5 ms·

It's clear Steve meant "freedom" in the sense of freedom of choice. If the industry were dominated by a single vendor, you have no freedom - you have to buy wha

It's clear Steve meant "freedom" in the sense of freedom of choice. If the industry were dominated by a single vendor, you have no freedom - you have to buy what that vendor is selling. Steve got the story right, but the characters and timeline wrong. It wasn't IBM in the 80s, but Microsoft in the late 90s that threatened to dominate personal computing. I remember these as rather dark times. Microsoft engaged in shady practices like per-processor licensing, which required OEMs to pay Microsoft for every machine sold, even if it didn't have Windows installed. Upstarts like Be couldn't get any traction, even with their technically superior OS. It all culminated in the US vs. Microsoft antitrust trial (which ended up going nowhere). During this period, Apple was very much on the ropes ("beleaguered", they said), but Mac OS nevertheless remained a viable option for the average consumer - the only real alternative to Windows. In this way, Apple provided users with a mote of freedom.

yuhong 13y ago
My favorite is the MS OS/2 2.0 fiasco, and keep in mind that OS/2 did not depend on DOS at all.
danieldk 13y ago
In the late nineties, some of the Linux distributions were also already viable. E.g. I remember introducing SUSE Linux at my high school in ~1998, and back then it could be installed by a reasonably technical person. Which was not that much different than Windows 9x, given all the work that was usually required to install device drivers, etc. We also had some desktops with KDE and most students had no trouble doing their usual work (web browsing, text processing, e-mailing, etc.). I wonder if things improved that much. Yes, we now have Android and iOS, which have a limited scope (portable devices). But, on the desktop and laptop it's still Windows. Mac is only an option for the rich contingent of Western countries. Meanwhile, the Linux desktop has splintered into a market where there are no clear market leaders anymore - Red Hat abandoned the desktop, SUSE is not really visible anymore, and Canonical is working hard to get rid of its user community. That, plus a half a dozen desktops (GNOME, Unity, Mate, Cinnamon, KDE, Xfce). Frankly, it's a mess! However, what's perhaps more damaging is that 'the hope' is gone. There was a time where many people believed that the Linux desktop would eventually take over. Now nobody believes that there will ever be the year of Linux on the desktop and a large number of developers has left to OS X. The only spark of hope are web applications, since they are platform independent and there is usually some competition. However, you never purchase or own an actual license. So, the vendor could go bankrupt, cancel development, remove features that are crucial, etc. You can never make the decision to stick with an older version, since you don't own a license. Moreover, usually you get a backup of your data in any easy way, let alone convert your data to a web app of a competitor. tl;dr: mobile devices are not good computers yet, on general purpose machines one of the best competitors fragmented itself into oblivion, in platform-independent web apps you are dependent on the whims of the vendor and locked-in. To end on a positive note: at least Android is mostly open and captured most of the smartphone market and will do the same on tablets. It's really good to see the work of the Cyanogenmod community, etc. Edit: Downvoters: Is it because you believe that the Linux desktop hasn't fragmented? Do you disagree on the downsides of web applications?
- tluyben2 13y ago
  Not sure about the downvotes, but talking about the influence of who buys personal computing devices, almost no-one cares about the above. Cloud stuff disappears? You open up somewhere else and mobile devices are fine computers/computing devices. Almost no-one who is non-tech is buying laptops. And those are the same people who don't care about 'your data', data privacy and all that. They read about it in the paper, have no clue how it affects them and then start up Facebook and forget about it. And that's 30+ers. Kids < 20 really don't care about any of that. My cousins drop their tablet while playing and just open another Gmail account because they cannot be bothered to write down the password. And they do everything on those things. Unless you're talking CAD/CAM, game dev, 3D modelling, movie/music editing, sci computing, people are simply not buying laptops proving mobile devices are great computers for 99% of the world. Oh yeah; they don't care about the OS either; they care about what 'others' in their situation have; they buy what their friends have or what looks good when sitting at the hairdresser.
- raverbashing 13y ago
  "In the late nineties, some of the Linux distributions were also already viable. E.g. I remember introducing SUSE Linux at my high school in ~1998, and back then it could be installed by a reasonably technical person. Which was not that much different than Windows 9x, given all the work that was usually required to install device drivers, etc." I strongly disagree with this. In 1998 Linux was not easy to use. Sure, KDE, etc, was nice, but to get to a minimally workable system it was hard. I know, I did that, coincidentally in 1998 as well. Getting the video drivers to work, very difficult. Find the right driver, install, etc Configuring Dialup, hard. Using dialup, hard as well. After that, sure, it was nice to startup KDE and browse the web. Linux, as a "unix clone" was good if you had standard hardware and a permanent configuration. Then you can justify setting up wvdial like it was (and probably is today)
  - josefresco 13y ago
    Came here to say just what you did. From 1998-200+ I installed literally hundreds of different linux OSes hoping that "this one would be the one". Sadly I spent even more countless hours finding and debugging drivers and generally failing at my attempt to find something to replace or even run alongside Windows (every geek I knew duel-booted another OS). So yes on paper Linux had/has everything Windows does but in practice it was another story. It arguably still remains the case even today which is shocking considering how longs it's been. Most of it is related to drivers and hardware industry support which will never happen until the other dominant players (Windows, OSX) stumble.
InclinedPlane 13y ago
MS pulled some shady shit, no doubt about it, but I don't think MS has ever been the serious threat to freedom that other companies have. The PC has always been an incredibly open platform. That openness was taken advantage of by many competing operating systems, especially linux, over the years. And remember that the "PC" in this case extends to the server market as well. It's always been possible to build PCs from parts and put whatever OS you wanted on them, and MS has always been a part of that phenomenon while Apple and other companies preferred much more closed ecosystems. We should remember that, and give credit where it's due.

yuhong 13y ago

My favorite is the MS OS/2 2.0 fiasco, and keep in mind that OS/2 did not depend on DOS at all.

danieldk 13y ago

In the late nineties, some of the Linux distributions were also already viable. E.g. I remember introducing SUSE Linux at my high school in ~1998, and back then it could be installed by a reasonably technical person. Which was not that much different than Windows 9x, given all the work that was usually required to install device drivers, etc. We also had some desktops with KDE and most students had no trouble doing their usual work (web browsing, text processing, e-mailing, etc.). I wonder if things improved that much. Yes, we now have Android and iOS, which have a limited scope (portable devices). But, on the desktop and laptop it's still Windows. Mac is only an option for the rich contingent of Western countries. Meanwhile, the Linux desktop has splintered into a market where there are no clear market leaders anymore - Red Hat abandoned the desktop, SUSE is not really visible anymore, and Canonical is working hard to get rid of its user community. That, plus a half a dozen desktops (GNOME, Unity, Mate, Cinnamon, KDE, Xfce). Frankly, it's a mess! However, what's perhaps more damaging is that 'the hope' is gone. There was a time where many people believed that the Linux desktop would eventually take over. Now nobody believes that there will ever be the year of Linux on the desktop and a large number of developers has left to OS X. The only spark of hope are web applications, since they are platform independent and there is usually some competition. However, you never purchase or own an actual license. So, the vendor could go bankrupt, cancel development, remove features that are crucial, etc. You can never make the decision to stick with an older version, since you don't own a license. Moreover, usually you get a backup of your data in any easy way, let alone convert your data to a web app of a competitor. tl;dr: mobile devices are not good computers yet, on general purpose machines one of the best competitors fragmented itself into oblivion, in platform-independent web apps you are dependent on the whims of the vendor and locked-in. To end on a positive note: at least Android is mostly open and captured most of the smartphone market and will do the same on tablets. It's really good to see the work of the Cyanogenmod community, etc. Edit: Downvoters: Is it because you believe that the Linux desktop hasn't fragmented? Do you disagree on the downsides of web applications?

tluyben2 13y ago
Not sure about the downvotes, but talking about the influence of who buys personal computing devices, almost no-one cares about the above. Cloud stuff disappears? You open up somewhere else and mobile devices are fine computers/computing devices. Almost no-one who is non-tech is buying laptops. And those are the same people who don't care about 'your data', data privacy and all that. They read about it in the paper, have no clue how it affects them and then start up Facebook and forget about it. And that's 30+ers. Kids < 20 really don't care about any of that. My cousins drop their tablet while playing and just open another Gmail account because they cannot be bothered to write down the password. And they do everything on those things. Unless you're talking CAD/CAM, game dev, 3D modelling, movie/music editing, sci computing, people are simply not buying laptops proving mobile devices are great computers for 99% of the world. Oh yeah; they don't care about the OS either; they care about what 'others' in their situation have; they buy what their friends have or what looks good when sitting at the hairdresser.
raverbashing 13y ago
"In the late nineties, some of the Linux distributions were also already viable. E.g. I remember introducing SUSE Linux at my high school in ~1998, and back then it could be installed by a reasonably technical person. Which was not that much different than Windows 9x, given all the work that was usually required to install device drivers, etc." I strongly disagree with this. In 1998 Linux was not easy to use. Sure, KDE, etc, was nice, but to get to a minimally workable system it was hard. I know, I did that, coincidentally in 1998 as well. Getting the video drivers to work, very difficult. Find the right driver, install, etc Configuring Dialup, hard. Using dialup, hard as well. After that, sure, it was nice to startup KDE and browse the web. Linux, as a "unix clone" was good if you had standard hardware and a permanent configuration. Then you can justify setting up wvdial like it was (and probably is today)
- josefresco 13y ago
  Came here to say just what you did. From 1998-200+ I installed literally hundreds of different linux OSes hoping that "this one would be the one". Sadly I spent even more countless hours finding and debugging drivers and generally failing at my attempt to find something to replace or even run alongside Windows (every geek I knew duel-booted another OS). So yes on paper Linux had/has everything Windows does but in practice it was another story. It arguably still remains the case even today which is shocking considering how longs it's been. Most of it is related to drivers and hardware industry support which will never happen until the other dominant players (Windows, OSX) stumble.

InclinedPlane 13y ago

MS pulled some shady shit, no doubt about it, but I don't think MS has ever been the serious threat to freedom that other companies have. The PC has always been an incredibly open platform. That openness was taken advantage of by many competing operating systems, especially linux, over the years. And remember that the "PC" in this case extends to the server market as well. It's always been possible to build PCs from parts and put whatever OS you wanted on them, and MS has always been a part of that phenomenon while Apple and other companies preferred much more closed ecosystems. We should remember that, and give credit where it's due.