The Apple Paradox, Closed Culture & Free-Thinking Fans 945
waderoush writes "The secrecy surrounding the expected Apple tablet computer is only the latest example of the company's famously closed and controlling culture. Yet millions of designers, musicians, and other creative professionals love their Apple products, and the Apple brand is almost synonymous with free-thinking creativity. How can a company whose philosophy of information sharing is so at odds with that of most of its customers be so successful? This Xconomy essay explores three possible explanations. 1) Closed innovation, overseen by a guiding genius like Steve Jobs, may be the only way to build such coherent, compelling products. 2) Apple's hardware turns out to be more 'open' than the company intended — Jobs originally wanted to keep third-party apps off the iPhone, for example. 3) Related to #1: customers are pragmatic about quality, and the open source and free software movements haven't produced anything remotely as useful as Mac OS X and the iPhone."
Free-thinking? (Score:5, Funny)
This is probably the first time in history a cult has been described as "free-thinking"......
Re:Free-thinking? (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree. This is absurd. I take it the blurb was written by a cult member.
Re:Free-thinking? (Score:5, Funny)
"Think Different" was an order, not a suggestion.
Re:Free-thinking? (Score:5, Funny)
So at the office where I work, we used to have these meetings with my whole department (mostly a bunch of programmers and such). I noticed that pretty much everyone in the meeting except me had a mac laptop (I have a dell running Fedora). Anyway, one day I grabbed a sticky note and drew an apple logo on it with a marker, and underneath it wrote "Think different.", then put the sticky note over the Dell logo on my laptop. Anyway, about half way through the meeting, someone finally noticed, and asked me why I had the apple logo stickied to my laptop, and I replied:
"Because I wanted to think different, like everyone else."
Re:Free-thinking? (Score:5, Insightful)
Simplified != dumbed down. It is the essence of good design.
Dumbed down is when you design the system at cross-purposes to itself to cater to the naive user who does not understand the conventions of desktop computing. For example, putting a big-ass "Start" button and five hundred application launcher shortcuts on the desktop, because your users don't have a clue what to do after the computer boots. Or designing your apps as monolithic monstrosities because your users don't understand multitasking. Or having your windows maximize because the multiple-application desktop is too confusing, or you were too cheap to buy an actual workstation monitor. And then needing to add a taskbar because with maximized windows it's really hard to see what you are running.
Obviously, I'm pointing my finger at Windows, here, but Linux has been adopting the Windows conventions of desktop computing steadily over the last 10 years, to the point where it is now pretty much assumed even by most OSS enthusiasts that the many of the idiotic conventions of Windows are the correct ones to emulate. It takes several hours of tweaking a *nix box to undo these stupidities and get it back to a proper Unix-style desktop as were common in the 1990s, but then of course you are taking a step backwards. Or you can get a Mac, and get a Unix desktop that has kept up with the times.
You can always spot the people who don't understand real desktop computing. They are the ones who complain that the Mac's maximize button doesn't work, and that you need a two-button mouse to do real work. I mean, do they seriously not know that real men use 3-button mice? On their macs?
Incorrect premise (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Incorrect premise (Score:5, Interesting)
Further the notion that "the Apple brand is almost synonymous with free-thinking creativity" is about a decade out of date.
I spend most of my days in various professional recording studios video production houses and you see a lot fewer Macs than you used to.
Re:Incorrect premise (Score:5, Interesting)
I spend most of my days in various professional recording studios video production houses and you see a lot fewer Macs than you used to.
Funny, all the IT professionals and programmers I meet seem to be using MacBooks these days.
Re:Incorrect premise (Score:5, Insightful)
I spend most of my days in various professional recording studios video production houses and you see a lot fewer Macs than you used to.
Funny, all the IT professionals and programmers I meet seem to be using MacBooks these days.
Which is entirely irrelevant. I'm an "IT Professional and programmer" and I carry a Thinkpad. Why? Because it's the best option for me, in order to best accomplish the tasks I set myself. Look, nobody is arguing that Apple's products have a lot going for them, so there's no need for you to defend them. What is being discussed is whether or not individuals who are part of a cult-like self-reinforcing hivemind can be considered "freethinking". Personally, I don't think so. If you're someone who rationally evaluated his or her computing requirements, looking at all the options, and then settled on a Mac as the best answer, well, bully for you. Like I said, Apple makes nice stuff. If, on the other hand, you simply bought a Mac because, in your view, there can be no other option, well ... as a child your parents must have given you mental blocks for Christmas. There is a world of computing beyond Apple Computer's current product line.
Re:Incorrect premise (Score:5, Interesting)
the response i get when i say i would favor thinkpads over macbooks, is that the thinkpads have boring design.
at that point i start to wonder how much of the macbook craze is about sitting at some "starbucks" with a macbook on the table, looking like a up and coming artist working on the next bestseller book or song...
Re:Incorrect premise (Score:5, Informative)
I have some better reasons than that to prefer a MacBook:
Just being prettier is pretty secondary to all of those.
Re:Incorrect premise (Score:4, Interesting)
Sturdier - since a) apple introduced their unibody aluminium cases and b) lenovo started making IBM's designs into utter crud
That's at least partially true -- Apple's notebooks are quite solidly constructed. However, I never had an IBM-era ThinkPad fail on me, including the one I toted around for ten years for notetaking and word processing long after I'd replaced it with a more recent model for work. As far as I can tell so far, most of the new Lenovo ThinkPads are also pretty good, though there are occasionally exceptions, which is true of all manufacturers.
An excellent track pad, not a track nipple
Every ThinkPad I've had has both, and I prefer the nipple and disable the trackpad. I don't care to waste my time making repeated motions on a trackpad to achieve what I can in a single gesture with the trackpoint.
Really good quality IPS screens
Granted. Screen quality varies pretty widely across ThinkPad models, though I've never had any complaints with mine.
MagSafe power connectors
Whatever. Never had any problems with the connectors on any brand of laptop I've owned.
A really good quality keyboard - with backlighting
Backlighting? That's not a feature, it's a bug. I learned to type thirty years ago. I don't hunt and peck in broad daylight, much less in a darkened corner of the local Starbucks.
If you like Apple's products, good for you. They are not, however, the only manufacturers of decent hardware, and tastes differ. The Apple style that Apple fans like repels me, personally, and no doubt they dislike the appearance of my preferred machines. Big deal. We probably own different cars and different brands of shoes. There are people who affect a stance of superiority over that bullshit, too.
Re:Incorrect premise (Score:4, Informative)
Browsing is nice too with 3-finger swipes sideways to go back and forth in the web history.
You can pinch zoom in pictures, or just put two fingers down and rotate them.
Also, no area is wasted for buttons, the whole pad presses down with a good tactile click.
I've hated trackpads for a long time, but upon using this one, after learning all the gestures etc I could never go back to a nipple(what I had before) or god forbid the old style resistive single touch tiny trackpads of other laptops.
Re:Incorrect premise (Score:5, Informative)
Luckily though, we were discussing MacBook Pros, not MacBooks. MacBook Pros do have IPS screens.
Re:Incorrect premise (Score:5, Insightful)
So because someone appreciates a product produced by that hive mind ... they also must be of the hive mind? What a retarded statement.
It is possible to appreciate the work of someone/some company that doesn't think exactly like you, at least for us normal people.
Re:Incorrect premise (Score:5, Interesting)
The exact same thing can be said for Linux fans, Windows fans, or any other clique.
I heard something this morning about the "hidden brain" on NPR's Morning Edition, and the author was explaining how the choices we make may not entirely come from our "rational" conscious mind. I know I'm butchering this up so go find a podcast, but your "hidden brain" is rather dumb and makes its choices by what is sees as prevalent in the environment around them.
So this could be:
"I like Windows - because everybody around me uses windows." or
"I think Apple Users are gay, because I observe that 1) the "creative artists" in popular culture appear to be gay, and 2) I see Apple is creative with their designs therefore they must be gay too." or
"I like Apple because I observe a lot of Windows machines crash and have viruses" or
"I like linux because I observe a lot of nerds uses it and I want to be a nerd too."
Anyway, it's just a theory...
I like Apples myself and I'm not gay and I don't think all my scientist colleagues which use Macs are either... not that there is anything wrong with being gay (Sienfield Reference).
Use what you are happy with, everything else is an illusion.
Re:Incorrect premise (Score:5, Interesting)
He said that the only clues he had as to who he was were how other people treated him, so he totally went with it. There seems to be a mental need to conform to your surroundings and other people's expectations of you.
I think this was the last story on This American Life. Yay for NPR!
IT Professional != "free-thinking" (Score:4, Insightful)
At least by the convention in question. "Apple is the choice of creative types" is juxtaposed against the "PCs are for techies and nerds" stereotype.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
4-5 years, and it's still working a treat.
Re:Incorrect premise (Score:5, Insightful)
No, in the sea of crap that is most laptops, MBP/MB are some of the least crappy.
Re:Incorrect premise (Score:5, Insightful)
Alternative explanation (and more plausible seeing as I saw this trend before the iPhone existed).
Apple offers a high quality unix environment with a good user interface that "just works", but is still extremely capable of running all those geek-necessary unix utilities. All while offering it on an extremely high quality hardware platform.
Closed toolmakers (Score:5, Insightful)
Agreed. Just because the maker of a tool operates in a closed manner doesn't mean that the tool itself is closed or that users of the tool are closed-minded.
Yamaha is closed when it comes to production of their pianos. Cross is closed when it comes to production of their pens. And Ford is closed when it comes to production of their cars. But it's no paradox that anybody is creative, productive, independent, or expressive with those pianos, pens, and cars.
The Unix foundations of Mac OS X appeal to technology geeks. The Just Works interface appeals to artistic types who want to create without hacking or fighting the tool itself. And the high quality hardware appeals to anyone who favors reliability and sturdiness.
Re:Incorrect premise (Score:4, Insightful)
Exactly. OSX is to me a machine with a Unix command-line that takes less of my time to maintain and has a more robust set of applications.
Re:Incorrect premise (Score:5, Insightful)
That's it. That's pretty much why you'll see a large number of geeks sporting Apple hardware. When you're a professional, spending most of your time working with a tool, you want that tool to be the best there is. Yes, that's going to be expensive. You can buy a cheap regular drill for $50 at Walmart (with a set of bits) like I did, but for some reason, my carpenter friend got himself a $400 top of the line impact drill. Have you seen a professional photographer plying her trade with a pocket camera? Or even a low end DSLR? Nope, they all use heavy duty, full frame cameras that cost in the thousands, not including lenses. You can do pretty much what you want with a cheap camera or a cheap drill, but your life will be much easier with a professional tool. Because a professional tool will get out of your way and let you do your thing faster with a lot less headache and a lot more joy.
Same with computers. If I'm to spend most of my waking hours in front of a computer, I want it to be fast, reliable, look good, allow me to do whatever I want and get the hell out of my way and let me focus on the task at hand. Neither Windows nor Linux running PCs fit this bill as well as a Mac running OSX. My time and mental energy are precious which is why the cost of the hardware is no object.
Re:Incorrect premise (Score:5, Interesting)
The lack of Intel processors the first half of last decade went a long way towards that. Programs like Lightwave and Maya began optimizing their rendering engines for x86. By 2005 there was a stark difference rendering times on PPC and Intel machines with Intel beating the crap out of the PPC. Plus some of the larger shops began supporting Maya on Linux. Especially for their render farms.
That being said, I dealt with those on the small to medium side of the house almost all went Mac primarily for the software. I know a of shops that used dedicated NLA devices for editing in the 1990's and then went to Final Cut Pro. I know many more who switched from Premiere on the PC to FCP on mac because Premiere 6 was highly unstable on a lot of Windows boxes compared to FCP 3. Then Apple acquired Shake and made sure that Shake + a PowerMac/MacPro cost the same as Shake for Linux. And then dropped the price to $500 for OSX three months after I paid $3k for the software....
Re:Incorrect premise (Score:4, Insightful)
Just to nitpick, MacOS X is a certified UNIX. Linux isn't. Thus, I don't think that statement is saying what you wanted it to say.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I would argue that most Apple fanboys (the real hardcore ones anyway) only THINK they're "free-thinking." They're original and free-thinking in the same way that hippies thought they were original and free-thinking in the 60's--by acting, dressing, and thinking like every other hippie. Real free-thinkers don't start out with an set ideology, and they certainly don't have a cult leader or product line that they worship.
They are more "West Side Story" than West Side. They are like the Dolce and Gabbana "Punk" t-shirt that costs 120.00 and says "Wash on gentle".
Re:Incorrect premise (Score:5, Funny)
Excellent observation! Like the Puerto Ricans, Apple users are a vibrant and creative culture just trying to make it in the bad New York streets with all those Windows thugs snapping their fingers in some weird choreographed dance fight.
Re:Incorrect premise (Score:5, Informative)
Real free-thinkers don't start out with an set ideology, and they certainly don't have a cult leader or product line that they worship.
From the summary:
the Apple brand is almost synonymous with free-thinking creativity.
I think what the article was trying to say is that it's as close to 'free-thinking' as one can get when describing a company or product line. You are painfully correct in that this is a ridiculous use of words but if you think back to Apple's marketing past and present, I think you'd agree that the company sought to enter the market by appealing to people who need something to feel different. And they did and that's why it's 'almost synonymous' and not equivalent. I almost appreciate the fact that they use 'free-thinking' because that title is almost always self appointed ... whether it be to imply that everyone else is 'jailed' but you or the simple fact that no one but yourself can truly know what you are thinking so to describe how you think, only you are the de facto expert.
The funny thing is that every music studio (of five) that I've been in hinge on Mac hardware and Mac software. It's hilariously uniform. Sometimes they even have the same model of Mac with the same (ProTools) hardware and software setup. The 'free-thinking' and creativity comes from what the people do with it and not the fact that they are going against the grain in a hardware and software manner.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
so apple is the computing equivalent of hottopic?
The CORRECT PREMISE: (Score:4, Insightful)
Apple's history of "just works" allows people more time for creative effort. BECAUSE it is closed, there is not as much complication to have to figure out. There's no registry, no need for scripting, and if something crashes it tends to recover on its own. THAT'S why "creative" types use it, because it allows me to REMOVE one more OBSTACLE to my workflow.
I'm not a "creative" in the typical sense, I'm a neuroscientist. Every time my Windows XP system crashes on me, or my network didn't initiate correctly, that's wasted time, effort, and it means I need to learn a new skill set to correct the problem.
The few times my OSX machine crash on me, it self recovers. OSX GETS OUT OF MY WAY, where as Windows and Linux KEEP PROMPTING ME WITH USELESS STUFF! The fact that fewer exploits target OSX is also a great benefit, and I don't have a billion choices for which hardware to buy so it's easier for me to choose the "best" one available to me. I don't want to spend a month figuring out if the Acer, Panasonic, or Dell is going to be the most ergonomic for my uses. With Apple, it's not even a question, because it's irrelevant insofar as I do not have a choice.
Also, by being an "outsider", there is less push to conformity. I don't know anyone else that uses a Mac, so I'm not being told which software is the "best" or how I should organize my workflow, thus allowing me to make my own decisions about what's important. This is critical in Science, and has been shown to be important in Sociology studies of how Science gets work done. "The Neuroscience of Screwing Up [wired.com]"
Re:The CORRECT PREMISE: (Score:5, Funny)
I see your capslock key is acting up though. You might want to have Apple take a look at that for you.
Re:The CORRECT PREMISE: (Score:4, Insightful)
Every time my Windows XP system crashes on me, or my network didn't initiate correctly, that's wasted time, effort, and it means I need to learn a new skill set to correct the problem.
As long as you're not using some cheapo hardware, if you have XP crashing more than once a year, you're obviously doing something you shouldn't. That is not Window's fault that you can't figure out how to properly use a computer. It's like a guy at work the other day trying to blame Outlook / Exchange because he couldn't figure out how to make an archive properly.
The few times my OSX machine crash on me, it self recovers.
Really? When I've had OS X crash on me, it's always been a "the system is so screwed up that you have to hold the power button to turn it off" situation.
OSX GETS OUT OF MY WAY, where as Windows and Linux KEEP PROMPTING ME WITH USELESS STUFF!
With Windows at least, you can turn that off. You claim to be a neuroscientist but you can't take 5 seconds to find out how to turn off UAC?
The fact that fewer exploits target OSX is also a great benefit, and I don't have a billion choices for which hardware to buy so it's easier for me to choose the "best" one available to me.
So in other words, you walk in and say "I want a computer" and you let the salesman tell you what you should buy, instead of you making an informed decision and actually finding out what would work best for you and at the best price.
I don't want to spend a month figuring out if the Acer, Panasonic, or Dell is going to be the most ergonomic for my uses. With Apple, it's not even a question, because it's irrelevant insofar as I do not have a choice.
If it takes you more than an afternoon to find out what the best system is, you're doing something horribly wrong, and I think you're beyond help if you spend a whole month looking for the best system.
Also, by being an "outsider", there is less push to conformity. I don't know anyone else that uses a Mac, so I'm not being told which software is the "best" or how I should organize my workflow, thus allowing me to make my own decisions about what's important.
First off, every Macolyte I know all uses pretty much the same software - partly because there's not nearly as much available (fact of life). Secondly, why do you consider it a BAD thing that people are making suggestions as to how you can perform task X faster or get the software for free?
Just a note for everyone else, I use all OS's and they all have ups and downs. I have nothing against OS X, but I find this particular persons reasons for using Mac's to be pretty bogus.
Bahahahaaaa!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
That is not Window's fault that you can't figure out how to properly use a computer. It's like a guy at work the other day trying to blame Outlook / Exchange because he couldn't figure out how to make an archive properly.
Yes. That's exactly what it's like. Blaming the computer because the computer is hard to use. If you think computers need to be hard to use, then it is YOU with the elitism problem, not Mac users.
The few times my OSX machine crash on me, it self recovers.
Really? When I've had OS X crash on me, it's always been a "the system is so screwed up that you have to hold the power button to turn it off" situation.
Anecdotal evidence cannot invalidate other anecdotal evidence. Quit wasting time.
OSX GETS OUT OF MY WAY, where as Windows and Linux KEEP PROMPTING ME WITH USELESS STUFF!
With Windows at least, you can turn that off. You claim to be a neuroscientist but you can't take 5 seconds to find out how to turn off UAC?
Again, the answer is Yes. And I claim to be an audio engineer, and I can't be bothered to take thirty damned minutes to figure out how to use the proprietary network driver's stilted crap UI to turn on 802.11, enter a WPA key, set my service order, and turn on DHCP. AFTER I've used the built in Windows Network UI to connect to a wireless network and had it mysteriously fail, twice, because the network driver stubbed out Windows' own API for the hardware when it was installed at the OEM.
You know what it takes to join a new wireless network in OS X? ONE SINGLE DAMNED CLICK, on a menu whose icon LOOKS LIKE AN ANTENNA, then a password if necessary. THAT'S IT.
Stuff like this makes a REAL difference. Take your haughty incredulity and shove it up your ass.
If it takes you more than an afternoon to find out what the best system is, you're doing something horribly wrong, and I think you're beyond help if you spend a whole month looking for the best system.
O RLY? As an avid bicyclist, I can tell you, that if it takes you LESS than an afternoon to purchase a new bicycle, then YOU are doing something horribly wrong; because if the decision is that easy for you, you obviously don't know enough about how to properly fit a bicycle.
Be careful with your analogies.
Just a note for everyone else, I use all OS's and they all have ups and downs. I have nothing against OS X, but I find this particular persons reasons for using Mac's to be pretty bogus.
What constitutes "use" to you? Did you install 10.5 on a hackintosh for an afternoon and diddle around in TextEdit, before declaring yourself an expert on all things OS X?
Did you know that in bash, the default shell for OS X, you can hit "ctrl-A" to move to the beginning of a long command line?
Did you know that EVERYWHERE ELSE IN THE OS X UI, even including text boxes in Safari, you can hit "ctrl-A" for the exact same behavior?
No, you didn't.
As I said before, stuff like this makes a real difference.
Decoupling of product and user (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd argue that the "free-thinking" aspect comes from Apple's somewhat paradoxical "white box" branding.
Let's start with design. Their products are as faceless and devoid of nonfunctional design features as possible with the exception of the Apple logo (so you have a disk drive, but not one shaped like an alien's face) and consequently the product design is rather decoupled from the user. An Alienware laptop projects a certain image, and consequently Alienware laptop users are going to disproportionately be adolescent male gamers, regardless of the hardware's usefulness as a workstation for making scientific visualisations. An Apple laptop, by virtue of being a big featureless slab of whatever it's made out of, could be used by anyone.
Similarly the OS, hardware and so on are heavily abstracted to make it easier for the user to get on with what they're doing. It's basically a box which does some computer stuff, and if all goes well you don't need an awareness that you're using eighty yottabytes of hyper-RAM and a BMX derivative OS. All that stuff is thrown to the background in much the same way that the case design is made as bare as possible. As a result, things like hacking the OS etc. don't really enter your mind. There are apps, you run them, you get things done... ideally the software ecosystem is such that you never have to tinker around and realise that you're using a platform that's locked down.
Now, this also goes into their corporate image, and this is where it gets really tricky. Their corporate image is the products. You are to think about the processes which went into them as little as possible. This is part of why they crack down on leaks so much. Ideally, they want you to think of the product alone. So naturally, the fact that it's probably made in some poorly-paid factory in China doesn't enter your mind. That's maybe not as true with a Microsoft-carrying machine, where you think of the Microsoft corporate entity and so on.
Essentially, the stink of corporate is less obvious in Apple's products because they put a big fat cloaking device on the corporation. That means that self-described free thinkers, who are likely to be anti-establishment, and thus anti-corporate, and thus repelled by something with an MS logo, go with them by default.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
1. Apple keeps their development process very secretive, so that they can release a product to much fanfare. (As compared to FOSS, where the entire process is usually open to scrutiny.) If you think about creative people like artists and musicians, many of them follow this exact same pattern: they toil in secrecy, not divulging any details of what they're working on, so that they can release a piece and shock/awe/inspire p
they had similar style, but much more flexibility (Score:4, Insightful)
by acting, dressing, and thinking like every other hippie.
You clearly were not paying attention; they dressed in a similar STYLE, but there was wide variation. They WERE free-thinking and individualistic compared to the people who went into work wearing the same color shirts (usually white), ties, hats, shoes, slacks, jackets. Streets of major cities at rush hour at the time were a sea of men dressed the same.
Also: anyone who claims Apple has an inside culture of creativity and free thinking is full of shit. A few idea people bring ideas to the top, and everyone else is told exactly how to implement things, with strict parameters. It's one reason a friend of mine left- he spent several years working on Apple's flagship software components and hardware, but had no say in anything. Now he makes less money but at a smaller company, where he also felt his input would matter.
Another culture shift at Apple: remember when there were credits? No more. Apple now refuses to recognize to the public the contributions its employees make, except for 2-3 top-level people. Jobs, Ive, etc.
Both the top-down ideas and refusal to recognize employee work are cashing in short-term profits for long-term stability. I wouldn't invest in Apple long-term if you paid me to; the day Steve Jobs or Ive retire, get hit by a bus, or just drop dead- Apple stock will crumble because everyone is under the perception (correctly) that they are the driving force.
When your brand is as much your top level executives as your products, you have a big problem down the road.
Free-thinking? (Score:4, Insightful)
Most of the "free-thinkers" who buy Apple products are just hipsters who think it's cool to be different, not people with genuinely "free-thinking" or radical minds.
I guess Apple did all that themselves... (Score:5, Insightful)
"customers are pragmatic about quality, and the open source and free software movements haven't produced anything remotely as useful as Mac OS X and the iPhone."
No.. they just created what runs on the them, that's all..
Meh.
Re:I guess Apple did all that themselves... (Score:4, Insightful)
For those who still don't get it after that slightly cryptic jab, the linked article is bullshit because most of what isn't GUI polish in OS X, including WebKit and BSD, is open source.
So the open source and free software movements created Mac OS X, which also runs the iPhone.
That said, the Apple ecosystem is marketed as if it was embraced by freedom lovers, this doesn't actually reflect the user base.
Re:I guess Apple did all that themselves... (Score:4, Funny)
You have to wonder which KoolAid fountain they were drinking from when they wrote that line....
The core components of Mac OSX & the iPhone OS are taken from open source.
Re:I guess Apple did all that themselves... (Score:5, Informative)
They obviously never visited this page [apple.com].
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
No.. they just created what runs on the them, that's all..
Meh.
Err, not entirely... OSX came primarily out of NeXTStep [lowendmac.com].
Re:I guess Apple did all that themselves... (Score:5, Insightful)
"haven't produced anything remotely as useful as Mac OS X and the iPhone."
I have to disagree with this one as well.
Linux is on more systems than OS/X everything from Supercomputers to Wifi routers to cell phones. More of the Internet is powered by Linux Apache, MySQL, PHP, Python, and Perl.
Firefox is on how many system? OpenSSH? and let's not forget that OS/X is built on BSD.
FOSS has not built any desktop systems as useful as OS/X. Android vs iPhone is still an on going battle but I would put them as equally as useful of not as polished.
OS/X is a great desktop and Linux really could learn from same as the iPhone. Since both OS/X and the iPhone have been built using FOSS as their foundation I would say that it goes both ways.
Re:I guess Apple did all that themselves... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, some portions of OS X are derived from OSS. The GNU userland that almost no mac users use, and portions of the extremely heavily modified userland and base libraries and a few services such as printing.
Those add up though. More significantly, every time a Mac user runs two processes at once, they're using the preemptive multitasking that was missing from MacOS 9, and was fixed by moving wholesale to a FOSS kernel. Every IP packet goes via a FOSS TCP stack. The pretty GUI would be useless without these foundations.
pretending that Apple is standing on the shoulders of OSS is retarded unless you want to claim that OSS Unix like OSes are standing on the shoulders of Bell labs
It would be ridiculous not to acknowledge that Linux, FreeBSD etc. stand on the shoulders of Bell Labs.
FOSS (Score:5, Insightful)
"the open source and free software movements haven't produced anything remotely as useful as ... the iPhone"
I'm not sure whether this is due to the difficulty getting make and gcc to construct things out of plastic, metal and semi-conductors - or a lack of configure options...
If *only* there were a freely available OS to us on phones that wasn't from Apple - hmmm
Re:FOSS (Score:5, Informative)
If *only* there were a freely available OS to us on phones that wasn't from Apple - hmmm
Most of Apple's iPhone and desktop OS is FOSS anyway: the Mach kernel, BSD libraries, the gcc compiler and runtime, and tons more.
Re:FOSS (Score:4, Funny)
If *only* there were a freely available OS to us on phones that wasn't from Apple - hmmm
Most of Apple's iPhone and desktop OS is FOSS anyway: the Mach kernel, BSD libraries, the gcc compiler and runtime, and tons more.
True, but the GUI layer isn't, and that's what is most important from a typical user's perspective. Apple will defend that "intellectual property" to the death.
Nice Troll (Score:5, Insightful)
the open source and free software movements haven't produced anything remotely as useful as Mac OS X and the iPhone
Many users of Android, Linux, and many other open source products might have some serious disagreements with that statement.
Some of which. (Score:3, Insightful)
Linux, and many other open source products
Among which the *BSD family of unices, which forms the basis of Mac OS X.
It even looks like the open source movement has produced a viable set of unix implementations for a long time before an (almost-on-the-brink-of-extinction) Apple decide to borrow it, slap a nice interface on it and call it "Mac OS X" to replace the ageing (not-even-true-multitasking) shit it had before.
In fact, I still wait to see OS X on anything but Macs and iPhone. Whereas open source, although often unnoticed, tends to show up disc
Fourth option... (Score:5, Insightful)
status of shiny white thingys (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:status of shiny white thingys (Score:5, Informative)
Translation, status symbol.
Maybe yes and maybe no. I'm a university professor and the increase in Apple logos I'm seeing facing me in class is going through the roof. I think it's over half in most classes now.
I've seen group projects get screwed up because although the Mac, which is the underdog, has had to learn to be super-compatible with everything else, the same can't be said of Windows. So you may be hearing the result of the network effects of everyone having Macs and her use of a different OS being a stumbling block to working together easily. I most certainly have seen that.
Don't chalk everything up to marketing. I switched to the Mac about 2 years ago, after 10 years of dismissing it as a pain in the ass. But since they've been on Intel, the amount of stuff you can do (easily) on them has really gone up. You can boot damn near any OS, and there is phenomenal virtual machine software so you don't even need to. Yes, this is only because Apple won't support their OS being used on off-the-shelf hardware, but I think a lot of people are just making the pragmatic decision that they don't really care.
I'm not saying you should buy the girl another new computer--we're all pretty susceptible to trends when we're freshmen in college and trying desperately to fit in--but that there might be more to it.
AAPL reality check (Score:4, Insightful)
Apple, as a publicly traded company, only has one obligation: to make a profit for shareholders. That means doing things like closing off Darwin for developers and totally locking down the App Store to only provide apps friendly to Apple, then they will do it and from a business perspective rightfully so. Of course I'm still gonna break my iPhone because I don't care about five apps on the App Store that make my iphone a flashlight. I need tethering and even more useful apps like blacklisting SMS messages and phone numbers that call me who I don't care for.
Apple does and gets away with a lot of things that
That being said, I only use Apple products. Apple makes products that work. That's all I ever wanted from my computer and cell phone. They do it, I'm fine with their business and Steve Jobs deserves all the zillions he's worth. Actually making products that work and listening to your customers forgives a LOT.
Re:AAPL reality check (Score:4, Interesting)
i keep wondering what jobs would have been doing now if he never had known woz, and talked him into selling his computer design fully assembled.
Lesson: Apple marketing i working! (Score:5, Insightful)
and the Apple brand is almost synonymous with free-thinking creativity
Yes, just like cigarettes make you healthy and slim, alcohol makes you attractive to the opposite sex, junk food makes you popular, and Nikes turn you into a long distance runner, weight lifter, and all-around bad-boy. Branding is great, isn't it? Of course, it has nothing to do with reality.
Repeat after me, Mac users: "we're all different".
Related to #1: customers are pragmatic about quality, and the open source and free software movements haven't produced anything remotely as useful as Mac OS X and the iPhone.
Funny, I think Apple has never produced anything remotely as useful as the open source software movement, in particular given that probably the majority of the code Apple ships with OS X is derived from other people's open source projects to begin with.
It's number 3 (Score:5, Interesting)
From my perspective, getting an Apple laptop is the easiest way to get a nice, portable laptop which runs a Unix system (which, with MacPorts, I can get all the unixy goodness) AND to make sure that the hardware is guaranteed to work. I don't need to worry about whether the new kernel broke support for ndiswrapper, I don't need to worry about the regressions in hardware support that have hit my Linuxy friends, and I have a GUI that gets as close as I've seen to the DWIM pattern.
And I have a scriptable GUI. Say what you will about its syntax, AppleScript allows some wonderful scripting possibilities. And you can call out to a shell script, so it's also powerful :)
Designed to stay out of your way (Score:5, Insightful)
My personal opinion is that the main reason a lot of creative (both "artsy" types and developers) like Apple's products is because the user interface and the physical products are designed to, as they say, Just work. This includes staying out of your way and letting you get to work but also to not pull the "Microsoft approach" to user friendliness by renaming things to make them "easier". There's a reason the market for customization of the look and feel of OS X is a lot smaller than the market for similar products for Windows.
Of course, there are several reasons why this works for Apple, a couple of these are partially because they have full control over the hardware and operating system which allows for tight integration and coupled with this are the development tools and the user interface guidelines. Another influence which I think is major is that third party developers know that Apple's customers generally expect software to behave in a certain way, something which isn't true to the same extent with Windows and other *nix systems. An example of this would be drag and drop, if a Windows application fails to handle drag and drop properly most people just dismiss the error message, restart the app and think nothing of it, after all, drag and drop is generally hit or miss with Windows apps, if an app for OS X failed to handle drag and drop properly most likely users would complain and consider it a screwup on the developer's part.
So part of the reason is the centralized control from Apple and part of the reason is that users have come to expect little to no user interface issues which forces Apple to make good development tools and developers to put in extra effort to make sure things work.
/Mikael
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
One of the reasons I abandoned Windows was that I was sick of icons and names and places changing with every new release. I hadn't used a Mac in 10 years when I first started looking at them again (2 years ago), but in about 5 minutes I was back to feeling comfortable with it. So little has changed that you don't need to think about the OS at all. Things are where they are supposed to be, and they basically don't move.
The other approach I appreciate is that OSX doesn't ask for a pat on the head every time
Option 4 (Score:5, Insightful)
4) Slashdot readers and contributors are on the geeky, bleeding edge and do not represent 90% of the population, most of whom could not care less about 'openness'.
Eric
Apple sells hardware (Score:4, Interesting)
The statement "haven't produced anything remotely as useful" is also nonsense. Let's see, how about the Internet, including TCP/IP and DNS? Web servers? As far as end-user products, Android phones (including Droid) and the XO are certainly useful. OSS has produced lots of useful things.
wrong assumptions (Score:5, Insightful)
How can a company whose philosophy of information sharing is so at odds with that of most of its customers be so successful?
Really? The first thing you should always question is your assumptions. Does Apple have a "philosophy of information sharing" and if so, what is it?
The company is secretive about upcoming, not-yet-available products. Which is not information that customers require in their day-to-day work anyways. As a user or as a developer, it is information about the current, existing products that you need most. And as both I've always found that to be readily available whenever I needed it.
So how does a philosophy of "not talking (much) about unreleased ideas" merge with the mindset of a designer, artist, programmer or any other kind of creative person? Quite well. A lot of creative people don't talk (much) about their work-in-progress, either, until it's finished. Programmers are about the only kind who feel that putting a half-finished thing out for the public is the thing to do.
Subjectivity presented as fact (Score:5, Insightful)
From TFA:
The programs people are inspired to write for the Mac OS X operating system are routinely more elegant and useful and less annoying than their Windows counterparts.
Quite the claim! Yet there are no examples.
I own a Mac. I've not installed much extra software on it. But what I have installed appears very similar to its Windows equivalent.
So can anyone give an example of what he's talking about?
I guess iLife should be showcase software for Mac.
- iPhoto is a confusing mess compared to Picasa
- GarageBand has some pretty neat amp simulation software in it. But the UI is the opposite of intuitive.
- iTunes is clumsy and inconsistent. I've been using it for over 5 years on Windows and Mac, and it still throws me curveballs.
- I once put together a slideshow in iMovie. I still don't know what was going on.
- iDVD is pretty easy to use. But that's because it's basically a wizard.
Unwarranted Assumptions (Score:5, Insightful)
Somebody has conflated the kind of "free-thinking creativity" of artists, designers, etc. with the kind of free-thinking of the open software movement. "free thinking" to an artist means the freedom to create her own vision without interference by anyone else, not freedom to collaborate on or elaborate someone else's vision. This artist's "free-thinking" often looks more like the Jobs method of top-down control than like the open-source movement's wide-distribution collaboration philosophy. Which isn't to say that artists never collaborate, of course.
It's all explained pretty well by Adam Curtis (Score:3, Interesting)
It's not designed by committee (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm as much a fan of open-source as the next guy and I've contributed to some projects and asked for features, etc. However, I find that the whole "designed by committee" that *many* open source apps have reduces the overall quality. Those OSS apps that truly shine generally have either a strong leader or a single author. You know the old saying, which is true, as well as witty; that a camel is a horse that was designed by a committee.
As far as openness goes, Apple doesn't announce vaporware like most other companies do. This means when they announce something, they are going to sell it. Usually their products have taken old ideas and looked at them from a different angle opting for being very good at a few things rather than poor and many things. Let's face it, Cmdr Tacos' famous assessment of the original iPod is a classic example of how "the masses" would design a similar product. If Apple would release an "alpha" product to "test the waters" like so many other companies do, the iPod (and iPhone, for that matter) would have died at birth or would be so hideously deformed that it would be unrecognizable.
Huh? (Score:4, Insightful)
How can a company whose philosophy of information sharing is so at odds with that of most of its customers be so successful?
Just seems like a non sequitur to me. Or it illustrates the fact that people who gravitate to the Mac are interested in a tool they can use and, say, Linux users are interested in a toy (and I mean that in a good way- I love me my toys) they can fiddle with. Windows users (those who choose it when they don't have to for some reason), well, who can understand them? ;-)
Does a an artist care about the inner workings of the companies that makes paints and brushes?
Apple stuff just works (Score:3)
I'm a long-time Linux user and even occasional contributor, and most of the development work I do for Hercules [hercules-390.org] is on Linux. My primary desktop and laptop run OS X, though, for one simple reason: they're tools, not toys. I need them to just work when I sit down in front of them to get things done. I find I spend far too much time getting a Linux desktop to that point.
I tell people I'm a Mac user because I'm a Unix geek. OS X, unlike Linux, is a system you can give to your computer-illiterate inlaws and have it be solid and reliable, and not have to spend hours on the phone playing tech support. Being Unix-based, it's far more secure and stable than Windows, too.
So what if it's closed source? It just works, and that matters to me far more.
Why should irony be surprising? (Score:5, Insightful)
As engineers, we ought to know that sometimes we want things that are contradictory. We'd like this airplane to be strong, but it also must be light. You can't have unlimited quantities of both.
The same goes with creativity. We say we want originality, but that's not really what we are looking for most of the time. What we want is something derivative enough to be certain to work but original enough to be an improvement. Any idiot can be "original". Just take whatever is being done and do it a different way. The problem is that most different ways aren't better.
That's why "creativity" can't be treated as a "core organizational value". It's not something you can pursue in any meaningful way. What really distinguishes "creative" organizations is that they have greater insight into their problem domains.
Apple's most admired products each embody an insight about what the users they are after want to do. The iPod was not the first portable digital music player, nor has it ever been the best going by specs. The user interfaces on the iPods have been well designed and have featured innovations like multi-touch, but the killer feature isn't a feature at all. It's how the iPod, iTunes and iTunes store work together to make managing your media convenient.
That said, nobody can be all things to all people. I hate the iTunes search interface to the iTunes store, because I don't use it the way Apple's target users do. I don't watch TV and don't care about being part of popular culture. I'm more interested in finding oddball, eccentric stuff. If Google ever opened a music store, that'd be for me; YouTube is more what I'm looking for. The iTunes store wants to steer me to the latest episode of whatever TV show is the rage, and discourages me from finding what I want.
But it doesn't matter because catering to the oddball whims of very eccentric people isn't the business model for iTunes.
My thoughts as a Creative Professional (Score:4, Interesting)
I've always been into computers, and was a die-hard Windows fan until the Intel macs were released. I made the switch, and haven't looked back; HOWEVER, I didn't make the switch "to be cool (as was discussed above)," nor did I make it because windows = bad, apple = good. IMHO, they're both computer industry giants whose main interest is (ding!) PROFITS.
That being said, I'm in the "Free-thinking" business; music is what I do, it's who I am. I choose Mac, NOT because of it's affiliation with the "young, hip, etc." crowd, but because when it comes down to it, Macs are simply more stable than Windows. The MAJORITY of creative software - audio, in my case, but artwork and video as well - is run on macs. Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of great software selections on PC; however, when I walk into a studio (and this also goes for film/photo editing) chances are 9/10 times the main computer will be a mac, typically running Pro Tools (which also runs on windows). The reasoning behind this lies in the fact that Pro Tools, and pretty much every major Digital Audio Workshop (DAW) runs incredibly stable on the Mac. Pro Tools doesn't even support Windows 7 yet! The thousands of high quality plug-ins out there for purchase? They all run incredibly stable on a mac, too. Why? Because Mac has become the "creative" industry standard, an attribute largely due to its stability in the first place.
As a music professional, I take great care to make sure my data stays uncorrupted. I back up EVERYTHING multiple times, JUST in case my computer crashes/gets wiped, etc. My computer IS my office. I wouldn't be able to do what I do without one (unless I have an analog studio - anyone want to invest $30,000?). I don't need the cost-effectiveness of a PC, I need the guaranteed stability that comes with buying a mac.
On a different note: Apple's do-it-yourself recording, filming and photo editing software is big business. It remains powerful enough to produce professional art, while remaining cheap enough for practically anyone (college hipster kids included) to purchase. Tie that into a couple generations of internet users who drown themselves in media, and what do you get? A few million you-tube directors who all want macs, because it's what the professionals use, and there's a chance in hell their parents might actually buy it for them.
It's not rocket science, really. (Score:4, Insightful)
Apple users embrace the "free-thinking" mantra because that's the image Apple's served up. In short, they were told that using a Mac makes them free-thinking. And no, I'm certain the irony is not lost of those of us who abhor Apple's general policies, which are nothing of the kind.
Apple found themselves, entering the early 1990s, as the lone major computer platform other than Windows, and they had arguably better graphics and a few pretty good music applications, which were struggling to actually function on the PC/Windows until well into the Windows 95 era (UNIX-like OSs didn't do audio well at all... you needed a DSP subsystem, as on the SGIs and the NeXT machines, to do audio at all in the very non-realtimey, who-cares-about-interrupt-latency versions of UNIX/Linux at the time).
So they used this as a sales pitch. The PC equals Windows, it's from IBM, and it's used in business... thus, its only uses are business-related. They weren't selling Macs to computer experts who knew this to be false, and certainly not those of us who actually did the PC work as well, then better than the Mac on media content creation of all sorts. They're selling to users who are fairly clueless about PCs.
Apple always had very good marketing, and both that, and their message, continue today. They were selling a slightly more capable 8-bit machine, back in the early 80s, versus Commodore and Atari machines at 1/5th the price (they had slots... that's the "more capable" part). The Mac came in, with hardware so oversimplified it was actually kind of creepy (the "Ready" pin on the SCSI controller drover /DTACK on the 68000, for any bitheads in the crowd) and cheap, but got huge margins. Today, a Mac is exactly a PC in a fancy case without a battery door... there's nothing different about an Apple PC, and yet they still get 2x-3x the cash. That pays for a ton of brainwashing.
And it's also something like human nature. As some may know, I was a senior hardware designer at Commodore on several high-end models of the Amiga computer. There was a time when the Amiga was the best (only) personal computer for color graphics or video work. Like, the mid-to-late 1980s. Today I do my video stuff on a PC running Windows 7 and Sony Vegas, with 8GB of RAM, a Quad-core CPU, and Terabytes of storage. But I still hear from people talking about how the Amiga IS better (not was, but IS).
When you join an exclusive club, you immediately embrace all the positive memes associated with club membership, and you employ these to justify your decision. This isn't restricted to computers, it's found in Video software (Vegas vs. Avid vs. Premiere vs. FCP, etc), cars (Ford vs. Chevy vs. Dodge), still cameras (Canon vs. Nikon), videocameras (Sony vs. Canon vs. Panasonic vs. JVC), soft drinks (Coke vs. Pepsi... sorry, Rock Star rules here, folks), etc. And sure, the cultier that club's culture becomes, the more the users grab hold of it.
Apple is one of the few remaining exclusive clubs in computing, and they're perhaps the cultiest and most exclusive there is in just about any discipline. Ok, Amiga fans could have given them a run for their money back in the early 1990s, but not since... the Mac hardcores have expended to embrace the iPhone. The iPhone has delivered new converts to the alter of Mac. There's a persistent meme that "Windows is hard", bug ridden, full of viruses, and of course, MacOS is impervious to any and all problems, the only way to do media content in computing, and so simple your cat can use it without reading a manual. Apple works very hard to keep these memes alive, in the general population to an extent, too, not just among the Apple Faithful.
Another factor, among those in a successful cult, is that they reinforce one another and don't pay much attention to the outside world. You can stay blissfully within your world of Apple -- magazines, web sites, etc. and never hear more than frightening stories about the world outside. This is also something that Apple cultivates...they were among t
Re:I'm off-duty (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, there is some correlation between creativity and homosexuality; you'll find a larger percentage of gays in art school than studying any other discipline.
But the disparity TFS speaks of isn't real. You don't buy a computer because of its culture, you buy it because it serves you purposes better than other brands. For a long time, Apple made the only computers that you could do art on; the Mac was graphic when DOS was text-only.
Re:I'm off-duty (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I'm off-duty (Score:5, Insightful)
Vincent Van Gogh didn't have enough talent to make decent money at it. In fact, he only sold one painting in his short life, and that was to his brother, for a pittance. But I've seen his work (photos don't do them justice) and they're indeed breathtaking.
There's more to life than money, and how much you can earn at it bears no relation to how good an artist you are. Art is one of the disciplines that you don't expect to make money at it, just like music. One studies art and music because they love art and music, not to get rich at it.
Re:I'm off-duty (Score:5, Funny)
I don't want to start a conspiracy theory or anything, but I have a cousin who only turned bender AFTER he bought an iphone and mac book.
Coincidence or causation? Has anyone checked the iphone source code for back-doors?
What paradox (Score:4, Insightful)
Everyone I know who bought Apple did so because of the marketing, the artist "says" it is better but is completely unable to quantify it beyond "but everyone says Mac is better". Most Mac do not understand computers particularly well, thus they turn to an OS that limits what they can do. We call Apple a cult for a reason. I really cant see Mac users being "free thinking" about tech, especially as one of Mac's biggest selling points is that it Just Works(TM) meaning that you arent meant to think about using your computer..
I know a few designers having done tech support for a Marketing company before (so glad I'm out of that gig now) and the most talented designers can do everything they can do on a Mac in Windows, unfortunately the reverse isn't true due to the limitations of the Mac OS, it's not hacker friendly and was never meant to be.
Re:I'm off-duty (Score:5, Insightful)
Or perhaps there are simply more openly gay people in the arts?
Re:I'm off-duty (Score:5, Informative)
I took some art courses working on an undergrad Fine Arts program at 2 different colleges and I didn't see an unusually high number of gay students. I honestly don't know what you're talking about. I suspect you're peddling bullshit stereotypes you picked up from watching some lousy TV sitcoms.
Re:I'm off-duty (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually, there is some correlation between creativity and homosexuality; you'll find a larger percentage of gays in art school than studying any other discipline.
I don't remember that many gays (some, but not that many), but there were a lot of left-handers... And crazy art chicks. THAT was memorable.
If you want to take a dip in the gay pool, it's the theater you'll want to visit, rather than the art gallery.
Re:I'm off-duty (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:I'm off-duty (Score:4, Insightful)
But the disparity TFS speaks of isn't real. You don't buy a computer because of its culture, you buy it because it serves you purposes better than other brands.
But for some people, their purposes include social, as well as technical, requirements. e.g., everyone else has a mac and they don't want to stand out, or they buy in to the whole "image" thing.
Re:I'm off-duty (Score:5, Interesting)
You don't buy a computer because of its culture, you buy it because it serves you purposes better than other brands. For a long time, Apple made the only computers that you could do art on; the Mac was graphic when DOS was text-only.
I'd say it's more because if you're an artistic person, you don't want to fuck around with the technicals that don't relate with what you do. You want to buy a computer that works to your specifications out of the box, because that's more time for artsy stuff. Macs fit that bill pretty well, so of course it's a good thing for the 'technical' side (Apple engineering) to be as closed as possible, letting the artists who use the product actually use it, rather than customizing or working out compatibility issues.
Re:I'm off-duty (Score:5, Informative)
Wrong. Artistic people generally care a lot about technicalities, and guess what? Apple has exemplary colour management (not necessarily correct colours out of the box), which Linux just doesn't have. It's got a lot of fairly decent audio software that works well on Apple's limited range of laptops. Buying Windows is more of a risk (some times it works, some times it doesn't), and Linux is great if you have the time and knowledge to tailor-make your system to your needs. Some artists actually do that, most don't.
Oh, and the Mac is something of a standard for graphical work. Some people feel it's easier to collaborate with others when they use the same system, just like some people think using Microsoft Office is absolutely necessary in the real world. It isn't, but it can save you from a lot of problems.
Re:I'm off-duty (Score:4, Insightful)
That's fine so long as your specs are fairly limited.
If all you want to do is run a single kilobuck app, then all is fine and dandy.
Most graphic designers and artists do just that, run Photoshop CS, or Elements, or Final Cut, or Logic, whatever. They don't care to recompile the kernel, or fix driver compatibility issues; all they want is to be able to run their program.
If you want to be "creative" about how you use your Mac then it won't be "non-technical".
Computer creative and art creative are different. Computer geeks write scripts and software to automate annoying tasks. Art geeks create, you know, art. Only one of those tasks is technical and may require an 'open' platform. The other has no need for technical modifications or an 'open' platform, closed works just fine as long as it's closed in a workable configuration. Which is which is left as an exercise for the reader.
Heaven forbid an artist actually customize something... [snicker]
They do, they just want a nice clean aluminum canvas for their customization.
Nope - you're incorrect (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
...waitaminute - what about the gay folks who work for Microsoft [microsoft.com]? I'm sure they're not Mac users.
Re:I'm off-duty (Score:4, Informative)
Yep, every [adium.im] single [blacktree.com] thing [freewareosx.com] costs money.
And there's absolutely no [macports.org] compatibility [finkproject.org] with any linux software at all.
You're 100% correct.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
... and Safari is a pretty thin wrapper around WebKit.
OSS's "remotely useful" contributions just keep cropping up.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Not sure in USA but in Spain... (Score:4, Insightful)
Well hell, with those sorts of risks I may as well just run linux...
Re:Not sure in USA but in Spain... (Score:5, Funny)
Elitist really? You are simply jealous and I'll bet that you can't even comprehend the refinement and engineering that goes into Apple's devices, but then again, it is so hard for those so far away from the apex of technology to understand such things.
Re:Not sure in USA but in Spain... (Score:5, Insightful)
"They put commodity parts..."
Yeah. Because Apple doesn't tend to use higher quality caps and fans and other components than HP or Dell. Apple doesn't use Intel's high-end processors. Apple doesn't use custom formed LiPo batteries and customized power controllers. Apple doesn't design their own ASICs. Apple doesn't use custom glass trackpads or create innovative connectors (Magsafe) for use in their designs.
And Apple doesn't create, maintain, and run it's own OS.
Oh. Wait. They do.
"... into slick aluminum casings."
They are, aren't they. (grin)
And combined with the above, that's better than 90% of the other manufacturers who shove actual commodity parts into cheap plastic cases and stuff Windows Home Edition on the hard drive....
Re:Not sure in USA but in Spain... (Score:4, Funny)
Mac users are bought
Where do I get one? Is there a code word I have to use at the Apple store? When I get it home, will it, like, you know, do "stuff" to me?
Re:Not sure in USA but in Spain... (Score:5, Funny)
Mac users are bought
They sell Mac users in Spain?
Re:Not sure in USA but in Spain... (Score:5, Insightful)
Mac users are bought by those that want to distinguish themselves from the rest in terms of money or social class, more in the lines of "I can afford an Mac and you are a poor blue collar bastard"
I really can't stand this. This line of thinking comes up at least once per Apple article anywhere on the internet, and it's always taken as truth for some reason. I own a mac that has been used in public all of once, in an airport. I own it because I prefer it to any other laptop and was ok with spending the extra cash. It has nothing to do with showing off or demonstrating my superiority. I know plenty of other people who own macs and would agree. I'm sure some people do buy them with that intention, and I wouldn't mind people saying so except that every time they do it's always referring to "mac users" instead of "some mac users". I really hate being lumped in with a group of smug assholes just because of my laptop choice.
Re:Not sure in USA but in Spain... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not sure in USA but in Spain... (Score:5, Funny)
You know the GP referred to "some Mac users?" He was talking about you, douchebag.
Re:Not sure in USA but in Spain... (Score:4, Informative)
I think it's funny. I bought a Mac Powerbook 5 years ago because it met the needs for what I wanted. It was lighter than anything comparable and did what i needed it for. I quickly grew to like it a lot. The main reason at the time? Sleep/hibernate actually worked reliably. That was it.
I then experimented with some other features included with the OS such as photos and videos. I then noticed I spent no time dealing with the OS or application bizarreness, and realized I was starting to use it for everything I normally do in my personal life. I bought a MacBook Pro as it was comparable in price when spec'd out against a comparable Dell or Compaq. (Yes, it really was in fact $200 less for the same basic hardware - CPU/Hard Drive/RAM/Video/Screen Resolution)
I then decided to look at how it would work out with development, and within a couple of days realized that it was far superior, primarily because of the reliability and speed. I'd reboot maybe once every 2-3 months, a darn sight better than my work windows machine, which I then replaced with Linux. The main issue with the linux box I found is I had to spend too much time dealing with OS/application issues. And thus the promotion of the MBP to my full work/development machine. I now spend 99% of my time dealing with what I need to spend time on vs dealing with OS/App issues or rebooting. (Bringing up an entire system that runs 4GB plus across multiple components takes a significant portion of your time if you have to reboot once a day a more often, which I found was the case with Windows.)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)