Sunday, November 4, 2012

The dangers of platform lock-in

The dangers of platform lock-in, article.

This was rather a specialized situation, but nevertheless, arguably, an ebook did get broken and inaccessible because it was limited to iOS.

It's a mixed up situation. I guess all customers want open platforms. Why would anybody want to be limited to one company's hardware? But most companies who thinks they have a chance want to shoot for the lock-in and then a monopoly, because it's a licence to print money, just see Microsoft, they are still earning billions every year because they won the platform wars of the nineties, and their system came to be seen as "standard" and others as "non-standard" and thus risky.
It's not really a meritorious way of earning the extra money, but it's a tiny minority indeed of humans who will turn down free money, so humanity has to change at depth before we get rid of that situation, is my guess.

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