The little things
January 11, 10 a.m. | gadgetry
I like Cory Doctorow. He fights the good fight more often than almost every blogger out there. But, sometimes he's just wrong. Like, for example, this article about general-purpose computing. In it, he says, about single-purpose computing (see: Kindle Fire, Nook, Apple/Google TV, etc):
We're not making a computer that runs only the "appliance" app; we're taking a computer that can run every program, then using a combination of rootkits, spyware, and code-signing to prevent the user from knowing which processes are running, from installing her own software, and from terminating processes that she doesn't want.
...which entirely ignores user experience. It's like the user interface design portion of it didn't even occur to him. People buy an e-reader to read books. They don't buy it to run a spreadsheet or play Skyrim. Possibly because it's just not good at that. I don't see any problem with trying to encourage users to use a device for what they bought it for.
People aren't stupid: if they want a general purpose computer, they'll go out and buy a Dell or an iMac or whatever they want. If they want a set-top-box, they'll buy that, expecting to use it as such. Admittedly, it's a shame when those environments are locked down, but it really only affects such a vast minority of users that the problem is irrelevant.
And not only that, when I used two different Android phones for a year, knowing I could do whatever I wanted with them, I didn't use them significantly differently than my iPhone. In fact, I preferred the locked-down environment simply because there was less in between the user and the experience. There was less I had to worry about when I wanted to just use my smartphone. I don't have to stress about my custom ROM having flaky wi-fi. I don't have to worry about accidentally installing spyware or wiping my phone when trying to restore a nandroid backup. I just use the product for the single-purpose it was designed for.
And I don't feel any less free.
