Joshua, that’s what a dongle is. It’s a piece of hardware that is necessary for a piece of software to run. The whole point of the article is that if you go to the store and buy a copy of OS X, you can’t do anything with it if you don’t have Mac hardware, even though you may have a computer that could run it (i.e. has an Intel processor)
I’m not sure why I should give a crap. The only people who lose freedom are those who don’t buy the Mac hardware. They don’t force anything on anyone.
Complaining about that you are forced to buy a Mac to run OS/X is like complaining that you are forced to buy Windows to run Internet Explorer.
To everyone saying the Mac is not a dongle:
You’ve got it backwards. It doesn’t matter that the Mac can run Windows and Linux. The point is that other manufacturers’ computers can’t run OS X.
To clarify, the Mac is the dongle to allow you to run Mac OS X. You cannot (particularly feasibly) run Mac OS X on a Dell, for instance. Because you don’t have the dongle: the Mac.
emAlso, nobody seems to care that iPods only work with iTunes. If I buy an overpriced Mp3-Player should’nt it be my choice which software I use? It’s not like you cant just plug any other Mp3-Player into an USB-Port and start transfering files./em
This is not meant to be some sort of snarky come back, but you can install open source firmware (Rockbox) on your iPod. I mention it because it leads to another reason a lot of people don’t care about Freedom 0. I may be working on a closed system, but there are plenty of people working on ways to open it up. Whether it’s using Rockbox, jailbreaking the iPhone, playing games with WINE, we can probably break out of our box. It may be a pain in the ass, but dealing with open source software can be a pain in the ass as well. (This is implied in the post, the idea that closed systems work with a “minimum of fuss”.)
The first paragraph of the preceding was a quote. Apologies.
Mac is THE ONLY hardware on this planet that offers the freedom to run Mac OS (of course), Windows, Linux their corresponding software! How is that for being restrictive?
The real dongle are proprietary formats. If you use LaTeX, HTML, or other mark-up for writing, you could switch to any computer, os, and editor combination and still access your document. I wish it was as easy to create and edit a proprietary “database.” It’s possible, but not easy.
I guess the income from the blog ads hasn’t been doing so well. Thankfully you can always use the John C. Dvorak method of pageview generation to bump the numbers up.
“…hypnotized into accepting old software designs as if they were facts of nature. Linux is a superbly polished copy of an antique…”
Does he realize the OS X /iPhone is BSD unix-based? Jaron Lanier is a left-over talking head from the 90s. What has this guy done? Why is his opinion relevant to anyone?
The fact that some( certainly not all ) proprietary software is so innovative and polished is simple. People are PAID a LOT of money to develop it, and make it the best. And it is successful, because users will pay a LOT of money to have neat stuff. It’s called capitalism and market forces.
I think most people using or writing open source software are not doing so to bring down Microsoft or stick it to the man, or other nonsense. They are doing so out of the love of it. Why else would people work for free? There is no hippie/communistic conspiracies, just people creating and sharing stuff.
Seems like this point has already been brought up, but there’s no harm in reiterating.
OS X is based on free software. Just, non-copyleft free software. They care about free software insofar as they can use it in their operating system, Apple just doesn’t give a damn about passing those freedoms on to its users.
Just because somebody poured a lot of money into one good system, and another bad system was built for free doesn’t mean that “all systems built for free are bad.”
Really, what matters is not the philosophy but the people behind it and the effort put in. Apple has great people who put in a lot of effort. Other companies have not-so-great people who put in less effort. And some open source projects have brilliant people who put in a lot of effort.
There’s plenty of innovation in the open source world. There are definite usability features that GNOME had before Mac OS had them. And although it’s kind of primitive at this point, GNOME does have the Online Desktop model that isn’t really anywhere else.
Ruby is an open source programming language, and Rails is an open-source product, and those are both pretty innovative.
It has nothing to do with the process, it only has to do with the people.
-Max
Apple is selling solutions, sexiness, flair, and a software/hardware platform that is clearly the favorite of many. How it goes about it is, like many other companies’ practices, what people find objectionable.
Every day we lose freedoms: in elementary schools, the vaccines our babies must take, Bill of Rights, how much shampoo we can take on an airplane. There is no Freedom 0, except when you turn the machine off.
If the open source people could EVER get it together… Downloaded Ubuntu with great hopes but the installer failed. Why bother?
I guess the last computer I really enjoyed was the Amiga…
People couldn’t care less about freedom zero. Only a handful of people really realize what they’re bying off the shelves, they’re not committed to the crap they buy. It’s just crap.
If enough people would give a notion to freedom zero, i’m sure that someone like Apple would be among the first to start producing freedom zero products.
It’s all about demand and people are more interested in quick-fix diets that give you the feeling of “it just works” rather than anything that would require them to make an effort for something.
We, people, are suckers for things that just works, even if it comes with the cost of a little bit of freedom. And what comes to freedom zero, there’s always a button to switch-off the dongle and go do something else. That’s just enough freedom, atleast for me.
Sure I have no freedom to run OSX on anything other than a Mac but I’m fine with that. Why? Because I don’t give a crap about OSX. It’s just the operating system. All the things I really care about are open source applications which run just fine on OSX. The day they don’t will be the day my Mac becomes a paperweight and Steve won’t ever see another dollar from me after that.
I have no idea how the apple fanboys find every single pseudo anti-apple post on the web, and manage to put some crazy argument supporting apple’s policies.
To most of these the content of the post seem irrelevant, and all that matters seem to be only that someone’s saying something that kinda looks anti-apple. (P.S: I am writing this from a windows pc, coz I can’t afford a mac, coz I am a loser, coz I am stupid etc… - just bashing myself and saving the “fanboys” the trouble).
anyway, now that I have vented some of my irritation, I really think that the issue you raise, “lack of freedom 0”, is something that is mostly ignored and sidelined and is something that has to be discussed a lot more.
Until Vista, there has always been a commercial alternative (albeit a lousy one) to a locked down like MacOSX. It’s been over a year, and I can’t get myself to upgrade to Vista (although I got it free with my laptop). What is the alternative for the normal pc user?
“I have no idea how the apple fanboys find every single pseudo anti-apple post on the web”
Well, you see they have stuff that just works. Leaves you with plenty of spare time 
I just had to, i’m sorry.
It depends on what you define as “Freedom.” The Freedom 0 philosophy is too vague to say people don’t care about it, people do, but “freedom” is relative… I don’t care if you feel a Mac lets you have Freedom for your purposes, it does for me and mine.
“Any purpose” is just that – “Any purpose” (relative to the person using it.) For me, I feel I have far more freedom on my Mac than I do my Windows or Linux PC’s. Not because of any license agreement or hardware but instead of because what I define as freedom in relation to an OS.
For a lot of people, myself included, that freedom is simplicity and usability. Why should usability not be a part of the “freedom to have or do X.” I use a Mac at work and at home because of my personal habits and my uses for a computer OS (I don’t give a crap about the hardware, really.) Those personal habits and goals, for the most part, mean keeping the OS the hell out of the way and letting me get things done. I also require a shell. For me Windows doesn’t have the former and Cygwin just doesn’t cut it for the latter and is a sort of leaky cauldron solution – I needed something else.
From a Windows PC I moved to Ubuntu when it came out, and life was pretty good, but the UI was a little clunky for my taste so I moved to an Intel based Mac… It solves my problems and that is ultimately what a computer is here do to: make life easier and solve problems – Not freedom from proprietary devices or licenses.
First and foremost a computer is a tool, one that should work well. Working well is infinitely relative and will forever remain so and so is what people consider “freedom.” Freedom is a very hard thing to ultimately and globally define. Some people feel quite free on a Mac (me) others feel very unfree (you.) Everything is relative.
So… can I run my windows on a Whatever Processor? Is Intel Processor hardware dongle for windows?
This post is beyond silly.
Jeff,
your statements are right-on. I was a huge Apple fan in the Apple II days. The Apple II was the prototype for the computer that won the computer revolution…unfortunately for Apple, that company that made the revolutionary computer was IBM. In 1984 Apple gave us the Third Reich of Computers: one computer, one computer company, one fuhrer. The irony of Apple’s 1984 ad is staggering. A common theme among Apple fanboys seems to be slavery is freedom - where have I heard that slogan before?
Sounds more like people trying to justify spending too much money or people feeling duped that Apple made them think buying their computer would make them cool, hip, and sexy. The Mac is a dandy kick-butt overpriced machine. The point of your article is totally missed by the Apple fanboys. After reading some of the Apple fanboy comments - I think some of these people need to realize Apple can only dream of having a 10% market share. Apple dominates 3% of the market (although I think it is down to about 2.3% worldwide) - get over yourselves - about 97% of PC-type computer work is done on non-Apple hardware and there are many times more non-Apple PC’s that just work than there are Apple machines in existence…this is taking into consideration all the problems in the non-locked-down-non-Apple world). The Mac eats nothing except your money - and for some people, their brains. The only reason OS X doesn’t run on any Intel PC is Apple will not let you. If you want to run Unix-type or Windows software you can get more powerful machines for far less money if you buy Non-Apple machines(and the market share for pure Apple software does not rise about the noise level). The irony of Apple market sharing growing because Apple computers run Windows is about staggering as the Apple 1984 ad. I was there - for years Apple told us Windows was crap and now the only reason Apple is viable is Apple runs Windows.
This was a computer philosophy debate and it seems those that buy expensive devices to be hip and cool don’t like to operate on the philosophic level - unless Apple creates a commercial that tells them philosophy is cool.
Why choose open source over proprietary when you can always download the crack to the latest versions of proprietary apps?
IMHO, you get the best of both worlds.
open source code is for geeks who never get laid.