The Progression of Closed Systems

The idea of proprietary, closed systems has been around for yonks, since some marketing idiot (who should now be stoned to death for crimes against technology) had the realisation that if people can only use your device with your products and are entirely reliant on you, you can then milk the consumer for everything they've got and make a killing. Unfortunately for him, he was in marketing so he didn't realise that the world didn't work like that. So the hacker (note: not crackers, they're idiots) community came up with the brilliant idea that why not open up the closed system and make it even better than it was before. So was born the idea of hacking devices. Some of the more well-known ones of these are the PSP and the iPhone. These are more remarkable than the millions of other devices that were swiftly cracked and taken to the masses because Sony and Apple, respectively, have both tried very hard (to varying degrees of success) to halt the free flow of hacked software and hardware.


The ultimate reason that these companies cannot win is because they are taking the entirely wrong approach to solving the problem. Take the PSP Custom Firmware example. When PSP's came out, they were very quickly hacked and custom firmwares released along with homebrew games by the hundred showing the world a new world of portable gaming...free. Then, with Firmware 1.5, it all slowed down a bit, because with this release, Sony had added a new feature: the Internet Browser. users upgraded to get this new feature because they preferred it to the hacked solution's lack of said browser. Then, with Firmware 3, we see the other approach. Sony released a new Firmware, built off a new kernel, and with security like no-one had previously seen, but there was little increase in capability. So what was the end result of this move: Hackers across the interwebs got pissed and between the lot of them, cracked it in no time at all.

The point of all this is that you will never be as good or as secure as the millions of hackers around the globe are determined and skilled. Therefore, trying to secure your product from their hacking fingers is pointless. You must remove the determination. As far as I can see, the only way to stop people from hacking your product is to give them such capabilities and features that it's not worth their while to go without them.

Now, the iPhone. One of the most proprietary closed systems on the planet, Apple controls every aspect of the device, the hardware, the OS, the capabilities of the Apps and everything about the phone and it's equipment. And yet, they are regularly jailbroken and hacked by the multitude of ra1n and sn0w programs populating the darker corners of the Internet. So, what did Apple do. First was 3.0 which saw multitudes of people flock to the official OS for it's great new features. Next was 3.1.2 which was solely a security update which was met not by exodus from the jailbreak community but by stiff competition and determination from the hackers. This all culminated with GeoHot's fantastic Blackra1n, an easy-to-use 30-second jailbreak for any Apple Touch device, running any OS. So, their big move to stop jailbreaking led to it becoming a lot easier and a lot more accessible for the average user. No tricky consoles here, just one big button that says "make it ra1n" and you're done.


Of course, for Apple, one of the biggest reasons the jaibreak community are so successful is because they are getting apps for free, an income stream that Apple doesn't want to simply abandon, and Sony doesn't really want PSP owners to be simply downloading their ISO's off the net, and starving them (and the already nervous developers) of their revenue. Since, there's no real solution that keeps both sides happy, I think we've only really seen the very beginning of this.

iTunes: Apple's Elephant in the Room

When Apple released the first iPod onto the market, I don't think even they could've expected all this to happen. From a foundling product with not all that revolutionary features, iPod's now pretty much own the portable MP3 market. Initally, they faced stiff competition for the then unheard-of portable MP3 market. Now, iPods are everywhere running away with the market share in the face of only token gestures of disagreement from Microsoft and some very high-quality, but nonetheless unsuccessful new ranges of Walkmans from Sony. Now, the iPod is available in just about any size, shape, colour, format and with almost any capability you can name. And if the iPod can't do it, there's probably an app for that. So, Apple has been feverishly making bucketloads of money and trying to keep the momentum up, sometimes failing (new iPod shuffle), mostly succeeding (iPhone, ipod touch, iPod nano, etc.).



One of the big things that has let them take such commanding control over the market is the iTunes connection. By forcing iPod users to iTunes, you take more control over their actions as well as ensuring that most users will start purchasing content from the store. The initial iPods barely did anything but then the developments started rolling in. First there was music, then photos, then videos, then PIM data, then Podcasts, then Apps, Ringtones, Games, and various other extra functions. Unfortunately, fearful of losing their market momentum and iTunes users (to others like Winamp etc.). This means that they've kept essentially the same application since the first iPods, But the first iPods contained little more than music. Now, iTunes must sync multiple devices, multiple file systems, music, videos, photos, applications, PIM data and a billion other things that it was never really written to handle. Thus, we now end with what I believe to be one of the singularly worst mainstream bits of code that the world has seen on such a scale before. It's unstable, unreliable, difficult to use, requires immense resources and is generally not a very good program. Admittedly, it probably functions a bit better on Mac, but they should realise that the majority of their consumer base is currently using Windows.


My venerable old Acer Travelmate 4602 has finally been replaced by a new Dell Studio 1557, a far superior machine running all the newest gear (i7, yay!), and still iTunes 9 is slow, only starts up around 50% of the time and is a resource hog. I'm onw very relieved that I didn't try to upgrade the old machine with the new v9. On top of this, there are a multitude of things that software like that should be able to do, that it can't. Move to a new computer without ruining one's carefully organised music colletion, for example. Or to function fully without a stable internet connection. But it can't do this, or any of the other things that the Web would so dearly love.
Apple has simply been overcautious and (to an extent) greedy, trying to hold onto every scrap of market share and so simply stuffing a not-all-that-fantastic application with so much not-all-that-well-built functionality that it is just waiting for one of two things: major overhaul or catastrophic failure...