
Apple crippled DTrace on MacOS X - nickb
http://blogs.sun.com/ahl/entry/mac_os_x_and_the
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umjames
Is it possible the reason Apple did this is so that people don't use DTrace to
find a way to hack Apple's DRM in iTunes?

I'm sure the RIAA and the MPAA had some concerns about that.

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tx
This is one of the reasons why when my time to ditch Windows has come, I opted
for Linux on a ThinkPad instead of OS X on MacBook Pro.

~~~
mechanical_fish
<snark>

Yes, it's true: You will probably never have to worry about whether or not
DTrace is compatible with the Linux version of iTunes. That is one problem you
will never have.

You may also never have to use DTrace with the Linux versions of 1Password,
Adium, Audio Hijack, Automator, Colloquy, GarageBand, Handbrake, Path Finder,
Pixelmator, Quicksilver, NetNewsWire, Snapz Pro, Textmate, Transmit,
Twitterific, VisualHub, or xScope. To say nothing of Photoshop or Logic Pro.
Just think of all the bugs you will never have to find.

Of course, based on a quick Google search for "dtrace Linux", you don't seem
to be able to run DTrace on Linux at all. But, if you could, I'm sure it would
be perfect!

</snark>

Mind you, I love Linux and I use it all the time. Just not on my desktop.

~~~
Tichy
iTunes itself had it's share of unpleasant aspects, like in the beginning when
it logged your playlist to Apple by default. I don't really miss it all that
much - OK, Rhythmbox does not have Coverflow (yet), but apart from that, it
seems to do roughly the same thing.

I don't want to compare Apple apps to Linux apps, just point out that many
Apple apps come with a nasty aftertaste. Maybe most apps on your list are
clean, maybe not. It's all about trust to begin with, and I don't really trust
Apple to do the right thing.

~~~
mechanical_fish
_Rhythmbox does not have X (yet), but apart from that, it seems to do_ roughly
_the same thing._

An excellent choice of words: "Roughly". You and I are in complete agreement.

I find your answer very illuminating. "I don't really trust Apple to do the
right thing," you say, and yet of the 21 apps I listed (including DTrace
itself), exactly three are Apple products. Another, Photoshop, is a Adobe
product, and DTrace is made by Sun. I believe the remainder are all produced
by little shareware shops, composed of one to five people, with a sinister
"corporate agenda" that consists mainly of "make enough money so that we can
keep eating and writing cool software." Or, like Colloquy, they're open
source.

(There are interesting exceptions. NetNewsWire now has an exciting new
corporate agenda: they are giving away the software and planning to make money
by tracking audience numbers for the content that their subscribers read. In
other words, they've chosen to become some combination of Google and the
Nielsen folks. Is this scary? Perhaps. I'm not completely in love with this
new development. But it's not as scary as Google itself, let alone Gmail.)

I would love to run a Linux desktop. Seriously. And, in a world where the
market for Linux-based software was healthy, I could do that without regret.
But the Mac OS X world is filled with elegant apps which have been honed, over
the course of several years, by dedicated one-to-three person design teams.
The result is that I can rip a DVD and put it on an iPod in two steps without
thinking (Handbrake), or set up a flawless, bootable, automated system backup
in two minutes. (SuperDuper -- I can't believe I left this off the original
list. And that's not even counting Time Machine. My god, do you have any
_idea_ how many hours I wasted trying to get automated, bootable backups of my
Linux box? At first I dared to sample the "rough" SuperDuper alternative,
Mondo Backup. Gaaaack. After hours of suffering I fell back on rsync + Knoppix
+ detailed handwritten notes, the tried and true hard-core-geek solution.)

Unfortunately, these polished apps don't seem to exist for Linux. The market
doesn't seem to be there.

Why not? I think the biggest reason is that Linux is an amorphous blob:
although Ubuntu has done much to improve the situation, it's still the case
that every Linux system is different from every other, often in nontrivial
ways, and this creates a support nightmare for the one-person software vendor.

But I think there's another reason: if, for example, Agile Web Solutions were
to port 1Password to Linux and start selling it for $39.95, significant
portions of the Linux community would react by trying to run it out of town.
They would denounce the company's sinister corporate agenda, demand that it
release the code for free, and promote a bunch of "rough" free alternatives,
many of which were produced in one day by a high school student who has
already moved on to something else.

The attitude is _pervasive_. Your response to my snarky post was quite
sensible, as these things go, and yet it was completely natural for you to
unknowingly group the makers of _Audio Hijack_ \-- a $32 piece of software
that, among other things, can _strip the DRM from any piece of audible
content_ \-- with companies like Adobe. As Mac software vendors, they're _all_
potentially "unclean". What in the world is unclean about them? Is it all that
filthy money?

~~~
Tichy
I simply did not know most of the applications you listed, but I assumed that
the true Apple feeling comes from software provided by Apple itself.

I don't deny that they do some things right, or at least set interesting
trends. I am still amazed at how bad other companies are at copying apple's
style (it does not seem that hard, but the clones are always horrible).

Anyway, I can only speak for Ubuntu, and I think they are really making giant
steps towards usability. I am very happy with what is available on Ubuntu - it
beats the usability of Windows in many ways, and personally I prefer Windows
usability over OS X... One major gripe I have with OS X style is that it
requires you to know so many things (like keyboard combinations). Windows and
Ubuntu almost always let you find a way with the right mouse button. With OS X
I often had to google to find out how to do trivial things (like cut+paste,
file renaming, etc).

The latest Mac Book Air is a good example: the gestures on the mousepad might
be a nifty feature, but they are something you have to learn somehow. There is
nothing about the mousepad that suggests those features to you. Chances are, I
personally would never learn them, just as I never learned to write the
special letters on my Palm Pilot back in the day. But an OS X super-geek will
be able to do wonders with them, perhaps, at least impress some girls at
Starbucks.

You could be right that the true secret of Apple is the willingness of users
to pay for stuff, hence more pretty shareware for Macs. Interesting!

------
jey
I really want to like Apple, but shit like this bothers me.

One of the commenters on that post said:

    
    
      They're more concerned with their image than doing the right thing. That is the essence of evil.
    

Sounds about right.

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zeka
I am not sure what "spirit of open source", that the blog post refers to
means, but what Apple did isn't looking nice from any angle.

