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Apple Announces iLife '11, FaceTime Mac, Lion, Mac App Store, MacBook Air
Apple once again streamed their latest keynote where they unveiled iLife '11 (more fullscreen and Facebook in iPhoto, Audio editing and automatic trailers in iMovie, Rhythm correction and lessons in Garage Band). FaceTime for the Mac will connect video chat to phones with a Beta starting today. Next we get a preview of OS X Lion which will have an App Store and new UI bits shipping this summer. The Mac App Store will launch on Snow Leopard in 90 days. The New MacBook Air is under 3lbs, 13.3" screen, Core 2 Duo, solid state only storage. There's also an 11.6" version starting at $999 with 64gb of storage shipping today.
It gets rid of a lot of developer headaches, including finding a place with high bandwidth mirrors for consumers to download and fetch updates.
Yes, Apple gets a 30% chunk, but IMHO, it is a good thing to have long term.
Will the app store have the same lock down?
With no apps that can use plug ins?
No games with user maps or mods?
No sex apps?
No fat app?
$99 year fee even for free apps?
fixed price points?
will you be able to buy app and use it on all systems you own? will app dev be able to have app that you need to buy per system?
can apple pull a app at any time?
Will there be a max app size?
As Ron Gilbert just put it
"For you Apple apologists claiming Apple will never lock down the Mac, step one is in place and you all let it happen."
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
As with every Windows/Mac OS feature, Linux did it first and better.
I am interested about the App Store coming to the desktop now.
Any hardware news?
This is a pretty lame release, as things go. Actually, it's worse than lame as they're now locking down Mac OSX just like they do with iOS.
The strange thing is that Apple *used* to be all pro-open with the "we run Darwin, Windows sucks" stuff back in the day when they claimed closed and integrated systems (Windows + IE) were horrible. My how the turn tables...
I tried to RTFA in this story, but I couldn't find it. Is it that hard to include a link to a source?
more fullscreen and Facebook in iPhoto, Audio editing and automatic trailers in iMovie, Rhythm correction and lessons in Garage Band
Why can't all this functionality be available through one integrated program instead of being fragmented over many sources?! The end user will get confused!
I mean, App Store for iPhone / iPod touch? I get that. It's basically the first of its kind and creates its own market share. Apps which would have been trivial and/or freeware for a desktop could be sold to mobile users if they were good or early to market enough. Kinds of apps that would be made wholly useless given a full-size-screen web browser and a keyboard could have a market, too.
But for the Mac? When roughly all Mac users are dual booting Windows anyway?
I'm interested in seeing some of the apps on the Mac -- there are quite a few that do one very useful job very well. So I welcome the chance to use these under OS X.
And no, I'm not one of the trolls that somehow believes that traditional apps will be restricted under OS X. I don't even see how you could think that traditional apps could be delivered via an App Store-like interface, or that traditional software on the Mac will be uprooted for the App Store. There will always be apps too fat for an iDevice, which require a non-touch interface etc, and I don't see those going away ever.
Unless the prices fall suddenly, the new Macbooks just found a new reason to be more expensive than ever: SS drives.
Carl Sagan quotes get you an automatic +5 on all posts.
They just released the hybrid device (MacBook Air) that will eventually replace all consumer devices with built-in DRM. Steve will have no incentive to allow you to buy any software outside of the App Store, since he gets a 30% cut.
No, seriously guys. You already consented. He's going to stick it all the way in.
The app store is a rip-off of Linux package systems and other people's online stores, except of course that it will be more restrictive. The new window management is what you have been able to get standard on Linux for many years. And the new MacBook Air is basically a netbook; since OS X and its apps are so heavy-weight, it ended up having to be overpowered and overpriced. And, of course, Jobs talked about it as if they invented it all.
Here's a question: if you put an app exclusively in the app store, will it be uninstallable via other methods (i.e. - can you hack the package to manually/locally install)? Would this / could this be a piracy reduction vector for software developers on the mac, and is the 30% fee (brilliant, btw, Jobs) enough enticement for small to mid-sized developers to go exclusively with app-store sales? Is there even a pirate market for apple application?
It looks more like a way for Apple to get a bigger piece of the pie. That's a well played move, in an evil corporate genius kind of way.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
I know that every other comment under the sun here is going to focus on the app store and DRM concerns, but I'm also somewhat concerned about the fact that CPU speeds on these new Macbook Airs seem to be... rather pathetic. C2D 1.4 and 1.86 Ghz processors? Is Xcode really that much better at leveraging the GPU, to where they can release something like this when announcing Lion and its new features that sound like they're going to brutalize processing power. With CPU speeds like these, it almost seems like they just didn't want to say the word 'Atom'.
My own pointless vanity vintage computing page
Linux repositories are a general purpose mechanism; you can point at any "app store" you like with them. Furthermore, they do extensive dependency management and checking.
Apple's App Store gives you one source of applications and it doesn't seem to do much in the way of dependency management.
Apple clearly got the idea from Linux distributions and other commercial vendors, but they are misusing the idea to lock down their machines.
Where's the evidence to support that claim? Of the many people I know using Macs, only one runs Windows (via parallels) and it's so they can access a crappy, legacy Active X web app. The only people I know dual booting Apple hardware are running linux.
I'm a little disappointed that they're saying that they're sticking with track-pad and mouse input verses touch-screen because "touch screen doesn't work well in front of the user".
It's true that you wouldn't want to reach out and touch your monitor in order to navigate, but I often find myself printing things out so I can work with them directly. My brother has an app on his iPad that he can use like a remote control for his mac mini (which he has plugged into his TV) it basically turns his iPad into a track-pad for his TV. I can imagine a way to use your display as just that (a window to look at information) while using an iPad like device to do work or select information for viewing on the display and navigate on the display if there's 3D or video content. I'd really like to see someone bring multitouch (on a touch-screen) to the desktop, I think it would be a lot easier to work with.
I am no Mac fan and I will never use this, but Steve Jobs has decided that there are enough users that want or don't care if they are locked down and tied to an ecosystem, as long as that ecosystem is easy enough for them to use.
So Apple will make a heck of a lot of money on this sort of thing from the type of people who want it.
For the rest of us, it gives us a great excuse to say "I know nothing about Apple products" when grandma or the nieces/nephews need help with their iProducts.
That new MacBook Air... imagine that with the Netbook edition of Ubuntu on it. Mmmmm.
The DRM will be in the new operating system that replaces it. iOS 5, probably.
Apple can keep all of their promises, and you'll still get fucked. One Vendor; One Master. There is no apologizing your way out of it.
Full screen "apps"? An "App Store" (aka repository)? Alt Tabbing!? Webcam chat? Icons you can click to open "apps"!!!!?
And people said that Windows 7 was a meaningless redress of Vista...
makes you think if apple will intel video in the next mini and other low end system when core2 is gone.
apple likes to drop speeds and more to fit in the supper thin case and that why you have a $700+ desktop with a old laptop core2 cpu and on board video.
Check out the software reinstall drive included with the Air.
http://www.apple.com/macbookair/specs.html
A USB stick with the OS on it? Kind of handy - I wish more software developers would distribute large quantity data this way. The Adobe suites and various large content video games come to mind.
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
As soon as Apple can convince Microsoft and Adobe to hand over 30% of their revenue from Office and Photoshop.
You say that as though it's a good thing that Mac owners are now essentially dependent on Microsoft and Adobe of all horrible things to safeguard their freedom of choice, as surreal as it sounds.
Those two companies provide pieces of software too crucial for Apple to flip them the bird... for now. Otherwise you'd already have the scenario you deride as a conspiracy theory.
You missed his point. It's not Microsoft and Adobe safeguarding anyone's freedom. It's the free market (eg. the existence of a diverse base of developers) safeguarding Mac owners' freedom.
You know, just like every other platform.
No other details on 10.7 ?
What about a new filesystem? What about full 64-bit GUI? what about a fine new finder? what about hardware support?
Man, technical news is really thin on the ground. Only one version ago we had plenty of nitty-gritty details about Unix and Enterprise-class OS features. Instead now we have demos of music lessons. This is terrible.
yet... I think I'll stick with my PC, since it has more.
http://www.apple.com/macbookair/specs.html shows the OSX re-install disk as a USB thumb drive!
http://images.apple.com/macbookair/images/specs_flashdrive_20101020.jpg
DiscDividers tabbed plastic CD dividers: divider cards f
I don't see Apple removing the ability to run non-AppStore Apps
Just like many of us didn't see Microsoft removing the ability to run non-store apps from Windows Mobile until Microsoft announced Windows Phone 7.
I can still install the development tools so that I can build and install standard Unix software and use XCode to build Mac software.
The fear is that Apple will start charging $99 per year to use XCode.
I can still install Eclipse when I want a different development environment (basically when I'm not developing Cocoa-based apps.)
The fear is that Apple will start charging $99 per year to use XCode so that you can compile, install, and run your own copy of Eclipse.
And I can still install apps in any of the ways that I've always done...whether that be by MacPorts, Fink or the traditional application installation methods (dragging the .app to Applications or installing the .pkg.)
The fear is that Mac OS Xi will require mandatory verification of digital signatures in the same way that iOS already does, blocking MacPorts, Fink, and drag and drop.
...planes, too.
And how come beds don't get 20% bigger each year?
It must be some sort of conspiracy.
even if Apple never locks down the mac, the mere presence of the App store will force developers to get on the store, after all how can you compete with that much exposure and convenience? Joining the app store is survival, then it's more power to Apple, which is not a good thing.
What is going to be in the App Store for the Mac?
If it is what is in the iPhone App Store, then I must have missed the point. A lot of what is in the iPhone App Store are flash ports. Mac has a browser that supports flash. Hence, as a developer why would I ever list in the App Store?
Mr Jobs is looking to make the entire computing landscape homongenous. The problem is that most apps are dumb. They are small bits of a program to do a very specific task only. And that makes sense on a phone. Furthermore, if Apps can be used on iPad and OSX then wouldn't the nasty "fragmentation" problem come into play? Or will OSX be running a virtual instance of iOS for these Apps?
I am just glad I am not a Mac developer. 70 / 30 split for full applications sucks. Plus the license is good for all personal Macs. Mr. Jobs really really hates developers. Maybe one of his developers pissed him off while working on the new iLife or something.
The more I think about this, the more convinced I am that it will just be a virtual instance of iOS to run Angry Birds or other fun time wasters. No way Mr. Jobs would want crappy software on the Mac that could affect its performance.
Apple gets a 30% chunk, but IMHO, it is a good thing to have long term.
Wow, and people talk about the "Microsoft tax".
Getting 70% is a developer fantasy. By the time you find a publisher, and they sell to a distributor, who then sells it to a retail store ... a developer is lucky to get 15% to 20%. Digital distribution is a game changer. For a small developer implementing an online store with support and returns, paying for international payment processing, bandwidth, etc is non-trivial. If that adds up to less than 30% then the difference may easily be justified by the increased traffic and exposure of a high profile site like one provided by Apple. Unless you are a large corporation Apple's deal is not bad at all.
I think Linus will include DRM in the next kernel.
Bad analogy: That's not baseless. In addition, there's already DRM in the standard Linux kernel.
In the highly unlikely even that you are correct (they would literally have to rewrite OSX from the ground up to make it into the kind of locked sown system you're talking about)
Not exactly. Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) and later is already capable of checking the signature of an executable to know whether elevated privileges granted to an old version of an app should propagate to the new version of the same app. (See Code Signing Guide.) Currently, it works on a key continuity management basis: privileges from one version of an app propagate to another version if and only if they are signed with the same key. But this infrastructure could easily implement a policy to deny execution if the CA chain doesn't go up to Apple.
then I won't buy it. Problem solved.
Then what would you buy instead? I'm a fan of small form factor; what make and model of PC running Windows or Linux do you recommend to replace a Mac mini?
iLife $49.00, down from $79.00. SuperDrive $20.00 cheaper.
How many app store is there for OS X? Steam, Apple, probably others... so many fragmentation! I think that we should only allow one app store (and remove root access) for better integration and security.
-Steve J.
It was a waste of time to follow this event live. Here's what they announced:
iLife has some minor new features.
The next version of OS X will have an improved Expose visualization that handles lots of windows better. And it'll also let you do things you could already do, but we'll pretend they're new and inspired by iOS.
The new MacBook Air. It's totally not a netbook. No, really. See, netbooks are too small to be useful. Our computer may be the same size as a netbook but it's useful, so it's not a netbook. (Psst. Crank up the RDF, I don't think they're buying it.)
Welcome to the future, OS X. Only three months behind us, not bad at all.
that takes photoshop and other pro apps out.
also how many dev's will like a office buying a app one time and useing it on like 30+ systems?
Further, you can't develop software on a locked platform, which would push their developers onto Windows systems.
No, it'd get people to buy unlocking keys for $99 per year, just as they currently do in the iPhone developer program and XNA Creators Club.
Obviously, your children don't work at Foxconn.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
ZFS had some licensing issues, but that was under Sun. Now that Sun == Oracle, and Larry Ellison and Steve Jobs are friends, apparently, maybe a deal can be reached.
I was pretty excited when I heard that Apple was releasing a new 12-ish inch laptop.
Back in the day, my 12" Powerbook was a full-featured, state-of-the-art machine crammed into a teeny-tiny lightweight chassis that also happened to have great battery life. I still own one, and use it regularly -- it's an absolutely fantastic, and very capable little machine; arguably the best small laptop ever produced.
5 years later, it's back, and.....the processor has a lower clock speed, there's less built-in storage, fewer ports (no Ethernet!), no optical drive, and the standard amount of RAM is barely sufficient for a modern OS. The battery is only (barely) better, and can't even begin to compete with the truly awesome battery life on the MacBook Pro line.
Yes, I get that it's thinner, lighter, and that the loss of the Firewire port and optical drive are not exactly a dealbreaker today. And although the Core2Duo is indeed a better processor than a G4, it's also not anywhere remotely near state-of-the-art, and 1.4GHz is the slowest-clocked machine I've ever seen to carry that architecture.
Good design is a very big deal in laptops for portability, durability, and usability, which is why I've been buying from Apple for so long. They have virtually no competition in this regard. However, the tech specs keep slipping further and further, and I'm finding it difficult to take Apple seriously as a hardware manufacturer. The 13" Macbook Pro is a beautiful machine, but is similarly anemic in terms of performance and features. I also own a Mac Mini, the current lineup of which is inexcusably overpriced and underpowered. Apple's also gotten into the habit of putting incredibly low memory caps on their machines. The new Airs go up to 4GB, which is adequate for today, but definitely not the future. My 2006 Mac Mini maxes out at 2GB, which is killing the performance of an otherwise great machine.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
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Serial Box on the Mac App Store. How cool will that be?
Say hello to my little sig.
Seriously? Troll?
Someone posts an inflammatory, unsubstantiated statement and is modded insightful. Someone asks for proof, and that's trolling?!
What. The. Fuck.
Jobs did not talk about anything for Lion except UI changes. Probably he did not even demo Lion, what we saw was just a new Finder prototype running in Snow Leopard.
With the new Mac App Store, it is probably appropriate to start thinking of the Mac as a big jail-broken iPad. All Apple software, even iTunes, will be distributed in the future through the Mac App Store.
What we didn't see: iBooks for the Mac and iWork. iWork '11 is probably waiting for the Mac App Store, where it will be sold as individual apps.
I expect a beta of Lion will go out to developers at WWDC in June and will ship in September, eleven months after it was announced.
The app store will, yes, but Steve specifically stated that the app store will not be the only place you can buy Mac software. So, they get to choose what they're selling, and you get to choose where and what you buy.
I poooooooooooooooooped! Yeah, bra!
i bet if they do that, someone accidentally the whole thing!
People, what a bunch of bastards
Excellent point. Linux does it so much better. That is why MS and Apple are struggling for a couple of factions of a percent of market share against the desktop Linux behemoth.
with the new MacBook Air <3.
my opportunity to freely express myself with the potential persecution and hangings and such
App Store, iLife, Garage Band, SSD? Where's the beef?
i wish all my pictures came out that beautiful, but my friends aren't that pretty.
What's wrong with pounds and inches? What is so unscientific about them? NASA uses pounds and inches.
my opportunity to freely express myself with the potential persecution and hangings and such
No, there isn't. Based on Apples history, and the way the historically change, There is no reason to believe they won't. In fact, it would be stupid to think they wont try it because it's the most economical sense;however, they aren't dumb. They will push in little bits until they get enough feedback. Then they will step back a bit.
Base a forecast on a historical trend isn't slippery slope.
Had he said, the install the App store, then they will enforce specific user biometrics to logon . That would be a slippery slope because the end result is an extreme. Since they are already selling locked down devices, it's not an extreme position to say they will move it to other platforms.
Of course,, we won't know until we know. The key issue is to be sure you let Apple know you wouldn't want them to do it before they do it. The best approach is a nice letter.
I take it logic 101 was a morning course for you?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
FaceTime for the Mac will connect video chat to phones with a Beta starting today. What the heck is a beta? A play on words perhaps, or a mistake of words. &_& I want a beta. I like being radiated.
My Web Site
Prove me wrong without using facts.
the same way you can opt out of Disneyworld, don't go there. Don't buy a ticket and whine like a little bitch about how there's no good X rated theater inside it.
Do you not understand how computers work? Because making that transfer over isn't hard.
If think screwing over and locking out third parties is evil, then Apple already became an evil company for what it did to other OSX-compatible hardware vendors. At least with the App Store they just ban some of their competition and take some of the receipts.
And if you don't think screwing over and locking out third parties is evil, then what's with all the skepticism about Apple trying to make even more of their software ecosystem fractionally as locked down as their hardware ecosystem? Answer for me: why shouldn't they?
They know that, even if they do so, you'll still be an apologist for them afterwards.
What I don't get about the new MacBook Air is the default 2GB of memory. When every $500 PC at Best Buy is shipping with 4GB, you need to make it standard. We're spending $1000 on a MacBook Air, so it's silly to cheap out on the memory. Yeah, you can upgrade to 4GB for another $100. But you shouldn't need to special-order to get what should be the standard.
Core 2 Duo is disappointing but not unexpected. NVIDIA's chipset doesn't work with Nehalem and probably never will.
SSD is nice, but we'll have to see what the performance is. Depending on the controller it could range from poor to excellent.
Honestly, Apple did what they could. If you need to buy now, both of the MacBook Air models are nice - if expensive - machines. Getting a 1.6GHz Core 2 Duo and decent graphics in a 2.3lb package is really cool. Paying $1400 to get the configuration that this machine should have as stock (1.6GHz, 4GB, 128GB) is less so, but compared to other premium machines (ThinkPad X201s, Vaio Z) you're not paying much of a premium - you're just trading less performance for less size/weight.
The problem is that this category is about to be redefined. AMD is releasing Ontario and Zacate early next year, which will contain an out-of-order processor with similar performance to the Core 2 Duo in the Air, plus a Radeon 5400-class GPU that will handily beat the GeForce 320M in the Air. All of this in 9/18W (less than the Air) and a single chip, at a low price.
Intel is releasing Sandy Bridge next year. It will have similar graphics performance to the GeForce 320M, plus CPU performance that will blow it away. All while using less power, in a single chip.
You can already buy 11.6" notebooks with better CPU performance than the Air. The Acer 1830 series runs around $700 with an i5 and 4GB of DDR3. It has the same resolution screen as the 11.6" Air. It has a hard drive, which increases the size and weight. It also enables you to have 500GB of storage or to upgrade to a fast SSD (Intel, SandForce, etc.) for around $200. The Acer also has Gigabit Ethernet and an HDMI port.
The Air's advantage is that it's built better (aluminum vs plastic), that it's thinner/lighter (2.3lbs instead of ~3lbs), and that it runs OS X. But I can't help but think that the Mac would be better off with an i5 instead. Most people are not going to play games on an 11.6" notebook, both because of thermal issues (25W+ of CPU+GPU in that form factor means lots of heat/noise) and because PC gaming isn't that popular in general. I think most people would trade a slower Intel GPU for a faster CPU, and the Air could easily take a ULV Core i5 or i7 (18W).
Ultimately, Sandy Bridge or Zacate is the answer to this category, not a last-gen Core CPU. Apple made compromises that are acceptable but not ideal. Unfortunately, that's hard to swallow in a $1000+ machine.
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Do you not understand how computers work? Because making that transfer over isn't hard.
No - you're the only one.
FYI: Retail stores markup prices so they can stay in business.
Apple's app store merely needs to charge around the price of a typical retail markup on their software. Major packages may get breaks but then they do in retail stores as well. In fact, someday they may pay for product placement in the app store just like many do today --by paying retail stores for better shelf space for their products!
Its nearly pure profit for apple because there is no retail store involved but given its ideal location they could charge a little more. The difference here is that they are going to pressure vendors to take prices so that the app store's end price is comparable with retail stores instead of charge premium pricing at their store. This may be something smaller vendors like if it is in exchange for FAIR placement in the store against a larger vendor just itching to buy the best shelf space or pay employees to promote their product (like MS does in retail stores.)
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As an owner of an iMac, two iPhones, several iPods, and an iPad (among various other computers), I find the "just works" slogan to be a joke. Basically, it works a bit better than Windows, which isn't saying much. There is vast room for improvement in all computing platforms, my beloved Linux (Debian) included.
My basis for the above gripe is mainly with iTunes, which in every iteration seems to be a bug-laden piece of crap that locks up multiple times whenever I try to get some gadget synced. The rest of OSX is OK, but not great. The dock is confusing to my family (they tend to leave all the apps running because it isn't so clear which icons are launchers and which are minimized apps), the one-button mouse is crippled, the apps aren't in paths recognized by the underlying unix so you can't easily run them from the command line, the FS is case-insensitive, the "fat" universal apps are an abominable hack - I could go on and on. Sure, it all looks pretty and polished to the layperson, but to any self-respecting geek OSX is a horrible mess. Just not as bad as Windows.
THIS more than anything would be a competition-crusher. Granted there are platform differences, but those could be overcome in the next-gen Mac hardware. Maybe a new form of the touchpad that you can manipulate and rotate like an iPod touch. There are some great, cheap IOS apps and games. I predict when Lion ships you will be able to run IOS apps on it.
Ask Me About... The 80's!
ultimately, it will have Windows for business, and XBox for consumers. Apple will work on a similar distribution.
Yeah, I think they'll call their business distribution OS X. It'll be a lot like Windows.
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
Customary/Imperial is regionally inconsistent; there are different miles, different ounces, different gallons. SI is consistent: a metre is a metre anywhere. A litre is a litre anywhere.
Let's do some conversions. If you are 1.70 metre tall, you are 170 centimetres tall. Easy peasy. But if you are 5 feet, 7 inches tall, you have to stop and do the math: 1 foot = 12 inches, therefore (12x5)+7= 67 inches tall. And it gets worse for long distances; the conversion ratios are a mess. 1 foot = 12 inches; 1 yard = 3 feet; 1 mile = 1760 yards = 5280 feet. Just to mention a few, and I haven't touched weights or volumes yet.
Now check the SI: 1000 milimetres = 100 centimetres = 10 decimetre = 1 metre. A thousand metres make a kilometre. And a litre is a cubic decimetre. Powers of ten, always. It makes sense because it is designed to make sense!
And I'm not one to say "do things like everyone else does", but in this case it's a good point: pretty much the whole world uses the SI, so using a different system is a bit of a hindrance for international trade. Who else uses the old system? Liberia and Burma. Not the greatest business partners to you can find, really.
Circumcision is child abuse.
Must have more livers. Om nom nom.
You see, the mac went from a completely open, vanilla platform, with common software and hardware development tools, to being one of the most closed, inflexible, heavily policed platforms on the market.
No wait...
The mac went from having bizzaro, exotic hardware to having dull, industry-standard hardware that you can run any major OS on-- they even include a boot manager for it. It went from having a completely closed development model to having an open one. It went from having a locked-down OS to having a Unix-compliant BSD-based OS.
Macs have gotten more open and more flexible every year. I don't like the iPhone App store's policies surrounding apps either, but you'll notice that they got major ass-chapping for that from the Feds themselves. I don't see the Mac App store as going in that direction, but I do think some folks will not want to distribute through the store. That's fine-- the mac remains a very capable general-purpose computer that can run programs from a wide variety of sources.
Now I have to spend more cash on getting OSX Lion. iWork just seems like a complete waste of money to me, iWork 09 is almost identical, only differences are that iWork 11 looks different and iMovie has a few more features. MacBook Air still sucks. Facetime for Mac is fun though! :P
Err, except that your example is exceedingly hyperbolic.
Apple is shipping systems that are locked down now.
No they aren't.
They ship mobile devices that are locked down, but none of their general purpose computers are locked down. Name one that is.
I oversee a bunch of systems, Windows, Linux and Macs - the Macs include Mac Minis, iMacs and Mac Pros. Not one of them is locked down in any way that prevents me from installing anything I want to.
So, I repeat my challenge to you: name a computer system (not a portable phone, tablet or music player, but an actual computer system) sold by Apple that is locked down.
Putting moderation advice in your
Because we're fucking pissed that corporations keep trying to pull this shit on people.
So why not put your own machine together and install Linux?
Is someone forcing you to buy from Apple? (That's a rhetorical question and most everyone is going to be sure that the answer is 99.999% likely to be "no")
The market is large enough to support a wide range of users from those like my parents, who just want things to work easily (which Apple actually delivers), to users who like to tinker with their systems (which, strangely enough, outside of portable devices, Apple also delivers), to even cranks like yourself who are on some kind of anti-Apple jihad (who can buy a no-name computer and install Linux or even Windows).
Seriously, nobody's requiring that you not go out and buy whatever computer you want and install whatever you want on it. If you truly feel that Apple is trying to persecute you in some way, you should probably seek professional help before you load up your car with explosives and run it into the nearest Apple store. Do you feel like the walls are closing in on you? Do you look over your shoulder when you walk down the street, to make sure that nobody wearing a black turtle-neck is following you? These are symptoms of paranoia, which is very treatable these days.
It's not even like Apple is a very large slice of the "PC" market. Heck, Windows already uses signed installers for some things like device drivers doesn't it? Why aren't you on a rant that they're going to require that only device drivers that are signed by MS will be able to be installed in the future? MS holds a far bigger slice of the OS marketplace than Apple does, and MS seems far more likely to do something like that.
The bottom line is that there is always going to be a market for general-purpose computers that can be used in any way the user wants. As long as the market need is there, computer makers will support it. Relax, and just don't buy anything from people you don't like. Even if they aren't out to get you. Which they could be.
Putting moderation advice in your
You may want to see my earlier post #33973130 where I suggest that another individual who appears to have only a tenuous grip on reality and seems to believe that Apple is out to get him or her may want to seek professional help.
For some reason, there are a number of people who seem to hope that Apple is going to lock down their desktop systems (systems, which I must point out are not the only desktop systems sold in the personal computer market space; there exists a huge number of alternatives) purely so that these individuals can express their outrage at something which is not happening.
Even if it did happen, there are other computer systems available from other manufacturers who have no problem letting you install whatever OS and other software you want on their systems.
This paranoia that Apple somehow defines all that takes place in the personal computer marketplace, coupled with the apparently very realistic hallucination that Apple is locking their desktop systems down and somehow by extension locking all other general-purpose computers down is really ready like mass hysteria, or some kind of shared persecution complex.
Seriously, give it a rest. It's not reality. Apple is not locking down their desktop systems (mobile phones, portable media players, and Internet tablets are not general-purpose computing devices). If Apple did lock down their desktop systems, nothing would prevent end users from obtaining and using other computer systems. In fact, those alternatives are already available - alternatives which would flourish as former Mac users move to more open alternatives.
Putting moderation advice in your
but iLife '11 is still distributed on DVD.