This is going to backfire on Apple. It is absurd the lengths they are going to. Imagine if when you bought a car the manufacturer tried to control what stereo you could install. "We made this car, and you have to play by our rules." Insane.
Actually, controlling aftermarket parts is crucial to automakers. Add nitrous, void your warranty. Modify chip, void your warranty. Make a cosmetic change, no problem.
Is the warranty the issue here? Isn't it the right to add some functionality to the device? I could see your point if there was an argument between Amoeba and Apple about voiding warranties. But I don't see that being the issue.
A warranty is just a contract, much like the contract put in place that allows Rogue Amoeba to sell software on the iOS and Mac platforms.
Adding in support for AirPlay to an app and selling that won't void your or my iPhone's Warranty if we were to install it, but it can void the contract put in place between Rogue Amoeba and Apple, if even just for that singular app. Here is the real reason Apple threw this app out of the store: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4087666 RA was using a private key derived from a firmware update for the Apple Airport Basestations in order to encrypt the audio stream in accordance of the AirPlay protocol.
Well, car manufacturers have certainly not been very aftermarket-friendly with their center stack over the past decade. It might actually be fairly similar after all:
Want a custom stereo in your new car with a fancy center stack setup with a non-standard-size stereo and possibly even integrated AC/heater controls? You're going to have to jump through a lot of hoops. Want software with more functionality than Apple exposes to developers? There's always jailbreaking...
In neither case has there been a substantial consumer backlash.
Bought a Jetta in 2000. Best car I've ever owned. Didn't like the stereo though. Tried to replace it with an aftermarket system and was told that doing so would void the warranty on the door locks, the car alarm, everything wired into that cabling system. I lived with it for ten years til I sold the car, but it's one of the first things I ask about when researching a new car purchase.
It's one thing to make the center console non-standard, it's another to prevent the installation through warranty restrictions.
What hoops? If the purchaser wants to install a stereo he can choose to do it himself or take the car to a shop that installs stereos. What's happening in this case is, roughly, by analogy, the car manufacturer is trying to exercise control over a shop that is selling stereos that can be installed in the car. Is that overreaching? Would consumers complain if a car manufacturer actually tried to do that? The factory installed stereo better be very good.
Go look at a car from the 90s with a DIN or double-DIN stereo, then go look at one from the past five years, where the prevalence of nonstandard sized stereos has gone way up, as has the complexity of how tightly coupled they are to the rest of the car. Those are the hoops. I don't think the manufacturers are upset at all that one of the side effects of this trend has been to make aftermarket head unit installs a lot less convenient.
And I don't know any manufacturer that will sell you someone else's head unit as an aftermarket piece. It's up to you to find out how to take everything apart and fit something else in there on your own, or to find someone who knows—basically, jailbreaking your dashboard. Except you generally lose stuff (like steering wheel controls), while I hear jailbreaking is pretty painless these days.
Edit: Apple's app store isn't some third party stereo store, it's a store owned by the manufacturer itself. And car manufacturers are famous for having highly priced proprietary replacement parts, especially when it comes to electronics like stereos, if you aren't willing to deal with an outside store/brand. I really don't see any way Apple's less flexible with the iPhone than a car manufacturer is with their cars.
Agreed. I simply wanted to point out that the car manufacturer does not actively try to prevent the car owner or the installation shop from installing a stereo. However Apple does this with their devices. Everything must pass through Apple even after the sale is complete and the user owns the device, and that is just absurd. I can't imagine what older Macs that we used for audio applications would have been like if all software had to be approved by Apple. Apple does not have the expertise to write all that software. When I say Apple's strategy will backfire I mean that the more tightly they try to exercise control, the easier jailbreaking is going to get. The auto manufacturers may have made it very difficult to do stereo installations on newer models but they are not actively trying to interfere with stereo makers and installers after the car is sold. And why should they? The buyer made his choice when he bought the car whether he wanted any factory installed audio options or not. If after the sale the buyer wants to buy parts, or get service from an authorized dealer, she can do so. But the manufacturer does not try to interfere with her choice to get service (e.g. stereo installation) elsewhere. Imagine if every car stereo maker had to get approval from car manufacturers and could only sell their products in the manufacturer's distribution centers.
Actually you can test two at a time by using an alias in /etc/hosts.
In /etc/hosts:
1.2.3.4 site1.com site2.com
Then you have to edit /etc/hosts to try two more sites.
The idea that the user cannot access /etc/hosts on the iPhone is reason enough to jailbreak it. Denying access to /etc/hosts means the iPhone cannot connect to the any website that requires a hostname, even when the iPhone can connect to the internet, unless the iPhone can access some DNS server (which of course Apple probably wants to control). That is a ridiculous limitation. The internet nor the web requires DNS to work, but the iPhone requires DNS to access the web.[1]
1. assuming the website is using virtual hosts or otherwise requires a hostname
Users told us they would rather have tactile buttons as on a PC keyboard or Blackberry. We're working on a small "smartphone keyboard" for fast "two thumbs" typing like on a Blackberry. The user can plug it into the smartphone when the user wants to type quickly and detach it when they are done and want to store the device.
"OK, kids, time to stop squabbling in the sandbox and go home."
The problem is that these kids have weekly allowances in the hundreds of thousands. And most lawyers do not discriminate among potential clients by maturity level, they discriminate by net worth. They are happy to become instruments of a sandbox squabble, for a price. The kids don't do the squabbling. They pay lawyers to do it for them.
"OK, kids, time to stop squabbling in the sandbox and go home."
I could say the same for our judicial system up until now. Slam them all day if you'd like (referring to the judge), but all the patent troll rulings up to this point has precipitated this state of affairs.
The "success" of a language is determined by what the language can do, not what programmers manage to do with it.
It is entirely possible there is a language that exists that can do more and do it faster than any other language in existence, but "most programmers", the ones who make a language "popular", either don't know about it or don't want to learn it.
