OSNews

What to put on it though? I had XP, but I had liked Windows 2000 and we had a copy from an old machine. I installed it. It worked fast and predictably. But we were getting worried about security problems, and I had been experimenting with Linux for some time. After a little while on Windows, I took us first to Suse and then to Mandriva, running Gnome in both cases as the desktop. It was a revelation. The quantity of software, the configurability of the system, the helpfulness of user groups, the amount of information available, the cheapness and performance of the hardware. Open hardware, it turned out, and an open OS that one could run on the hardware of one's choice, was the great contribution of our industry to personal freedom. It had reduced prices and improved quality in an amazing way. It had made computing power open and affordable. It had given control back to the user. I said to my friends, if I was going to be running a gui over Unix, why not just go to Linux and skip all the proprietary irritations? OSX and XP in their later releases seemed increasingly designed to appeal to viewers of desktops in shops, and calculated to infuriate anyone who had worked at it long enough to want configurability and shortcuts. Gnome in contrast, for the ordinary user, 'just worked' and stayed out of the way.

My writer friend moved to Linux too, when his Mac expired. He spent a quarter of what a new Mac would have cost him, partly because he reused his old screen until big flat LCDs came down in price. Unaccountably, he preferred KDE!

I carried on reading on the net. The disturbing trends increased with the emergence of the iPod as the saviour of the company. The locking of hardware to software to purchases recreated the worst anti-choice aspects of the original Mac platforms. The advertising campaigns seemed to be encouraging the attitudes of what I was beginning to hear described as the MacZealot or MacFanatic faction. There were increasing expressions of contempt for alternatives, and worse, for people who made alternative choices.

And finally, we had the OSViews saga on OS News, when it seemed that from day to day the number of hysterical pro-Apple postings soared, huge numbers of phantom memberships appeared, and all postings with any dissent were abusively moderated down. Finally it was traced and stopped. It was with this episode that I finally realised that the phenomenon is not simply harmless eccentricity. How could devotion to a company have driven one person, or group of people, so crazy that they thought this a reasonable way to behave, and one that would do Apple any service?

It is exactly not like devotion to the Amiga or BeOS, which strikes me as a harmless, goodnatured enthusiasm we should all feel good about. It is a positive hatred of any sort of 'thinking different'. If you listen to the views expressed, they are in fact totalitarian and authoritarian. You will hear that choice is bad, it just confuses people. That it is good for you to have a limited and monopolised range of hardware that will run your OS. That all people want is one thing that works, not to be driven crazy by multiple alternatives that don't. You'll hear that DRM is fine for Apple to use, though bad for anyone else to use. Because it will help Apple succeed. You'll hear that for Apple to tie its software to its hardware to its content to its music purchasing service is perfectly acceptable in the cause of giving the user a seamless experience. It is in fact better for the user if Apple has a monopoly. They will only ever use their monopoly power to your benefit. You will hear constant tirades of abuse of Microsoft, Linux, Dell, and their users, and for the whole open hardware business model that has created a PC industry that has done so much for intellectual freedom and the affordability of computing in the last 10 years. The Apple fanatic, in addition to being obsessed by BMW cars, hates the open business model which has reduced Apple to a niche supplier, at the same time as it has benefited the world and society, and that is why the open hardware model and its exponents come in for particularly vociferous abuse.

1. "Why I Will Probably Never Buy Another Mac, 1/5"
2. "Why I Will Probably Never Buy Another Mac, 2/5"
3. "Why I Will Probably Never Buy Another Mac, 3/5"
4. "Why I Will Probably Never Buy Another Mac, 4/5"
5. "Why I Will Probably Never Buy Another Mac, 5/5"