Somebody pointed me towards an article online about the iPhone, and I was so stunned at the poor research involved that I couldn’t let it pass without countering it. It’s worth pointing out that I am NOT an Apple evangelist of any sort - of the machines in our house at the moment, three run Windows, one runs Linux, and one runs OSX.
Here’s the statements from the “Free Software Foundation”…
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.
WRONG. Many, many applications available on the iPhone app store are free. The great majority of them in fact. Apple only takes a cut of the sale price of commercial software - just like any other retailer in the world.
iPhone endorses and supports Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) technology.
WRONG. iPhones and iPods support the most popular formats, meaning they will play MP3, MP4, and the followup to MP3, AAC. Apple does not support DRM - Steve Jobs has publically stated that given the choice by the media companies, they would not be implementing digital rights management on media sold through iTunes. Not all content in iTunes is protected… EMI sell their entire catalogue without DRM.
iPhone exposes your whereabouts and provides ways for others to track you without your knowledge.
WRONG. After taking a photograph, the iPhone with GPS will ask if you want to include location information in the photo. It never does it without asking.
iPhone won’t play patent- and DRM-free formats like Ogg Vorbis and Theora.
Only because they are in the incredible minority.
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.
The iPhone and iPod lines of media devices do so well because of better design and manufacturing quality than other devices on the market. Apple devices are renowned for being solid and easy to use - and most people realise you get what you pay for.
The iPhone App Store means applications will arrive to play the free/open source media formats.
The Gadget Show in the UK recently did a group test of the best media players, and the iPod won hands down because of iTunes - the process of acquiring video of a recent chart hit for any other device became so complex the user often gave up. In iTunes you just buy the media and sync it to the device - end of story.