The greatest thing about Google Chrome? I can download any extension, and if I dislike the UI the developer hastily slapped on there, I can change it myself in a few minutes. I can store changes however I want, back them up in case future extension updates overwrite them, maybe even send the guy my changes. The web is built on this dying code of ethics, one I will one day sorely miss. The web is shrinking and consolidating. Like the industrial revolution, there will be much turmoil, chaos, and injustice ahead. Unlike the industrial revolution, there is no guaranteed improvement in living standards. Maybe the leash around our necks and blindfolds around our eyes will tighten. But we will accept, even unwittingly, because there is no point of reference. There will be more monopolies than innovators. More fences than doors.
What building a walled garden does is it drives other people, whether through annoyance or motivation, to building their own walled gardens. The result is the new century's arms race. The stakes are users and their information. The end result is less functionality and freedom for the end user, who has to make difficult decisions and commit to certain technologies and platforms out of paranoia about identity security. But more importantly,
Why should anyone trust software, hardware, or services that refuses them access rights?
The web is also built on standards. Take aways standards and there's only chaos, inefficiency, and room for mishaps much worse than the typographic eyesore. By creating a new whole new 'ecosystem' of distributed applications outside of the internet and its protocols and technologies, there comes a great burden of re-inventing the wheel. Apple just declared war on the Internet. The walled garden versus the open prairie. Even if what Apple is selling works and looks better (at least on the front-end), it is poison. There is nothing worse than playing a game and betting your life on other people's rules. In the simplest of terms, it's a dictatorship versus a democracy. And while giants like Google can potentially dictate, they are more benevolent and aware of the community's needs.
Apple's war on the Internet is not a complete win. Much has yet to be done about Flash, about being able to search through an app collection wider than 3-4 iPhones. I would suggest the company rethink its goals, and also bear in mind: Why do I need an app that only a fraction of developers know how to build (thereby more expensive), only a fraction of people will get to use (thereby less profitable), and with a potential chance of being rejected by a third party; when I can build an app using open, common technologies like HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Java, Python, etc. Time spent focusing on shiny buttons is time lost on accommodating developers is chances of building real and useful apps wasted. Don't get me started on the idea of interactive ads. Most apps are already ads in and of themselves. Unobtrusive is the best cure for a necessary evil. Google already figured that out. Time to stop reinventing the wheel.
Back in college, if I had to get my old
hellolittlefriend.com website approved by Google or Yahoo or Apple prior to launch, it would have never seen the light of day, and I'd be a few months less of a front-end web engineer. I might have never even gotten the needed break. The site was a UX what-not-to-do: CSS was wonky, the jQuery was horribly inefficient, and the Portfolio page had 50+ full-sized images. But no users were harmed in its making, and I learned from my mistakes. Coupling its review process with its hands-off-my-shiny-shell policy, Apple is doing such a disservice to education, I would suggest Mr. Jobs, in light of this hypocrisy, to retract his speech at the 2005 Stanford commencement. It turns out, never settling and thinking different are not always good.
