[Remind-Fans] The Apple Stance [warning: long]

[Dougie Lawson]

On 18 May 2010 03:22, David F. Skoll <dfs at roaringpenguin.com> wrote:

> Apple directly opposes and threatens the hacker culture.
> (Well... Apple is a big company, and big companies are always
> multi-faceted, so I'm sure there are many open-source and
> hacker-friendly people in Apple.  I'm referring here to the direction
> in which Steve Jobs is taking the company.)
>
> Apple seeks to create a walled garden of locked-down gadgets,
> Apple-approved applications and even Apple-approved development
> methodologies.  It seeks to exclude contentious or "obscene" content,
> and it can terminate your right to sell applications on its platforms
> at its pleasure.
>

I'm another tinkerer. I started playing with
transistor/capacitor/resistor/diode/LED based ciruits when I was about
twelve (1975) then graduated from that to building a Sinclair ZX80 (in 1980
it was £49.99 for the kit or £99.99 for the ready built machine so we saved
that £50 and learned more with a hot soldering iron). Later I built a
Microtan 65 (6502 based) micro and learned machine code on it. My twin is
also a tinkerer and has worked in harware/software manufacturing since he
graduated university 1984.

The problem I see (I work for a large American mainframe manufacturer (the
one that letter to the right ot HAL)) is that Microsoft, Apple and  my
employer are that they're not teaching enough graduates to tinker, they're
also trying to make the computer into a commodity like a TV or a washing
machine or a vacuum cleaner. They are also companies that are more focussed
on profit than product. There's now too many sales folk who wouldn't be able
to debug a program for all the tea in China, they don't understand the 1s
and 0s and getting them back in the right order. I've worked with mainframe
database and transaction management systems since 1982. I'm a massive fan of
Linux and I dislike spending money on software.

I admire your stance against Apple but I suspect it's probably like King
Canute and his desire to turn back the tide.

Regards, Dougie.
-- 
http://twitter.com/DougieLawson
http://facebook.com/Dougie1963
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