Of course it probably helps that I’m careful in what I buy, having had lots of experience in desktop/laptop Linux for 10+ years. That might be the difference between our experiences.

Automobile analogies are popular, so I’ll use one of those :-). Think of it like buying a car. A Linux car can be taken to a network of garages and service centers, all of whom have the spare parts and complete diagrams on how to fix the car.

Your Apple car, although very nice looking, can only be taken to an Apple ™ service center. Nowhere else. For everyone else the hood is welded firmly shut. If the Apple service center decides they don’t support your model of car anymore, then that’s just tough luck. If it doesn’t drive any more then you’ll just have to write it off, or buy a new one. I’m sure the Apple dealership would be happy to sell you a new one :-).

My Linux car can be fixed anywhere. Which more accurately describes the real world of automobiles to you ? It amazes me that people put up with restrictions on their computers that they’d never accept on any other device they own. I need to get work done too – and it’s too important to bet continuing that work on the good behaviour of companies that don’t often show it.

After all, that was the reason behind Rob’s initial post :-). Enjoy your Mac. For now..

I’m not a fan of Google, but even I’m not willing to throw them under the bus just yet.  Heck, instead of killing Sparrow, what if they are going to change the GMail interface to resemble it?  I hope so – we switch to GMail at work and the web interface is godawful, cluttered and limited compared to traditional clients with dragging and dropping of attachments, keyboard shortcuts, interface element manipulation…  I feel like I’ve gone back to email in the 90′s….  cc:Mail had more functionality…

But they didn’t.  So it still was a brilliant move :-)

Linux is only not a “Jail” by your narrow definition if you are willing and/or able to take your own software into your own hands.

That’s not me.  Yes, if I spent 10 years mucking around with internals and technologies like C (yeah! A language only a geek could love – force the human to do shit that computers excel at) based on work done in the 60s and not advanced much further except with bubble gum, bailing wire and a prayer, I too could be free from your hypothetical “jail”.

But that’s a false dichotomy.  There’s perhaps a hundred, maybe two hundred people in the entire world that would be free from your “jail” and have the wherewithal to take their entire software destiny into their own hands.  Bully for them.  For the rest of us schlubs, what’s far more likely to happen is for me as Linux user to be screwed by the idiotic whims of a group of people driven by ideology instead of necessarily focusing on an overall better experience because their livelihood literally depends on it.

Apple, and even Microsoft, have to convince people to *buy* their stuff.  If they throw shit together, people will switch to someone who is doing it better.  Yes, MS had the market for decades, but look at the dramatic reversal of fortunes where MS posted their first loss and Apple is on a tear of what, five years of record quarter after record quarter, now that the first real viable alternative to the Wintel duopoly has emerged?

That’s why I’m not worried about this “Apple Jail” BS – or even “Microsoft Jail” BS.  Competition and the free market.  Linux and most open source software is a false free market – truly “open” projects have no ultimate accountability and are purely beholden to the benefactors of the project – who can, at any moment, do whatever the hell they want with little or no repercussion.

“But Wait!” you say – “Someone who doesn’t like it can just fork it!”

Yeah right.  Sorry, my time is money.  And chances are there is a commercial product that does what I want for far cheaper than I could duplicate it in what it would take in time, let alone resources.  Sure, it may not be a 100% perfect solution and do EXACTLY what I want – but seriously:  how many things are SO important that they have to be done EXACTLY the way *I* want them to be?  I run into this all the time when people want to take COTS software (even open source) and start tweaking the hell out of it when a simple change in business process/culture would be SO much easier and economical, now and forevermore.  How many fricking ways do you really need to save a file, print something out, draw a window on a screen or calculate payroll?

Scroll back up to the post from Daytime Thorns - he nails it.

Enjoy your jar of smug, in the meantime I’ll be getting real work done (obviously too stupid to be aware of all the reasons why I shouldn’t be able to due to the restrictions of “closed source” and “proprietary” software.  Yawn.)

http://tuxdeluxe.org/node/175

For details. But you’re missing something. The best was I heard it described was like this: “When you get Windows on a machine it’s like being in prison. Lots of restrictions. But at least you *know* it’s a prison. Bars on the windows, no exits, bad food – that sort of thing. But when you buy a Mac you’re also in prison. The problem is the food is much better. There are plasma screen TVs to watch and comfy couches to sit in. But make no mistake, you’re still in prison and eventually the warden will come and shout  ‘lights out’”.

I have a lot of patience. Eventually Apple will do something so outrageous to all you Mac lovers that all these “I love my Mac” posts will collapse into a fury of hated, recrimination and bitterness – trying to learn to love the suddenly revealed iron bars that have appeared around you. It will be fun to see :-). Don’t worry, I’ll remind you all of this conversation :-).

And the interesting thing is the more annoyed the attacks become, the more it reveals the underlying fear and uneasy feelings of the Mac owner. You *know* deep down that you’re only renting the love of your life, and sooner or later someone is going to take it away from you. Don’t know when, don’t know how – but you know it’s going to happen to you someday. Have fun until then :-).

One can only assume that the owners knew more than a few days ago that this was in the works.  A reasonable person might reasonably assume a motive:  get as much as you can while the getting is good.

Refund requested.

There is a correct pronunciation.

It’s also quite shabby the Sparrow Team made many promises to their users that they now won’t adhere to.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.  Oh man.  Thanks for that.  Needed a laugh.