Locking users out their computers will relegate Apple back to the trash bin of obscurity again

Steve Jobs closed world is doomed

Open Systems are good. Closed systems are bad. That is the only mantra of computing I know.

Apple’s Steve Jobs has always wanted to rape and pillage the world with his design to enrich his wallet. The whole Apple thing about being unique and Job’s years in the wilderness with NeXT was about his singular desire to own you and me. He’s a certified megalomaniac who made people rich.

Cool Apple iPad arrives in Canada

Last week we learned that Jobs is not allowing developers for iPhone 4 OS (which eventually will become iPad 4 OS) to recompile their applications from Adobe Flash to the iPhone. Adobe’s evangelist wrote a hearty Hey Apple Screw You blog.

Despite needing Adobe Photoshop for all it’s core market – artists who use Photoshop, Illustrator and Premiere on their Macs – Steve Jobs is trying to squeeze Adobe out of his universe and yours. I can agree Adobe writes bloatware and that Flash is slow but guess what – they define the market for their products.

If I want to use something else to edit photographs or my movies, that will be my choice, not Steve Jobs. Foobar to Steve Jobs and his control of the world.  

Open Systems are good. Closed systems are bad.

One day back in the mid 90s I was sitting in the Holiday Inn, Fargo North Dakota having a few Buds with the cognoscenti of Great Plains Software and the PC Mag guru John Dvorak. Fargo North Dakota was a centre of computer smarts enough for Steve Ballmer to buy Great Plains Software for $1.1 billion dollars.

Every year at Stampede to Fargo, Doug Burgum Great Plains CEO would assemble the faithful accounting software dealers. The were a Mac and Microsoft bigots in for a four day conference. Big cheeses like  Ballmer and Scott McNealy of Sun Microsystems would duke it out on the stage. Mom-and-pop computer sellers mixed in the audience with the blond haired people of Scandinavia who were residents of Fargo.  You could have lunch with Apple evangelist Guy Kawasaki or put up with one of those manic rants from Steve Ballmer.

Back to the bar, IBM had recently announced they were splitting with Microsoft over Windows and going to own the world with OS/2. John, ever the wise prophet of all things computing, gave the table his opinion that OS/2 would beat Windows hands down. IBM had the money to out develop Bill Gates.

Perhaps in my Saturday afternoon jeans and with the Buds I spoke too quickly. I believe I said he was full of it. In my opinion we had thrown off the closed shop tyrant that IBM was and would still like to be and gotten ourselves free from slavery. If Microsoft kept us open, then they would win was my prediction.

When the Apple iStore opened with it’s closed shop, I resisted the whole process. I like to buy music but I’ll be dammed if Steve Jobs is going to tell me what to listen to, where to buy it and what format it will come in.

Admittedly I joined the iPhone world last year because I needed a smart phone. I’ll be replacing it this year with something open from the Android phone selection.

If I wanted to live under a tyrant, even a design genius like Jobs, I’d still be a JW, or Catholic, perhaps a Mormon convert or belong to the asinine Press Club of PEI with their little- people, control freak minds.

No I was born to be free. My whole generation was born to be free and my kids were born to be free. Steve Jobs is a megalomaniac and the iPad will be the device for his followers but not free people. As for mothers needing an iPad, she doesn’t need one either. At 90 she is adept and using her Windows computer, her second since she turned 80.

Open systems are good, period.

For other opinions see Boing Boing Why I won’t buy an iPad (and think you shouldn’t, either) and The Washington Post  Apple’s iPad: Tool, toy or trap?

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