Apple’s App Store meets 1984
In 1948 just after World War II George Orwell wrote a novel called 1984 about how Britain might have looked if a communism regime had come in to power. An excellent read if you haven’t read it already.
In 1984 Apple made a commercial:
Continuing their promotional campaign Apple in 1997 started to use the slogan: “Think Different”, which has also ended up on some of the icons in Mac OS itself.
However in 2008 Apple released its App Store for its shiny new iPhone and its SDK, which in turn has reversed their “Think Different” and anti 1984 adverts from the past.
Apple now sees itself as Big Brother scrutinising over every App submission; making sure that it fits in with their regime before allowing them into the App Store (sometimes taking up to a month to approve).
Some Apps are rejected before they have even seen the light of day, though the developers may have had the best of intentions and spent 100’s of man hours creating them; such as Google Voice which could see Apple and AT&T (and other networks) lose out on profits over charging customers for voice and text messages. Background applications are another no no, so Apps like Locale could never make it on to the iPhone. Using Apples own internal private API can also land you in trouble, without you even knowing about it.
“The government attempts to control not only the speech and actions, but also the thoughts of its subjects, labelling unapproved thoughts with the term thoughtcrime.” ~ Thought Police
Some Apps were published on the App Store only to be later removed or resubmitted with limited functionally just because Apple now deems it inappropriate or because it competes/replicates existing functionality. Which doesn’t give much hope for running your favourite browsers like Firefox or Opera on your device.
“Rectifying” historical Apps to concord with Big Brother’s current pronouncements ~ Ministry of Truth
My previous phone allowed you to use it as a modem (e.g. connecting to a laptop via bluetooth) free of charge using my phones Internet connection and existing data plan, but Apple have made it easy for operators to charge extra for this functionally, essentially allowing them to charge customers twice for the same service. Higher bandwidth Apps such as VoIP and video streaming also struggle on Apples platform as 3G connections are denied; usually not because the network operators can’t handle all this data, but because they will lose out on being able to bill talk time (hopefully this restriction is to be removed soon).
And as for those who “Think Different” (“The crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers”) who decide to jailbrake their iPhones and start installing software that isn’t vetted by Apple they are able to free themselves from the communist Apple regime and customise the way their device looks and behaves; they are caught in a “cat and mouse game” against the system.
Don’t get me wrong I do love Apple’s initiative new mobile operating system for its iPhones, iPod touches and iPads. However its communist App Store is just limiting developer innovation and progression. It also locks users into the Apple ecosphere; if they were to buy Bejeweled for their iPod touch they wouldn’t be able to transfer it to their new Android phone.
I just hope this isn’t the shape of things to come on new mobile phone platforms or computer operating systems, as I strongly believe users should be free to choose what Apps they want to install on their phones, computers or media devices. Just imagine if Microsoft had the same policy with Windows: not allowing people to use anything other than Internet Explorer just because it competes and replicates existing functionality of the OS.
An ideal App Store would be one where developers can publish applications instantly and users are able to warn other users if it’s unsuitable, buggy or inappropriate. Users should be able to use their applications on all of their devices and developers should not be restricted to what they can and can’t do. I just hope that the Orange and O2 App Store and others can live up to this ideology.
