I would struggle to characterise a company that brings a lawsuit claiming exclusive ownership of the very idea of graphical user interfaces as a good company.
This is all purely my own opinion of course (and you’re free to disagree), but it was based on the parent comment's branding of Canonical as a dubious company on ethical grounds when he mentioned fragmentation / community cooperation / governance / propaganda / dishonesty / etc. Apple is a great company if the metrics you're looking at are the concrete financial/economic ones, but “ethically”? I’m not a fan.
Over the years the list has become much too large for me to even remember it all personally, but some concrete examples of this off the top of my head would be:
A) how the company is structured and how it views its employees [1],
B) general overly intense secrecy (read: proprietary mindset) everywhere
C) rejecting apps without explanation and creating their own versions [2]
D) inconsistent app review process [3]
E) refusal to give to charity during the entirety of steve jobs’ run
F) patent abuse [4]
G) needless limits on products you supposedly "own" (e.g. ipad syncing being limited to 1 computer)
H) tracking users' locations without their knowledge/consent [5]
I) and most recently, the unusually long silence and delay after having a security breach in their developer portal (which I was a member of for some past work, believe it or not)
[There’s also the whole labor situation in china, but I don’t believe apple’s uniquely at fault there]
This is all fairly consistent behaviour, and it exhibits ‘personality’ traits that mirror those of an ultra-proprietary narcissist (read: steve jobs). None of this should be earth shattering to anybody, it’s always been out there in plain view. The only thing one could really disagree with is in how to react to it. Most people don’t care as they don’t see it affecting them, and that’s cool. But I do see how it can affect me, as it has already bitten me multiple times in the past, so I’m not neutral to it anymore. And I have a feeling that a lot of the people that are pro-linux/ubuntu/OSS have similar sentiments.
Don't get me wrong though, from the user’s perspective Apple does the whole customer satisfaction facade amazingly well (and they deserve credit for it), but that's not really an ethical thing when it's so obviously in their best economic interest to do that kind of stuff anyway (which is why I think more companies should follow it). And by "that kind of stuff", I mean those stories you always hear about people taking in their totally-burnt-to-a-crisp 9yr old macbooks into a genius bar, and Apple 'super generously' gives them a brand new fully-upgraded macbook pro with a free iphone to compensate, no questions asked. Sure that's a bit of an exaggerated scenario, but you can see how that would look amazing from the consumer perspective. The issue is that it’s purely a tactic to keep you loyal and faithful to the [proprietary] Apple brand. There was a study somewhere about hotel guests being significantly more loyal and likely to return to the same hotel chain after they've had a bad experience that was handled well by the hotel they were staying in -- same deal here. Apple had the marketing brilliance to intentionally craft that notorious cult-following mentality in its fans.
On it's own, that really isn't all that negative though. The problem is, that Apple is clearly (IMO) using it to push a dubious proprietary agenda that goes against almost everything OSS stands for[6], thus amplifying the influence of their questionable views exponentially. That's why something as benign as not having removable batteries on their devices is a lot more worrisome coming from Apple (if you're invested in their ecosystem). That design choice carries no ethical significance on it's own, but if the actor implementing it has a history of dubious motives, you better believe the significance of the move is no longer null, because it is but a vehicle to convey their greater intentions. This Edge phone for example doesn't look to have a removable battery either, but Canonical is not generally known for being closed about things, so such a design decision wouldn't worry me too much about investing in their platform.
The important thing to realize is that when you vote with your wallet, you're voting on more than just 'features', and these other less-visible aspects can and will affect you at some point.
I’m sure this rant is gonna get nit-picked and analyzed to hell, possibly missing the forest for the trees and all that, but it is a large reason why I don’t find Canonical to be a bad option to support -- and that’s really the main issue here.
[1] The book ‘Inside Apple’ is a really good read if you’re interested to know what it’s like in there: http://amzn.com/B00C2IFS3W
[6] I’m aware that they do have lots of OSS projects of their own, www.apple.com/opensource/ is always the first thing that’s pointed out to me when I go on an anti-apple rant. My point is that the company’s overall intentions aren’t aligned with that of the FLOSS community, and that those dubious intentions can and will bite a large segment of consumers in the ass at some point.
