Interesting People mailing list archives
a personal rant on Apple and their customer nasty behavior
From: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Thu, 17 Jul 2008 16:44:53 -0700
________________________________________ From: James Love [james.love () cptech org] Sent: Thursday, July 17, 2008 6:51 PM To: David Farber Cc: ip Subject: Re: [IP] Re: a personal rant on Apple and their customer nasty behavior I would agree with the general sentiments expressed by Dave Crocker. Apple has undermined openness in several important ways. For example, Apple has not supported open document formats in it's otherwise excellent office productivity software, iWork. And, in a number of ways, Apple seems to want to undermine Linux. For example, Apple has not released a version of iTunes for Linux. I don't think Mac OsX out of the box reads data from a mounted Linux Ext3 formatted drive. And, it is difficult to migrate data from the new Mac OS mail client to other mail clients. I do think, however, that Linux has improved quite a bit as a client operating system. One year ago, frustrated by Apple's lack of support for ODF in iWork, I switched to a Dell laptop running Ubuntu (sold pre-installed by Dell*). I am currently using Ubuntu 8.04, having easily upgraded twice using the standard Ubuntu install disks. For a lot of readers of your list, Ubuntu today would be an excellent choice, and its getting better (slicker, easier and more fun to use) quite fast. OpenOffice, while it takes some getting used to, has improved considered in the most recent releases, including the new OpenOffice Database program. The main Ubuntu mail clients, such as Evolution, work fine. Firefox looks and works great on Linux. Adobe's flash and acrobat readers work fine. A quick visit to Medibuntu and you can have all sorts of audio visual programs working just fine. There remain some issues in terms functionality that will deter some users, but I would encourage more people to give Ubuntu a look, if you can get the Ubuntu install to work with your video and sound cards. (It does install very well on Intel Macs, by the way, including as a dual booting computer). Jamie --------------- *About a decade after this request: http://lists.essential.org/1998/info-policy-notes/msg00007.html On Thu, 2008-07-17 at 02:39 -0700, David Farber wrote:
________________________________________ From: Dave Crocker [dhc2 () dcrocker net] Sent: Wednesday, July 16, 2008 1:58 PM To: David Farber Cc: ip Subject: Re: [IP] a personal rant on Apple and their customer nasty behavior David Farber wrote:Why oh why do I deal with these people. As soon as there is real competition I don't intend to .But Dave, Apple's model is to ensure the most complete lock-in they can achieve. This means that once you choose to go with their products, you really have little -- and in the case of the iPhone, no -- choices. In other words, Dave, if you want competition, you have to leave the Apple sphere. This is, for me, the one compelling reason to stay with Windows for now, and move to Linux whenever its set of applications get wide enough to support serious desktop business use. (No, it is not there yet. For example, I cannot do native synchronization with my PDA.) And it is why I do not have a phone with hardware or service lock-in. Lock-in encourages poor vendor service and customer service arrogance. If you don't like it, then don't subordinate yourself to it. d/ -- Dave Crocker Brandenburg InternetWorking bbiw.net ------------------------------------------- Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/247/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/247/ Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
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Current thread:
- a personal rant on Apple and their customer nasty behavior David Farber (Jul 16)
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- Re: a personal rant on Apple and their customer nasty behavior David Farber (Jul 16)
- Re: a personal rant on Apple and their customer nasty behavior David Farber (Jul 17)
- Re: a personal rant on Apple and their customer nasty behavior David Farber (Jul 17)
- a personal rant on Apple and their customer nasty behavior David Farber (Jul 17)
- Re: a personal rant on Apple and their customer nasty behavior David Farber (Jul 30)
- Re: a personal rant on Apple and their customer nasty behavior David Farber (Jul 31)
- Re: a personal rant on Apple and their customer nasty behavior David Farber (Jul 31)