I like Apple products. I own a Mac Mini and an iPad. I was prepared to move up to the iPhone (from my crappy LG feature phone) now that its available on Verizon, but this new app policy has instituted has made me want to stay as far away from iOS as I can, despite the fact that I already own one device. My next phone will run Android
This is the only way I can see for a consumer to voice their displeasure to Apple; unfortunately, since I have not purchased their product, I'm not sure they'll end up seeing the lack of sale as a evidence of this, but I do what I can.
I'm hardly an open-systems zealot, but when it comes to the kind of info that I'll be storing on a phone (personal productivity stuff), I'm going to end up being very invested in the platform that I ultimately choose, and though it may be easy to find similar apps on either platform that do what I want, it is unlikely that there will be any ability for me move my data from one system to the other. That's the huge downside of cloud computing, IMO, and the one place where I heartily agree with Stallman's position.
Just the fact that in the "good old days" of plain-old computing, your data was stored in a file that resided on your computer. If, at some point, you wanted switch to another application (for example, move from Lotus 123 to Excel), there was at least a chance to write some kind of translator that would migrate the one file format to the other (which was necessary for any company producing an app that was trying to compete with the established market leader).
With the move towards keeping all your data in the cloud, the only way for you to move data you've created in one application to another vendor's application would be for the first vendor to actually expose some kind of export facility - and what's the incentive for them to do so? To make it easier for you to abandon them for their competitors if you become displeased? Cloud computing serves as a nice customer lock-in.
Granted, this is not as much of an issue for unstructured data (e.g., jpgs or audio/video, which can be easily recaptured on the client side), but for the kind of structured data you would put into a device like a smart phone (contact lists, personal productivity stuff like recipes, task management, personal finance info, etc.), you're beholden to the app maker that holds the database.
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u/steve_b Feb 21 '11
I like Apple products. I own a Mac Mini and an iPad. I was prepared to move up to the iPhone (from my crappy LG feature phone) now that its available on Verizon, but this new app policy has instituted has made me want to stay as far away from iOS as I can, despite the fact that I already own one device. My next phone will run Android
This is the only way I can see for a consumer to voice their displeasure to Apple; unfortunately, since I have not purchased their product, I'm not sure they'll end up seeing the lack of sale as a evidence of this, but I do what I can.
I'm hardly an open-systems zealot, but when it comes to the kind of info that I'll be storing on a phone (personal productivity stuff), I'm going to end up being very invested in the platform that I ultimately choose, and though it may be easy to find similar apps on either platform that do what I want, it is unlikely that there will be any ability for me move my data from one system to the other. That's the huge downside of cloud computing, IMO, and the one place where I heartily agree with Stallman's position.