From: Stephen Kellett Date: 2005-04-01T17:34:45+09:00 Subject: Re: Respect and Disappointment In message <51445b392fe809199199e4fe9f5aa106@loudthinking.com>, David Heinemeier Hansson writes >, Apple are on many fronts a role model. The shared appreciation of >Apple's products is an important component of the company culture. Just >like a shared appreciation of the open source benefits is an important >component. That I do not understand. Apple has been a very litigious corporation, making premium priced products for a fashion conscious, niche market. How does that mesh with the OSS model, of free access to source code and use, a copyleft licence and increasingly a less and less niche market? If I was developing OSS the last platform I'd choose would be a Mac, based on their previous behaviour of burning customers (incompatible hardware changes), premium pricing, etc. You don't have the hardware problems with Linux or Windows on WinTelAMD. >As an example of good fit, I don't think it's a surprise that pretty >much all >of the Rails core contributors are Mac users. That Rails heavy shops >like Perhaps there are other trends at work. The Mac has historically scored well for Artwork and Music. I have not been involved with the music industry for some time. It would not surprise me if many arty-types (for want of a better phrase) realised they could do work with the Web and started doing websites and continued using their Macs and this has fed into the increase in use of Macs. Many years later, and you get the current situation where support on the Mac for the web is equivalent in terms of design tools (you tell me, I'm guessing). That good web design can be/is done by good arty people with talented software people behind them doesn't surprise me one bit. That the arty people may prefer Macs also doesn't surprise me. That some of them decided to learn to write software also doesn't surprise me (although statistically it should be lower than the norm as more dyslexic people are found in the art/creative community and thus staring at screen all day is not their thing). That people that use Macs for web design and write software thing Ruby is useful, or like the Ruby approach, well that seems fair enough. Rails is a web application, so matches that pattern. If your general claim (if I understand you) is true, then we will see, over time, a real increase in web and non web applications also written on the Mac, simply because it is a better platform (in your view). >Maybe you should consider the occasion ripe to do a chance of computing >environment? I know this great platform... oh, wait. My If I could go out and buy a Mac clone maybe (I could always put Linux on it if I still didn't like it). Whilst I have to pay a premium to Apple for their hardware, No. When the Mac clones were announced (November 1994, I think) I was pleased. I thought we'd see a rebalancing of sorts, but Mr Jobs saw to that. Stephen -- Stephen Kellett Object Media Limited http://www.objmedia.demon.co.uk RSI Information: http://www.objmedia.demon.co.uk/rsi.html