[ale] using ipod touch or iphone with linux (yeah, OSeX!)

[aaron]

On 2009, May, 31, , at 7:12 PM, Jerald Sheets wrote:
> On May 31, 2009, at 2:30 PM, Mike Harrison wrote:
>
>>> As a Linux user and freedom zealot, I'm very glad Microsoft came out
>>> on top and not apple. Every time I power on the G4 I get an urge to
>>> goosestep around the room while it boots up.
>>
>> the Apple mindset works well if you are a mundane user and are
>> willing to pay for.. well.. everything..
>>
>> If you are a geek or power-user, you must be willing to drink the
>> kool-aid and enjoy it.
>>
>> I have my personal music stored under a WiFi file sharing program
>> called "Air Share" which works for me. - out of itunes perusal and  
>> control.
>
>
> I always find it so humorous that the people I probably respect
> technologically more than most I've met in my almost 20-year career
> start whining like toddlers when talking about Apple products.
>
> It's really funny.  No, really.
>
> After using a Windows laptop several years ago, and the fighting
> through the somewhat unfinished GUI in Linux-land, I bought my first
> Mac in '05.  I've not looked back since.  NO products out there are as
> well thought out, well designed, well integrated, and easily
> manageable as these.
>
> And I use Linux on my desktop at work.
>
> When I get home and get back into may laptop, It is a relief from
> dealing with Linux all day.  If I couldn't just open up shells, and
> never use the GUI, Linux would drive me positively mad on the desktop.
>
> As a server, however, I don't think it can be beat, though, and am a
> very happy admin when it comes to Linux.
>
> Relax, folks.  They're just computers.  In comparison to a sunrise or
> a walk in the country or good times with good friends,  they're just a
> box of junk.

Gotta whole heartedly second Jerald's observations, though most  
especially
the last reminder.

Once Apple came of age by adopting FreeBSD as the foundation of their
new OSeX systems, the Apple packages and products became hard to beat.
(In other words, once the Apple developers side stepped Steve Jobs ego
and abandoned most of the "one button mouse", user handicapping limits
he had previously imposed on Apple systems, they became functional  
tools).
I've been using and maintaining and owning a number of Mac OSeX systems
for 5+ years now and my general experience echos Jerald's: "NO [current
computer] products out there are as well thought out, well designed,  
well
integrated, and easily manageable as these." All I would add is some
emphasis on the word INTEGRATED, plus the important historical note that
the Amiga, in comparison to it's Apple and PC contemporaries, was all
that and more a full 15 years earlier. :-)

With all of the exponentially expanding variables of connection and
communication and licensing among all of the increasingly layered
[hard|firm|soft] technologies in a modern computer, Apple's single  
source
production policies allow them to reduce or eliminate most of the  
variables
that cause conflicts and complications for commodity PC systems and the
Operating Systems that try to run on them. Having a computer where the
Operating System AND all the hundreds of different [hard|firm|soft]ware
components from dozens of different providers and production lines have
been packaged, tested, licensed and presented as a consistent,  
integrated
unit is hugely valuable -- in the case of Apple's OSeX systems, it
becomes well worth every extra penny one might pay for them.

In a more sane world these complications and convolutions of component
layer interfacing would be addressed and reduced by public, free to
implement, industry derived and global standards that everyone complied
with to the best of their abilities in a fair market. However, given
the present real world of thousands of proprietary pseudo-standards
enforced by corporate welfare state licensing laws and monopolist
consortiums, Apple's solutions, while seeming draconian, may be the
only way that a consistently high quality consumer computer product
can be realized.  They get to cherry pick or help develop the best of
the technology pseudo-standards and filter only the most compliant
into their product line.  Not sure it's entirely fair to condemn them
because the corporate welfare system abuses of copyrights and patents
means that Destructive Restriction Mechanisms (DRM) are part and
parcel of many of the commodity system pseudo-standards the market
drives them to use.

Chasing that maelstrom tornado of corporate controlled and proprietary
component interfaces is the bane of both using and developing for Linux
as well. In my view, these issues present the biggest hurdles to it's
mainstream marketing and adoption. Perhaps some day soon some GNU Linux
entrepreneur will get the bright idea of using Apple's single source
production principles to start distributing a fully integrated Linux
system as a means of breaking through the proprietary blockades. With
the use of open internet standards becoming truly ubiquitous, we're
starting to see a hint of this with Linux installed appliances like
netbooks, but imagine having a set of OPEN [hard|firm|soft]+ware system
API specifications integrated to the advantages of the Linux OS,  
something
any entrepreneurial manufacturer could adopt. If the API spec group
could also provide a single point licensing service for any unavoidable
proprietary components, then marketing Linux systems could gain much
broader appeal in a profit [bl|m]+inded world.

In any case, all my appreciation of OSeX doesn't make me any less of an
advocate for GNU Linux or the ideals of Free, Freedom Friendly software.
I'm sincerely committed to doing my part to make the world more sane by
using and promoting open standards and GNU Linux and Free Software, thus
helping make information technology more accessible where ever possible.
I also think the FreeBSD core of OSeX helps the cause more than Apple's
[easily circumvented or ignored] concessions to DRM hurt it.  If OSeX
didn't ship with a terminal program, a bash shell and the X11 extensions
that provide access to all of my favorite *nix tools and GPL software
in the OSeX environment, I wouldn't be singing about Apples at all, and
I doubt that I would ever have bought one.

peace
aaron












  These limitations
are more the bane
  whether the OS trying
to address the various multi-source [hard|firm|soft]-ware components
of that system is Linux