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Apple and Linux Beneficial to Each Other?
viewstyle writes "There is an interesting commentary on eWEEK discussing the 'synergies' between Apple and Linux after visiting LinuxWorld. It makes a good point that advancement of Linux is good for Mac OS X and vice versa, because of the ease of porting across the platforms (soon to get easier with the X11 on Mac OS X)." Next thing you know, most of the Slashdot editors and programmers will be using Macs ...
I already have a reason to never own a windows machine again. I call it "Mr. iBook." Hell- this "Mr. iBook" of which I speak has also given me a reason to never waste my time with Linux again. Imagine that! Two birds with one beautiful white stone!
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
In no particular order:
/ 190248&mode=thread -- Apple SUED Macromedia to keep them from releasing a properly functional Linux player. Also don't bother me with 'but you can buy blah blah blah' or 'you can use unauthorized codec clone blah' -- I don't want nor should have to buy anything or break the law to watch what Mac and Windows users see legally for free.
1. Harrassing Aqua-ish theme makers. As Apple should know, you can't patent "look and feel" -- as their failed case against MS demonstrated.
2. Refusing to release a Sorenson codec enabled player or library for Linux, effectively locking Linux users out of an increasing majority of all Internet video content and thus making Linux unviable to end users. Don't bother me with 'it isn't Apple's' fault -- as was covered here months ago, IT IS! See http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/07/19
3. Undercutting development of established Open Source projects, like Mozilla and XFree86, by pushing less open alternatives and thus both cutting their mindshare and draining developer talent. And before someone replies 'but now it supports X11', the point is that they aren't the 'default' systems under MacOS -- which means "native" GUI MacOS X applications are useless to Linux, and pages coded for Safari will probably becoming increasing incompatible with Mozilla.
Apple is a parasite sucking the blood of the Open Source movement, and is actively working to destroy Linux as a viable solution. The "open" solutions Apple endorses (Quicktime, Safari) do not work on Linux and serve only to spur sales of MacOS X.
In short: Apple is not Linux's friend, and these articles that claim otherwise are stupid and tiresome. Jobs may be fooling the moronic majority, but that isn't everyone. FUCK YOU, JOBS.
Apple is dumb if they don't bond well with the linux community. But then again I never underestimate Apple's ability to shoot itself in the foot.
(ethernet, CD-ROMs, firewire and USB, IDE hard drives, etc ... can't count video cards, I guess)
... even if no one else can produce Macs per se, Apple knows that they are not alone in the world, and the ability to switch hardware platforms without switching OS has got to affect their pricing. (Not that Apple laptops are badly priced, all things considered ... go price some non-Apple 17", super-thin, aluminum-clad notebooks;)) Even though it's not direct, it's definitely competition. And that's just for people willing / anxious to run Free software; even for Mac OS-only users, Windows laptops (which cannot run OS X) are obviously competition; people need computers, not necessarily Apple computers
This is FAR from being good enough. And this is far from resolving my initial comment. I challenge you to BUILD a mac. I have owned, purchased, or otherwise consumed over 25 computers in the past 10 years. Of those, only 1 of those were a name brand PC (my very first one). Since then, I have built every single one of those from parts. I have found that by building my pc's I am able to build them cheaper (than purchasing a package deal or name brand pc) and more custom to my needs. This is the point I was trying to make about macs.
when just exchanging floppies between Windows and Mac OS was a big pain
I'm not sure where this came from. This is completely irrelevant to my point. My point is based solely on mac hardware. I was not even suggesting that the hardware had to be compatible with PC's let alon software/storage mediums. Again, I won't own a mac until they open their standards and create competition for hardware.
Now sure Macs support usb and/or firewire, but who gives a crap. Quite frankly, I find USB's ONLY use to be for standard peripherals (mice, keyboards, etc) and for portable devices. Any other device (such as hard drives, cdrom drives, etc) I'd rather have internal devices as that crap tends to clutter up my already cluttered desktop(real). And considering how cheap mice and keyboards are... forget about it.
there are non-Apple OSes that run on Apple's hardware (a few varieties of Linux, and at least the three biggest *BSDs). Now I'll admit this is a roundabout argument, but
I don't think you quite understand. Macs don't have any homogenius competetion. Macs are typically overpriced and underperforming. The latest macs use hardware that is outdated and several months closer to obsolecense than the latest PC's. And yet the top of the line macs can cost as much or more than top of the line PC's. And mac hardware is typically inferior to PC hardware... (unless you purchase shitty motherboards and such). And when your onboard Video card craps out, or your built-in display (crt or flatscreen) shoots poop, your only fix is to take it to an authorized service center and then wait 6 or more weeks while they fix it. Whereas if my monitor shoots its load, or my video card craps out, I'm back up and running in about 5 minutes.
THESE are the issues that will prevent me from buying a mac. If you want to buy a mac, its your money... but unless you need a specialized pc for doing multimedia editing, you are a fool for wasting your money on this crap.