Radsoft
 About | Buy | News | Products | Rants | Search | Security
Home » Resources » Red Hat Diaries

Red Hat Diaries/0071

#114

This is episode 114 in the Red Hat Diaries saga - you'd know that if you knew how to count in zero-indexed hex. Maybe you do. In any case, a lot has happened, and I think it might be time to recapitulate.

This all started because I was supposed to conduct an experiment in migration to Linux. Back then, with the limited knowledge I had - with the limited knowledge we all had - this seemed to be in keeping with the times. The impression was that Linux was finally on the move and that mass migration from Microsoft was imminent. We at Radsoft felt it a good public service to migration-minded visitors to chart the setup and daily operation of the popular RedHat Linux platform.

Things took a twist almost immediately. Confronted with the necessity of selecting suitable laptop equipment for this experiment, and taking considerable time (half a year) to research what was available, we came to the unalterable conclusion that most if not all of what was being offered was shit.

Consumer Affairs Online gave us a glint of hope: While digging deep into the murky past and present of the major Wintel hardware vendors, we happened upon the curious phenomenon that Apple was unique in the world with a singularly high brand loyalty.

Our first investigations of Apple hardware left us blurry-eyed. We were dazzled; Apple hardware was so cool! We fell in love, much as the Consumer Affairs report promised we would.

We'd had previous experience with NextStep; and I for one hated C++ and saw Objective-C as a possible way around the bugs and bloat that plague the industry; and so, with hardware like that, with the dazzling GUI, and with a development platform of promise, we figured it was worth a shot.

There were some further trials and tribulations, but it's a year now we've had our Apples, and we're theoretically a year wiser for it, but what once was a euphoric blur has since spoiled and turned rotten, venomous, and made us cynical. And if you've followed these Red Hat Diaries up to now, through all one hundred fourteen chapters, then you have a bit of an idea of what it's all about.

What is really tragic is that neither Syd nor I fully understood what we should have a year ago. We both were tired of the incessant weeping and gnashing of teeth from the Wintel camp; I was sick unto the death with the boring, dead-end Microsoft development platform and the Wintel users who knew better but lacked the intestinal fortitude to migrate out; the spirit had gone out of things, and the world of Apple loomed as an elixir.

But Apple's history is a long one, and under the bonnet of the new Jaguar lurks a history many would rather were forgotten. Application code winds its way through so many Cupertino mistakes to make it to your dazzling hardware; the Aqua/Cocoa on top is only the paint finish; what is underneath is not much different from what Apple had prior to the NextStep/Steve Jobs buyout at the end of 1996.

And there is a whale of a difference between having good hardware and having a brand loyalty. For although many women would prefer sleeping with their laptops to sleeping with their lovers, this does not translate to Rolls Royce computer hardware; it only means what it says: that Mac users love their Macs - come rain or come shine, come quality or come defect.

The iMac is an ugly desk lamp. It was designed by an Englishman whose most recent job before this was as designer of bathroom wash basins. And it shows. The Power Mac sounds like an International Harvester. The iBook is grand - most likely by mistake - but its processing power is beneath that required by an operating system pushed by the very same vendor. And the PowerBook is a laptop without a case - as good an example of poor design as there ever was. In an effort to make the machine as sexy as can be, and resisting the Jiminy Cricket advice to kill one's darlings, Apple essentially released a machine with no tolerance for daily use, a machine so vulnerable to the most innocuous of things - and with a graphite finish that makes the machine look ugly as soon as you start using it. Everyone thinks Apples are cool - but even the most loyal users have a lot to complain about, and Apple will seldom listen to what they have to say.

Development for the Apple platform is wrought with difficulties as well. Cocoa is a platform that does not possess the durability and the scalability to make a difference, and this because it hasn't been tested in the field enough, and this because the business world will not adopt a platform which traditionally despises the business world and business people, and because the tight-assed Apple Cocoa developers can simply not admit they have an immature technology with vast room for improvement. My own experiments with the Cocoa platform - and the Cocoa community - gave me a sense of foreboding that has since been recognised by other experts with other perspectives: Apple are not ready to make the switch themselves.

Steve Jobs still has the soles of his feet stuck in the face of business, and although he knows he now has to take his feet down, he cannot, and it's not because he doesn't want to; it's because he doesn't know how.

Click here »

About | Buy | News | Products | Rants | Search | Security
Copyright © Radsoft. All rights reserved.