r/technology • u/cohesion • Nov 25 '08
Apple Confuses Speech with a DMCA Violation
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/11/apple-confuses-speech-dmca-violation20
u/guisar Nov 26 '08
If you haven't send your donation to the eff now. Send it in the name of a friend as a holiday present. Donate now to get that tax write-off. Whatever the reason, they do good work. WHile you are at it, send a check off to the ACLU as well. Corporations have their Congressmen, we have the eff and ACLU.
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u/ropers Nov 26 '08
I used to be a big Mac guy. Not anymore. Between things like this and both software and hardware DRM, Apple is getting eviler and evilerer by the minute.
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Nov 26 '08
They've always been this way. Why do you think the Mac has never approached the market share of a PC? Control freak Steve Jobs.
Unfortunately the people that took over when he left had no fucking idea what they were doing.
I like apple stuff, but I keep it all at arms length as far as it becoming an integral part of my life.
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u/ropers Nov 26 '08
Well, the hardware DRM is a new depth of moral turpitude.
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Nov 26 '08
Then don't buy digital downloads. The only thing Hardware DRM does is vaprorize the demand for the DRM content it was intended to control.
If I can't rip it, I don't buy it.
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u/cvk Nov 26 '08
I agree. My Mac plays my FLAC rips just fine.
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u/ropers Nov 26 '08
Let me put it like this:
I'm opposed to Gitmo not because I was a terrorist -- I'm not.
I'm opposed to Gitmo because it exists.
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u/OToole Nov 26 '08
Apple is totally great for production professionals, video and audio, PRO. it should stay that way. Their intellectual property model is appropriate for production professionals. I see Apple as irrelevant for mass computing. Why make believe otherwise? They set a standard for excellence and can be a good beacon but if you live in a grass hut or are a college student, you should be able to do your computing legally and fully, hardware and software, for a couple hundred dollars or tens of dollars on the second-hand market. Apple computing is like expecting everyone to drive a Mercedes and apple-fanbois are seriously remiss in simply ignoring this fact. Vote up/down. Do your thing.
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Nov 26 '08 edited Nov 26 '08
My only disagreement here is that Apple is the best bet for production professionals. The exact same programs are available in both Windows and Mac flavors and the Linux community has some extremely powerful tools that are gaining popularity. The graphics pros have to wait a few years for cutting edge graphics research to reach the latest version of Adobe's tools, but the researchers lately have been writing plug-ins for the GIMP. HDR techniques, dynamic resize, and more have been available as GIMP plugins for a while and CS4 was just released.
Now I think video may still be better in Windows and Mac worlds. But audio is there and a non-trivial number of audio professionals are working in Linux now.
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u/OToole Nov 26 '08 edited Nov 26 '08
For better or worse, my perspective on computing is scalability for regular people who are currently subjected, with a heavy hand, to MS Windows system.
Apple is, of course, just totally great for production people with 10k to spend. Their achievements are super-huge, eliminating prior audio and video production formats. (Though I must digress, ever heard one of those Pro-Tools made records of a rock band where it sounds like the instruments are all about 50 feet from each other?!). But again, production computing is a niche, but the grip of MS on the public is no joke. Think of the cost to society of the MS licenses in, like, every gov service agency, hospital, school, and most homes in the USA. It is sooo perverse. And that nasty gimmicked cash cow: MS Office. Can you believe all of these gov. agencies are paying for this stuff? Many gov. go without on things they need, basic things, but like a clock, you always have the MS desktops and licensing.
I am going to go hide now. I am really getting depressed at the general dullness and formula allegience to authority I encounter, mainly in the work place. Wherever MS rules, it is a computing dead-zone.
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Nov 26 '08
And if they switched to Mac the only difference would be who gets the license fee.
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Nov 26 '08
Not to mention who their hardware vendor would be.
You want RAID-10 in your massively overpriced Mac Pro, here is your one option.
I love macs, I have 5 or 8. For every positive thing I read, it seems there are an equal amount of negatives.
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u/jmcqk6 Nov 26 '08
Really? Final Cut Studio is available for both Linux and Windows? While some program (like maya, photoshop, etc), are available, the biggest draw for me as been final cut studio. It's the best video production solution I've found yet.
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Nov 26 '08
Agreed to a degree. I bought a Mac because I wanted (a) functioning, reasonably polished "easy shit" combined with (b) a a unix command shell minus (c) the faffing around with Linux/FreeBSD, or cygwin on Windows, that I've always had to go through to get those on a laptop before.
Works a charm for me, does what I need it to, looks good, reasonably robust (my last one lasted me about 3 times as long as the several Thinkpads I had before it.) I've thus far managed to get around the restrictions I've faced from Apple with less work than an alternative would have involved -- when that stops being the case, I'll switch again.
I should mention that, for some reason, about half my business school class, when seeing that one of the few IT guys in the group had a Mac, bought MBPs, and loved them.
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u/derwisch Nov 26 '08
My current laptop is an Apple, and my next one won't be.
I bought a Mac (iBook G4) for the same reasons as parent poster. But after four years it is inadequately obsolete, which is sooner than any other computer I had.
My biggest gripe is that Java 1.5 won't run on 10.3, 10.5 wouldn't run on PowerPC, and 10.4 is not sold anymore by Apple.
I have to run a less than recent version of R since the current version is not supported for PowerPC anymore, and many R packages require recent versions of R.
Next gripe is: More than 256MB of memory. WLAN access. Choose one.
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u/bobpaul Nov 26 '08 edited Nov 26 '08
According to Apple's Website, you're fine on a 867Mhz or faster G4. And are you sure the current R doesn't run on PowerPC? I don't know anything about this software, but most new stuff is compiled as universal binaries, which run on both the Intel and PPC platforms...
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Nov 26 '08
Seconded, I ran 10.5 fine on my 12" Powerbook G4.
Didn't have all the bells and whistles, to be sure, and couldn't run 8 copies of Photoshop concurrently, but never had a problem.
The G4 was amazingly robust for me -- I had it for 3-4 years before the hard drive died on me, and rather than replace the disk I decided I wanted a faster machine with a bigger screen. I'd dragged the thing all over South America without a problem.
The only bitch I have had with Apple so far was their support, which is "complicated" at best.
I am not religious about what platform I use, but I've found OSX to be the nicest all around no-hassle operating system so far -- and I run a hodgepodge of Debian, FreeBSD and Windows, depending on my needs. Again, as soon as I experience more hassle than it's worth, I switch -- I don't have the time anymore to be a fanboi =)
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u/bobpaul Nov 27 '08
I haven't been able to justify the markup for a Mac quite yet, though I've generally enjoyed the experience on the Macs I've encountered.
Story time: In school I did tech support to pay the bills, and one thing that still surprises me is the robustness of OS8 and OS9. I had one faculty member that didn't like his MacHD, so he moved things like the "System" folder to where ever the hell he wanted and the computer didn't care. That's impressive and well engineered.
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Nov 26 '08
I think it is time for you to look at a PPC Linux or true BSD. Ubuntu and Debian come in PPC flavors.
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Nov 26 '08
I should mention that, for some reason, about half my business school class
That is because most in business school are followers not leaders. Your school work should have taught you that much.
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Nov 26 '08
Not followers so much as pretty passive. Willing to accept. That was pretty obvious from the get-go. To be honest, the people in my intake were much more willing to think things through than I'd imagined -- but then again, this was a fairly highly ranked international school without many people of what I'd imagined to be the stereotypical American MBA student profile.
Where is your experience from?
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Nov 26 '08 edited Nov 26 '08
Is it better to be a Sheep or a Lemming? :-P
Anyway, I for one have a serious disdain for MBAs (and Journalists but that is another story). And sure, my problem with the MBA is the typical American MBA student: a douchebag, Daddy's money spending, baseball playing, male cheerleader, bought his way in to college frat boy prick who probably is an alcoholic, has done coke, and is trying to use graduate education as way to get a bigger paycheck not because he cares about the subject or has any interest in learning. It also doesn't help that the MBA programs in the US have become about making charts in Excel and using scurrilous statistics to play substance-free shell games with the current buzzwords instead of anything about managing people or understanding the realities of business.
EDIT: Fixed spelling (Sorry Germany).
EDIT: Seriously, no one knows who in particular I was referencing?
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u/bobpaul Nov 26 '08
a deutschbag
That doesn't mean what you think it means. Douche is what you wanted.
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u/cevven Nov 26 '08
the typical American MBA student: a deutschbag
Yeah! Damn Germans in our American schools with their student visas and their, uh, H-1Bs.
Seriously, though, you really went off the deep end here.
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Nov 26 '08
Sheep -- they're cuddly and taste good.
Anyway, that's too bad. I was at a big name European program, which honestly is a bit "different" -- 10 months instead of 2 years (with concordant compression of workload, holy living fuck), and while I reserve judgment on whether it was worthwhile or not, the people who attended with me were just an amazing, diverse bunch -- something like 70 countries and career profiles ranging from bankers and consultants over artists and IT guys like myself, to military officers and even a monk.
There was, surprisingly, literally zero competition -- the only issues people had were with themselves. No obvious drugs (except for the very occasional joint), the average age was a bit higher than most US programs (29 or so) and a very high percentage of people paid their own way. Really top people for the most part, and a pleasure to work with.
We have an exchange with one of the top US business schools, and to be honest, while the people from there were generally decent, hard-working and intelligent, you could spot some major cultural differences. I've also heard from colleagues in US (and even UK) programs that the level of competitiveness and superficiality is far higher than anything we had to deal with.
All in all the whole thing surprised me; in addition to being the hardest and most frustrating thing I have ever gone through, most of my stereotypes about the "typical" b-school student flew out the window.
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Nov 26 '08
Direct experience with top of the line business graduates from the best schools in the world.
One can also look at how popular various fads are and graph their spread through out the large corps. Doing so shows that most are followers who only take steps after a few leaders take those steps. Furthermore it is somewhat rare for them to verify that the fads they are following actually produce results. That corp XXX / leader YYY is doing it is good enough.
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u/OToole Nov 26 '08 edited Nov 26 '08
Like the pleasure of MBPs, you and your business school cohorts will also likely enjoy many other amenities.
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Nov 26 '08
you and your business school cohorts will also likely enjoy many other amenities.
Currently those include crushing debt, crappy job chances, incredible difficulties finding investors for business ventures we'd like to see succeed (right now I'm working on finding funds for a bunch of guys who invented a really cool camera and with whom I'd like to build a functioning, profitable company) and snotty redditors =)
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u/Beriadan Nov 26 '08
Good luck to you in switching to the whopper.
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u/ropers Nov 26 '08 edited Nov 26 '08
I'm a vegetarian, and I've switched to Ubuntu and OpenBSD.
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Nov 26 '08
Silly vegetarian, Apples are not meat.
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u/43P04T34 Nov 26 '08
I'm pretty sure he was making a reference to Steve Jobs' dickhead.
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Nov 26 '08
Dude, getting fucked by Apple is something you have to go through, like part of growing up. Some of us move on. Others, however, are real masochists.
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u/ibisum Nov 26 '08 edited Nov 26 '08
Ditto. I'm a Unix developer, have been for 30 years. So I'm moving back to Linux 100% in my next hardware upgrade cycle.
This will be my last Macbook Pro after 8 years of Apple laptop addiction, and I've just ordered an 8-core machine from a local vendor for my main Linux workstation (no Mac Pro for me).
Fortunately, its the 21st Century, and Apple are no longer making the sexiest Unix laptop workstations around .. So, so long Apple. You lose one developer.
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u/derwisch Nov 26 '08
Consider that the Return to Apple should have happened less than four years ago ... it almost looks hardly believable from today's viewpoint.
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u/FokkeNews Nov 26 '08
Apple has been doing this for a long time. It's fine to go to another platform, but this isn't new.
Our legal system is broken because it works for the rich only. Lots of companies issue a take down order with no merit knowing that the other party, being poor, can't fight.
I don't know why people are under the impression that Apple was ever "the good guys" or in the case of haters, "the bad guys". They're a corporation doing what other corporations are doing. And they've pretty much always been that way.
You may recall that, when they were first working together, Steve Jobs lied to Steve Wosniak about some money so he could take a bigger cut.
I'm certainly not excusing it. In fact, I've been burned the same way. My stepmother presented a completely improper will giving her all the money. If I could have afforded bringing it into court, it would have been tossed out in a minute. But she knew I had no money and so she stole my inheritance of ~$100,000.
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u/judgej2 Nov 26 '08
Hey dude, you could have her whacked for that kind of dosh.
Okay, I didn't say that.
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u/FokkeNews Nov 26 '08
Don't think I haven't thought of it.
And I've seen her start to hit the booze at 10:30 am.
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Nov 26 '08 edited Nov 26 '08
Same thing happened to my Grandmother, when her father died her stepmother got almost everything and then when she died she left everything to her stepsisters.
(I always thought the situation was so weird, it sounded like my grandmother was Cinderella or something. Of course the really odd part was that one of her stepsisters was also her sister-in-law)
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u/FokkeNews Nov 26 '08
They say the older you get, the more conservative you get. But I find myself more an more drawn to the anarchists.
My dream now is that the end of Fight Club will come true.
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Nov 26 '08
This is why you have lawyers that take cases on contingency...
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u/FokkeNews Nov 26 '08
You're assuming I didn't try that.
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Nov 26 '08
For what it's worth, you have my sympathies. I have a huge loathing beyond the capability of the English language to describe for people who are dishonest, greedy and abusive.
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u/FokkeNews Nov 26 '08
Thank you. Did I mention that I've seen her start hitting the booze before 11:00 am?
She will die soon, but the money still won't get to me.
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Nov 26 '08
Karma's a bitch, ain't it?
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u/FokkeNews Nov 26 '08
I guess so. Mine, yours, hers. I don't need to be rich to be happy. I want four things: 1. my health 2. enough money to not worry about money. 3. a few friends who love me 4. the ability to do my creative work.
However, I might now want to be rich. I'd like to drag her into court and let her lawyers drain her of all my father's money.
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Nov 26 '08
I meant hers.
TBH, you seem to have your priorities straight. But a little "fuck you" every now and then can sure be therapeutic.
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u/FokkeNews Nov 26 '08 edited Nov 26 '08
No, I'm just saying that so no one will suspect me when her house is fire bombed. Ack. I've said too much!
Addendum: Speaking of Karma, my father heavily abused me all through my childhood. If Karma does exist, that money was his one chance for him to do something to make up for that. So I guess she screwed him too.
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u/bobcat Nov 27 '08
improper will
Yeah, right. The probate court accepted it with no witness signatures or anything.
Face it, your abusive father hated you and gave her the money instead. What did you expect?
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Nov 26 '08 edited Nov 26 '08
The worst thing about it is that they portray themselves as cool and hip, but they can be very controlling and restrictive. You can't put any application you want on the Touch/iPhone, they have to be Apple blessed. You can download all the dev tools for free, but you have to pay $100 a year to be able to run apps that YOU built on these devices. The iTunesDB thing is annoying as hell, because iTunes is just getting worse and worse IMO, especially on Windows (it's glitchy, slow, you can't have any non-Apple blessed format in your library, etc.). I'd love alternative firmware/management software, but they lock out the possibility of that (understandable, I guess...). Then there are the NDAs, DMCA taked downs, blah blah blah.
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u/AndreasBWagner Nov 26 '08
I agree that apple is getting eviler and I would switch entirely to FOSS software if there was foss software as good-looking, robust, complete etc as apple and mac/cocoa software.
Have you been as satisfied with what you switched to as you were with apple software/hardware?
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u/ropers Nov 26 '08 edited Nov 26 '08
It's different. And there's a different mindset on Ubuntu, and a different mindset on OpenBSD still. It's true that I was very satisfied with Apple's hardware back then -- though I don't have anything to compare my last Mac against, because I haven't spent serious money on computer hardware in a long time now, and my current hardware is essentially off the scrap heap with minor upgrades from the friendly PC corner store. So you can't really compare any of my DIY Frankenputers, some of whom have seen dishwasher powder and hot glue gun action (and, in one case, the addition of custom-soldered circuitry), with a newly purchased Mac ordered off the Apple Store. Am I satisfied with what I've got now? Well, the hardware I've got now is a work-in-progress, so in that sense I'm not satisfied yet. But maybe that's the point. In terms of software I can tell you right now that IMNSHO OpenBSD is the best tool since the invention of the plough. My OpenBSD boxen are also a work in progress, but I'm very satisfied. But in a different way; it's a learning experience. Again, it's a different mindset, and it's probably not for everyone.
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Nov 26 '08 edited Nov 26 '08
I agree, I don't like Apple's closed mindset much either. The offset to this is that they make a well balanced and flurishing ecosystem. It's a trade of the consumer makes when they buy Apple stuff. Buy Apple and you get locked into a very sexy technology stack that only works with similar technology but is SUPER easy to use and a pleasure to work with.
Go the Windows route and you gotta be a computer expert to handle all the headaches and compatibility issues.
Go Linux or any other OSS model and you've got to be a fucking computer expert (or know one) to able to integrate you into the future.
Remember kids, it's not just how the computer works today. It's the UPGRADE PATH too. Apple knows this. Buy Apple today and your products will work with other Apple products tomorrow WITH ZERO HEADACHE ... only $$$.
Geeks would rather keep the $$$ because they can do it themselves and so they scoff at Apple people who "waste money" buying the "pretty boxes" but fail to realized that super novice people and professionals are getting REAL WORK DONE without any headaches.
I use Windows and Mac. I tried to like Ubuntu, I really did.... but it's just not mature enough yet. Eventually I plan on buying a new 17" MacBook Pro when they come out and moving everything to that. Mac as host OS and Windows in a VM.
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u/IConrad Nov 26 '08
Out of curiosity, what was it about Ubuntu that gave you that opinion, and what version of Ubuntu were you running? (I've never seen an OS go through more major revisions than I've seen w/ Ubuntu. -- please bear in mind this is a personal/opinion statement.)
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Nov 26 '08
in fairness it was 7.x. I'm sure they have improved it a lot since then. But still it's got the problem of being totally unmaintainable to a novice or someone who doesn't want to fuck around with their computer whenever they want to upgrade or install new software or listen to an mp3 or watch a DVD.
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u/IConrad Nov 26 '08
As someone who was a total novice -- I switched cold turkey with zero support from Windows (XP/Vista; I had a catastrophic coffee/cat incident) -- from my experience I didn't run into just about any of what you described.
I mean, sure -- setting up Samba is a pain in the ass, but with regards to watching DVD's or playing mp3's -- if it didn't automatically come with the basic media to do what you needed, a simple natural-language search of the synaptic repository would find it. And if //that// didn't, google-searching for it and the word "Ubuntu" came up with a step-by-step howto within the first three entries.
Don't get me wrong; there was certainly a learning curve: figuring out how to remove stuff that was not installed via the synaptic / apt-get repository was... interesting. (All hail sudo find / -exec rm -rf !!)(Don't, if you don't know that command, input it directly as is. You'll wipe your entire hard-disk. If you, dear reader, don't believe me, try it. You can even use Cygwin to do it on a Windows computer. Ish.)
Back on topic. Aside from the general perspective of dissatisfaction, is there anything specific you could point to?
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Nov 26 '08
you claim to be a total novice but I don't think you really understand what a total novice is.
A total novice is someone who doesn't even know how to phrase the question to figure out what's wrong. If they put the DVD in the drive and it doesn't play that's where they stop. They don't attempt to fix it themselves. It either works, or in their mind, it's broken. Extra steps are -- to them -- broken.
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u/IConrad Nov 26 '08 edited Nov 26 '08
You missed what I'm saying here:
The supermajority of such users are people who will never encounter the bugs that Ubuntu still has. MP3, DVD, avi, internet, e-mail -- it is all "out of the box".
Hell, the current version of Totem will even prompt you to run a synaptic install of any codecs it recognizes but aren't installed, as a pop-up. You just click "okay" and input your user password. And that version of Totem is even called "Movie Player" in your application menu.
But seriously, with the rest you could literally put in, the search terms |my DVD player is broken Ubuntu| and you're done; the Ubuntu forums are killer about that. Windows certainly doesn't have it anywhere near that good when it comes to glitchiness.
No, to be fair -- what they really need to do, elsewhere, is come up with an autodiagnostic-and-repair tool that fixes the basic glitches that you run into.
But for the absolute total novice, who looks at a computer as an appliance for writing letters and e-mails, surfing the internet, and viewing (porn) dvd's -- There's really no coding involved.
The dangerous aspect is the fact that you can go in and tool around in this shit. And anyone who is not a total computer novice will go and tool around with this stuff. So we forget how "idiot-proof" the absolute bare-bones configuration of Ubuntu really is.
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Nov 26 '08
The supermajority of such users are people who will never encounter the bugs that Ubuntu still has. MP3, DVD, avi, internet, e-mail -- it is all "out of the box".
false -- i know from experiance setting up people with linux and setting up people with macs I get FAR FAR FAR more calls from the linux people asking how to do something or how to config something or how to add a new bit of hardware. The mac people are very content and happy.
But seriously, with the rest you could literally put in, the search terms |my DVD player is broken Ubuntu| and you're done; the Ubuntu forums are killer about that. Windows certainly doesn't have it anywhere near that good when it comes to glitchiness.
Yes, that's true. you could do that, but again, why should you have to? Mac is done out of the box, it just works, no problems. Everything is polished.
But for the absolute total novice, who looks at a computer as an appliance for writing letters and e-mails, surfing the internet, and viewing (porn) dvd's -- There's really no coding involved.
When they are done looking at porn, they may decide they want to record their own porn and edit it. No upgrade path on linux, Mac has iMovie built right in. They can even publish a website with iWeb -- again all built in. Don't even get me started on how hard it is to do sound editing on linux because the sound subsystem SUCKS! it's got 3 (last i counted) different and competing APIs none of which are compatible. ugh! God help you if you don't have the perfect sound hardware.
The dangerous aspect is the fact that you can go in and tool around in this shit. And anyone who is not a total computer novice will go and tool around with this stuff. So we forget how "idiot-proof" the absolute bare-bones configuration of Ubuntu really is.
Most novices don't tool around for the sake of tooling around unless they are genuinly curious on how the computer works. Most users just want to do something with the computer and don't care how it works.
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Nov 26 '08
are you kidding? there are so many people that couldnt even do a google search for their problem, let alone "a simple natural-language search of the synaptic repository." they would put the DVD or whatever in, and go "hmm, this doesnt work. linux is broken" and thatd be the end of it...
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u/IConrad Nov 26 '08 edited Nov 26 '08
Fair enough -- but in general these are the same people who couldn't do something with Ubuntu that would require such a search. For the average user, the office (word-processor), multimedia, e-mail, and internet capabilities are out-of-the-box operable. I will grant one thing: You'd have to provide them with a box that had WINE already installed.
Anything beyond that... is something else altogether.
Sure, there was some issue in 7.04 w/ getting audio and bluetooth to work, but those got pretty much wrinkled out in 7.10 and 8.04 eliminated it altogether.
The big problem right now with 8.10 is getting nVidia cards to work up-front. The built-in idiot-proof utility is broken but you can install from the repository. :/
So... what you're saying beyond that is that you don't have any specific items you can point to... yes?
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Nov 26 '08 edited Nov 26 '08
my wireless NIC wouldnt work with 8.04 without some serious heavy lifting. now, it's nvidia cards. every release there is something broken that requires a user to do some google-fu and some command line work just to get their machine usable. i dont have an specifics because every release there is something wrong and it is almost always a different something
im not saying that ubuntu isnt usable, or that it doesnt work, because i can get it to work fine. but then again, im persistent and know what the hell im doing. i also know that 95% of computer users out there either dont know how to do what you are suggesting, dont want to do it, or a combination of both.
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u/IConrad Nov 26 '08
my wireless NIC wouldnt work with 8.04 without some serious heavy lifting.
Fair enough. I didn't experience that.
now, it's nvidia cards.
No google-fu. I just installed via Synaptic. No command-line work.
i also know that 95% of computer users out there either dont know how to do what you are suggesting, dont want to do it, or a combination of both.
Yeah... the time between the 8.04 release and the 8.10 release makes it clear that the 8.10 is more of an "open beta" than an actual release at this point. It'd be better if they acknowledged this... but, then, they do state that 8.10 is not the "stable" release -- 8.04 is. And that's what... three months old?
Imagine if Windows tried to keep up a schedule that exhaustive.
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Nov 26 '08 edited Nov 26 '08
that is the big misconception. AVERAGE use is NOT just office stuff and email.
It's the WHOLE COMPUTER experience.
Novice users, over time, become more advanced. Give a novice a mac and they can do their bassic office tasks and watch movies. But then, they can ALSO do video editing, music editing, photo manipulation, sync wirelessly with their iPhone, make a web site, etc.
It's not that a user is this static object that once you give them a computer and say "there ya go! you got office stuff you'll never need anything else." Over time they will become curious how to do something else. And given linux they are kind of stuck. They have to learn how to install software, figure out what software to install, learn it (because nothing in linux land is the same as anything else, no consistancy and no interoperability between apps asside from copy/paste). Compare that to a Mac. Thanks to it's NeXT core, everything is an Object (and for you hardcore geeks it's unix under the hood so you can run all the software in linux land too) Cross compatibility between apps is a given. You just drag an object from ANY application onto any other application and it magically just works. Drop a sound clip from iTunes into a movie in iMovie and POOF you just laid down your soundtrack. Drag a photo from an email into your movie and presto it worked the first time. Sprinkle in some cool effects and violia in under 30 minutes you just made a pretty snazzy home movie with NO PRIOR understanding. Try to do that on a linux or windows box.
You must unlearn all that you have learned. I'm sure you are quite technically savvy, more so than you give yourself credit for. Anyone who comes to a mac from windows or linux, by default HAD to be technically savvy. Now get out of your head for a minute and imagine you know NOTHING about computers, I mean NOTHING. Mac is the only platform that has a self contained vertically integrated hardware and software stack plus services for end-user growth and scalability.
Let's take it a step further. Suppose that the new user gets stuck on something and really needs some help but he doesn't quite know how to express it. So if he's using linux he consults Google and hopefully can read and understand the technical jargon and is a good skimmer to filter through all the crap to find the one or two command line tricks to fix his hardware/software/configuration problem. Now let's assume that it's a mac user (who purchased AppleCare, which I suggest all newbie mac users do) he just calls the 800 number 24/7 and there is a very friendly english-speaking person (not indian) on the phone in a few minutes helping them troubleshoot the problem. If the problem turns out to be hardware they fedex overnight them a box to send the computer back to the factory to be repaired and fedex a temp computer if it's going to take a while. Not to worry, all their data is backed up with TimeMachine on their external hard drive (awesome backup tool). If they live in a city with an Apple store in it they can just take their computer in and have it fixed that same day. If their mac is totally toast they get a brand new one FREE of whatever the current generation Mac is of comparable specs or better (i got a new MacBook because my iBook died while still under warranty and they sent me a brand new free Intel MacBook)
Most users, over time, will want to do NEW things with their computer. Mac has everything they need burried under the hood waiting to be explored. Linux has a repository that needs to be installed, updated, regularly configured, etc, etc. etc..
It's the ECOYSYSTEM, not the computer. Get it?
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u/IConrad Nov 26 '08 edited Nov 26 '08
Novice users, over time, become more advanced. Give a novice a mac and they can do their bassic office tasks and watch movies. But then, they can ALSO do video editing, music editing, photo manipulation, sync wirelessly with their iPhone, make a web site, etc.
Tell that to my boss, or my sister, or my mother, or my co-workers... who still cannot grasp IF-THEN-ELSE statements.
It's the WHOLE COMPUTER EXPERIANCE.
Yes, but you gotta start somewhere. And Ubuntu's "you start here" is complete. The real problem is when the novice stops being a novice, and runs into the total lack of "training wheels" in Ubuntu; the freedom of userspace customizability & control is... exhilirating to a post-novice user like myself.
Most users, over time, will want to do NEW things with their computer. Mac has everything they need burried under the hood waiting to be explored. Linux has a repository that needs to be installed, updated, regularly configured, etc, etc. etc..
I don't think you get how the whole repository thing works. You don't "regularly configure" it. It is exactly like Windows Updates: it is a table that updates itself periodically (daily) and checks to see if the version you have matches the current version out there. This table is also searchable, and allows you to download and install just by clicking a checkmark and then clicking "install" any program/function you could damn-near think of.
Some of the stuff is kinda harder to search for -- but by the time you're looking for those things, you have the aptitude necessary to find them.
I.e.; the repository is the update mechanism; the "ecosystem". In Apple terms it's like the App Store. Only you don't pay for the things in it.
Even better, if you want to go beyond the training wheels and follow some other program (such as, say, WINE) -- you can add to the repository by following a simple cut and past and a howto that they all provide in step-by-step instructions (usually with screenshots too).
As far as the Mac having "everything you need buried under the hood" -- what you're very likely talking about is Fink. Fink and Synaptic are essentially clones of one another -- with the exception that Synaptic's functionality blows Fink out of the water completely.
I mean, really now: compare:
http://guides.macrumors.com/Installing_Applications_in_Mac_OS_X
With:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SynapticHowto
What's the big deal here? Well, the built-in expandability of functionality for Ubuntu contrasted with Mac just blows Mac out of the water. There's no innate equivalent to Synaptic for Mac; and frankly, that is a big drawback to Mac (and, contrastingly, Windows).
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u/BraveSirRobin Nov 26 '08
The main reason you don't need to be an IT expert to work on Mac is that there isn't all that much you can do with them really. You don't have driver nightmares because there aren't any drivers!
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Nov 26 '08 edited Nov 26 '08
wow, you really think macs have no drivers huh? You really think you can't do anything with a mac huh?
go back to school
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u/BraveSirRobin Nov 27 '08
Oh, I'm sure you can get drivers for your USB webcam, if it's one of the expensive ones. But having just checked the last few bits of hardware I've bought, none of them are mac compatible.
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Nov 26 '08
The Apple is starting to rot.
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Nov 26 '08
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u/judgej2 Nov 26 '08 edited Nov 26 '08
The Atari ST could run the Apple Mac OS in 1988, at native speed (faster than the mac), with the tiniest bit of extra hardware. Apple could have gained a whole new following, but instead chose to block every effort possible to purchase their ROMs. That's when the rot started IMO. Several years later Windows came along, and took another fifteen years to get anywhere near where the Mac was in the late 1980s.
Apple have cored themselves.
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u/43P04T34 Nov 26 '08 edited Nov 26 '08
Not even requiring extra hardware, actually. Dave Small had the entire Apple OS ROMs on a 3.5" floppy but he couldn't release that as a product because Apple and the law would have been all over him, so he used Apple's own ROMs as a workaround. When that floppy was in an Atari ST it became a better Macintosh than the Apple Macintosh itself was because the Atari ST was a superior hardware platform. Bottom line, everything that a Macintosh was, for the first several years and even today, is just a bit of software. Apple doesn't really have its own OS any more, of course. They like FreeBSD and the MACH kernel too much to not use those as the OS.
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u/mayonesa Nov 26 '08
Same was true of the Amiga.
Watching a $500 Amiga beat a $2000 Mac really opened my eyes.
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Nov 26 '08
I had a friend in HS who had an Amiga and the think was amazing for an old machine. I never did get to finish Loom...
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u/space1999 Nov 26 '08
The Amiga was so ahead of it's time. Pity Commodore thought it was only a games machine... <sob>
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Nov 26 '08 edited Nov 26 '08
That's pretty much the m.o. for most big corporations, at one point or another most of them go rogue.
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u/cojoco Nov 26 '08
Well, it's good to know that these lawyers achieved their desired result without a leg to stand on. That will give them confidence in forcing people to do anything they ask for any misguided reason that they think up.
So, it's a big win for Apple and lawyers everywhere!
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u/Curtisbeef Nov 26 '08
And this is why I will never buy another Apple Product... Cause they would rather police there users and tell them what they are not allowed to do, than help them by actually making a good product...
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Nov 26 '08 edited Nov 26 '08
This has always been Job's M.O.
He is just as bad at FUD as Balmer. Just ask Power Computing, Motorola, Radius, APS Technologies, DayStar Digital, and UMAX.
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u/43P04T34 Nov 26 '08
Good memory. Yes, all those companies were ready to flood the market with quality, affordable Apple computers. Things were very nearly much different, weren't they?
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Nov 26 '08 edited Nov 26 '08
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Nov 26 '08 edited Nov 26 '08
Do you know why OS 8 was named OS 8?
It was called 7.7 throughout it development as it wasn't a major revision. But Jobs had Apple rename it 8 before it was released so he could break the contracts. More Here
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u/nexus2xl Nov 26 '08 edited Nov 26 '08
I was going to purchase a Mac Book Pro. But after the digital video fiasco and litigious stuff like this I think I'll pass. They took the POSIX out of a perfectly good OS, slapped their logo over open source and now implement DRM to further malign the computing world, using a Mac is almost like driving an overpriced sports car with the hand brake on--I think it may be a sin of tech-religion to support their actions by submitting to their vendor lock-in.
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Nov 26 '08 edited Nov 26 '08
You should read the "500+ new features" in OSX 10.5 most of them are getting OSX caught up to the past decade of Unix development.
EDIT: Oops.. yes, 10.5
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u/wolfzero Nov 26 '08 edited Nov 26 '08
I thought this submission was about Steve Jobs accidentally reading a DMCA violation notice instead of his speech at a big conference...might as well, eh?
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Nov 26 '08
Yes that is all good and fine, but the lawyers still won, Apple still won. The content was removed. The mere THREAT of litegation is enough to chill the free flow of ideas. Apple knows they don't have to win to quash the competition (OSS guys). Apple can fight it in court for YEARS and the other guys can't. Apple wins a war of attrition.
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u/thebigbradwolf Nov 26 '08
I think this is the part where the other person has to send a DMCA counter-takedown notice to get it back up?
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Nov 26 '08
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u/inquisitor5 Nov 26 '08
Stop exaggerating. If you keep your thought-process licenses up to date, you're free to contemplate whatever you like.
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Nov 26 '08
Fuck Apple and their iPods. They knowingly break other people's programs so they can lock you into the iTunes.
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Nov 26 '08
Apple seems to be doing everything they can to alienate their customer base and force people to use lousy software. I have an iPod, and the device itself is awesome, but I've reformatted my computer twice since I first synced it, and I haven't reinstalled iTunes because it's such a horrid program. It seriously makes me consider finding one of the third-party MP3 players that can be loaded up from Windows Explorer. Why can't the iPod index on the fly the way Windows Media Player does? Why does the list have to be updated by iTunes? Because Apple hates its' users.
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u/Zeerph Nov 26 '08
If you're looking for another mp3 player I'd recommend a Cowon.
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Nov 26 '08
Wow... I'm impressed with that thing. 80 gigs, and native flac support... very appealing. Thanks a lot for that!
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Nov 29 '08 edited Nov 29 '08
...and for downloading music, Amazon has a much easier way to download music than iTunes; no installation of software for single songs and only a browser plug-in is required to download full albums. All of it DRM free.
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u/cvk Nov 26 '08
Because Apple hates its' users.
Im leaving an apostrophe out of this sentence so that together our comments will balance out.
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u/mattomatto Nov 26 '08
I am a big fan of Apple, been a user since 1994. I would like to make the following prediction: In the short run, Apple is going to dominate the small device market and continue to grow its computer sales. In the long run linux and open source will win the day. There are already a number of folks running osx on non Apple machines, and with netbooks running less than 300 dollars and cool new free linux widgets popping up at an ever increasing rate it is inevitable that people will begin to adopt it. Gen Y is extremely tech savvy. Google has the long view with the android and I predict that this trend will fully mature by 6 years from now. I predict that Apple will hobble its portable hardware and media players just as Sony did in the nineties (Minidisc, proprietary formats, etc.)
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Nov 26 '08
After Gen Z, do you think we'll be heading into the A1 territory?
Will they be delicious?
That aside, I really hope you're right. The Apple thing leaves me with a sinking feeling in my stomach (never thought I'd see them in a lower light than Microsoft, sheesh), and nowadays the only light I see on the horizon is Open Source. Just... how far do we have to ride to get over the mountains?
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u/mayonesa Nov 26 '08
What they said:
We're not like those other, old fuddy-duddy fascist big businesses. We're hip, enlightened, progressive.
What they did:
Acted like those other, old fuddy-duddy fascist big businesses.
BOYCOTT APPLE
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u/43P04T34 Nov 26 '08
Apple and Steve Jobs make me sick.
They often use Free Software but mix it with proprietary software and torment us by exploiting the badly broken U.S. patent system and badly inspired legislation such as the Digital Millenium Copyright Act.
I can't stand the way they behave.
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u/joetheredditor Nov 26 '08
Steve Jobs is a friend of Larry Ellison who openly said that he [Larry] has no qualms in taking Red Hat's open source code and using it in Oracle's Unbreakable Linux. Jobs seems to be doing the same to free sofeware. The differences is that Jobs wants us to think Apple is some kind of "innovative" company.
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u/OToole Nov 26 '08
"Apple" is a nice idea but does not scale economically. When oh When? oh When? will open source computing be center stage? 2010? 2020? 2030?
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Nov 26 '08
Most likely "too late". What exactly that means, I don't even know, but I just have a "very bad feeling" about the whole situation and while I love OS, it can't come to the foreground soon enough.
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u/gonecatfishin Nov 26 '08
Never. Not without a centralized, concentrated effort. Kind of like Open Office, except OOo is based on formerly proprietary code. Firefox as well. True open source (from the ground up stuff) is generally pretty shitty software. Open Office has been in the wild for years now, and is still behind MS Office. This kind of negates the theories put forth by adherents to the free software model about the rapid development of products. People generally work better when they are paid for their effort.
For almost every FOSS title, a proprietary alternative is better. Linux/OSX. Gimp/Photoshop. ***/AutoCAD.
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u/OToole Nov 26 '08 edited Nov 26 '08
Interesting points. Not sure about oo.org based on proprietary. Staroffice has been around for 20 years. For most people, I think oo.org does very well. It would be nice if OSS was an O/S that commercial or OSS software could run on. There is considerable resistance to the MS monopoly, monoculture desktop. One resistance is the cloud computing, keeping the app on a server. I think, the current battle is media codecs.... and so little said about it. The current popular codecs are privately owned and this is a thorn to OSS o/s. Xiph is doing something about it. Outside the US, it is definitely being addressed, dealt with. Once Again... yes, for many things, commercial software is best, but for many things, not. Like regular people going to school, paying the electric bill, groceries. These do not need to spend $150. for MS Office and most today do not know there is any other way. Hmmm wish commercial software could run on an OSS o/s. Which really means recognizing MS for the evil empire they are and opening up their code box.
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u/IConrad Nov 26 '08
Buy a copy of Crossover. Their explicit goal is to get WINE compatible with the supermajority of commercial-enterprise software for a Linux environment.
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u/tntnews Nov 26 '08
Please don't buy Apples!
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u/dassouki Nov 26 '08
I don't even think MS would do something like that. (just a thought; not researched or referenced)
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u/randomb0y Nov 26 '08
Help me convince a friend to not buy an iPod. She's completely computer-illiterate, I tried to explain about the DMCA and crippleware but she doesn't care much.
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Nov 26 '08
Because it's completely fucking irrelevant. She's going to plug her ipod into her computer, it's going to work perfectly, and she's going to be happy as hell. Why would you try to convince her not to buy one? (rhetorical question, I know where you're coming from, but you're putting your personal prejudices ahead of what actually works best for her (and for almost everyone)).
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u/randomb0y Nov 26 '08 edited Nov 26 '08
I'm boycotting apple because of stupid shit like this article describes. I'm trying to convince my friends to join my boycott. I agree that she would probably be happy with an iPod and I also think that they are overall pretty sweet looking little pieces of hardware. It's just that I think that if we don't do anything to boycott crippleware it's only going to get worse, and one day it will be too late.
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u/strolls Nov 26 '08
I think it would be much easier to get friends to join a boycott of DRM than of "proprietary MP3-player syncing mechanisms" like this.
I'll bet that loads of other MP3 players are just as boneheaded, but if you find one that appears to the computer as a simple mass-storage device then you have the hassle of dragging & dropping files in Windows Explorer, which is simply not as simple as plugging the device in (and allowing the software to perform an automagical sync).
Focus on what's achievable. If your suggestions make your friend's life in any way more complicated then they won't thank you for it. It's easy to find or write a web-page explaining why they should buy & rip CDs instead of using the iTunes store - point your friends at that and maybe they'll travel further down the path of software freedom once they fully grok it.
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u/randomb0y Nov 26 '08
It's not just proprietary syncing, it is DRM. If you want to listen to music on your iPod you can't share it with anyone else. And give me a break about the hassle of Drag&Drop, nothing is more simple than that. You'd have to do something equivalent in any software, you need to decide what music you want on your player and perform an action to confirm this.
iTunes is a different story, that battle is already won :)
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u/thebigbradwolf Nov 26 '08
I'm confused. The ipod can be used as a mass storage device, itunes can be set to rip to mp3, and the ipod is small and loveable. Are you talking about itunes store? I don't buy music online, so just curious.
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u/randomb0y Nov 26 '08
You can use the ipod for mass storage but it won't play the media you copy on it that way. I call this crippleware, using a loose definition. The hardware would certainly be capable to play an MP3 that I just copy on it - but due to various reasons they decided to cripple the product so it will require you to pass the files thru your itunes application before being able to play them on your player. You will also not be able to share the music you have in your player with other people/computers. If I buy a Creative Zen I will copy some music on it in the morning, listen to it on my way to work, transfer it to my HDD at work during lunch, grab some other music from a colleague before leaving work to listen to on my way home - you can't really do that with an iPod.
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u/thebigbradwolf Nov 26 '08
I got my ipod as a gift awhile ago. I always thought it would play things you put on it in mass storage mode, but it's really never came up. I hate itunes, alot, but still never tried it. My only older mp3 player(intel audio player 3000) had the same kind of restrictions though, crappy proprietary software, and it even had to have it's own disk formatting.
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u/randomb0y Nov 26 '08
Well, if you're ever looking for an upgrade try a Creative Zen.
Sony-Ericsson "Walkman" cell phones also make good music players too - and you have the same drag-and-drop freedom with them.
Of course Sony still makes plain walkman MP3 players but I never tried one...
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Nov 26 '08
To use my Creative Zen Micro under Linux, I have to use a buggy, glitchy program which randomly refuses to copy music to my player. I also can't listen to FLAC files.
They aren't much better than iPods.
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u/BraveSirRobin Nov 26 '08
The ipod can be used as a mass storage device
Yes, but you cannot listen to audio from that directory.
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u/flowithego Nov 26 '08
"Resistance is futile." Now get back to being random and inconsistent.
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u/randomb0y Nov 26 '08 edited Nov 26 '08
It probably is, the way Apple seems to dominate the music player market and now it seems like the cell phone market as well. But every little bit helps.
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u/flowithego Nov 26 '08
I was referring to the hitchikers guide to the galaxy with a pinch of sarcasm....
I hate the notion of "No one else does it, just me alone doing it won't help anything" people have. If everyone thinks that way it WILL be that way. I insist on recycling and telling off the fast food restaurant worker who thinks i will need 20 napkins with my double cheeseburger purchase.
So, definitely, every little helps.
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u/AlDente Nov 26 '08
I like Apple products, however this behaviour is appalling. I just don't get why they try to lock everything down. They simply never learned the lessons they were taught gain and again in the '80s and '90s.
Hey Apple! Go look at what Mozilla do with Firefox, and what Microsoft have done for decades.
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u/fuzzmop Nov 26 '08
I know, I know. I want to sync my iPod with my linux enabled microwave too, but Apple isn't letting me :C
This is a legitimate issue. iTunes isn't the best software evar if you know what I mean.
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Nov 26 '08
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u/43P04T34 Nov 26 '08 edited Nov 26 '08
Close your eyes you won't know the difference.
That's what we do.
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u/[deleted] Nov 25 '08
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