High-Tech: Prisoner of Its Ecosystem or the End of the Competition?
Apple is probably the best example of a successful global ecosystem. Perhaps the most complete of the market, it allows the geeks to live their digital life, sport, culture through access to knowledge, from the wrist with the Apple Watch to the work done by the MacBook , iPad and iPhone , not to mention the Apple TV, transcended by Salt TV! But…
If we have to admit that these different products fit together perfectly, we must admit that once we have bought software, games and applications for its multiple devices, not to mention the recordings on Salt TV , the music on iTunes, we hesitate to pass to the competition…We are thus a little prisoner of such a system.
Use of licenses: Microsoft shows the way
Especially since some software companies do not necessarily simplify things, as I have recently experimented with Adobe, which offers some licenses purchased on the web exclusively for Mac or PC. Of course, going through the customer service can probably get a gesture…There is also the expensive offer in the cloud…
On the other hand, recovering application licenses purchased on Android or iOS for use on another system is not necessarily the rule. That said, Microsoft, with Office 365 shows however the example since its licenses are indistinctly usable from the smartphone, to the tablet via the desktop! When we want we can.
Exporting data: the example of Google
In other cases, things are more complex. Indeed, when one has accumulated dozens or hundreds of TV recordings at his operator, either on a disk or in the cloud, one hesitates to migrate to another service provider… Another terrible limitation of the competition to our 100% digital world…
Yet another giant of the painting shows the example. Google offers the possibility to download all your personal data. One realizes besides how much the first world search engine is unavoidable, as it offers us interesting and varied services, often even free!
Impose the export of user data?
We could extend the reflection by wondering if the legislator should not follow the example of a Google and impose it on other high-tech players to allow the consumer to recover personal data, which should be the consumer’s property. In the other direction, competitors could be forced to facilitate their importation.
All this seems so simple and obvious. There remains the question of copyrights for music, cinema, TV recordings, etc., even if private copying is acquired in some countries, but not all over the world … Obviously, at the time of streaming that does not continues to gain ground, we may wonder if one day it will still make sense to try to recover his MP3 or TV recordings…
