It has already been pointed out in numerous articles that the Samsung Galaxy and the iPad are not even the same shape. Apple doctored the images in their filing to make them look the same. How could you miss this? Practically every major newspaper has had an article on it!
A slightly different aspect ratio. And only *SOME* of the images have incorrect ratios.
But it's not the *exact* ratio that makes the Tab look like an iPad. It's the black bezel, rounded rectangle with a metallic border. Look at this picture: Galaxy Tab. It's extremely similar to an iPad.
European courts have already shot down the argument that "they look just like an iPad"; let's leave it at that.
No, but one Scandinavian court did say "slide to unlock" was too broad.
And if one court is enough to "just leave it at that", what about all the other courts that have a different opinion? Besides, just look at the Galaxy Tab from the front. It looks almost exactly like an iPad. There are plenty of different ways to design your tablet (and phone, and computer), and for some reason, Samsung's offerings seem to look a lot like Apple's offerings, even though other companies seem to have no trouble coming up with their own designs.
Nerds here like to pretend like Apple is claiming the rights to "rectangular tablet". They aren't. They are claiming the rights to a rectangular tablet with a certain, recognizable design. There are near infinite ways to make a rectangular tablet, and Apple has come up with one. They are merely demanding that other companies do the same.
A bloody picture frame looks like a iPad ffs. Its an old concept and an old design.
I've never seen a single picture frame that looks like an iPad. There are plenty of ways to make a tablet, just look at the market. The Galaxy Tab is all but an exact clone of the iPad from the front.
Of all the recent lawsuits in "mobile space", Apple's is the only one I'm aware of where not only they have demanded to ban sales of their competitors' products (rather than merely asking for $$$), but have actually succeeded in that.
Because the products are a copy of the iPad. They look just like an iPad. That's not something you demand money for, that's something you outright ban.
I could have used better terminology, but I was in a bit of a hurry at the time. What you described (not the wannabe variant, though) is basically what I meant when I said "white-hat" -- the people who aren't trying to break other people's networks, etc., but are trying to see what cool things they can do with a given piece of hardware and/or software.
In that case we probably don't disagree much. The type you are talking about will be highly prone to buying a MacBook (or any other PC) as a computer they will use and hack around on, but won't buy an iPad to hack.
However, the part where (I suspect) we still disagree is that there's no reason they wouldn't buy an iPad to use as an iPad, for music, movies, books, apps, etc. Sure, *some* will opt for an Android device that they can also hack, but some will buy an iPad to jailbreak and hack.
But there is NOTHING to be for with the Macbook. it is bog standard Wintel parts at truly INSANE prices.
You are only comparing the electronic components, and completely ignoring the way they are assembled and encased. In fact, you are really only comparing *some* of the electronic components, and ignoring many like FW800, Bluetooth, 802.11n (though less unique these days), IPS and otherwise higher quality displays, thunderbolt ports, longer battery life, better trackpads, magsafe power adaptors, backlit keyboards, etc, etc... These things aren't magically free just because they are "bog standard" (even though most of them actually *aren't* "bog standard").
No, you're just looking at "Core i5 + 4GB RAM + ATI XXXX + XXXGB HD" and stopping there.
And you're also ignoring OS X. Even if all Apple did was buy Dell PCs and preload them with OS X, they could sell them for more than Dell sells them with Windows.
The only thing I can figure is like another poster said, its like Prada. it is people paying for the logo.
So, let's take it as given that you really can't figure it out, other than fashion. Just look at the millions of Macs sold every quarter. Do you honestly think that these people are only buying them as a fashion accessory? Does that even make any sense? Do these people *also* have Prada or LV products? Some, sure, but most, absolutely not. And Prada and LV can be acquired for much less than a computer.
So, given that people aren't likely to fit with the "only thing you can figure out", wouldn't it be more realistic and more honest to accept that you just *can't* figure it out, and that people are caring about things that you simply ignore, rather than shoehorn in an explanation that doesn't even make any sense?
Show some intellectual honesty for once and admit that people can like things you don't like without them having to be some sort of idiotic fashion zombie. You're a nerd. Most people aren't. That should make it clear enough that you will have different opinions on the same things without having to resort to superficial or even entirely artificial values.
It it possible that some significant percentage of people have given Apple products an honest chance, and dislike the always-assumed-to-be-flawless usability? Or that they buy them for lack of credible options, but are pining for an alternative?
I said "most". Which clearly means it's possible for what you wrote to happen (ignoring your idiotic hyperbole about "always-assumed-to-be-flawless usability"). In fact, that most certainly happens.
But what I'm referring to are the jackasses who claim that people only buy Apple products because they are "trendy" or trying to impress others. At no time have I ever made the claim or implied that everyone likes Apple products.
They are all serviceable, but also suffer from idiosyncrasies and constraints that reasonable people could have perfectly legitimate but vastly different opinions about.
This is exactly my point. People have different opinions. And these opinions aren't merely either "I'm smart and don't buy Apple products" or "I'm shallow and only buy Apple products to impress others" as the fool a few posts up claimed.
Apple has been on lawsuit-rampage during the last 6 months, its nice to see at last some action from Google. This is going to be fun!
Define "rampage". They've sued Samsung in multiple jurisdictions for copying the iPad and iPhone. And they've got maybe one or two other suits, that aren't merely countersuits, against other companies.
We where just minding our own business, suing them, and then THEY SUED US for no reason!
Apple is suing people over non-critical things. Things that these companies have done to too closely copy Apple's designs. The Samsung Galaxy hardware looks almost *exactly* like an iPad. Apple's not saying they can't make their own tablets, on the contrary, they are asking them to actually make *their own* tablets, and not just clone Apple's.
The patents Apple is talking about here are FRAND patents, which are critical to entering a market. They are supposed to be offered under Fair, Reasonable, And Non-Discriminatory terms, which Apple is complaining that they aren't doing.
A lot of people like to segregate themselves in to a special group called "geek". The fact is my 7 year old nephew crasked his buddies iPhone and helped him load apps from Cydia. He's seven years old. Think about what these young consumers will want in the future. These are the manufacturers future target market, not us dusty 30 somethings (soon to be 40 somethings). Easy to use won't cut it for the future consumers.
Right, because in the future, *everyone* will be a nerd who eschews things that are easy to use. That's why the teenagers in the '50s who hotrodded their cars were a harbinger to a future where everyone wants full access to and moddability of the internals of their cars...
Your son is not the norm. That's not a bad thing, but thinking he is representative of everyone his age and how they will grow up is, at least in terms of leading you to wildly erroneous conclusions.
Maybe you should ask router manufacturers. For them, "DD-WRT compatible" has gotten a marketing point to have. I wouldn't necessarily call flashing DD-WRT "hacking" tho. Neither is flashing a prebuilt cyanogenmod.
Yeah, because I'm *sure* this has increased their sales so much that every router is "DD-WRT compatible"...
No, it's just a label slapped on old hardware that allows them to keep selling cheap routers to a handful of nerds who want it. I mean, honestly, what percentage of routers do you really think are purchased in order to be flashed? Even among proper nerds, it's going to be a small minority, and nerds themselves make up a small minority in the consumer market.
He means neither. He's not talking about security hackers. He's talking about hardware and software hackers in the FSF/OSS sense, and I'd guess he's talking more about the wannabe variant that really just wants to fuck around with different software and settings as provided by others as opposed to the people actually writing software or designing hardware, as it's this group that makes the biggest fuss on sites like Slashdot.
Which highlights a certain absurdity in this slashdot submission: "Smartphone vendors seem to have gotten the message: users want to control the software on their phones."
No, some nerds want that, but not users in general.
The fact is that it's hard to justify paying laptop prices for what is seen as a luxury item.
Ah, but if you're an Apple cultist then a tablet isn't an expensive alternative to a laptop, it's a cheap alternative to a Mac laptop.
And if you're a reality-deficient nerd, only "Apple cultists" buy iPads.
Hint: people liking or buying something you don't like or want to buy does not mean they are under mind control. It just means not everyone is like you. In fact, being a nerd, *MOST* people aren't like you. If anything, *YOU* exhibit more eccentric, "cult-like" behavior. For example, automatically judging people for liking perfectly acceptable products which you've deemed undesirable.
He wasn't comparing iOS with Android (iOS has outsold Android, btw, in TOTAL sales to date, and at least as recent as June, the *iPhone* has outsold all Android devices combined).
But back to the original claim, the iPhone is the top-selling smartphone handset. The handset OS market share breakdown might be something along the lines of 50% Android, 30% iOS (where's iPod touch and iPad?), but Android's 50% is split among many manufacturers, so the OP's claim is correct.
Last I checked the iPhone was one of the most expensive cell phones money can buy.. specialty jewel encrusted gold phones notwithstanding. I don't think I'd call that low prices.
As are all of the top-teir Android phones (many of which cost more than the iPhone, and generally have less storage, which is one of the parts that has a significant impact on price).
And the iPad, where are all the lower-priced, but similarly specced Android tablets? Or the low price iPod touch competitors?
Other than your belief that people only buy Apple because it's trendy, or that maybe anecdotal evidence suggests that superficial high school kids treat it as a status symbol... do you have anything which supports this assertion? Or is this merely your own perception or something you've just heard from other people? Because, quite frankly, I hear this a lot but without anything to support it.
It's because, like many nerds, he's blind to the whole "user experience" aspect. He just sees hardware specs. Due to this, the only reason he can come up with is that people are buying Apple products as a fashion item.
Even though that's laughably absurd, it's the only thing that makes sense to him.
There are a few other options for user-experience-blind nerds, such as the users are "stupid", "fooled by marketing", or "locked in by the evil Steve Jobs".
Fortunately, all of the above really just account for an extremely small fraction of people, and even of nerds. Most people either like, own, and use Apple products, respect but don't use Apple products, or just really don't give a fuck either way.
'Open Standards' at Apple are seen as avenues to pull in resources from outside the company. Then they put what they deem the proper proprietary twist on it to keep it theirs. They've been doing that for decades. No amount of fanboy spin will change this.
And calling people "fanboys" doesn't make you right. It just makes you, as usual, a complete jackass.
Your statement is wrong in just about every possible way. The *only* example of doing something to an "open standard" to "keep it theirs" is the dock connector, and even that comes with significant benefits to the end user that cannot be met with any existing standard.
But sure, if you can't actually support your claim, I can understand why you'd just call anyone who dares disagree with you a "fanboy", but wouldn't it just be simpler (not to mention feel better) to simply be right instead?
hahaha.. clearly you don't remember what happen when he left before and the company needed to be saved my Microsoft?
He was clearly talking about more recent leaves of absence. And your history is a bit rusty. MS didn't save Apple. They bought $250 million worth of stock as part of a lawsuit settlement, at a time when Apple had billions of dollars in pure cash. If somehow they actually needed an extra $250 million (which they never did), they could have easily borrowed it.
- Apple paid Xerox for use of their GUI (and other) technologies. - MS did not "help" save Apple *in any way* if you are referring to their purchase of $250 million in stock as part of a lawsuit settlement. Apple had billions in cash at the time, and they just paid much more than that to buy NeXT. - You are giving Commodore *way* too much consideration here. Very little would be different in the world today had they never created the Amiga. The only real differences would have been in TV broadcasts and a few shows from the '90s would have had different (probably worse) CGI. And that's assuming the Video Toaster wouldn't have just been made for Macs instead.
Probably because PCs (yes, this includes Apple's line of computers, sorry fanbois)
What is that supposed to mean anyway? "Fanbois"? What strange silliness to start your post with.
are so widespread and people still hold significant control over their own computation.
As they do with iPads and iPhones. So, what's the problem?
If all computers were like the iPad, you can bet that more people would care about openness
If by "more people", you mean "nominally more", sure, there might be a few more people who "care about openness", but the few people who are going to care already do.
What, do you think normal people are going to instantly turn into nerds and start caring about something all of a sudden? How is that supposed to even work?
And all computers *won't* be like the iPad. This is a scenario that is invented whole cloth out of an irrational fear you and many other people here hold. You will always, for the rest of your life, be able to buy a Linux PC, Linux tablet, Linux phone, Linux whatever. Or possibly replace "Linux" with whatever open system replaces it if that happens during your lifetime.
I had an eye-opening experience back when i bought my one apple product, an ipod nano (7 years or so ago), the 8GB model. I had it loaded up with music, and after reinstalling, wanted to get my music back by syncing it with the newly installed itunes.
The result was a wiped ipod, as apple does not want me to own my data. Lession leaned.
Then the lesson you learned was wrong.
Apple in no way "does not want you to own your own data". When you go to sync an iPod with another computer, iTunes ASKS YOU if you want to wipe the iPod. If you don't want to, you can either sync manually, or not sync at all. The iPod is just a cache of your music. It's not a backup. Your original files, which you own, reside on your computer and any other backups you may have made.
No, I'm talking about data. The things which you have no non-Apple approved way of accessing on your iDevice.
Nonsense. There are plenty of "non-Apple approved ways" of accessing data on iOS.
But even if you limit yourself to "Apple approved ways", what data exactly are you not able to take off of iOS? The whole damned thing syncs to your PC! Document-based programs can interface with iTunes, and soon iCloud, to transmit data. It has a full TCP/IP stack with which to share files!
So, what data, exactly, are you talking about? Well?
Slashdot Mirror
It has already been pointed out in numerous articles that the Samsung Galaxy and the iPad are not even the same shape. Apple doctored the images in their filing to make them look the same. How could you miss this? Practically every major newspaper has had an article on it!
A slightly different aspect ratio. And only *SOME* of the images have incorrect ratios.
But it's not the *exact* ratio that makes the Tab look like an iPad. It's the black bezel, rounded rectangle with a metallic border. Look at this picture: Galaxy Tab. It's extremely similar to an iPad.
European courts have already shot down the argument that "they look just like an iPad"; let's leave it at that.
No, but one Scandinavian court did say "slide to unlock" was too broad.
And if one court is enough to "just leave it at that", what about all the other courts that have a different opinion? Besides, just look at the Galaxy Tab from the front. It looks almost exactly like an iPad. There are plenty of different ways to design your tablet (and phone, and computer), and for some reason, Samsung's offerings seem to look a lot like Apple's offerings, even though other companies seem to have no trouble coming up with their own designs.
Nerds here like to pretend like Apple is claiming the rights to "rectangular tablet". They aren't. They are claiming the rights to a rectangular tablet with a certain, recognizable design. There are near infinite ways to make a rectangular tablet, and Apple has come up with one. They are merely demanding that other companies do the same.
A bloody picture frame looks like a iPad ffs. Its an old concept and an old design.
I've never seen a single picture frame that looks like an iPad. There are plenty of ways to make a tablet, just look at the market. The Galaxy Tab is all but an exact clone of the iPad from the front.
Of all the recent lawsuits in "mobile space", Apple's is the only one I'm aware of where not only they have demanded to ban sales of their competitors' products (rather than merely asking for $$$), but have actually succeeded in that.
Because the products are a copy of the iPad. They look just like an iPad. That's not something you demand money for, that's something you outright ban.
I could have used better terminology, but I was in a bit of a hurry at the time. What you described (not the wannabe variant, though) is basically what I meant when I said "white-hat" -- the people who aren't trying to break other people's networks, etc., but are trying to see what cool things they can do with a given piece of hardware and/or software.
In that case we probably don't disagree much. The type you are talking about will be highly prone to buying a MacBook (or any other PC) as a computer they will use and hack around on, but won't buy an iPad to hack.
However, the part where (I suspect) we still disagree is that there's no reason they wouldn't buy an iPad to use as an iPad, for music, movies, books, apps, etc. Sure, *some* will opt for an Android device that they can also hack, but some will buy an iPad to jailbreak and hack.
But there is NOTHING to be for with the Macbook. it is bog standard Wintel parts at truly INSANE prices.
You are only comparing the electronic components, and completely ignoring the way they are assembled and encased. In fact, you are really only comparing *some* of the electronic components, and ignoring many like FW800, Bluetooth, 802.11n (though less unique these days), IPS and otherwise higher quality displays, thunderbolt ports, longer battery life, better trackpads, magsafe power adaptors, backlit keyboards, etc, etc... These things aren't magically free just because they are "bog standard" (even though most of them actually *aren't* "bog standard").
No, you're just looking at "Core i5 + 4GB RAM + ATI XXXX + XXXGB HD" and stopping there.
And you're also ignoring OS X. Even if all Apple did was buy Dell PCs and preload them with OS X, they could sell them for more than Dell sells them with Windows.
The only thing I can figure is like another poster said, its like Prada. it is people paying for the logo.
So, let's take it as given that you really can't figure it out, other than fashion. Just look at the millions of Macs sold every quarter. Do you honestly think that these people are only buying them as a fashion accessory? Does that even make any sense? Do these people *also* have Prada or LV products? Some, sure, but most, absolutely not. And Prada and LV can be acquired for much less than a computer.
So, given that people aren't likely to fit with the "only thing you can figure out", wouldn't it be more realistic and more honest to accept that you just *can't* figure it out, and that people are caring about things that you simply ignore, rather than shoehorn in an explanation that doesn't even make any sense?
Show some intellectual honesty for once and admit that people can like things you don't like without them having to be some sort of idiotic fashion zombie. You're a nerd. Most people aren't. That should make it clear enough that you will have different opinions on the same things without having to resort to superficial or even entirely artificial values.
It it possible that some significant percentage of people have given Apple products an honest chance, and dislike the always-assumed-to-be-flawless usability? Or that they buy them for lack of credible options, but are pining for an alternative?
I said "most". Which clearly means it's possible for what you wrote to happen (ignoring your idiotic hyperbole about "always-assumed-to-be-flawless usability"). In fact, that most certainly happens.
But what I'm referring to are the jackasses who claim that people only buy Apple products because they are "trendy" or trying to impress others. At no time have I ever made the claim or implied that everyone likes Apple products.
They are all serviceable, but also suffer from idiosyncrasies and constraints that reasonable people could have perfectly legitimate but vastly different opinions about.
This is exactly my point. People have different opinions. And these opinions aren't merely either "I'm smart and don't buy Apple products" or "I'm shallow and only buy Apple products to impress others" as the fool a few posts up claimed.
Apple has been on lawsuit-rampage during the last 6 months, its nice to see at last some action from Google. This is going to be fun!
Define "rampage". They've sued Samsung in multiple jurisdictions for copying the iPad and iPhone. And they've got maybe one or two other suits, that aren't merely countersuits, against other companies.
So, where's this "rampage" you speak of?
We where just minding our own business, suing them, and then THEY SUED US for no reason!
Apple is suing people over non-critical things. Things that these companies have done to too closely copy Apple's designs. The Samsung Galaxy hardware looks almost *exactly* like an iPad. Apple's not saying they can't make their own tablets, on the contrary, they are asking them to actually make *their own* tablets, and not just clone Apple's.
The patents Apple is talking about here are FRAND patents, which are critical to entering a market. They are supposed to be offered under Fair, Reasonable, And Non-Discriminatory terms, which Apple is complaining that they aren't doing.
A lot of people like to segregate themselves in to a special group called "geek". The fact is my 7 year old nephew crasked his buddies iPhone and helped him load apps from Cydia. He's seven years old. Think about what these young consumers will want in the future. These are the manufacturers future target market, not us dusty 30 somethings (soon to be 40 somethings). Easy to use won't cut it for the future consumers.
Right, because in the future, *everyone* will be a nerd who eschews things that are easy to use. That's why the teenagers in the '50s who hotrodded their cars were a harbinger to a future where everyone wants full access to and moddability of the internals of their cars...
Your son is not the norm. That's not a bad thing, but thinking he is representative of everyone his age and how they will grow up is, at least in terms of leading you to wildly erroneous conclusions.
Maybe you should ask router manufacturers. For them, "DD-WRT compatible" has gotten a marketing point to have. I wouldn't necessarily call flashing DD-WRT "hacking" tho. Neither is flashing a prebuilt cyanogenmod.
Yeah, because I'm *sure* this has increased their sales so much that every router is "DD-WRT compatible"...
No, it's just a label slapped on old hardware that allows them to keep selling cheap routers to a handful of nerds who want it. I mean, honestly, what percentage of routers do you really think are purchased in order to be flashed? Even among proper nerds, it's going to be a small minority, and nerds themselves make up a small minority in the consumer market.
He means neither. He's not talking about security hackers. He's talking about hardware and software hackers in the FSF/OSS sense, and I'd guess he's talking more about the wannabe variant that really just wants to fuck around with different software and settings as provided by others as opposed to the people actually writing software or designing hardware, as it's this group that makes the biggest fuss on sites like Slashdot.
What do they have in common?
Failure in the consumer market.
Which highlights a certain absurdity in this slashdot submission:
"Smartphone vendors seem to have gotten the message: users want to control the software on their phones."
No, some nerds want that, but not users in general.
The fact is that it's hard to justify paying laptop prices for what is seen as a luxury item.
Ah, but if you're an Apple cultist then a tablet isn't an expensive alternative to a laptop, it's a cheap alternative to a Mac laptop.
And if you're a reality-deficient nerd, only "Apple cultists" buy iPads.
Hint: people liking or buying something you don't like or want to buy does not mean they are under mind control. It just means not everyone is like you. In fact, being a nerd, *MOST* people aren't like you. If anything, *YOU* exhibit more eccentric, "cult-like" behavior. For example, automatically judging people for liking perfectly acceptable products which you've deemed undesirable.
He wasn't comparing iOS with Android (iOS has outsold Android, btw, in TOTAL sales to date, and at least as recent as June, the *iPhone* has outsold all Android devices combined).
But back to the original claim, the iPhone is the top-selling smartphone handset. The handset OS market share breakdown might be something along the lines of 50% Android, 30% iOS (where's iPod touch and iPad?), but Android's 50% is split among many manufacturers, so the OP's claim is correct.
Last I checked the iPhone was one of the most expensive cell phones money can buy.. specialty jewel encrusted gold phones notwithstanding. I don't think I'd call that low prices.
As are all of the top-teir Android phones (many of which cost more than the iPhone, and generally have less storage, which is one of the parts that has a significant impact on price).
And the iPad, where are all the lower-priced, but similarly specced Android tablets? Or the low price iPod touch competitors?
Other than your belief that people only buy Apple because it's trendy, or that maybe anecdotal evidence suggests that superficial high school kids treat it as a status symbol ... do you have anything which supports this assertion? Or is this merely your own perception or something you've just heard from other people? Because, quite frankly, I hear this a lot but without anything to support it.
It's because, like many nerds, he's blind to the whole "user experience" aspect. He just sees hardware specs. Due to this, the only reason he can come up with is that people are buying Apple products as a fashion item.
Even though that's laughably absurd, it's the only thing that makes sense to him.
There are a few other options for user-experience-blind nerds, such as the users are "stupid", "fooled by marketing", or "locked in by the evil Steve Jobs".
Fortunately, all of the above really just account for an extremely small fraction of people, and even of nerds. Most people either like, own, and use Apple products, respect but don't use Apple products, or just really don't give a fuck either way.
'Open Standards' at Apple are seen as avenues to pull in resources from outside the company. Then they put what they deem the proper proprietary twist on it to keep it theirs. They've been doing that for decades. No amount of fanboy spin will change this.
And calling people "fanboys" doesn't make you right. It just makes you, as usual, a complete jackass.
Your statement is wrong in just about every possible way. The *only* example of doing something to an "open standard" to "keep it theirs" is the dock connector, and even that comes with significant benefits to the end user that cannot be met with any existing standard.
But sure, if you can't actually support your claim, I can understand why you'd just call anyone who dares disagree with you a "fanboy", but wouldn't it just be simpler (not to mention feel better) to simply be right instead?
I remember getting Macs in 2006, they had Apple talk on by default but not TCP/IP
Unless you are referring to OS 9, your memory is flawed. OS X has supported TCP/IP since day one, and has always been enabled by default.
As for OS 9, it's possible you might have had to enable TCP/IP in the Control Panel. It's been so long, I'm not sure if that was the cast at the time.
Don't worry, there are plenty of trolls all to eager to tell us what they seem to believe we are thinking...
* He has left before off and on to little effect.
hahaha.. clearly you don't remember what happen when he left before and the company needed to be saved my Microsoft?
He was clearly talking about more recent leaves of absence. And your history is a bit rusty. MS didn't save Apple. They bought $250 million worth of stock as part of a lawsuit settlement, at a time when Apple had billions of dollars in pure cash. If somehow they actually needed an extra $250 million (which they never did), they could have easily borrowed it.
You've got a few facts wrong.
- Apple paid Xerox for use of their GUI (and other) technologies.
- MS did not "help" save Apple *in any way* if you are referring to their purchase of $250 million in stock as part of a lawsuit settlement. Apple had billions in cash at the time, and they just paid much more than that to buy NeXT.
- You are giving Commodore *way* too much consideration here. Very little would be different in the world today had they never created the Amiga. The only real differences would have been in TV broadcasts and a few shows from the '90s would have had different (probably worse) CGI. And that's assuming the Video Toaster wouldn't have just been made for Macs instead.
Probably because PCs (yes, this includes Apple's line of computers, sorry fanbois)
What is that supposed to mean anyway? "Fanbois"? What strange silliness to start your post with.
are so widespread and people still hold significant control over their own computation.
As they do with iPads and iPhones. So, what's the problem?
If all computers were like the iPad, you can bet that more people would care about openness
If by "more people", you mean "nominally more", sure, there might be a few more people who "care about openness", but the few people who are going to care already do.
What, do you think normal people are going to instantly turn into nerds and start caring about something all of a sudden? How is that supposed to even work?
And all computers *won't* be like the iPad. This is a scenario that is invented whole cloth out of an irrational fear you and many other people here hold. You will always, for the rest of your life, be able to buy a Linux PC, Linux tablet, Linux phone, Linux whatever. Or possibly replace "Linux" with whatever open system replaces it if that happens during your lifetime.
I had an eye-opening experience back when i bought my one apple product, an ipod nano (7 years or so ago), the 8GB model.
I had it loaded up with music, and after reinstalling, wanted to get my music back by syncing it with the newly installed itunes.
The result was a wiped ipod, as apple does not want me to own my data. Lession leaned.
Then the lesson you learned was wrong.
Apple in no way "does not want you to own your own data". When you go to sync an iPod with another computer, iTunes ASKS YOU if you want to wipe the iPod. If you don't want to, you can either sync manually, or not sync at all. The iPod is just a cache of your music. It's not a backup. Your original files, which you own, reside on your computer and any other backups you may have made.
No, I'm talking about data. The things which you have no non-Apple approved way of accessing on your iDevice.
Nonsense. There are plenty of "non-Apple approved ways" of accessing data on iOS.
But even if you limit yourself to "Apple approved ways", what data exactly are you not able to take off of iOS? The whole damned thing syncs to your PC! Document-based programs can interface with iTunes, and soon iCloud, to transmit data. It has a full TCP/IP stack with which to share files!
So, what data, exactly, are you talking about? Well?