151–160 of 239 posts
But over the past few weeks I keep seeing vapid, information-less articles like this make it to the front page, and it's pretty disappointing to see happen. The knee-jerk anti-Apple sentiments seem to have infected even this (mostly) austere and considerate site.
I hope this is a temporary thing.
Why does this have to be such a negative article? I would prefer to see a praising of how great the latest Ubuntu is in detail. Intro with "I've been a power mac user for x years..." and then go on to sing the praises.
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Any user who doesn't know what Gatekeeper's purpose is (and how to disable it) probably stand to benefit from keeping it on. I imagine these people are the ones most at risk for downloading malware. People who don't want/like the walled garden can disable it trivially from the settings. For people like my mom, who clicks on any ad/link/attachment without a second thought, this will save a ton of headaches.
Any user who doesn't know what Gatekeeper's purpose is (and how to disable it) probably stand to benefit from keeping it on. I imagine these people are the ones most at risk for downloading malware. I don't necessarily disagree (I have a mom too ;)), but: (1) there are many trustable open source programs that are unsigned because their developers cannot afford or do not want to pay $99 per year for an Apple developer…
If it had an overridable dialog straight from double-click, people will just see this as an annoyance and end up clicking the "Yeah, whatever!" button without skipping a beat.
The way it is, it's actually overridable per application with "right click->open" which gives you the overridable warning you wish for, with OSX actually remembering the overriding and you can subsequently double-click on the now whitelisted app. This whitelisting apparently survives even Sparkle updating.
It appears that it's just convoluted enough for people dangerous to themselves not to shoot themselves in the foot, yet convenient enough for the informed user to act easily. And ironically the solution is actually written in the non-overridable dialog, yet the kind of people not reading dialogs is precisely the risky kind. I'd venture it's made so on purpose.
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X11 is crossplatform (not just to unix - my VMS box runs it)
X11 is a platform.
By that definition, POSIX libc is a platform. X11 is a standard with one flagship implementation (currently X.org, formerly XFree86) and multiple other implementations fewer people care about.
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Let's compare apples to apples (pun not intended) but it is fairly obvious you cannot do AS much on a tablet as on a desktop computer. You cannot do graphic design as well, you cannot do 3d modeling, photo editing, you cannot type office documents in the most efficient way, you cannot compress movies at reasonable speeds, you cannot develop for it (although I know this is technically possible it is far from being acc…
"When parents want to edit HD videos of their kids taken with their camcorder they will not run to their iPad to do it" That's the problem right there. I don't know many "parents" (== non-technical-people) who are able to edit HD Videos, at all, period. Most non-technical people I know have memorised how to do the few things they actually need from their computer, like check emails, compose documents, and use the sof…
Personally, I haven't even bothered trying an iPad, but speaking as a previously satisfied user of the Apple's laptops, the OP's comment very much resonated with me.
I also would like to note that (as mentioned elsewhere in this thread) that Apple software's propensity to assume the Big Mommy role is hardly a new phenomena. Apple was never an "open system", it is true. But there was a golden age in the '00s that produced just the right mix of open and managed systems.
Finally, there is a political subtext to all of this. Apple clearly believes in ('benign') authoritarianism -- it is in their DNA -- and given their empowered position in the computation loop, I no longer feel it is appropriate to support their bottom line, specially given the unacceptable stated position of Jobs on matters such as free speech.
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The problem is that we don't have a choice. There's only one premium option to go for. And it's apple. It's surprising how none of the others have at least created a luxury brand, similar to Toyota/Lexus or Volkswagen/Audi.
Dell tried with Adamo. Vaio started out, and was for the longest time, the premium PC brand. It's not like they didn't try, it's more like they just gave up.
Despite plunking down a pretty penny for premium brands or product lines, Dell and Sony would still nickel and dime you with LOADS of pre-installed crapware. (No experience with other manufacturers' 'premium' lines..)
Of course they gave up -- it is bloody annoying to buy an expensive piece of hardware and then spend loads of time simply fighting with it; the market just couldn't stand it any more and jumped ship when a crap-free out-of-the-box experience presented itself.
Personally, because I have more time and skills than money, I use cheapo Dells and Lenovos which I wipe and set up from scratch. But for my parents and other relatives who really couldn't care less, I'd recommend an Apple laptop in a flash and not have to waste hours upon hours as tech support. (Now that they're more easily available, I'm cautiously considering moving this recommendation to a Dellbuntu...)
/rant.
What's weird is that this has been a running argument for almost the entire existence of Apple. Here's the thing though -- Apple hasn't changed. They are simply closer to their goals then ever. I'm not saying it's right. But computer as an appliance? That's the dream! In the 80s we would argue on Usenet that the WIMP interface was too simplistic, and that real computer users stuck to the command line only. Now, in 20…
The issue is that many Apple fanboys never experienced the original Apple, the one with proprietary connectors and Mac OS specific APIs for video, 2D, 3D, networking .... When Apple tried to cater to the open source community using the UNIX underpinnings of Mac OS X, young generations thought Apple was always more open than Microsoft, when actually they were the opposite. Now that they are back on top with more profi…
Likewise graphics APIs. (Which platform has non-proprietary 2D APIs?) QuickDraw 3D's problem wasn't that it was proprietary, it was that it sucked.
Likewise QuickTime video. You do realize (a) it was first, and (b) Apple licensed the architecture to the MPEG folk (MP4's container format is QuickTime) and this predates OSX.
I actually had a "discussion" about the whole connector thing with a colleague recently. Eg. In its history The Mac has used three kinds of connectors for mice and keyboards -- a serial connector for the very first Mac, ADB (same cabling as S-Video, so not actually proprietary at all) from 1985 to 1997 or so, and then USB. How's that compare with PC? Go on, I'll let you go Google.
Video is definitely the worst, I'll give you that, but even there it's mainly been a case of sticking to an early standard too long (D25 or whatever it was), the horrific octopus thing (which they tried a second time) and the problems with DVI which aren't unique to Apple.
There was a period when Apple had a weird Ethernet socket that required an adapter for 10BT or RJ45 or Token Ring, but this was because a standard hasn't emerged and competitors generally didn't support networking without an expansion card.
No question Apple has been more proprietary than, say, commodity pc clone makers, but they compare very well to everyone else (Sun, SGI, Commodore, IBM, etc.)
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How is this an issue with Apple fanboys? They're not the one's complaining about Apple. Surely it's an issue with the people who tend to be Open Source advocates, complaining that Apple are no longer open? Not that it's really an issue at all, it's just different strokes for different folks. With computers doing as much as they do now it's seems highly unlikely that a single company will ever fulfil all our computing…
If you take 'Apple fanboys' to be the group who came to Apple in the early 2000s (I was amongst them) I think the parent is probably right. I fought the fights and put up with the greif for being the only developer with a Mac out of the 50 in the office. I lived on the bleeding edge - even paying for access to early unstable OS builds. I watched the OS get better and better with each release. It opened the doors to t…
I live fairly happily with hardware tinkering restrictions in my iMacs, but the inability to upgrade RAM in the new smaller iMac may be the last straw. It's really irritating.
The ironic ending of the blog post is interesting. He's running Ubuntu... on a MacBook Pro. Even if you hate the software and all things iOS, it's hard to find a better designed laptop.
Every corner of the MBP is rounded except the edge that your wrists actually come into contact with, which are sharp and leave painful marks. The trackpad lacked actual "mouse buttons" which made a simple task like highlighting and right clicking on text a finger dexterity test. The keyboard feels cheap and slow. Most of all, I miss my trackpoint. :)
For actual usability, it seems to me ThinkPad is a close to laptop perfection as you can get. I replaced my 2007 TP (Windows XP) with a new one this year (Ubuntu). If apple sold OSX for non-apple hardware I'd probably be running that instead of linux.