Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears…
Do not be deceived by Apple’s new iPad, for it is hardly revolutionary, instead this device serves as a blatent declaration of war against software developers everywhere. Hidden inside this trojan horse is the next twenty years of computing development in which we could very well witness a world where major computing firms such as Microsoft and Apple could be in control of the entire application development process from beginning to end. Imagine if you will, a world where a developer has to pay, through yearly licensing, to write software for computers and it be required for your application to even be considered. Assuming developers did pay, their applications must be submitted to Apple for review. Guidelines established by Apple would serve as a “legalized” form of censorship. Apple will claim they have rid the world of piracy through peer review, but as we watched in Equilibrium, Apple would also banish any form of artistic expression which does not carry a viewpoint other than that of their own.
This is a very dark time indeed. Apple doesn’t plan to revolutionize the computer. They plan to turn the computer into a futuristic ad vehicle.
There is a great thread going on right now. I highly recommend all those who care about the openess of computing development to contribute to it. If Apple wants a war, they’ve come looking in the right place.