Apple just caught up to the notion.

Oh, wait. I was thinking of that kid with the blanket in It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.


Who's Linux again?

Linux is the BEST OS around. Stable, responsive, "muscular". I have NEVER had a crash on my Linux machine,NEVER. I have no anti-virus software because Linux is so well designed. It is open source, meaning improvements come from dedicated lovers of the system. Household name? Like Microsoft, or Apple or Mac? No, but name recognition has little to do with quality computing. Orrex, you obviously don't know anything about Linux, Ubuntu, RedHat, etc. If you did, you would never have made such a shallow judgment about the VERY BEST OS in existence. And, I have NEVER had to pay for a single update or new install of any Linux software. If I were good enough at coding, I could design my own software as well. Apple is 20 years behind the times. And consumer/users like Orrex are so confused they say dumb things about the real number 1!!! I giggle at you and your consumer value system. (Teh Stoopid! It BURNS!!!) Don't fear the penguin!

They make Apple cultists seem calm and reasonable by comparison.

Linux Zealots are almost as absurd as OS Ostriches with their heads firmly planted in the sand.

If you find such a person, by all means let me know.

After all the fore runner of OSX was NeXT.

A NeXT Computer and its object oriented development tools and libraries were used by Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau at CERN to develop the world's first web server software, CERN HTTPd, and also used to write the first web browser, WorldWideWeb.

and you are 20 years behind the times.

OSX is built on Unix not Linux. Linux is Unix like but not actually Unix. Android is Linux based though.

And that's why there's GNU tools found in the terminal.app in OS X. Its also the reason why I switched to Mac. I can do my Linux/Unix thing and have a well engineered machine and well engineered OS.

Its also part of the reason Apple can offer Mavericks for "free." Yeah the quotes are on purpose, they still get paid at the end of the day. I can't put Mavericks on a hackintosh, so its not "free" in that sense.

&quot W)e are pleased to announce that Mac OS X Mountain Lion has achieved certification to The Open Group UNIX® 03 standard, which is the mark for systems conforming to the Single UNIX Specification, Version 3.

The Single UNIX Specification is an open specification that defines the set of required interfaces for a conformant UNIX system. Support for the Single UNIX Specification permits wide portability of applications between compliant and compatible operating systems."

Puts it in the same league as Solaris, HPUX, and AIX.

http://blog.opengroup.org/2012/07/25/apple-registers-mac-os-x-10-8-mountain-lion-to-the-unix-03-standard/

Awesome. Still it is based off FOSS, which is my point. Linux and BSD, before it, pioneered the concept. "UNIX" is a commercial enterprise, BSD is not, OS X is a branch of BSD, which is a branch of Unix.

My point still stands, major operating systems have been free long before Apple doing it.

Don't get me wrong, I love that Mavericks is free, and it is noteworthy that its free given Apple's slice of the computing pie that are not servers is much larger than Linux and BSD combined. Its a good move on Apple's part and gets us closer to a better computing happy place.

Of course, OS X isn't really any "freer" an OS now - it's just no-cost, free-as-in-beer, gratis. It's not free-as-in-speeh, libre, like Linux or BSD, or Darwin for that matter. Important distinction there.

And while I do like it and think it's a perfectly reasonable and sustainable practice for Apple, as well as any other systems vendors, I don't see Microsoft ever doing anything like this.

They're a software company after all. Sure they have a few hardware ventures, like the XBox, but their bread and butter is software that runs on PC clones.

Apple, on the other hand, has always sold the software and hardware as a package. They have that to rely on. Furthermore through the iDevices line they have other revenue streams that allow this move. And lastly, they have shifted, successfully, to selling a brand over an actual product. They aren't selling just devices, but a way of life.

You are correct that this is a free-as-in-beer move. You're getting the beer for free, but you have to buy the glass from Apple. Their profit margin won't be affected by this in the least. I could see the move coming as the price of OS X has been dropping steadily over the last few iterations. I'm sure you weren't surprised by the move either.

But that's cause I was writing a USB driver for a home-made USB device and screwed up

Apple's declining fortunes reversed when they built over BSD. Without those software commies at the FSF the corporate ideal of computing would have been quite different and much less usable.

This is hardly revolutionary. To Apple the os is an accessory to support the hardware sale. Heck Toyota even throws in a "free" set of mud flaps too once you buy the car...

Dang, I got ripped off worse than I realized!

Perhaps times have changed. It sucks to realize I am well down the path on my transformation into a greybeard.

If they're too cheap to add a couple hundred $$'s of accessories, then I walk away. But both times it worked.

...except for that short, misguided era under Scully.

...and it looks like a waste basket.

"Don't use those around cigarette smokers. They'll leave their butts in it."

it will actually kinda look like one too!

Make fun of Apple all you want but it's America's greatest company building truly wonderful products.

I am not counting that refurbished ipod with the defective battery that never worked for me.

to Google. More metadata than the NSA.

All Siri requests are stored at Apple HQ for up to two years.

http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2013/04/siri-two-years/

Couldn't imagine the NSA not wanting that data, too.

If you're paranoid about the NSA, use a secure Linux distro, never connect to the internet, and never talk on the phone.

roll eyes or poke fun, can't one?


(Rest assured, I am a BIG fan of Apple. Ditched my Commodore 64, and later the KayPro, for the first Apples. I got to shake Steve Jobs hand at a BCC conference when he introduced LISA in 1983. My only regret is not having enough money to invest in early Apple stock!)

Right under the bench seat were the massive A/C to D/C transformers... and quite a bit of R/F radiation (think microwave).

So... if he wants children... don't sit on the Cray-1 (I think this was a Cray-1S).

(For those that keep track... my first Cray was Serial number 7)

Faster speed...more battery--- a couple of changes to Finder.... so far so good.

AFAIK it's only distributed as an upgrade to an existing OSX install, so you need a system running it. It may be possible to run 10.6 (Snow Leopard) in VirtualBox and then install .9 on top of that, but I don't know what kind of checks the App Store runs. Vendor lock-in, ain't it great?

Fear not the penguin.

I run them on my Windows PC.

No? Then I guess it's free just like the "free" engine that came with my $24,000 car.

see tonymacX86.com

* with purchase of a massively overpriced Mac.

Buy a Mac Laptop for only $3000 and get the Operating System FREE*!

*OS cannot be used on any other laptop

Includes "I'm in a cult" Apple shaped window sticker!

Here's one place to start.

http://nofilmschool.com/build-a-hackintosh/

The one where you have to pay a monthly fee for software - and when you stop, everything you've created with it is worthless?

They're giving extortion a bad name.

I do love my MacBook but for what this damn thing cost I BETTER get free software for life!

I went ahead and signed up at the $30 a month for former CS users rate.

I'm rarely the guy who complains about software fees, but when the year is up, I plan to negotiate with them, like I do with my cable company.

A $50 rent on software is too damn high.

I saw this coming when Adobe bought Macromedia during the Dubya Era, when antitrust enforcement was all but non-existent.

If you store them locally, as most people do, they will remain.

Adobe's Creative Cloud is great, and MUCH cheaper than buying the whole software suite.

and your subscription lapses, you won't be able to open it again. No matter where it resides.

I own Photoshop at home and use Adobe CC at work.

Are you saying a PSD I create with Photoshop CC will self-destruct if my work lets the subscription lapse?

What about the thousands of PSD's I've sent to clients? Will they stop working? I doubt it.

I'd love to see a link on the subject.

Edit: Just did some quick research. PSD's produced w/ Photoshop CC will remain if your subscription lapses, just like any other file. You just can't open these psd's with Photoshop CC since you don't have Photoshop CC any more. Gimp, or other versions of Photoshop will open them just fine. I didn't think I was wrong about this.

if Photoshop CC has new features not present in older desktop versions?

Of course the documents won't self-destruct. You'll just have to pay whatever Adobe's currently asking to be able to open them (unless you save them in an older format, and toss any work you've done with new features).

They have users by the nads.

Files don't store "features", they store data. CS4 will open psd's created by CS6, The document might be missing fonts and effects, but it's been like that since the first version of Photoshop. It has exactly nothing to do with the big, scary "cloud".

People don't like Adobe Creative Cloud because it represents the beginning of the end of Photoshop piracy.

It hasn't "been like that since the first version of Photoshop". If you bought the first version of Photoshop, you could open documents you created with it - with fonts and effects - indefinitely.

Now, to open what you've created with Photoshop CC, you not only need to keep paying indefinitely but Adobe can charge you whatever they want. And do you honestly believe they'll make CC PSDs open at all with older versions of Photoshop in the future? Why on Earth would they?

"People don't like Adobe Creative Cloud because it represents the beginning of the end of Photoshop piracy." Ironically, the opposite is true. Hackers have broken into the Adobe website and stolen Adobe source code. Try googling 'free Photoshop download', and you'll see...there's a Renaissance of piracy underway.

GIMP is the solution to any nad grabbing that Adobe is doing/has tried to do on its customers. It's well designed, completely free, available on just about any platform, and has most if not all the tools that most users need.

That was the figure at the time of posting, anyway: http://www.change.org/petitions/adobe-systems-incorporated-eliminate-the-mandatory-creative-cloud-subscription-model

except for most people who work for a living.

think i'll bring that up in the daily meeting. I don't know why we're wasting time building and deploying windows 7 systems when we can just be handing out ipads.

Most computing these days are messages/web access to smartphones in the fields. It's unlikely delivery guys/field workers use a computer, most likely to use a phone, tablet or custom handheld device.

Desktop computing is here to stay.

Most discussion of smartphones and tablets outselling desktops seem to have this batshit implication that people are only buying one or the other.

To those people, the fact that I bought a tablet a couple weeks ago, but haven't purchased a desktop in years (because the one I got in 2010 is still humming along just fine doing things that would melt a typical tablet, thankyouverymuch) implies that I've Made The Move To Tablets or something like that, which is beyond silly.

Last computer I had built locally, and told them to just keep the XP operating system. Just didn't want to pay for another goddam license, and anyway Vista (which was new at the time) is worse than XP for my needs.

-- Mal

Sweet!

because you will need to pay a premium for the privilege of a free OS.

That is Apple's logic, defended by shills like the OP.

On both points.

Apple's making such obscene profits off the mobile hardware division (and I'm sure a healthy margin on the computers, as well), they can afford to simply eat the cost of the software and call it a day. At the end of the year, the $100mil extra profit that they haven't realized is a small loss compared to the buzz going "free" generates.

I use a MacBook, love it actually, but I'm not under any impression that Apple is some benevolent almighty Cathedral Of Innovation.

[link:http://www.tomshardware.com/news/apple-mac-pro-thermal-core,24810.html|

the retina ipad mini myself! Mavericks can wait; I don't like to load the newest OS the first week...or month.

Of course, I could be imputing motive wrongly. Maybe the author just missed the last twenty years of computing history. Or has Apple shares.

In other news, Tesla Motors just invented electric cars.

Thank you for the post.

Apple can afford a loss leader, but the vast majority of even Mac users are still dependent on Apple to run their expensive computers.

I'm not criticizing Apple--just pointing out the hilarious overreach of the subject line.

No parts, incompatible with new OS's. So they wind up in the landfill leeching lead into the groundwater. Bad Apple!

I had an Apple II, loved it. When they built the Mac with no slots, I got a PC because I wanted control over what video card and what sound card I installed.

All these years Apple's new OS's were incompatible with old machines and old software, so every time you wanted to upgrade you lost all your old application software too.

With Linux the upgrades to the OS's and the applications are free.

With Windows most applications are compatible even with the 10-year-old XP OS.

The Mac changed all that. Jobs was a control freak.

There were a few later Macs that had slots, but they were a bewildering array of constantly shifting and mutually incompatible models, so the market for used machines could never get organized.

Or do have to upgrade to Snow Leopard 10.6? Maybe it's too old to handle 10.9?

Leopard and Snow Leopard are pre-installing over the Internet era.

And you probably it's probably not suggested for a low end six year old Mac anyway:

Mac mini (Early 2009 or newer)
http://www.apple.com/osx/specs

...biggest advertising machine and data collector in human history.

m-kay. Wake me when I can install that on hardware that I can buy for 1/2 the price.

Your mileage may vary.

i don't know all the details, i just found out about it a while ago while looking for used laptops on ebay.