Would someone please explain to me why it is that whenever i talk to another fellow linux user, they always say nice things about apple? I grant that they have accomplished a few noteworthy things, but in my view they are just as bad if not worse than MS. Really the only difference between the two is that apple made some stupid mistakes back in the day which allowed MS/IBM clones to become the dominant computing platform.

I don't want to start a flame war here, so lets try to keep things civil, shall we?

-Zorak

its said: "the enemy of my enemy is my friend"
MC OS is enemy to M$
making it a fiend of Linux who is also an enemy of M$

in addition, Mac OS 10 is nothing but a Unix ... ehem - linux's brother (?!)

cousin / brother something like that


Unix is great in every form especially when it is well implemented.

It is ever better when it is open source :-D

It's too bad apple is proprietary even though they are based on BSD

Yes, the fact that Apple picked-up some great, open stuff and has returned very little to the community does gall me. The had the opportunity to really advance some areas but did nothing with it.

Basically, they have a very nice system because of the hard work of a community and decided to give little back (yes, Darwin the kernel is open, but from all the stuff that they actually used, I feel a bit like they took more than they gave)

My $.02

Also, on a more technical side, Darwin is an amalgam of the Mach micro kernel with BSD external trappings such as the VFS layer and process handling, with substantial modifications to glue the two together and tailor the use to Apple's will.

I am glad to see that there is at least one other Linux user who doesn't think Apple is all "peaches and cream" (pardon the fruit metaphor). They may have a nice system and some nice hardware, but I just don't see why people don't include Apple in their thoughts when they scream about vendor lock-in. MS isn't the only company that tries to force you to use their software. Honestly, Apple even goes so far as to dictate what kind of computer hardware you use (although admittedly w/ the advent of intel macs this problem is lessened a bit). Not to mention the fact that you pretty much HAVE to use itunes if you have an ipod.

As good as UNIX is, just because something is a flavor of UNIX doesn't make it good if the company producing it has questionable business practices (Think SCO here).

That is just my opinion on the matter, and I realize that not everyone is going to agree with me, but I would at least like to get people to realize that MS doesn't have a monopoly on evil the way it does on desktop computing.

-Zorak

I'm not a huge Linux user; though I have dabbled with it from time to time. I completely agree with you on Apple, though. The only thing that has stopped them from being condemned as much as Microsoft is their small market share. It amazes me that Mac users condemn Microsoft when Apple is as bad (perhaps worse). Just because you have your OS running on a pretty candy shell doesn't make it better; nor does it justify Apple's business practices.

The only reason Apple isn't viewed as a monoply is their market share... but when you consider the way they "lock-in" their customers, it's pretty clear that they ARE a monopoly all to their own. It shocks me that Apple users don't realize it.

Yes, I'm no fan of Apple myself. They are just as cruel as M$, it's just because they only hold 2-3% of the computing world, no one really cares

The reason, in my eyes, Apple is worse than M$, is that the average Mac user is really, really smug without really understanding the benefits inherent to OSX, they just know what marketing has told them. I know it's a bit superficial, but as they are the spokespeople for the platform, they just really do a poor job of presentation.

Both platforms are fundamentally flawed in their goal, it's just that there isn't the level of aggravating aire of superiority mixed with a healthy dose of lack of information on the Windows side of the fence, generally speaking.

Again, my $.02

I couldn't agree with you more! And in all honesty i don't think that is superficial, quite the contrary. I think it is incredibly perverse that about 90% of mac users (at least out of the one's i've met) get all their information about apple from apple! And all the smugness and claims of being more enlightened than the windows users make things all the more ironic since they just follow propaganda as blindly as most windows users.

To the credit of MS, I have never seen them raise up an army of jihadists the way Apple has, but seeing as how MS isn't very good at either PR or making software, that isn't saying a whole lot.

I think if more people would just learn a tiny bit about computers instead of listening to marketing departments, we'd all be a lot better off. I realize that not everyone wants to get a degree in Computer Engineering and specialize in architecture design just to learn about computers, but at this point in time, it is damn near IRRESPONSIBLE not to have at least a modicum of knowledge about the machines that so permeate our society.

-Zorak

P.S. If we keep adding our two cents to this thread we may be able to generate quite the profit

Ahh common - A barking dog never bites!
and Apple is nothing but a barking dog.

It saddens me that Mac users (being outstandingly gay) have no idea or whatsoever what the hell everybody is talking about.
Tellem unix or linux and they would have no bleeding idea - tellem windows and all they can say is "mac is better than windows - we are reborn users" [/real low sarcastic voice]

now I care no less what those lil' infantile mac users have to say about that great white stuff they call a computer sitting there on their desk, but I do have a complaint about Linux users (being one makes me blush while saying this):

and excuse my ignorance if I'm wrong -
Now why the hell can't I run Mac OS designed software perfectly (natively) on my Linux?
I would love to buy photoshop or mac games and run them on my linux better than a Mac could ever dream of running them - am I missing something out here? (and I assume that I am!)

I wouldn't say that Apple is entirely harmful, but they aren't harmless either, but I guess more than anything, they are just really annoying.

As for the whole OSX/Linux compatibility issue, there are probably some programs out there that address that, but just because both are UNIX variants doesn't necessarily mean that they should be fully compatible with one another. For example, i am not certain, but I don't think you could run linux programs on FreeBSD. Also OSX and its programs were originally written for an entirely different architecture than your standard amd/intel box. Architecture considerations aside, there are also a bunch of extra libraries and things that Apple created for OSX that aren't needed or implemented by Linux (e.g. Cocoa) .

But like I said, there are probably some programs out there that address this compatability issue.

-Zorak

You are spot-on here, the *BSD's have a very light layer of compatibility framework (namely just allowing the kernel to read and execute Linux binaries) to allow them to run nearly all Linux-targeted software with no modification to the code (according to the FreeBSD site, it hovers around 90% of Linux code works fine with no modification).

Also, many of the overlooked low-level apps that ship on Macs are in fact ports or outright copies of Unix/Linux code (as Darwin and the low-level OSX system is Posix-compatible). These include things like less, grep, cat, find, and even bigger systems/apps. I kinda chuckled recently when I overheard a Mac user extolling this great system he just recently discovered for setting up and managing printers that was far superior to anything Windows had to offer. The system? the Common Unix Printing System, or CUPS. The same system that has been in use for years in OSS systems.

Most of the high-level apps, as Zorak so aptly pointed out, are missing system libraries from messaging subsystems to graphical layer libraries. If those could be reproduced or, say, released by Apple under a libre license, it would only be a matter of time before we saw OSX binary compatibility layers such as WINE.

Thanks for the brownie points!

-Zorak

What I hate about Apple isn't the interface, or the hardware. Its the people.
I had to deal with a idiot Mac user a week ago.

She saw me using my laptop to do some stuff in Photoshop and told me that I could work more efficiently and get this, more creatively on a Macbook. So immediately I switch to angry black man, and reply with a scathing "Miss, how the hell does a certain machine allow you to be more creative?" She danced around that issue and kept going on about how the Mac's are simpler and don't crash as much as Windows PC's and the typical Mac evangelist bullshit. So me, being in a enthusiast, begin to dress down the twit about security issues and the like. I told her that there is no god given right to use a PC. Its a god damn privilage. It requires a certain amount of skill and at least some intelligence to work these machines. If you don't know how to use a computer without being swamped by spyware, or click on every fu[b][/b]cking link that you see, then you deserve what ever viruses you get and would probably be better off using a damn Casio than $1000+ equipment.

After saying this, I reached over to her Macbook and proceeded to make it lock up.

And they need to stop equating all PC's to Windows. By the strict definition of the word, a Mac is a PC.

I was using Windows with Photoshop but god forbid if I was using Gimp...

I apologize for the colorful language, but stupidity irks me.