http://www.boingboing.net/2010/06/13/tiny-cartoon-penis-r.htmlhttp://www.thebigmoney.com/blogs/app-economy/2010/06/09/joyce-s-ulysses-banned-again-apple-not-government?page=fullhttp://www.thebigmoney.com/blogs/app-economy/2010/06/10/why-apples-no-nude-apps-policy-worries-meApple is an interesting company. My mother (and Fluffy actually) love almost all of their products. Fluffy has an iPod and an Mac laptop. She buys stuff from iTunes, even though I beg her not to. But, it Just Works™ and that is the appeal for her.
I don't like Apple because it is a controlling company. There is an ecosystem with Apple, one that is tied pretty tightly into controlling everything. The old iTunes had a ton of DRM in it, which once resulted in Fluffy losing her entire music collection for a
year because her iPod kept breaking. It was... annoying and frustrating.
Apple also tries to be the perfect moderator. The iTunes (iPad) store has a lot of not really published rules on what is allowed. Sometimes, you get applications that are pretty stupid (the pull my finger or shake the baby) while others just get generally censored. In the above links, two artistic forms of nudity (breasts and a non-erect illustrated penis) caused an entire application to be banned, simply because of the "nudity."
For me, it is censorship. It is control and I don't like it.
I choose not to buy Apple products. I don't use them, I don't encourage them. I choose to vote with my money and go with products that are philosophically aligned with me.
But, Fluffy doesn't care. She likes them, therefore she wants them. She hears my reasons and does it anyways. I love her and she is her own person, but I wonder if I'm being upset for the right things. The more I listen to politics, the more I heard about these things, I see little chains being formed. They are minor and insignificant, but dangerous if it got big. Kind of like censorship for the sexuality on this site. I think it should be free, because people like it but I'd rather not find myself arrested because I encouraged obsenity.
