[racket] iPhone (Was: [The Racket Blog] New comment on Racket.)

1. I cannot agree with Neil more strongly.  I now have a ipad (for
   various reasons), and I think that the most obvious word that comes
   up to my mind seeing it is "fear".  I view a future like John
   describes (computers running only approved apps) as a 1984-ish kind
   of hell -- and I think that if anyone will do it, Apple would
   definitely jump there first.

2. Regardless of all of this, this has very little to do with Racket
   specifically (beyond not being able to run it there, of course).
   There are other platforms where this is likely to be possible (a
   friend told me yesterday about a google nexus device he just got,
   which is apparently running an ubuntu-like environment -- so it
   seems like you can even hack your phone using shell scripts).

3. Please try to keep this on-topic -- I know how this subject can
   explode.


On Jun 18, Neil Van Dyke wrote:
> I have gotten a somewhat less favorable impression of Apple's motives 
> and methods...
> 
> I believe that Apple has been in anticompetitive territory, such as 
> killing off apps when when they now compete with their own offerings or 
> partnerships, and prohibiting features that would let developers or 
> users add behavior that Apple could not kill off in this way when it 
> becomes competition.
> 
> There is also anti-free-speech territory, with Apple prohibiting 
> "objectionable" content.  Although sometimes they have disingenuously 
> used the "family values" line for anticompetitive purposes, such as 
> prohibiting a Project Gutenberg e-book viewer because that competes with 
> big-business selling e-books, or prohibiting independent apps with 
> bikini pictures but selling a Playboy app.)
> 
> Google has a "don't be evil" policy, but Apple's new policy seems to be 
> more like, "be a fashionable rich kid, and you can get away with 
> anything." :)
> 
> I believe that this is relevant to any Racket developers considering 
> whether or how they want to be investing in and supporting the iPhone 
> platform.

-- 
          ((lambda (x) (x x)) (lambda (x) (x x)))          Eli Barzilay:
                    http://barzilay.org/                   Maze is Life!