da9000 wrote:
Hans_ wrote:
I've never liked: the closed system approach, and locking in to Apple products. Locking in to Apple doesn't seem to have changed, just look at things such as the iPod and iPhone. Both are locked in to Apple services (or Apple sanctioned AT&T).
Hmmmm, so Hans, how's that different than the Amiga? Did Commodore go around giving the source to Kickstart to everyone? Last I've heard, it's still illegal to have a copy unless you own a real chip. And the company has been dead for 10+ years!
As for the "lock-down", I chose the lesser of the two evils: Compare Apple's lock-down to Microsoft's. Microsoft wrote the freagging book on this subject! Most people don't know that when they're buying a PC to run Linux on it, they are STILL PAYING MICROSOFT money for a copy of Windows. Don't talk to me about lock-down.
Lastly, I'd rather be locked down in an awesome environment such as the one Apple provides, then a Microsoft hell.
To put it more visually, would you like to be locked down in a Swedish prison with hot blondes, or a Turkish prison with man-friendly guards? I picked the first, you pick your favorite.
I feel I should add to this also, When M$ want to lock down a system... they will invent a new format, which one then needs to reverse engineer in order to be compatible with... When apple choose to lock down a system they take a format that already has multiple vendor support... and or is an agreed standard.
I'm not sure exactly just how locked in you are with Apple products either... If I encode a video or some music in wmv or wma... then I've locked into windows only platforms... if I encode the same files in mp4/AAC (as promoted by Apple)... then I can run them on a Mac, iPhone, most *nixes, Windows, Windows Mobile... etc... to me that seems less of a ventor lock in...
Apple's Webkit (the basis of their Web Browser) is also opensource... being ported to AROS as we speak by Robert Norris... used by various other vendors to provide html support in their products... that seems quite open...
Every Mac you can buy comes with gcc... plenty of dev tools and an SDK... seems rather open to me... You don't get that with Windows out of the box.
Even the MacOS X Kernel is free and open source... not so much of a lock in there...
Ok you want to run MacOS X... you have to buy an apple box... but if you want full support for your Windows Box... you have to go to a system vendor too (Dell, HP etc...)... just the same, except, the people who made the OS have no idea about the hardware and the people who made the Hardware have no idea about the OS... that's a great situation to be in, I'm sure!
How is the iPod locked to apple services? I had an iPod for a year an a half, without having an iTunes account, all the music on there was from my CD collection. That iTunes easily imported onto my computer for me (getting CD names and everything) in one click...When I finally got an iTunes account, the service was so good that I use it all the time... it even automatically added album art work to my existing collection... Apple's lock in here, is a damn fine service...
Ok, rant over...
