Mel Tajon

Apple: The 4-Foot Walled Garden

Victor Agreda reported:

From where I sat, Apple was on the defensive — but in a good way. The defense was primarily “we own the store, we own the rules for the store, and our goal is to protect the consumer.” Working to Apple’s advantage is the tight control of the App Store, which some (including TUAW at times) have bemoaned as draconian. But I think today’s hearings show how a tightly-controlled store can benefit consumers if the entity controlling the store is genuinely proactive about protecting the privacy of consumers.

Google took a beating in the hearings, basically admitting that the Google app market is a Wild West of applications. With the Android Marketplace’s openness, developers can and do write apps that encourage or enable illegal activity. Also, Google’s policies on who does what with your data (be it location or email or whatever) are there, but each app developer can pretty much do as they please with only the vaguest notion that Google might (in case of malware, for example) come down on you and remove your app from the store.

By explicitly stating that the aim of the Android Marketplace is not for Google’s team to be gatekeepers, Google puts the onus on consumers to be aware of who is using their data and how they are using it.

I’ve always thought of the Apple ecosystem as a 4-foot walled garden.

For us Apple heads, we love everything in here. The Apple garden doesn’t have EVERYTHING but it has everything we need. Everything in here compliments everything else that’s in here.

Sure, there is a big wild world outside of our walls, filled with all sorts of things that we don’t have. And if we ever had to leave this place, it’ll take some effort to get all of our things over that 4-foot wall.

But hey, we feel protected by it. Nothing is forcing us to stay.

We just really like it here.