Apple and Piracy

If you know me, you know I have always been anti-apple.  But the cellphone market being the way it is (complete shit), I gave in and tried an ipod touch.  How can I properly hate something if I don't know anything about it?

Apple has developed an interesting mobile OS.  From the user's perspective there are no files at all.  Only apps.

Picture apps contain pictures.  Music apps contain music.  Movie apps contain movies.  If you delete the app, you also delete all the music or movies that app contained.

This is of course why the itunes software exists and is necessary.  The only way to install "files" on the device like music or movies is to use the critical itunes software.

Otherwise, files cannot be shared between apps.  Downloaded files cannot be viewed unless the browser is capable of viewing them.

It's a genius method for combating piracy.  After all, how can end users share files with each other if they don't even know where the files are, or if there even are files, or what a file even is.

This basically takes what is essentially a computer and turns it into an appliance.  A very slick, silky-smooth and snappy appliance. And most people can't tell the difference.

Appliances are closed.  Appliances do only what they are designed to do, rather than what they can do.  If the Apollo LEM was made by apple it would have been much better than the real LEM at landing on the moon and all the Apollo 13 astronauts would have died.

How can this disparity  exist between full-fledged PCs and mobiles?  Because the mobile market is so closely tied into the oligopoly of nationwide networks and because the mobile market completely crushed the UMPC market.

Nationwide networks demand draconian control over their handsets and nobody makes UMPCs without cellular radios like the Nokia N800 anymore.

As a result we have no UMPC market and a crummy mobile market just as the technology became good enough to give us awesome devices.  Maybe that's the problem... all this fabulous mobile tech is still too new.  It's been 5-6 years since apple and android took over the markets from nokia.  I say it's time for a rebellion.

I want a UMPC, not a smartphone!