What brand of freedom would you like? - O'Reilly Radar
2105:
Freedom means different things to different people. Hence Richard Stallman’s quip, “Think free as in free speech, not free beer.” While there’s no question the code is much more free on Android, I think Steven Levy’s point in his piece on the iPad is worth repeating:
While Apple wants to move computing to a curated environment where everything adheres to a carefully honed interface, Google believes that the operating system should be nearly invisible. Good-bye to files, client apps, and onboard storage — Chrome OS channels users directly into the cloud …Funneling users to the cloud means storing their data for them, on Google-owned and controlled servers. And Google is at least as restrictive about the data on its servers as Apple is about the apps in its App Store — maybe, I think almost certainly, a lot more restrictive.
The whole thing is quite good.
