I’ve never really given much thought about who controls the platforms and technologies I use, or why it is being controlled or contrastingly, why it is not. Take any platform and look what you can and can not do with it- all of this, is the choice of the manufacturer.
In particular we have Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android phones (for example a Samsung Galaxy). These two products both offer state of the art technological and innovative design, however they are both extremely different in their design and functioning because of the creators ideological choices. Apple has gone with a ‘locked appliance’ way of running its iOs system whereas Android has taken a ‘generative platform’ approach (who tout that, no industry player will “restrict or control the innovations of any other”)
What we have here are these two technologies – a locked appliance or a generative platform; the difference being that the manufacturers of the locked technologies have complete control over the platform which includes the content and user, and a generative platform; which allows the user to have complete control over the software.
Evan Williams stressed the value of generative platforms, commenting that we as users shape the system and how our input can greatly improve technological platforms like Twitter. William’s witnessed this first-hand, as it was users that introduced the hash tagging component into Twitter.
This generative platform takes Henry Jenkins quote to a whole new level, ‘No one knows everything, everyone knows something, all knowledge resides in humanity.’ Where we can feed off each other for bits of information to create our own personal and unique platform to meet our every need. Android offers this through such avenues as ‘rooting’. We, humanity are the creators. Android allows us to, essentially create a phone, however we choose.
Apple strongly disagrees with this way of running things. Steve Jobs stated that “You don’t want your phone to be like a PC. The last thing you want is to have loaded three apps on your phone and then you go to make a call and it doesn’t work anymore.” This puts Apple devices in its own separate being, with their own stores such as the App Store. Apple wasn’t always like this, for in 1977 with the release of the Apple II allowed people to ‘tinker with it‘, thus making it a generative technology. I wonder if they changed for the safety of the user or to just maximise profits from their stores.
So what do users prefer? Recent news articles suggest that Apple’s mobile operating system continues to dominate against Android, however Android is growing, and growing fast. Read more here.
If you have a spare 13 minutes, here is a worthwhile (maybe a little biased) video to watch.
Which do you prefer? The generative platform like the Android or the closed application of the Apple iPhone?
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