[clug] Vaguely off topic: iPeds and other Android tablets - availability and comparisons to that Apple one

[Neill Cox]

I am a recovering Apple fan boi :) There are 13 functioning Apple devices in
my household and I don't know how many dead ones, going right back an SE/30.

At this point my take on Apple is that they are indeed a great marketing
company, but they are also a great engineering company.  Their products are
well engineered, attractive, not that expensive  and (nowadays) very well
marketed.  Unfortunately Apple also want to exercise what seems to me to be
an unreasonable amount of control over the devices they want em to buy.

I'm sure that Apple do comply with their license obligations, and I'm sure
they considered those licenses very carefully before selecting which OSS
components to use in their toolkit.

I'm also sure that I don't want to hand Apple the level of control over my
life that they seem to want.  This is a personal decision and flow from what
I think is the most important part of F/OSS - that users should control
their devices, not the other way round. I'm also sadly aware that a
vanishingly small portion of the population shares (or even understands) my
concerns.  I wish I was better at expressing them :)

It's kind of sad for me to feel at this point that Microsoft is a more open
company than Apple.  Perhaps Apple will change one day, but I expect they'll
need to get rid of Steve and have their own anti-trust moment for it to
happen.  That's a pity - Steve has done a remarkable job of improving
Apple's products. It's just a shame that he thinks it's so important to
control which apps are run, and what features they might contain.

Apple are very defintely not a F/OSS company though, and I'm not sure why we
are spending so much time talking about them.

Cheers,
Neill

On Thu, Aug 5, 2010 at 10:42 PM, Jim Croft <jim.croft at gmail.com> wrote:

> the same is true in the biodiversity informatics field.  there is a
> quantifiable trend to portable mac things that can be seen at
> conferences, etc.
>
> the ratio often hit and exceeds 50%. the argument is that they are
> basically linux inside, you can install what you need, and all the
> systems and network connectivity look after themselves, and you can
> concentrate on the work.
>
> they have a point, but ideological loathing of the big end of town
> prevents me following them...
>
> but it is not just marketing. the apple industrial design package is
> very smooth.
>
> jim
>
> On Thu, Aug 5, 2010 at 9:25 PM, Mike Carden <mike.carden at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Thu, Aug 5, 2010 at 9:10 PM, David Austin <david at d-austin.net> wrote:
> >
> >> However if you know a little more than the average about
> >> technology then Apple is not for you.
> >
> >
> > That's an innocent and simplistic view that I won't leave
> > unchallenged. While I sympathise with the idea that Apple's target
> > market is people who will pay for form over function and who love the
> > fact that (most of) function just follows... it's a bit silly to
> > suggest that Apple users are not tech savvy.
> >
> > Have you been to a FOSS conf in the last 5 years? Count the MacBooks.
> > FOSS devs *love* Apple. Look at the 'core Apple devs. These people are
> > not writing Hello World. Their philosophy may not match yours, but
> > they aren't stupid.
> >
> > It happens that I soldered up an Apple IIe when doing so was True Hard
> > Core. I own an iPod and a (dead) G3 Powerbook. I respect Apple. Apple
> > do some good stuff and some not so good stuff. To suggest that Apple
> > is not for the technically savvy is very very funny indeed.
> >
> > --
> > MC
> > --
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> > linux at lists.samba.org
> > https://lists.samba.org/mailman/listinfo/linux
> >
>
>
>
> --
> _________________
> Jim Croft ~ jim.croft at gmail.com ~ +61-2-62509499 ~
> http://www.google.com/profiles/jim.croft
> 'A civilized society is one which tolerates eccentricity to the point
> of doubtful sanity.'
>  - Robert Frost, poet (1874-1963)
>
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