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Apple and Independent Developers
Corleone writes "We've seen a realization recently that Microsoft isn't standing still with Longhorn, and countering Longhorn has been pushed to the forefront. That is why I found the concept of Apple being the larger danger in Rhapsody in Yellow so ironic. The author skirts the scary question: would Apple porting their frameworks to Linux give them undue influence over the direction of the free operating system movement? This is after recent reports saying missing programs are the biggest thing holding Linux back on the desktop. Macromedia has interest in their tools on Linux, surely many others are too. This would seem to allow thousands of companies a simple path to the Linux market but with Apple as the gateway. If not Apple, what of Microsoft porting their engine?"
I'm surprised he didn't mention Darwin even once. Darwin, the open source core of OS X, can run on x86. I've got a powerbook, but I'd love to have OS X on my x86 boxes.
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Sorry but that's meaningless rubbish. 5 years ago it was primitive, it certainly isn't now. As someone who uses XP every single day, I much prefer the linux desktop and can't see how you could possibly call it primitive. One big productivity plus is multiple desktops, something I use constantly under linux but which is barely usable under XP.
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True, but that doesn't make it primitive. And switch on & go is a lot more common, without the old windows driver disk dance.
I can also unplug my USB broadband modem from Linux without a blue screen of death. Something I can't say about Windows XP (and that's after using the tray icon so XP claims it's safe to remove the device).
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400+ digital cameras are supported, and most of the ones that aren't will still mount as a usable bulk storage device.
It's not the fault of Linux that so many device manufacturers have a closed mentality. And it is unfair to use that against Linux, an operating system that is so open and inclusive that hardware manufacturers could easily support it. It is competing with a monopoly after all.
I find these sleight of hand arguments more than a little annoying, and disapparaging to a movement that has provided a huge amount of quality software, making it available and accessible to everyone. Constant nit-picking about issues that are not the fault of those doing all the work to develop the software. You can install Linux on most machines without problems, a lot of the hardware is supported now. But you'll still get the old arguments: Linux isn't ready because it doesn't support piece of hardware X. Despite the fact it fully supports the equivalent hardware Y.
A lot of hardware is designed and drivers written for a monopoly operating system. So get over it. You can't expect to pick up any piece of hardware and use it on any operating system other than that monopoly one and expect it to work right out of the box. That isn't the fault of the non-monopoly operating system though, you just need to check what is supported before you buy it. Because the existence of said monopoly makes it impossible to do otherwise.
Wow that's a poorly-named API.
Your sig drove me insane :(
WARNING: If accidentally read, induce vomiting.