Towards a Permission-Based Web

On his blog over at RedMonk, analyst James Governor looks at the walled garden we seem to be moving into, and possible cracks in the wall. "As we rush to purchase Apple products and services on Cupertino’s monochrome treadmill of shiny shiny, I can’t help thinking the open web community is losing something vital — a commitment to net neutrality and platform openness. If a single company can decide what plays on the network and what does not, in arbitrary fashion, how can that be net neutrality? ... Is the AppStore a neutral network? Should it be? Is Comcast, the company net neutrality proponents love to hate, really the only company we should be wary of? Pipe level neutrality is surely only one layer of a stack. The wider market always chooses proprietary wrappers — every technology wave is co-opted by a master packager. Success in the IT industry has always been about packaging — doing the best job of packaging technologies as they emerge. Twas ever thus." Governor ends his essay with an optimistic look at Android, which he says "potentially fragments The Permission Based Web, and associated data ownership-based business models."

Re:we care

[Canazza]

Software service providers have all the rights to lock down their applications and pre. My only beef is when they start pressuring ISPs to do the things at their end in order to save themselves time and effort.

Re:Total Puff Piece

[Ethanol-fueled]

Agreed. His juxtaposition of the mobile and desktop perspectives of net neutrality makes no pragmatic sense. We can still slap anything we want on our desktops and surf anywhere with relatively minimal (if any) meddling from our ISPs.

As a final WTF, he shamelessly shouts out to Android and open source as the answer to society's ills. Guess what people? The average user can't do shit with their phones, Android or otherwise, as long as the telco's are in charge of what goes on them!

Saying that Android is free is like telling people that a chained servant is free*

. *free in his mind, that is.

Re:we care

[spottedkangaroo]

Wrong. If you buy a car, you expect to be able to take it to your own mechanic. If you buy a phone, you expect to be able to put your own apps on it. This vendor lock-in BS is not acceptable. Did I buy the device or didn't I? Then how dare you tell me how I can use it.

I wish more people would choose to not buy those things. Fuck Apple.

Re:we care

[rsborg]

If you buy a phone, you expect to be able to put your own apps on it.

Your analogy breaks down right there. When I moved from my Treo 600 to an iPhone, I didn't expect to be able to move my apps/games with me. Neither if I moved to a blackberry. Sure there will be some great devs who do cross-platform stuff (PopCap: Bookworm), but that's because they take the time and effort to write it in different platforms

The iPhone is NOT a car. You can't die by using a phone, and the phone industry is not nearly as regulated as the auto industry.

In short, I have NO expectation that I should be able to move my apps from one platform to another, willy-nilly. Maybe if everything was copyleft'd and we were all using ports-capable OS's, sure. But I have no expectation of that any time soon.

Re:Wrong assumption

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is there never any mention of Android being a data mining system for Google? Not that Apple and other's don't do the same thing, but it's an important point.

Google didn't create android for any altruistic reason, and they don't care about open source anything. They created android because they see where phones are headed, and they want to be able to track you, index your voice mail, follow your every purchase/discussion/email, and sell what they learn about you to another corporation for the profit of both.

Not that other companies, including Apple, don't do the same or similar things, I'm just amazed that more people don't find that just a little creepy.

Re:we care

[natehoy]

I'm sorry, "open" is exactly how I would not describe Apple, unless I'm misunderstanding your use of the term. In exactly what way is Apple "open" in your view?

I'm with you on the protecting their customers from crap, scams, etc.

If half of Apple's lockdown is forced by their partner (AT&T) then pray tell why can I tether my Blackberry, why do I have MMS on my Blackberry, and why can I run Google Voice on my Blackberry? AT&T has never said "boo" about ANY of those things.

As far as "priced cheaper over two years" versus a Blackberry, I'd like to see the numbers. My wife picked up her Blackberry Pearl for $50 after all the rebates and stuff - she could have gotten a Curve for the same bucks. The cheapest iPhone started in the $100 range post-rebate. It was all AT&T. Same voice plans, same data plans, same instant messaging plans. So she saved $100 out of the gate, and would have paid the same monthly fee. How does the iPhone become cheaper over time?

As far as getting a signal from a Verizon tower... I had no idea the iPhone supported EVDO, because Verizon sure as hell doesn't support GSM/CDMA/EDGE on their towers. At least not where I live, where Verizon is actually dominant. I know I'm not getting any signal off the Verizon towers around here, unless AT&T also has an antenna on the same tower.

Re:we care

[hardburn]

There's this magical thing called "Java". Perhaps you've heard of it?

Haven't we been through this before? Nobody has taken the cross platform capabilities of Java seriously since "All Your Base" jokes went out of style.

Re:we care

[Anonymous Coward]

I have had a BlackBerry Bold since Tuesday. I didn't like it. Tethering to a non-computer is not possible without buying a $170 device (CradlePoint PHS300) and it can't act as a wifi access point for my iPod Touch. Its email handling (formatting) is terrible and it didn't work with Thunderbird (emails deleted in Thunderbird were deleted on the Exchange server but not on the BlackBerry, emails read were updated on the Exchange server but not on the BlackBerry etc etc). The browser is terrible, most pages with Javascript menus resulted in dozens of pages of crap before the "real" content appeared.

Trying to use the little plastic trackball is horrible. There are menus of menus you have to navigate to do even the simplest things. A reminder for appointments won't let you snooze for any more than 5 minutes, which means your 1-hour advance notice causes more trouble than it's worth. Voice dialing doesn't work. Searching for "STE" brings up 5 people named Steve, but typing an additional "V" (so it's STEV) makes them all disappear. It's so frustrating to use I had to remind myself not to throw it.

I sent a 4-page listing of issues to our phone guy and he couldn't help with any of them. So today I paid $100 out of pocket for an 16GB IPhone 3GS, which will be here Monday. I will hand over the BlackBerry to someone else in our department who can use it. I'm already familiar with the iPhone capabilities since I have an iPod Touch 2G. All these issues... aren't issues on the iPod Touch 2G. It's truly a pleasure to use, which is why I spent $350 of my hard-earned cash on it.

Yes the iPhone 3GS will set you back $200 if you are a regular Joe. Originally I was offered an 8GB 2G for $50. Either way it's worth it to me.

Posted anon for obvious reasons.