On Sat, 2007-02-24 at 02:52 +1100, Steffen Kluge wrote: > Please don't take this post as a pro-Apple rant, I was just trying to > express that people (other than just ESR) can become frustrated at > various aspects of a home computing environment that doesn't give the > user a star to steer by but seems to be chaotic and rudderless all > the time. I will certainly keep open-minded and closely follow the > Fedora project. I would tend to agree with you, if I hadn't had major run-ins with Apple Inc. back in the very early eighties. Sure, good software (albeit expensive) and good hardware (albeit expensive, half stolen and the closed)... it's the company's Gestapo mindset pathology that I have major experience, and resultant concerns, with. I started the Bay Area Apple Users Group, in the Johnston Space Center area south of Houston, TX. We grew to 150 members, which is darn respectable for a local user group of any kind. Apple Inc. started up the "Apple Core" national Apple, Inc. coordinated user group, complete with a slick magazine. I got a letter from them demanding I enroll my group into their fold, or suffer a lawsuit demanding I remove the word "Apple" from our user group name, and that I would be personally sued. Enrolling the group would have entailed me collecting dues to forward to them. WTF? We had no dues, I set it up that way and that was all there was to it. So, I wrote back to them, threatening to boycott their local dealer, and to contact the local news media to publicize our action and the reasons why. I noted that we had Astronauts and their family members in our group (remember Lord British??) so if they thought for a moment that they would survive that kind of press, to bring it on. A few years later, when I checked with each of our members, they had moved onto the IBM XT. Everyone of them. I did as well. I laughed my ass of while watching the Apple ][ become the Apple ]I[, the Lisa, the Mac, the Mac Plus, and at each stage the former user got blown completely off. Every time. That is their pathology. They maintain complete control over hardware and when the next new thing comes along, the old platform is tossed over the side with alarming speed, and their users with it. It's all about the "Vision of Jobs", and buttkiss to their user/customer base. My first Apple product was one of the garage built machines, so I have watched them for a long long time. Great system, great OS, abusive corporate ethics. according to my perspectives, Ric -- ================================================ My father, Victor Moore (Vic) used to say: "There are two Great Sins in the world... ..the Sin of Ignorance, and the Sin of Stupidity. Only the former may be overcome." R.I.P. Dad. Linux user# 44256 Sign up at: http://counter.li.org/ http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/oar http://www.wayward4now.net ================================================
