"Yep, freedom from programs that steal your private data. Freedom from programs that trash your battery," the Apple honcho [Steve Jobs] wrote. And then came the kicker in his litany: "Freedom from porn. Yep, freedom. The times they are a changin'."This email exchange is the subject of Eric Felten's WSJ column today. Felton nails it.
Mr. Tate gasped. "I don't want 'freedom from porn,'" he shot back, "Porn is just fine!"
"[Y]ou might care more about porn when you have kids..." was Mr. Jobs' response.
After some sparring with Mr. Jobs on another topic, Mr. Tate came back to what is now bothering him most: "I may sound bitter," he wrote, explaining why: "It's you imposing your morality, about porn."
My, how the definition of imposing one's morality has changed over the years. Once it meant enforcing criminal sanctions on smut-peddlers. Now, a businessman who prefers to opt out of the trade is accused of impinging on everyone else's free speech.
Also, as Tom and I discussed, if the masses are crying out for porn then Apple will find out the old fashioned way. They'll go out of business.
I will take a moment here to point out that this led to a continuation of a long-running and enlightening conversation we have been having about Flash and Apple.
Simply, Steve Jobs may be against porn. But he is more against allowing open development. He is about control.
Here's how that works in this case.*
Flash is a program that is used to make and show moving things on websites, including YouTube embedded videos. (This is an extremely simplified explanation.)
Apple can't run Flash on the iPhone.
This is because they don't care to develop the iPhone to run Flash, for whatever reason.
Therefore, Steve Jobs denigrates Flash whenever he gets a chance by mentioning things like buggy programming. I will spare you the details and slurs.
This led to an exchange of attacks between Adobe (developers of Flash) and Apple.
Until finally, Apple has shown their true colors in this fight. They make tons of money from the Apps that are sold to go on the iPhone.
A way to produce an App for the iPhone has been developed that uses Flash and then exports it (with no moving elements) as an App. Therefore, it is perfectly usable with no buggy programming.
Apple has made it a policy to refuse Apps developed using Flash, even though it does not affect the end product or the iPhone's ability to use it.
Simply put, this is about total control. Period.
Goodbye
Hello
Same as the old boss.
*This has deliberately been made extremely simple since it is a very complicated topic. However, keep in mind that complex arguments can be used to obscure real objectives, which when stripped down are fairly simple. Control. Ownership. Money. Steve Job's reality distortion field. Etc. (We love Apple in general, but we have NOT drunk the Kool-Aid.)
