DRM, Apple and freedom in computing
I love free software. I’ve learnt my profession thanks to it. But it shouldn’t be mandated everywhere. In light of the recent iPad announcement by Apple, and the raging outcries it is causing, let me declare my appreciation for closed systems.
Everybody and their dog seems to be screaming from the rooftops that Apple is creating the death of freedom in computing. All because Apple has created an ecosystem where DRM is present at a few different levels. I call bullshit.
DRM is a joke. Everybody knows that, Apple first, they’ve had to deal with it for a while.
Nevertheless they persist in using it. Why? It’s all well and good to declare “Apple is evil”, but let’s look at the situation and where Apple is using DRM.
DRM in iTunes media from third-parties
Movies and TV series for example are still using DRM in the iTunes Store.
Wanna bet Apple would rather see those removed?
Technically minded people who would copy media between all sorts of devices can easily get this content, in many different ways, anyway. Apple makes a boatload of money thanks to the integrated experience they deliver with the iTunes Store, not because they are the sole providers of this content, because they are not. All DRMed media on the iTunes Store is available elsewhere, legally or not.
So all this DRM is good at is being an annoyance to Apple product users.
And if Apple can get rid of that annoyance, they do: never heard of iTunes Plus and its DRM-free format? Apple switched the entire iTunes Music Store to a non-DRM format as soon as the studios and labels agreed to it.
So, let’s be clear: the distributor, Apple, doesn’t impose the DRM, the content owner does. You can have your content distributed on the iTunes Music Store without DRM. Producers still don’t want to. Their fault.
The claims that iTunes users can’t enjoy the fine cultural piece that Twilight is because Apple loves DRM just doesn’t hold up. Apple does what it can, as we’ve seen with music, but you can’t expect all content providers, particularly the moguls of the cinema and tv industries to bend over easily. Since they are incapable of distributing digital content correctly, that’s the only way they have found to maintain an illusion of control. Blame them.
DRM in AppStore applications
As far as the AppStore goes, Apple has created the market and is the sole distributor. So they have a bigger stake in the whole thing, and they have made the choice to use DRM encryption on Applications.
Turns out this is a good thing for many reasons:
Easy access to applications
As a consumer, I have a one stop shop to get to the content (even though the AppStore is a bit messy). No one can set up a different store where I’d get applications from. There is no “source URL” to configure in my AppStore application. There is now “Where do you want to get Applications from?” question to answer. Good, there shouldn’t be. People want applications, they don’t want to make a choice about where to get them from.
Would you like to try and explain the concept of server to dozens of millions of people? People understand they can shop for groceries at one supermarket chain or another. Because they look different. On a computing device, we’d have the choice between having a separate application per store (well that sounds nice and easy to use…) or have one interface but ask the user “Where do you want to get Applications from?” (I can already hear the numerous “err… what the f*** does this mean?”)
I wonder how all the websites tracking the price changes on the AppStore would cope with multiple application distributors too. Let alone if any app could be hosted anywhere.
A better ecosystem
Only authorizing one store to distribute content means that there is no technical or functional complexity in managing content sources. How would you ensure the copy of Application X you’ve downloaded from some website hasn’t been modified to send your address book over to a not-so-privacy-conscious russian server? You couldn’t.
And this has even happened to big open source projects. Debian servers got hacked for example and modified packages were made available for everybody around the world to download unknowingly. Sure you could look at the contents of packages, it’s all wonderful open source content, but the point is when shit happens, you want to be able to limit the impact. The distributed Debian mirrors, under the control of many separate people, didn’t quite help in that respect.
Apple, as a business, can’t possibly afford that. Even if there was no direct financial impact and no one would sue them, their image as a trusted content distributor would suffer very very badly.
The agreements in place with carriers for the iPhone are also a pain. Misuse of the device can quickly turn into misuse of the network. As cool as it would be, you can’t allow bittorrent use on a cell network. And you can’t let anyone code an app that could send SMS by thousands. It’s been demonstrated already that jailbroken iPhones can be at risk of what is essentially a virus using the phone network. Centralising application distribution allows you to prevent this sort of stuff.
So if you distribute on the AppStore, you have to be identifiable, by consumers and by Apple, your Application gets a sanity check, and if approved but still fraudulent, one has to be able to pull the plug and make sure consumers can’t get it anymore.
It’s a pretty sane, and safe, ecosystem for the consumer.
No actual lockdown for developers
Further the market that was created was intended only for Apple devices. Therefore, nothing prohibits anyone from releasing their app on other platforms. Quite a few people have started publishing the same app on the Android Market, and even on gaming consoles.
If an App developer choses to only develop for the App Store, it’s his choice. Feel free to use someone elses software on another platform. Good on you for doing so.
No actual lockdown for consumers
Apple allows you to use apps on other devices, without re-purchasing them. Of course, this is only valid and useful for devices that can run these apps, meaning Apple devices.
If Samsung tomorrow allows you to create applications for its devices, does it mean you should by default be able to run those apps on a Sony camcorder?
And even if it could, it’d deliver a wonderfully shite user experience.
I can copy my music, applications and whatnot between Macs, from one iPhone to another and even to an iPad now. All this media and software can actually be run wherever it can physically run, without me having to re-purchase it.
Sure I can’t give it to a friend in a practical way. If it’s a free app, he can get it himself, and if it’s a paid app, he should buy it. Turns out software on the AppStore is ridiculously cheap and of much better quality than any other mobile software before.
In my mind: + 1 for developers, + 1 for consumers.
It’s all about the user
The implications of the Apple eco-system on software developers are either imaginary, or really needed for users.
There are a few things people could do with completely unrestricted software on Apple devices:
Modify applications for myself
You can get the source code of an app placed under free software, modify it and having Apple re-distribute it. It’s a tedious process, but not impossible. But who does that? Geeks. The programming kind of geeks.
And DRM being a useless piece of crap for geeks, they quickly do away with it and you end up with Cydia, and apt running.
So in the end, the people who are interested in using this aspect of free software, can still do it on Apple’s evily closed devices. It’s not official, it’s not supported, but that’s really not a problem.
Have access to the OS and it’s GUI to hack it to pieces
Let me tell you my opinion as a consumer of those products, and not as a pure techie: I thank Apple with the deepest of my heart for creating an environment which remains coherent and I can actually see non-techies use. Our operating systems that we use day to day are utter complete pieces of crap when it comes to user experience. They’re freaking unusable. There’s always something that breaks, doesn’t work, hangs, behaves differently. It’s awful. It’s why we, the almighty “knowledgeables”, keep being called by family and friends to “fix their computers”, which don’t have any hardware problems but are just running awful awful software. Sometimes, someone has to actually be made responsible so that a consistent vision drives a project and a coherent product gets created. Well Apple is in the business of creating experiences and they don’t want people to mess around with these experiences.
Thank. Freaking. God.
I hate computers. Let me re-phrase: I loathe them. A small part of this comes from non-ubiquitous hardware. But really most of it comes from software. Software is there as the means to accomplish things. Get shit done. And from the moment it starts being about the software itself, from the moment every software you use has “Tools”, “Options”, “Preferences”, contextual menus, multiple toolbars, endless configuration etc. we the software developers, have massively failed.
If you don’t think this is fair, I have two things for you:
First: have you ever built a web application? You should try. It’s pretty complex work, you have to deal with a thousand different things and concerns, from data privacy to getting stuff to display correctly in all browsers. The most ubiquitous development platform we currently have is bloody hard to work with. Alright, so you have your web application done, it’s shiny, awesome and useful. Ok, now be a true open-platform hero: give server access to your users. Go wild, make it root access. Enjoy the madness.
This is what letting anyone code anything for a platform means. Some dude is going to code something awful, and it might well be downloaded hundreds of thousands of times by other users. He will in effect, by distributing a dodgy app, impact the experience of all other users. And that would be fine if those users knew what they were in for. But with a consumer market device like a phone or a tablet, people have no clue how things work. They’ve had computers for 30 years and most still can’t get it. We have come to the realisation that most people who use software will never understand what it is, and we therefore have to keep the experience to what they understand. To achieve this correctly, we have to limit what third-party software can do.
So how do you go about it if you need to give your users some level of customisability in your web application? Well you define what this means exactly, define clear formats in which they can do that, and lock the rest completely. In short: you define APIs on top of which third-parties will build clients, that third-parties will use. And the more closely you keep these APIs to the tasks users of your application are supposed to accomplish, the better for everybody. You will have kept your user experience as consistent as possible.
And so Apple has APIs that let people extend the experience of the core software by creating applications. But the rest, the operating system, is locked down and protected with DRM. Good. No one needs to temper with it. And that DRM, like all DRM, will get cracked anyway, and that’s fine, Apple knows that. In reality, that DRM doesn’t prevent techies from doing whatever they want with their devices. Anyone who has had Apache running on their iPhone knows that. But what it does is make it clear that Apple does not caution tempering with the experience powered by its software. They won’t let you add some toolbar or menu entry or some other artifact visible by users, if it is not done in a controlled, usable way.
As a user, I thank them so much. And as a geek, I have a jailbroken iPhone.
Second: go somewhere else. Just fuck off. For all I know, Apple hasn’t chained you to its machines with a Kensington lock. So use something else that truly makes you happy. There are pretty cool things out there already. I value the user experience and all round shinyness just as much as technical flexibility in products I buy and use frequently. If you’d rather be able to hack on anything you put your paws on, then just use whatever allows you to do that, and shut up. Apple doesn’t own the world. If their approach to consumer computing is truly a danger, like the Free Software Foundation thinks, don’t you worry things will balance themselves out and alternatives will rise up and bring choice first then real competition. Don’t hold your breathe for any totally open alternative that brings you the same level of consistency than Apple products do. It really is my hope that devices similar to the iPad but based on Android will show up in the coming two years. It is also my belief that, from a UX point of view, they will suck balls. Pretty big balls at that. But hey, in the end, each to their own.
In conclusion
I love closed systems, for two reasons:
- they give the freedom to the one creating them to truly control the experience the system will deliver to its users.
- nothing is truly closed, DRM is lame and therefore formats layered with it are not really closed, people who don’t want the restrictions of DRM quickly find a way to circumvent them. And formats are really what matters.
DRM is a joke, get over it. The world is actually a better place with than without Apple. I’ll enjoy my iPad.