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Jobs Offers Free Mac OS X For $100 Laptops
bonch writes "Steve Jobs offered Mac OS X free of charge to the $100 laptop effort by the One Laptop Per Child project. However, his offer was declined because the project was looking for a 100% open source solution. The laptops will now be running on Red Hat Linux on AMD chips."
> I thought it was offered free? So where's the problem?
Your understanding of the word `free` in this context.
While fast for what it does, OSX does quite a bit. Will you really get a 3d accelerated GUI environment to run on a $100 machine? That seems like asking a lot from the hardware which costs so little. While OSX is nice, I've heard that it can be somewhat slow on even a 700mhz iBook. Do we really want to use it on a $100 laptop?
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However, in the long run it is always better not to compromise on your beliefs.
What if those beliefs are asinine, as in this case?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Well their reason for not selecting it might be zealotry, but I have to beleive that they can create a Redhat based distribution that will work with their hardware all the time. That is part of the Apple secret. If your hardware is a small handpicked set, then having an OS that just works is that much easier.
Think Deeply.
*sigh* does *noone* read the article? I've already written this several times in several different threads. This isn't free publicity for Red Hat - they're helping funding the project! They've donated a couple of million dollars to this project: "Five companies -- Google Inc., Advanced Micro Devices Inc., Red Hat Inc., News Corp. and Brightstar Corp. -- have each provided $2 million to fund a nonprofit organization called One Laptop Per Child that was set up to oversee the project."
And that's what it's really all about in the end. If they adopted OSX, there would be massive vendor lock-in all over the world. Not to mention, they would be dependent on Apple for support due to Closed-source api's. With a free (libre) solution there would be none of this trouble. Not to mention localization possibilities.... This is essentially an empty offer, since they'd have to be nuts to accept it.
The toad can't burp - and for some reason can't fart either, so it swells up and eventually explodes. --Anonymous Coward
I think sir, you will find that kids are FAR more adept at grasping unknown concepts than you and me. We have our ways and are set in them. To learn something new, we need to get away from what we are used to. Kids don't have that disadvantage. Believe me, I know from experience. They grasp Linux as fast as they grasp Windows. From what i've seen (I setup a linux computer lab for an orphanage in India and helped them decide the computer syllabus for the school), Linux helps more because the brighter kids start poring through the man pages and start mucking around with shell commands and scripting after some time (all we told them was that if they needed to know about something, use "info " or "man " - nothing else). They actually learn from it and sometimes they ask you about options that you didn't know existed :) With Windows, the help from both Windows and the command shell isn't too great and the chance to experiment isn't really there. They also appreciate choice. Give them an option to choose their window manager at the login screen and they will go through every single one! Why? Because they can and because they're curious.
:) Sure, there will be those who dont want to learn. That is something that won't change regardless of WHAT you're trying to teach them. But for those that DO want to learn, anything will do.
Sure, Mac OS X is a great OS that just works. Sure its a real steal at no cost. But for kids, the cost of the OS doesnt matter. The fact that it just works is good. But what they really want to do is get into the internals and rip it apart to see what makes it tick. What better candidate than something that's open source? They dont have deadlines to meet. They are not bothered by customers who inist on their documents being in the MS Office format. For kids, it's about the concepts. If it doesn't work, they'll try for some time to see why. They will ask you why it doesn't work. They will try to fix it. If they can't they will ask you. They will listen while you tell them what's wrong. If you can fix it, they will watch you doing it very carefully, trying to understand what you are doing and asking 100 questions in the process. If you can't fix it, they forget about it and move to something else.
Do not underestimate the kids' thirst for knowledge and their ability to acquire it
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They rejected OSX in favor of a better solution.
You should not dismiss the concept of Open Source software as a "silly doctrinaire reason". The economic impact of adopting proprietary software could be enormous and long-lasting. It's critical that this technology be sustainable in the long term without dependence on a single foreign entity.
Apple could easily be gone in ten years, but there will be a continuity of Open Source software until the next ice age.
Open Chipsets? Are there such a thing? You might as well build a whole new architecture. The foundation of this project is standing on the shoulders of older technology that is somewhat tried and true, and now cheap to manufacture. It's pointless to design new chipsets from scratch.
"10001110101 - periodic table with a centerpiece of mind" -Clutch
.....noting the designers want an operating system that can be tinkered with....
That tells me that this project is doomed right now. The supposed recipients of these computers don't want something to tinker with, but a computer they can actually USE to COMMUNICATE and learn stuff that has nothing whatsoever to do with computers as such. This is like giving a telephone to someone, but requiring that they first learn the laws of electricity before they can use it to call their friends. To use a gas driven water pump for irrigating a field, it is not neccessary to learn the details of how an internal combustion engine works. To use a computer tool, it should not be required to be able to "tinker" with it. With OSX a knowledgeable person CAN tinker with it, but 99% of those computers will NOT be tinkered with by their users. Because Linux is designed by tinkerers for tinkerers, it will never be a general use computer by the unwashed, non-technical masses.
It seems that people around here immediately ascribe the worst motives to any large company that wants to help even a tiny bit in making this a better world.
All theory is gray