Curtailing abuse will require borrowing and adapting some of the tools of the hidebound, consumer-centric culture that many who love the Internet seek to supplant. A free Net may depend on some wisely developed and implemented locks and a community ethos that secures the keys to those locks among groups with shared norms and a sense of public purpose rather than in the hands of one gatekeeper.
In time, the brand names may change; Android may tighten up its control of outside code, and Apple could ease up a little. Yet the core battle between the freedom of openness and the safety of the walled garden will remain. It will be fought through information appliances that are not just products but also services, updated through a network by the constant dictates of their makers. Jobs, it seems, left his mark on both sides on the tug-of-war over Internet openness.
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Add CommentAfter you realize that Steve Jobs walked into Xerox PARC and walked out with Alan Kay's interface for the MAC; he seems less saintly. Thievery, or the ends justify the means? Is that the hallmark of greatness? I was pleasantly surprised that this was included in his biography. Jobs was great at manipulating the masses. Unfortunately, that's what most people want. Steve knew most people couldn't handle personal responsibility for their lives and wasn't afraid to use it. The freedom Steve Jobs gave you was always Steve Jobs' version of reality and most were happy to go along and paid dearly for that version. Steve Jobs played all of you; he was always on Steve Jobs side. Hey, but don't listen to me, I'm just the voice of reason.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt always amazes me how the Jobs worshipers always jump right over Job’s big failures. This author skips right to the 3rd big thing, iPhone, NO it was not the 3rd big thing! The Next computer was his next big thing and it was a big FAIL. No one remember that great square, black box that had no software and cost 5 times what every other PC on the market cost?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHe was a great promoter and marketing guy, but electronics design? No, not even close.
Like many of the titans of industry who came before him, Steve Jobs was a bully whose admiration by millions of Americans is more than a little frightening. Both Thomas Edison and Henry Ford were controlling autocrats whose inventions and the infrastructure changes necessary to use their inventions have both transformed and wreaked havoc on the planet.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLike the Devil in a fable of old, these executives may have started out tinkering, but within a matter of decades became corporate titans who offered humanity magical gifts if they gave up money, land, and the air we breathe. As pointed out by one of the other comments posted here, Jobs was not an engineer: he was a salesman. Yet the myth of the independent entrepreneur and inventor remains strong in the United States where most of us believe in a version of history I like to call myth-story.
Edison, Ford, and Jobs all are titans in these myths.
But they are terrible individuals to emulate.
The problem with our economics is it is irrational. We have a copyright law that makes little sense, because it restricts economic activity. I don't advocate piracy, but the absurdity of having copyright extensions that go back to 1924 is patently clear (as patents clearly show--Lipitor is famously available as a generic this week--because patent law only protects owners for a couple of decades).
Apple's system is like the copyright laws. Its closed nature precludes innovation "outside the box". This is terrible for renewal, and offers a lousy model for those who live in the real world where turbulence and crashes in the stock market-- like tsunamis and earthquakes-- are part and parcel of what makes our planet the place it is.
How many times do we have to go through this? Apple negotiated and paid for what I believe were two visits. Xerox received pre-IPO stock. Hey, theVoiceOfReason, do you have original ideas yourself or do you troll web sites trying to promote whatever loser canard you can latch onto?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this" In that first year those who dared hack the phone to add features or to make it compatible with providers other than AT&T risked having it “bricked”—completely and permanently disabled— on the next automatic update from Apple. It was a far cry from the Apple II’s ethos, and it raised objections."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOf course there is always a chance that a phone where you're flashed the firmware or baseband won't upgrade correctly to a new version of the OS. That's also true of anyone doing the same on Android, for example by using CyanogenMod.
But there is absolutely no evidence whatever that Apple *intentionally* "bricked" jailbroken phones. What they have always done is close the security holes which allowed people to jailbreak their phones in the first place.
Even demigods have feet of clay; whether their shortcomings are sufficient to dethrone them must be left to the individual. FDR and JFK retain their crowns in spite of behavior that today would be, as the saying goes, "immediately disqualifying" in a prospective president.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJobs? Time will tell, although Apple fanitics are a dedicated bunch.
Oh, BTW...will I ever get Flash on my iPhone?