Zittrain's opinion piece "A Fight for Freedom at Apple's Core" in the Financial Times (February 3rd, 2010) caught my eye.
It's worth reading, but I think it is largely wrong, partly because Zittrain does not make it clear what kind of freedom he is talking about, but also because he gets so many facts wrong.
Zittrain's argument seems to be that Apple used to be open but is now closed. That the freedom that was present for the original Apple computer has disappeared for the iPhone (and presumably, the iPad).
In reality, the iPhone is closed in some respects and open in others. Zittrain's opening statements, that the original Apple computer allowed you to write software, is true - but fundamentally misleading. The iPhone does too.
Sure, the iPhone doesn't boot up to a BASIC prompt, but that's because it's a phone (and media player, email device and much more). But if you want to write software for it, you can. And you can do this freely: Apple make the tools and SDK available at no cost; with these tools you can write fully fledged iPhone applications.
This makes the iPhone much more open than the early Macintosh computers. If you wanted to develop software for these, you needed to buy tools from Apple or third parties. This was sufficiently expensive that it could rule out casual software development for the Macintosh by amateurs.
Apple seems to have learned from this. They now make a rich set of software development tools available for the Macintosh and the iPhone. Both are accompanied by good documentation. And it all costs nothing; you can download them now.
What's changed with the iPhone, is that Apple now provides an online store for the sale and distribution of applications. Apple decides what is allowed in the store. This makes Apple, as Zittrain says, the "gatekeeper". But it also provides advantages: small-time software developers now have a global route to market and a means of being paid for their wares. And iPhone users have an easy means of finding software that (mostly) works and which they can pay for safely too.
So while Apple does exercise some control on the primary means of commercial distribution, it is not altogether a bad thing. Look at the figures: there are a huge number of applications now available and being downloaded from the App store (over 130,000 and 3 billion respectively, according to Wikipedia)
Users of the iPhone "No longer own or control the apps they run" writes Zittrain. What does he mean?
Users "own" the software they buy from the App Store as much as they "own" any software under a commercial license agreement. If you've read one of these (does anyone? Even Zittrain?) you will have noticed that they almost always tell you that you do not own the software. Instead, you own a CDROM (assuming you have any physical asset at all) and have bought limited rights to use the software under particular circumstances. Along the way, you will probably have agreed that the software need not work and that you indemnify the company that licenses the software completely against any damage the software might do.
And what on earth does Zittrain mean by "control"? I have no idea, and he does not say.
Nor is it true that customers of the App Store "rent [the applications] minute by minute." No they don't. Where does this stuff come from?
"Hope lies in more balanced combinations of open and closed systems," according to Zittrain, implying that the Apple scheme is unbalanced and therefore bad without really having provided convincing evidence for either.
What is the right balance? One that delivers the most benefit to the greatest number of customers. That market is world has changed a great deal from the time of the early personal computer. The vast majority of personal computer and smartphone buyers will not write any software. They are buying a tool and they want it to work.
I think there are some interesting analogies with the motor industry. Early owners of motor cars could reasonably expect to have to be an expert mechanic, to understand how the car worked, effect their own repairs and perhaps make their own modifications. The modern car is a "closed" system. Sure, you can find places that will let you download new software for the ECU, and there are keen hobbyists who tweak things, strip the engine, change the exhaust, buy different wheels, spoilers and so on.
It seems to me perfectly reasonable that computers and smart phones will go the same way, at least for the majority of users. Computer hobbyists will persist, happily downloading device drivers from random sites on the Internet and debating the performance of different motherboards. But that is not what interests most users. The change will take a while, but it is coming, and coming faster in the smartphone world than it has with conventional personal computers.
As seamless user experiences go, the iPhone is a great example of how things can be done, and of how successful they can be in the marketplace.
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