Andrew’s Mac Tips Weblog

A while back I was telling no one in particular (probably no one at all) that I thought it was OK for the iPhone to be a closed system; arguing that the phone appears to be an elegant and fool proof appliance right out of the box and why open it up to bugginess and unreliability.

I also argued that Steve Jobs, who secretly despises third party developers, finally had a product that encompasses his bicycle for the mind theory…

“Every once in a while, a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything. And Apple has been — well, first of all, one’s very fortunate if you get to work on just one of these in your career. Apple’s been very fortunate. It’s been able to introduce a few of these into the world. 1984, introduced the Macintosh. It didn’t just change Apple. It changed the whole computer industry…”

The iPhone is obviously a huge deal to him; such a huge deal that it would be the final real product where he can say, “Go ahead and enjoy it, but don’t tamper with it; a lot of really smart people have made it exactly what it is supposed to be…”

That’s great. What do I care? After all — it is a phone first of all — not a computer.

But, now there’s speculation that Leopard, the next version of Mac OS, will essentially lock down its included applications. No more third party tweaks that invisibly enhance existing applications such as Safari, Mail, iPhoto etc. Evidently (and it’s way too early to know for sure if any of this will in fact transpire) the reasoning is that it’s a security feature — another way to prevent malicious code from getting in the system.

Could be it’s Steve’s way of saying: “This whole system is starting to stagger around. Let us control the built in stuff. You stick with stand alone third party stuff.” Either way I’m very worried.

In my brief two-odd years of using Macs, I’d say that a good One Half of the enjoyment I get out of the experience, is derived from tools that hack right into the system itself. Tools like Butler, PithHelmet, Sogudi, Witch, et al.

So, now being potentially at the sharp end of this new Don’t Tamper policy — all I can say is: “I don’t like it! Not at all!”

Please, Steve, reconsider. The guys who write these hacks aren’t hacks themselves. This is subtle elegant classy seamless stuff; all done in the best possible taste. If all that is gone with OS 10.5 then I just might lock down the fine as-is OS 10.4 and be happy with that.

Leopard Axing Input Managers? - The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)