Why I'll Likely Never Buy An iPad (or another iPhone)
Steve Jobs is to be commended for creating a business model that is making Apple investors ecstatic.
On the other hand there are some people, me included, who feel that Apple's hand-held products are just more of the same thing that Microsoft tried to foist off on us with Vista. The Apple products, through a more tightly focussed application niche, complete control over the hardware, and far better engineering have not had the negative press that Microsoft got for their buggy and slow Vista, but the there are far more similarities than differences.
The problem I have is that Steve Jobs has set Apple up as the sole dictator over what I can do with their handhelds. They dictate what software I can run, how hard I can stress the battery (no multi-tasking on the iPhone for example, even though there is no other reason for it not to be there) and what kinds of documents I can view and what I can do with those documents. In other words there is extremely tight Digital Rights Management on these systems.
We've already seen what can happen with such a system when
Amazon removed paid-for books from the Kindles "owned" by their customers. That's like my favorite book store,
White Dwarf, coming over to my home and removing a book I'd purchased from my library. I know White Dwarf would never consider doing this - so what makes Apple and Amazon and any/all other DRM-pushing publishers think they should be able to?
At some point in the future I might also like to exercise my (few) rights under the Canadian copyright act and abstract something from a work to do a news or critical item about it. Want to bet the DRM won't let me? You'll lose.
But more to the point I have many different music and video systems in my home and I want to ensure I can listen/watch those works I purchase whenever/wherever I want. I also do NOT want Apple, Amazon, or any other publisher to know when, where, for how long, or with whom I do such private viewing/listening.
OK - here in Canada I still sort of have the right to figure out if Apple is hiding something from me in the way of privacy-invasive software on their machine that I might purchase. I can, so far, reverse-engineer the software and look for problems that affect me. If/When Canada adopts any/all of the EU or ACTA style of anti-circumvention laws I won't be legally allowed to do this ON MY OWN, BOUGHT AND PAID FOR, HARDWARE. So much for any rights that come along with First Sale or similar law.
And down in the US and anywhere else with an anti-circumvention law you are not allowed to even look for such privacy invading back doors.
Nope - I'm not going to be one of Apple's customers. I'll wait for something similar with either Android or a true open-source OS like Linux on it. At minimum I'll wait until someone cracks the DRM like they've done for the Kindle and the iPhone. At least at that point I'll be able to do a backup and keep my purchased works, even if I sell the hardware (minus my videos/music/documents of course) to someone else.
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