So much anger and bitterness!
Plus a bonus misspelling of the article’s title.
If you buy a computer from Apple — you can use any software or operating system on it.
If you buy a keyboard from Apple — you can use it with most any Bluetooth–capable device.
If you buy a music player from Apple — you can put any music from any source on it.
If you buy headphones from Apple — you can plug them into any device.
Man, Cory hates iPhones so much that he’ll even waste hours of time on a tortuous and plodding allegory.
I suppose his biggest gripe is with the fact that apps need to be digitally signed by Apple before they can be sold through the App Store. For most people, this is not a big deal; for everyone else, there is:
-jailbreaking (which is not illegal, and does not void the warranty in any practical sense)
-buying a different phone (which has other security risks)
-paying 99 bucks to become a developer who can run and install any code at all
Besides, it isn’t like iPhones are the only way to do computing. How many iPhone owners also happen to own general purpose computers that can do everything an iPhone can’t? I bet almost all of them.
The is about as meaningful an analogy as Cory comparing himself to a dishwasher that rather than cleaning some brands of dishes only bitterly ranted about them via a text console with the dish names misspelled for added emphasis on his contempt for them while explaining how wrong the dish owner was for having them since the porcelain they were made of was patented preventing the owner from creating and selling their own dishes out of that same material.
[quote=“ben_ehlers, post:4, topic:51863”]
How many iPhone owners also happen to own general purpose computers that can do everything an iPhone can’t? I bet almost all of them.[/quote]
Well…no. If you read his previous posts, Cory seems to believe that nothing qualifies as a “general purpose computer” unless, apparently, it’s some home-built rig running some obscure flavor of Linux. Windows and OSX-based boxes (which is what most of those iPhone owners will have) don’t qualify as “general purpose”.
And, yeah, this was a pretty tortured bit of ranting. Par for the course, anymore, I’m afraid.
Mod note: Stay on topic.
Yeah, you can boot Linux from a Mac. If you’re willing to disable certain security features, install sporadically-maintained EFI software, go through a non-standard boot process, and want to waste hours debugging odd hardware compatibility issues. Not exactly within the realm of your average user. And if you want to run Windows (as long as it’s not Enterprise Windows or 32-bit), sure, you’re welcome to pay for two operating systems for the convenience of running a supported OS on your pretty hardware.
If you buy a music player from Apple — you can put any music from any source on it.
Not quite true - you’ll need a 3rd party app for certain types of music files.
If you buy headphones from Apple — you can plug them into any device.
You won’t be able to use the headphone controls on a non-iPhone.
You’re looking at this from the wrong perspective (says this Apple fan for over 30 years):
If you’re an iUser and you buy yourself a Windows system (or heaven-forbid build a Linux system), you’re locked out of a lot of iFeatures.
If you buy a non-Apple-approved charger, your phone may not recognize it.
If you buy an Android phone, good luck with all those DRM’d itunes songs you paid $.99 each for.
If you buy non-Apple-approved headphones, the controls don’t work.
#iPhones != all Apple computers
#iPhones != Apple keyboards
Does apple even make a physical iPhone keyboard?
#iPhone != iPod
#iPhone app != mp3
#iPhone != headphones
Any other incoherencies you care to share?
Yeah, you can boot Linux from a Mac. If you’re willing to disable certain security features
Which security features do you need to disable? Unlike other recent PCs, Macs don’t implement Intel’s Secure Boot requirement for signed boot loaders.
install sporadically-maintained EFI software
Not necessary. Recent Linux kernels are directly bootable by Apple’s EFI implementation (though they have to live on a filesystem the EFI firmware understands – making /boot HFS+ format actually works rather well.
go through a non-standard boot process
See above. You can also just install most Linux distros very simply using the EFI’s BIOS emulation mode.
and want to waste hours debugging odd hardware compatibility issues. Not exactly within the realm of your average user.
Well, that’s Linux for you. Though there’d be nothing stopping some distro from tuning itself to install more seamlessly as an EFI bootable system on Macs.
And if you want to run Windows (as long as it’s not Enterprise Windows or 32-bit), sure, you’re welcome to pay for two operating systems for the convenience of running a supported OS on your pretty hardware.
Uh, is there some way of running Windows and not paying for it? Legally, that is.
The article’ premise is “if Apple made a dishwasher, …” implying that everything Apple makes would behave the same way their iOS App Store (or a fictional version thereof) does. Ⅿy little jab is is just a few counter examples.
If you’re referring to the spelling of “Iphone” vs. “iPhone”
IIRC…
That is a deliberate stylistic choice, not a mistake. Cory made a New Year’s resolution (in 2014, I believe) to eschew the use of embedded capital letters on the grounds that they are a branding affectation, rather than correct usage.
Really?
The article’s headline is “If dishwashers were iPhones” (spelled correckly @ the original).
Implying that everything Apple makes that is an iPhone would behave the same way their iOS App Store (or a fictional version that only applies to dishwashers that are like unto an iPhone thereof) does.
However, for certain, unusual definitions of the term “iPhone” (or “Iphone”) where [iPhone Iphone] := everything Apple makes you may have a point.
Because, Lord knows, nobody would make a general purpose computing device that is non-mobile that has an app-store (cough Windows 8 cough) and even if they did they would surely never lock it down at some point in the future because there is certainly no precedent for such a thing (cough iOS App Store cough) and anyway a smartphone is not a computer that’s why G-d gave us multi-piece desktop towers and they shall weigh a tonne and be beige and their keyboards shall be clicky and their monitors green for so it is written.
I know. But he quotes his article, which has the “correct” spelling even in his link to The Guardian. Why not be consistent?
…and meanwhile “dana boyd” gets a free pass…
All right, in that case I’m just not buying the analogy. Why should an Apple dishwasher be like an iPhone? There are reasons iOS works the way it does; reasons that obviously wouldn’t apply to other things (dishwashers, keyboards, PCs, …), making this analogy pointless.
Since we are getting persnickety about grammatical and typographic mistakes, proper parallelism would require the use of single nouns in all four example – thus: If you buy a pair of headphones from Apple – you can plug it into any device.
It would be unusual, but not unheard of, to plug several headphones into one device. Hopefully the device would be properly configured with multiple headphone jacks, and not have one shoved into the power-jack, f’r instance. Which is also not unheard of.
And what are those reasons that obviously don’t apply to other mobile operating systems, since there are several that don’t have locked app stores? The curves? The bezels? The intrinsic nature of the chips, washed in the glacial-snows of Kilimanjaro?
(N.B.: I have no idea if Kilimanjaro has glaciers, and anyway, the things are made in China.)
And what are those reasons that wouldn’t apply to a PC? It’s a computer with a cellular radio. It’s far more powerful that the computers I had in the 80s and 90s, and much, much smaller. Cheaper, too. My C64 cost $600 when new, and the floppy drive was another $600. Modem was extra, and only 300 baud (truth be told, my dad borrowed that from his work on the weekends).
Just like jailbreaking isn’t for everyone, getting around those same challenges on MacOS isn’t for everyone either. And Apple tends makes it as hard as possible if you want to do something that they don’t support. So it’s really not honest to say you can run “Any” OS on a Mac.
You can’t have full-disk encryption with FileVault2.
Well, that’s Linux for you. Though there’d be nothing stopping some distro from tuning itself to install more seamlessly as an EFI bootable system on Macs.
Playing it off as “well, that’s Linux” is disingenuous - if I wanted to install Fedora on any other year-old PC, I can put the CD in, accept the defaults, and have a chance at functional system in the time it takes for the RPMs to be read off the DVD. It shouldn’t take a kernel engineer hours of tinkering and browsing through page after page of outdated message boards for help to get even a basic boot on a Mac without a panic.
Uh, is there some way of running Windows and not paying for it? Legally, that is.
It’s commercial, licensed software, so no. It comes built into the price in OEM Windows systems, but must be purchased otherwise. My point is that if you want to run anything other than MacOS, most users would trend to the official Apple-supported Boot Camp (which is what the majority of the dual-boot users out there want), your choice is Windows 7 or Windows 8. So now you’ve paid for 2 full OSs (Mac + Windows) – even if you’re wiping out the Mac partition completely – and 2 sets of software (since most commercial software makes you re-purchase on a different platform).
Of the people in this conversation, one and only one is not wasting hours of time.
That would be the one who got paid for an opinion piece, published in the Guardian.
