waffle

In case you’ve been wondering, this is the calm before the storm.

So it finally happened; “Windows Genuine Advantage” (WGA) stopped working for a day or so. To install some XP and Vista distributions, you must pass WGA. To download some critical XP and Vista patches, you must pass WGA. Not only did this say “sorry, you can’t download this”, it actually put some people installing legitimate systems with legitimate serial keys and legitimate installation media and license into what’s called “Reduced Functionality Mode”.

And to think; the perverted, spineless scum installing and using the cracked versions of Windows that does not use WGA did not have to withstand this at all. One wonders exactly how Genuine that Advantage really is.

Computer Sweden interviewed Eric S. Raymond yesterday about the past and future of open source and how it relates to the Free Software wing. If you know Swedish, it’s a good read.

However, one thing stuck out at the end. I’ll translate this passage:

Q: Open source is often criticised for not being user friendly. Why is that?

A: That’s correct, we have issues with being user friendly. We’re improving, but there’s still a way to go. An explanation is that many come from a Unix background where the prevalent culture is a programmer culture that doesn’t pay attention to usability. Another reason is that programmers have a tendency to write for their own needs instead of their customers’. Sooner or later, usability will become more prevalent, but it is hard to predict when.

So, in those lines, Eric establishes that:

• Programmers, by and large, don’t pay attention to usability.
• Programmers are happy using non user-friendly interfaces - usability only comes in when the customer expects it.
• Good usability can creep into products as more hands touch the code; unless Eric figures that everything will have to be replaced, Eric implicitly hints that this is the way it’ll happen.

I feel I should object to this. There are many people who care about usability. I care a great deal about usability, even in toy apps I write for myself. There are many programmers, fortunately, with a knack for usability. So I think Eric should have gone out of his way to clearly delimit any programmer culture from the specific original Unix programmer culture, where usability is taking a hit in favor of, of many things, componentization and the strong passion for the command line. There are clearly many programmer cultures, including the programmer cultures in, for example, Gnome and Mac OS X where usability takes the front seat, in Gnome especially where it clashes with the pre-existing Unix culture in a number of places; witness the spatial Nautilus, for example.

But that’s not even the important point. The important point is that Eric to some extent sees usability as something the customer demands, not that something that’s an intrinsic part of a great product. John Gruber famously argued that usability is really something you have to take into account right from the start. It can be retrofit, but as the program approaches an application rather than a backend architecture, the difficulty of this really goes through the roof. So it is a technical problem.

But more than the technical aspect, the curious position is that hardened programmers don’t need no usability. Instead of “let’s respect the people who will be using this and make it easy and efficient to use so that we can get out of their hair and let them get real work done”, there’s buried a sentiment that the customer (or user) is stupid; we have to dumb it down for them. I wish Desktop Linux the best, I really do, and Ubuntu in particular has made enormous strides in the past few years. But with sentiments so deeply buried in community members that continue to make a difference, is it any wonder many people think it’ll never work out?

Update: Many of the points are indeed extrapolated from the thinking behind Eric’s comments. It may be true that Eric does not carry these sentiments personally right now, and just expressed himself badly; I don’t think it’s likely, since Eric has no trouble expressing himself in general, but as with any interview it could happen. It is however certain that Eric’s thoughs have lied in this general direction before, and so I don’t deem it unlikely that this is more or less how he feels about these issues today.

So: the iPhone hacking effort has basically passed exactly no one unnoticed by now. In just over a month since the device’s release: from nothing, we have a way to bypass activation, install arbitrary software and write full-blown apps for the iPhone, using a compiler that was hacked together from existing compilers and public knowledge (the hacking equivalent of growing a human ear on a mouse’s back, if you will).

Apple has now released two updates. While the first one did trash some hacks, it looks like the second one didn’t. It seems to me that Apple is taking a relaxed attitude towards the hacking; something like the “I know what I’m doing, let me mess with this” hacking-mode, frown-upon-SDK some people asked for as a golden middle road between no SDK (the current situation) and a full-blown SDK (a move some deemed it unlikely for Apple to take).

Why is that?

Apple has made it clear that it’s going to continuously update the iPhone software - it even splits up the initial profit of the iPhone into 24 (easy) monthly payments in order to legitimize this. And officially, from Apple’s part, the only way to run apps in the iPhone is to run Apple’s real apps or third party web apps in Safari.

Now, as the Washington Post noted when they covered the phenomenon of hacking a device like this, “Hardware manufacturers are usually not happy about such user-created innovations because they can lead to piracy. Why buy a game or a software application if you can download one free?” This is a problem with the PSP, it is a problem with the Nintendo DS and, because of iPod games, it’s even a problem with the full-sized iPod.

It is not a problem with the iPhone. Think about it. Who makes “legitimate” software for iPhone? Apple does. No one else. And every iPhone owner gets all of Apple’s software for it, including updates, for free. There is no reason for Apple to block app development. People who install extra apps, at least as it stands today, know that they are crossing some sort of illicitness border. If Apple thinks it’s a problem in support, they can simply ask that a reasonable measure is to restore the phone and see if the problem persists - the same exact policy the company has with regards to Macs using Unsanity’s Application Enhancer (APE) or its haxies.

This has happened before, too. Rockbox and iPod Linux are two alternate firmwares for iPods that have gone unattacked. And let’s not forget the hack effort lead on the Apple TV’s firmware, AwkwardTV, to develop new modules for its user interface, extending the official, Apple-sanctioned firmware in just this way.

Critics of the iPhone often call it out as a shining example of Apple’s wish to retain perfect control of every individual product, top to bottom, from the (docking) cradle to the landfill. If Apple’s wise, they will realize that they can only reasonably control the device until it lands in the box and is shipped out of the factory. If Apple instead upholds the values its critics ascribe them, they will fight tooth and nail to prevent it, and that will be a clear misstep.