Archive for the 'autonomy' Category
Posted: Saturday, June 5th, 2010 @ 8:29 pm in autonomy, privacy, web | View Comments
The web browser has become the universal trusted client. That can be good: users can mostly rely on their browsers to isolate their banking site from the other web sites they visit. It can also be bad for users’ freedom: Facebook can encourage the world to add “Like” buttons everywhere, and suddenly users are being [...]
Posted: Thursday, April 29th, 2010 @ 12:52 pm in autonomy | View Comments
Steve Jobs is a genius for many reasons, but one reason that may be under-appreciated is his unparalleled ability to convince users that he’s locking them into his platforms for their own good. Consider Jobs’s latest letter explaining why he won’t accept Flash on the iPhone/iPad. Most of the letter is right on: Adobe’s Flash [...]
Posted: Wednesday, April 7th, 2010 @ 10:31 pm in autonomy | View Comments
I told myself I wouldn’t write about the iPad anymore, but I have to. Nick Carr has joined the John Gruber club, by calling us Luddites: What these folks are ranting against, or at least gnashing their teeth over, is progress – or, more precisely, progress that goes down a path they don’t approve of. [...]
Posted: Monday, April 5th, 2010 @ 5:23 pm in autonomy, security | View Comments
An interesting thing happened with the Apple AppStore this weekend: This weekend, as hundreds of thousands of people explored their iPads [...] they found [...] an application called Facebook Ultimate, featuring a sleek version of the familiar ‘f’ logo. The application quickly rose through the ranks to become one of the App Store’s top selling [...]
Posted: Saturday, April 3rd, 2010 @ 10:32 am in autonomy, policy | View Comments
Many folks, like John Gruber, are responding to criticisms of the iPad’s closed ecosystem with the “it’s a tradeoff” idea: to have such a great computer, you need to lock it down. Some use the argument that Linux has never conquered the desktop, so there, open is incompatible with good usability (I’m looking at you [...]
Posted: Friday, April 2nd, 2010 @ 2:04 pm in autonomy, personal, policy | View Comments
Ben Fry recently explained his concerns about the iPad: I want to build software for this thing. I’m really excited about the idea of a touch-screen computing platform that’s available for general use from a known brand who has successfully marketed unfamiliar devices to a wide audience. [..] It represents an incredible opportunity, but I [...]
Posted: Wednesday, March 31st, 2010 @ 6:43 pm in autonomy, policy, web | View Comments
I had an invigorating and thought-provoking chat with my good friend Oliver Roup today. We agreed that the Apple iPad is going to be an unbelievable success. I’ve thought from day one that it would be huge, but I think it will be bigger than huge. Before the end of the summer, millions of people [...]
Posted: Saturday, December 26th, 2009 @ 8:31 pm in autonomy, policy | View Comments
Why a prediction? Eh, cause it’s fun and cause I think the Apple Tablet will have a large impact on consumer computing. I think Apple will launch a tablet computer in January that will be aimed at saving TV and print journalism. On-demand video and on-demand print magazines and newspapers will be at the forefront. [...]
Posted: Sunday, August 30th, 2009 @ 3:06 pm in autonomy, policy | View Comments
My friends and colleagues might soon wonder if they’re witnessing a kind of metamorphosis in me lately: what’s with the Apple criticism, Ben the Apple Fanboy? It’s true, I work exclusively on Macs (often with Linux running inside VMware for development), and I’ve converted many family and friends to Macs. I use the original iPhone. [...]
Posted: Tuesday, July 21st, 2009 @ 11:20 am in autonomy | View Comments
As much as DRM bothers me, I’ve tolerated some implementations of it, specifically Apple iTunes, Apple’s iPhone App Store, and the Amazon Kindle, because I’ve gotten more value than pain out of them. And, usually, the DRM didn’t get in the way. But the slippery slope of DRM has reached a dangerous point with the [...]