Yes, he was consistent, but I feel, also short sighted.
In effect, the idea that all drivers need source code push some manufacturers to Windows and no Linux drivers. People, well people not named Stallman, buy tools, not ideologies. If Windows has drivers for the hardware I want, I'll never look at Linux.
Can he play off the 'this driver has no source code' vs the 'all this hardware has no drivers at all, and that is pushing people to Windows" in his head? No, he's too much of a zealot, but, IMHO, he'll win the battle, but lose the war.
See also: Palm. They had a huge lead in PIM devices, never bridged the gap to phones. Ended up a hot potato, dead at HPs hands.
Or Windows for that matter. Though not dead yet, Windows CE/Mobile had a huge lead in this space, now way behind, only still treading water because of MS billions and Nokia's need to be somewhat relevant.
To be honest, only Apple is really good in this space. Google is releasing Android just so they can guarantee access to the mobile platform. Having to kiss cell Carrier ass is one of two things (the frenzy of Google+ being the other) denting the Halo of Don't Be Evil.
Its beginning to look like the PC market. Mature market, with Apple on one side making margins, and a bunch of manufacturers with low margins using someone else's software (Windows vs. Android). Some differences being that Android is free, relieving some pressure on manufacturer margins, and Google also competes (Nexus One, and now Motorola).
So don't be so surprised. A lot of PC makers died too. RIM never made itself a platform. From the CEOs down, it was a secure email platform and no vision for anything else. They actively dissuaded other code on the phone. The BB browser makes me want to stab my eyes with a fork. The only reason BBMessenger doesn't make me want to stab my eyes is that I don't use it. RIM could stick around while there was nothing better, now I can get an Android for $150, no contract. Apple's iMessage is a bigger BB killer than many think. My non-technical wife and her technology fearing mother in Taiwan use iMessage daily, never had to set anything up.
So, we have a debate on whether or not you should have to give your facebook password to your boss, and your solution is to have them be able to get into absolutely every mail, twitter, facebook, etc account that you browse from work? This frankly scares me. I have a CA checker in my browser for just this issue.
Many years ago i was associated with Project UDI, the Uniform Driver Interface. The goal was to make a uniform ABI/API for device drivers. On Machines with the same hardware target (say, 32 bit x86) you would have binary compatibility. The same driver works on Solaris or Windows. For other platforms, they'd be at least source compatible. It worked in theory, and somewhat in practice - I think UnixWare shipped this as their native Device Driver Interface.
But you never heard of it. Part of it was the SCO/Caldera fiasco. 'Nuff said about that.
But part of it also was the fact that people had vested interests in this failing. Most famously, Stallman didn't like it. For now you could ship drivers without source for all i386 targets (not that having the normal Linux DDI prevented that before). But it was fun that I worked on something shipped in a commercial kernel, and also something that pissed off Stallman.
More importantly, the people who want this are necessarily in the weakest position. MS doesn't want this - everyone makes Windows drivers. They get nothing from it except lower exclusivity. (The fact that Gates and Stallman were on the same side of this should have given Stallman time to reflect). They'd never allow the UDI code to touch their kernel. One or two other big UNIX vendors feigned interest, but they had the same issue - they had exclusive (to UNIX) device drivers, and they'd lose exclusivity. Only Caldera used it. It was their project, and it helped their forked codebase - they had both UnixWare and OpenServer (very old) code bases they needed drivers for, and it made it an easier target for device makers.
None of the issues were tech issues, they all were people issues, which haven't gone away in the intervening years.
Nokia removed their other lines because they were either old and unworkable (Symbian) or not even ready and unworkable (meego, or whatever you call it this week). MS had nothing to do with it.
They got money, and somewhat exclusivity - they're the Big Dog when it comes to Windows phones, though the exclusivity may be more rats escaping a sinking ship.
Not a single Megaupload user has come forward and claimed the data in their account is their data.
Quite a few artists, not affiliated with labels, used Megaupload to distribute their albums. It became the new mixtape.
Since they were uploaded the artists, and the artists owned copyright, it definitely was their data.
I've seen discussions of whether this was part (just part, not all) of the motivation for the Megaupload shutdown. Record labels didn't want to lose their control over distribution. This control was one way how they forced musicians to sign bad contracts - there was no other way to get their albums out.
Theres a good article at Businessweek about Elop and the direction change.
The article states they negotiated for Android, but got no quarter from Google on special access to Android or direction on features. They didn't want Nokia to be Just Another Android Vendor. Whether that's false pride that will cause them to disappear, or a stroke of genius that allows them to be different, though much smaller, only time will tell. MS did throw some cash at them, this seems to be a partnership of weakness, where both sides have a weak hand and need each other to succeed. I kind of want Windows Phone to survive - it's an interesting new OS, one I'm sure I'll never own a device that runs it. But it will never succeed in any stretch.
Of course you could argue that any moves toward Android were just cover for a long term strategy with MS Windows Phone.
(This is going to be incredibly insensitive torwards those lives that were lost, but it has to be said.) 17 lives lost in the last 50 years of U.S. space exploration really is not too bad.
17 Lives lost because space exploration is hard and risky is one thing. 17 Lives lost because people ignored people who knew what they were talking about and pushed through anyway is a tragedy.
It's not the lives - people die every day. We're all going to go some way, some day. But these lives were lost to arrogance, and ignorance.
I read this article last night, and when I read that he couldn't watch the launch because he KNEW it would blow up, it made me sad. Then he was forced out, because he was right and put egg on the faces of his superiors (maybe "superiors" should be in quotes).
I do remember everyone saying the 4S absolutely needed 4G, but Apple kept 4G out of it for this reason - it would be horrible about battery life, so bad that it would negatively affect the consumer experience.
Not that the 4S is great about battery life either, but imagine it worse.
And all this for not even 4G. Its more like 3.75G, but the American carriers lobbied to bend the rules in advertisements.
Kodak Invented digital cameras, and the first digital camera I ever used was an Apple Quicktake manufacture by........ Kodak.
They wanted to get into it, but just never could get their minds away from "sell cheap cameras to sell expensive film and processing". It was more business model than tech.
As much as people like to bash Apple here, Apple is one of the better ones to say "hell yes we'll sell what destroys our current product". It's released iPods that cannibalized existing ones (Nano replaced Mini), and the iPhone/iPod/iPad mutual overlap while it eats away a bit of laptop sales.
The DMV in Illinois has to, by state law, charge extra fees for credit cards.
In economics, there is no free lunch. Those points and any card cash back has to come somewhere, and it comes from the cut that credit card companies take on every transaction. By state law, Illinois needs to get $X for every license, and $X - 5% doesn't cut it.
Why do you think Target gives you 5% off if you use a Target card? or Lowes, also save 5%? Partly they want to eliminate that cut to the credit card companies (partly other things, like they get the (too high) interest charges, and they get all purchase info).
Verizon may be being a dick, or it may just be trying to recoup lost money, money lost to credit card companies. I'm too lazy to investigate further before posting this, why bother RTFA?
You know what's best for everyone? Configurability.
Not always.
Sometimes you just want things to work. To not have to spend half an hour playing with settings, and get things done. Sometimes well thought out, well designed defaults and a limited subset of changes is the best. I really don't want to spend 2 hours playing how the light model affects my 3d rendering of push buttons.
This is the Apple model, and seems to work for a large subset of people. I know some geeks don't like the 'shackles' of Apple, but some well thought out limits on an (essentially) infinite state machine helps usability a lot.
I forgot where I heard it so I can't give proper attribution, but I remember people having problems with the wording of that phrase, wanting to change it to: Innocent unless proven guilty.
"Until proven guilty" sounds like "we know they've done it, now we just have to go through the motions to prove it". A lot of our justice system and a good deal of our foreign policy feels like that, or maybe we've just dropped the idea of going through the motions by now.
I RTFA, I used Hypercard and SuperCard for some quick prototyping for a HCI class. SuperCard was a superset of HyperCard, and I think you could import any Hypercard deck and have it Just Run(TM). It was not controlled by Apple, in fact it's still around. I needed to search for it to see if it still exists. Not saying the audience doesn't exist, but nobody is clamoring for it
The two Steves had radically different ideas for the direction of computing. Woz was a tinkerer, wanted everyone to be able to do anything, even if that meant shorting your board and starting a small fire. Jobs saw a computer as a great tool but as a near infinite state machine, it needed to be simplified and controlled a bit if everyone was to use it. Both models work, for a subset of people, and with some crossover. I'm a geek and like to tinker (Woz model), but sometimes i just want stuff to work (leans towards Jobs model). The removal of a tool that didn't make much money for the company and left some threads showing is consistent with the Jobs model, with no evil overtones.
I'm never sure why people like to pile on the government. Like any social organization, and Soylent Green, it's made of people. Just like Citibank screwed itself, Enron self destructed, Goldman Sachs enabled Greece to self-destruct, all governments and companies are made of people.
One additional thing to add, government employees rarely get high pay (remember that those $600 toilet seats were paid to private contractors). So, you're blaming fallible humans, a group made more likely to be fallible by the fact you don't want to pay (taxes) to hire the best.
And that was an edited version that removed the other email and some useless footers.
Some of it is just him being picky (does he have Aspergers too?); some is nice (prefers to couch surf than hit hotels). Some is dickish - can we just drop the GNU/Linux thing? Linux is Linux, there's so much software in there now that's non-FSF that the original justification for it is gone. And him clinging to this so much looks petty.
Re:Is there a technical reason for no OTA updates?
on
iOS 5 Update Available
·
· Score: 1
Remember that an update isn't an app download, it's a download of a brand new OS and reflashing your device. This isn't trivial and if it fails it has a good chance of bricking your device. To get the device to handle it properly is harder than having an external app download the update and update the device.
Also, old (iOS4 and previous) updates were a full system image. So you had to download a huge file and find space for it on the device. I think iOS is able to download partial components and update individual components, which makes the storage issue smaller. I think making the OS componentized helps with the overall update. You can have a core component always run (maybe with a backup copy if it itself needs an update) and everything else can get downloaded and updated.
So, Apple solved these issues, possibly with some help from the "update Lion from the App Store" team.
GM was supposed to make a rotary a.k.a. Wankel Engine. AMC was going to source it. They decided to design a car with a futuristic almost UFO-ish look. This was the Pacer.
GM never made the engine, never sold it to AMC. The Pacer still was sold, making Wayne's World just a bit funnier.
Apologies for the long rant. I've seen the 'damn overpriced Apple' screed often enough that I've thought about it a bit.
Unless you're a programmer, you don't really know how much effort that simplicity takes. Your thinking that simplicity is a cheap trick is missing the point. It's not that Apple doesn't see all the good features out there, it's that they wait and spend many hours honing things before they see the light of day. Deleting features takes guts, it's telling a programmer you can't do your fun thing. It's keeping to a list of things that are integrated, even though checkbox marketers (Microsoft is the best example here) try to say you're inferior and you're getting nailed in product reviews. But, every feature that you have is actually usable.
You also seem dismissive of their tech. Apple has managed to put a hybrid microkernel/UNIX device with OpenGL graphics, 4 radios (CDMA, GSM, Bluetooth, Wifi), an inhouse designed CPU, and a capacitive touchscreen in wifes pocket. And as someone whose brain isn't wired for tech, she loves it. If you go out to a cellphone store now, you'll see many phones that copy that formula. For a desktop/laptop company to take over the direction of phone design in a few years says something about the quality of their engineers and designers. You seem to confuse simple with stupid, or rather simple on the interface with simple everywhere. It's actually a mistake Microsoft made with the Zune, and old versions of Windows CE. You also seem to make a mistake many people make where they think everyone is just like them but is missing some fact that would make them agree with you. Not everyone is just like you.
As far as the 'Apple Tax', you've evidently never taken economics. The price in the field is determined more or less by supply and demand. Every vendor would love to sell you their stuff for more. It's called profit margin. No one is ever forced to pay it. Consumers choose to. Only the vendors whose products are loved get to charge a decent margin. If they're not loved, no one will pay their prices. So, Apple charges iTaxes? Then, no one must be buying these things that are overpriced? Apple seems to be moving product fairly well. Only iPhones get to charge margin, and very similar specced android phones can not, because they're not quite the same. Even near-WIntel spec laptops with just MacOSX as a differentiator are getting sold. There must be something in that secret sauce of iOS and MacOSX that makes people want to pay more for them, even though Macs don't run Windows programs. It's all that effort you don't see, all that simplicity that makes iOS/MacOSX just work for most people. We have a macbook, and the wife's plan says to replace the aging Windows machine with some iMac once it finally kicks over. She's no fanboy (err, girl). Macs just are easier for her. And I'm a UNIX programmer, who ran FreeBSD for various jobs (besides Linux, Solaris, etc) and I'm low level enough to have done driver work (which shipped in a UNIX kernel) and I like the iMac idea. MacOS does quite well if it's simple enough for her to use, yet powerful enough for me.
As someone who has been on Macs since 89 or so, I can assure you there was no fanboyism about the Performa days or System 7.1.1. or the 'the Pepsi ex-CEO can design and move computers, right?' fiascos. Apple had their nadir, and they built up since then. There was no reality distortion field back then, they made hard choices, killed projects, (Copeland, Rhapsody, Pink, Taligent, etc) and started slowly building Apple to where it is.
"Google ['s game revenue cut] is at 5% because they don't have any [gaming] users,"
This intent is a bit less hyperbolic, and truer to the intent of the statement. Not that Facebook has been overly honest in their war with Google, but they aren't ignoring the Google+ userbase either.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, he was consistent, but I feel, also short sighted.
In effect, the idea that all drivers need source code push some manufacturers to Windows and no Linux drivers. People, well people not named Stallman, buy tools, not ideologies. If Windows has drivers for the hardware I want, I'll never look at Linux.
Can he play off the 'this driver has no source code' vs the 'all this hardware has no drivers at all, and that is pushing people to Windows" in his head? No, he's too much of a zealot, but, IMHO, he'll win the battle, but lose the war.
See also: Palm. They had a huge lead in PIM devices, never bridged the gap to phones. Ended up a hot potato, dead at HPs hands.
Or Windows for that matter. Though not dead yet, Windows CE/Mobile had a huge lead in this space, now way behind, only still treading water because of MS billions and Nokia's need to be somewhat relevant.
To be honest, only Apple is really good in this space. Google is releasing Android just so they can guarantee access to the mobile platform. Having to kiss cell Carrier ass is one of two things (the frenzy of Google+ being the other) denting the Halo of Don't Be Evil.
Its beginning to look like the PC market. Mature market, with Apple on one side making margins, and a bunch of manufacturers with low margins using someone else's software (Windows vs. Android). Some differences being that Android is free, relieving some pressure on manufacturer margins, and Google also competes (Nexus One, and now Motorola).
So don't be so surprised. A lot of PC makers died too. RIM never made itself a platform. From the CEOs down, it was a secure email platform and no vision for anything else. They actively dissuaded other code on the phone. The BB browser makes me want to stab my eyes with a fork. The only reason BBMessenger doesn't make me want to stab my eyes is that I don't use it. RIM could stick around while there was nothing better, now I can get an Android for $150, no contract. Apple's iMessage is a bigger BB killer than many think. My non-technical wife and her technology fearing mother in Taiwan use iMessage daily, never had to set anything up.
So, we have a debate on whether or not you should have to give your facebook password to your boss, and your solution is to have them be able to get into absolutely every mail, twitter, facebook, etc account that you browse from work? This frankly scares me. I have a CA checker in my browser for just this issue.
Many years ago i was associated with Project UDI, the Uniform Driver Interface. The goal was to make a uniform ABI/API for device drivers. On Machines with the same hardware target (say, 32 bit x86) you would have binary compatibility. The same driver works on Solaris or Windows. For other platforms, they'd be at least source compatible. It worked in theory, and somewhat in practice - I think UnixWare shipped this as their native Device Driver Interface.
But you never heard of it. Part of it was the SCO/Caldera fiasco. 'Nuff said about that.
But part of it also was the fact that people had vested interests in this failing. Most famously, Stallman didn't like it. For now you could ship drivers without source for all i386 targets (not that having the normal Linux DDI prevented that before). But it was fun that I worked on something shipped in a commercial kernel, and also something that pissed off Stallman.
More importantly, the people who want this are necessarily in the weakest position. MS doesn't want this - everyone makes Windows drivers. They get nothing from it except lower exclusivity. (The fact that Gates and Stallman were on the same side of this should have given Stallman time to reflect). They'd never allow the UDI code to touch their kernel. One or two other big UNIX vendors feigned interest, but they had the same issue - they had exclusive (to UNIX) device drivers, and they'd lose exclusivity. Only Caldera used it. It was their project, and it helped their forked codebase - they had both UnixWare and OpenServer (very old) code bases they needed drivers for, and it made it an easier target for device makers.
None of the issues were tech issues, they all were people issues, which haven't gone away in the intervening years.
Nokia removed their other lines because they were either old and unworkable (Symbian) or not even ready and unworkable (meego, or whatever you call it this week). MS had nothing to do with it.
They got money, and somewhat exclusivity - they're the Big Dog when it comes to Windows phones, though the exclusivity may be more rats escaping a sinking ship.
Not a single Megaupload user has come forward and claimed the data in their account is their data.
Quite a few artists, not affiliated with labels, used Megaupload to distribute their albums. It became the new mixtape.
Since they were uploaded the artists, and the artists owned copyright, it definitely was their data.
I've seen discussions of whether this was part (just part, not all) of the motivation for the Megaupload shutdown. Record labels didn't want to lose their control over distribution. This control was one way how they forced musicians to sign bad contracts - there was no other way to get their albums out.
Theres a good article at Businessweek about Elop and the direction change.
The article states they negotiated for Android, but got no quarter from Google on special access to Android or direction on features. They didn't want Nokia to be Just Another Android Vendor. Whether that's false pride that will cause them to disappear, or a stroke of genius that allows them to be different, though much smaller, only time will tell. MS did throw some cash at them, this seems to be a partnership of weakness, where both sides have a weak hand and need each other to succeed. I kind of want Windows Phone to survive - it's an interesting new OS, one I'm sure I'll never own a device that runs it. But it will never succeed in any stretch.
Of course you could argue that any moves toward Android were just cover for a long term strategy with MS Windows Phone.
"Be sure to drink your Ovaltine."
Or you'll shoot your eye out?
17 Lives lost because space exploration is hard and risky is one thing. 17 Lives lost because people ignored people who knew what they were talking about and pushed through anyway is a tragedy.
It's not the lives - people die every day. We're all going to go some way, some day. But these lives were lost to arrogance, and ignorance.
I read this article last night, and when I read that he couldn't watch the launch because he KNEW it would blow up, it made me sad. Then he was forced out, because he was right and put egg on the faces of his superiors (maybe "superiors" should be in quotes).
I do remember everyone saying the 4S absolutely needed 4G, but Apple kept 4G out of it for this reason - it would be horrible about battery life, so bad that it would negatively affect the consumer experience.
Not that the 4S is great about battery life either, but imagine it worse.
And all this for not even 4G. Its more like 3.75G, but the American carriers lobbied to bend the rules in advertisements.
Kodak Invented digital cameras, and the first digital camera I ever used was an Apple Quicktake manufacture by........ Kodak.
They wanted to get into it, but just never could get their minds away from "sell cheap cameras to sell expensive film and processing". It was more business model than tech.
As much as people like to bash Apple here, Apple is one of the better ones to say "hell yes we'll sell what destroys our current product". It's released iPods that cannibalized existing ones (Nano replaced Mini), and the iPhone/iPod/iPad mutual overlap while it eats away a bit of laptop sales.
The DMV in Illinois has to, by state law, charge extra fees for credit cards.
In economics, there is no free lunch. Those points and any card cash back has to come somewhere, and it comes from the cut that credit card companies take on every transaction. By state law, Illinois needs to get $X for every license, and $X - 5% doesn't cut it.
Why do you think Target gives you 5% off if you use a Target card? or Lowes, also save 5%? Partly they want to eliminate that cut to the credit card companies (partly other things, like they get the (too high) interest charges, and they get all purchase info).
Verizon may be being a dick, or it may just be trying to recoup lost money, money lost to credit card companies. I'm too lazy to investigate further before posting this, why bother RTFA?
Not always.
Sometimes you just want things to work. To not have to spend half an hour playing with settings, and get things done. Sometimes well thought out, well designed defaults and a limited subset of changes is the best. I really don't want to spend 2 hours playing how the light model affects my 3d rendering of push buttons.
This is the Apple model, and seems to work for a large subset of people. I know some geeks don't like the 'shackles' of Apple, but some well thought out limits on an (essentially) infinite state machine helps usability a lot.
I forgot where I heard it so I can't give proper attribution, but I remember people having problems with the wording of that phrase, wanting to change it to:
Innocent unless proven guilty.
"Until proven guilty" sounds like "we know they've done it, now we just have to go through the motions to prove it". A lot of our justice system and a good deal of our foreign policy feels like that, or maybe we've just dropped the idea of going through the motions by now.
Supercard was out at the time, it was a superset (mostly) with color. I worked with both at the time, and it was easy to move a deck to Supercard.
As many other people mentioned, LiveCode is probably the modern equivalent with the most distribution.
I RTFA, I used Hypercard and SuperCard for some quick prototyping for a HCI class. SuperCard was a superset of HyperCard, and I think you could import any Hypercard deck and have it Just Run(TM). It was not controlled by Apple, in fact it's still around. I needed to search for it to see if it still exists. Not saying the audience doesn't exist, but nobody is clamoring for it
The two Steves had radically different ideas for the direction of computing. Woz was a tinkerer, wanted everyone to be able to do anything, even if that meant shorting your board and starting a small fire. Jobs saw a computer as a great tool but as a near infinite state machine, it needed to be simplified and controlled a bit if everyone was to use it. Both models work, for a subset of people, and with some crossover. I'm a geek and like to tinker (Woz model), but sometimes i just want stuff to work (leans towards Jobs model). The removal of a tool that didn't make much money for the company and left some threads showing is consistent with the Jobs model, with no evil overtones.
Err, Human failure....
I'm never sure why people like to pile on the government. Like any social organization, and Soylent Green, it's made of people. Just like Citibank screwed itself, Enron self destructed, Goldman Sachs enabled Greece to self-destruct, all governments and companies are made of people.
One additional thing to add, government employees rarely get high pay (remember that those $600 toilet seats were paid to private contractors). So, you're blaming fallible humans, a group made more likely to be fallible by the fact you don't want to pay (taxes) to hire the best.
$: wc stallman.txt
1161 9089 51706 stallman.txt
And that was an edited version that removed the other email and some useless footers.
Some of it is just him being picky (does he have Aspergers too?); some is nice (prefers to couch surf than hit hotels).
Some is dickish - can we just drop the GNU/Linux thing? Linux is Linux, there's so much software in there now that's non-FSF that the original justification for it is gone. And him clinging to this so much looks petty.
Remember that an update isn't an app download, it's a download of a brand new OS and reflashing your device. This isn't trivial and if it fails it has a good chance of bricking your device. To get the device to handle it properly is harder than having an external app download the update and update the device.
Also, old (iOS4 and previous) updates were a full system image. So you had to download a huge file and find space for it on the device. I think iOS is able to download partial components and update individual components, which makes the storage issue smaller. I think making the OS componentized helps with the overall update. You can have a core component always run (maybe with a backup copy if it itself needs an update) and everything else can get downloaded and updated.
So, Apple solved these issues, possibly with some help from the "update Lion from the App Store" team.
GM was supposed to make a rotary a.k.a. Wankel Engine. AMC was going to source it. They decided to design a car with a futuristic almost UFO-ish look. This was the Pacer.
GM never made the engine, never sold it to AMC. The Pacer still was sold, making Wayne's World just a bit funnier.
Thanks :)
5 Radios, I forgot GPS.
Apologies for the long rant. I've seen the 'damn overpriced Apple' screed often enough that I've thought about it a bit.
Unless you're a programmer, you don't really know how much effort that simplicity takes. Your thinking that simplicity is a cheap trick is missing the point. It's not that Apple doesn't see all the good features out there, it's that they wait and spend many hours honing things before they see the light of day. Deleting features takes guts, it's telling a programmer you can't do your fun thing. It's keeping to a list of things that are integrated, even though checkbox marketers (Microsoft is the best example here) try to say you're inferior and you're getting nailed in product reviews. But, every feature that you have is actually usable.
You also seem dismissive of their tech. Apple has managed to put a hybrid microkernel/UNIX device with OpenGL graphics, 4 radios (CDMA, GSM, Bluetooth, Wifi), an inhouse designed CPU, and a capacitive touchscreen in wifes pocket. And as someone whose brain isn't wired for tech, she loves it. If you go out to a cellphone store now, you'll see many phones that copy that formula. For a desktop/laptop company to take over the direction of phone design in a few years says something about the quality of their engineers and designers. You seem to confuse simple with stupid, or rather simple on the interface with simple everywhere. It's actually a mistake Microsoft made with the Zune, and old versions of Windows CE. You also seem to make a mistake many people make where they think everyone is just like them but is missing some fact that would make them agree with you. Not everyone is just like you.
As far as the 'Apple Tax', you've evidently never taken economics. The price in the field is determined more or less by supply and demand. Every vendor would love to sell you their stuff for more. It's called profit margin. No one is ever forced to pay it. Consumers choose to. Only the vendors whose products are loved get to charge a decent margin. If they're not loved, no one will pay their prices. So, Apple charges iTaxes? Then, no one must be buying these things that are overpriced? Apple seems to be moving product fairly well. Only iPhones get to charge margin, and very similar specced android phones can not, because they're not quite the same. Even near-WIntel spec laptops with just MacOSX as a differentiator are getting sold. There must be something in that secret sauce of iOS and MacOSX that makes people want to pay more for them, even though Macs don't run Windows programs. It's all that effort you don't see, all that simplicity that makes iOS/MacOSX just work for most people. We have a macbook, and the wife's plan says to replace the aging Windows machine with some iMac once it finally kicks over. She's no fanboy (err, girl). Macs just are easier for her. And I'm a UNIX programmer, who ran FreeBSD for various jobs (besides Linux, Solaris, etc) and I'm low level enough to have done driver work (which shipped in a UNIX kernel) and I like the iMac idea. MacOS does quite well if it's simple enough for her to use, yet powerful enough for me.
As someone who has been on Macs since 89 or so, I can assure you there was no fanboyism about the Performa days or System 7.1.1. or the 'the Pepsi ex-CEO can design and move computers, right?' fiascos. Apple had their nadir, and they built up since then. There was no reality distortion field back then, they made hard choices, killed projects, (Copeland, Rhapsody, Pink, Taligent, etc) and started slowly building Apple to where it is.
(just a hobby, won’t be big and professional like gnu)
Quite a few things have changed since then
First the Java mess, and now this... :(
"because they don't have any users,"
is a bit better presented as...
"Google ['s game revenue cut] is at 5% because they don't have any [gaming] users,"
This intent is a bit less hyperbolic, and truer to the intent of the statement. Not that Facebook has been overly honest in their war with Google, but they aren't ignoring the Google+ userbase either.