Apple becoming Big Brother, censoring you and I as well

Carlos Caballero — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 16:12:39 +0000

The article in Baseline looking at how Apple is stifling innovation shyly touches in one slide what I think is the biggest problem with Apple: too much power derived from total, arbitrary control over device, software and even purchasing choices. Not surprisingly, that power falls in the hands of a monumental egocentric like Jobs, and it becomes worrying.

I am an Apple fan, and as a consumer probably in the 97 percentil when measured by reliance and expenditure on Apple for personal AND business computing devices. But I have started to be alarmed too, and despite all previous proclamations, have decided NOT to buy the iPad, and to seriously look at switching away from the iPhone.

When Apple decides to keep OUT of the iPad technology that has become ubiquitous, just to REDUCE and without arbitration curtail what I can do with the device, it goes too far.

It goes even further, waaaaaay too far, when it decides in a non-transparent way which apps I can buy or not. No, not apps that could drain batteries (miserable excuse to keep Adobe out of their devices). The decision is taken on CONTENT; in other words, a megalomaniac decides what I can see.

Not that I would use the iPhone to buy porn: the device screen is too small to enjoy it. But who the hell is Jobs to decide what I can do with a device I paid good money for, and which has as competitors wonderfully open devices? Fuck, I left my country of birth to leave authoritarian despots behind, I am not going to take it from Apple. It’s not a matter of motivation: whether the decision is taken to make more money on me or to control my thinking or whatever: it still SUCKS.

Post from: Online shared intelligence; copyright © 2008 Carlos Caballero. All rights reserved.

Apple becoming Big Brother, censoring you and I as well

About auto-censorship

CC — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 15:16:52 +0000

This has to be one of the finest anecdotes I have heard in a long time. Perhaps everybody knows it, but nonetheless it’s excellent.

In a conversation about Acceptable Use Policies (AUPs) for Enterprise Collaboration, Gil Yehuda answered a comment I made about the chilling auto-censorship effect that AUPs can have on collaboration. In his response he says:

As a security professional once told me “Anything you say can be used against you, so why speak when you can nod?”

Couldn’t help but think about my posting yesterday in this same blog: this is another example of the limitations of 2.0-anything. We are all nice people, we all like each other, and we have really good intentions. But Big Brother doesn’t sleep. Or, in other words (Porter’s, in Technopoly), the transformational powers of technology can be grossly over-estimated, specially when that technology is brought about by those that would be most impacted by it.

Online shared intelligence » censorship

Apple becoming Big Brother, censoring you and I as well

About auto-censorship