[tlug] What's with this anti-Apple tirade? [was: 2014-05-10 Linux Quiz]

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>]

Travis Cardwell writes:

 > I have received much flak from OSS friends for using a MacBook Pro.

Then they're not OSS people, they're free software people.  The whole
point of the open source software vs. free software fork is that we're
not going to drink the poisoned Kool-Aid just because Richard Stallman
does.  And, no, cute logos not withstanding, Stallman can't levitate.

Minor annoyances aside, the free software movement is a good thing.  I
just wish Stallman would spend more time improving free software and
less time boycotting open source[1] and nagging people who think that
judicious use of proprietary products improves their freedom of action.

 > Caveats:
 > 
 > * Never buy Apple hardware unless you have to run Apple software
 >   legally.

I don't know anybody who has switched to Apple who is unhappy with it
(except you).  Certainly most of my graduate students are happy with
their MacBooks, although some still have Windows notebooks.

 > > b) You are not developing software on them, want them to Just Work
 > > (TM), and have accepted the Apple ecosystem lock-in

What lock-in?  I spend almost all of my work time in XEmacs (built
locally, of course) and MacPorts.  The exceptions are Preview (Apple),
Firefox (OSS), and Chrome (Google almost-OSS)).  I have a few other
Aqua applications lying around (Freecell, Calibre, gnuplot, XQuartz ;-),
and yes, I use iTunes to sync some stuff with my iPhone and iPad.[2]
I regularly use Debian and Gentoo systems for various purposes (I'm
typing on Apple hardware, but XEmacs is running on a Gentoo system
remotely) and it's all pretty seamless to me.

Xcode is indeed a necessary evil for working on Apple-specific apps,
but I don't actually use the GUI (except to access developer docs).
xcodebuild does everything I need (which admittedly is very little).

It is true that the equipment is relatively expensive and there's a
lot of hardware lock-in (eg, proprietary cables, especially those
annoyingly expensive power supplies and video connectors).  But
printers and scanners work well (something that cannot be said for
Linux even today).  I know people have trouble with projectors, but
that doesn't seem common nowadays (and I've only had such an
experience once, about 6 years ago).

 > > c) You actually like Apple products and know how to use them

s/and know how to use them//  The point of using Apple stuff is that
they do HCI better than anybody else, including frills like "stylish"
and "looks cool" and "their image character is people doing neat artsy
stuff", and some things that aren't frills, like *working Japanese
input out of the box*.  I think this has a lot to do with why many
Japanese like Apple -- it fits the monozukuri culture (kaizen, kaizen,
migaki, migaki) of "give me an object that is mostly self-explanatory
and looks nice".

 > My grandmother gave up computers because of spam, which is
 > unfortunately cross-platform.

AFAICT Google (GMail) is now doing a very good job of filtering spam
-- including spam from your "friends" with Yahoo! accounts (that seem
to be rather incompletely defended from spammer hacking).

 > Personally, I do not buy into the Apple ecosystem lock-in.  I do *not*
 > agree to the terms of service of iTunes, for example...  An annoyance on
 > my MacBook Pro is that iTunes starts automatically when I plug in the
 > cable to the audio system.

That does suck, and no, it's not that specific to you: I know non-
technical users who would prefer manual launch of iTunes when they
plug in cables.

I bet it would be possible to configure launchd to prevent autolaunch
though.  (I haven't found it annoying enough to investigate yet, sorry.)

All that said, I don't advocate using Apple products, I advocate
keeping an open mind to using them.  They're not just "computers for
the rest of us" -- depending on your use cases, they have advantages
for the technically adept, too.


Footnotes: 
[1]  Yes, "open source".  Stallman is currently pushing a boycott of LLVM.

[2]  The iPhone was a birthday present from my wife, I'd probably be
perfectly happy with Android. The iPad was a yosan-tsubushi purchase
-- isn't that disgusting? and don't forget, it's *your* taxes that pay
for "use your budget or lose your job" bureaucracy -- with the intent
of doing some UI testing for my home page.