iPad or iBad?

So finally the time has, Steve Jobs has finally presented Apple's new creation, the iPad… that some people already renamed to iBad, their new (highly anticipated) "toy" has been finally unleashed to the large public.

You know I'm a BIG Open Source and FSF fan, I think software as learning resources should be FREE! I'm fed up with the old story about "…Open Source = Free = Money…", we all know that's not true, we all know that's plain hypocrisy and we all know that is usually big companies excuse to cut our rights or to justify you have to pay large amount of $$$ to just use an OS or an App. Anyhow I was watching a few videos and reading some industry news about this iPad and have to admit I was quite positively surprised about Apple's creation, nothing to say they have good ideas and a good marketing department, but then something crossed my mind… How will applications/music/whatever be installed on this handled device? One word came to my mind AppleStore which, in turn, invoked into my mind images of iTunes, iPhone and… DRM!

I don't have an iPod nor an iPhone, don't need an iPhone and usually can listen to all the music I want on my pc, but as a good geek I read a lot and know a few people who saved to have an iPhone just to be like the rest of mass (no offence intended to iPhone owners, it's just a comment about Italian way of life) and so I'm pretty aware of very restrictive policy of Apple about installing "non official" application or non-DRM stuff.

A quick tour on search engines brought me to confirm all my fears but gladly enough I've even found FSF already launched a petition about Apple's policy on these matters, I've already signed it and invite everyone of you to do the same, the petition can be found here.

I think the best way possible to close this post it's with an image and Holmes Wilson's words :

"This is a huge step backward in the history of computing.
If the first personal computers required permission from
the manufacturer for each new program or new feature, the history of
computing would be as dismally totalitarian as the milieu in Apple's
famous Super Bowl ad."

  Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010