On Fri, 21 Oct 2016 21:54:04 +0200
lukáš Hozda <luk.ho...@gmail.com> wrote:
Hello Lukáš,
> Do you know about some bad things Apple has done in their pursuit of
> ever-increasing profits? Do you know about ways Apple is against free
> and open-source software? Please let me know. Naturally, if you know
> about some good deeds of Apple, I accept them as well.
Apple used to make very good hardware, and I am running Mac minis here
as work computers and servers, and some of them have been serving me for
almost a decade now. But these machines were built by an older alter
ego of Apple, and it has been almost 4 years since I've last bought a
Mac mini.
At suckless.org we are releasing our software under permissive licenses
like MIT and ISC, so in general I'd love to see suckless software
running in macOS and everyone who writes suckless software has to
accept the fact that his software can end up there. They already made
the switch to LibreSSL, so one can say that they are interested in using
quality open source software. Liberty wise it may not be very good, but
when you count up the numbers, the macOS userbase might be the biggest
percentage of all users of LibreSSL.
When you're discussing Apple, you always need to compare the pre- to
the post-Jobs era. Job's vision was to build up an ecosystem that
consisted of hardware and software. What really catches this spirit is
the following quote by Alan Kay
"People who are really serious about software should make their
own hardware."
And this approach works: Macs are reliable and used to be very reliable
machines, as already pointed out in this thread IBM found that out as
well a while ago.
Now, the post-Jobs Apple has changed in many respects, and they've made
decisions excluding the professional market further and further. Aiming
your product at the consumers works of course, and the bean counter Tim
Cook sees this as the only logical decision (consumers are our biggest
market group, so it should be our target group).
The problem this really brings is the fact that the highly-invested
developers the Apple ecosystem needs are depending on "professional"
Mac machines to work with, and there are only so many things even an
Apple fanatic can put up with.
If this trend continues, more and more "high-end" developers will leave
this area and move towards developing for other platforms. What is
keeping them back is the fact that the App Store is by far the most
profitable of all app stores, but this gap is closing with more and
more developers flooding the market.
I don't think it will be doomsday for Apple in the coming years, and
they are doing really well. But all the money in the world can't buy
you a developer-base that is loyal and invested in developing good
applications for your ecosystem. This might all end up in a big pile of
uselessness.
I'm looking forward to what they will announce on Thursday at their
Mac event[0], but won't hold my breath.
With best regards
Laslo
[0]: http://www.apple.com/apple-events/october-2016/
--
Laslo Hunhold <d...@frign.de>
