I used to think that too. But then I cautiously started experimenting with desktop Linux about 8 years ago when Windows Vista (which admittedly is not the best example of an OS) got extra-sucky on my laptop and I got too cheap to buy a new machine. I had a few false starts, but within 6 months was using Linux more than I was Windows. Within 18 months I was booting Windows about once a year (just imagine the Windows Update hell that went with that…). Nowadays I don’t even have Windows installed on my machine, though I bought a new laptop in 2011 when the battery and the backlight on my old one both died.
So all that said, I tend to the geeky side and I’m not afraid to work with a command line. The Linux desktop is not for, say, my totally competent but un-geeky wife who wants her computer to Just Work. Or so I thought. A year and half ago she needed a new machine and specifically requested a Linux box. I thought I’d turn into a round-the-clock support person, but I can count on less than one hand the number of times she’s asked me for help. And we recently bought a new laptop, one that she insisted run Linux.
Agreed 100%. And I guess you can say that my iPhone generally works as advertised. But the advertisement includes constant iCloud nagging and a walled garden that I find obtrusive and undesirable, and restrictions on how developers and apps can work that are often good for Apple, but not necessarily for the user. For example, I’ll bet 99.9% of Dropbox users would like Dropbox for the iPhone to sync invisibly in the background like it does on every other device, but Apple doesn’t allow that. To be fair, that is “as advertised,” but that doesn’t necessarily make it good or desirable.
I am willing to – and do – pay for Android because I can generally make it work how I want, not how somebody else thinks it should, but I only have an iPhone because that’s what they give me at work (though they prohibit me from using iCloud – but not Dropbox – or installing iTunes on my work-issued Windows laptop because of “security concerns” – go figure…). On the other hand, I have the vague sense that Android spies on me more, probably because of the persistent login to Google. Somehow, despite the company’s old mission statement, that somehow seems more evil than being logged into Apple all the time.
