a convenient truth

John Gruber has become something of an Apple apologist over the last couple of years. His blog used to be pretty interesting, but it kind of morphed over the period of a year into a series of rants about basically how anyone who didn’t like Apple was deluded in one way or another.

A lot of us don’t like Apple’s approach under Steve Jobs. The products are uber shiny, but it’s just the same trap Gates cooked up for us 15 years ago, with a similar pitch. Back then Windows looked pretty good too, remember. It wasn’t brushed aluminium, but it had a whole 16 colours!

The deal is one that short sighted companies supplying almost anything will try and offer - lock-in. Lock-in is a well known issue in the IT industry, and in my day job it’s something we have to address with our customers in every pitch.

Lock-in describes a situation where a customer loses the ability to change supplier, because the supplier has a proprietary hold on them somehow. In my business the risk is generally that we deliver something nobody else can easily understand, but in other businesses it can be introduced in all sorts of ways.

I honestly believe lock-in is bad for both parties to a contract eventually. It is clearly bad for a customer to give up their control over their own property, and for a supplier it encourages lazy, inwardly-directed thinking that ultimately makes their products suck. c.f. Microsoft.

Apple are being creative in their approach to lock-in. Buy an iPod, and you can only really use it with iTunes. Install iTunes, and lo here’s a music store with DRMed music that you will never be able to move to another manufacturers player. Clunk, click, you’re locked-in. You shell out 500 quid on records from the Apple music store, and for the rest of your life you have no choice of music player - pick another supplier and you lose your entire music library.

That’s pretty much par for the course for a lot of companies these days - many of them feel that’s fair business tactics. Apple have gone further with the iPhone though. It’s not just your music that’s locked down, but any applications you can run. If you are happy with Apple becoming your own personal Sky Daddy then that’s fine. But the odd one of us weirdos thinks that maybe at some point in the far distant future we might actually want to be able to control our own property. Just in case, you know?

Apple have almost immediately shown their true colours with their control over the iPhone Appstore with their decision to remove a piece of software because it competes with their own products. And yes, even John thinks it’s wrong. Which shows just how bad it really is.

The nerve Apple have here is far beyond Microsoft’s wildest dreams. For all their unfair business practices and shoddy code, Microsoft have maintained a neutral platform on the whole. Sure they hid some APIs and agressively bought and then killed competitors, but Windows is a thriving ecosystem with real software on it. Just imagine if Microsoft plain denied WordPerfect because they’d decided to release MSWord. Dear me.

So please, dear reader, remember that whilst a benevolent dictatorship might seem very efficient it can turn sour very, very quickly. And if you really want to keep control over your own life, choose Free Software.

[Microsoft dropping DRM from Zune Music Store](http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyName=mobile_devices&articleId=9015898&taxonomyId=75). Microsoft have seen the writing on the wall for music DRM much faster than expected, and are [following Apple](http://news.com.com/2100-1027_3-6172398.html?part=rss&tag=2547-1_3-0-5&subj=news) into providing music files without DRM restrictions.

This probably really is the end for music DRM, something that is in the best interests of most music lovers and artists. The revolution that’s finally going to happen in music is going to change the shape of it, and is certainly going to make [some forms of music](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Britney_Spears) uneconomic, but it will also make other forms feasible that once were not. It’s a whole new world out there and if I was an unsigned artist I would be very excited about the possibilities.

What this isn’t is the death of DRM. The impulse that made the music industry commit [such]( http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20050204-4587.html) [public](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/music/3140160.stm) [hara-kiri](http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060424-6662.html) wasn’t irrational, it was just very poorly judged against their market. In video and television I think we can expect the same behaviour, but with a lot more ferocity. The vast investments in the business models, not least the business models of their suppliers (think Windows Vista), will mean DRM hangs around for some while yet.

Transient content will probably always be advertising supported, since it’s easy and gives access to the most eyeballs. There’s a whole new arms race in there for advertising avoidance software, so the advertising will probably end up pretty subtle. It’ll be just as offensive as TV is now — but hey, go read a book or something.

The DVD market is the one that’s really going to hurt a lot of people. This stuff is being traded big-time on the P2P networks now, and it has become a vital market for a lot of media companies. A lot of series would not be produced without the DVD aftermarket, and the economics of video are, for the moment, different from a lot of music. It will be a few decades before you can make *The West Wing*, from scratch, on your own, in your bedroom, using only a computer. If there isn’t a business model that can support large scale drama with high production values, that would be a real shame.

Video is far less accessible on the move than music too, so being restricted to play your DVDs only on your home player is less of a restriction. I can see a lot of technological battles coming up to try to lock down every single digital and analogue hole in video reproduction. The recent [AACS Crack](http://www.engadget.com/2006/12/27/aacs-drm-cracked-by-backuphddvd-tool/) is only the beginning. Expect a few attempts, some successful, to change the law too.

The scene: a gaol, somewhere in the mid-west. With apologies to Jim Dodge.

> I’m standing in a cell, when the cell block door opens and the Sergeant, fat, red and sweating enters dragging a screaming Microsoft user. He hauls him to the end of the line of cells and throws him into it. The Microsoft user’s name is Joe. The Sergeant’s name is Bill.

> Joe screams “Noooooooooooooooooooooooooo!” I hear the Sergeant kick him in the stomach. The Sergeant walks out, locking the cell behind him. He leaves the cell block.

> Silence. The other prisoners are quiet too, listening. We can hear Joe sobbing.

> Ten minutes later, Joe takes a huge breath and we hear him scream again “Noooooooooooooooooooooooooo!”. This repeats once every ten minutes or so. “Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!”.

> After a few hours of this, the cell block door opens. The Sergeant walks in, tapping his blackjack on his thigh. He walks to Joe’s cell, and opens the door. We hear the sudden thud of the blackjack striking Joe’s head, and he hits the floor with a thump.

> “Too much noise. I’ll give you something to block up that mouth of yours, kid” says the Sergeant.

> “On your knees”.

> There’s another thump as he strikes Joe again.

> “That’s right, good. Now you know what to do.”

> We hear a moan and a gag from Joe. Everyone else in the block is silent, as we hear the panting of the Sergeant. Then, with a crescendo, it stops. Joe gags and pukes.

> “You better remember that, kid.”

> The sergeant slowly leaves the block, looking even more florid than before. We hear Joe gag and puke.

That’s what it’s like to be a Linux user right now, seeing all the rest of you being abused by your software vendors.

I see Microsoft, Apple and other users of big corporate manufacturers being slowly imprisoned by their own software. As more and more [DRM](ttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DRM) is added to the things we own, the less freedom we have from it.

This post isn’t about the dangers of DRM, or indeed why it’s so harmful. That much is obvious. This is a gaze into the crystal ball to see where this might go.

Microsoft are attempting perhaps the largest land grab in the history of entertainment and communication. What has happened so far with record sales is *nothing* compared to the prize of Internet Television (IPTV). That big box in the corner of your room is not long for this world in it’s current form. Microsoft want everyone to have a Microsoft television, running Microsoft Windows, and taking content mediated and managed by Microsoft.

To become both the monopoly supplier of IPTV and the [monopsony](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopsony) buyer of content from the TV and film companies, Microsoft need to conduct a major land grab right *now* to get their platform and their standards accepted. Selling it to their users is difficult, since there is no benefit to them. Selling it to the film and tv companies is easier, since right now it costs them little and has some significant temptations to them.

This answers the conundrum I posed [the other week](http://adju.st/2006/12/vista_drm.html) — why are Microsoft building such horrendous DRM into Vista? If they can get the content suppliers on side now, they have a real possibility of tying up the platform. But I don’t think they’ll succeed, and in the process they may ruin their business. And the reason they’ll fail is because of Linux.

Vista is going to be a nightmare when it rolls out, but right now Microsoft couldn’t give two hoots. It’s going to be slow unstable crap, because of all this DRM, but right now as far as they are concerned their users have *no choices*.

It would seem in fact as if Microsoft have this all sewn up. If they can provide a viable platform for IPTV that limits users right sufficiently that content producers can maximise their profits, what could stop them? After all, if you want your content, where else are you going to go?

RIght now, the answer would be the various P2P networks. They are cheap and easy, and you can get pretty much anything. These aren’t going to work for Vista users though, oh no. Anything with DRM will be unplayable on Vista, even if you can download it from these sites. So, you have to suck your content from the Microsoft pipe, or nothing.

Apple would be viable competition, but they are going down exactly the same road. They are basically happy with their computer market share, and Microsoft are willing to cede this to them. If Apple lost much more market share, in fact, Microsoft would probably once again fund them, just to make sure they weren’t legally a monopoly. Some weak competition is very valuable to them. I’d be willing to bet that Apple buy into the same DRM strategy as Microsoft, especially if Microsoft find it in their hearts to fund the development.

So, all you Windows users, if you want to play a movie without paying a fee for every view, or a fee for time shifting, or without the 5 minute rant about copyright theft at the beginning, what do you do? You run Linux, that’s what you do. You will shortly have no choice and this, I suspect, is going to be the greatest encouragement to the growth of Linux ever.

I can see some corporates buying this argument too. Vista is going to be buggy as hell, and I reckon it’ll take much longer to become stable than 2000 or XP needed. When corporate networks start failing, this might provide the final urge to a lot of companies to move to Linux on the desktop. The product is very nearly there now, and with a tech support team to roll it out, a Linux corporate desktop is a real option now.

The availability of the Linux desktop *on it’s own* is enough to cripple Microsoft’s strategy. If enough people run a Linux desktop, or soon a Linux TV, it defeats Microsoft’s strategy. As Firefox has shown, you don’t need a major market share to be a disruptive influence. Just 20% of people using non Microsoft/Apple software should be enough to stop the monopoly/monopsony strategy.

And where there is competition their lock-in strategy fails. In ten years when you are still running Windows, and you’ve got your Microsoft-powered TV, but your content isn’t priced per minute, or person watching, or whatever, then be thankful for those Linux users who kept the market open.

As suspected, [DRM-infested arse](http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/14/business/yourmoney/14digi.html?ex=1326430800&en=2c5efe51f9d74dd8&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss). You’d have to be mad to buy one.

Pretty much everyone I know has posted something about the iPhone, so I felt I had to join in.

The most intelligent comment so far can be found on Vecosys (read past the cisco stuff for some thoughtful stuff) and Jason Kottke.

For a more general take on the Apple fanboyism sweeping the internets this week, the Encyclopedia Dramatica has the best summary:

People who subscribe to Apple’s corporate philosophy (see human slavery or i-Noob) often espouse the notion that Apple products are somehow inherently more liberal than other things built out of metal and silicon. While this is true for the special case of Ann Coulter, Apple users are in all other cases simply the delusional but willing victims of trendy advertising, which makes expensive computers made by fascists appear to be a counter-culture political statement. Apple users are simply fucktards who will believe anything they see in a commercial, as long as it agrees with the knee-jerk opinions they have already formed from other advertisements. In the final analysis Apple users are helpless slaves irrevocably wed to the mediated and hyper-hedonistic run away freight train of industrial society; thanks to iPods built with alien mind control technology they are unable to conceive of existence outside of music, video, and images. It is these legions of iPod wearing zombies with their thick black framed glasses and trendy shiny hair who are the Storm-Troopers of the ‘Great-Beast’.