Apple’s cloud computing “ecosystem” – a walled garden or comfortable prison?

Grazed from TechnologyTell. Author: Charles Moore.

A friend of mine—a longtime and formerly ultra-enthusiastic Mac fan—recently summed up his frustration with the direction Apple has taken. He still uses Apple computers because, he says, he’s too lazy to learn a new system, but he detests the walled garden model Apple has constructed around the iOS and, increasingly, OS X as well. He’s not a convert to the philosophy of cloud computing, with the exception of using DropBox for backups and file synching, but of course you could do that with a Windows or Linux system.

Meanwhile Apple’s new regime is making users more and more dependant on connection with the iTunes / iCloud / App Store mothership, which my friend says puts him in mind of 19th-Century sweatshops. They make people 100% dependent on the factory owner—in this instance the manufacturer of machines we depend on, like the iPhone, iPad, and, increasingly, the Mac as well…

My friend has a nice mid-2010 13? MacBook Pro running OS X v10.6.8 that could easily support OS X v10.8 Mountain Lion, but he’s balked at upgrading to any OS X version that has to be downloaded and installed remotely from the Cloud, with no physical media installer alternative available on CD, DVD or USB stick drive. He also has a 12? PowerBook G4 and a Pismo G3 500 MHz PowerBook still in service, both running OS X 10.4? Tiger…

Read more from the source @ http://www.technologytell.com/apple/112519/apples-cloud-computing-ecosystem-walled-garden-or-comfortable-prison/