You may agree with its decision this time, but will you always agree? Apple's wielding of power in this way is likely to attract the attention of groups such as copyright/IP lobbyists, which have an immense desire to have all "non-authorised" files/software erased from all user's machines.Īs the saying goes, "two wrongs don't make a right". Some other comments here suggest that the installation of this update is controlled by a setting described as being for system related updates, which a user would expect to leave his/her third-party software alone.) (This is subtly different from updating things like OS files, for example. It's been rather disturbing to see this whole thing play out - I'm not taking sides here, but Apple "flexing its arms" in this manner shows that it is willing and has the power to go beyond policing its App Store and such (which while I do not like, I feel it does have the right to) and involve itself in the affairs of third-party software which it did not originally install. There's nothing moral about proprietary software. Proprietary software is unjust power over the user. The root of all of this is the power of proprietary software (software the user can't inspect, share, or modify, and in some particularly restrictive cases can't always run). Back doors aren't moral, they exist to grant another party over the device the user bought and should own. ) but Steve Jobs said it was okay because we can trust Apple ("Hopefully we never have to pull that lever, but we would be irresponsible not to have a lever like that to pull."). Apple's iPhone back door lets Apple delete a user's apps (per. That bug was said to allowed government spying. There's nothing moral about using "silent updates" (updates the user has no opportunity to decide whether to adopt).Īpple certainly wasn't looking out for their users' privacy and security when they let an iTunes bug go unfixed for 3 years (see. It is thoroughly depressing all round.Īccording to the article, "Apple said the update does not require any user interaction and is deployed automatically.". I see these statements of fact are always jarring for people to notice for the first time, especially if they quite like the machines (I do), and quite like liberal democracy and free market economics (again I do!) and more so that this utter hideousness is our best option right now because there is no option even remotely on the same planet as good. If they did anything else they might be guilty of securities fraud(!) So yeah, they can be completely horrific and still win the PR battle because others seem even worse. Since it has been massively profitable for them to turn their customers into their product, they see no reason to change and I guess why should they? Profit maximisation is their business, yours and my health and welfare is only of interest in service to maximising profit. Microsoft, IBM look on in envy at how they've managed to get away with it. Well that's what Apple might do if they really were in the business of being paid by customers to serve those paying customers and nobody else.īut of course Apple literally wrote the book on selling their customers as product to third parties. Why would any=body insist on preserving the option to behave badly in the future unless that bad behavior is part of their future plans? This shouldn't be a problem for anybody that actually wants the moral outcome. > The answer to not getting pressure from your bosses, your stakeholders, your investors or your members, to do the wrong thing later, when times are hard, is to take options off the table right now. And once you become a grown up, you start to understand that there will be tired and desperate moments in your future and the most strong-willed thing you can do is use the willpower that you have now when you're strong, at your best moment, to be the best that you can be later when you're at your weakest moment. If you're serious about not eating a bag of Oreos your best bet is to not have a bag of Oreos to eat. It's just that the net present value of tomorrow's weight loss is hyperbolically discounted in favor of the carbohydrate rush of tonight's Oreos. > It's not that you don't want to lose weight when you raid your Oreo stash in the middle of the night. Cory Doctorow gave a good talk about using Ulysses pacts in the tech industry. You simply need to remove the ability to make defined classes of bad decisions by binding the company's future decision making capability with a Ulysses pact. make it increasingly difficult to enforce ethical decisions
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