Assumption that I'm a thief and making me jump through hoops instead of just letting me work.
Refusing to let me uninstall apps I don't want.
Refusing to abide by ratified W3C standards so I get people whining that my site doesn't work with their piece of crap browser and then stewing when I tell them to click on the link that's right there on the page that validates the page as good HTML.
Constantly trying to foist needless upgrades on people that aren't necessary and just result in more headaches for me in tech support, like item 1 above does.
Actively interfering with my ability to choose what OS I might want to use on a computer that I buy on the rare cases I might want to buy a whole new PC from some big company.
Actively (in the past) interfering with competitors' software that they decide they don't like and then not coming up with a satisfactory excuse for why.
Stupid and frivolous lawsuits.
Monopolistic tactics (convicted of it).
Weaseling out of the punishment that they should be forced to induce.
I'm sure there's a zillion more. Those are the big ones.
I also use a free firewall and AV app for my rarely-used Windows box, but most people don't. They use what comes with their machine, and that's not free -- it starts blackmailing you for protection money after X weeks or a year or whatever.
MS may have improved regarding not screwing with competitors' apps, but the fact is, they have done so in the past and that willingness to mess with competitors' business is a huge black mark on their record. I'm not willing to trust them given their past record and their newfound desire to snoop into MY COMPUTER. MY COMPUTER, get your hands off it!
And I prefer to be able to remove whatever the hell I want to remove, if I decide I want the disk space back rather than having to have an app installed that I don't want and will never use.
Did you (the proverbial "everyone" you) really expect them to not do something that "blocks parts of the OS from running without permission" after they stated the OS will only run on APPLE HARDWARE?
Y'all need to go look up WHAT DRM IS FOR. Of course they're using it for this!
I'm referring to Microsoft's invasive phone-home strategy (which causes all kinds of grief to legitimate users) and invasive scans just to install updates (I license software, I don't want snooping in my machine, you got my money and that's the only business that is yours; all your updater needs to know is version numbers of the OS and installed updates).
And yes, you're right about the clones, but the thing I'm saying is that the kernel changes are being done so that you can't build your own clone because then they wouldn't get any money from the sale of the hardware the OS is run on.
Maybe. But Apple also knows how angry people are that Microsoft, their arch-competitor, now wants to snoop into your computer and look for anything they don't like, and that people don't like being treated like thieves. There is also a high margin on Apple hardware. To run the OS in the first place, you must have paid quite a bit for hardware, so they knkow that they already got quite a lot from you.
So, knowing how people feel about what MS does is an incentive to not repeat those mistakes, and the fact that you already gave them quite a lot of cash is another.
I would imagine that they have thought of that and don't think it would be positive to the rest of their plans. Otherwise they'd have said that there would be a version that would work on other systems. (It would also be a support nightmare -- just look at the mess there is now with the infinite configs you get on Windows and the accompanying problems. I don't blame them for not wanting to deal with that).
DRM makes sure that software/content can't be used in such a way that the manufacturer doesn't want done. Apple's already said that they won't allow OS X to run on anything other than their own hardware. This has been known for a long time now. If Apple is going to use Intel boards and video cards and so on, that would open the way for people to use commodity boxes to run Apple's OS. They're using DRM to make sure that doesn't happen.
I haven't been paying attention? Looks like all the coverage of the Intel switch hasn't been read too closely...
But see, that's the thing. They've (almost certainly) done research on whether doing that would boost revenue. And if it would boost revenue for them, wouldn't they be announcing that they will do it? Instead they've announced the contrary. Looks to me like they're pretty sure they're doing the right thing for their business.
They would make money doing that, yes. And they have chosen not to; they have likely done research showing that it would be detrimental to them to stop tying the OS to the hardware. "Just give it up"? What kind of company would do something that would lose them quite a lot of their revenue?
They don't want to lose hardware sales AND they don't want to worry about the zillions of configurations out there that currently cause a lot of headaches for Windows and Linux developers and users.
So write letters to the government. You're a citizen, from the sound of it, just like I am. You have the right to petition the government for redress of grievances. Do so. Doing nothing but complaining about the issue will not help. I do write in from time to time and at least one bad law or bill that I've written in about has died, in part from complaints from the public. Laws are also sometimes enacted as a result of public action.
Don't be so surprised when a law relevant to a given situation gets used in that situation, even if it is a bad law (which I do think it is). And corporations, in the end, don't pass laws. The government does.
You pay just as much or more in the end trying to secure a Windows machine properly. And I don't see Apple hacking its OS so thirdparty stuff won't run; the only case I've heard of where they did that was to disable Menu Extras, but I've never had an issue with that. Still, for those that do, you can get a little app called Menu Extra Enabler for free that will fix that, and Apple never disabled that.
You can also uninstall anything you want to remove -- don't like Apple's browser? You can remove it and select a different default. And so on.
And yes, Apple knows that since you're using its software, you had to buy its hardware. That's the entire point of my original message.
But Apple is not going to do that because they know they will lose profit by no longer guaranteeing that the user will have to buy Apple hardware if they want to use Apple software. They've been at this for years and would have made it platform-independent long before now if they knew they could still keep making as much money; OS X has been internally Intel-capable for a long time now.
I'm not sure what you're trying to say there. Doing that wouldn't help them keep selling the hardware that they primarily exist to sell. You are confusing Apple with your more typical company that makes its living selling software and has no interest in making sure you use particular hardware with their stuff.
All true, although I should clarify a few of your points:
Apple may not warranty HP iPods, but you can still go to their site for troubleshooting. They just won't perform physical hardware repair or replacements.
Also, they won't void your warranty if you use someone else's RAM, but they will sometimes remove it if you send in your system for repair, and advise you to replace it with Apple RAM if the RAM turns out to have caused your problems. For this reason, you should remove the extra RAM before sending in a computer if you didn't get it from Apple.
They don't support transfering files from an iPod, but it's not that hard to find software that will do it.
There's no company out there that is going to support third-party products... that one is just dumb.
That's because Microsoft doesn't sell systems. Redhat doesn't sell systems. The OpenBSD people don't sell systems. And so on. Apple does. For all other OSes you have to provide a computer separately, or optionally you might buy the OS along with a computer, but the OS maker didn't make that machine.
I don't think it's either. You aren't being mistrusted the way Microsoft chooses to snoop on peoples' computers; it's just looking for specific hardware. Apple has always had a philosophy of allowing the user to do what they want without the OS getting in the way, whenever possible.
Why would it be in their best interest? If you could buy just the software and not the computer, that'd mean they'd lose quite a lot because they wouldn't be able to sell computers. It's actually in their best interest to make sure they still sell hardware.
Erm, I don't think this is quite what you think. Apple already doesn't treat customers like scum the way Microsoft does (which I appreciate; I'm honest, but I don't like the assumption that I am not). I think this is just Apple's already-known plans to prevent the OS from not running on anything they haven't sold as a Mac. In other words, you have to buy a computer from Apple to run their OS. Which makes sense -- Apple is a hardware company primarily and makes its money mostly from the computer sales.
Schiller (a VP) has already stated that the OS will not be usable on generic computers, and why would it? Unlike other OS makers, Apple primarily sells hardware. It would be against their whole business plan to become a generic OS maker.
Hence my comment.
However, I am hopeful that now that standard motherboards are used, costs may be lower which means that Macs may cost less in the future than they do now. However, of course, I don't know whether that will happen.
Yah, that's pretty much what I did. I coded it and then I validated it and ran it past the major browsers (and asked an opera-using friend to browse and send me a few screenshots). Works all right in everything.
I really don't understand this current mentality that it's OK for a site to turn anyone away instead of letting them try browsing anyway. And I also don't understand why some of them use some strange scripting language that Firefox (I use a Mac) can't figure out at all. And then depend on it for almost everything.
Just design a standards-compliant site and make sure it's good by using the HTML validator at w3c.org. A proper browser will be able to show your site correctly due to your following the standards. Provide a link to the validator allowing users to validate the site for themselves to show that it's properly built. I've done this for the site I built at work as it's the right thing to be doing.
That does not fix the problem. What will fix the problem is accurate reporting of the user agent and repeated complaints to the site authors until the site is fixed to not blindly cough up error messages, or at least allow users to browse with a warning that not all functions may work.
I do that for my page -- it's written to W3C standards and is validated by their checker. It tells you that it's standardized and to use a standards-complaint browser -- but it won't stop you from deciding to browse anyway with whatever you're using now.
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Assumption that I'm a thief and making me jump through hoops instead of just letting me work.
Refusing to let me uninstall apps I don't want.
Refusing to abide by ratified W3C standards so I get people whining that my site doesn't work with their piece of crap browser and then stewing when I tell them to click on the link that's right there on the page that validates the page as good HTML.
Constantly trying to foist needless upgrades on people that aren't necessary and just result in more headaches for me in tech support, like item 1 above does.
Actively interfering with my ability to choose what OS I might want to use on a computer that I buy on the rare cases I might want to buy a whole new PC from some big company.
Actively (in the past) interfering with competitors' software that they decide they don't like and then not coming up with a satisfactory excuse for why.
Stupid and frivolous lawsuits.
Monopolistic tactics (convicted of it).
Weaseling out of the punishment that they should be forced to induce.
I'm sure there's a zillion more. Those are the big ones.
I also use a free firewall and AV app for my rarely-used Windows box, but most people don't. They use what comes with their machine, and that's not free -- it starts blackmailing you for protection money after X weeks or a year or whatever.
MS may have improved regarding not screwing with competitors' apps, but the fact is, they have done so in the past and that willingness to mess with competitors' business is a huge black mark on their record. I'm not willing to trust them given their past record and their newfound desire to snoop into MY COMPUTER. MY COMPUTER, get your hands off it!
And I prefer to be able to remove whatever the hell I want to remove, if I decide I want the disk space back rather than having to have an app installed that I don't want and will never use.
Did you (the proverbial "everyone" you) really expect them to not do something that "blocks parts of the OS from running without permission" after they stated the OS will only run on APPLE HARDWARE?
Y'all need to go look up WHAT DRM IS FOR. Of course they're using it for this!
I'm referring to Microsoft's invasive phone-home strategy (which causes all kinds of grief to legitimate users) and invasive scans just to install updates (I license software, I don't want snooping in my machine, you got my money and that's the only business that is yours; all your updater needs to know is version numbers of the OS and installed updates).
And yes, you're right about the clones, but the thing I'm saying is that the kernel changes are being done so that you can't build your own clone because then they wouldn't get any money from the sale of the hardware the OS is run on.
Maybe. But Apple also knows how angry people are that Microsoft, their arch-competitor, now wants to snoop into your computer and look for anything they don't like, and that people don't like being treated like thieves. There is also a high margin on Apple hardware. To run the OS in the first place, you must have paid quite a bit for hardware, so they knkow that they already got quite a lot from you.
So, knowing how people feel about what MS does is an incentive to not repeat those mistakes, and the fact that you already gave them quite a lot of cash is another.
I would imagine that they have thought of that and don't think it would be positive to the rest of their plans. Otherwise they'd have said that there would be a version that would work on other systems. (It would also be a support nightmare -- just look at the mess there is now with the infinite configs you get on Windows and the accompanying problems. I don't blame them for not wanting to deal with that).
DRM makes sure that software/content can't be used in such a way that the manufacturer doesn't want done. Apple's already said that they won't allow OS X to run on anything other than their own hardware. This has been known for a long time now. If Apple is going to use Intel boards and video cards and so on, that would open the way for people to use commodity boxes to run Apple's OS. They're using DRM to make sure that doesn't happen.
...
I haven't been paying attention? Looks like all the coverage of the Intel switch hasn't been read too closely
But see, that's the thing. They've (almost certainly) done research on whether doing that would boost revenue. And if it would boost revenue for them, wouldn't they be announcing that they will do it? Instead they've announced the contrary. Looks to me like they're pretty sure they're doing the right thing for their business.
They would make money doing that, yes. And they have chosen not to; they have likely done research showing that it would be detrimental to them to stop tying the OS to the hardware. "Just give it up"? What kind of company would do something that would lose them quite a lot of their revenue?
They don't want to lose hardware sales AND they don't want to worry about the zillions of configurations out there that currently cause a lot of headaches for Windows and Linux developers and users.
So write letters to the government. You're a citizen, from the sound of it, just like I am. You have the right to petition the government for redress of grievances. Do so. Doing nothing but complaining about the issue will not help. I do write in from time to time and at least one bad law or bill that I've written in about has died, in part from complaints from the public. Laws are also sometimes enacted as a result of public action.
Don't be so surprised when a law relevant to a given situation gets used in that situation, even if it is a bad law (which I do think it is). And corporations, in the end, don't pass laws. The government does.
It seems that everyone doesn't judging from the surprised tone of the story summary and many of the other posts in the comments.
You pay just as much or more in the end trying to secure a Windows machine properly. And I don't see Apple hacking its OS so thirdparty stuff won't run; the only case I've heard of where they did that was to disable Menu Extras, but I've never had an issue with that. Still, for those that do, you can get a little app called Menu Extra Enabler for free that will fix that, and Apple never disabled that.
You can also uninstall anything you want to remove -- don't like Apple's browser? You can remove it and select a different default. And so on.
And yes, Apple knows that since you're using its software, you had to buy its hardware. That's the entire point of my original message.
But Apple is not going to do that because they know they will lose profit by no longer guaranteeing that the user will have to buy Apple hardware if they want to use Apple software. They've been at this for years and would have made it platform-independent long before now if they knew they could still keep making as much money; OS X has been internally Intel-capable for a long time now.
I'm not sure what you're trying to say there. Doing that wouldn't help them keep selling the hardware that they primarily exist to sell. You are confusing Apple with your more typical company that makes its living selling software and has no interest in making sure you use particular hardware with their stuff.
All true, although I should clarify a few of your points:
Apple may not warranty HP iPods, but you can still go to their site for troubleshooting. They just won't perform physical hardware repair or replacements.
Also, they won't void your warranty if you use someone else's RAM, but they will sometimes remove it if you send in your system for repair, and advise you to replace it with Apple RAM if the RAM turns out to have caused your problems. For this reason, you should remove the extra RAM before sending in a computer if you didn't get it from Apple.
They don't support transfering files from an iPod, but it's not that hard to find software that will do it.
There's no company out there that is going to support third-party products... that one is just dumb.
That's because Microsoft doesn't sell systems. Redhat doesn't sell systems. The OpenBSD people don't sell systems. And so on. Apple does. For all other OSes you have to provide a computer separately, or optionally you might buy the OS along with a computer, but the OS maker didn't make that machine.
I don't think it's either. You aren't being mistrusted the way Microsoft chooses to snoop on peoples' computers; it's just looking for specific hardware. Apple has always had a philosophy of allowing the user to do what they want without the OS getting in the way, whenever possible.
Why would it be in their best interest? If you could buy just the software and not the computer, that'd mean they'd lose quite a lot because they wouldn't be able to sell computers. It's actually in their best interest to make sure they still sell hardware.
Erm, I don't think this is quite what you think. Apple already doesn't treat customers like scum the way Microsoft does (which I appreciate; I'm honest, but I don't like the assumption that I am not). I think this is just Apple's already-known plans to prevent the OS from not running on anything they haven't sold as a Mac. In other words, you have to buy a computer from Apple to run their OS. Which makes sense -- Apple is a hardware company primarily and makes its money mostly from the computer sales.
Schiller (a VP) has already stated that the OS will not be usable on generic computers, and why would it? Unlike other OS makers, Apple primarily sells hardware. It would be against their whole business plan to become a generic OS maker.
Hence my comment.
However, I am hopeful that now that standard motherboards are used, costs may be lower which means that Macs may cost less in the future than they do now. However, of course, I don't know whether that will happen.
I had thought that it was widely known that OS X won't run on anything not sold by Apple as a Mac.
Yah, that's pretty much what I did. I coded it and then I validated it and ran it past the major browsers (and asked an opera-using friend to browse and send me a few screenshots). Works all right in everything.
I really don't understand this current mentality that it's OK for a site to turn anyone away instead of letting them try browsing anyway. And I also don't understand why some of them use some strange scripting language that Firefox (I use a Mac) can't figure out at all. And then depend on it for almost everything.
Just design a standards-compliant site and make sure it's good by using the HTML validator at w3c.org. A proper browser will be able to show your site correctly due to your following the standards. Provide a link to the validator allowing users to validate the site for themselves to show that it's properly built. I've done this for the site I built at work as it's the right thing to be doing.
That does not fix the problem. What will fix the problem is accurate reporting of the user agent and repeated complaints to the site authors until the site is fixed to not blindly cough up error messages, or at least allow users to browse with a warning that not all functions may work.
I do that for my page -- it's written to W3C standards and is validated by their checker. It tells you that it's standardized and to use a standards-complaint browser -- but it won't stop you from deciding to browse anyway with whatever you're using now.
... with a wizard to explain why it's a stupid idea that just leads to continued stupidity of web admins ...