A Spoon full of Freedom makes The Closed Source go Down

For as long as I can remember I have always thought of Apple being the superior technology in relation to mobile phones, computers and basically every appliance in my home. However, is this only because I enjoy the comfort of being told how to consume, how to use and how to buy into apple products?


The battle between the comfort of walled gardens being our protectors from digital baddies and horrifying content and the freedom of open source appliances allowing for unlimited creativity allows for the great debate of:

“Are you Apple or Android?”

Sure, by using Apple you have access to every “i” product in the world. Being a closed source walled garden with only branched products, it tames its users to only consume. But with Android, as an open source technology, there are so many more possibilities for creation, data aggregation and therefore consuming of content.

Another example would be the use of regional barriers in an open source and closed source context. What do region locks on websites such as CBS do for the users of the content? Nothing. The fact that I need to download a program such as ‘hola‘ to access the content that I want to see from America just shows how much freedom media corporations give us in regard to their content. Hola can therefore be described as a hammer which is smashing against the walled garden of the region locked barriers of media transnationally.

Myself, I can see both sides of the coin.

On one hand I have an apple laptop, iPhone, iTunes, iBooks, iMovie and iNoLife.

On the other hand I own a Windows PC.

By this you could assume that closed source products (such as Apple products) are superior to that of open source. However, the past few years of market share graphs would not agree.


On mobile devices, android has actually become more so popular then Apple. Are people wanting more freedom? Are they thirsting to become the aggregators of content instead of a submissive user?

“Networked organisations outcompete all other forms of organisation, particularly the vertical, rigid, command-and-control bureaucracies… companies that do not or cannot follow this logic are outperformed and ultimately phased out by leaner, more flexible competitors.” –Manuel Castells (Why networks matter)

In any case, the notion of proprietary islands versus a generative net will never cease to exists. While Apple exists, so will Android. But slowly but surely there will be a shift in the walled garden paradigm which we all live in today.