I had a very long and arduous argument with a good friend last night
about how Apple are evil and I shouldn't support them by buying their
product.
Sorry, but I buy what works for me, and prime considerations are more
about the user experience overall, the look and feel of the hardware I
am interacting with, and how well it integrates with other products I
own and use.
I do support Linux, I think the idea is great, I love how configurable
it is, but that's also part of the problem. With so many
distributions, code bases, and differences between them all, you're
stuck with using one of the major distributions unless you want to
start compiling source code yourself, and building your own drivers.
I've worked in IT professionally for almost 20 years. I have done my
hard time messing with hardware configurations and subsequently
software settings to get things working, updating software packages to
make things work again after a new driver breaks something and so on.
I admit things nowadays are a lot easier, but I simply don't care
about tweaking and maintaining anymore. Up until 2 years ago, I had
built every PC I had owned from scratch. I upgraded them over the
years until they were the Sugarbabes of the computing world (no
original components left) and upgraded the operating systems with each
revision.
As I stopped gaming after the birth of my daughter nearly 10 years
ago, I realised that my upgrades weren't as often. I simply had no
need for a new CPU or graphics card with each new game I wanted to
play. A few years later, it was hardware failures which drove the
upgrades rather than a desire for anything faster. As my usage peaked
at video and music editing being the most intensive thing I did, it
meant that the spec I was using then wouldn't be much different to two
years down the line.
The thing that carried on throughout all of this was updating the OS,
patching it, installing bug fixes, running system maintenance,
changing anti-virus providers when better ones came along, doing the
odd rebuild of the OS when maintenance tasks didn't improve the
degradation of performance, and so on. I still had a reasonable spec
PC, and it did everything I wanted it to, but it was a tool to use for
things, a utilitarian box sat in the corner of the room.
Since the early 90's I have usually had a Mac sitting around, mainly
because I like messing with things, and learning about them. They have
never been my primary machine, just second hand things I picked up to
play with. Since my first iMac running OSX, the things that has stuck
in my mind is how little maintenance they require over long periods of
time, and even old Macs running newer versions of the OS carry on
regardless chugging away doing what you want them to do. Sure, they
still crash from time to time, as does any OS, but a lot less than
Windows XP ever did.
In around 2005/6 I made a decision to get a Mac laptop as my primary
mobile device, since then I have gradually replaced everything I use
with Apple's systems. The argument that they are more expensive is
just not true, I researched many systems when I purchased my new iMac.
I wanted at least a 20" widescreen LED backlit display, something
incredibly quiet, and small, as I don't have much space. In the end I
settled on buying an all in one system. My choices were then between
HP, Sony, Dell, and Apple. The Apple was higher spec, and cheaper,
quieter, and far nicer to look at. I didn't buy it just because it was
Apple, I bought it because it suited my needs the best, and I like the
look and feel of it on my desk.
So for those of you supporting Linux who believe it's the future, you
may well be right, but I bet the primary reason you use it is because
it suits your needs the best, and you are happy to do the tweaking to
get the most out of it.
Apple is no more evil than any other company out there to make money.
When people put a lot of effort into something, in most cases they
will want to be paid for all the hard work. Apple have a closed
platform? Well yes, that's true of the iPhone OS, but their desktop OS
is based on Darwin, an open source Net BSD distribution, their GUI is
however proprietary. The reason it all works so well is because of the
level of control they have over the platform and hardware.
Microsoft gets a bad name for the stability of Windows, but it's not
the OS, it's people running it on old and busted hardware, and failing
to maintain it properly. Linux has better stability here, because it
can be tailored to run well on that old and busted hardware, and
requires less maintenance once it's running, but you do have to invest
the time necessary to learn how to compile the OS for that platform.
Apple will say no, we are ceasing support for that old and busted
hardware, we want you to buy new hardware to experience our platform
as we intend, with a good user experience, and therefore a happy user.
Is this evil? Maybe to some, it takes away some freedom. But humans
generally fear change. They like to maintain the status quo. They will
go to extraordinary lengths to avoid change where they don't have to
face it. They will convince themselves that the change is unnecessary,
bad, evil, pointless, and so on, just to avoid it.
Apple drive change in consumer grade technology. They force us to do
things in new ways. These ways become second nature far faster with
Apple products than anyone else, because they are designing the
hardware, software, and entire user interface around the user
experience, not by the functionality. This is why so many people are
evangelical about their products. It becomes more important to a user
that they do something which makes them happy, than worrying about the
steps of how to achieve it. They can concentrate on the goal, not a
series of complicated steps which have to be learned.
Some argue this is dumbing down computing, that Apple make computers
for idiots, and only idiots can use them, and so on.
I ask you thou, why wouldn't you want your product easy to use?
It is my honest opinion, regardless of what you think about their
values or practices, that Apple have put the user interface and
experience frost and foremost in design, and they are by far the most
advanced company in the world at creating a platform for humans to use
intuitively.
Yes, you can make Linux do things in the same way, add all the nice
visual touches, use gestures, and so on, but it doesn't do it out of
the box. In the same way that most people don't buy a kit car, and
then do all of the maintenance themselves, people don't want a
computer that behaves like that either.
To summarise, I use what I like, what gives me pleasure to use, and
that does what I want it to do. Fuck what works for you, I am not you.
The argument works both ways.
:)
