John Gruber comments on accusations that Steve Jobs built freedom-sapping digital ‘prisons’

Jesus, Gruber drives me mental sometimes. Maybe calling Apple products and services ‘tyrannical’ or ‘freedom-sapping digital prisons’ is overstating the point, but it’s pretty clear those words are being used for rhetorical emphasis, not absolute literalism, so that smug bullshit doesn’t play. As for the main point: if you invest so much in a closed system (like I have), it’s never as easy as just choosing to leave. Could I switch platforms tomorrow and go back to a Windows-based set-up? Not without an outlay of thousands of euro and a few solid days of software installation. ‘Prison’ might be too strong, but ‘debtor’s prison’ is an apt simile in this case.

Sun 06 Nov 2011 at 17:51   ·