Get a haircut son, you look like a God-damned girl

Five reasons to avoid the iPhone 3G written by some grubby hippy idealist. Nonsense, claims I.

iPhone completely blocks free software. Developers must pay a tax to Apple, who becomes the sole authority over what can and can’t be on everyone’s phones

Well, y’see, I can’t run whatever I want on my phone, do you hear me whinging? It is a phone. Grab one of those sub-notebooks, install Debian, use Skype if you want a phone that runs your software. I have the Apple SDK, and know how to go about making apps if I want to. And if I want to, I play by Apple’s rules, as they designed the device.

What is it with people who scream from the rooftops every time they feel they have been personally insulted if they can’t do what they want with a certain device? Hack it if you want, if you can’t, go find something you can hack. Or have you actually bought into the hype and are annoyed at wanting a shiny toy but can’t install you own broken code on it? (As an aside, I have seen code people have written run on an iPhone. Crikey.) Then again, these people don’t believe you should own a games console, either. So, no M$ products, no Apple, no Nintendo. Quake and pathetic Tetris clones for all!

I have released code into the wild. I have vehemently argued in various places of employ that we don’t release our code. I do not believe all code should be Free. Given my heartless libertarian leanings, I of course believe in freedom. And capitalism. Not coercion. But I don’t hold with everything I, or someone clever, writes should be available for all.

iPhone is not the only option. There are better alternatives on the horizon that respect your freedom, don’t spy on you, play free media formats, and let you use free software — like the FreeRunner.

I do love it when people trot out that argument, as there is the old apocryphal story of a student asking his tutor if he should buy this $2000 laptop, or wait until the next iteration is out. Which would be better? Well, replies the sage, spend $1500 on hookers and cocaine over the next year, and at that point, you can buy the same laptop for the remaining $500. It implies you should never do anything, as there is always something better round the corner. Retreat! To the caves!

Of course, when the article gets down to accusing Apple of concocting the whole thing as some sort of profit-making scheme^[0], eyes cannot but help be rolled.

Stupid FSF people, forgetting that there is a choice. That no one is being forced to buy an iPhone. Yet people do. Funny, that.

No hypocrisy or irony was hurt during the making of this post.

Off by one

^[0]As one wag put it