[Off topic] Re: Mac OS X

[Clinton MacDonald]

Mr. Ryabitsev:

[The following constitutes a bit of a Mac-vs.-PC flame war, and I advise 
anyone who is not interested in such diatribes to ignore this post. I 
also ask Mr. Ryabitsev not to take my invective personally -- I can't 
resist a good fight!]

Konstantin Ryabitsev wrote:
> Clinton MacDonald wrote:
>> Do you, for instance, object to Apple's 
>> license terms for Mac OS X? What about
>> licensing for the Darwin project?
> 
> If you read the license terms of OS X, it states very
> clearly that you can only use OS X on Apple hardware,
> and therefore you effectively vendor-lock yourself into
> Apple products.

Your argument doesn't make any sense to me.

I do not have the license in front of me, but I will concede that it 
says you can only use the OS on Apple hardware. Ignoring, for the 
moment, that no other vendor makes Mac OS X-compatible CPUs (and 
ignoring that this license would be difficult to enforce), how is this a 
hardship? Apple makes fine -- though expensive -- hardware that is tuned 
to run Mac OS X, and Mac OS X is tuned to run on that hardware only. One 
of the major reasons one would choose Apple's hardware and software 
solution is for the high degree of compatibility and integration that 
entails. If that is not an issue for the buyer, then there are many 
other solutions available (including Linux on various Intel- and 
AMD-based PC computers).

One should choose one's operating system based on which programs one 
wants to run, not on which hardware one might someday want to run the 
programs on. Seriously, I use this argument all the time. For instance, 
if the only programs a computer buyer will ever run are the Microsoft 
Office applications (in, say, a secretarial setting), then I advise the 
buyer to purchase the Microsoft operating system on compatible PC 
hardware. However, if the buyer wants to use a larger range of products 
(say, a Web designer using BBEdit, Adobe Photoshop, several Web 
browsers, a nice e-mail client, calendar and and address book PIM 
synchronization, an open source database, and two or three Linux-based 
applications; or a molecular biologist using all those tools and several 
more specialized gene sequencing and annotating applications), I advise 
him or her to buy a Mac (and lots of RAM! :-) ). Those are the tools I 
use, and I have most of them open all the time.

> This is worse than Windows by a long shot -- if you
> don't like one hardware vendor, you can always switch
> to another and still run Windows. With OS X, you are
> *FOREVER* stuck with Apple, unless you choose to move
> away from OS X.

Are you *really* saying that Windows licensing is better than Apple's? I 
also do not have the Windows license in front of me. However, I think 
that the product activation scheme that Microsoft has instituted is far 
more restrictive than Apple's unenforced (and cheaper) OS licensing. 
Once Windows XP has been "activated," for instance, can one really 
transfer the license to another PC? I thought that the product 
activation prevented doing that. Please correct me if I am wrong.

> Apple licensing is bad for business.

I am not sure what you mean by that statement -- Apple's licensing 
certainly hasn't harmed my "business" (or research and educational 
endeavors). The hardware is more expensive initially, but I find that 
its longevity more than makes up for that.

> I don't see why any sane person would use Darwin. It's not a very good 
> implementation of Unix.

I don't know very much about Darwin, but I imagine you are right. I know 
that Darwin has not soared in popularity amongst the Open Source crowd, 
and that probably means that it is not a very good version of Unix. One 
*can* run X Windows on it, but I agree with you that there is no very 
good reason to do so.

On the other hand, I don't believe that Microsoft has (intentionally, at 
least :-) ) contributed any of their operating system code to the Open 
Source community. Apple is doing the right thing with the Darwin version 
of BSD, as far as I know, and is also contributing heavily to other 
important technologies (like the KHTML base of Konqueror and Rendezvous 
for network discovery).

Do I wish that Apple's PowerMacs were cheaper? Sure I do: I wish they 
were FREE, but that seems unreasonable. Do I think that Apple could use 
some competition in its market? Actually, Apple has incredible amounts 
of competition form all the Wintel and Linux PCs on the market today. Do 
I wish that other companies made Mac OS X-compatible hardware? I'm not 
so sure.... If driving the profit out of the hardware side of their 
market drove Apple out of business, I would be unable to get *any* Mac 
OS X products. So, I will have to say, "No."

Apple's job in the market is to create new and innovative hardware and 
software, and to keep creating it so that it is always a few steps ahead 
of the rest of the PC market. Just as innovations made by BMW and other 
high-end automobile manufacturers (innovations like air-bags, anti-lock 
brakes, etc.) eventually make their way to less expensive vehicles, so 
do innovations first brought to market by Apple (windowing operating 
systems, mice, WYSIWYG word processing, wireless networking, printer 
discovery, USB, Firewire, the iPod; heck, even Microsoft Word and Excel 
started on the Mac!) become mainstream in the PC world. Not everyone 
wants to purchase a Mac, just as not everyone wants to purchase a BMW. 
There is enough variety to keep everyone happy in the computing world.

Good night!

Best wishes,
Clint

-- 
Dr. Clinton C. MacDonald | <mailto:clint DOT macdonald AT sbcglobal DOT net>