[FoRK] More iPhone analysis

[Jeff Bone]

On Mar 9, 2008, at 1:55 PM, Jeff Bone wrote:

> It's got NOTHING to do with Kool-Aid a priori.  I wasn't  
> proselytized by Jobs, I wasn't effectively targeted my some Apple  
> marketing machine, I'm not a typical fanboy --- and neither are most  
> of the folks I know that use OS X.  Case in point:  my clusters  
> aren't Macs, they're commodity Linux boxes.

BTW, Tom, one bit of irony.  I've mentioned this before but...

Back in '97 or so I had a run-in with David Winer who got COMPLETELY  
bent out of shape by my suggestion at a conference that Apple should  
pack it in, that it was causing more harm than good by fragmenting the  
operating system space with its then-pathetic offerings.  He even  
singled me out in a subsequent column and essentially blamed me (as  
proxy for everybody who thought like that) for the decline of Apple in  
the 90s.  (Thankfully NeXT invaded and took over the shambling corpse  
of 90s Apple!)

I *do* think there that technological monocultures (particularly  
proprietary ones, or ones that are tied to distribution channels) are  
very dangerous, but I *also* think that there's some benefit in having  
a relatively few offerings in such fundamental platform technologies,  
and all of them should bring something different to the table.   
Avoiding fragmentation reduces certain kinds of friction in the OS  
market.  On that level, perhaps, it's a reasonable position to say  
e.g. that all UNIX users should get behind Linux exclusively in order  
to maximize the progress there, and the corollary to that would then  
be that Apple is in some way hindering forward progress with UNIX.  I  
think that line of argument has some merit.

But the mitigating factor here is, as mentioned, personal utility.   
Sure, Linux might perhaps get there quicker if "all the wood was  
behind one arrowhead" so to speak --- but is the cost in reduced  
utility through usability friction worth it?

It's a tricky calculus.  As they say, YMMV.

jb