“In 10.10, we’ll take a big step forward in the netbook edition, by
moving the menu into the top panel and combining it with the titlebar
for maximised windows.”

Now look at the image on the right.  It’s a screenshot of the proposed ‘Unity UI‘ that is being ‘developed’ by Ubuntu inside an OSX screenshot.  Note the monochrome icons in the system tray, the Apple / Ubuntu logos with identical spacing, the popout options on the dock with the identical black background, curved light borders and association arrow.  There is even a ‘Keep in Launcher’, ‘Keep in Dock’ option.  Ok I suppose the current running program indicator is an arrow instead of a bright spot, but that’s only because they are copying Tiger rather than Snow Leopard.  Add in the recent pointless change of moving the window decorations to the left.  It’s all very suspicious.

Although once you take the above quote into context the only significant difference between them disappears.  That is it is going to get an OSX style universal menu – that is the File / Edit / View menu moved to the top left outside the applications window.  I mean come on, there is being inspired and then there is outright plagarism and there really is far too much similarity here to chalk it up to chance.  As I said before it’s all cargo cult usability – the focus is on copying Apple because they care about usability rather than copying the reasons Apple do what they do.  It’s a significant difference.  It’s all irrelevant anyhow though.  Here’s why:

THE DESKTOP IS A SOLVED PROBLEM!

It’s 2010.  It doesn’t matter any more.  Why are we even talking about this?  I remember years ago, before the Internet was fast or reasonably accessible, playing with the OS for the seemingly sake of it, but nobody ever does this anymore.  Simply put the OS’s only job is to run the important thing – that is the applications.  Nobody tweaks their OS.  The reason you can’t change themes on OSX is because the majority of people don’t want to do that anymore.  Windows 7 lets you change the colours but that’s about it.  Essentially the OS has two jobs, running apps and bothering you as little as possible.  That’s it.

But no, we have Fedora, Ubuntu, Suse, CentOS, Mint, Kubuntu, Edubuntu, Ubuntu Studio, etc, etc, etc.  It’s a constant reinvention and minor tweaks to the overlying thing that doesn’t really matter (the OS) while the thing that really really matters (the apps) languish in obscurity as ‘upstream’.  With Windows (and OSX) there is a vibrant third party community developing all sorts of apps independently of their target platform.  With Linux it’s all about the repository and what apps you get is based on what distro you use.  You get your software updated when the distro decides you should get it updated, not when it is actually updated.  It’s not at all uncommon to have the repo version as several versions behind what is in the wild and if what you want isn’t in the repo you are screwed.  All the talk of ‘choice’ is utterly irrelevant as no matter what distro you ‘choose’ you will still have the exact same selection of software (you know, the things that matters) as every single other distro.

So why are the FOSS communities version of the record industry – the ‘packagers’ – where all the focus lies?  Why does everyone get whipped into a frenzy every few months when some new distro comes out with a fancy new wallpaper and a fancy new theme?  Why are we even still talking about this?  The only reason I can see to ever upgrade your OS is because the new one brings something significant and most people take a largely ‘wait and see’ approach yet with Ubuntu you have the insane BiannualForcedDeathMarch™ and if you don’t upgrade you can forget about ever having newer versions of the software.  Why on earth is there no sane way to install software outside this byzantine system?  LTS support?  Fine if you don’t mind them not bothering to update or add any apps to the repo.  Then they moan about Microsoft not following standards then require software developers to waste days making an individual releases for each version of each distro (see Skype) as they can’t even agree among themselves.  I can get software that was released for Windows 15 years ago and provided the developers didn’t do anything stupid it’ll still work.  Why is doing this so hard?  As I said it’s a solved problem.

Essentially no amount of distro tweaking is going to make Gimp stop sucking, or make OO any less bloated or magically make a decent selection of games appear.  The best Shuttleworth and co are going to end up with at this rate is a copy of OSX without any application support.  What’s the point in that?

But first some numbers…

Linux vs Windows (Google Trends)  Observe the steady decline.  Not exactly a pattern that’ll lead to anything significant.

The much touted W3 Schools logs.  These are horribly biased as it is only for w3schools.com itself, is cited so often to prove dubious claims of marketshare that itself probably skews the numbers, not to mention that Linux is obviously going to be skewed on technical sites, yet it has only shown Linux use double in the last 6 years from 2.2% to 4.2%.

I was going to show statcounter as well but apparently Linux’ usage has fallen so low it’s now classified as ‘other’.  I could have sworn it had it’s own heading.  Oh well.

And finally hitslink.  Shows Linux usage at 0.98% at December 2008, a peak of 1.17% before dropping to 0.96% in October 2009.  A net loss.

Obviously if you pull up the logs of Slashdot or some site like that you can get some more ‘convenient’ numbers, but I don’t think I have ever seen a positive trend itself.  Usage is not increasing in any significant fashion.  If it is provide me with the stats (seriously, do it) but until this point I think my assertion stands.

As an anecdotal point, across the board on all the websites that I admin, Linux usage sits at about 0.3%, which includes music festivals, dentists, estate agents and the like.  As soon as you remove people who’s interests are not computers themselves (and view them as a means to an end instead) Linux’ numbers plummet even further.

The Myth of Marketing

Of course the usual answer from Linux advocates at this point is that it is because of Microsoft’s advertising money, and that the only reason people don’t use Linux is because they haven’t heard about it.  Which is now provably false.

1: Linux has one of the largest grassroots movements on the Internet.  In fact I am coining “Kerberos’ Rule #8 – If someone mentions OS’s, someone will mention Linux.” You can’t have a technical discussion anywhere without someone trying to ram Linux down your throat.  I am pretty sure the majority of the technical community knows what it is, yet strangely choose not to use it.  Is this marketing?  Are MS suppressing Linux?  What about the Streisand effect?

2: The real killer is this.  Windows 7 managed to, before it’s official release, pass Linux in terms of usage.  Everyone who had it installed at that point had:

• Known what it was and where to get it, despite the fact it wasn’t ‘marketed’.
• Managed to burn it to a DVD.
• Managed to install it on an existing system.
• Managed to get it working with all their hardware and apps.

Yet these are the very people that, according to the Linux community, should be using Linux instead.  Yet overwhelmingly they all went with Windows, despite the fact that they obviously have the technical ability to obtain it and install it which the proponents of Linux often claim is easier that Windows.

Linux Is Faith Based

Obviously pointing at a bunch of facts as I have done doesn’t lead to a civil discussion, despite all I have done is point at some facts – and not even said anything inflammatory.  Even saying something like “Linux uptake is remaining flat despite claims of superiority, which doesn’t make statistical sense.” will get you lynched on most pro-Linux forums.  Even saying “Linux is not suitable for my needs” is often enough to incite a flamewar, and stating why will generally get you banned.  It’s why I started this blog in the first place.

The reason for this is obvious though, once you replace the idea that you are dealing with Linux advocates on a basis of logic and science and instead realise that it is a faith based initiative, and religious rule #1 is “Free software is superior to commercial software” and rule #2 “Microsoft is the antichrist”.  Any challenge which questions these rules will elicit a fear/hate based response as would telling a religious person God doesn’t exist*.  Such a statement is fundamentally incompatible with their worldview.  This is proven in the fact that there is pretty much zero critical discussion of Linux occurring anywhere outside ‘hate’ blogs, despite the claims of a community created OS.  So in a world where ‘everyone is a developer’ there is almost no debate and critical feedback**.  That can’t be either right or healthy – but it’s the truth.

What the ‘community’ really is is an evangelical mission to spread the word.  It’s not about self reflection and self improvement, it’s about embracing the two rules and then trying to bend the world to fit them – and calling anyone who doesn’t agree a ‘noob’ and ‘stupid’ along the way.

Pragmatism

I like to think of myself as a software pragmatist – I don’t care which faceless corporation that pretends to care about me produces it – I’ll choose whatever is best for the task at hand.  At the moment I have…

• A Windows 7 laptop,
• An iPod,
• An Android based phone,
• A Linux (Smoothwall) based firewall,
• I also develop websites for LAMP on Windows,
• Plus numerous managed Linux, Windows and BSD servers

The point being I’ll get whatever fits my needs the best at the time.  I’ll get all the available information about all the options, compare them to what I need and base my decision upon this information.  If someone asks me for help I use the following process:

1. Ask them what they will be needing it for
2. Find out the skill and experience of the user
3. Make my recommendation based upon the above

Here’s how your typical Linux advocate makes their decision:

1. Use Linux, it’s the best!

You can see the problem here.  It’s faith based, they have ‘belief’ that Linux is good (and correspondingly that Microsoft is evil), thus they have their answer.  Actual user requirements are irrelevant as they know that Linux is superior, and that Windows sucks.  From this point on it’s simply a case of trying to convert the person they foisted Linux onto to their world view – which generally involves telling them they are wrong and bashing MS whenever a problem arises.  The question ‘would this person actually be better off with Linux’ is rarely, if ever, asked.  Someone being happy with what they have is never even considered.

You see it all the time.  ‘Why aren’t you using Linux’, they ask – the assumption of superiority is in the question.  ‘It doesn’t run Photoshop’, I reply.  Then we go through the whole ‘try Gimp’ rigmarole, then the ‘try Gimpshop’, which is the technical equivalent of putting a Humvee bodykit on a Ford Fiesta and sending it to Iraq. Eventually Wine is mentioned – which is fine if you are 3 versions behind and don’t expect everything to work or be stable.  The fact that I’d have to invest large amounts of time and effort to simply be at, best case, a par with what I had before I ‘switched’ means nothing to these people.

Which is the crux of the matter – you cannot expect a Linux advocate to give you honest advice.  Pretty much regardless of requirements they will suggest their favorite distro.  I’ve seen people recommend Gentoo as an easy beginners system. ‘Gaming is fine with Wine’ and other absurd claims.  The importance seems to be getting people to use it, not getting people the best system.  It would be like asking a fundamentalist christian in a bookshop what book you should read, or asking a Vegetarian*** what restaurant you should go to – the answer almost certainly would not be based on your requirements.

Lies, Damn Lies and Linux Advocates

Another side effect of the blind belief effect is the ability to play fast and loose with the truth.  If it makes Linux look good, it’s true.  If it makes Microsoft look bad, it’s true.  Anything else is FUD and lies.  A once run benchmark from some random idiots blog somewhere will be taken as proof of Linux’ success if it is favorable.  A large companies benchmark will be called lies if it is unfavourable.  Facts are not rated based upon their veracity nor citations nor testing methodology.  They are rated based upon how well they fit the agenda.  The words ‘scientific method’ are seen cowering in a corner somewhere.

Take for example this review of Windows 7 – I think someone linked to it on LHB originally.  It’s one of the most unbalanced hatchet jobs I’ve ever seen, yet is put forwards as being ‘fair and balanced’.  Gems include:

In the RAM usage front, Windows 7 when idle takes a good 1-2GB of my 4GB of RAM, while Kubuntu takes between 200MB-500MB

It’s pretty well known that Windows Vista and now Windows 7 use the RAM you have.  Any half decent programmer knows you can sacrifice RAM for performance and vice versa (largely through caching).  If you put Windows 7 on a box with 512mb it’ll idle using about ~250mb.  It’ll run fine too.  It’ll generally take half your RAM for itself to speed things up but that’s fine – it’ll relinquish it if programs need it rather than using as little as possible and thrashing your disks constantly.

Yet this bit of information, despite being infinitely sensible, and which has been common knowledge for years, is somehow not known to an alleged IT pro.  If Linux treated RAM in this way you can be guaranteed we’d see a spiel about Windows inability to take advantage of your system.  Also, nobody runs an idle system.  Even if you did use a RAM-light version of Linux (which would not be the fully-featured Ubuntu this guy is chatting about) you’d be stuffed as soon you open Firefox or try to do anything as that’s where the real RAM usage is.

But everyone always trots out the RAM argument as it’s on the pro Linux talking points list, despite RAM being dirt cheap and plentiful it’s still viewed as somehow better to spend weeks tweaking a low use system than just buying 6gb or something ridiculous.

Then this classic:

This is a common element of debate, and one I happen to agree with. Windows 7 seems to have borrowed a bit from the KDE4 series. Now days, KDE has changed it’s look to the “Air” theme, so it no longer looks as close. However, the Oxygen theme that was used in KDE around the same time as when Windows 7 was in development is mysteriously similar. Even the selection of widgets is similar, with both shipping with an analog clock, news reader, sliding block puzzle, and hardware monitor by default. Take a look at this quickly put together collage, with widgets from both Windows 7 and KDE versions previous to 4.3

The dude doing the review has apparently never so much as seen a screenshot of Vista, yet alone used it. The clock, sliding puzzle, black gloss, RSS reader, and every other thing he mentioned are stolen from Vista.  Unless Microsoft owns a time machine it’s pretty clear that KDE ripped off Windows.  Hell the guy proved it himself – but it makes Linux look good so fact checking isn’t important.  I even linked to a video ages ago showing that Compiz is an early Vista ripoff – wobbly windows and all.

As stated earlier though this reviewer had obviously already got his conclusions before Windows was even installed, it was simply a case of hunting for the facts to fit.  If the aim was impartiality or fairness he would have attempted to find out why Windows uses the RAM it does, and would have tried it on a 512mb machine, and would have at least used Vista to get a feel for the improvements in 7.  I’d also bet he is a ‘Vista Sucks’ cheerleader – despite never even having seen it before.

The rest of the his points are the airy “I prefer Linux” type of conclusions where he just looks for a bunch of things he can criticise and write up.  I mean a ‘fair’ test would be to use it for a week or two for actual work (although a month or more would be preferred) and then report back on the experience.  This review looks like he installed it, played for an hour or so then ‘reviewed’ it.

Yet crap like this never gets called out.  It’s standard practice.

I have a point? Wow!

The whole point of this post is not to stoke some imaginary ‘Linux vs Windows’ war, but instead to try to get the supporters of Linux and FOSS in general to take a look at and to hold themselves to the same standards they accuse Microsoft of breaking.  You can’t claim MS are bad for spreading FUD while making BSOD jokes.

Also instead of getting defensive when someone says something bad about Linux consider that although you think it’s not a problem they certainly do and thus it is important.  There is a reason nobody is using it – find out why and it will rule the world.

P.S. I don’t imagine for a second anyone will actually listen though, so carry on writing that angry comment/email ‘proving’ that I am wrong so we can get back to flaming each other. 

* It’s an example, let’s not go into it.  I also don’t have a problem with the religious, be it FOSS or actual religion, as long as they keep it to themselves.

** If you think I am wrong provide three examples of healthy, critical, debate that isn’t heavily moderated or a flamewar.  I dare you.

*** I am a vegetarian, but I did make a sausage-crust pizza last night, so I am probably not the best person to ask about fancy restaurants anyway. And I am biased.

This blog is a cathartic to me – having to deal with this crap every day would drive you mad without an outlet, and everyone IRL I am sure is sick of my rants.  I think Linux just gets the brunt of it because they supporters are generally so brainwashed and stupid.

Anyway new post soon!

Don Whitbeck settles the question of “Linux has too many choices” once and for all with irrefutable logic:”Let’s just have one flavor of ice cream. How about vanilla? All that choice is bewildering. “

Or maybe not.  Ice cream is an end in itself.  A more realistic statement would be this:

Would you want 1,000 slightly different shaped tubs of ice cream all only able to fit in budget vanilla, or one tub that you could put any flavour you wanted in it?

I know which I would rather have.

An over reliance on analogy illustrates a weak argument – saying two things are in fact two other incredibly tenuously connected things and since they are better the original thing is better is intellectually dishonest.

A reliance on analogy just illustrates you don’t have any real point.  Analogy is only useful when who you are talking to is unable to understand the point in the current terms.  Using it when both people understand the subject fine is specious at best, lying at worst.

In this example I will show how I quickly and easily, using modern productivity tools, created the logo for this site – and you’ll also notice that pretty much none of the tools I used are even in the pipeline in Gimp, let alone available.  And bear in mind I am a developer mainly, not a graphic designer.

Part 1: The Parts

Firstly create three new text layers – one with ‘pie’, one with ‘st  r’ and one with a star – use the Wingdings font for this one (via charmap).  It is also advisable to put the ‘st  r’ and the star in a layer group – there is a button that looks like a folder on the bottom of the layers palette – so that if you need to move, resize or otherwise transform the text you can apply the changes easily to everything in the group, plus collapse the group to treat it all as one object.  Gimp, obviously, lacks this feature.

Part 2 – Text Effects

Now I want a light black border on the text, a slight drop shadow (to bring it forwards) and a very slight inner glow to make it more visible on the page.  I have no idea how on earth you’d achieve this in Gimp, but thanks to Photoshop tools bordering on nearly a decade old, it’s easy with PS.  Simply right click on the text layer called ‘st  r’ and select ‘Blending Modes…’.  You will get up a fun box for controlling the effects.  Use the following settings…

Drop Shadow: Black, Multiply, 75%.  2px distance, 0 spread, 3px size.
Inner Glow: Lighten, 12%, White.  100% choke, 1px size*
Stroke: 1px, black, outside, normal blend mode, 77% opacity.

* Inner and Outer glows can be used with 100% choke as a secondary stroke – set blend mode to normal.

The great thing about the blending modes on Photoshop is that you can tweak them afterwards – want to lessen the glow, try a different stroke etc.  no problem.  You can also alter the text and enlarge it, losing no clarity and not requiring you to redo everything.  Also, updates are done in real-time – you can see your drop shadow change and move as you change the settings.  Obviously with Gimp what was done in PS in a couple of minutes would take hours, plus you’d have to physically write down everything you did (all settings for plugins) as if you wanted to redo or adjust you’d have to start again otherwise.

All that is left now is to apply the same effect to the star, and to the ‘pie’.  Which is just a case of right clicking on the ‘st  r’ layer, selecting ‘Copy Layer Style’, then right clicking on the other two text layers and selecting ‘Paste Layer Style’.  Just set the star and the ‘pie’s text to orange and you’re done!

Part 3 – The Pie

All that is left is adding a piece of tasty pie!  High quality artwork can usually be sourced from someone like istockphoto.com where for a very reasonable price you can choose between thousands of relevant, high-quality images for the one that fits.  Or if you are a Gimp user you can pick from the dozens of amateur crap at somewhere like sxc.hu – If there is no money to be made, where is the motivation to do excellent (costly) work for free after all?

After choosing the right image, import it into your document, convert it to a smart object – smart objects allow you to resize down, up and rotate an image without losing the quality of the original – position it, add a bit of drop-shadow and voila!  You’re done.  Unless you’re using Gimp in which case you’d probably still be trying to get the first round of drop-shadows done.

Summary

Total time taken, about 30 minutes, and that included picking the image.  If I was using Gimp how long would creating the above to a similar level of detail take (including experimentation and tweaking)?  I am guessing several hours minimum.  That’s the thing about Gimp – it has the complexity of Photoshop and the power of Paint.

Imagine a programming language that lacked arrays.  Sure you can work around it but it would certainly not be fun.  That is what using Gimp is like – even basic, stupid, taken-for-granted mundane stuff that Photoshop has had for over a decade is, at best, ‘coming soon’.

Gimp has no ‘hidden depths’.  Mastering it will not enable you to compete with Photoshop.  It is not ‘the same, only different’, it is not ‘catching up’.  Not all people need all the options, sure, but even then you might as well go with something that is actually easy to use – rather than the colossal disaster that is Gimp’s UI.

Also, what is really, really, really pathetic is the fact that Gimp is a flagship in the FOSS world that has been around for years, yet a (iirc) student project, Paint.NET, pretty much matches it on functionality, and thrashes it on speed and ease of use.

I suppose the one good use that Gimp has is that it makes filtering the ‘full-freetard’ hopeless causes out from the sadly deluded – anyone that insists that Gimp doesn’t suck when presented with the facts is a gonner.

The strange thing is reading his blog I can’t see any point that our opinions diverge significantly, such as:

his post on ‘freedom’, my post on ‘freedom’ – I say that the FOSS license excludes small developers, he says he’s a small developer that tried (and failed) at open sourcing.

My main gripe with Linux, which the commenter FBM gets, is that the community is largely a bunch of argumentative newbies who are intent on a almost religious level of promotion and who refuse to hear a bad word about their OS.

Anyway, I’ll go on your show provided you can answer the following:

1. Where do we actually diverge in opinion.  You say you want to debate, but what about?

2. Find me three examples of constructive criticism of Linux on a public, semi mainstream Linux forum that a: isn’t a flamewar and b: that the answers are not all largely YouDontNeedThat ™ and c: the developers of the software actually read.

Since I’ve never yet seen someone complete 2. I reckon I am safe. 

Hello again everybody. First of all, you people are the noobish fanboys who I ranted about on my blog. It is you people who need to get a life!

Now the thing to remember is that he is probably, at most, fifteen.  He was saying in one post how he had to beg his parents for $30 for wifi in a hotel they were staying in.  Not that there is anything wrong with being young, no, but the fact is most of the people he’s calling ‘noobs’ have been using (and programming computers) for longer than he’s been alive.  Computers are not simple and despite his laughable claim that it only takes two weeks for someone to become an expert programmer, it takes years of study to truly come to a point where you can call yourself competent.

I agree with you people that a lot of Linux users can be immature, but this site is the HOME OF IMMATURE NOOBS. We need to get lives eh? At least us “freetards” don’t spend all day attacking an operating system that’s much better than Winblows made by Microshit.

You’ll notice I don’t refer to Linux as Linsux, Shitux, or even the new and improved Shitsux.  You are a fanboy.  You claim you’re not but you drank the kool-aid, took the red pill, or whatever it is you do to become a penguin worshipper.  You keep claiming that Windows sucks, that Linux is years ahead, that Linux is ‘so much better’, but utterly fail to even make one cogent point that backs up this assertion.

You also talked about ‘Solaris Linux’.  That one phrase alone declares you unable to make any comment about operating systems as the spectacular lack of knowlege to think that Solaris runs on the Linux kernel basically says you have no idea of the heritage of Unix.

Also almost every single tech site is overrun be freetards bashing MS and promoting Linux even when it is massively inappropriate for the task.  The whole Linux Hater thing is a response to the non-stop idiocy of the freetard community.  For every one anti-Linux post I can find you 100 anti MS posts, and no doubt I can find them faster.  In fact name me one popular tech site that isn’t infested with freetards and I’ll give you a cookie.

You hypocrites make me so fucking angry!

Us “freetards” aren’t giving our money to companies that don’t give a fuck about their customers, like Microsoft and Adobe and more!

I don’t think you understand how this capitalism thing works.  Here’s a quick reminder:

Someone makes and sells a product that does a task.  If the product does this task well the company will be successful.  If it doesn’t do it well they will be less successful.  The whole basis of this is an exchange of something that you want (a decent OS) for something that they want (Money).  If they ‘didn’t give a fuck about their customers’ then their customers would be less likely to give them money, thus they would do badly.  It is in their, and their shareholders, interests to ‘give a fuck’ as otherwise they will fail as a company.  As they should.

Then you have ‘Open Source’, who truly don’t give a shit about their customers, and who’s main reply to criticism is ‘Fuck off, it’s free’.  The capitalist evolutionary trait of survival of the fittest simply doesn’t apply, the evolutionary force of competing products doesn’t apply.  There is no incentive for anyone to do anything new and innovative as a: all the truly competent people have full time jobs as b: they won’t get anything out of it.  You may dislike what LH and myself say, but i’ve yet to see you actually coherently argue against any point apart from ‘wahh, they are being big meanies’.  And you end up with pieces of shit such as Gimp, Gnome, a massive reliance on CLI’s for everything and a failure to gain any marketshare whatsoever.  Windows 7 beat Linux marketshare months ago – is this because everyone installing a beta MS OS is an idiot, or because it’s simply better than Linux?

Actually, this is getting so fucking annoying, this constant bashing of an OS that is years ahead of Windows! Microsoft is finally making something good, because we all know that every operating since Windows 95 hasn’t had a new feature added.

Again with your failure to know anything about history.  Windows 98 was the ‘end of the line’ in terms of the 9x kernel, Windows 2000 built on top of NT, a true multitasking protected-memory kernel.  It’s be like running Gnome on top of BSD instead of Linux (but moreso) and claiming that this wasn’t anything new.  There have been hundreds of improvements made to Windows since 95, but you’re too much of a deluded newbie fanboy hater to understand.

Plus pretty much everything that makes Linux Linux is nicked from either the Unix world or Windows.  It’s a Unix rip-off system on a Windows rip-off GUI.  It’s so far from original it’s not funny.  And apart from the idiocy that is package management (I’ll get into this in a new post sometime) I can’t think of a single thing that can’t be traced back to someone else’s work.

Microsoft, I used to like, I used to defend. But they have gotten so fucking stupid, I just had to switch. They didn’t care about me, or any of their other customers. At least in the “freetard community,” we’re actually paid attention to.

You’re not paid attention to.  You just feel you’re part of some community, which is fine, but the needs of the tiny freetard section is largely ignored by Microsoft as what you want isn’t in their best interests and isn’t worth the time to implement anyhow.

A challenge:

If you truly feel you are being paid attention to then try this:  Go to a semi-official Linux forum and try giving constructive criticism, that is honest feedback.  Not I love Linux poetry, not anti Microsoft rants, but honest criticism.  If you need any tips just read LH or my blog – try this post, it’s quite inspirational.  If you can do this without creating an angry flamewar then maybe I am wrong, but I seriously doubt it.

The whole reason for this blog existing is that Linux sucks, yet idiots like you* spend you’re whole lives bashing MS and making outlandish claims while failing to actually contribute anything – except acting like a boat anchor to progress – to this great cause.

* I’ve realised that the people who promote Linux the most are the ones that know the least.  They have fervor, but lack understanding.  You get some idiot who only found out that CLI’s existed 6 months ago arguing with veterans of 20+ years about how typing apt-get install foobar** is actually more intuitive that just downloading an installer.  Put down your ‘RMS talking points’ cards and shut up.

** Which moron decided to call a sound app foobar anyway.  It’s like creating a domain name called ‘example.com’ or ‘localhost’.  Retards.

So I heard it was out and visited the Orange website – it’s available on T-Mobile, but not quite yet – to see if I could buy it and yes, it’s there.  So I added it to the basket (getting quite excited) and was asked to pick a ‘plan’.  And guess what?

There is no data plan for it.

That’s right, the latest Google phone is not available with a data plan on Orange.  It’s an exclusive phone so I am assuming they had to bribe pay someone for the privilege of selling it, but apparently didn’t think anyone would want to use a data plan with it?  It’s also not like they don’t do data plans – if I want one I am free to buy a Blackberry off of them and they have a range of plans that include data – just not for the Android phones.  Well, it’s not strictly true they have no data plans – they do, but it’s £1.50 per day extra on top of the already expensive monthly contract.

It’s like Orange are stuck in the 90′s, offering thousands of minutes, free texts and hip, friendly, ‘appeal to the youth’ marketing copy on their website yet failing to see that the whole entire reason for that phone to exist is data! They even name the plans after animals for some reason – ‘Dolphin, best for texting, ideal for 14 year old girls’.

Maybe someday soon, hopefully, one Orange executive may hear about this MySpace thing that all the youth of today are using and make a MySpace Phone that gives cheap access to the internet, but until that time I think I’ll wait for the T-Mobile release.

Update:

On the (unavailable) ‘Panther’ plan – “500MB anytime mobile internet browsing”.  anytime?  anytime?!? It’s like I just had a flashback to the mid 90′s when BT were offering ‘anytime internet access’, where you could connect to the internet at any point in the day! They are advertising that they are not going arbitrarily gouge you on price and access at various times of the day as a feature.  Generous.

It is unarguable that Apple is having massive success now.  Their unwavering focus on user experience in emerging markets has led to some great products that are, rightly, doing well.  Apple ‘get it’ when it comes to design and the fact that even now large amounts of people and companies think that it is just down to bling and marketing show how far away the competition largely is from understanding this.

That being said the latest action against Palm shows their true colours.  For those not following the story, when Palm released the Pre they made it appear to iTunes as if it was an iPod, thus enabling easy native sync.  Now Apple have disabled this little workaround in the latest release of iTunes, with this cute little note ‘addresses an issue with verification of Apple devices.’ Basically Apple do not allow any non Apple devices to easily sync with iTunes.  It’s funny how Apple does not make iCameras and thus all cameras can sync with their photo software, yet they do make mp3 players so feel the need to block competitors.

Lets look at Apple’s market share for iTunes (from Wikipedia):

• Steve Jobs announced in his “It’s Showtime” keynote that Apple had 88% of the legal U.S. music download market on September 12, 2006.[44]
• Apple announced that the iTunes Store had sold more than two million movies, making it the world’s most popular online movie store on April 11, 2007.[53]
• Apple announced that iTunes Store surpassed Best Buy to become the second biggest music seller in the USA behind Wal-Mart on February 26, 2008 and eventually became number one on April 3, 2008.[1]

So Apple, that biggest music retailer in the world, let alone online, is deliberately breaking and blocking access for 3rd party hardware to leverage sales of it’s iPod and iPhone products.  Isn’t leveraging a dominant market position in one market to assist a product in another market anti-competitive?

Didn’t Microsoft get in trouble with bundling IE with Windows to increase its browser marketshare?  Aren’t the EU still getting all worked up over this issue?  Yet what Apple are doing is not only considered bundling, but actively blocking competitors.

Look at the App Store.  You have to pay money for the privilege of developing software, then you are limited on what apps you can actually write to ones that do not compete with Apple’s own apps (and a bunch of other draconian rules).  Then once you have created your app you can submit it to be approved.  And if Apple do not like it for any reason (or even no reason) it’s tough luck, with no recourse.  So what you spent 6 months writing it – just spend another 6 months writing something else, maybe that’ll be approved.

The question ‘are Apple a monopoly’ and ‘are they breaking laws’ is entirely irrelevant.  Maybe they are, maybe they aren’t, but their attitude and behaviour make Microsoft look like a box of kittens.  What if Microsoft decided that Windows Media Player would only sync with the Zune from now on?  What if they decided that Windows CE (or whatever they are calling the mobile phone OS these days) would only run ‘approved’ apps, and that you could only use IE on it?  What if Microsoft stopped iTunes from being installed on Windows?  The community of Microsoft haters would go utterly batshit insane on a previously unseen level before.  There would be an epic bashfest to end all bashfests and you wouldn’t hear the end of it for years.  It would be the new BSOD.

Yet Apple has a level of paranoid control that Microsoft could only dream of, yet everyone still thinks MS is the ‘big bad’ of the software world.  I just don’t get it – answers on a postcard.