Jobs: iPad brings "freedom from porn"

mad

King Kanute tried to hold back the sea which drowned his daughter,Benetton confused commerce with politics..both are dead and long gone such stupid mistakes....

By trickii1 on 17 May 2010

Law suites

I can see it now Apple will have to backtrack on this as a no porn world is not possible...the law suites will start shortly?

By trickii1 on 17 May 2010

Remember the guy with big moustache and a pipe? He wanted the world to be free from rotten capitalism. The one with a small moustache had even further reaching freedom programme. What's really worrying and nobody seems to pick on this that Jobs' relationship with his customers is not unlike of a religious guru and his faithfull sect. His dogmatic, he's got a strong view on morality and executes his power to impose that view onto his followers, he convinces people that his products will change their life in almost spiritual manner.

I used to just shrug about all this but more and more often I feel like a world free from Apple philosophy would gain on sanity big time.

By Josefov on 17 May 2010

5th largest religion?

Does this make Apple the 5th largest religious movement in the world? Jobs as their supreme leader issuing his decrees is a slightly worrying picture, but then as seen above this does seem to be the case. Curious to see if this sermon to the devout will reduce the profits made by such nefarious companies?

By skarlock on 17 May 2010

Maybe people are missing the point?

I'm with Steve Jobs on this one. It is his right to do what he thinks is the best for his company, as he runs it. There is a difference between being elected (e.g. government) and being in business, and sometimes I think people the two overlap play by the same rules. The only people Steve Jobs is accountable to is the shareholders, and right now they seem pretty happy with him.

My father owns a newsagent and he refuses to sell top-shelf (soft porn) magazines. You could argue he's not allowing full freedom for people to choose, but he would argue it goes against his moral code. And if you don't like it, then you can go elsewhere and he is more-than-happy for you to do so.

Nowhere has Steve Jobs/Apple said you can't go to Google, Microsoft, Blackberry etc to get your fix.

Apple have very good mobile products which they've spent a lot of time creating and perfecting and suits a lot of users, and that's mostly down to the decisions of the CEO. If you want to target Apple's user base, then you have to stick by Apple's rules.

This is not about freedom, this is about business.

By Chatan on 17 May 2010

Freedom, I think not!

So lets recap, that's less choice of software, and filtering content. Yup that's exactly how I define freedom. Good to see Apple taking a nod from China there.

By Gunnwulf on 17 May 2010

And I thought that the ipad was expressly designed to enable people to "surf" one handed whilst sitting on the sofa/bed/cinema etc......

By Flangie on 17 May 2010

@ Chatan

I'd agree (and your father's stance is commendable).

However, the difference is that Steve Jobs claims it's about freedom but it is anything but.

By Grunthos on 17 May 2010

Ahh well, I'll stick to my iphone to view porn then....and it had such a lovely big screen as well.

By clickdog on 17 May 2010

Freedom of Choice - I'll take 4 please!!

Where were these 10 years ago?? I have one 'damaged' son and a husband who needs his unhealthy fix whilst leaving his ?^#@#*$ pubic hairs all over the keyboards.
Yes, I'll ditch all our computers in favour of these new Steve Jobs ones, please.

By Roving_Expat on 17 May 2010

This from the nation that is OK with gun killing live on TV, but panics at the sight of a nipple

Morality is a social standard, which applies locally not globally.

Maybe Jobs should watch French TV for while (you can't go two minutes without a booby popping out) Is he going to ban French TV, modern art, etc.?

I think Non-native North American spelling should be banned and the phrase "American English" crossed out of existence. My opinion is a valid as his. It doesn't make either of us right.

By cheysuli on 17 May 2010

Sermon on the mount

Will Steve be claiming that "Blessed are the App makers" and the "Geek shall inherit the earth"

So long as you give unto Apple what belongs to Apple

By DagMiller on 17 May 2010

Freedom "from" rather than freedom "to"

The authentic mark of the tyrant everywhere! Freedom from freedom anyone?

He cannot deliver anyway (sorry Roving_Expat). Last time I checked all his products had open access to the internet via Safari, which should be enough porn for anyone!

By JohnAHind on 17 May 2010

"I'm with Steve Jobs on this one. It is his right to do what he thinks is the best for his company, as he runs it. There is a difference between being elected (e.g. government) and being in business, and sometimes I think people the two overlap play by the same rules. The only people Steve Jobs is accountable to is the shareholders, and right now they seem pretty happy with him.

My father owns a newsagent and he refuses to sell top-shelf (soft porn) magazines. You could argue he's not allowing full freedom for people to choose, but he would argue it goes against his moral code. And if you don't like it, then you can go elsewhere and he is more-than-happy for you to do so."


Did you offer the same support to Microsoft who seem to get hammered by all companies, including Apple, as well as the EU for virtually everything they do?

Great business policy by your dad - stuff the customers they'll have what I tell them.

By steven_h1 on 17 May 2010

What on earth is he on about? The only way he can do that is to control the DNS server and have an up to the second IP blacklist. Otherwise people are just going to use Safari.

By SwissMac on 17 May 2010

NO Porn!!!! Really

So if I fire up the browser on the Ipad and Google Sex,porn etc I get no porn? Please!!! let's avoid believing this idiotic excuse unless Jobs puts the great firewall of China around "his" Ipad it is simply not true that it is free from porn! The only thing it is free from is apps he does not want you to install....that way he can keep it "his" Ipad

By sandman652001 on 17 May 2010

That way Apple can cream off some of the money for every app installed.... Could you imagine if Microsoft tried to claim a right to a percentage of the sale of every piece of software installed on Windows?

By skarlock on 17 May 2010

iDiots

iDiots, somebody should stick up a photo Of Jobs donning a Hitler Uniform and saluting a crowd of iDiots while tucked under one arm is his new iPad and the speech bubble reads "with this new calculator I can stop you watching whatever I dont want you to watch" or something better. I bet if the picture got a hell of a lot of publicity it'd put the brakes on the rotten fruits marketing machine (- Jobs has a moustache too I think Josefov)

By nicomo on 17 May 2010

Glad I was sat down for this....

Reading the words "Steve", "Jobs", "Apple" and "Freedom" in the same article

By everton2004 on 17 May 2010

Really?

Just thinking about Steve Jobs's hatred of porn: is this akin to many homophobes secretly being gay?

By The_Scrote on 17 May 2010

but it's all such tripe...

Look, I've got a HTC Desire phone, running Android. It hasn't got any porn on it. It's already free from porn. The iPhone I used to have was free from porn too. But if I'd wanted to I could have safari'd for porn and put a bookmark straight to it on my springboard.

I don't mind Jobs talking up his product, it's a good product, but this is such a blatant, nonsensical attempt to smear Android that Jobs should be ashamed of himself. In fact Google should sue the twat and make him retract - he doesn't have a leg to stand on.

By Noghar on 17 May 2010

Me thinks that ...

Steve Jobs needs a good job himself!! He sounds very frustrated.

By vikarmo on 17 May 2010

freedom from freedom

freedom from applications apple choose, freedom from porn which is part of free speech for adults, freedom from apple having to improve battery performance and hardware handling efficiencies in the OS as per Blackberry.

If this is freedom, I'm a banana.

Double-speak worthy of Orwell, the Nazis or in fact modern day China, which also "protects" its population from porn, in much the same way as it protects them from democracy. Way to go Jobs! He is genuinely losing it.

By gavmeister on 17 May 2010

pride comes before a fall

Gizmodo arrest; flash attack; "freedom from porn/applications" I think we may be witnessing Jobs approach the apex of his hubris, like the moment Fred Goodwin sealed the purchase of the ABN rump for RBS in 2007. the moment may soon come when the trendy left-leaning consumers of his stuff start to view him as being evil, and the whole edifice begins to crumble.

By gavmeister on 17 May 2010

an even better analogy

AOL, with a similar walled-garden business model, reached their apex of hubris when they sealed a reverse takeover Time Warner just before the dot-com bubble burst. Result: nothing good whatsoever.

By gavmeister on 17 May 2010

Presumably the men in white coats will be along shortly to take Jobs away.That's if he hasn't shot himself in his bunker by then.Er can you get Mein kamp as a download on the Ipad? Just a thought.

By Jaberwocky on 18 May 2010

The Canute metaphor is mistaken. He went to the sea precisely to prove that he could NOT turn back the tide.

By bubbles16 on 18 May 2010

Freedom from porn; freedom for repression-crazed school administrators to spy on their pupils without consent. Both of these concepts stretch the definition of the word "freedom" an awfully long way - and both are Apple stories this year. I can see what Jobs means to achieve here, and I agree with his net assessment of the impact of porn: but, a bit like Margaret Thatcher's mis-quoted "there is no such thing as society", there is far too much about Apple's communications lately that will make this assertion into a corrosive negative. It's the kind of irritable, blanket statement that makes you want to rush out and hug your nearest topless model (yes, yes, I know, fnarr fnarr) - as another poster has pointed out, other cultures like France and Germany have managed to defuse the power that the English-speaking world appears to hand over to porn without introspection. It's quite shocking to see Jobs come out with something so old-school and ultimately, pointless.

By Steve_Cassidy on 18 May 2010

PS, can I just turn the telescope round here and point something out to all those who draw a comparison with Hitler and Stalin and so on? All you're doing there is giving the subject of your criticism, a carte-blanche escape clause for listening to you. Try to think of these problems as being new, and of themselves, and having very little to do with some kind of historic precedent. Then your words stand a higher chance of actually getting through.

By Steve_Cassidy on 18 May 2010

spare me the lecture Steve

but I will deploy any analogy I see fit, thank you very much, don't be so patronising. Using Stalino or the Nazis gives no one a get-out clause, if used effectively. Just because the foolish deploy fallacious Reductio Ad Hitlerum arguments, should not preclude drawing a perfectly valid analogy with the propagandists of fascist regimes. Do you suggest we forget the lessons of the past? No problem is new and of itself, everything has historical precedent, "there is nothing new under the sun" and the lessons of the denial of free speech and where that leads is perhaps the most important lesson history teaches us.

Don't you dare, Steve, to presume to lecture me about it.

By gavmeister on 22 May 2010