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Apple: We have decided to no longer release Libm source (2013)

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Re: Apple: We have decided to no longer release Libm source (2013)

#31

Post by pessimizer »

davidw wrote: post #29
halostatue wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s also a good system for people who don’t have time to hack on things that aren’t related to their core interests. Like me. I stopped building my own PCs in 2001 (when I switched to laptops almost exclusively) and stopped fighting with both Windows and Linux desktop configuration horrors in 2006 (when I switched to Mac OS X as my host system). I have things that I think are far more interesting to work on than wor…

I've been buying Dells with Ubuntu for something like 10 years, and once in a while have a minor annoyance with something, but not more than I see people complaining about on twitter with their Macs. And I have had occasion to hack on low-level stuff like kernel drivers, now and then, so knowing the whole system well because I use it every day has been an advantage.

I'm astounded by the stories of misery I hear from computer people trying to install Linux in the past 5 years. I agree that an appliance like Apple or Google produces might be more useful for them: in the worst case, they can just send it back to the company, and since it's going to be replaced every 1.5-2 years anyway, all problems are going to seem more ephemeral at that rate of consumerism.

I'm shocked at hearing those complaints from people that want to be hired to use computers, though. If I (as a developer) couldn't handle installing a post-2010 Linux system within a few hours, I'd be ashamed, not indignant.

Re: Apple: We have decided to no longer release Libm source (2013)

#32

Post by jdiggidy »

Anyone who's spent time developing on Mac or who has moved from a Linux dev environment to a Mac environment should understand the flawed nature of the open source argument here. Mac OS includes many open source tools from Apache to jabber and many others. The fact that Mac OS is a BSD derivative should indicate that the OS lends itself to open source. As an aside, control over the ecosystem doesn't necessarily mean a bad thing.

Re: Apple: We have decided to no longer release Libm source (2013)

#33

Post by halostatue »

dingaling wrote: post #25
halostatue wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s also a good system for people who don’t have time to hack on things that aren’t related to their core interests. Like me. I stopped building my own PCs in 2001 (when I switched to laptops almost exclusively) and stopped fighting with both Windows and Linux desktop configuration horrors in 2006 (when I switched to Mac OS X as my host system). I have things that I think are far more interesting to work on than wor…

> I have things that I think are far more interesting to work on than worrying about hardware compatibility. I've never used an Apple system, but I have the impression that only a subset of third-party hardware is compatible. Is that accurate? I've perhaps deduced incorrectly from the number of one-star Amazon reviews that decry 'lack of Apple drivers'. To me that would be frustrating since there are only two parties…

I suspect that it’s accurate to a point. Most of the hardware that I use is also limited and/or works through reasonably well-defined interfaces. I’m a software guy, so I’m mostly not trying to plug in hardware that does fancy things. (I will note that it works just fine with the MicroView Arduino I backed on Kickstarter.)

Re: Apple: We have decided to no longer release Libm source (2013)

#34

Post by halostatue »

davidw wrote: post #29
halostatue wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s also a good system for people who don’t have time to hack on things that aren’t related to their core interests. Like me. I stopped building my own PCs in 2001 (when I switched to laptops almost exclusively) and stopped fighting with both Windows and Linux desktop configuration horrors in 2006 (when I switched to Mac OS X as my host system). I have things that I think are far more interesting to work on than wor…

I've been buying Dells with Ubuntu for something like 10 years, and once in a while have a minor annoyance with something, but not more than I see people complaining about on twitter with their Macs. And I have had occasion to hack on low-level stuff like kernel drivers, now and then, so knowing the whole system well because I use it every day has been an advantage.

Yeah. Ubuntu’s one of the ones that have gotten better. When I was still working with C++ for multiple platforms (Windows, Linux, AIX, HP-UX, Solaris, …) I ran an Ubuntu desktop with VMware Workstation to contain Windows in a useful (less dangerous) place. With the exception of some stupidity around hald with Ubuntu 8.04, it was pretty good (there were several other people who followed my lead on this) except that I still had to run a VM to read email (Outlook; no good connector, and the web access was suboptimal) and other stuff.

I could probably switch much easier to a Linux system now, but most of the systems that I’ve played with just don’t have the same level of polish that I expect from a desktop system, and I don’t want to hack on kernel drivers—it just doesn’t interest me.

Other people will make other choices. To make a slightly tortured analogy, I need a pre-assembled propane barbecue, because I have food to make. Other people want to go through the whole process of building their barbecue (or at least putting its pieces together), but I’d rather be cooking. De gustibus, ya know.

Re: Apple: We have decided to no longer release Libm source (2013)

#35

Post by zanny »

pessimizer wrote: post #31
davidw wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been buying Dells with Ubuntu for something like 10 years, and once in a while have a minor annoyance with something, but not more than I see people complaining about on twitter with their Macs. And I have had occasion to hack on low-level stuff like kernel drivers, now and then, so knowing the whole system well because I use it every day has been an advantage.

I'm astounded by the stories of misery I hear from computer people trying to install Linux in the past 5 years. I agree that an appliance like Apple or Google produces might be more useful for them: in the worst case, they can just send it back to the company, and since it's going to be replaced every 1.5-2 years anyway, all problems are going to seem more ephemeral at that rate of consumerism. I'm shocked at hearing…

Well, some chipsets, gpus, etc are just broken in the kernel and do not work, and you have to put hours in trying to fix them.

I recently built an OpenSuse box for a client, and since there is no "good" motherboard manufacturer for Linux, I have to just randomly hope whichever one I get works.

I've gotten Gigabyte, MSI, Asrock, and ASUS boards in the past. Of those, only Asrock supports dhcp online updates to the firmware, which is nice considering most of them supply some shitty proprietary firmware installer on Windows without firmware imgs. So I went with an Asrock board.

Now, I know from experience Asrock boards wipe their EFI boot menu when you update the firmware, so you need a thumb drive to boot into a Linux to readd your OS to the boot menu. Their proprietary EFI gui is all right, better than ASUS' in my book.

Problem is the board came with a mini-pcie slot, which did come with an Atheros NIC, but something in that pipeline (board -> PCI -> NIC) meant that handshakes would always time on when attaching to wifi. Dmesg was never useful, it would just keep retrying requests without getting responses.

And then sometimes it works, randomly. It is probably an electrical problem somewhere along the chain, but considering it was just a perky extra rather than an important part of the system, I'd rather not go through the pain in the ass of RMAing a board to get on back that might work.

I think fundamentally the problem is that unless you buy from Zareason / Thinkpenguin / System76 (in the US, that does not have consumer protection laws that mandate systems be made available without OSes like in Europe) you are stuck building your own, and there is no computer you can assemble that whole stack has Linux support.

I know that Mushkin and Kingston have SSD firmware updaters for Linux. AMD and Intel obviously support Linux. RAM vendors do not need to care about OS, that is the firmwares problem. But not a single motherboard vendor supports Linux, and that is a real problem.

Re: Apple: We have decided to no longer release Libm source (2013)

#36

Post by halostatue »

pessimizer wrote: post #31
davidw wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been buying Dells with Ubuntu for something like 10 years, and once in a while have a minor annoyance with something, but not more than I see people complaining about on twitter with their Macs. And I have had occasion to hack on low-level stuff like kernel drivers, now and then, so knowing the whole system well because I use it every day has been an advantage.

I'm astounded by the stories of misery I hear from computer people trying to install Linux in the past 5 years. I agree that an appliance like Apple or Google produces might be more useful for them: in the worst case, they can just send it back to the company, and since it's going to be replaced every 1.5-2 years anyway, all problems are going to seem more ephemeral at that rate of consumerism. I'm shocked at hearing…

I didn’t say I couldn’t handle it. I said that my time is worth more than the annoyance of dealing with Linux on the desktop. I have made different choices about time prioritization, and one of those is that I have other work to get done.

(I also tweak my environment—I maintain my own cross-compatible dotfile environment that gets me running on Linux or OS X in minutes, and the same for my vim config. But I’m not interested in playing with the kernel or graphics card or whatever. I’m interested in a computer that works with as little intervention from me as possible.)

Re: Apple: We have decided to no longer release Libm source (2013)

#37

Post by zanny »

CoffeeDregs wrote: post #20

I'm very much for open source and all, and I'd love to see Apple as the bad guy here (since I think they're a Bad Guy), but I'm not sure what is the big deal. AFAICT, every CPU vendor has a libm implementation. Apple wants to be tight-lipped about its hardware. [Maybe] Since hardware reviewers seem to get their information on the hardware from compilers, Apple is removing as much information as practical to avoid com…

> I can't say that I blame Apple for trying to keep competitors away.

I certainly can. They restrict their users freedom to own the machines they buy by disrespecting their customers by giving them software without available source.

You can always blame them. It is not something that is ok, it is ethically wrong to sell someone something without giving them the proverbial floorplan. If it is a "competitive disadvantage" for others to know how your software or hardware works, then you must not have a very compelling product if it cannot stand on its own in the open.

Re: Apple: We have decided to no longer release Libm source (2013)

#38

Post by Terretta »

pjmlp wrote: post #21
Terretta wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> history of being quite hostile to consumers That's going to need some really impressive fact-based justification. I think a good case could be made Apple's the only PC maker focused on making mass market consumers happy (vs enterprise or technology buyers). They've also seemed more focused on the product experience than on market share. - - - Some TL;DR specific thoughts on each of your examples: - "finally offerin…

Well, I remember another Apple, back in the 80-90's. Not the open source friendly one, that developers that only know Apple since Mac OS X days seem to think about.

To be clear, I started with the Apple II+, stayed Apple through Mac SE/30, switched to Wintel for enterprise interoperability till Apple adopted Intel CPU and switched back.

Re: Apple: We have decided to no longer release Libm source (2013)

#39

Post by davidw »

halostatue wrote: post #34
davidw wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been buying Dells with Ubuntu for something like 10 years, and once in a while have a minor annoyance with something, but not more than I see people complaining about on twitter with their Macs. And I have had occasion to hack on low-level stuff like kernel drivers, now and then, so knowing the whole system well because I use it every day has been an advantage.

Yeah. Ubuntu’s one of the ones that have gotten better. When I was still working with C++ for multiple platforms (Windows, Linux, AIX, HP-UX, Solaris, …) I ran an Ubuntu desktop with VMware Workstation to contain Windows in a useful (less dangerous) place. With the exception of some stupidity around hald with Ubuntu 8.04, it was pretty good (there were several other people who followed my lead on this) except that I…

> To make a slightly tortured analogy, I need a pre-assembled propane barbecue, because I have food to make. Other people want to go through the whole process of building their barbecue (or at least putting its pieces together), but I’d rather be cooking

That's kind of funny :-)

https://plus.google.com/u/0/+DavidWelton/posts/96kQRRC1L2W

https://plus.google.com/u/0/+DavidWelton/posts/9CdDeqjCcfY

https://plus.google.com/u/0/+DavidWelton/posts/Vztd1KSFdZ3

Re: Apple: We have decided to no longer release Libm source (2013)

#40

Post by techrat »

geden wrote: post #13
techrat wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are we honestly surprised? Apple has a history of being quite hostile to consumers despite their image as a trendy company. Nothing they do is done unless there's an actual threat to their bottom line, whether it's finally offering larger screens for the iPhones, finally making iTunes (partially) DRM free or closing up code/eliminating venues for cross compatibility. Apple is about anti competitive as they get.

DRM in iTunes was solely at record companies request. Not an Apple choice. This has been repeatedly covered before. http://news.cnet.com/Apples-Jobs-calls-for-DRM-free-music/21... I would argue that Apples strength is it's ability to make daring technology choices which drives the whole market forward. (Adoption of USB, dropping floppies, CDROMs, introducing iPhone, iPad) and in the long run that is very pro-consumer…

Labels who requested that their songs be DRM free in the iTunes store during this era were denied that option.

Jobs called for DRM free music because he saw that he was going to run into serious anticompetitive charges if he didn't allow for people to use iTunes purchases outside of iTunes and iPods.

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