On Sun, Jul 13, 2008 at 7:47 PM, Jeffrey 'jf' Lim <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Mon, Jul 14, 2008 at 10:37 AM, Chris Henry <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > wrote: >> >> On Sun, Jul 13, 2008 at 7:24 PM, Soh Kam Yung <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >> wrote: >> > (http://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/5-reasons-to-avoid-iphone-3g) >> > >> >> > >> > Note: 'free' below means 'free speech', not 'free beer'. Apparently, >> > you cannot write a GPL'd application for the iPhone (rumour?). >> > ===== >> > 5 reasons to avoid iPhone 3G >> > Submitted by johns. on 2008-07-10 09:26 PM. Community >> > >> > The 5 real reasons to avoid iPhone 3G: >> > >> > * iPhone completely blocks free software. Developers must pay a >> > tax to Apple, who becomes the sole authority over what can and can't >> > be on everyone's phones. >> >> Probably true. Though a compelling counterargument is that Apple wants >> to maintain the standards of iPhone at a high level, thus having such >> rights allow Apple to eliminate trash application. I'm not sure about >> all these 'tax' thing, what I know is that the level of penetration of >> iPhone 3G is gonna be pretty high soon enough that many companies >> would start writing software for iPhone 3G. > > Bazaar, vs Cathedral. User control, vs MNC (or centralized entity) control. > So it's good enough that "many companies" will be able to write software for > the iphone?
What I'm saying is it doesn't matter either way for Apple, people are still gonna flock to them; developers and users. >> >> > * iPhone endorses and supports Digital Restrictions Management >> > (DRM) technology. >> >> Don't buy music! Download pirated, DRM-free for free (kidding!). >> AFAIK, Apple Music Store is moving away from DRM. You can take it this >> way, you can't play any DRM-ed songs at non-DRM-compatible music >> player (e.g. FreeRunner), but with iPhone, you could play both. It's >> now up to you (as in 'free speech') to decide what type of music do >> you buy. > > "you can play both" also means you're buying something that supports it. > Says in the link that the iphone wont play non-drm formats. You're saying it > can? Is this after it's unlocked (or whatever)? Or which formats are you > specifically talking about that are non-DRM that it can play? mp3, aac (not all aac is DRM-ed); that's what I've already seen with my own eyes. Apple website states: Audio formats supported: AAC, Protected AAC, MP3, MP3 VBR, Audible (formats 1, 2, and 3), Apple Lossless, AIFF, and WAV; seems that the writer of the article does not do his research. > > >> >> > * iPhone won't play patent- and DRM-free formats like Ogg Vorbis and >> > Theora. >> >> Gosh. Ogg Vorbis, it has been ages since I heard of that format. It >> begs the questions: does it affect you? After all, iPhone is not a >> swiss army knife. (: > > I guess it's a case of different beliefs/priorities here? I may care about > global warming - even though it doesn't really affect me all that much at > this point in time. I'm not sure about the iphone being a swiss army knife. > Perhaps not - but you buy what you want to. You don't buy what you do not > want to. Sure. That's 'free speech', isn't it? I never ever ask you to buy an iPhone. I may persuade you if you were my close friends, but I'm usually not a good salesman anyway. Saying something is bad because you don't want to buy it is not cool, especially when it's so one-sided (it happens all the time though, which is why university nowadays give critical thinking lesson; politics is one of the worst battleground ><) > >> >> > * iPhone is not the only option. There are better alternatives on >> > the horizon that respect your freedom, don't spy on you, play free >> > media formats, and let you use free software -- like the FreeRunner. >> >> Yeah, that's definitely true. But I'm still gonna get an iPhone 3G >> when I'm back in Singapore. It's a good piece of hardware with >> well-tailored OS and UI. (: Plus I'm an Apple whore anyway. It has the >> closest OS to UNIX I could get that also has amazingly good UI. It >> also has some of the best hardware and customer support around. > > -jf > > -- > In the meantime, here is your PSA: > "It's so hard to write a graphics driver that open-sourcing it would not > help." > -- Andrew Fear, Software Product Manager, NVIDIA Corporation > http://kerneltrap.org/node/7228 > Cheers, -- Chris [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ Slugnet mailing list [email protected] http://wiki.lugs.org.sg/LugsMailingListFaq http://www.lugs.org.sg/mailman/listinfo/slugnet
