Mostly benign monarchies may seem very attractive at first glance, but over time abuse of power is inevitable and then it's too late.
I've changed my focus from iOS to web because of Apple's policies.
Bingo!
I leaned that way before as well. recent events just reinforced my decision to do the same. i've got one iOS native app in the pipeline for a startup client now. but it will hopefully be my last. there are just too many business ideas, too many features and experiences I can deliver quite satisfactorily as a desktop-friendly & mobile-friendly website, or on Android, to have to put up with this Nazi behavior on Apple's part anymore. i demand the ability to have whatever features I want, whatever content I want, do billing however I want, design my UI whatever way I think best, use whatever tools I want, and make new releases when and how I want, with no more bureaucracy, rituals or dumbass XCode quirks and mole-whacking. No more.
Comparing this situation to monarchies and abuses of power is stupid. It's just an in-app subscription model for a mobile OS that nobody is being forced to use.
Yes, people can go elsewhere. And I think that's precisely what will happen. Apple has had the lead in mobile app development as a platform up until now, but their restrictive and short-sighted rules and policies may very well sap much of that momentum.
Music on iOS devices isn't DRMed and hasn't been for some time. If your new device can't play m4a files this is a separate issue and you can transcode them just like if you had a pile of drm-free WMAs.
Apps are DRMed but even if they weren't it'd be irrelevant unless a WINE-analogue for iOS came about (and consider the time-scale this would take and performance issues, etc. UIKit is non-trivial). I can't move an Android app onto my iPhone either, despite its lack of DRM, and whether the blocker is legal or technical is irrelevant. The real problem isn't that a user can't move their 99c iOS whatever-app to their new android phone, it's that they can't find or don't know how to find or can't be bothered finding equivalent app(s) for their new phone. Leaving aside the whole question of relative top-tier application quality on the platforms.
Movies, I don't know the behaviour here. Do people collect big libraries of apple DRM-ed movies, enough to keep them stuck to a phone? TV episodes I could see, but those strike me as more disposable in any case.
What is the 'etc' in "music, movies, apps, etc"? It's not your photos. It's not your emails. It's not your calendars or your contacts. It's not even the data saved in your applications - there's a trivial API now for transferring files from an application to your desktop via iTunes; if you can't export the data from your favourite applications to transfer to a different platform, that's on the application developers, not Apple.
I suppose it could be your alarms, preferred weather cities and stocks app choices. Or your SMS database, which I bet most people don't even consider as something that should easily transfer from phone to phone (though obviously it should).
> I suppose it could be your alarms, preferred weather cities and stocks app choices. Or your SMS database, which I bet most people don't even consider as something that should easily transfer from phone to phone (though obviously it should).
Absolutely. However, those things aren't huge. Different platforms have equivelants anyway. If I go from iOS to Android (or the other way around), I have plenty to take the place of those. Setting them up again may take a little time, but not much.
I wouldn't even say that. I'd say "Apple focuses on making their services and goods work together painlessly." Being incompatible with other things is not the goal but it does end up being the end result some of the time. It's a subtle but important distinction.
Yes, a lot of the time it is. Apple went out of their way to prevent the ipod working with non-itunes software, they also went out of their way to make itunes music streaming over the network incompatible with other software.
That's actually Apple's fault too. There is an Android runtime for iOS (http://www.xmlvm.org/android/). However, as far as I understand Apple's store rules, such a runtime must not be used for applications.
If an actual Java runtime was made though, that would be banned.
> Not to mention the fact that users have built up libraries of dozens of applications and DRM-laden content that won’t transfer between devices.
What you say is (emphasis added):
> The article makes another great point about people not being able to leave iOS devices for a competitor because all their music, movies, apps, etc are in Apple's DRM format and won't transfer to other devices.
Music is DRM-free on iTunes and has been for some time. TV shows and movies are another matter and have other issues (such as only one download), which is why I won't buy them from there.
But it's not Apple demanding DRM. It's the content producers, who are still until the woeful delusion that DRM prevents copying. In reality it simply annoys customers. The only reason music is DRM-free on iTunes is because Apple extracted that concession as part of a deal that gave the RIAA three pricing bands for songs ($0.69, $0.99 and $1.29, which basically means $1.29 for anything new) over the previous model, which was $0.99 for everything.
I'm not sure I see your point
Apple music = Amazon music = DRM free
Apple iBooks = Amazon Kindle books = incl DRM
Apple movies = Netflix = everyone else = incl DRM
Correct.
Apple iBooks = Amazon Kindle books = incl DRM
Apple movies = Netflix = everyone else = incl DRM
Less correct. Kindle and Netflix have DRM, but they don't have the platform lock-in of iBooks and movies. iBooks, as far as I know, is only available on iOS. DRM is bad, but DRM that's tied to a smaller range of platforms is even worse.
2) Amazon's VOD service provides DRMed video, too.
Then what's the issue?
That's the problem. The DRM locks it to Apple only software and/or hardware.
So yeah, the DRM is still there, but if you're not happy with the way Samsung is doing things, you can hop to LG or Sony just as easily.
Compare with Apple where if you bought video content on iTunes and don't like the AppleTV... well... tough.
whoa. first time I heard this. if this is true, it's probably straws[final+5] for me. goodbye native iOS app development, hello mobile multi-platform web apps and Android apps.
The article makes another great point about people not being able to leave iOS devices for a competitor because all their music, movies, apps, etc are in Apple's DRM format and won't transfer to other devices.
Apple deserves to have control over their own platform, but this is getting a little crazy. The extra fee wouldn't be so bad if developers could increase fees through apps to offset it, but Apple is forcing them into a horrible position. They can't say the reason for higher prices is Apple charging them. They have to eat that cost for the customer and aren't even allowed to post links to their site in the app anymore.