wow, can’t believe so many people misunderstood your dongle point and claim that because they can run XP on their mac it’s really more open? You are actually proving the reverse, that you can run XP and Linux on your Mac only because they are not hardware (dongle) locked.
I have a nice fast computer, easily up to running OSX, the only reason I can’t (legally) is because it’s not got the certain bits of hardware in there that OSX checks for on startup… exactly like a dongle.
Happily dongles are just as crackable as other protection methods, so I can now run OSX on my machine if I ever need to (although still not legally of course).
Oh, and your Mac machine is not special in being able to run multiple OS’s, I have XP and OSX VM’s that run just fine from within Ubuntu.
It’s an interesting question. I’m inclined to agree with most of what you say in the blog post; while you can run OSX on other machines (with effort and unsupported by Apple) and you can build your own machine from scratch, most people don’t do those things… And more importantly, most Apple consumers are buying Apple so that they don’t have to do those things.
I’ve been thinking about a similar issue with regards to web applications and beta. I personally use several beta web apps enough to say I rely on them—particularly the Google software suite. I do this with full knowledge that they could re-design the entire user interface tomorrow, and my only recourse would be to stop using the software or suck it up and deal. In many ways, this is iworse/i than the situation computer owners have with regards to their desktop applications; while you can always choose to continue to run Movable Type 2.6 and not upgrade to 3.0, if Google started charging for gmail tomorrow, I think most users would just start paying.
So why do we care so little about freedom zero? I think we care so little because it’s often easier to pay someone to make your computer work for you than to figure it out yourself. Freedom zero is great, but it won’t magically solve my e-mail needs without some effort on my part. Google is willing to fill those needs in an arrangement that gives me everything I want except software control; that’s good enough for me, and probably good enough for most people.
“You mean I can’t put in any engine? I have to use one specified by the manufacturer. One that fits? That’s proprietary!”
err, but you can, no one stops me from pulling out one engine and putting in another, there’s not clause hidden in the paperwork saying I can’t, there’s no laws saying I can’t drill different holes if the manufacturer has decided to make a proprietary mount, hell there’s nothing stopping me scrapping the engine and strapping a jet engine on the back if I really want to… http://www.ronpatrickstuff.com/
That’s kind of the joy of real physical stuff, it’s nearly impossible to make anything really proprietary as it can always be taken apart and adapted (barring laws put in place to keep patent holders rich), much like OSS.
“why doesn’t anyone give a crap about freedom zero?”
Because life is too short to spend it worrying about running some 10+ year old app on 10+ year old hardware. $100 for an OS upgrade every few years is worthwhile bargain to me. YMMV.
Oh please will all the Mac fanboys just stop. The point is that I cannot run OSX on my PC made from parts I’ve selectively assembled, not that I’ve got the choice to run XP, Vista, Linux on top of their nice shiny cases. The reason why you can run XP on your Mac has nothing to do with Apple being open, but more that they wanted to take business from Microsoft.
I know loads of Unix, Linux and like to work with Terminal. (CLI); the last 10 years of my life I spent programming for Windows (.NET now).
I use a Mac. Why?
Because It just Works™. I can’t stand Windows Vista (I have nothing against MS, in fact we’re just MS Partners as ISVs). But Microsoft’s offer is disgusting for me. I find Vista to be a giant patch over Windows XP, which is a giant patch over 2000, and over NT, and Over ME and over 98 and finally Windows 3.11/0. Go to control panel - fonts to see what I mean.
I understand the new kernel, the new tech, the new new new new… but I don’t buy it.
OS X, with all its faults, its just a Unix on Steroids. You can see what’s happening (if you care).
I’m not going to compare user experiences with either OSes, that’s subjective, but seriously, who cares about Freedom Zero? Do you really care about the computer in your car? about the Firmware in your TV? DVD Player? Microwave? Nah, you don’t. I feel Jeff is bashing Apple for no reason, and masking it with the Freedom Zero stuff.
I usually agree with Jeff, but I don’t truly get this. I’m not an apple fanbot at all, I just like to work with computers, and OS X is the cleanest way to do it I’ve found. Windows for me is just a “container” for Visual Studio
My personal experience with OSS is such that when I hear someone
mention using OSS, I pretty much think “Oh God, you’re gonna be in
hell!”. That is due to my personal experience that the vast majority
of OSS I have dealt with SUCKS! The software SUCKS, the support
SUCKS MORE
Well, I’m going to hell anyways as I’m some sort of atheist, so that doesn’t matter.
Another thing: I don’t see anything that SUCKS with any of my OSS-machines, everything just works. But, well, I am one of those godless persons who somehow are able to read (the manual) when neccessary, or even use Google. It’s a shame that only afterwards I realized that reading your post was not neccessary.
I think most of your OSS-problems are based on the attitude of the component that’s sitting between your chair and the monitor. I recommend getting it fixed, or stay far away from OSS.
What about gaming? Am I the only one who uses his PC primarily for gaming? I assume if you just use mac or linux, you’re not really into playing the latest PC games. Most, if not all, major titles are written to run natively in Windows. For linux or mac, don’t you typically need some sort of virtualization software to run them? At best, you lose some performance. At worst, the game doesn’t like being virtualized (I hear people having tons of problems getting Oblivion to work properly in Linux, for example - you need one version of WINE to fix one problem, but a different version to fix a another problem, so you need to compromise). Consoles are okay, but nothing beats keyboard + mouse for first-person shooters.
Meh. Seriously, true Freedom Zero is almost impossible unless you grab a soldering iron.
You could view the x86 (or PPC or ARM or what-have-you) architecture as a dongle of sorts. I mean how deep do you want to go? Yes, Apple has lock-in for OSX. Thanks to Microsoft giving up on the PPC and Alpha (remember kids?), you have x86 lock in for Windows, which wasn’t always the case. I see the point of having a need for Freedom Zero and … it’s there. Go ahead. No one is stopping you. But the responsibly for managing/building such a code-base/build/distribution/hardware-platform is all yours.
And it has been done. But I think the Arduino is a little too small to put Linux on… But seriously, the REAL concern for Freedom Zero is to have it on large systems. In terms of computing power, this is what most microcontrollers of today were a few decades ago.
Freedom Zero is not a leading edge expectation in computing. It’s a trailing edge expectation.
The great thing about Freedom 0 is when it is properly implemented it’s a great thing. TCP/IP, SMTP, HTTP. Those are all open implementations. They are industry backed (and before that, academically backed) technologies. No one questions if connecting to the internet may or may not work anymore. Open source has excellent support in the server market because there is industry supporting it. And they pay for it.
The bad thing about Freedom 0 is no matter how you cut it it still costs money (someones time is being spent to support a project). I can’t count how many times I’ve looked for a solution on sourceforge only to find out the developer hasn’t made any progress in 3,4 or 5 years. All interest has dried up and the code just sits there. And even though anyone can resume the project, does any honest developer really believe they are going to take on someone else’s leftovers?
And there isn’t any code in OS X that prevents you from running it on a normal PC. its the lack of code that prevents it from running. If you look on the boards its the same complaints: no native support for certain chipsets, soundcards, video cards, wifi, power management. As the crackers have found out its perfectly doable to install and run a retail copy of OS X if you can get a loader that does EFI. You can ask Apple to provide driver support for ASUS, Gigabyte, or MSI hardware but I’m sure you know they aren’t interested in supporting ‘your hardware’.
People could care less about freedom in anything until they are negatively affected by the the lack of it. People will gladly and happily give over any form of freedom in exchange for shiny bits and a false sense of security. Whether it’s an OS or Homeland Security, they love it until they hate it.
Also, sadly, if you look at the greatest wonders of the world, the most incredible feats of building, you’ll notice that a large majority of them came about because of the will of a single tyrant, dictator, pharaoh or king. A single, crushing vision brings something to the table that a democratic group rarely matches. iPhone vs. Windows Mobile.
Charlie: You’re right about the fps mouse keyboard. But, I never liked those fps’s too much anyways. At least I can have operating systems on my home-computers that really work well IMO. I’ll pay the price of playing on Xbox360 and getting used to the controller
P.S. It is possible to play some Windows-games on GNU/Linux systems with Wine/Cedega (dunno about OSX), but personally I don’t think it’s worth the trouble. Maybe you’ll just have to wait for game-studios to release their fps-titles on other OS’s more often (there actually already is some rare examples of such behaviour).
The argument is lost on most people. It’s the same argument as liberty vs “security” – the US has already devolved into a police state and the citizenry doesn’t care.
That’s nothing new. It reminds me of the “when they came for X, I didn’t speak up because I’m not an X… when they came for me, nobody was left to speak up for me” quote.
People won’t complain until it really hurts them personally, and by then it will be too late to change things without major pain, suffering, disruption and loss.
People also have almost no ability to plan for the future, especially in today’s instant gratification hyper-consumerism. They have no conception of the fact that 20 years from now, UNLIKE with what they write on paper (all the mac zealots with their pen and paper strawman arguments above really need to take a valium and learn to separate their self-worth from their computing platform of choice), they may not be able to access any of the digital artifacts they create and buy today.
I mean, people today have no conception that their $40,000 credit card debts and scam mortgages that are as big as their entire life incomes will ruin the rest of their lives, how can we expect them to have the forethought and insight to understand what Freedom 0 is about?
And a final flame for the mac trolls: Apple hardware is a dongle for OSX and all software that runs on OSX. The fact that you can crack OSX and run it on non-Apple hardware is irrelevant and beside the point. With sufficient effort, you can crack any software and run it without the dongle.
… At least until the hypervisor is embedded in the hardware and even the BIOS has to be cryptographically signed and verified before booting. And that’s already halfway there in the server space. And when that happens in the consumer space, that’s when it really starts to hurt. (See above for the police state bit, and read up on your world history if you are unable to grasp the point.)
