Steve Jobs: "Want freedom? Buy Android"

According to Apple CEO Steve Jobs people who want porn or political satire should choose an Android phone instead of an iPhone. Because Apple has a "moral responsibility". You know, just like those Iranian priests have a "moral responsibility" to ban anything they find morally offensive (which is basically everything). In addition Jobs bans applications that are too similar to functionality already found in the iPhone, or applications that could perhaps in some way maybe be used to perform copyright infringement. Or applications he just doesn't like.

So I couldn't agree more with Jobs, if you want freedom on your phone instead of a "moral police" filtering out applications that they deem "inappropriate" for whatever reason, go buy an Android phone. I did.

Photo: barockschloss

Taliban loves iPhone

The Taliban apparently loves Apple's iPhone. Perhaps they feel Apple's ideology goes well with their own? You know, a totalitarian view of the world where one strong and unquestionable leader tells you exactly what to think, what to do (and most importantly in Apple's case, what NOT to do) and exactly how to do it in the most limiting and narrow-minded way?

Something tells me the Taliban are not huge fans of the more democratic approaches of open standards, interoperability and compatibility.

The basic functionality of a modern cell phone

ZoomMediaPlus have released a card reader, ZoomIt, for the iPhone and iPod Touch, making it possible to view files from a memory card, and interact with them, directly on the iPhone/iPod. I can't that it should take a 3rd party vendor to see this ridiculous design flaw or limitation in the product and come up with this functionality on their own. After all, it's pretty much standard in most other phones these days.

Except in most phones you don't have to have an extra gadget plugged in on the side of it for this to work. It's called a memory card slot, and you just insert your memory card into it, and voila, all the files you've transferred from your computer and onto the card are there. Usually these phones also let you copy or save files onto the memory card so you can easily transfer all music, photos and other stuff onto your computer.

But no, that would be giving the customers way to much freedom and ease of use, if you ask Apple.

Photo: ZoomIt website

Steve Jobs is a gnome

So Apple launches the iPad, a new e-book reader and more. Big deal. Please let me be wrong, but I suspect it will be hopelessly locked to the shockingly bad iTunes software which will be needed to do more or less anything with the device. I also suspect you will have to buy e-books in a proprietary format - from iTunes. In other words just as uninteresting as the Amazon Kindle and other proprietary systems.

What I find a bit amusing though is the picture of Steve Jobs holding the iPad. Doesn't he look like a cute, little gnome holding a huge iPhone in his hand?

Photo: Justin Sullivan / Getty Images

Spotify for iPhone

If you're one of those people choosing overpriced hype instead of features, chances are you might be the owner of an Apple iPhone. If you also happen to be a Spotify-user (if not, check this out), you'll finally be able to use it with your iPhone - not thanks to Apple or Spotify, mind you!

A brilliant mind has created an open source Spotify-client for the iPhone called Spot. Of course you will need to jailbreak your phone in order to use the application, but then again this is something you have to do anyway if you want to unlock your ridiculously expensive phone's full potential.

Check out the demo below, and download the software here.



Or you could just wait for the official version of the mobile Spotify application, which is gonna cost you though.

Bad apples, part 2

As I've said before, I'm not (to say the least) a huge fan of Apple and their over-priced range of proprietary technology gadgets with a lock-in effect that should make Microsoft cry their eyes out. Today's example is just another one of why I would never dream of buying anything with the stupid apple logo on it: Being the control freaks they are, they have banned an actually useful utility, one of the very few I've ever heard of, from the AppStore (you know, the online store that let's you download applications that enable you to tickle your stupid iPhone, pop virtual bubble wrap and mimic the sound of a light sabre...), a remote control for a BitTorrent client, with the motivation that "this kind of software is often use to perform copyright infringements". Say what???

The BitTorrent technology is not only perfectly legal, it's a brilliant way of distributing all kinds of files. Furthermore, this remote control app doesn't actually download one single byte of "potentially illegal" material, it merely controls a BitTorrent client you've set up at home.

So, Apple, I'm assuming computers in general should be banned then, because they're "often used to perform copyright infringements". Particularily the DVD-burner, that's got to be banned. Burn it, I say! Oh, and the Internet, of course, we all know that a huge amount of the traffic on the Internet, both HTTP, FTP and not to mention those dreaded newsgroups, is piracy, so let's just close down the whole thing, shall we*?


*) Incidentally this is just what French president and crazy frog extraordinaire, Nicolas Sarkozy is trying to accomplish. Perhaps they should join forces, dumb bastards.