FSF Campaign against Microsoft's Plan to Enforce "Secure Boot"

[Nadav Har'El]

On Tue, Oct 25, 2011, geoffrey mendelson wrote about "Re: FSF Campaign against Microsoft's Plan to Enforce "Secure Boot"":
> >small market (this is the way Apple went for many years, and many
> >of its
> >services still are unavailable in Israel),
> 
> That's simply untrue. Apple for whatever reason it chose, sold an
> exclusive franchise to a company called YEDA about 27 years ago.
> When it expired, they chose to sell another one to a new company
> iDigital, which happens to be part owned by the President's son.
> They do that in many countries because of tax and other considerations.
> What products are sold in Israel or not is up to iDigital. They have

As they say, the proof is in the pudding. The product that turned Apple's
luck around, the iPhone, wasn't sold here for years. If I understand
correctly, you still can't buy songs or movies on iTunes if you're in
Israel. Apple also makes it easy for application makers to discreminate
against people from certain countries, and as in Israeli I still can't get
some applications that Americans can. Until very recently (perhaps just a
year ago?), the iPhone didn't have a Hebrew keyboard out of the box.

You can blaim Yeda, Akum, Pelephone or the President of Israel, but at the
end, it all comes down to a top management decision - does the company do
*whatever it takes* to please Israelis and make a few extra millions (peanuts
compared to the billions they are already making)? Microsoft decided *yes*:
they didn't sell their products through crappy resellers, they added Hebrew
support many many years ago, they didn't make it easy for application writers
to discriminate Israelis, didn't limit their online services only to
people from certain countries, and their new products were available in
Israel at the same time they were available everywhere else. Apple, on
the other hand, decided *no* - they would use a reseller than everyone
complain about, they would take years until new products reached Israel,
they would sell products without Hebrew support, prevent their own online
services from working in Israel, and help other app writers avoid being
sold in Israel.

If Apple wanted to act differently in Israel, they could do it 27 years
ago, 10 years ago, 5 years ago, or today. But they simply don't care. I don't
think it's antisemitism - it's simply that they don't care about the extra
0.01% that their profits can grow by pleasing Israelis more. Beside, Israelis
are, despite their hatred of being "friers", world famous suckers: If the
iPhone is (unlike its situation in the rest of the world!) the top selling
smartphone in Israel, even without iTunes working here, then why should
Apple bother to fix anything?

> Some products are not sold here because they are phased in, for
> example the iPhone 4s, but that's common around the world.

I'm not talking about a few months of delay. I'm talking about the *years*
it took before the iPhone got here, the *years* it took for it to get even
a Hebrew keyboard, and more importantly - iTunes store is still not available
(as I'm told), 8 years (!) after it was open in the U.S.

And again, don't blaim Akum - I don't think Akum is more powerful or greedy
than the RIAAA or whatever in the U.S. If iTunes still isn't available here
it's because Apple didn't bother.

> For example, someone I know went to Office Depot the first day they
> were selling legally imported iPads and a person from iDigital was
> there answering questions and doing demos.  The iPad came out of the
> box with Hebrew support.

Indeed. But believe it or not, until about a year ago, iOS did *not* come
with Hebrew support (especially no Hebrew keyboard). People were selling
various apps on the appstore for adding a rudementary Hebrew keyboard.

> BTW, despite what many people say, Steve Jobs was very supportive of
> open source. The actual MacOS is open source (though with a

I think there is no doubt that apple changed, some for the better and
some for the worst, but changed - when they came out with ipod (2001)
itunes (2003) and iphone (2007). Perhaps it has a few pieces of openness
from before that era, but it shed most of its openness during those years.
Mac OS X was released in 2001 - just before those "end of openness" years.

-- 
Nadav Har'El                        |                   Tuesday, Oct 25 2011, 
nyh at math.technion.ac.il             |-----------------------------------------
Phone +972-523-790466, ICQ 13349191 |Debugging: the art of removing bugs.
http://nadav.harel.org.il           |Programming: the art of inserting them.