On Fri, Mar 5, 2010 at 1:22 PM, Benjamin Scott <dragonh...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 5, 2010 at 10:41 AM, Alan Johnson <a...@datdec.com> wrote: > >>> > Well, except MacOSX has specific hardware. > >>> > >>> Indeed, that's a big part of Apple's strategy. Design the hardware > >>> and the software together, and they'll work well together. And there > >>> is something to be said for that. > >> > >> And that's one of Apple's prime advantages. > > > > Advantage? Well, for Apple, it is an advantages over MS, but certainly > not > > for the users. > > Eh, I'm not sure about that. If you buy from Apple's extremely > limited pool of products, things tend to work together far better than > I've seen on any Microsoft-compatible platform, even if you buy from a > single vendor. > Ah, but I've had even better luck sticking to hardware vetted by the Ubuntu community, and it didn't cost me my freedom, just quite a bit of my geek cycles, which certainly have there own value. And of course, I've been able to do things with Ubuntu that I'd never be able to get working with Apple or MS software. > The IBM pee sea is a loose collection of vaguely similar things > which happen to work together sometimes -- and that's being kind. > Even if you buy everything from a single vendor, things rarely work as > well together as they do when one company designs everything. I propose the "rarely" here is a function of the company in question. Even Apple falls into this category for they did not design every thing about everything they sell either. To that point, there is rarely a company worth much more than they are charging across most industries. =) > The > IBM-PC platform was not designed -- it evolved. Like the house that > Jack built, things have been stuck on, later removed, changed, > modified, extended, and reinterpreted so many times, by so many > different actors, it's a wonder it stays standing. The single-vendor > solution has to be built to work in that environment, and that's > harder to do. > The same applies to Apple and Open Source systems, only Apple tor down and rebuilt more recently than MS, and it is a regular occurrence in open systems because the openness enables it. > > In contrast, the Apple dictatorship does mean that standards are > actually... well, *standard*. Look at Jerry Feldman's problems with > partitioning. Ask three different programs how to do partitioning on > an IBM-PC, and you'll get at least four different, mutually > incompatible, data-destroying answers. In the People's Republic of > Cupertino that would never happen. Whatever Apple decrees is The One > True Way to do things. > There is certainly value in a known set of components that work well together. You left out the part of my text that pointed explicitly to Apple making it illegal to use those parts with others outside their blessed set. Tell me you won't support me for playing with others? Fine. Put it in your EULA that you can sue me if I do? Go to hell. That's all I'm saying. > > > The only reason Windows has dominance over Linux is inertia ... > > Just as the only reason mankind is limited to one planet is inertia. > Nope, that's gravity. ;-) If it were not for gravity, inertia would fling us off into space. But I don't think either of us are making points relevant to the topic, eh? =) > > > ... and the only reason Apple has dominance over Linux is marketing. > > Certainly, Apple's marketing is brilliant. They know exactly what > people want to hear, and they say it. But, in all fairness, they also > steer their ship in that direction as well. They see a lot of people > frustrated with the pee sea, and they build their platform -- the car > with the hood welded shut -- specifically to appeal to that crowd. > Welding the hood shut does not provide value to drivers that would not open it in the first place and takes away value from those that would, or know a friend how is handle with a wrench, or would rather take his car to a local mechanic than to the dealer. > > > Apple could have > > crushed MS by now if they had gone with the GPL attitude instead of > picking > > BSD so they could keep all their toys to themselves. > > Yah, I'm not buying that. If all you needed was the GPL, Linux > would already have crushed Microsoft. It's had 20 years and Microsoft > has only gotten stronger in that time. (When Linux first came out, > you also had a fleet of commercial Unixes, Novel, several BSDs, OS/2, > BeOS, and all sorts of other bit player platforms. Today it's all > Microsoft, with Apple and Linux nipping at their heels. If I were to > draw a conclusion from that, it would be that GPL is good for crushing > bit players, not the big guys.) > I did not say it was all that was needed. I only suggest that if you take the beauty and elegance of Apple's skin, subtract out the "I wrote it, you can't have it, even though 90% of it I got for free from BSD" attitude, add in a share-and-share-alike mentality, and I think they would have crushed MS by now. But of course, Apple only exists so that MS can claim they don't have a monopoly, so they won't do anything to upset MS, like try to crush them or share. All this Mac vs. PC marketing is a pure facade. > > > To be clear in limiting my own zealotry, I concede that there are a > number a > > specific use cases that are better addressed by Windows or Apple. > However, > > the vast majority of those are catch-22's like the ones described in the > > article that started this thread. > > Absolutely correct! However, the fact that's it's a hard problem to > solve doesn't mean it isn't a problem. Indeed, the fact that it's a > hard problem is why it hasn't been solved yet, and why the best idea > anyone has come up with is sheer persistence over time. > No doubt. The only way to solve catch-22's like these is by nipping away at them, which has been going on for some time now with great strides in the last few years. I believe strongly that the momentum is in favor of open systems. All they need is a strong enough business, or group of businesses, depending on them. Google just might be the anvil on top of the straw the breaks the camels back with their open platform devices.
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