Ralph:
I very much appreciate the politeness of your reply. I do not, however, like the condescension of the tone and argument, which suggests that I, as a "tool user," have had nothing to do with programming and programmers in the course of a lifelong career.
At one point, I was actually referred to as a programmer by people who hired me (not that I was well versed in any sense, nor was that my focus). I also have friends who are far better at programming than I, grew far wealthier as a result and are still doing what they love.
One of them began as a person who created utilities in hypercard, eventually designing and maintaining the applications people used to create electronic books as CD-ROMS. That person went on to design database software that is now used professionally across platforms. He still prefers to create applications for OSX environment rather than Windows, though he can easily do both. He even likes writing apps for the iPhone.
Another friend's first job out of college was being Sys Admin for Sun Microsystems. He likes to write in Java and was one of the first people I know to create a database that could be revised by several people at once. His computer of choice is a MacBook Pro and he takes it with him on his long, long vacations between periods of intense and relentless work.
You make it sound as if you haven't had any experience using early macs. I find it hard to understand why you refer to the "closed system" as something the Apple OS has
always represented, rather than something which developed
after Jobs's return to Apple.
The beauty of Windows is that it's designed to run on all kinds of heterogeneous computers and does so well a good deal of the time. Jobs's approach was different: to design the software and the computer as a single object, as Atari also tried to do with the SE (which, to my knowledge, was the first personal computer with a MIDI jack built in).
You can call that approach controlling if you like, but objectively, it's simply a choice to create a more seamless environment, one in which the same kind of aesthetic informs the hardware as the software. The "closed system," one which banishes innovators who fall outside the Apple camp, came far later. In the beginning, Jobs's approach made the mac far more useful to artists than Windows, and more attractive to programmers with certain kinds of artistic ideas.
You're also creating a false parallel between understanding computers and a polemic endorsing open systems, as if the two were interchangeable, as if no one on this thread had had any experience with operating systems like Linux and Be, or even black boxes in C++.
You're also using the royal we, which I find distracting. I very much appreciate the specialized POV you bring to the discussion as a person who writes code, but you're making an argument by authority, and your conclusions aren't necessarily the same as those of everyone else who writes code -- particularly when you make arguments against Apple in the past based on Apple in the present.
Any number of "tool builders" fall on different sides of the wearisome debate you're insisting on having at the virtual memorial service of a dead man. Any number of "tool builders" prefer more open environments than the one upon which Jobs eventually settled.
But those same "tool builders" are just as likely to point out what was great about Job's approach in the beginning, and how, whatever Draconian excesses might have followed, he was undeniably important, and his approach did "change the world," for better or worse, despite your need to judge his achievements solely by his autocratic social politics and decision in the mid-90s to begin building an electric fence around Apple's OS.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward
I think this is a cultural clash. Let me explain.
There is a large group of people who are tool users. The artistic use you describe is purely using the computer as a tool, unchanged by the user of the tool.
There is another, smaller group out there, the tool builders (of which I am one). We use tools, and we create new ones. I specialize in logic structure creation (code), but physical creation is just as important.
Tool creaators need openness to provide the tools for other people. They are at odds with the closed, I know all the answers, tool implementations. They are alway looking to do something new, something different, something better. You might say "They are the bleeding edge, by definition." They want, they need, openness to express their creativity.
They don't like closed systems, nor are they enthralled with the proponents of closed systems. And the pure tool user, has no use for the world view of the tool creator, except where the crweations can be "broken to harness" for use without any tool creativity (tweaking) being needed.
Hence the slogan "The computer for the rest of us."
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