June 2006 Archives
Much has been made of late about the revival of switching to open source. Casting off the shackles of iTunes DRM and running naked in the fields of sweet, sweet Freedom!
So riddle me this, if you ditch proprietary desktop apps because you are taking a principled stand against the tyranny of closed source software or formats, are you also ditching Google web apps (search, mail, etc.)? Isn't Google's search algorithm is every bit as proprietary as Apple's iMovie? Yahoo web apps? Flickr? Exporting your data in an open format isn't or shouldn't be enough! The app must be Free (as in speech), right? Just like Wordpress. Oh, I remember the Great Movable Type exodus like it happened yesterday.
I know...I know. I'm just being an ass. We all have that line and it's in a different place for all of us. I would love to hear the reasoning behind why it's okay to use Google and not iMovie though (or mix and match any non-open source web app with a non-open source desktop app)...even if it is a sad statement as to what I find entertaining in terms of conversation.
Update: I should note that I'm not trying to mock people for taking this stand, just that it looks like there are rather large caveats about said stand.
Tim O'Reilly ponders on Radar if Ubuntu is a threat to OS X market share, citing recent high-profile alpha nerd switches of Mark Pilgrim and Cory Doctorow (but lets not forget Tim Bray). He also ponders about Ubuntu vs. RedHat.
The short answer is that Ubuntu will not capture any signifigant part of the OS X market. The linux part is a bit complicated because there is Fedora and RedHat Enterprise Linux. Ubuntu could certainly take a chunk of Fedora users, but Fedora is more of a test bed for RHEL. RHEL could suffer with fewer people running Fedora, as their bug reports could potentially go down. Ubuntu vs RHEL isn't even really a match-up people should be thinking/worrying about.
But back to the OS X issue. First off, too much is made of high profile alpha nerds coming to OS X. Sure, Mark was a lifelong mac user, but like most nerds he didn't have just one computer. He was always running the latest and greatest of Windows (and Linux?). Alpha nerds, or at least the ones I know about, are never really happy with their computer. There are always bugs and annoyances that they are poking at, or rather are poking at them. They tend to use whatever they hate the least at the time and have their feet dangling in the water of any number of pools.
What I think Apple has lost most are users that have loud megaphones to voice gripes, which is a double-edged sword. There will be fewer C|Net and Register stories about Mark Pilgrim tearing apart a new app or feature but at the same time there will be less pressure on Apple to fix things that these users uncover. So, yes...in a very indirect way these defections could lead to a hit in market share is Apple doesn't keep their quality high. But it would be quite impossible to calculate exactly how much impact these users have on product quality and how much product quality has on current and future market share. Unless you simply want to say that we now stand at Current Market-share - 3, with more coming and going everyday.
If Tim is right and I'm wrong, which is the more likely story, the good news is that the canary in the coal mine dies so that the miners might live. But I think in this case the canary just flew away because it didn't like the miners anymore and not because of the toxic fumes in the mine. At the same time I'm sure Mark would say it is the toxic fumes of DRM that helped kill his relationship with Apple.
-
Wherein Zeldman conflates his problem as a user with a usability problem
-
california state parks with wi-fi access
-
minor league manager getting his 2 cents in
-
If the user is never wrong, why do we do error checking? Yes, it's sarcasm.
-
John Stossel is such a wanker
So, Zeldman's missed three distinct warning that his Flickr Pro account was about to expire. He wrote about it. He got feedback. He wrote about it again. In-between I made snarky comments in my del.icio.us entries (it's just like leaving a comment, only different!). My basic point on the first was that just because he had a problem with Flick, it didn't automatically make it a usability problem. My second point was that his idea that there is such a thing as usable to "all users" is just insane. I'm not saying that you shouldn't strive for 100% coverage, because that will make your site better, but there is no perfect score in this game. Ever.
I understand that his blog is his soap box when he wants it to be, and that's dandy. Go shout from the mountain tops! Let it rip! Say what's on your mind. But if you're on a popular box and you start speaking crazy talk, you should expect a few people to point and whisper about the crazy guy talking to the rocks.
I'm just sayin'...but enough about Zeldman, I've been neglecting my rocks.
-
making fun of Red State is like shooting fish in a barrel
-
crazy js debugger for all WebKit apps
-
Ubuntu, which is an ancient African word meaning “can’t install Debian”.
-
Lamont drops an OHSNAP! on Liebarman
-
giant space boob
-
the local monks grow some fine grapes
So my buddy Dale passed along this fine WaPo op-ed opinion column on how Jon Stewart is an "enemy of democracy," and by "fine" I mean "not fine." The gist is that two political science profs did a study that showed that people who watch the Daily Show have this crazy notion that politicians are idiots, our electoral system is in shambles, and that the country is basically going to Hell in a hand-basket. You see, if people think things are bad they might not vote. So obviously the "problem" is that people are hearing bad news.
Classic. Utterly freaking classic...
It's not the "insane jackasses" in the House of Representatives that is making people apathetic...it's hearing that they're insane jackasses. Iraq is only going bad because we hear about it going bad. Domestic spying is only a problem because we heard about it. Torture is only wrong when we find out about it, otherwise it's just good tactics. Global warning wouldn't exist if Al Gore would shut his pie hole! Government corruption doesn't exist until the liberal media makes it up...and yet people still get indicted. Odd, isn't it?
We're so divorced from reality we can't even begin to fathom that we have real problems that people need to know about so we can, you know, solve them. But no! That just makes people cynical and apathetic and then they don't vote. In what kind of world does any of this make sense? As Atrios is wont to say, CLAP LOUDER!
-
Craig Newmark speaks to NPR about net neutrality
-
I'm so joining this party
-
the chronic amnesia of the American voter
Beware the Semaphore Ninja. He is deadly.
Lets all blog from TextMate. TextMate is the new emacs, for OS X anyway.
Of course Al Gore used Keynote. He's on the board...
Mostly for historical comparison.
- 2,019 photos
- 80,010 views
- 25 Sets
- 99 groups (6 with admin privs)
- 33 untagged photos
I'll leave out tags because I have a lot of geotagged photos.
-
yet another calendar solution
Update 3 is here.
-
Colbert talks to grads. Hilarity ensues.
Shut up...
Well, I've made it to Vancouver. I did manage to only forget one thing (so far) and that's the USB cable for my camera. So, no Flickr fun unless it's from my phone cam.
Today I'm going to take a small hike around this small peninsula.
