Jack Schafer on Apple’s iEcosystem

Slate’s Jack Schafer, a writer I admire very much, has written about the iPad, the iPhone, the App Store, and Apple’s very un-PC-like control over the entire system. His title, “Apple Wants to Own You,” kind of says it all. But here’s more:

Actually, the iPad and its silicon predecessors, the iPod Touch and iPhone, aren’t insane. What’s insane is the perimeter mines, tank traps, revetments, and glacis he’s deployed around these shiny devices to slow software developers to a crawl so he can funnel them through his rapacious toll booth and collect a sweet vig before he’ll let their programs run on your new iDevice.

[snip]

[The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It author Jonathan] Zittrain peppers his book with examples of “killer” applications that nobody could have imagined emerging from uncredentialed developers. A hobbyist in Tasmania wrote Trumpet Winsock, which allowed Windows PCs to access the Internet. A pair of students wrote the first graphical PC Internet browser in three months.

I’ve squawked frequently about both the overarching principles and specifics of the App Store myself. If the day comes when Apple lets apps get onto iPhones and iPods without insisting on being an intermediary, it’ll be a profoundly good thing. But I think anyone who rants about the current situation needs to address the following points:

Despite Apple’s restrictions and micromanaging, the iPhone has inspired far more creativity than any mobile platform before it. (Or if you wanna argue that third-party Android, say, exhibit more imagination than iPhone ones, be my guest–but make your case.)

Apple may take a thirty percent cut of the money people fork over for paid apps, but a substantial percentage of apps (including some of the best ones) are free. In those cases, Apple is subsidizing distribution, not serving as rapacious toll collector. (Yes, of course, it profits handsomely from the fact that all those free apps make the iPhone and iPad so compelling, but the embarrassment of free apps does interfere with any “Apple wants money every time you do something on its devices” theory.)

The App Store is rife with interesting products from uncredentialed developers who wrote programs to solve their own problems. Guys in basements. Teenagers. Other folks whose software found a wide audience quickly thanks in part to Apple making it easy for iPhone and iPad users to find it.

Shafer says that anyone who thinks that “Apple’s rules are more about blunting competitors and creating a prudish atmosphere guaranteed to offend nobody than they are about throttling viruses and improving the user experience” is “a captive of Steve Jobs’ reality-distortion field.” Maybe so. But with the possible exception of a BlackBerry–and setting aside AT&T issues for the moment–the iPhone is the only smartphone I’ve ever owned that I can actually count on to work. (I can’t say that about my Droid.) I don’t think people who find the iPhone’s stability to be a major plus are dupes.

Like I say, I’m no Apple apologist. (Every time I think of its refusal to approve the Google Voice app–without ever quite rejecting it–my blood pressure rises.) But Schafer’s piece, like some of the ones he applauds, doesn’t ever address the reality of the iEcosystem as evidenced by the apps and services that exist for it. It’s simply not that dystopian. And while I continue to believe that openness will eventually prevail over closed systems, the iPhone’s more open rivals have yet to prove they can provide a better experience than Apple’s semi-walled garden.

Glympse Lets You Share Your Location on Facebook

Glympse is a clever app for iPhone, Android, and Windows Mobile that lets you temporarily share your location via dynamically-updated maps that show where you are–but only for as long as you want them to. Until now, the obvious application for the services has been to alert family members, friends, and coworkers to your whereabouts–maybe because you’re on your way to meet them somewhere and might be late.

Now Glympse has added a nifty bit of Facebook Connect integration that lets you embed a Glympse map in your Facebook wall. You can choose to make it either a one-time indication of your location–which Glympse describes as being similar to a Foursquare check-in, although it seems only vaguely related to me–or an auto-updating map that shows your travels for up to four hours. (That restriction is in place so you don’t forget and let Glympse reveal your wanderings to the world without your knowledge.)

The Facebook integration makes Glympses a bit more public, and therefore a fun way to share vacations or other interesting travel. But I like the granularity of the control Glympse gives you: When you set up Facebook on your phone, you can set your Glympses to be shared with just friends, friends of friends, everyone, or several other settings–including “Just Myself.”

After the jump, a few images.

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Apple-AMD Rumor

AMD CPUs inside Apple computers? I’ll believe it when I see it. Even if the two companies are talking, it doesn’t mean much. (Wouldn’t Apple be nuts not to explore its processor options from time to time, especially when it’s negotiating future plans with Intel?) I’d love to see it happen, though–if nothing else it would be an entertaining news story to cover…

Volkswagen’s Autonomous Car: Drivers Unneccesary

On Thursday afternoon, I went for a very short ride–maybe forty yards–in the back seat of a diesel Volkswagen Passat. Here’s why I’m writing about it on a site called Technologizer: The car had no driver. I was attending the formal dedication of the Volkswagen Automotive Innovation Lab (VAIL) at Stanford University–complete with a ceremonial ribbon cutting by German Chancellor Angela Merkel. The car in question was Junior 3, a collaborative effort between VW and Stanford researchers.

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No More Free Ning Networks

Ning, the service that lets anybody create a social network on any topic, is undergoing some big changes. The company, which hosts 2.3 million social networks, says that it will shut down its free version and require network creators to either switch to a paid plan or leave Ning. It’s also laying off forty percent of its staff.

Back in 2007, Ning cofounder and chairman Marc Andreessen visited PCWorld (where I worked at the time) and explained how Ning would be able to cover the costs of free networks through advertising. I liked the idea, and hey, he’s Marc Andreeseen, so I bought the idea. Here’s cofounder Gina Bianchini making the same case in a 2008 Cnet video. But it looks like the strategy didn’t pan out.

When we chatted with Andreesseen, he was also passionate about the fact that Ning let network owners tinker with their network’s source code–but Ning eventually shut off that feature in favor of letting users install apps on their networks.

It’s yet the latest evidence that it’s dangerous to assume that free services will be around forever, at least as free services. I wonder how many Ning networks will convert to paid services, how many will move elsewhere, and how many will just go away?

Technologizer has a Ning network–but not one that’s very active or inspiring. That’s at least partially our fault, for not promoting it more aggressively. Mostly, though, we discovered that the social side of Technologizer was going on in article comments as well as on Twitter and Facebook. Even though we’re already paying Ning customers, we may quietly close down our presence  there at some point–let us know if you think that’s a lousy idea. But I’m still a fan of the idea, as expressed both at Ning and its competitor SocialGo (which already focused on paid services).

Verizon Gets Another Droid. And It’s Incredible!

There’s the Droid. And the Droid Eris. And now there’s the Droid Incredible, a new Verizon Wireless Android-based handset made by HTC.   It’s got a 1-GHz Snapdragon processor, a 3.7″ OLED display, an 8MP camera, and Android 2.1 with HTC’s Sense user interface. The Incredible is $199 after $100 rebate with two-year contract–just like the Droid was when it shipped last November. (Actually, the Droid is still officially $199, but for most of its life Verizon has had 2-for-1 deals and other incentives–and other sellers have had the phone for as little as $50.)

As long as you don’t want a physical keyboard, the Incredible is clearly the new flagship of the Droid line. And, on paper at least, maybe the Android handset to beat for the time being–although new Android phones arrive so quickly that it could well lose that honor shortly after it ships on April 29th.

The Bay Area, incidentally, is still rife with “Droid Does” billboards–although the new ones focus on apps, so the message is presumably less that the Droid trumps the iPhone than that it’s not completely uncompetitive. The fact that there’s a plain-old Droid as well as an Eris and an Incredible is kind of confusing–I assume that future advertising extravaganzas are more likely to focus on the sexy Incredible than the aging–hey, it’s been out for five months!–Droid.

Song Lyrics Site Serves Up Java Attack Code

Popular lyrics site Songlyrics.com was discovered to be delivering attack code which could open up visitors to remote code execution attacks, several news outlets reported Thursday. The exploit was discovered by researcher Tavis Ormandy last week and reported. Songlyrics.com has taken action to remove the offending code from its website.

Ormandy and partner Ruben Santamarta said it was easy to exploit the issue, and AVG researcher Roger Thompson has called upon Oracle to patch the issue as soon as possible. However, according to the Register, the company has neither answered their requests for comment, nor confirmed the exploit exists at all.

Needed: Tweetie for Android

I’m still at Twitter’s Chirp conference, where Cofounder Ev Williams told a questioner In the audience that there will be an official Twitter client for phones based on Google’s Android operating system. He wouldn’t say if the company I’d building a new or will acquire an existing app. But he said they’d hoped to have been ready to announce the details at Chirp but fell short, so I assume it’s not too far off.

And I know what I think Twitter should do: it should bring Tweetie–er, Twitter for iPhone–to Android. The application which Twitter bought last week has just about everything about doing Twitter on a phone figured out perfectly. Why build or buy something else for Android that almost certainly wouldn’t be nearly as good? Shouldn’t the mobile Twitter experience be consistent across all phone platforms?

Time to Play Some Original Xbox

As promised, Microsoft will shut down Xbox Live support for the original Xbox at midnight Pacific time, so this is your last chance to play any of your favorite online games from the previous generation.

I’ve pulled out all the online-enabled Xbox games in my library, and while in all honesty I’d rather be playing something newer (and should actually be finishing up my taxes instead), I’ll probably run through all the games for old time’s sake. I’m mostly curious to see if anyone’s still enjoying Doom 3, or whether any players of Mortal Kombat Deception are bad enough to at least let me win a round.

Also, if you fire up Halo 2 today, Bungie says you’ll get “a piece of visual flair” to be used in multiplayer for the upcoming Halo: Reach, and the developer is giving away prizes as well. You’ll also apparently see some funky messages while waiting for games to begin.

Microsoft isn’t doing anything special to say goodbye to the previous console, and that’s okay. But soon after service shuts down, the company should offer more details on what players stand to gain. Microsoft said in February that it needs to make changes to Xbox Live that are incompatible with original Xbox games, without giving specifics.

With online play for original Xbox shutting down, the time for answers is now. The 100-person cap on friends lists will probably be lifted, as that was apparently a technical limitation of the original Xbox, but I hope that won’t be the only benefit for Xbox 360 owners. Not all of us are popular enough to say the trade off is justified.

I’m Not Sure if I Follow Google Follow Finder

Good grief, more Twitter-Google news from the Chirp conference! Google has launched something called Google Follow Finder, a tool designed to help you identify Twitter users you might enjoy following. Enter your Twitter handle, and it’ll list people who tend to be followed by followers of people you follow–I think I have that wording right–as well as people who follow the same people you do.

Unfortunately, Google Follow Finder may be too good at identifying folks you should be following. I’m not sure if my experience was typical, but when I tried it, it looked as if it made no attempt to determine whether I was already following anyone it mentioned. Consequently, the vast majority of recommendations it made were for accounts that already rank among my favorites (actually, eighty percent or so were personal friends, colleagues, and acquaintances).

As Google’s blog post on Follow Finder notes, you can also enter names of Twitter users besides yourself–ones you already know you like–and find new people to follow that way. But the venerable Mr. Tweet, which has a similar mission, seems to be much better at analyzing your own Twitter data and telling you about people you don’t already know you like.

If you try the service and have better results than I did, let me know…

Twitter’s Big News Day

I’m at Twitter’s Chirp conference at San Francisco’s Palace of Fine Arts, in an auditorium crammed to the rafters with Twitter developers and other interested parties. The mood seems slightly subdued–maybe folks are concerned over Twitter’s encroachment into areas traditionally left to third-party companies–but there’s lots of news. Such as…

The Library of Congress is archiving every tweet ever tweeted. As much as I love Twitter, my impulse was to be jokey and dimissive–”what’s next, YouTube comments?”–but as I think it over, I’m glad it’s doing so. There’s an awful lot of our digital heritage that’s already gone, and it’s better to err on the side of saving everything than to let interesting stuff (like the most significant tweets) slip away. (The announcement doesn’t, however, explain precisely how people will be able to get access to these tweets, or find the ones that anyone will care about in, say, 2047.)

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Three Neat New Windows Tools (and Free Coffee)

Bring a reusable travel mug into your local Starbucks on April 15th, and you’ll get a free brewed coffee. Two things I’ll guarantee: The lines will be long and the baristas won’t be perky. And I’ll bet they’ll try to pawn off a cup of their insipid Pike Place brew on you. (Me, I still prefer Peets…) [Thanks, Tom.]

Shaky Videos? Here’s a Free Fix

We’ve all done it (or at least I have): Clicked the video button on the digital camera hoping for a quick, 60-second oooh and ahhhh video. What we end up with is something shaky, jiggly, and not-so-terrific.

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No iPads For the Rest of the World

Apple says the iPad is selling so well in the U.S. that it’s had to delay the international release by a month, until late May.

Skyfire Eyes the iPhone

Mobile browser maker Skyfire is congratulating rival Opera for the arrival of Opera Mini on the iPhone App Store–and saying that it wants to put its browser on the iPhone (and, it sounds like, the iPad). Which is interesting not only because it’s a neat product, but because it could put Flash sites on the iPhone without putting Flash on the iPhone–like Mini, Skyfire caches and compresses sites on the server, but it goes further by transmitting everything–including Flash video, audio, and interactivity–to the phone.

Wonder how Apple (not to mention Adobe) would feel about that?

Blockbuster’s Still Working On Those Game Rentals

I had a touch of déjà vu today after reading that Blockbuster is testing a mail-order video game rental program in Cleveland, with plans for a nationwide rollout before year-end. That’s because 14 months ago, Blockbuster was telling essentially the same story.

It’s not clear what happened. Did the pilot program die and come back to life, or is testing just taking a lot longer than planned? Whatever the case, you still have to be a mail-order movie subscriber to rent games, but the pricing has changed. It’s now $7.99 plus tax for every month you rent a game, instead of $5. You can only rent one game at a time, and it counts towards your allotted number of movie rentals.

Blockbuster’s plan would be more enticing if you could take out games from the store, but only exchanges are allowed, and they cost $4.99 for each new game you take out (exchanges for movies cost less, depending on your rental plan). I’m guessing Blockbuster’s financial troubles make it harder to offer big bargains.

Looking over my coverage from February 2009, it’s funny how I said it would take significant savings to pull me away from GameFly. Cut to the present, and I’m thinking about ditching mail-order game rentals altogether. Too often, I’ve tried to get the newest releases from GameFly, and waited weeks for availability. Even months-old games take a little while to ship.

Mail-order game rentals don’t work when you’re trying to play the next big thing. There are only a few top-tier games that come out every month, and everybody wants them. Rarely is there an off-the-beaten-path game (like the equivalent of an art-house flick) that no one’s waiting for, so you stand in line with everyone else. Unless Blockbuster figures out a solution to that problem, its system won’t fare much better than the competition.

Why Do You Buy New Computers?

Apple announced upgrades to its MacBook Pro notebooks today. As someone who bought a 15-inch MacBook Pro in 2009, I had the usual conflicted feelings about the news. Yes, I’m in favor of technological process, and it’s good to hear about worthwhile new products I might want to buy or recommend someday. But learning that something you bought fairly recently has been trumped by something radically better is never a great feeling–even though it’s one that you will have, repeatedly, if you buy tech products.

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