A few days ago, I returned the Ipod touch that I had for exactly 11 days, coz Apple chose to charge me $20. Apart from me being a cheap bas***d, I had this queasy feeling in my gut, about apple products. I felt an unexplainable rage towards Apple, Jobs and the fanboys. I am usually a very moderate person, and it really surprised me that I could harbor such crazy extremism and frustration. I could never place a finger on the source, until I read this article on Coding Horror by Jeff Atwood.
He hits the nail on the head with this one:
So let’s be completely clear: when you buy a new Mac, you’re buying a giant hardware dongle that allows you to run OS X software.
and goes on to state something, that threw the spotlight on that source that I was trying to find within myself
Maybe I’m a hypocrite. Maybe the issue cuts philosophically deeper than mere dongles. Maybe it’s not only about the freedom to run your operating system on whatever hardware you wish, but also the freedom to run whatever software you want for whatever purpose you need, in perpetuity. That’s Freedom Zero:
There are two kinds of us: those who put conviction above convenience, and those who don’t. There is nothing right or wrong about being on either of the sides. All that matters is that, one needs to understand, which “club” one belongs to. Through all this, I realized one thing - I will never be content with a Mac, until I convince myself to give up expecting my computer to do everything I want it to do. Do I want to do that? I have no idea. Do I want an ipod touch that allows me to run linux on it? I sure as hell do.
I hope, for the sake of computing, that Apple realizes that it has a platform in the Ipod Touch, get off its proud ass, and open-up the touch to third party. However, with Apple, I just know that it will never happen. Why? It takes genius to build something like the iPhone or the iPod and a vision to make that into a platform.