While I am sitting on a Boeing 737 (which my uncle flies) with a screaming baby behind me and a class of loud teenage school girls on a trip to London, who think they need to cheer at everything, in front of me, I decided to continue working on my posts regarding issues that are very important to me.
Lets start with Sony's action against the people who hacked their PS3 system. The hackers got into the system and retrieved the master code. This code is used to verify that the games inserted into the console are legitimate. If one put a homemade game into the console, without it being signed with this code, it will not load. Now you can sign these homemade and pirated games with the master key, which is meant to be top secret.
Sony took these hackers to court and sued them for violating some law and blah blah blah. That's not the important stuff. The important thing is that we spent about £250 on the console and an extra £35 per game. We own the console, it becomes our property, so why do companies still think that they can sue if we want to play homemade games instead of shelling out a ridiculous amount for a game? Why can't we install our own software on a device WE OWN? Yes, I understand pirating games is not good, but there will always be the occasional bad egg.
This argument can also be applied to Apple's attempts to stop jailbreaking, by making it almost impossible to do Look at the recent update to iBooks: you are not allowed to read a book if the system detects jailbroken software. Apple went to court, as well, over this issue and, contrary to the Sony case outcome, lost. Jailbreaking an iPhone or an iPod touch is legal, and why not? We own the hardware, so we have the right to decide what software we want. If there are security issues, that's the problem of the people who jailbroke their iPhone. Now, let's move on to a positive. Windows Phone 7.
That shocked you didn't it? You all probably know that I hate all the useless software that Microsoft churn out, but if you don't, I hate all the useless software that Microsoft churn out. It all started with Vista, when, after 6 months of using it, it took iTunes 2 hours to open! After that fateful month, I switched to the Mac (OS X 10.5 Leopard).
I once had a windows phone 6.3, and i will tell you now, I loathed it. Every day I wanted to smash that constantly crashing device. Anyway, having tried windows phone 7, I was pleasantly surprised. It had a responsive interface, intuitive user interaction, and overall a well thought out concept. I believe that Windows phone 7 is the only system good enough to compete with the iPhone (once more apps get onto their marketplace). For me, the Android, WebOS and Blackberry systems are good, but cannot compete with the iPhone on user friendliness and ease of use. The only reason why android is leading in the market is because the phones are cheap.
To round off this abnormally long post, the issue of Apples new subscription methods. Apple is demanding that all apps that offer subscriptions and content have to offer that same subscription and content at the same price or less through their in app purchase method. There is only one problem, Apple want a 30% cut of everything. Publishers are not allowed to provide links to their website in the app.
Let's look at this from a publishers point of view. Previously, they would receive 100% of all the revenue. Add to that the information they get from the subscriber that they can sell on to advertisers (yes folks, it's true). Now, Apple comes in, demands 30% and only gives the publishers consumer information if the consumer agrees to it, and who would?
Personally, I love this! I think that the greedy publishers get enough money already. We can choose whether we give out our information. The publishers have no right to sell on our information to advertisers if we don't want them to. Publishers would probably get more subscribers though, which would cancel out the loss, as who really wants to fill out a form and send it in? This one click method benefits both the consumer and the publisher.
But then again, this could be seen as anti competitive. Smaller startups would not be able to sustain themselves if apple and Google (wanting 10%) impose this system on their devices. Please share your views in the comments section below.
Final thought: have you ever noticed when you are flying, that you are sitting in a massive, heavy metal cylinder, accelerating at unimaginable speeds, 30000 feet in the air?
