Hey, I never said that every single Apple customer is the same. Obviously, with tens (or even hundreds) of millions of customers over the company's existence, there's going to be some variety. I've even bought a couple of their devices, way back when I was married, mainly because my wife wanted them (an iPod nano and an iPhone 3GS), so I do have some personal experience, though it was years ago, but it did give me a big distaste for how bad their products are for interoperability and after Android phones got better I steered her away from any more Apple crap. (I've also used Macs a little, but that was back in the 90s, not to mention Apple ][s back in the 80s; now those were great computers but that was really a different company.)
But my point is, there seems to be no shortage of loyal Apple cultists^Wcustomers today. Sure, they'll lose a few people like you with these moves, but there's plenty more people lining up to take your place, and tons of existing customers who will happily buy their latest gear, even if it does require two pounds of dongles to be usable. Apple hasn't stopped being profitable and the most valuable company on the planet yet. Sure, companies like Razer make products which are objectively better, and a better value, but they don't have Apple's name brand and the cachet that comes with that, which allows them to charge a huge premium and get sales from dummies who just think that Apple must be the best thing around just because it's big and has this illusion of quality. It's no different from other luxury brands like Bentley and Rolex. Are Bentley cars more practical or reliable than Toyotas or Hondas? Of course not. So why do people spend $300k on them? Because they're Bentleys, that's the only reason. It's the same way that most Apple customers think.
In every democratic country except the US, perhaps. Here in the US, we've been taken over by extreme right-wingers. Our "Obamacare" was a product of one of those conservative think tanks, and the people now in power are frothing at the mouth to repeal it and replace it with nothing at all except "free market economics".
So yes, we can look forward to "total chaos" here. Why do you think our police are so militarized? It's so they can brutally put down any unrest caused by massive unemployment and homelessness. Hopefully those other democratic countries are ready to accept millions of refugees from the US in the next 4 years or so.
Why would the 'haves' want to bother to do this? Why would they want to have to spend their time organizing an army of people in busywork jobs? And why would they want to insult all these people with stupid, pointless jobs anyway?
No, the issue is that all those morons on MacRumors and elsewhere gripe and complain, but then run out and spend tons of money on the latest Apple iGadget anyway, despite all their bitching and complaining.
I never said all Americans had identical opinions. "Some pro-socialism people" is not enough people to win elections. There's "some" of many different groups of people here: Amish, Windows Phone lovers, etc., but not remotely enough to matter politically.
No, this is total bullshit. Apple is the company that refused to make big-screen phones, and their customers defended this, until suddenly they changed and made big-screen phones, and suddenly all their stupid cultist customers defended this even though just before they were defending Apple's eschewing of big-screen phones.
Apple is successful because their customers are cultists who will buy whatever Apple makes. They're just like many other massively overpriced luxury brands like Coach and Bentley, who live on their brands alone, except that Apple stuff isn't quite as expensive so it's accessible to a lot more people.
The main problem with this idea of "living on less" is that, even in the southern US, the rent prices are very high these days because of the real estate bubble and property speculation and foreign investment. The only place where property isn't expensive is in places where there are really zero jobs at all.
I'm going with the latter (complete economic collapse). There's no way, with the political attitudes and beliefs present in our society, and our current political leaders, that we'd be able to pivot fast enough to avoid it. Only small, homogenous nations like Finland (or Japan, even though it's not that small, but it is homogenous) can pull that off because they don't have all the infighting and diversity of political beliefs that we do, plus our religious notion of "self reliance".
Apple customers want whatever Apple execs tell them to want. Apple tells them "thin is in!" and Apple customers believe that thinness is the most important thing ever. Even Apple fans here on Slashdot will go to great lengths to convince us how important thinness is; I've seen it myself.
No, Apple customers would not be willing to sacrifice thinness for anything, unless of course Apple suddenly changes their tune and tells them that thinness isn't that important and replaceable batteries and headphone jacks are important, at which time Apple's cultist customers will suddenly change their opinions to suit, and run out and buy new thick iPhones with headphone jacks and replaceable batteries.
If my contentions here were incorrect, we'd be seeing Apple customers abandoning them in droves, and their sales collapsing (esp. for laptops, as you note with the thinness being a real hindrance), but we don't. Apple customers will happily buy anything that Apple makes and tells them to like.
And among many Apple customers there is an increasing backlash to their quest for thinness,
I'm not seeing any such backlash. If there is any tiny reduction in sales going on, Apple can easily make up for it by just jacking up their prices. Their devoted customers will pay anything.
Remember, most of the US population is religious, and not only does this involve some "actual" religion (usually Christianity), it also involves the "anti-socialism" religion. Now remember, the defining feature of religion is a complete lack rationality, and believing in something with zero supporting evidence, frequently despite enormous evidence to the contrary (as in the case of young-earth creationism, something that a huge number of Americans believe in).
So yes, it is "a pretty funny thing to say", but that doesn't make it untrue. People here will rationalize this in all kinds of crazy ways. Plus, there's a division here in the US between the "left" and the "right", and many of the people on welfare are not Trump voters, for instance. And of those Trump supporters who are on welfare, they're probably overwhelmingly not on "welfare", but on "disability", which in their minds is somehow different even though it's still socialism.
At least here in the US, that won't change anything. The unemployed will still happily vote against anything that smacks of "socialism". It's a religion to us here. People here would rather shoot themselves (and their family members) in the head than enroll in social services.
A thinner phone is somewhat more convenient all things being equal, but thing's aren't equal. We're obviously at the point where many consumers would prefer a marginal improvement in robustness over a marginal reduction in thinness.
"Many consumers" does not equal "Apple customers". That, right there, is the fundamental problem. Apple customers want thinness at all costs. And so many companies, like Samsung, are sooo jealous and envious of Apple's cultist customer base that they somehow think that they can replicate this level of success by copying Apple's impractical and user-hostile design decisions.
I'm still hoping these companies will eventually get a clue and stop chasing Apple and their idiotic customers, and concentrate on making solid, reliable, practical products for the rest of us.
Society has some big choices to make in the upcoming decades and political systems may crash and rise as we adapt.
Are we heading towards "basic wage" for all people? The ultimate socialist state?
It depends on the country, I think. I believe many countries, like Japan and Finland, will indeed go this route.
However, here in the US, we are vehemently opposed to anything that can be branded as "socialism". So instead, society here will soon resemble "The Walking Dead".
Yep, there's a bunch of curmudgeonly/. posters out there like that. I'll bet a lot of them are Trump supporters too. Make no mistake, there's a ton of people here on Slashdot who are right-wing extremists.
You don't get tax credits on mortgage interest. You get a tax *deduction*. And it's not that great, because you still get the "standard deduction" as a renter; if you're not paying much in mortgage interest, you might not be able to deduct that much more than the standard deduction. (If you don't know the difference between a credit and a deduction, you need to educate yourself fast if you're a taxpayer.)
Your points about benefits of home ownership are suspect in modern society. If you live out in the sticks, sure, you can do whatever the hell you want mostly. (But there's no jobs in the sticks, esp. not tech jobs.) If you live in a subdivision, no. Buying a big dog can get the police called on you because you leave it outside to bark its head off all day long, disturbing the neighbors. Having a shed or workshop might not be approved by your HOA. Same with having a garden. There's all kinds of limitations on what you can do on your own property in municipalities these days.
The giant downside of owning a house is being tied to it: if you get laid off from your job and need to move to another city for a new job, owning a house makes that far more difficult and expensive. Even changing jobs within the same metro area is complicated by it, because it could mean going from a short commute to a brutal one. Renters have an easier time packing up and moving when things become too inconvenient. The other big problem is property taxes: in some states (NJ and TX come to mind), property taxes are insanely high and keep going up far beyond inflation. Apparently those police departments want cushier retirement packages for their members.
Yeah, that seems to be a big problem with the people in "Trumpland". They don't want to move to Michigan or wherever, where jobs are. They want the jobs to come to them in Podunk, Alabama, hours away from the nearest city. It doesn't work like that. Suggest it to them and they whine about "my family is here!" or "the cost of living is too high there!"
Why would anyone want to work for Amazon? I've literally never heard anything good about that place as an employer, only horror stories about employees crying at their desks (not to mention how awful the working conditions are for their warehouse workers).
The "SJW's" [sic -- the apostrophe is incorrect, as this is plural] you complain about are not nationally prominent politicians or personalities in the national news like Thompson and Lieberman. Offhand, I can't even think of any "SJWs" by name, except maybe that stupid woman who said "we need some muscle" at some college protest (and I don't remember her name either, just that she made the news with that comment and got fired).
I'm sure there were plenty of horribly annoying people back in the 90s with very similar opinions to the worst of today's "SJWs", but we don't remember them because they didn't make the news, just like today. Some silly college students with extreme opinions don't matter; there's people with extreme opinions everywhere. What matters are people with actual power, like Lieberman when he was in Congress and on the ticket for VP in the 2000 election.
For whatever reason, censoring video games has fallen by the wayside as a political issue. It probably had something to do with Gore and Lieberman losing to Bush in 2000; both Gore (through his ex-wife Tipper) and Lieberman were known for these efforts at mild censorship, and after the Dems lost in 2000 that whole thing seemed to disappear from the Dem platform, thankfully. It was really rather curious too, as the Dems were/are supposed to be the more socially-liberal of the two parties, so why the Dems would jump on a moralizing campaign like that doesn't make much sense to me, I'd expect that from the Christian Republicans.
What's wrong with Plasma? The main problems I saw with KDE 4+ were all the indexing things they added in which sucked CPU cycles: Akonadi, Strigi, etc. It was possible to disable these things, but they were a little too baked-in.
As a Linux fan myself, I really wonder sometimes how things might be different if Gnome had never been made (Miguel de Icaza had been hit by a bus perhaps), and KDE had become the de facto standard Linux desktop UI instead.
Hey, don't blame Americans for this one; you're being hypocritical. It's not only Americans who use Windows; the vast majority of computer users across the world use Windows. You all have yourselves to blame. You could all decide to stop using Windows, leaving only Americans to suffer with it, and switch yourselves to Linux, but you don't; except for a few isolated places like Munich, you all still use Windows and give your money to MS.
If you're a non-American (person, business, or government) and don't like an American company spying on you, it's pretty pathetic for you to complain when you continue to willingly use the American OS that does this.
It's nothing new. This exact same sentiment has come up every time the GNOME UI vs. KDE has come up for discussion. Basically, the anti-KDE people *hate* configurability and options, because they want it to be set to their preference by default, and somehow everyone is supposed to know their personal preference and agree to this. So they like stuff like Gnome because it forces them into one way of doing things and doesn't give them a choice (which they then mentally turn around so they think it does follow their preference), and they hate stuff like KDE which gives them choices.
You don't need the source to your BIOS to boot an OS; it's an entirely separate thing. (Unless your BIOS will only boot a cryptographically signed kernel.)
You don't need the source code to your microwave to run an OS on your computer. And while it'd be nice to be able to modify your microwave to play DOOM or whatever, most people just don't care much about that, they just want it to cook their food. Microwaves and dishwashers just aren't something many people care about modifying; they're simple appliances. Computers are not. Lots of people do not want to run the OS their computer came with, and if you account for OS updates/upgrades and also patches, almost no one is.
The source code to all of Nvidia's driver isn't all that important; the problem is that their driver just doesn't work that well in Linux because of the way it's packaged, and because they don't make use of some newer features in Linux that make it nicer to use. It is possible for them to keep the "secret sauce" in a binary blob and put the stuff like KMS in open-source code, but they've done a somewhat half-assed job of it all.
The other problem with Nvidia's source code is that, on the Windows side, they've been found to put a bunch of crap in there to game the benchmarks. Testers have found huge differences in performance when running some game normally, versus after renaming the executable for instance (i.e., there's code in the driver to look for a particular executable being run, and then turn on/off certain optimizations to artificially get better numbers for that benchmark, perhaps at the expense of quality). Open-source code avoids this kind of thing.
But really, the primary problem is interoperation. It's a lot easier to make sure the system all works together correctly when you have the source code for all the components at their interfaces, so for instance if you want to redo how mode-setting works, you can fix it on both sides and send out some patches instead of having to put together a cross-industry committee and convince them to make a small change. A lot of things work quite nicely in Linux because various teams (like the Debian devs) have visibility into all the parts, and are able to contribute changes across a stack, instead of things being siloed the way it is in Windows where it's basically impossible to get another team to change something to make it work well with something on your end, so you end up with API madness.
Also it's very counter-intutivie to compare something that was primarily designed to deliver pre-designed content to a screen at a fixed resolution and formation, to something which needed to not only present dynamic content but prepare it first.
Web pages were never meant to deliver content to a screen at a fixed resolution. That was the whole reason they came up with "markup language", so that content could be delivered and rendered according to the geometry of the available screen.
Of course, it didn't take very long until web page designers demanded viewers to have a particular screen resolution: "this page designed for 800x600". But the WWW was never meant to be like that.
The dynamic content is what's newer: the original WWW was never meant to have dynamic content at all, only static.
Slashdot Mirror
Hey, I never said that every single Apple customer is the same. Obviously, with tens (or even hundreds) of millions of customers over the company's existence, there's going to be some variety. I've even bought a couple of their devices, way back when I was married, mainly because my wife wanted them (an iPod nano and an iPhone 3GS), so I do have some personal experience, though it was years ago, but it did give me a big distaste for how bad their products are for interoperability and after Android phones got better I steered her away from any more Apple crap. (I've also used Macs a little, but that was back in the 90s, not to mention Apple ][s back in the 80s; now those were great computers but that was really a different company.)
But my point is, there seems to be no shortage of loyal Apple cultists^Wcustomers today. Sure, they'll lose a few people like you with these moves, but there's plenty more people lining up to take your place, and tons of existing customers who will happily buy their latest gear, even if it does require two pounds of dongles to be usable. Apple hasn't stopped being profitable and the most valuable company on the planet yet. Sure, companies like Razer make products which are objectively better, and a better value, but they don't have Apple's name brand and the cachet that comes with that, which allows them to charge a huge premium and get sales from dummies who just think that Apple must be the best thing around just because it's big and has this illusion of quality. It's no different from other luxury brands like Bentley and Rolex. Are Bentley cars more practical or reliable than Toyotas or Hondas? Of course not. So why do people spend $300k on them? Because they're Bentleys, that's the only reason. It's the same way that most Apple customers think.
In every democratic country except the US, perhaps. Here in the US, we've been taken over by extreme right-wingers. Our "Obamacare" was a product of one of those conservative think tanks, and the people now in power are frothing at the mouth to repeal it and replace it with nothing at all except "free market economics".
So yes, we can look forward to "total chaos" here. Why do you think our police are so militarized? It's so they can brutally put down any unrest caused by massive unemployment and homelessness. Hopefully those other democratic countries are ready to accept millions of refugees from the US in the next 4 years or so.
Why would the 'haves' want to bother to do this? Why would they want to have to spend their time organizing an army of people in busywork jobs? And why would they want to insult all these people with stupid, pointless jobs anyway?
No, the issue is that all those morons on MacRumors and elsewhere gripe and complain, but then run out and spend tons of money on the latest Apple iGadget anyway, despite all their bitching and complaining.
I never said all Americans had identical opinions. "Some pro-socialism people" is not enough people to win elections. There's "some" of many different groups of people here: Amish, Windows Phone lovers, etc., but not remotely enough to matter politically.
Yet you happily continue to buy Apple products, instead of putting your money where your mouth is and going for a different brand.
No, this is total bullshit. Apple is the company that refused to make big-screen phones, and their customers defended this, until suddenly they changed and made big-screen phones, and suddenly all their stupid cultist customers defended this even though just before they were defending Apple's eschewing of big-screen phones.
Apple is successful because their customers are cultists who will buy whatever Apple makes. They're just like many other massively overpriced luxury brands like Coach and Bentley, who live on their brands alone, except that Apple stuff isn't quite as expensive so it's accessible to a lot more people.
The main problem with this idea of "living on less" is that, even in the southern US, the rent prices are very high these days because of the real estate bubble and property speculation and foreign investment. The only place where property isn't expensive is in places where there are really zero jobs at all.
I'm going with the latter (complete economic collapse). There's no way, with the political attitudes and beliefs present in our society, and our current political leaders, that we'd be able to pivot fast enough to avoid it. Only small, homogenous nations like Finland (or Japan, even though it's not that small, but it is homogenous) can pull that off because they don't have all the infighting and diversity of political beliefs that we do, plus our religious notion of "self reliance".
Oh, BS.
Apple customers want whatever Apple execs tell them to want. Apple tells them "thin is in!" and Apple customers believe that thinness is the most important thing ever. Even Apple fans here on Slashdot will go to great lengths to convince us how important thinness is; I've seen it myself.
No, Apple customers would not be willing to sacrifice thinness for anything, unless of course Apple suddenly changes their tune and tells them that thinness isn't that important and replaceable batteries and headphone jacks are important, at which time Apple's cultist customers will suddenly change their opinions to suit, and run out and buy new thick iPhones with headphone jacks and replaceable batteries.
If my contentions here were incorrect, we'd be seeing Apple customers abandoning them in droves, and their sales collapsing (esp. for laptops, as you note with the thinness being a real hindrance), but we don't. Apple customers will happily buy anything that Apple makes and tells them to like.
And among many Apple customers there is an increasing backlash to their quest for thinness,
I'm not seeing any such backlash. If there is any tiny reduction in sales going on, Apple can easily make up for it by just jacking up their prices. Their devoted customers will pay anything.
Remember, most of the US population is religious, and not only does this involve some "actual" religion (usually Christianity), it also involves the "anti-socialism" religion. Now remember, the defining feature of religion is a complete lack rationality, and believing in something with zero supporting evidence, frequently despite enormous evidence to the contrary (as in the case of young-earth creationism, something that a huge number of Americans believe in).
So yes, it is "a pretty funny thing to say", but that doesn't make it untrue. People here will rationalize this in all kinds of crazy ways. Plus, there's a division here in the US between the "left" and the "right", and many of the people on welfare are not Trump voters, for instance. And of those Trump supporters who are on welfare, they're probably overwhelmingly not on "welfare", but on "disability", which in their minds is somehow different even though it's still socialism.
At least here in the US, that won't change anything. The unemployed will still happily vote against anything that smacks of "socialism". It's a religion to us here. People here would rather shoot themselves (and their family members) in the head than enroll in social services.
A thinner phone is somewhat more convenient all things being equal, but thing's aren't equal. We're obviously at the point where many consumers would prefer a marginal improvement in robustness over a marginal reduction in thinness.
"Many consumers" does not equal "Apple customers". That, right there, is the fundamental problem. Apple customers want thinness at all costs. And so many companies, like Samsung, are sooo jealous and envious of Apple's cultist customer base that they somehow think that they can replicate this level of success by copying Apple's impractical and user-hostile design decisions.
I'm still hoping these companies will eventually get a clue and stop chasing Apple and their idiotic customers, and concentrate on making solid, reliable, practical products for the rest of us.
Society has some big choices to make in the upcoming decades and political systems may crash and rise as we adapt.
Are we heading towards "basic wage" for all people? The ultimate socialist state?
It depends on the country, I think. I believe many countries, like Japan and Finland, will indeed go this route.
However, here in the US, we are vehemently opposed to anything that can be branded as "socialism". So instead, society here will soon resemble "The Walking Dead".
Yep, there's a bunch of curmudgeonly /. posters out there like that. I'll bet a lot of them are Trump supporters too. Make no mistake, there's a ton of people here on Slashdot who are right-wing extremists.
You don't get tax credits on mortgage interest. You get a tax *deduction*. And it's not that great, because you still get the "standard deduction" as a renter; if you're not paying much in mortgage interest, you might not be able to deduct that much more than the standard deduction. (If you don't know the difference between a credit and a deduction, you need to educate yourself fast if you're a taxpayer.)
Your points about benefits of home ownership are suspect in modern society. If you live out in the sticks, sure, you can do whatever the hell you want mostly. (But there's no jobs in the sticks, esp. not tech jobs.) If you live in a subdivision, no. Buying a big dog can get the police called on you because you leave it outside to bark its head off all day long, disturbing the neighbors. Having a shed or workshop might not be approved by your HOA. Same with having a garden. There's all kinds of limitations on what you can do on your own property in municipalities these days.
The giant downside of owning a house is being tied to it: if you get laid off from your job and need to move to another city for a new job, owning a house makes that far more difficult and expensive. Even changing jobs within the same metro area is complicated by it, because it could mean going from a short commute to a brutal one. Renters have an easier time packing up and moving when things become too inconvenient. The other big problem is property taxes: in some states (NJ and TX come to mind), property taxes are insanely high and keep going up far beyond inflation. Apparently those police departments want cushier retirement packages for their members.
Yeah, that seems to be a big problem with the people in "Trumpland". They don't want to move to Michigan or wherever, where jobs are. They want the jobs to come to them in Podunk, Alabama, hours away from the nearest city. It doesn't work like that. Suggest it to them and they whine about "my family is here!" or "the cost of living is too high there!"
Why would anyone want to work for Amazon? I've literally never heard anything good about that place as an employer, only horror stories about employees crying at their desks (not to mention how awful the working conditions are for their warehouse workers).
This is a really stupid comment.
The "SJW's" [sic -- the apostrophe is incorrect, as this is plural] you complain about are not nationally prominent politicians or personalities in the national news like Thompson and Lieberman. Offhand, I can't even think of any "SJWs" by name, except maybe that stupid woman who said "we need some muscle" at some college protest (and I don't remember her name either, just that she made the news with that comment and got fired).
I'm sure there were plenty of horribly annoying people back in the 90s with very similar opinions to the worst of today's "SJWs", but we don't remember them because they didn't make the news, just like today. Some silly college students with extreme opinions don't matter; there's people with extreme opinions everywhere. What matters are people with actual power, like Lieberman when he was in Congress and on the ticket for VP in the 2000 election.
For whatever reason, censoring video games has fallen by the wayside as a political issue. It probably had something to do with Gore and Lieberman losing to Bush in 2000; both Gore (through his ex-wife Tipper) and Lieberman were known for these efforts at mild censorship, and after the Dems lost in 2000 that whole thing seemed to disappear from the Dem platform, thankfully. It was really rather curious too, as the Dems were/are supposed to be the more socially-liberal of the two parties, so why the Dems would jump on a moralizing campaign like that doesn't make much sense to me, I'd expect that from the Christian Republicans.
What's wrong with Plasma? The main problems I saw with KDE 4+ were all the indexing things they added in which sucked CPU cycles: Akonadi, Strigi, etc. It was possible to disable these things, but they were a little too baked-in.
As a Linux fan myself, I really wonder sometimes how things might be different if Gnome had never been made (Miguel de Icaza had been hit by a bus perhaps), and KDE had become the de facto standard Linux desktop UI instead.
I agree, Gnome sucks.
Hey, don't blame Americans for this one; you're being hypocritical. It's not only Americans who use Windows; the vast majority of computer users across the world use Windows. You all have yourselves to blame. You could all decide to stop using Windows, leaving only Americans to suffer with it, and switch yourselves to Linux, but you don't; except for a few isolated places like Munich, you all still use Windows and give your money to MS.
If you're a non-American (person, business, or government) and don't like an American company spying on you, it's pretty pathetic for you to complain when you continue to willingly use the American OS that does this.
It's nothing new. This exact same sentiment has come up every time the GNOME UI vs. KDE has come up for discussion. Basically, the anti-KDE people *hate* configurability and options, because they want it to be set to their preference by default, and somehow everyone is supposed to know their personal preference and agree to this. So they like stuff like Gnome because it forces them into one way of doing things and doesn't give them a choice (which they then mentally turn around so they think it does follow their preference), and they hate stuff like KDE which gives them choices.
You don't need the source to your BIOS to boot an OS; it's an entirely separate thing. (Unless your BIOS will only boot a cryptographically signed kernel.)
You don't need the source code to your microwave to run an OS on your computer. And while it'd be nice to be able to modify your microwave to play DOOM or whatever, most people just don't care much about that, they just want it to cook their food. Microwaves and dishwashers just aren't something many people care about modifying; they're simple appliances. Computers are not. Lots of people do not want to run the OS their computer came with, and if you account for OS updates/upgrades and also patches, almost no one is.
The source code to all of Nvidia's driver isn't all that important; the problem is that their driver just doesn't work that well in Linux because of the way it's packaged, and because they don't make use of some newer features in Linux that make it nicer to use. It is possible for them to keep the "secret sauce" in a binary blob and put the stuff like KMS in open-source code, but they've done a somewhat half-assed job of it all.
The other problem with Nvidia's source code is that, on the Windows side, they've been found to put a bunch of crap in there to game the benchmarks. Testers have found huge differences in performance when running some game normally, versus after renaming the executable for instance (i.e., there's code in the driver to look for a particular executable being run, and then turn on/off certain optimizations to artificially get better numbers for that benchmark, perhaps at the expense of quality). Open-source code avoids this kind of thing.
But really, the primary problem is interoperation. It's a lot easier to make sure the system all works together correctly when you have the source code for all the components at their interfaces, so for instance if you want to redo how mode-setting works, you can fix it on both sides and send out some patches instead of having to put together a cross-industry committee and convince them to make a small change. A lot of things work quite nicely in Linux because various teams (like the Debian devs) have visibility into all the parts, and are able to contribute changes across a stack, instead of things being siloed the way it is in Windows where it's basically impossible to get another team to change something to make it work well with something on your end, so you end up with API madness.
Also it's very counter-intutivie to compare something that was primarily designed to deliver pre-designed content to a screen at a fixed resolution and formation, to something which needed to not only present dynamic content but prepare it first.
Web pages were never meant to deliver content to a screen at a fixed resolution. That was the whole reason they came up with "markup language", so that content could be delivered and rendered according to the geometry of the available screen.
Of course, it didn't take very long until web page designers demanded viewers to have a particular screen resolution: "this page designed for 800x600". But the WWW was never meant to be like that.
The dynamic content is what's newer: the original WWW was never meant to have dynamic content at all, only static.