[clue-talk] the cult of mac

[David L. Willson]

Kevin,

Your "points of freedom" are actually points of ROI, but I suppose you knew that.  I
never meant to argue that Mac had a low ROI, though.  When I talk about freedom, I mean
it as the FSF means it (the "four freedoms").

When I'm talking to managerial types, I put it in their terms, and that is "freedom to
choose" or "benefits of competition".  If my OS vendor does something I don't like, or
another Linux vendor does something I like, I can switch vendors, for almost no cost. 
That "competition" or "switching vendors" can't happen in the MacOS or Windows arenas,
and it's a benefit I wouldn't willingly sacrifice.

Similarly, whenever a maker of free software does something particularly inspired, that
something benefits the entire community.  That leads to my final point, "contribution".
 When I said Apple wasn't contributing, I meant that they're not, as far as I know,
submitting improvements to the upstream developers so that those improvements can
benefit the entire community.  For example: Samba adds value to MacOS, right?  Has Apple
contributed money or code to "the Samba team"?  

MacForge?  Even Microsoft let's developers share code.  As far as I know, neither
Microsoft nor Apple give code away, in the way that Red Hat and Canonical do.

--David

On Sun, 29 Jun 2008 13:17:04 -0600, Kevin Cullis wrote
> Hey, need some clarification here.
> 
> On Jun 29, 2008, at 11:23 AM, David L. Willson wrote:
> 
> > On Sun, 29 Jun 2008 09:56:48 -0700, Louis Miller wrote
> >> Hey folks,
> >>
> >>  If anyone didn't get their 2c in about how the Linux community  
> >> feels about
> >> Macs and Apple and any of you are the same folks from the clue- 
> >> tech list, then
> >> I guess this is the appropriate venue. Sorry, for posting to the  
> >> wrong e-mail list.
> >
> > MacOS is not free.
> 
> As in beer, I'd agree, but let's talk differences between Windows,  
> Mac, and Linux here. There are many uses of freedom here, not just  
> free in price and free to use as you see fit. Let's take a look at  
> the computer industry as a whole.
> 
> 1. Free as in beer, it's Linux, Mac, and Windows, in that order.  
> We're not talking about illegal copies here either.
> 2. Free as in changes to make to the OS, Linux, Mac, and Windows, in  
> that order again.
> 3. Free as in the number of choices and solutions for users, Windows,  
> Mac, Linux.
> 4. Free as in getting support for the average person, Windows, Mac,  
> Linux.
> 5. Free as in ease of use, usability, it goes Mac, Windows, Linux.  
> The last two can be debatable.
> 6. Free as in trouble free use, Mac, Linux, Windows.
> 7. Free as in getting good documentation to develop for, Windows take  
> this, but Linux and Mac are tied for second place.
> 8. Free as in cheap parts, Windows, Linux, Mac
> 
> So you can see, it depends on which "part of the elephant" you are  
> looking at which will give you the degrees of freedom that you want.
> 
> > I prefer freedom.  I also resent how little Mac contributes back to
> > the community.
> 
> Says who? The OS is based on FreeBSD and it gives back in terms of  
> improvements to certain aspects of the OS, but not everything is  
> going to be given away, and that is to be expected. See Macforge.com  
> for free Mac ports of OSS apps to it. Some of the more polished apps  
> are at Apple's web site at the UNIX and Open Source web page. As  
> developers, you can visit the Developer Connection to get some more  
> info about developing for Mac as well as porting Linux apps to Mac.  
> And lastly, how about UNIX 03 Certification of Leopard Mac.
> 
> As I tell computer geeks and friends, computers are tools, may the  
> best tool be used for the job that is needed. But I'll put a  
> challenge to you and the rest of the Linux users: how about making  
> cross platform apps that run on Linux and Mac? You'd be surprised at  
> the number of people that are switching to Mac from Windows BECAUSE  
> they have solutions to using Macs now, especially cross platform apps  
> AND VMWare's Fusion. Imagine if you had an app that ran on Windows,  
> Mac, and Linux, how many more would leave Windows for Linux? Of all  
> of the computer users, 95% are not geeks, but they do want things "to  
> just work" for them, and a Mac does just that for them.
> 
> > OTOH, the machines are reputed to be easy to use.  (The strength of
> > which reputation leads me to believe that mine must be an exception.)
> 
> Yes, there are exceptions to everything, it's called degrees of  
> exception, or in the manufacturing or quality assurance world,  
> percentages of defects or variation You can't get away from problems,  
> but they can be reduced.
> 
> > but every time someone buys a Mac, rather
> > than a Windows box, I am happy because the industry becomes a  
> > little less stale and
> > monolithic.
> 
> Hear, hear!! Can Apple do better? You bet, and I wish I had a direct  
> connection to those that make those decisions, but I don't. But I can  
> be hopeful though.
> 
> Kevin


-- David