jobs spent weeks making his family discuss what they wanted from their washing machine.

Jobs’s meticulous unpacking of the values embedded in different washing machines, and his insistence on comparing them to the values he wanted to live by, would be applauded by moralistic philosophers of technology from Heidegger to Ellul, though it may be a rather arduous way of getting on with life. But Jobs understood the central point that philosophers of technology had tried (and failed) to impart: that technology embodies morality.

Emphasis mine. Technology may be morally neutral in the abstract, but when we make technology choices, we are making moral choices, either because of the details of how the technology is made, or because the technology filters moral possibilities.

The problem was that Jobs, while perfectly capable of interrogating technology and asking all the right questions about its impact on our lives, blatantly refused to do so when it came to his own products. He may have been the ultimate philosopher of the washing machine, but he offered little in the way of critical thinking about the values embedded in the Macintosh, the iPod, and the iPad. When he discussed his own products, he switched from philosophical reflection on the effects of consumer choices to his Bauhaus mode of the vatic designer.

I would put it this way: Towards the end of his life, Jobs took his passion for product design in the autocratic and paternalistic mode, and applied it to everything about the products he oversaw.

“Steve believed it was our job to teach people aesthetics, to teach people what they should like,” [one of his ex-girlfriends] said.

This is the real reason why the App Store exists. This is why iOS is locked down, and why the Mac is being moved to an App Store model. Sure, the revenue stream is welcome, but it’s really about paternalistic control.

“It just works”—Jobs’s signature promise at product launches—was soothing to a nation excited and addled and traumatized by technology. Nothing could go wrong: Apple had thought of everything. The technology would work as advertised; it was under total control; it would not get hacked.

This is the new Apple philosophy. Sacrifice control to paternalistic Apple, and you can relax. The benevolent leader will teach you what to like and what not to like, keep you safe from danger and ugliness. The fact that this philosophy is utterly opposed to the values expressed in so much Apple advertising is remarkable, and shows how cunning and slick their advertising and marketing people really are.

People fall for it, too. I know many self-professed libertarians who believe in absolute freedom of speech and say that they trust nobody to be a censor, but who nevertheless line up to buy iPhones and iPads and give Apple control over what software they can run on their phone, what books and magazines they can read on their tablet, even how they are allowed to arrange app icons. (Try removing Newsstand from your iPad.) Business travelers with iPads complain all the time about being forced to submit to the TSA when they take a plane flight, but what is the App Store if not the TSA of software?

Some iOS users engage in doublethink, recasting their lack of “freedom to” as a positive “freedom from”. (“Sure, I’m not free to download a wifi scanner… but I’m free from viruses!”) It’s true, all apps have metaphorically gone through the scanner and had a minimum-wage drone check their boarding pass, and you can be sure they aren’t carrying bottles of water that compete with the drinks sold by the gate, but that’s not how real security works.

Some iOS device owners ease their sense of guilt by rooting the device, ignoring that they’ve already cast a powerful vote for loss of freedom by buying it. Most, however, seem content to live in cognitive dissonance, apologetically pointing out that Apple hasn’t been that bad a dictator, and has mostly not eliminated competing services. I mean, yes, they’ve forced other magazine and book sellers to move their stores to web only to escape Apple control, but so far they haven’t blocked those web sites, so it’s OK, right?

Which brings us to the web. Criticize the lack of freedom represented by the iOS devices, and before long you’ll likely be told that it’s simply not a problem, because there’s a web browser. Sure, Apple says no porn on the iPad, but you can get porn on the web via Safari so somehow there’s no censorship occurring. But people are pointing out that Apple’s ‘app economy’ is increasingly threatening the web itself. Apple (and other corporate entities like Amazon) are managing to mold the web to be what they want it to be. And that doesn’t appear to be what I want it to be.

[...] Jobs outright rejected the possibility that there may be a multiplicity of irreconcilable views as to what the Web is and what it should be. For him, it is only a “direct-to-customer distribution channel.” In other words, Jobs believed that the Web is nothing more than an efficient shopping mall, and he proceeded to build his business around what he believed to be the Web’s essence.

Some people even claim that the web is dead, and that as we move into a post-PC era of tablets and phones as the primary Internet access devices, the web will be replaced by apps. And freedom will be replaced with complete corporate control.

Our choice is between erecting a virtual Portland or sleepwalking into a virtual Dallas. But Apple under Steve Jobs consistently refused to recognize that there is something valuable to the Web that it may be destroying.

A virtual Dallas, a prospect that will make every Austin web developer shudder.

So I now realize that this is where I parted company with Apple. When the Jobsian paternalism was restricted to matters of hardware design, I mostly appreciated it. I wish my laptop had a replaceable battery and anti-reflective screen, but mostly I’m happy with what I was told I should like—the large trackpad, the solid metal casing, and so on.

But when the paternalism was extended to books and movies and video games and applications, and when it started to threaten the web—well, that was several steps too far.

Everyone says they love freedom, and that freedom is important. But as the cliché says, “freedom isn’t free”. Freedom means ugliness. Freedom means danger. Freedom means complexity. Apple, in a stroke of marketing genius, offers you freedom from those things. And by accompanying that promise with images of freethinkers and a ‘think different’ message, it manages to make you overlook the fact that what you are really doing is giving up your freedom, and financially rewarding the very entity you are giving it up to.

So what’s the alternative? Well, sadly you won’t find a mobile platform with a rich ecosystem that doesn’t require ceding some control to others. Many people have said to me “Well, since that’s the case, what’s the point? I might as well go with the best.” But I’m not an absolutist; I don’t believe in the idea that if you can’t be perfect, you might as well not try. Rather, when it’s time to make a choice, I’ll choose the imperfect option that’s better.

Even Google, with its naïve technocratic ethos, is more committed to questioning the impact that it is having on the Internet and the world at large. They fund a bevy of academic and policy initiatives; they have recently launched a Berlin-based think tank dedicated to exploring the social impact of the Internet; they even started a quarterly magazine. [...] Apple, by contrast, holds itself above the fray. It seems to believe that such discussions of meanings and consequences do not matter, because it is in the design business, and so its primary relationship is with the user, not with the society.

And then there are things like the Data Liberation Front, AOSP, and the periodic table of open APIs. You can even run Android devices without Google, pretty much. Try using a new iPad without an Apple ID.

So until something better comes along, I’m going with Android for my phone and tablet needs. Freedom is too important. Google might not be perfect, but in the specific area of mobile platforms, they are a lot better than Apple.

Root of all evil

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There’s no root of all evil these days. You’re supposed to create an EvilContextFactory to obtain an initial EvilContext, use that to get an EvilEnumeration, and then iterate through the EvilBindings in a thread-safe manner.

Steam in a box?

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As you’ve noticed from my postings about Apple, I don’t believe in locked-down hardware. People have asked me what I do about video game consoles. My answer is that I buy them, even though they are locked down, because there’s no good alternative. Yes, there’s PC gaming, but then you’re financially supporting the Microsoft empire, and that’s even worse. Plus there are the endless DRM and driver problems, the software updates, the periodic reinstalls, and all the other things that make Windows miserable.

So I have a Wii and a PS3, until such time as someone makes a decent open console.

Now a new report claims that VALVe is planning an open console. This makes me very excited. Team Fortress 2, Portal and Portal 2 are some of my favorite games. (The original Half-Life was good too.)

There have been leaks suggesting Steam for Linux. I’m thinking those leaks are related to this Steam Box project. It wouldn’t make sense to require a full Windows license for every console and introduce DLL hell into console gaming; game programmers don’t want most of Windows anyway, they want access to the bare metal. It would make sense to have a standard Linux or BSD image to support Steam, and then provide direct access to a standard set of hardware components for the games themselves.

Anyhow, if VALVe does release a Windows-free open gaming console, I will definitely buy one. Even if it doesn’t come with a copy of Half-Life 3.

Regarding Rush Limbaugh and contraception

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Rush Limbaugh’s comments on contraception have shown that he doesn’t understand how people respond to basic economic situations.

The contraceptive pill is something you have to take every day. You don’t only use it when you have sex. So if you think you might have sex once, you need to go on the pill and stay on it.

This means that the cost of contraceptive pills purchased by the user is what economists call a sunk cost. Humans are loss-averse, so when they are faced with a sunk cost, they tend to try and make more use of whatever incurred the cost, so as to minimize the perceived loss.

This is most often encountered when considering transport. Suppose I spend $6,000 per year to maintain an automobile so that I can commute to work. Now suppose I’m faced with the desire to go to a restaurant downtown. I could pay a couple of dollars to get the bus, but since I’ve already paid the six grand to have a car available, chances are I’ll go by car in order to get more use out of it.

So if people have to pay for contraceptive pills, then economics tells us they’re likely to view the sunk cost that way. In other words: if you have to pay a fixed amount per month for contraceptive pills, chances are you’ll want to have more sex, so as to reduce the apparent cost per sexual encounter.

On the other hand, if contraceptive pills appear to cost you nothing, because you get them covered by insurance, there’s no motivation to have more sex.

So if conservatives wanted to encourage people to have sex more, making them pay for contraceptives would be the perfect way to do so.

There are similar economic motivations around condoms, of course. If you buy a box of 12 you have an economic incentive to use them up before they expire. If you get them for free, you don’t care if they go unused.

Death of the Mac: The smoking gun

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Some people are still convinced that OS X being jailed by default is not a sign of evil intent on Apple’s part. So here’s some more commentary around the topic.

“If Apple really wanted to restrict all app distribution to the app store, why did they come up with this Gatekeeper system?”

Because right now, there are a lot of applications that can’t be placed on the App Store because of Apple’s rules, as well as the technical restrictions such as sandboxing. There are even more applications whose authors are not interested in the App Store. I think the App Store has failed to get the critical mass Apple hoped for.

The ‘third way’ approach of “Well, you can get a key and sign your code but not actually have to use the App Store” is a way to entice everyone to sign their code with Apple-approved keys. Once all the major developers go along with that, the “Turn off Gatekeeper” option can be removed from OS X without 99% of users ever noticing.

At that point, Apple has complete control. They can set the terms for what software is allowed on the Mac, and yank apps even if they aren’t from the App Store. If they don’t want DVD rippers or emulators available, they just revoke the appropriate developer signing keys. And they can rent you developer access to your own hardware, like they do with the iPad and iPhone.

“You’re paranoid. Apple would never do that.”

If you don’t think Apple would ever do all these things, I have to ask: Why wouldn’t they? It would give them complete control over the platform, and the iPhone and iPad have apparently demonstrated that there would be no impact on sales from doing so. Even big names like Adobe and Microsoft have gone along with the iPad’s restrictions.

Compulsory signing would also eliminate the ability to run cracked pirated versions of applications. Developers would love that—and so would Apple, since they could start demanding a 30% cut.

You can see more of this cat-herding going on if you look at the new features in Lion and Mountain Lion. iCloud is only available to applications in the Mac App Store. The new notification center is the same. There’s really no technical reason for such restrictions; it’s just Apple using new functionality as a carrot to get everyone onto the App Store where they can be controlled.

“It’s just being done for the sake of security.”

You could just about make the argument that iSync needed to be limited for security reasons, but there’s no such excuse for apparent limitations on notification center access. To me, this is the smoking gun that shows Apple’s intent.

If Apple were really concerned with security, they’d be updating the out-of-date GPL software that ships with OS X to current versions that have had the security holes patched. But instead, they are purging all the GPL v3 licensed software.

The two big features of GPL v3 are disallowing use of patent lawsuits to prevent people using the code you distribute, and preventing locking down hardware so you can’t run modified code. The idea that Apple wants to be able to sue people who run GCC or the bash shell is possible, but it seems unlikely to me. Similarly, wanting to share code between iOS and OS X doesn’t really explain why they won’t distribute things like the bash shell and GCC which only exist in OS X. So that leaves locking down OS X as the most plausible motivation.

If Gatekeeper is all about security and not about control, why don’t Apple offer the same options as Gatekeeper on the iPad and/or iPhone? If Apple do that, I’ll admit I’m being paranoid and shut up about this. (And buy an iPad.) Since I submitted a request for a developer option to turn off the jail when the iPhone was launched, I’m not holding my breath.

On the contrary, unless Apple reverses their current course and opens up the new OS X functionality to all applications and not just jailed ones they get a 30% cut from, my current Mac will be my last.

Macintosh RIP: 1984–2012

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OS X is now no longer Mac OS X. The Mac is dead.

Meanwhile, the next release of OS X will, by default, refuse to allow unsigned code to run. As I predicted, Lion was the last unlocked OS X, and OS X Mountain Lion ships jailed, like iOS. And good luck selling your software if it requires turning off the ‘security’ of GateKeeper; never mind that the OS X malware threat is practically nonexistent.

For now Apple gives you a way to jailbreak your Mac for free, but I expect that option to disappear with the next release. You’ll pay an annual developer fee and submit your code-signing keys to Apple, and in return you’ll get shell access and the ability to run your own code on your own computer. It’ll be just like iPhone and iPad, where you pay $99 a year to be able to run your own code on ‘your’ device.

And as people on Google+ have pointed out, it won’t be long before the corporate interests start politely asking Apple to revoke developer keys.

That emulator you like playing games on? Oh, sorry, Nintendo and Atari asked Apple and they disabled it. Your copy of VLC? Oh, sorry, the MAFIAA threatened Apple with a lawsuit for enabling playback of pirate movies, so it was disabled. Your DVD ripping software? What, you need to ask?

So I guess I’m moving to Linux. I’m sure there will still be people content to live in denial about how this is going to go, but I’m not one of them.

I started using the Mac in 1986. Bought my first Mac in 1990. So I’d just like to repeat a big ‘fuck you’ to all the lemmings who bought locked-down iPhones and iPads, and convinced Apple they could get away with this.