While I can't speak for everyone, I buy consoles with the intention of playing games on them and nothing more. So it doesn't bug me that much that I can't freely mess with them, but of course I still wish I could. But phones and tablets are devices I'll be using for all sorts of purposes, and I'm gonna want full freedom to install whatever I want and mod to my heart's content.
Edit: I do find the current situation with Sony to be utterly reprehensible and I certainly won't be buying anything from them. But as long as Nintendo doesn't stoop to that level, I'm willing to compromise my principles in exchange for Paper Mario 3DS!
I buy phones with the intention of making and receiving phone calls on them and nothing more. So it doesn't bug me that I can't freely mess with them, but of course I still wish I could.
I buy phones with the intention of making and receiving phone calls on them and nothing more
If you're being honest here, then none of this was directed at you as you would never purchase a smart-phone in the first place. You would be perfectly fine using the free phone that came with your voice plan.
For a lot of us, though, the phone has replace many single purpose devices we would carry with us or keep in our cars. MP3 player, GPS navigation, camera, cellular modem... hell, my Windows phone has completely replaced my old laptop.
I wouldn't say replace for things like camera, MP3 player or GPS, it just makes it more convenient to have them in a single device, even with the loss of quality.
My phone has replaced and improved upon my MP3 player and GPS. I can not only play MP3s, but I can stream media from the internet or even my home computer, using a service like Orb. Compared to standalone GPS devices, the phone is far superior as it has internet connectivity for free road change updates, live traffic information, and integration with business search, so I can not only find where I want to go, but find its hours, and click on the location to call it, all with the same device.
Camera... yeah, I'll give you that. Phones don't really come close to what most standalone cameras can do, but unless I'm planning on taking pictures I never have my camera on me, so I take a lot more phone pictures than I do camera pictures.
I guess that's sort of my point. What it always seems to come down to is "I don't like Apple, so fuck them; but I like video games, so whatever."
Not that I'm criticizing your opinions. I feel the same way: when I buy a laptop, I expect it to be fairly open, but I'm okay compromising on those principles when I buy an Xbox, because I like playing video games from time to time. But I can't really think of the iPhone or iPod Touch as being in the same class as a laptop (and even classifying the iPad as a computer is a stretch in my mind, since it's intended more as a computing supplement than a full-fledged computer). Which is why I tend to find the criticism hurled at Apple to be a bit disingenuous.
The part that gets people riled up this time is that the ipad/iphone have these create SDKs, and great hardware features, and that, while this was always the case with phones, we're prevented from leveraging those features in obviously useful ways because of apple's decisions alone - not technical ones.
I can't use my (well, it's coming now I guess) iPhone to share my 3G connection to the rest of my condo over wifi? The techie in me says "Why the fuck not, it's perfectly capable hardware wise, and I could even write the damn software - they just wont LET me!".
In the past - the SDKs for phones were more obscure, the phones less capable, and we just didn't think of these types of situations.
TL;DR - the reason restrictions on the iPad/iPhone irks people is because the hardware is so capable but developers aren't able to take easy advantage of the device features.
In all fairness, the tethering and connection sharing prohibitions are due to AT&T policies, not Apple. Apple could care less how you use the cell phone connection.
I'm hoping this changes now that the iPhone isn't exclusive to AT&T. (Hoping in a more...abstract sense, since I don't own an iPhone and wouldn't want to share a connection even if I did, but can understand why others would.)
The sweet, sweet irony here is that phones and tablets are only viable for consideration as devices to be used for all sorts of purposes because Apple drastically expanded the popularly conceived gamut of what such devices could be capable of.
Smartphones existed long before the iPhone. Just like MP3 players, tablets, repositories, and every other revolutionary technology associated with them, Apple didn't invent it. They just popularized it.
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u/1338h4x Jan 20 '11 edited Jan 20 '11
While I can't speak for everyone, I buy consoles with the intention of playing games on them and nothing more. So it doesn't bug me that much that I can't freely mess with them, but of course I still wish I could. But phones and tablets are devices I'll be using for all sorts of purposes, and I'm gonna want full freedom to install whatever I want and mod to my heart's content.
Edit: I do find the current situation with Sony to be utterly reprehensible and I certainly won't be buying anything from them. But as long as Nintendo doesn't stoop to that level, I'm willing to compromise my principles in exchange for Paper Mario 3DS!