Disenchanted with Windows & Linux

Many years ago, after I got out of college, I owned a series of Macs. I liked the Mac back then because it was just simple to use, and I didn't want to deal with all the hbuttles of owning a PC i.e. no software, awkward filenames, msdos crap.

Eventually I became disenchanted with the Mac however for a number of reasons.

For instance, Apple had some terrible policies regarding software development for the Mac, e.g. you had to pay a lot of money to join up and write software using their development system. For a hobby programmer, that was simply unacceptable. It seemed Apple wanted total control.

Around 1994 I discovered Linux, which had a lot of promise, and I ended up using it for years, just working around its many inconveniences. But as time pbutted it became sadly apparently that regardless of the lofty ethos of "anybody can change the system", the reality is that control of the key elements: kernel and the major GUIs (KDE and Gnome) is in the hands of a few unelected people, maybe 30 at most. They don't take input and they have their opinions which are not open to discussion. If you want to change something that is not trivial, you're out of luck. It's the same old "we know what's good for you" atbreastude that you see from Microsoft and Apple and other Unixes.

Then I looked at Windows, which has become half-decent, even if Microsoft is a very disturbing company just like most big companies are when you get a close look at them, however there's no Unix OS underneath Windows and no way to rectify that. Windows is and will always be junk for business people and newbies.

Now I find myself thinking of the Mac again, but I'm not convinced that Apple has changed at all.

The cost to join the Developer Connection is still a large $500, which a hobbyist ought not have to pay, or for their premier membership it's a mbuttive $3500.

Cost was another reason I dumped the Mac. But even today the powerbook is a huge $1500 whereas my very fast and similarly well-built PC laptop was $500. (The ibook is, in my opinion, junky compared to my $500 PC laptop.)

Thus Apple's computers are unfortunately still the "rich man's toys" that they always were beginning with the early Mac. When the Mac was the "only game in town" for a GUI-based computer, they could get away with high prices. But today? The argument falls flat.

So I guess I am disenchanted still with Apple. I don't think they want to increase their market share any more than BMW does. They're happy making computers for a rich elite and for a captive publishing market.