On Thu, 25 Oct 2001 21:28:53 -0700 (PDT) John Hebert <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> --- Dustin Puryear <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > So, essentially you are saying it's acceptable to > > choose the lesser of two > > evils? Not that I think Apple is evil, but I think > > this makes for a good > > point. > > Sure, especially when you weigh the relative "evils" > that are Apple and Micro$oft: > > Apple: > - sued some developers for creating an "Aqua"-based > theme for Xfree86 in violation of Apple's copyright. Oh, I tend to think that Apple's "evil" goes quite a bit beyond that. - Apple is a control-freak company with a uber-control-freak CEO. Note that the Apple's own open source license has all sorts of tricky provisions. It took a few revisions before even ESR would accept it. (Ayatollah Stallman still doesnt, but that's not suprising) - Apple, both in their products and their corporate behavior is one that likes to "do all the thinking" for its users. Apples products tend value ease-of-use above all (to the point of excluding functionality) and seem dumbed down. - When people in the computer industry hear the phrase "Not-invented-here syndrome" they think Apple...in a pavlovian way. Apple's always had closed, proprietary hardware and system software. The Classic Mac and iMac were the prototypical closed welded-shut boxes. - Apple seemed to have gained a clue when they stopped suing cloners and opened up their platform, but then, in short order, they closed it again. They've always used system ROMs as a means of controlling access to their market. Apple demands dictatorial control of their platform. - Apple stuck with MacOS, a terribly lame operating system for so long. Apple has used ease-of-use for such a long time. MacOS, even OS9, is functionally about like Windows 3.1. Cooperative multitasking. And they relied on that well into the age of WinNT2000, Win98/SE/ME. They actually HAD to go out and buy NeXT (they also looked at Be) -- and despite having developed rumored "uber-os'es" like "Pink" and "Taligent" internally, they really didnt know how to bridge the gap to a real future OS product. (MacOS seemed more stable than Windows simply because Apple had dictatorial platform control) - Even OSX isnt that good. OSX is not UNIX, it's not based on FreeBSD or NetBSD. NeXTStep was a object oriented API environment (written in Objective C) that runs on top of Mach, a big bloated slow high-latency microkernel. NeXTStep uses the BSD filesystem, csh and BSD shell commands. It was missing most of the UNIX system calls and was nowhere near POSIX compliant. Where Rhapsody and OSX differ from NeXTStep is that the tacked-on BSD bits are a bit more complete than they used to be. It's still tacked-on -- it's still 1 API out of 3. Carbon and Cocoa apps dont touch the "unix-ey" parts of the OS. - Rhapsody/OSX doesnt perform all that well either. Apple's always had a problem with slow filesystems and OSX continues that tradition. Bonnie benchmarks show that OSX is far slower than LinuxPPC in memory accesses and tcp/ip network performance. - Apple has a long history of _abruptly_ abandoning it's product lines. Apple Lisa, Apple ///, the Apple II line, 68k macs, the Centris line, the Newton, PPC 603s and 604s. Mac users follow Apple's pronouncements, because when Apple says a particularly machine is discontinued, it is truly dead (i.e. no more development). - Though older PPCs could run OSX, Apple's written specific code into the OS to detect the machine and refuse to run on an unsupported model (i.e. if you've got a Mac older than a G3, you're SOL). Even if you have a 603/604 Mac with a G3 or G4 upgrade card -- Apple hates those cards. Also, modern Macs detect and reject non-Apple-approved memory sticks. - The old "look-and-feel" lawsuits. Nuff said. - The Jeff Goldblum commercials. Ick. - Apple is substantially to blame for derailing the efforts to create standardized, commodotized PPC platform hardware. (i.e. PReP, CHRP) It was something they said in public they were 100% behind, but behind closed doors they were unwilling to give up any of their platform control. - Apple has been slow to provide hardware specs and keeps substantial parts of their ROMs and OSes under lock and key. This has resulted in delays in LinuxPPC supporting iMacs, and blocked BeOS from Macs entirely. - The G4 benchmarketing. (i.e. using Photoshop filters as a performance gauge) - The G4 cube. The whole push towards "cute" computers. The fact that they sued PC companies over _case_design_. ================================================ BRLUG - The Baton Rouge Linux User Group Visit http://www.brlug.net for more information. Send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] to change your subscription information. ================================================
