Interesting article,

[Alan Johnson]

On Fri, Mar 5, 2010 at 8:52 AM, Tom Buskey <tom at buskey.name> wrote:

> > Well, except MacOSX has specific hardware.
>>
>>   Indeed, that's a big part of Apple's strategy.  Design the hardware
>> and the software together, and they'll work well together.  And there
>> is something to be said for that.
>>
>
> And that's one of Apple's prime advantages.
>

Advantage?  Well, for Apple, it is an advantages over MS, but certainly not
for the users.  This goes back to my post about Italian Trains.  Apple has
managed to convince the bulk of their user base that legally limiting the
hardware they can use is some how to the advantage of the user, when really
it is only to the advantage of Apple in that it makes their job easier and
they can charge more based on perceived value.  The user can get the same
"advantages" of hardware limitation from Linux or Windows by only buying
from a well run OEM that knows what hardware works best.  For the slightly
more advanced user, they can limit their hardware choices to those that have
been vetted by the larger community, as I and many on this list do.  Because
of dominance, Windows does not have to work as hard at this, but both
Windows and Apple at least TRY to allow more freedom in hardware for their
users.

The only reason Windows has dominance over Linux is inertia, and the only
reason Apple has dominance over Linux is marketing.  Apple could have
crushed MS by now if they had gone with the GPL attitude instead of picking
BSD so they could keep all their toys to themselves.  They are stomping on
the shoulders of giants rather than standing.

To be clear in limiting my own zealotry, I concede that there are a number a
specific use cases that are better addressed by Windows or Apple.  However,
the vast majority of those are catch-22's like the ones described in the
article that started this thread.  E.g. poor gaming and OEM adoption implies
low market share which implies poor gaming and OEM support.  Both issues are
being whittled away at and also remember that the global market share of
Linux is much greater than in this country and there should be no confusion
about the correlation to the location of the MS and Apple headquarters.
China and India have no national interest in choosing MS or Apple, and they
both have a whole lot more potential users.

This is why Google is getting in to the hardware market with Linux
(Android).  They don't want to sell a few hundred thousand devices in the
US. That's just a testing ground.  They want to sell billions of devices
globally.  MS and Apple will never achieve that with closed technologies
because they could never handle the overhead of maintaining translations,
etc.  The powerful concept is that Google does not even have to make any
money on the hardware, as long as they don't loose much, and users keep
using "google" as a verb. =)

That said, I am completely convinced that the sum of the *nix flavors out
there are surely superior in an over-all sense when compared to the sum of
Windows and Apple options.  (I know, I know; MacOS is a *nix, but let's
split out for reasons mentioned above, shall we?)  The only hold up at this
point is strong enough business, or small set of businesses, getting behind
it to ease the average user into it.  When Dell and/or HP start offering
Linux on the majority of their hardware, that will be the beginning of the
end of closed systems like Windows and Mac.  When Google puts a billion
Android devices in the global market, I won't have any trouble playing
downloaded Amazon video files on my Ubuntu box hooked up to my TV.

For now, I'll have to settle for Redbox over Netflix (since their streaming
player requires Windows even though their set-top box runs Linux) and
playing videos I buy from Amazon through their streaming player on my TV box
while it also functions as commercial grade backup server, carrier grade
firewall/NAT-router/traffic shaper, local/Internet streaming media
server/player, educational tool for my children, smart home server/interface
(if i ever get around to it), and yes, with plenty of selection for my
limited tastes as a recovering gamaholic, a gaming machine.  Oh, woe is me.
;-)
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