

Mac OS X mistakes and malfeatures - tjr
http://www.fsf.org/blogs/rms/mac-osx-mistakes-and-malfeatures

======
harpastum
Broken down, the article really only talks about two different things:

\- iTunes updates that either stopped 3rd parties from accessing the iTunes
Music Store, or only allowed iTunes libraries running current DRM versions to
play DRMed music.

\- A _single_ quicktime update (7.4) that broke export functionality of
AfterEffects. This was fixed in the _very next_ update (7.4.1 [1]).

Using these two (three if you count iTunes as two) examples under the headline
"Mac OS X mistakes and malfeatures" is disingenuous at best.

[1][http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1345330...](http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1345330&start=90&tstart=0)

~~~
duskwuff
> \- iTunes updates that [...] only allowed iTunes libraries running current
> DRM versions to play DRMed music.

To put a finer point on it, "iTunes updates which modified the store
communications protocols and/or keystore format in non-backwards-compatible
ways". The purpose of these updates was specifically to disable applications
which bypassed DRM restrictions -- which I strongly suspect that Apple is
_contractually bound_ to do.

------
Scriptor
This seems to be mostly about iTunes and a little about quicktime. Hardly
anything about problems in the core of OS X itself.

~~~
dangrover
Aaaaand this is why I don't take the Free Software Foundation seriously
anymore.

------
GHFigs
_I have said in speeches that Apple could forcibly impose software changes in
Mac OS X, just as Microsoft can with Windows. I heard this in the Mac
community, but there is no published information that confirms it, and I now
believe that I was misinformed._

Ah, yes, that devious Mac community, always tricking people into making
counterfactual statements. Stay classy, RMS.

~~~
ptomato
"Stay classy, RMS."

Well, at least the retraction is reasonably classy.

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DarkShikari
This would be much better titled "iTunes and Quicktime mistakes and
malfeatures". It has many valid points--none of which have to do with OS X.

~~~
boucher
Honestly, you can't separate iTunes and Quicktime from OS X. In the general
sense of it, OS X is as much an ecosystem as anything else. In that ecosystem,
iTunes and Quicktime are extremely important. Everything Apple does now runs
through iTunes, it's central to the experience. And the underlying technology
behind quicktime powers much of what you see on the screen when using a mac.
These things ship with the OS, and it's taken for granted that all users have
(and almost all use) them.

~~~
tptacek
Neither iTunes nor Quicktime are anything like IE was alleged to be in the
'90s. You can work on a Mac system _just fine_ without using DRM-tainted
Quicktime code or ever launching iTunes. Everything Apple does _does not_ run
through iTunes, and iTunes is _not_ central to the experience.

You're confusing the weirdness of managing a smartphone contacts database
through a "Tunes" application with, um, an operating system.

Webkit is far more important to OS X than iTunes is; note that Webkit has also
begun to devour iTunes.

~~~
boucher
I'm not making a technical claim. I know what an operating system is. I'm
making a claim about general mac users.

I don't know a single person (even amongst the techies) who has uninstalled
iTunes from their mac. I know few people who don't use it every single day. If
you use an iPhone, or an iPod, you use iTunes. There is no supported
alternative. There isn't even a widely used alternative for just playing music
on the mac.

On another level, Snow Leopard, the operating system Apple is shipping, is not
just about Mac OS X proper. iTunes ships with Snow Leopard, along with
probably a hundred other applications. They come installed. They are part of
the product. And to the vast majority of the computer using population, there
is no distinction between those two things.

~~~
tptacek
I'm sorry, but your argument that iTunes is "central" to the OS X experience
is totally unconvincing. The logic you're employing here implies that
Grapher.app is also central to the experience.

If you're not playing music and you don't own an iPhone, you simply don't ever
run iTunes. On the other hand, there's probably no Macbook use case that
avoids Safari, Finder, and either MS Office or Pages.app.

------
jsz0
I think everyone is aware OSX is closed source software. Most don't care
because the open source software community has yet to provide any high quality
alternative platform that meets the needs of the broader computer market. Very
few people outside of the tech community are going to switch to less
functional alternatives on the basis of a political statement. Most people
can't even be bothered to vote in our real life elections. OSS can win on
functionality, price, availability, customizability, etc but it will always
lose on politics an zealotry.

~~~
tptacek
Huge chunks of core OS X code are in fact open source, including several of
the most important bits (xnu, webkit).

~~~
boucher
It should be noted that much of what is open source is that way because it was
already open source when Apple started using it. And much of that remains open
source for legal reasons, not because Apple cares about open source.

~~~
tptacek
They just open sourced Grand Central Dispatch. They've deliberately chosen to
work with open-source projects instead of in-house alternatives --- for
instance, Konquerer and LLVM. It's a stretch to say they don't care about open
source.

Open source clearly isn't their priority, but then, I'm glad of that, and
happy not to be running Linux.

