Apple in 2010

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That is assuming Apple gains a monopoly, which they're not trying to do. That's Micro$hit you're thinking of.

This is always my argument against Apple-hating Micro$oft fanboys. If they hate Apple for overpricing their products, restricting use, etc., then they should LOVE Linux for precisely the same reasons.

Apple overprices their products, they say. A Mac costs about $1200. A PC running Windows costs about $500 to $800. Mac OS X and Windows 7 both cost about $165 for an install disk. Compare this to Linux, which costs absolutely nothing.

Apple restricts use of their products, they say. Compare Windows, a closed-source OS that you're not allowed to copy, redistribute, or modify, to Linux, which you can do anything you want with it as long as it falls within the GPL (the only real restriction of which is that you can't redistribute GPL'd software under a closed-source license). Another victory for Linux.

Apple locks you into buying their hardware, they say. This is indeed so. Mac OS X will only run on Intel-based Macs. Windows 7 runs on AMD and Intel-based PCs. Linux runs on AMD, Intel, ARM, SPARC, MIPS, HPPA, and just about every architecture in existence, and can be used in PCs, servers, supercomputers, and embedded systems. Yet another victory for Linux.

Both the iPhone and Windows Phone 7 need jailbreaking in order to gain full control over them. Android doesn't.

In essence, all the things M$ fanboys complain about Apple doing, Linux does the exact opposite. And yet they don't switch to Linux. Go figure.

Last edited by LordoftheMonkeys on 30 Nov 2010, 2:10 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Macs and PCs are about the same if you're talking about a machine with decent specs.



The EULA may forbid you from mucking around with both OS X and Windows, but people still do it, and neither company can do anything about it unless people redistribute pre-modded installs of the OS (in which case they can claim copyright infringement under derivative works, which I personally think is stupid, but hey).



OS X will run on most PCs, Intel or AMD. See OSx86.



Not so, most phone manufacturers lock down their Android devices so you have to hack them to root them just like you have to hack iPhones to jailbreak them. The only exceptions are the Nexus phones.

Since OS X and Windows are closed-source, it is necessary to reverse-engineer them in order to modify the code. This is a lot harder than modifying Linux distro code or creating a custom-compiled Linux kernel (e.g. LFS). Also, I don't know about Apple, but Micro$oft requires you to buy a separate license for each copy of Windows you use; having an unlicensed copy is illegal.



This has nothing to do with Android and everything to do with the carrier. Even so, I think Android is far less restrictive than iPhone or WinMobile. Recently, Apple rejected a version of DOSBox for the iPhone, which would have made the iPhone programmable. You can run the bash shell on most Androids.

Anyway, I don't feel like getting into an iPhone vs. Android debate. Apple and Google have both embraced *Nix, so they are my allies. The only real threat to our way of life is M$.

OS X has been reverse engineered to the extent it can be ran on pretty much any PC hardware, even old stuff like Pentium III CPUs. I don't follow Windows stuff as much but I assume it's been hacked to a similar extent since I can create custom images of it really easily.

And sure the licensing terms say blah blah blah, but again, there's not much Microsoft can do about people who don't listen to that.



I'd say it has a lot more to do with the manufactures than the networks, but you're right that Google had nothing to do with it. All of that is irrelevant, however, since my point is that, in reality, Android devices are rarely any more open than their rivals unless you've got a Nexus.

Don't get me wrong, though, I'm not dissing Android at all. In fact, I may very well sell my iPhone to get an Android phone soon, I'm just waiting for the Nexus S.

Better Steve Jobs than Verizon and Qualcomm saying what you can and can't download/upload/run on your non-smartphone. When I was on VZW, I had a cooked ROM on my HTC Apache and hacked my Motorola E815 to enable Bluetooth OPP. However, my mom's RAZR V3m and my brother's Chocolate VX8550/VX5400 were so locked down it wasn't funny - I did free my mom's RAZR with a flashover to Vivo Brazil firmware to get rid of the god-awful VZW UI.

And don't think Google is the savior either but I'd rather support them than MS or Yahoo! The Nexus, MyTouch and Droid lineups are free as can be although you might need a little root access to them but LG, Samsung, HTC and Motorola still lock down their Android phones per carrier request or on their own in one way or the other.

Actually, iPhone+JailBreak= best device out there, hands down.