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Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols

Cyber Cynic

Why does Apple get a break?

21 comments

TAGS:Apple, desktop linux, Mac, Mac OS X, open source
IT TOPICS:Development, Hardware, Linux, Macintosh & Apple, Open Source, Operating Systems, Software

Want to know a dirty little secret? We, Linux and open-source users, love Apple's devices.

Of course, that's not true of all of us. I'm sure Richard M. Stallman, founder of the Free Software Foundation, wouldn't be caught dead with an iPhone in his pocket and a MacBook Pro in his laptop bag. But, as Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation pointed out in a recent blog posting, Why does Apple Always Seem to Get a Break??? "Walking around LinuxWorld this year it was interesting to see the number of Apple notebooks in the halls and various sessions. It wasn't necessarily that there were more Apple notebooks than Linux machines, but it was a good number and begs the question: why do open source people seem to cut Apple some slack when it comes to their very closed proprietary platform?"

I was also at LinuxWorld and I saw the same thing. By my estimate, I'd say about a third of the laptops were from Apple, with about half of the rest either running Linux natively -- largely Asus EEE mini-notebooks, Lenovo ThinkPads, and Dell laptops - or had had Linux installed on them by their owners. Only about 10% of the computers at the show were running Windows, none of these, I might add, were running Vista.

Of course, not all those Macs were running Mac OS X exclusively. I noticed many of them were running Ubuntu. Still, Zemlin's right. We're always ready to throw bricks at Microsoft, but we do tend to give Apple a free pass.

Zemlin's explanation is that using a Mac is like "staying at a five star hotel with the only catch being that you can't ever leave." To pursue the analogy a bit further, I'd add that using Windows is like staying at a road-stop flea-bag hotel where the shower only has two temperatures, cold and frigid, and, no, you can't ever leave this one either.

There's something to that. What Apple really has going for it is a matchless integration of form and function. Apple controls everything on a Mac and the result is an attractive, seamless combination of power and performance. Macs are, in a word, compelling.

Ubuntu leader Mark Shuttleworth wants the Linux desktop to 'shoot beyond the Mac.' I don't think it can the way it is now.

There are too many Linux desktop development teams and vendors. While, thanks to the ground-breaking Portland Project, the two leading Linux desktop interfaces, KDE and GNOME can interoperate with each other, the Linux desktop advances in several different directions at once. The Mac desktop always marches to Steve Jobs' orders.

The irony is that the Mac is based on open source. You don't need to look very deep into Mac OS X to find its open-source roots. It's built from the open-source operating systems Mach 3.0 and FreeBSD 5. Hiding right underneath Mac OS X's glossy Aqua interface are all of Unix's shell interfaces, the Emacs and vim text editors; the gcc and make development tools, and open-source favorites like Apache 2.0, PHP 5, and Ruby on Rails.

The same is also true, as Zemlin points out in another blog posting, iPhone - the Device I love to hate with the iPhone. The operating system is, once more, a descendant of Mach and FreeBSD by way of Darwin and the Web browser is built from WebKit.

What Apple has done is to take open source work, surround it with proprietary goodies, and then lock it down to a small set of specific hardware platforms. If the Linux desktop is to ever catch up with the Mac, it needs to take a page from the Apple playbook. No, not the proprietary part. Someone needs to co-ordinate a distribution with a specific set of PC models, keep only the best open-source programs in each software category and throw out the rest, and then pound and polish on what's left until, like with Macs, they have a system that just works.

Until that happens, we're still going to be tempted by Macs, iPhones and iPods. After all, in a way, these most proprietary of all platforms are also the most successful of all open-source platforms.

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Missing the point

Submitted by fieldyweb on August 29, 2008 - 6:20 A.M.

So, he's a fanboy,so is everyone else who replied, most of these replies have missed the point, and drop to the usual windows vs Mac vs Linux argument.

the end of the article hit a very valid point, Apple is based on BSD, and works well, because apple essentially control the hardware which they use to run their OS on.

Windows brought us the all things to all me on all hardware approach to computing. Slap XP on a PC, and let it run.. 99% of the time it does. however as a penalty for this, you get an OS, which is large, and a jack of all trandes but master of none.

Linux is trying to copy this model, and tripping over, as the hardware vendo support, whilst getting better, isn't great yet.

So, why not take a look at apples model? you can still have the choice, run whatever distro you wish, but have a Linux version, which says, we run on the following hardware. no problems. and then lists the hardware they support.

You can try it on other hardware, it may or may not work.

I guess this is what Asus are sort of doing.

If you create a polished distro which is guaranteed to work on specified hardware, and people are looking to buy a new PC, then the "If its loaded with windows people won't change" goes out of the window.. as PC suppliers would be more willing to offer a Linux offering, theres not skin of their nose, because just like windows, they know it will work.

As sales go up for that machine, supply and demand kicks in, other manufacturers get on the band wagon (how many PC manufactures have copied the EEE in a short space of time, why? profit) and additional drivers are created, then you get to critical mass.. as the drivers will filter down.. to other distros.

already many other systems have benefited from Ubuntu, love it or hate it,Ubuntu has shown, with greater adoption, boundaries are moved forward. for years Suse and Redhat were plodding along, the Gnome project was.. KDE as well, then a new kid on the block, prompted some innovation and has moved hardware support specifically forward more in the last 4 years than any other distro, but they all benefit from it.

anyway, thats my 2 pennies worth.

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just works!

Submitted by justdoit on August 27, 2008 - 4:37 P.M.

I had to scramble when the CEO wanted to show some videos I had on DVD by using a laptop connected to a projector. I was surprised to find out that even though the laptop had the latest Windows Media Player, it did not play video dvd's because it was missing a codec. I scrambled through the office to find a copy of Nero and loaded it. It worked quirky but good enough to get us through. Hey Guys, get real... every Mac plays a DVD easily. I go back and forth on both OS's and Yeah, it is as different as Luxury and low rent. People (in general) don't give a crap about all the possible options with PC's, they just want to get things done quickly and easily, that's why if they try a Mac, they (in general) never go back to a PC.

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The only problem with that

Submitted by Anonymous on August 27, 2008 - 5:28 P.M.

The only problem with that is that the minute MS includes a DVD codec, all the DVD software companies will cry "Microsoft is abusing its monopoly position" and sue them silly over it.

It amazes me how Apple can lock people into programs like iTunes and no one blinks, but if Microsoft gets taken for more than most country's GNP over including WMP - by companies that lost market share from sucking more than because WMP came bundled with Windows.

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Steve Says "The irony is

Submitted by Anonymous on August 27, 2008 - 4:42 A.M.

Steve Says
"The irony is that the Mac is based on open source. You don't need to look very deep into Mac OS X to find its open-source roots. It's built from the open-source operating systems Mach 3.0 and FreeBSD 5. Hiding right underneath Mac OS X's glossy Aqua interface are all of Unix's shell interfaces, the Emacs and vim text editors; the gcc and make development tools, and open-source favorites like Apache 2.0, PHP 5, and Ruby on Rails."

Well that's the reason apple gets a free pass. It feels like home.

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Steven says, "Windows is

Submitted by Anonymous on August 27, 2008 - 12:32 A.M.

Steven says, "Windows is like staying at a road-stop flea-bag hotel where the shower only has two temperatures, cold and frigid, and, no, you can't ever leave this one either."

So why do nine out of every ten computer users use Windows? Methinks thou doth protest too much. Ninety per cent of the population would not put up with a fleabag hotel and nor would ninety per cent of computer users use a fleabag operating system. Doesn't compute.

Get some perspective please!

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I would have thought this obvious

Submitted by nosferatu on November 18, 2008 - 5:21 A.M.

Bill Gates is a genius. Not because he built a company that designs a great operating system but because he made a great big **** sandwich, pulled a wool over our eyes, and told us we'd love it. And it worked.

After taking a bite, 90% of us ignored our senses and said "This is the greatest sandwich ever." Eight percent of the remaining 10% who pulled the wool off shelled out money for Apples, and only 2% bit the bullet and went Linux/free software/free rights/more work (I initially went Apple 10+ years ago, now Ubuntu to support truly free software).

So yes, 90% of the population WOULD put up with a fleabag hotel because 90% of us are too tired from hard days work to care, or just too stupid to know the difference.

THAT'S the perspective.

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Most people don't know

Submitted by Anonymous on September 1, 2008 - 7:46 A.M.

Most people don't know nothing about having a choice, windows comes preloaded on the computer so windows is what they use.

They very thought of something besides microsoft software even existing is utterly foreign to them.

So much for perspective

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So why do nine out of every ten computer users use Windows?

Submitted by Anonymous on August 28, 2008 - 6:22 A.M.

Because they come preloaded with it, and most end uses will use what comes on the machine, not what they have to download and install on their own......

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John says, "Hear! Hear!"

Submitted by John in Missouri on August 27, 2008 - 2:02 P.M.

Perhaps its time to recognize that Mr. Vaughn-Williams is a fanboi; his beloved OS X can do nothing wrong, and there is nothing wrong with it. As for Windows, in Mr. VW's eyes, nothing can be right about it and it can do nothing right. Never mind that there are lots of people like me who hate many aspects of OS X, who always reach for his Windows box if he has a choice between the two platforms and who is really tired of all the self-righteous blather he hears about how good Apple is.

But Mr. VW hits one nail right on the head; Apple Macintosh is good because it holds all the cards. It rules like a dictator over everything Apple. Windows, on the other hand, has hundreds of different platforms and peripherals that it must try to fit in under its big roof.

I will make this prediction. The perfect marriage will last for a few years more, but some day Apple users are going to wake up and realize how little they may say about their environment. Whether they can do something about it by then...well, we'll just have to see.

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Not entirely true

Submitted by nosferatu on November 18, 2008 - 5:39 A.M.

John in Missouri says: "Windows, on the other hand,
has hundreds of different platforms and
peripherals that it must try to fit in under
its big roof."

Unless this post was conceived pre-plug-n-play, circa ten years ago, Windows neither supports more peripherals than MacOS, nor does Microsoft need any more of the implied "effort" to make them work.

As for "hundreds of different platforms," has Microsoft ported Windows to much of anything beyond Intel-based chipsets? I'm sure they have, but I dare you to name more than three. Hardly hundreds.

PS: Since we're talking OS's here, Microsoft
programs other than operating systems, especially
those ported by third party vendors, don't count.

I'm no Mac Zealot, but if you're going to argue
for Windows or against Mac, or vice versa please
use arguments that hold water. At least a drop.

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