The market thus far…

azspot:

marco:

Apple may possess the market lead for now, but I predict in a few years, it will succumb to challengers championing a more open approach. […] eventually, somebody is going to create a shiny computer phone that does all that iPhone does, without the restricted sandbox paradigm.

I hear this argument a lot, but the market just doesn’t support it. Very few people care about openness. The iPod dominated music players despite a lot of “open” competition, and iTunes dominated online music sales despite DRM and restrictions.…

The overarching arc of the history of computing refutes this assessment. Excepting for specialized niches, open has nearly always trumped closed. Early on, no. For decades, the state of computing was entirely a proprietary affair, with IBM (and a few other mainframe makers) the dominant force, almost apocalyptic in ushering advancement toward a mythical age of the supercomputer. Then came the microcomputer revolution that smattered that ethos in less than a decade.

As the PC proliferated across work desktops and later propagated to home users, the openness of the Microsoft platform just about pulverized Apple into nonexistence.

[snip]

It’s not about openness or lack of openness. People want the future. If that bit of the future is tagged as an open technology then it’s more serendipitous than the aesthetics of transparency.

We live in the future.

Also, butts. (giggle)

via azspot