Is Apple becoming the very thing they fought against?
Computers weren’t very exciting in 1984. Their graphics were blocky and didn’t have many colors, there wasn’t much of a user interface unless you liked staring at a blinking cursor, and sound was tinny 8-bit. While watching the Super Bowl that year, some people caught a glimpse of a 30-second commercial for what seemed to be….a new movie? A TV show? No, it was Apple’s first commercial for the Macintosh.
Men, walking in single file with no expression on their faces, are penned in a giant room with a screen at the end of it. On screen is a man, dictating to his people what has come out of the company they work for:
Today we celebrate the first glorious anniversary of the Information Purification Directives.
We have created for the first time in all history a garden of pure ideology,
where each worker may bloom, secure from the pests of any contradictory true thoughts.
Outside, a lone woman carrying a hammer is running from the hallway into the giant room. She’s being chased by what seems to be storm troopers, dressed in black.
Our Unification of Thoughts is more powerful a weapon than any fleet or army on earth.
We are one people, with one will, one resolve, one cause.
Our enemies shall talk themselves to death and we will bury them with their own confusion.
She stops, spins, and throws the hammer at the screen.
We shall prevail!
The hammer blows up the screen, and the announcer says that we’ll see “why 1984 won’t be like 1984″.
Today, has Apple become the very thing they worked hard to fight? The woman represented breaking out of the shackles of the boring PC. The Mac was supposed to allow people to be more creative, and it truly was revolutionary for its time. The commercial, while perhaps over the top, did represent what computing was like then.
Recently, Apple applied for a patent that determines if your phone has been stolen or hacked. By using facial recognition, voice recognition, and heartbeat pattern matching, the iPhone can tell if it’s the proper owner that’s using the phone. If not, the phone could send sensitive data to Apple for backup, and wipe the phone. The byproduct of this is that Apple can also see if the phone’s been modified in any way, including being jailbroken. If so, the phone could be shut down. Apple does this all in the name of consumer protection, but after the Library of Congress has deemed that jailbreaking is legal, has Apple gone too far?
When you buy a product from any vendor, who does it belong to? Most people will say that it belongs to the consumer, and rightfully so since they paid for it. However, in order for an electronic device to run properly, its code needs to be protected, or unforseen problems can happen. Apple claims that jailbroken phones can wreak havoc on cell towers if an unscrupulous developer chooses to do so. To date, there hasn’t been one report of that, or anything serious happening with a jailbroken phone. Is it possible? Yes.
So looking at the 1984 commercial today, there’s almost an ironic twist to it all. The woman now wants to break free of any restrictions, and the storm troopers represent Apple, trying to prevent anyone from seeing the light.
Consumers need to be allowed to have control over their purchases, and if they break the device and void the warranty, that’s their issue. It’s unknown how many users that jailbreak their phone don’t know the risks in the first place but it’s probably safe to say that most do. Apple may want to think of the ramifications of executing such a system.
Category: Technology
