How Ubuntu Taught Me Not To Fear The App Store
There’s quite an uproar in parts of the tech community advocating the Android platform over the iOS (iPhone/iPad) platform because Android is “open” and iOS is “closed”. Frankly, I think this idea is misguided. In addition, I believe companies like Google are cynically furthering this misunderstanding in an attempt to manipulate the tech community for PR purposes. I also think this is detrimental to the broader user community and, if successful, a turn we’ll probably regret in the future.
So how could someone who loves open source software and who has contributed to several open source projects take such a counter intuitive position? Shouldn’t I be chanting “Up With Android, Down With iOS?”
Let me tell you why I’m not.
It was Ubuntu that taught me. These days, I won’t recommend any Linux distribution other than Ubuntu to someone who isn’t a unix expert and knows what they’re doing. Even those folks should probably think twice before passing on Ubuntu. Don’t get me wrong; RedHat/Fedora, SUSE, et al are excellent, as are the BSDs. But, Ubuntu has a massive advantage; it’s engineered to be straightforward and simple to use for the majority of use cases and is managed by a community that takes the responsibility to maintain that very seriously.
When you run Ubuntu, the preferred way to get software onto (or off of) it is using the Ubuntu Repository. For GUI users there’s a beautiful app browser that lets you look for applications you might want, see some ratings, and click a button to install if you see something you like. If any updates come out, they’re pushed to you automatically. If you get tired of the app, you can just as easily remove it. This repository is curated; a group of people carefully review anything that goes into the repository to make sure it’s safe, installs cleanly, and so forth before it can be published and signed by Ubuntu. As an Ubuntu user, if you stick with the official repositories, you really don’t have to worry that much about your computer that you’re relying on getting trashed by spyware or malware, your personal data being stolen, your system getting some poorly written piece of crap on that prevents it from shutting down cleanly, running smoothly, or just getting trashed by a half baked app.
Does that mean Ubuntu isn’t “open”? Of course not, it’s fully open in every way that the word “open” can be meaningfully applied to software. What it makes it is “managed” and this is a powerful advantage to the platform in general.
Contrast that with the Windows platform. Even though I can install anything I want onto a Windows machine (and many come with tons of crap preinstalled on them), this doesn’t make Windows an “open” platform. In fact, it’s about as closed as they come. Rather, it makes Windows “unmanaged”. This, to my estimation, is a major failing of the Windows platform and why it is so often the vector for viruses and exploits that have done massive harm to the community at large.
How does this relate to the emerging mobile platforms, Android and iOS? Is iOS really “closed”? Well, it’s based on many open components like BSD, SQLite, WebKit, LLVM/GCC, and hundreds of libraries many of which Apple donates to the open source community and others it activity contributes to. There are open source applications available from the “closed” App Store, like Colloquy. Conversely, Android is also based on similar open components, but like iOS most of the apps that run on it are “closed”. So what’s the difference?
One big difference between the two is that iOS is, like Ubuntu, a managed platform whereas Android is, like Windows, for the most part unmanaged. If you use an iPhone or iPad you can be certain that the primary conduit for installing apps is being managed by a party with a vested interest in keeping is safe, reliable, and reputable. This might mean some hackware isn’t available or you can’t browse to some random site and click the “download” link to install an app, but it does mean that your system is as safe and reliable as you can reasonably expect it to be.
If you do get some app that you want gone, just delete it. You system won’t become littered with half installed bits of broken apps that make it run slowly or cause weird bugs. In a way, your device becomes what us techies call a “production” device. This word has a special meaning in the tech circles because it means a device plays a critical role that someone or something is depending on. It’s locked down from casual modification. New software and updates are applied in a considered manner, and efforts are taken to prevent it from experiencing downtime or sluggish behavior.
After nearly three decades of developing software for and using a computer regularly it’s really sunk in to me that your primary computer is a production device. It needs to be reliable and safe. Downtime or poor performance hurts you. Even having to do mindless and unnecessary maintenance on it (like cleaning out busted uninstalls or worse, wiping it and restoring it) is counterproductive.
Whether accidentally or intentionally, Apple seems to have gotten this resoundingly right with iOS. Google and it’s advocates haven’t figured it out, yet. I hope for the sake of the next generation of computer users, they do.
So how could someone who loves open source software and who has contributed to several open source projects take such a counter intuitive position? Shouldn’t I be chanting “Up With Android, Down With iOS?”
Let me tell you why I’m not.
It was Ubuntu that taught me. These days, I won’t recommend any Linux distribution other than Ubuntu to someone who isn’t a unix expert and knows what they’re doing. Even those folks should probably think twice before passing on Ubuntu. Don’t get me wrong; RedHat/Fedora, SUSE, et al are excellent, as are the BSDs. But, Ubuntu has a massive advantage; it’s engineered to be straightforward and simple to use for the majority of use cases and is managed by a community that takes the responsibility to maintain that very seriously.
When you run Ubuntu, the preferred way to get software onto (or off of) it is using the Ubuntu Repository. For GUI users there’s a beautiful app browser that lets you look for applications you might want, see some ratings, and click a button to install if you see something you like. If any updates come out, they’re pushed to you automatically. If you get tired of the app, you can just as easily remove it. This repository is curated; a group of people carefully review anything that goes into the repository to make sure it’s safe, installs cleanly, and so forth before it can be published and signed by Ubuntu. As an Ubuntu user, if you stick with the official repositories, you really don’t have to worry that much about your computer that you’re relying on getting trashed by spyware or malware, your personal data being stolen, your system getting some poorly written piece of crap on that prevents it from shutting down cleanly, running smoothly, or just getting trashed by a half baked app.
Does that mean Ubuntu isn’t “open”? Of course not, it’s fully open in every way that the word “open” can be meaningfully applied to software. What it makes it is “managed” and this is a powerful advantage to the platform in general.
Contrast that with the Windows platform. Even though I can install anything I want onto a Windows machine (and many come with tons of crap preinstalled on them), this doesn’t make Windows an “open” platform. In fact, it’s about as closed as they come. Rather, it makes Windows “unmanaged”. This, to my estimation, is a major failing of the Windows platform and why it is so often the vector for viruses and exploits that have done massive harm to the community at large.
How does this relate to the emerging mobile platforms, Android and iOS? Is iOS really “closed”? Well, it’s based on many open components like BSD, SQLite, WebKit, LLVM/GCC, and hundreds of libraries many of which Apple donates to the open source community and others it activity contributes to. There are open source applications available from the “closed” App Store, like Colloquy. Conversely, Android is also based on similar open components, but like iOS most of the apps that run on it are “closed”. So what’s the difference?
One big difference between the two is that iOS is, like Ubuntu, a managed platform whereas Android is, like Windows, for the most part unmanaged. If you use an iPhone or iPad you can be certain that the primary conduit for installing apps is being managed by a party with a vested interest in keeping is safe, reliable, and reputable. This might mean some hackware isn’t available or you can’t browse to some random site and click the “download” link to install an app, but it does mean that your system is as safe and reliable as you can reasonably expect it to be.
If you do get some app that you want gone, just delete it. You system won’t become littered with half installed bits of broken apps that make it run slowly or cause weird bugs. In a way, your device becomes what us techies call a “production” device. This word has a special meaning in the tech circles because it means a device plays a critical role that someone or something is depending on. It’s locked down from casual modification. New software and updates are applied in a considered manner, and efforts are taken to prevent it from experiencing downtime or sluggish behavior.
After nearly three decades of developing software for and using a computer regularly it’s really sunk in to me that your primary computer is a production device. It needs to be reliable and safe. Downtime or poor performance hurts you. Even having to do mindless and unnecessary maintenance on it (like cleaning out busted uninstalls or worse, wiping it and restoring it) is counterproductive.
Whether accidentally or intentionally, Apple seems to have gotten this resoundingly right with iOS. Google and it’s advocates haven’t figured it out, yet. I hope for the sake of the next generation of computer users, they do.