OSNews

Pure FUD. In what way is OS X more "DRM chocked" than MS? iTunes offers optional DRM, yes, so does Windows Media Player, and in fact Windows Media Player and Vista's DRM is much more onerous than anything in OS X, as Vista also implements DRM designed to "plug the analog hole". The OS itself is not "DRM chocked", nor is the platform a "locked in" closed platform the way say an Xbox or PS3 is. Anyone can write software for it, including open source software, and they do - in fact many Unix open source programs you may be familiar with run on OS X. In fact, the core of OS X, "Darwin", is open source Unix, and in fact is based on an open-source codebase that predates Linux. (NeXTStep) The GUI, admittedly, is not, but aren't you comparing it to Windows which is entirely closed-source?

As for "planned obsolecense", most of the time even when they change CPU architecture or the entire OS structure they've made a migration path, in both cases (from PPC and OS9 and going back to the 68K migration) one that's lasted years. Now, Microsoft Windows has ran on the same chip, the intel 80x86 series, for a long time, but that's not "more open", that's simply more locked-into Intel's monopoly. Of course, due to that economy of scale, which has produced as of late better chips than the PPC, Apple switched to intel (which I don't regret, again, now it's the better chip).

Apple is often criticised for being slower to introduce new technology by commentators, Jobs prefers a longer product cycle than intel has pressed on them, they've improved in this, now they even occasionally use CPUs that Intel introduced for the Air and the 3.04GHz iMac that were available on it first, but I find it quite puzzling that now they're being accused by the peanut gallery for "planned obsolescence". Maybe they see Snow Leopard, which includes multicore intel specific optimizations and possible phasing out of PPC support, and assume it's been that way throughout Apple's history and they intend to continue doing this. People who accuse Apple of DRM lock-in and planned obsolescence know nothing of Apple other than iPods and Snow Leopard.



OS X has more open source components by far than Windows, which is entirely a closed source system. Apple gives back to the community, now, maybe not as much as a purely open-source OS company would (which one do you have in mind?), but they do have some presence in the open source community, while Microsoft has practically none. Weren't the latest Ruby security updates, for example, Apple contributed? When was the last time Microsoft did anything like that? Apple doesn't view Open Source as a "cancer", on the contrary, they bet part of their business on it. I think the open source community has nothing to worry about if OS X gains some market share at the expense of Windows. I find this sort of criticism of Apple as being more evil than Microsoft (assuming one can attribute any morals, sadly, to a public corporation) to be a bit short-sighted at best.

Apple and Microsoft have both contributed a lot towards the innovation that have made it possible for all people to be able to handle computers. I suspect if it weren't for companies like Apple, with the Apple II, IBM would have never come out with the PC, or the Macintosh concerning Microsoft Windows. Now, it's good that the PC has clones, but let's not get carried away about the more open hardware of the PC and the future of open source software; which aren't related items.

(Besides, if you want to run open-source hardware A PC is not it. That's open-source hardware projects like "open cores". Though Sun has made some of it's CPU line open source now.)

One of the components that is used on many Linux distros that Apple contribute a lot to is CUPS.
IMHO, this has come on in leaps and bounds in the past couple of years.

Slightly Off Topic, the way,
why is it that the SMB implementation in OS/X finds windows shares better than any Windows system does?

"We must hope this doesn't go much further. Its tempting to think of OSX and Windows as Pepsi and Coke - a change of share between two essentially similar concoctions which makes very little difference to the non cola drinkers. In some ways this is true, as far as the OSs themselves are concerned, but the company business models are very different, and that matters a lot."

It's not we, it's you who hope that this doesn't go further.
I hope Windows market share goes down as hell. At this point I don't mind if MacOS goes up. Maybe it would be worse with Mac having 90% of the market share. But better than both situations would be Linux or FreeBSD having 90% of the market share. That would definitely be a better world. The best world.
If Mac and Windows a Pepsi and Coke, Linux is fresh squeezed orange juice (I mean custom made).