Last time I checked, Apple owned their own store on Regent Street, as do they every single one of their other stores (not even through a subsidary), so that had very much to do with Apple. That said, this kind of customer service - including transferring stuff over to the new box - shouldn't be surprising, and I think it's sad that it is. I know of only one local chain that would help out with stuff like that, and they'd likely charge you for that hour and not even know what to do with the Mac in the first place (even though they sell them).
Fair point. But if 'nux doesn't equal a Linux distribution (and I'm seriously at odds with what "'nux'" means in your description; however, it is "Linux" that ends with "nux" and not BSD or UNIX or Solaris or what have you), what does it equal? "Just Linux?" Just Linux is just a kernel. That'd be the BIG THREE "Two Operating Systems and one arbitrarily chosen kernel, popular as it may be".
So again, please fill us in about what "'nux" means in your description. If it does mean "the aggregate body of Linux distribution, or just a random one", then there wasn't anything wrong with the choice - Ubuntu is clearly a popular, usable distribution with momentum, and I shouldn't even need to detail how it'd be wrong and unfeasible, to say the least, to pit all Linux distributions ever into the match against OS X and Windows (XP).
Ubuntu Linux, one of the fastest growing Linux distributions, and widely regarded as one of the most usable. It's based on Debian, with which you might be more familiar.
voracious adjective
[..]
having a very eager approach to an activity : his voracious reading of literature.
vicarious adjective
experienced in the imagination through the feelings or actions of another person : I could glean vicarious pleasure from the struggles of my imaginary film friends.
For what it's worth, *if* I were living through it (which I'm not), I would almost certainly live both voraciously and vicariously through it.:)
As a swede, it's a strange feeling reading these kinds of comments.
To say that I voraciously live through the Internet would be wrong, but I do practically live in some sort of pseudo-american culture when I'm spending any amount of time online. Swedish, real life friends, sure, they're there too, but my AIM buddy list (the one I use to keep in touch with online friends) is longer by far than the MSN Messenger list (swedish friends).
Every day I read on Slashdot and on other sites about how freedoms are in the process of being taken away. Mostly, the problems are international or apply globally in some ways, but a surprisingly big chunk is US domestic. I'm really quite surprised you haven't risen up, shook your heads and beaten the crap out of your established political system yet - as an outsider, it seems like the "American" thing to do, if I'm to believe various over-patriotic messages relayed to me over the years.
What I think is happening is this: the US is more and more about its government. Two major political parties and a winner-takes-all system in general does that. The "American" thing has evolved towards supporting the government, instead of the government supporting the people. And any government today - especially Republican, *it seems* - "are not above a little bribery and corruption in the same way that the sea is not above the clouds" (thanks, Douglas Adams). What you have is the government, who is either to be awed or to be ignored, played around by the corporations while your civil rights go straight down the can and anyone who opposes is a communist^Wterrorist. (McCarthy would have been proud, from all I hear.)
I'm not saying my analysis is right. I'm currently not 'rooting' for one of the major american parties, though I am certainly rooting against the current administration. I'm just saying that it's odd that Sweden's the one following the 'socialism' ideology branch, while it's the american citizens who have to take in in the hiney from their government.
And for what it's worth, Sweden is far from perfect. But there's no doubt in my mind that it's the american citizen that's worse off of the two.
For what it's worth I don't think "Web 2.0" (and I detest that name) is all about enhancing things with new technology (even if a bunch of that technology enables stuff, even helpful stuff, that's not been possible without it - reorderable draggable lists, autocompleting, and so on).
Look at Flickr or Zooomr. *Anyone* could have created that even five years ago. It's not about new technology, it's about web people finally getting the web for themselves and doing their thing. The bubble was about conglomerates trying to shove the web into the mold of other medias, and on the other end of the chart it was about faulty business models (if "the new economy" meant that if two companies did jobs for each other worth $20 billion, they both earned $20 billion, then the stock market should have called bullshit on this from the very beginning).
I'm not saying some people aren't making the same mistakes all over again. It *is* starting to look like the bubble with startups all over the place, but unlike last time, some of the better successes of this era are companies *adjusting* to the web, embracing how it works and building on that. And some of the leaders of it are folks that have been doing just that all along - 37signals spring to mind.
I never said Nintendo chose *cartridges* because of advancing technology - I said they chose to *go from cartridges to optical media* precisely because of advancing technology. In retrospect, I do wish they had used optical media for the N64, but I'm not of one opinion entirely, because optical drives were a lot more sluggish back then. I'm completely buying your argument of strange storage formats being "security through obscurity", but aside from the FDD, Nintendo had never used any sort of standard media before, and I don't think they chose it just based on anti-piracy policies, even if you'd be mad to suggest that didn't play a part.
I also get your point about constantly repurchasing games, and like I said in the second paragraph, it's a constant process of companies putting out updated versions for new media. However, with the Revolution, Nintendo at least seems to embrace backwards compatibility (even if they also probably will have DRM, and even if they could probably go south too if they wanted), while the **AAs and the labels are fighting tooth and nail to make sure that you *will* need to continue repurchasing in a medium that could bring an end to the innate *necessity* (since the previous formats relied on being able to take a disc or tape of a specific format) of doing so.
Where did I say that the iPod could never play MP3s, or that iTunes would only handle songs from the iTMS? I'm just as annoyed by the error you're trying to correct as you are when it appears as the basis of someone's argument, but I didn't imply that in my comment. I said that songs from the iTMS had DRM, and that's it.
First of all, "Web 2.0" is a sucky label. It's a sucky label that has caught on with some marketing drones, but it's sucky nonetheless. "AJAX" is less sucky, but it's actually useful in that it's easier to type out than XMLHttpRequest.
Now, then. I don't think that the most interesting thing about this 'new wave', whatever you call it, is that font sizes are up 140% since last year or that form submits are being sent asynchronously. No, the interesting thing is both in the details and in the big picture.
Overwhelmingly, it seems that most people are embracing the media now. They're not trying to shoehorn in their old models and whining about how the web sucks when it doesn't work (see "the bubble"). The people who are fueling this are web programmers (or designers) who know what works and what doesn't, and they build their stuff for themselves.
Gmail was originally built because of the suckiness of most other webmail providers. Basecamp, Writeboard and Campfire were all built to solve problems 37signals had internally. And with everyone building *mainly* for themselves, of course you're not going to like everything.
The second thing is in the details. An example is the killer app for XMLHttpRequest is autocompletion. You type "Bill" and it fills out "Gates, Cheif Architect". You type "Linus" and it fills out "Torvalds, BDFL". It's not essential by any means, but it's very, very nice in very, very many places.
What about inventions like tags then? Well, people are building for themselves. They don't want to deal with folder hierarchies, and the creation thereof. They just want to type "important wednesday" for their meeting and get on with their lives.
My assessment of the 'new wave' we're seeing here boils down to what I wrote above. It's not about 'mashups', it's not about 'blogs', it's not about 70 point Arial, it's not about pastels. It's much more about interesting people coming to terms with what they actually can do with technology to solve their own problems.
Apple went through hoops to add DRM to the files - it was a requirement from the **AAs - whereas N64 vs Gamecube was just a fact of progressing technology. AAC (MPEG-4) being incompatible with MP3 (MPEG-2, Layer 3) because of technological advancements would be a more apt comparison to N64 vs GC here.
I was going to bring up how, with DRM, we'd need to repurchase the same damn songs on new media, but in fact that's just the way it's always have been, even without DRM. Media, regardless of it being books, music, movies, games, etc, is consumed and will always come out in new forms, just like any other case of consumption. (However, DRM and crummy quality is most likely the labels' way of making sure they can continue to resell you the same stuff tomorrow, despite how they could actually do something that we could conceivably play, no problem, on a computer in 100 years.)
At the end of the day, DRM sucks, and we all know this. However, I'm also confident that Apple's one of the vendors least tied to DRM, because Apple only offers 'buying', and not 'subscribing', which literally hinges on DRM - otherwise you could just keep the music, like with 'buying'! Apple's simultaneously the most and least likely to speak up against DRM: most because they use DRM, hate it and could say "all these sales we racked up for you? we could make them stop coming unless you offer DRM-less music"; but also least, because they know the labels would just make up a new store and Apple would lose profits itself (and it actually does make a slim profit on the store).
Spend a day at a supermarket. Pick 500 random people throughout the day. How many of them will be able to install OSx86 even when it's more refined? 30?
The people who will be installing Mac OS X on PCs will largely be people currently not buying Macs in the first place. Surely a fair percent will choose to go from buying Macs to buying PCs, but are you willing to bet that they'll all stay there? Drivers and official support will be lacking, as well as software updates. I'm willing to guess that a fair amount of the people that try it out will go back fairly quickly because of the experience being all the more cumbersome over time.
I'm not saying your scenario won't happen. It's *possible*. It's just not very *probable*. The rumors of Apple's death have been, are, and will continue to be, greatly exaggerated.
(If you want it spoiled for you: A guy (guy A) pays someone (guy B) to have an argument with him, but it shortly turns into a simple matter of negation on the end of guy B and a monotonous conversation for guy A. Guy A argues that this isn't an argument because there's no actual opinion being put forward but Guy B simply negates this too in order to lengthen the argument. It's a lot funnier than it sounds, and the wording's similar to the grandparent post.)
It's sad what we have to deal with today thanks to our growing loss of fair use rights
You have got to be fucking kidding me.
Let's say, now, that you have an apartment and a brother. Your brother wants to use your apartment once to host a party. Sure, you say. Then he proceeds to change the locks and won't let you in. That's not an issue of "fair use" in any way. That's breaching a contract, because it's not what you both agreed he could do based on your permission.( And regardless of if you agree with me that breaching that part of the EULA is that serious (no, not even I think so), it is nonetheless a breach of contract, and this is a good way to illustrate it.)
You could argue until you go blind that Apple should license OS X to other people, and regardless of whether that argument is valid it has *absolutely nothing to do with fair use*. It's their apartment, and they choose who they want to let in; it's their OS and they choose what they put in their EULA. Despite what you and I may think of some EULA claims (and I've seen ones more draconian than this, to be sure), we don't get to choose to only interpret the laws we like, and that's what it's all about. It's not about DRM (whatever hardware dongle they have is a feel-good measure, because it's going to be cracked anyway, and they know it, but the EULA clause is, at least in theory, legally binding) and it's certainly not about fair use.
When apple dumped IBM they basically tossed out what made them unique!
What's been consistently unique for Apple since the original Mac has been industrial design unlike the rest of the industry and a different OS. This is still true.
Apple dropped Mac OS 1-9 (the "Classic" series) because it was comparatively a house of patches above a system that had been designed for a computer with 128KB of RAM and no internal HD. It made sense. They're dropping Classic support now because they don't want to emulate Mac OS 9 on Intel, not because of the hell of it.
OS X is based on BSD, but it's not just BSD with a GUI over it (your wording seems to suggest this line of thinking). The kernel is vastly different, to begin with, and a lot of the stuff above - except for the ordinary UNIX command line tools, which, I'm reminded, is now in place on almost every desktop OS in the world except for Windows and some original creations - is written in-house.
Your assumptions are based on observing the effect, and not the cause. There are technologies in Mac OS X that you're not going to get anywhere else (like Cocoa and the window server), and that's a far cry away from, for example, a Linux vendor's skin, provided applications and general configuration - no ill will towards Linux distros, just making the distinction. If this didn't set OS X apart from BSD or Linux, you'd just be able to run your OS X apps on any PPC or Intel Linux, but you demonstrably can't, even with GNUStep (NIBs don't work natively, as I recall - they use Gorm instead of IB).
What sets Apple apart as always is the fact that - for better or worse - they still make the whole widget. They never made the CPUs, and they always made the industrial design and OS. From 68k to Core Duo, this hasn't changed one bit.
(And just for the record, Dvorak's argument is of course bullshit. Apple dropped classic Mac OS because it was plainly lacking in some areas that OpenStep and BeOS were excelling. This isn't the situation today, even if you're comparing to Vista. Noone would be happier than me to see virtualization or (Dar)Wine being embraced by Apple, but that's a far cry from 'switching to Windows'.)
My biggest fear before seeing the movie was that it would suck. It didn't suck - I found it to be quite good, actually. But it wasn't The Best Hitchhiker's Guide Film Ever, or even halfway there.
The book plot just doesn't work in a way that lends itself successfully to a movie plot. And nor does the plot of the TV series or the radio shows. The books and the radio shows work because of a very curious narrative style, which finds humor in the smallest descriptions and long scenarios. Spoken lines you can quip; the rest doesn't work quite so well.
Imagine, if you will, the atmosphere laid down for Krikkit in the third book. A cosy place to be, by all means, and lots of songs. Constant comparisons of what size country Paul McCartney would be able to buy, had he written the songs. And the total absence of the sky in the minds of the Krikkitans. This stuff just doesn't adapt very well to being acted out without constant narration, which is expected in radio, but does not work at all in a movie.
I realize how fellow readers may start chuckling here, but the Guide is deep. It's deeply written. When a movie makes you think, it's because of interesting exposition (see the philosophic aspects of the Matrix trilogy) and not because the book is typeset in industry script standards. So I think that the only movie that could have been done successfully would be one that was, when compared to the book, very shallow.
Movie-wise, it turned out quite alright, even if it was imperfect in a lot of places (like the parent says, some of the movie was mangled). But don't go see it if you truly expect it to be the book or the radio series in movie form. It's just not.
Slashdot Mirror
Last time I checked, Apple owned their own store on Regent Street, as do they every single one of their other stores (not even through a subsidary), so that had very much to do with Apple. That said, this kind of customer service - including transferring stuff over to the new box - shouldn't be surprising, and I think it's sad that it is. I know of only one local chain that would help out with stuff like that, and they'd likely charge you for that hour and not even know what to do with the Mac in the first place (even though they sell them).
Oh. Well, that makes it *much* less gross!
Adults love video games! Next up, sky blue, water wet, Stallman bearded. Don't change the channel.
and yet previously thought unthinkable for a major corporation
I'm guessing IGN hasn't heard of every Game Boy model, ever.
Fair point. But if 'nux doesn't equal a Linux distribution (and I'm seriously at odds with what "'nux'" means in your description; however, it is "Linux" that ends with "nux" and not BSD or UNIX or Solaris or what have you), what does it equal? "Just Linux?" Just Linux is just a kernel. That'd be the BIG THREE "Two Operating Systems and one arbitrarily chosen kernel, popular as it may be".
So again, please fill us in about what "'nux" means in your description. If it does mean "the aggregate body of Linux distribution, or just a random one", then there wasn't anything wrong with the choice - Ubuntu is clearly a popular, usable distribution with momentum, and I shouldn't even need to detail how it'd be wrong and unfeasible, to say the least, to pit all Linux distributions ever into the match against OS X and Windows (XP).
Ubuntu Linux, one of the fastest growing Linux distributions, and widely regarded as one of the most usable. It's based on Debian, with which you might be more familiar.
"Deer Park" was the covert name under which the Firefox 1.5 alpha was distributed. So yes, the future's not "Deer Park", indeed.
Now all I need to write is xyzzy!
Got any room over there in Sweden for some disaffected techies?
The good news: yes. The bad news: it's probably in the unemployment queue.
Right. Although...
voracious adjective
[..]
having a very eager approach to an activity : his voracious reading of literature.
vicarious adjective
experienced in the imagination through the feelings or actions of another person : I could glean vicarious pleasure from the struggles of my imaginary film friends.
For what it's worth, *if* I were living through it (which I'm not), I would almost certainly live both voraciously and vicariously through it. :)
If this is an obvious fake, why are they looking for three owners of each Intel Mac model to see what it works with?
As a swede, it's a strange feeling reading these kinds of comments.
To say that I voraciously live through the Internet would be wrong, but I do practically live in some sort of pseudo-american culture when I'm spending any amount of time online. Swedish, real life friends, sure, they're there too, but my AIM buddy list (the one I use to keep in touch with online friends) is longer by far than the MSN Messenger list (swedish friends).
Every day I read on Slashdot and on other sites about how freedoms are in the process of being taken away. Mostly, the problems are international or apply globally in some ways, but a surprisingly big chunk is US domestic. I'm really quite surprised you haven't risen up, shook your heads and beaten the crap out of your established political system yet - as an outsider, it seems like the "American" thing to do, if I'm to believe various over-patriotic messages relayed to me over the years.
What I think is happening is this: the US is more and more about its government. Two major political parties and a winner-takes-all system in general does that. The "American" thing has evolved towards supporting the government, instead of the government supporting the people. And any government today - especially Republican, *it seems* - "are not above a little bribery and corruption in the same way that the sea is not above the clouds" (thanks, Douglas Adams). What you have is the government, who is either to be awed or to be ignored, played around by the corporations while your civil rights go straight down the can and anyone who opposes is a communist^Wterrorist. (McCarthy would have been proud, from all I hear.)
I'm not saying my analysis is right. I'm currently not 'rooting' for one of the major american parties, though I am certainly rooting against the current administration. I'm just saying that it's odd that Sweden's the one following the 'socialism' ideology branch, while it's the american citizens who have to take in in the hiney from their government.
And for what it's worth, Sweden is far from perfect. But there's no doubt in my mind that it's the american citizen that's worse off of the two.
For what it's worth I don't think "Web 2.0" (and I detest that name) is all about enhancing things with new technology (even if a bunch of that technology enables stuff, even helpful stuff, that's not been possible without it - reorderable draggable lists, autocompleting, and so on).
Look at Flickr or Zooomr. *Anyone* could have created that even five years ago. It's not about new technology, it's about web people finally getting the web for themselves and doing their thing. The bubble was about conglomerates trying to shove the web into the mold of other medias, and on the other end of the chart it was about faulty business models (if "the new economy" meant that if two companies did jobs for each other worth $20 billion, they both earned $20 billion, then the stock market should have called bullshit on this from the very beginning).
I'm not saying some people aren't making the same mistakes all over again. It *is* starting to look like the bubble with startups all over the place, but unlike last time, some of the better successes of this era are companies *adjusting* to the web, embracing how it works and building on that. And some of the leaders of it are folks that have been doing just that all along - 37signals spring to mind.
I knew that you were, in effect, but I didn't know if you were interpreting my comment to mean that I said it - it sounded like it.
I never said Nintendo chose *cartridges* because of advancing technology - I said they chose to *go from cartridges to optical media* precisely because of advancing technology. In retrospect, I do wish they had used optical media for the N64, but I'm not of one opinion entirely, because optical drives were a lot more sluggish back then. I'm completely buying your argument of strange storage formats being "security through obscurity", but aside from the FDD, Nintendo had never used any sort of standard media before, and I don't think they chose it just based on anti-piracy policies, even if you'd be mad to suggest that didn't play a part.
I also get your point about constantly repurchasing games, and like I said in the second paragraph, it's a constant process of companies putting out updated versions for new media. However, with the Revolution, Nintendo at least seems to embrace backwards compatibility (even if they also probably will have DRM, and even if they could probably go south too if they wanted), while the **AAs and the labels are fighting tooth and nail to make sure that you *will* need to continue repurchasing in a medium that could bring an end to the innate *necessity* (since the previous formats relied on being able to take a disc or tape of a specific format) of doing so.
Where did I say that the iPod could never play MP3s, or that iTunes would only handle songs from the iTMS? I'm just as annoyed by the error you're trying to correct as you are when it appears as the basis of someone's argument, but I didn't imply that in my comment. I said that songs from the iTMS had DRM, and that's it.
First of all, "Web 2.0" is a sucky label. It's a sucky label that has caught on with some marketing drones, but it's sucky nonetheless. "AJAX" is less sucky, but it's actually useful in that it's easier to type out than XMLHttpRequest.
Now, then. I don't think that the most interesting thing about this 'new wave', whatever you call it, is that font sizes are up 140% since last year or that form submits are being sent asynchronously. No, the interesting thing is both in the details and in the big picture.
Overwhelmingly, it seems that most people are embracing the media now. They're not trying to shoehorn in their old models and whining about how the web sucks when it doesn't work (see "the bubble"). The people who are fueling this are web programmers (or designers) who know what works and what doesn't, and they build their stuff for themselves.
Gmail was originally built because of the suckiness of most other webmail providers. Basecamp, Writeboard and Campfire were all built to solve problems 37signals had internally. And with everyone building *mainly* for themselves, of course you're not going to like everything.
The second thing is in the details. An example is the killer app for XMLHttpRequest is autocompletion. You type "Bill" and it fills out "Gates, Cheif Architect". You type "Linus" and it fills out "Torvalds, BDFL". It's not essential by any means, but it's very, very nice in very, very many places.
What about inventions like tags then? Well, people are building for themselves. They don't want to deal with folder hierarchies, and the creation thereof. They just want to type "important wednesday" for their meeting and get on with their lives.
My assessment of the 'new wave' we're seeing here boils down to what I wrote above. It's not about 'mashups', it's not about 'blogs', it's not about 70 point Arial, it's not about pastels. It's much more about interesting people coming to terms with what they actually can do with technology to solve their own problems.
Your argument is fallacious.
Apple went through hoops to add DRM to the files - it was a requirement from the **AAs - whereas N64 vs Gamecube was just a fact of progressing technology. AAC (MPEG-4) being incompatible with MP3 (MPEG-2, Layer 3) because of technological advancements would be a more apt comparison to N64 vs GC here.
I was going to bring up how, with DRM, we'd need to repurchase the same damn songs on new media, but in fact that's just the way it's always have been, even without DRM. Media, regardless of it being books, music, movies, games, etc, is consumed and will always come out in new forms, just like any other case of consumption. (However, DRM and crummy quality is most likely the labels' way of making sure they can continue to resell you the same stuff tomorrow, despite how they could actually do something that we could conceivably play, no problem, on a computer in 100 years.)
At the end of the day, DRM sucks, and we all know this. However, I'm also confident that Apple's one of the vendors least tied to DRM, because Apple only offers 'buying', and not 'subscribing', which literally hinges on DRM - otherwise you could just keep the music, like with 'buying'! Apple's simultaneously the most and least likely to speak up against DRM: most because they use DRM, hate it and could say "all these sales we racked up for you? we could make them stop coming unless you offer DRM-less music"; but also least, because they know the labels would just make up a new store and Apple would lose profits itself (and it actually does make a slim profit on the store).
Spend a day at a supermarket. Pick 500 random people throughout the day. How many of them will be able to install OSx86 even when it's more refined? 30?
The people who will be installing Mac OS X on PCs will largely be people currently not buying Macs in the first place. Surely a fair percent will choose to go from buying Macs to buying PCs, but are you willing to bet that they'll all stay there? Drivers and official support will be lacking, as well as software updates. I'm willing to guess that a fair amount of the people that try it out will go back fairly quickly because of the experience being all the more cumbersome over time.
I'm not saying your scenario won't happen. It's *possible*. It's just not very *probable*. The rumors of Apple's death have been, are, and will continue to be, greatly exaggerated.
Dig up the Argument sketch for context.
(If you want it spoiled for you: A guy (guy A) pays someone (guy B) to have an argument with him, but it shortly turns into a simple matter of negation on the end of guy B and a monotonous conversation for guy A. Guy A argues that this isn't an argument because there's no actual opinion being put forward but Guy B simply negates this too in order to lengthen the argument. It's a lot funnier than it sounds, and the wording's similar to the grandparent post.)
It's sad what we have to deal with today thanks to our growing loss of fair use rights
You have got to be fucking kidding me.
Let's say, now, that you have an apartment and a brother. Your brother wants to use your apartment once to host a party. Sure, you say. Then he proceeds to change the locks and won't let you in. That's not an issue of "fair use" in any way. That's breaching a contract, because it's not what you both agreed he could do based on your permission.( And regardless of if you agree with me that breaching that part of the EULA is that serious (no, not even I think so), it is nonetheless a breach of contract, and this is a good way to illustrate it.)
You could argue until you go blind that Apple should license OS X to other people, and regardless of whether that argument is valid it has *absolutely nothing to do with fair use*. It's their apartment, and they choose who they want to let in; it's their OS and they choose what they put in their EULA. Despite what you and I may think of some EULA claims (and I've seen ones more draconian than this, to be sure), we don't get to choose to only interpret the laws we like, and that's what it's all about. It's not about DRM (whatever hardware dongle they have is a feel-good measure, because it's going to be cracked anyway, and they know it, but the EULA clause is, at least in theory, legally binding) and it's certainly not about fair use.
When apple dumped IBM they basically tossed out what made them unique!
What's been consistently unique for Apple since the original Mac has been industrial design unlike the rest of the industry and a different OS. This is still true.
Apple dropped Mac OS 1-9 (the "Classic" series) because it was comparatively a house of patches above a system that had been designed for a computer with 128KB of RAM and no internal HD. It made sense. They're dropping Classic support now because they don't want to emulate Mac OS 9 on Intel, not because of the hell of it.
OS X is based on BSD, but it's not just BSD with a GUI over it (your wording seems to suggest this line of thinking). The kernel is vastly different, to begin with, and a lot of the stuff above - except for the ordinary UNIX command line tools, which, I'm reminded, is now in place on almost every desktop OS in the world except for Windows and some original creations - is written in-house.
Your assumptions are based on observing the effect, and not the cause. There are technologies in Mac OS X that you're not going to get anywhere else (like Cocoa and the window server), and that's a far cry away from, for example, a Linux vendor's skin, provided applications and general configuration - no ill will towards Linux distros, just making the distinction. If this didn't set OS X apart from BSD or Linux, you'd just be able to run your OS X apps on any PPC or Intel Linux, but you demonstrably can't, even with GNUStep (NIBs don't work natively, as I recall - they use Gorm instead of IB).
What sets Apple apart as always is the fact that - for better or worse - they still make the whole widget. They never made the CPUs, and they always made the industrial design and OS. From 68k to Core Duo, this hasn't changed one bit.
(And just for the record, Dvorak's argument is of course bullshit. Apple dropped classic Mac OS because it was plainly lacking in some areas that OpenStep and BeOS were excelling. This isn't the situation today, even if you're comparing to Vista. Noone would be happier than me to see virtualization or (Dar)Wine being embraced by Apple, but that's a far cry from 'switching to Windows'.)
My biggest fear before seeing the movie was that it would suck. It didn't suck - I found it to be quite good, actually. But it wasn't The Best Hitchhiker's Guide Film Ever, or even halfway there.
The book plot just doesn't work in a way that lends itself successfully to a movie plot. And nor does the plot of the TV series or the radio shows. The books and the radio shows work because of a very curious narrative style, which finds humor in the smallest descriptions and long scenarios. Spoken lines you can quip; the rest doesn't work quite so well.
Imagine, if you will, the atmosphere laid down for Krikkit in the third book. A cosy place to be, by all means, and lots of songs. Constant comparisons of what size country Paul McCartney would be able to buy, had he written the songs. And the total absence of the sky in the minds of the Krikkitans. This stuff just doesn't adapt very well to being acted out without constant narration, which is expected in radio, but does not work at all in a movie.
I realize how fellow readers may start chuckling here, but the Guide is deep. It's deeply written. When a movie makes you think, it's because of interesting exposition (see the philosophic aspects of the Matrix trilogy) and not because the book is typeset in industry script standards. So I think that the only movie that could have been done successfully would be one that was, when compared to the book, very shallow.
Movie-wise, it turned out quite alright, even if it was imperfect in a lot of places (like the parent says, some of the movie was mangled). But don't go see it if you truly expect it to be the book or the radio series in movie form. It's just not.
These people crack me up.