Too much freedom can be a tyranny of its own
Miranda Devine shares some invaluable insight which may help explain why I feel like jumping the Apple shark with iPhone 4. And it’s not just me. Here are a few choice quotes from her article in the SMH.
“Part of Apple’s success came from popular antipathy to Microsoft because it was so successful … Jobs cleverly made Apple’s journey, like his own, into a countercultural success story, playing off the Goliath that was Microsoft. But this year Apple’s market value surpassed Microsoft’s, making it the most valuable technology firm in the world … It seems Jobs is finding himself hoist on his own petard. Too successful in a capitalist sense, at a time and to a new generation for whom success is suspect.”
Devine also explores Jobs’ take on freedom, as exemplified in his recent email exchange with Gawker’s Ryan Tate:
”If Dylan was 20 today how would he feel about your company? Would he think iPad had the faintest thing to do with revolution? Revolutions are about freedom,” Tate wrote.
Jobs replied: ”Yes, freedom from programs that steal your private data. Freedom from programs that trash your battery. Freedom from porn. Yep, freedom.”
Well, finally, something Eric Schmidt and Jobs can agree on. We all deserve to be free from porn. This brings me back to the title of this post, which I have stolen from Devine’s article and have to include again because it’s just so damn insightful.
Too much freedom can be a tyranny of its own.
This applies not only to the incredibly important world of smartphones. It can also be seen in less important matters such as western society’s tyrranical attitude to implementing counter terrorism.
We seem to be fine with outsourcing the “filtering out of bad stuff” to any dictatorship who is willing to take on the task. In effect, we are happy to trade in our freedom to experience the bad along with the good, in return for being freed of the inconvenience of deciding which is which.
We are now getting to the crux of the Android vs. Apple dilemma. As observed by Craig Simms from CNET (my emphasis):
“The separate approaches of Google and Apple are interesting. Apple’s ridiculous level of control, strange regulations and amazingly closed system have severely limited what its platform can do, but has resulted in a much more polished, complete and integrated operating system. Most apps will actually work when you download them. It’s both its biggest strength and weakness.
Google’s openness and flexibility is equally its biggest strength and weakness: it allows considerably more capability than the iPhone, but to the detriment of platform stability and a more polished experience. We’ve lost count of the amount of apps that simply don’t work and need to be force closed.”
It’s also worth pointing out that Android’s openness for allowing almost any app onto the Android Market raises the possibility of wallpaper apps that steal your personal data. This brings us right back to the terrorism allegory: trading in freedom for convenience.
What is convenience?
In the smartphone space, one of the most important conveniences to me is speed: freedom from wasted time. I’m not just talking about the processing power of a device, although that is a contributing factor. The question of device speed involves many more aspects of the whole smartphone package. They can all be encompassed in the broader question:
“How much of my time is wasted in achieving my objectives on this device?”
Assuming for the sake of argument that activities performed on my smartphone are not intrinsic time wasters, I’ve jotted down some areas for potential inefficiencies for both packages in approximate order of importance.
| iPhone 4 | Android | |
| Sync | One click sync with iTunes | Hunting down multiple desktop sync apps. Performing separate syncs for music and data. On wipe, reinstall all apps using the phone. |
| Setup | Accept I cannot customise the phone, download apps for OS shortcomings. Jailbreak just to customise SMS sound (this is essential) | Hunting down OS patches, installing custom firmware just to get the phone set up how I want. |
| Migration | Not an issue | Hunt down app alternatives |
| Music | That extra swipe to bring up iPod controls introduced in iOS 4 | Using iTunes to manually create Genius playlists, hunting for an app with star ratings, album art, Last.fm logging. Sift through non-music media files! |
| Input | Typing and correcting errors on an inefficient Swype-less keyboard | A little time getting used to Swype, then much faster typing |
| Bed & Couch | Lock phone rotation with double-click, swipe, tap | Disable phone rotation with 4 taps (slower as screens load) |
| Apps | All apps just work, a few crashes which 90% of the time resolve with app reinstall. | Many apps only work on specific versions or handsets. Don’t find out until install. This wastes time. |
| Dev | Significant time investment and hours of therapy while learning SDK | I expect dev to be way faster if the standard of the API is anything like Google Maps |
| Gmail | Archive now in native Mail app instead of visiting web service to clean up my inbox. | Archive also in native Mail app |
| Text Selection | Sometimes fiddly to use | Apparently woeful |
Android still has a long way to go before it has anywhere near the polish of iOS, despite all its faults.
The evidence seems to suggest that an iPhone 4 would be the most efficient solution at the moment. Can I really allow myself the luxury of indulging my own principles by rebelling against the Apple alliance? Not really.
Am I willing to accept Apple’s tyrannical dictatorship if it saves me some time and potential heartache?
The answer is Yes. Suck it up Orwell.
