Oh Apple, how I love thee..or wait, do I really?
Being an avid Mac user since, oh, let's say roughly 2006, I have become accustomed to a higher degree of design quality and usability {software} in my technological products and Apple is directly responsible for this mentality. Truth be told is that Apple product design has always had a strong emphasis on designing quality high-end products attached with satisfying technological experiences. This cannot be denied. Those who do deny, simply do not know and that is simply fact.
That all said, recently I have become quite judgmental of Apple, not in terms of their product designs, never! However, I have more so in terms of their business model and platform. Does Apple boast a successful business model? Indeed it does. However, at what cost to us, the everyday consumer, computer, and technology user? My view is the cost is quite high; almost too high and action is needed!
Some of you know that I have increasingly become more fed up with Apple and it's proprietary ways. From the Apple Touch/iPhone, to the Apple TV (mine has since been hacked nicely to work the way I want it to, now able to play all kinds of file formats...it's called freedom baby!), to now the iPad; Apple's new and fancy thingy which Jobs himself proclaimed would revolutionize the industry as we know it (really?), it's all designed for controlling our experiences (skynet??) rather than enabling truly satisfying experiences for all.
Sure, Apple has made some very nice products, the iPad being one indeed. But in a World with ever increasing limitations on our technological freedoms, we need to start opening doors in such regards, ensuring these freedoms rather than closing them and continuing to foster an unhealthy, unsustainable technological environment.
With my love/hate relationship with Apple, last year I began testing alternatives, choosing to evaluate a Dell intergrated GNU-Linux technological platform for my everyday activities. In my evaluation I learned that much that could be done with proprietary software, could be done with free/libre open source software just as well, with a little bit of work of course in some instances. I won't lie, things were going well. However, one aspect of my experience that I felt truly lacking was the emotional aspect of design and how it related to the degree of satisfaction I obtained while working. This, when thinking about it, was partially due to the difference in the quality of hardware in my Dell vs the quality of hardware on a Mac (cheap plastic vs aluminum) but also partially due to the way I interacted with the technology itself - opting to leave my "heavy" plasticy laptop at home and opting to purchase a small, lightweight netbook in its place (which is a great little device mind you - An Acer Aspire One with Ubuntu Netbook Remix installed on it - another post maybe!). This aspect of technology does matter - people do have an emotional attachment to the products they have and the quality of a Dell (or any other PC really) vs a Mac are, in my knowledgeable opinion, on 2 complete opposite sides of the spectrum. The saying that "you pay for what you get" is, quite frankly, true.
It cannot be denied the hardware quality of Apple products in relation to others on the market. Because of this I have since traded my Dell and have come back to Apple just for that fact. My MacBook Pro is lighter, better built, and has more of an emotional quality to me personally than my Dell had ever had. However, I do miss the whole open source and freedom aspect of my Dell/GNU-Linux experience. There is something said to have technology that is free and open - it's just non-DRM (digital "restrictions" management) quality goodness that simply works.
After hearing about all the many restrictions attached with the iPad (a biased source but you can also find similar unbiased ones), all of these emotions came flooding back. I don't know why Apple has to model their business the way they do but it's just the way they roll. Google, for example, is a leading company with an active open source mentality and environment and yet is still very successful - Maybe Apple can learn?? Given my very strong beliefs in fostering an open and free technological World, I have since decided to install and evaluate a GNU-Linux environment on my MacBook Pro; using Ubuntu of course, an open source and free operating system {think of it as a very viable alternative to Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, and Mac OSX}. In my view, open source is the future, so let's all start playing, designing, developing, and sharing! -tMac
PS: Apologies for the uncensored use of the php goto statement in the title of this post 