Jobs Offers Free Mac OS X For $100 Laptops 1053
bonch writes "Steve Jobs offered Mac OS X free of charge to the $100 laptop effort by the One Laptop Per Child project. However, his offer was declined because the project was looking for a 100% open source solution. The laptops will now be running on Red Hat Linux on AMD chips."
Free publicity (Score:2, Insightful)
I feel so glad for the red hat crew right now, because theyre going to get lots and lots of promotion from this
Silly? (Score:2, Insightful)
Sometimes it's tough (Score:3, Insightful)
However, his offer was declined because the project was looking for a 100% open source solution. The laptops will now be running on Red Hat Linux on AMD chips.
Sometimes it's tough to stick to your principles. However, in the long run it is always better not to compromise on your beliefs.
biggest mistake ever (Score:4, Insightful)
Give them a laptop the kinds can more easily use to accomplish their task.
I am an avid Linux user.. But i sure hte hell wouldn't expect most kids to figure out how to configure or install some applications at this point in Linux's development.
But they don't go for it... (Score:1, Insightful)
What? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Looking for OSSOS? (Score:5, Insightful)
Your understanding of the word `free` in this context.
The real strategy (Score:2, Insightful)
Hardware Requirements?! (Score:5, Insightful)
Redhat? Why? (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't see any reason why they couldn't take a nice bare-essentials distro, and build to it from the ground up. I've set up Slack boxes to work rather pain-free for computer illiterate users. No worrying about having to use bundled crap.
Oh well, I'm biased. Grain of salt ;)
Sensible Choice (Score:4, Insightful)
By choosing Red Hat not only do they have a free OS and practically guaranteed free upgrades, they'll also have a huge selection of free software to get maximum use out of the laptops.
Re:Looking for OSSOS? (Score:1, Insightful)
Whether you believe in open source or not, it is hard to argue it will not benefit those who are receiving these laptops. In the future if they want to use MacOS they can pay for it themselves and leave Linux behind if they feel it will make them more productive or happy.
But what if MS? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:But they don't go for it... (Score:2, Insightful)
So they declined a world-class OS with commercially available software because the designers (who are not the intended users) wanted something they could tinker with. Makes sense to me....
Re:What? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:good! (Score:3, Insightful)
Uh, how about kids who are actually using the notebooks to get their homework done... and not needing to FIX their linux installs at all!
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Zealotry? (Score:5, Insightful)
No to OSX but with a wave to Windows? (Score:5, Insightful)
Be afraid, be very afraid..
And Mr. Negroponte, after meeting with Mr. Gates, now says, "The machine will run anything, including Windows."
MS might be planing a way to ursurp all those laptops after they've been distributed. Hope Jobs does the same.
Re:Hardware Requirements?! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Hardware Requirements?! (Score:2, Insightful)
Say the designers need more speed. What are they going to do, go to Apple and say "Please optimize your GUI, it's too sluggish"? Apple isn't going to do that, there's no money in it for them. What are they supposed to do then?
This was the correct course of action for them.
OS X easy to use -- what are people smoking? (Score:1, Insightful)
It is said that the Linux window managers are imitating Windows. Could it be said that it was really Windows imitating X/Motif/Open look? Didn't windowing systems happen on Unix workstations before they happened on PCs, and wasn't Windows trying to be more like the workstations than like the Mac?
For starters, the Mac hangs on to the application program menu as this shared resource where the app that gets the focus also gets control over the single on-screen menu. That may have been fine back in the day of small screens and limited pixels, but in these days of monster displays and ever more pixels, for crying out loud, give each app its own menu as is done by the Linux window managers and by Windows. The Mac system of you have to think which app has control over the menu is too much a distraction. Interestingly, Java apps running under OS-X have their own menus along with a bare-bones Mac main menu.
Re:Free publicity (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Silly? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The real strategy (Score:5, Insightful)
And that's what it's really all about in the end. If they adopted OSX, there would be massive vendor lock-in all over the world. Not to mention, they would be dependent on Apple for support due to Closed-source api's. With a free (libre) solution there would be none of this trouble. Not to mention localization possibilities.... This is essentially an empty offer, since they'd have to be nuts to accept it.
Re:Sometimes it's tough (Score:3, Insightful)
I say they should reconsider taking the Mac OS X. Those users who want to tinker will be able to download Linux anyway. (GUESS WHAT, LINUX IS AND ALWAYS WILL BE FREE. Mac OS X is not.)
Dear Steve, (Score:4, Insightful)
Making it easier for us to contact your company with such proposals would be nice also.
Re:In other news... (Score:2, Insightful)
I think you'll find it's more like:
Fluffy Bunny's Candy Shop offered to give all of the kids a free lolly bag, but the project declined, saying they needed to stick to their previous decision of providing fresh vegetables, books on farming, ploughing and harvesting equipment, irrigation systems and bags of seed for everyone.
Re:Hardware Requirements?! (Score:3, Insightful)
I didn't say it would be a "incredibly stripped down" version of OS X that wouldn't resemble OS X.
I said it would be a version of OS X targeted for this platform and program. In other words, all the comments like "OMG, I heard some of OS X's special fancy graphic effects are slow on an iBook, so, OMG, how would it run on a $100 laptop?!??!?!??!!11111one" are completely irrelevant, because the 3D graphic effects aren't what's important. It would most certainly resemble OS X, and would in fact be OS X, and the things that are most important about OS X are things like its frameworks and APIs, and extensive support for languages and extensively polished user interface.
Re:free? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:But they don't go for it... (Score:1, Insightful)
Double slashdot standards as usual (Score:2, Insightful)
Apple offers it's OS-X free and everybody in this sections says take it.
Imagine Microsoft would offer Windows for free for this device? Everybody cries out loud.
(You can already see some reactions like that around this reaction)
I think it's very wise not to tie yourself to any vendor.
With commercial OS makers, you will have to hope they keep the terms the same in a couple of years and as Seymour Papert said: you can't tinker.
It's also a bit weird that Mr Jobs refuses 3rd party hardware makers to use OSX and now he suddenly 'donates' OS-X...
I admire both sides (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple, for offering up their hard work for free for a great idea. Apple wants people to be able to have a good, modern system for people to work with that is easy to learn and use.
Thank you, Apple.
I also admire the laptop project for turning them down. The point of a computer is not just to "do things" - it's to learn that things can be done. It wasn't pocket calculators that changed the world, it was readily-available, general-purpose, programmable computers.
Having a tool you can study and modify in great depth is a wonderful thing. It's not just a tinker-toy set, it's a tinker-toy set and ready-made large-scale projects *in that set* for you to study and alter/improve upon.
This is the same thing that brought about "hacker boom" of the TRS 80, of the Apple ][, and, yes, even early DOS - except this is larger scale, more sophisticated, and more flexible.
The $100 laptop is not about writing school reports, it's not about web logs, and it's not about accounting software. It's "here's what you can do, here's the tools to do it, and here's how it can be done - come join us."
That is the ultimate goal of Free software, and it can not be accomplished using Mac OS X, no matter how excellent a system OS X is.
Re:Silly? (Score:5, Insightful)
Do not underestimate kids. (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, Mac OS X is a great OS that just works. Sure its a real steal at no cost. But for kids, the cost of the OS doesnt matter. The fact that it just works is good. But what they really want to do is get into the internals and rip it apart to see what makes it tick. What better candidate than something that's open source? They dont have deadlines to meet. They are not bothered by customers who inist on their documents being in the MS Office format. For kids, it's about the concepts. If it doesn't work, they'll try for some time to see why. They will ask you why it doesn't work. They will try to fix it. If they can't they will ask you. They will listen while you tell them what's wrong. If you can fix it, they will watch you doing it very carefully, trying to understand what you are doing and asking 100 questions in the process. If you can't fix it, they forget about it and move to something else.
Do not underestimate the kids' thirst for knowledge and their ability to acquire it
Re:Looking for OSSOS? (Score:3, Insightful)
I shared with him that quote from Civ IV "The bureuacracy is expanding to support the needs of an expanding bureaucracy" but the point seemed to elude him. Possibly he focuses on the results, rather than the ethical vacuum existing within the Beltway.
At any rate, among the problems with the opaque OS X binary is that people can't learn much from it. I can't say that I have spelunked deeply within all of the tarballs in
Re:Do not underestimate kids. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:corporate charity == GOOD (Score:3, Insightful)
We want to educate these children, not torture them with litigation and incompatibilties.
Re:free? (Score:3, Insightful)
(or they could just admit that the whole thing is a giant pile of vapourware and has only gotten any attention because it has the MIT name associated with it -- just like everything else the Media Center "produces")
Re:What? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Silly? (Score:0, Insightful)
Mac excels for people who are cash rich, time poor people who have no wish to learn all about their computers.
Linux is great for cash poor, time rich people who can and should learn a lot about computers.
(Windows is great for people with bad habits and no time or interest to change them.)
Kids have (or should have!) the spare time, flexibility, lack of preconceptions about how things are done on computers, etc.. For them, the Linux barrier to entry is low, and they have the potential to exploit it far beyond what their older and dumber relatives can do. Their parents might need easy, but the kids need a challenge.
Re:I love the justification... (Score:4, Insightful)
Probably their payoff would be cohorts of students who were weaned on RH Linux moving into the business world, in countries where the IT infrastructure is minimal or based on pirated software. Instead of the usual dilemma of lock in to MS these countries face when they want to go legit, they'll be free to choose Linux if they want. MS will have to fight for the market instead of having it fall in their laps as it does now due to lack of support or familiarity with anything else.
Re:Free publicity -- What? (Score:5, Insightful)
He didn't say it wasn't publicity. He said it wasn't FREE publicity.
Red Hat is not getting free publicity. They are buying publicity for two million dollars. That's pretty fucking far from free.
Then again, Red Hat has been stretching the definition of "free" in a lot of ways over the last couple years, heh.
Software freedom isn't silly. (Score:5, Insightful)
Doesn't it seem like pro-proprietary software zealotry to think that refusing an opportunity to lose one's software freedom is pitched as "zealotry"? No, framing this issue as zealotry won't help you understand what is really going on.
Ease of use is not freedom. Ease of use is a subjective assessment (everything is probably roughly equally hard to learn when you have no experience with computers) that doesn't address educational goals to the degree software freedom does. Any software can be made easier to use and people don't need to rely on proprietors to do it for us. We can and should do it for ourselves and share the results with people (particularly those who will share their improvements with us). This is part of the spirit that got us the free software OSes we enjoy today.
What Apple is offering here is a gratis opportunity to put on some handcuffs and choose between a set of masters. Some of MacOS X is free software but not all of it. Why subject the kids to a computer they can't control completely? Why help them grow an addiction to proprietary software that will be hard to break? I realize that /. readers tend to think this way only of Microsoft, but Apple is offering a comparable deal here: no software freedom, more like "the first bite is free".
For more on this, I recommend reading Why schools should use exclusively free software [gnu.org].
Re:I love the justification... (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes, you're right. Big red dollar signs to the tune of $2,000,000. The only dollar signs they are likely to see out of this are years down the track, when these students are making purchasing decisions for their employers...
<rant>...or putting up annoying posts on
Re:Sometimes it's tough (Score:2, Insightful)
Regards,
Steve
Re:Sometimes it's tough (Score:5, Insightful)
You should not dismiss the concept of Open Source software as a "silly doctrinaire reason". The economic impact of adopting proprietary software could be enormous and long-lasting. It's critical that this technology be sustainable in the long term without dependence on a single foreign entity.
Apple could easily be gone in ten years, but there will be a continuity of Open Source software until the next ice age.
Re:biggest mistake ever (Score:4, Insightful)
Look, they can still install a Linux distro, if that's what they want to do, even if OS X comes preinstalled. Those who want to tinker with their operating system will undoubtedly do just that. Those who want to tinker with other stuff--Wikipedia, email to the developed world, whatever--they probably won't want to uninstall OS X, and as far as they're concerned, they'll be the better for it.
Re:Free publicity (Score:4, Insightful)
The entire project is purely a publicity mill for the involved parties.
A publicity mill, certainly, but what leads you to believe that it is "purely" a publicity mill? Are people only allowed to do good things if there is absolutely zero benefit to themselves?
At some point, cynicism becomes just another form of stupidity.
Re:Do not underestimate kids. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:free? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Hardware Requirements?! (Score:5, Insightful)
I have (currently) OS X 10.4.3 installed on a 400MHz iMac G3 (original graphite DV model). The actual specs are 400MHz/1GB RAM/7200RPM disk (120GB, for no reason at all). It runs Tiger just fine, and it's actually faster with Tiger than it was with Panther. Sure, it's not always quite as smooth as OS9, but it does it all in stride, and does a lot more than OS9 would allow me to do on it.
OS X has some neat tricks for older machines, including disabling the 3D effects when the machine can't handle it (this one definitely can't, it's an 8MB ATI Rage Pro). There's no interaction required to disable them, it just doesnt do it. Sure, it doesn't look as good as on my powerbook or my roommate's Dual 2.5GHz G5, but it does just fine for email, browsing, and streaming iTunes music to our Airport Express.
OS X could be made to run just fine on whatever machines they throw at it, I think.
not really.... (Score:5, Insightful)
With kids, what I've seen is that their imagination plays a MAJOR role in what they do. So, something even as limited as paintbrush is good enough to them. The ones who want to learn more about drawing will do so. They will come to you with questions. You show them how to do what they want and they will remember because that is what they are interested in.
Same with word processors. They will play with font sizes and bold, italics and underline fonts and will explore every button on the word processor to see what it does. They'll use character and line formatting to write "their story". Maybe a few figures here and there. it won't be structured and it won't need a table of contents - and openoffice is more than capable for those needs. They are also not bothered by it's sluggishness...to them...that's the way it works...no complaints.
Its the same with something like inkscape...as long as they can print their pictures or save them to work on them again, they're happy.
And yes, I do know what you're talking about and when stuff goes wrong, they will wait for you to fix it and then they're happy to get back to what they were doing. One thing with Linux stuff...you generally only have to fix it once. Once it works, it works well. That suits kids perfectly.
Re:I love the justification... (Score:2, Insightful)
Yeah, because the kids that are buying/getting $100 laptops will surely turn around and license RHEL for thousands of dollars.
Re:The Mac Demographic (Re:OS X easy to use -- wh. (Score:3, Insightful)
Way to sidestep the global marketing brainwashed groupthink and reject the use of sex to sell products! You certainly are creative and revolutionary. Well done.
Re:Sometimes it's tough (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Software freedom isn't silly. (Score:3, Insightful)
Running the software for any reason is only a part of software freedom. In fact, it's the first part of the Free Software definition [gnu.org]. It's the part that is supplied by just about all programs (but some programs even cut this off after a certain amount of time). What you don't get is the freedom to inspect the program, to learn how it works, or to share copies of the program, to help your neighbors, or to modify the program, to make the program suit your needs. In short, you miss out on all of the other parts of what makes a program Free Software. You could have used a different program to do that job, or written one yourself, or hired someone to write the program for you, then you would have software freedom. But with proprietary software, the proprietor is purposefully denying you your software freedom.
Re:Red Hat wasn't always bad. (Score:3, Insightful)
Would that choice not depend on what the primary uses that this $100 machine were to be used for? Also would that include the iLife programs and would there be enough RAM to run those? Certainly for e-mail and web surfing OSX would likely work quite well. OSX set up as a limited user is very easy to use by almost anybody. If the $100 hardware were certified by Apple to truly work with OSX for the intended uses, the rejection of the offer smacks of pride by someone associated with that project.
Re:I admire both sides (Score:1, Insightful)
Apple wants more people to use Apple computers, so that they'll buy more and more other Apple products. To believe anything else is simply stupid.
Re:Free publicity -- What? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The real strategy (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:free? (Score:5, Insightful)
You're kidding right? (Score:3, Insightful)
I can hardly stand OS X on an older G4 with 256 megs of RAM.
Re:Sometimes it's tough (Score:5, Insightful)
I've been a Linux user for roughly 7-8 yrs, not an old-timer by any means, but I've hit most of the distros, many when they were still in their infancy (RedHat, Mandr[ake/iva], etc.). I've installed Ubuntu for my sister-in-law and many developers at my company use it. But personally (when I'm not posting from my XP SP2 ThinkPad), I'm on a Mac. I just don't have to spend as much time "messing" with things. And that's the fact of the matter.
Flame away.
Re:Silly? (Score:5, Insightful)
That tells me that this project is doomed right now. The supposed recipients of these computers don't want something to tinker with, but a computer they can actually USE to COMMUNICATE and learn stuff that has nothing whatsoever to do with computers as such. This is like giving a telephone to someone, but requiring that they first learn the laws of electricity before they can use it to call their friends. To use a gas driven water pump for irrigating a field, it is not neccessary to learn the details of how an internal combustion engine works. To use a computer tool, it should not be required to be able to "tinker" with it. With OSX a knowledgeable person CAN tinker with it, but 99% of those computers will NOT be tinkered with by their users. Because Linux is designed by tinkerers for tinkerers, it will never be a general use computer by the unwashed, non-technical masses.
It seems that people around here immediately ascribe the worst motives to any large company that wants to help even a tiny bit in making this a better world.
Re:Silly? (Score:3, Insightful)
Why these laptop designers are idiots (Score:2, Insightful)
1.) That everybody is a goddamned operating systems kernel engineer instead of a user who wants to get some fucking computer work done. 95% of you people have never even modified a single line of your local Linux kernel source tree.
2.) That there will always be a majority of kids who aren't interested in staring at lines of source code to feel good about their "software freedom." Give me a break.
3.) That the tiny minority of kids who would actually be interested in Linux and 100% open source would just wipe OS X off the laptop and install Linux for free anyway.
4.) You guys obsess over making every little kid a coder, when XCode/GCC ships free with OS X, and these kids could have been designing the next great Cocoa apps. Cocoa simply whips the butt of everything else out there.
5.) There are TONS more creative kids than coder kids, and think of all the incredible creative stuff that would have been nurtured here. iLife ships for free with OS X. Now these kids won't get to have Garageband for free, or iPhoto for free, or iMovie and iDVD for free. But hey, now they get to experience the joy of having to install two entire desktop environments and libraries just to run each other's apps! Have fun with a "package management system" and a fragmented filesystem hierarchy that dumps files all over the place instead of in well-designed bundles!
6.) Which leads to my final point. These kids will be taught the wrong ways to do things instead of the right ways. App bundles, real application APIs, real drag-and-drop, etc....
But, the designers' wishes triumphed. Oh? What's this? Red Hat donated $2 million to this project, and now they're getting used over OS X? Ah, that's why. So much for free and open. Only the designers got what they wanted. I guarantee a kid given a choice and presented both systems would have gone with Apple...
Re:Redhat? Why? (Score:2, Insightful)
They are doing just that. The fact that RedHat is doing it, doesn't mean they are just installing a stock Fedora release on the boxes.
Re:Silly? (Score:3, Insightful)
Because Linux is designed by tinkerers for tinkerers, it will never be a general use computer by the unwashed, non-technical masses.
It's not clear to me that this is intended to be the kind of "general use" computer we are used to. Maybe it will only really be designed to run the productivity suite it comes with, along with some simple games... like GEM, back in the 80's. And if the exposed surface area is small enough, there's no reason Linux can't be plenty friendly (ever tried TiVo?).
Re:Free publicity -- What? (Score:4, Insightful)
You'll notice that you said some people in corporations. The official stance of the corporation however is not to give everyone a warm fuzzy feeling inside. The only purpose that a corporation has is to make profit. Yes many individuals want to create a better world. Some of those individuals work in corporations. Those individuals should be commended for their forward thinking views.
The corporation would be pissed if it participated in any community service that did not receive any attention, publicity, mind share, or free advertising. The bricks and stones of a corporation headquarters don't shine a little brighter when it has helped another person.
Re:Silly? (Score:5, Insightful)
The point is that OS X is a unix-based system, shipped with an X implementation AND a load of (closed source) other stuff. All you're doing by not using OS X is removing the 'other stuff'. Look at darwin-ports for the equivalent to apt-get...
The Mac UI is streets ahead of linux and windows in terms of useability (IMHO, but hell, I'm writing this!), it's been designed with thought for how to make things simple, rather than just available. I think it's a shame that they won't get access to it...
My personal opinion is that RH put $2M into the project, and don't want someone else's OS running the show, put real or implied pressure on the project heads, and OS X is turned down... The losers are the end-users, in this case...
Simon
Re:free? (Score:5, Insightful)
but why? That doesn't make much sense in the context of this project. if the goal is to help people - why put this software ideology and zealotry ahead of the wants or needs of users?
Despite all the Mac fanboy protestations, going with OS X would have been a step backwards.
What the hell does this have to do with "Mac fanboys"? It seems that it is the Open Source fanboys who are damaging this idea by excluding helpful tools, based on their narrow ideology and zealotry. OS X has many advantages. Linux has many advantages. They are not mutually exclusive, if it were not for this ridiculous thinking. Why not allow people to choose? Do poor people have to have their decisions made for them, unlike the lucky wealthy people? Do we know what's best for them? Imperial hubris.
If your plan is to indoctrinate the developing nations and poorer people through software - then you would be better off not bothering.
Re:Silly? (Score:2, Insightful)
Second, I don't think these laptops will be very powerful, so there's also the question how well would OS X perform on them. With Linux they can use a custom configuration (probably with XFCE) that would be pretty snappy. Getting OS X would be of no use if the system would crawl.
$100 lamp? (Score:2, Insightful)
"In one Cambodian village where we have been working, there is no electricity, thus the laptop is, among other things, the brightest light source in the home."
http://laptop.media.mit.edu/faq.html [mit.edu]
So this $100 laptop does not necessarily have to be used as a computer.
Heck, if they can overclock it, maybe it can be a hotplate too!
Re:Stupid Ideological Fools (Score:4, Insightful)
The decision to stick with open source is not a matter of ideology. The whole point of this exercise is to come up with a computer that can be provided to developing nations without "strings attached". That's why they're working so hard on the hardware to get the price down to $100. They're not trying to start a charity to give away computers --- if they were, they could easily use second-hand computers, or donated machines. Using OS X means depending on the charity of Apple. What happens if Apple decides to withdraw support for the program? What happens when new versions of the OS come out --- will Apple provide those for free? Using an OS that isn't tied to a corporation is the only way to deliver these machines the way they want to deliver them.
Re:Why these laptop designers are idiots (Score:4, Insightful)
Right, like these apps would run usably on these hundred bucks configs.
XCode/GCC ships free with OS X, and these kids could have been designing the next great Cocoa apps. Cocoa simply whips the butt of everything
Narrowminded. You say we shoudln't "force" linux and linux dev tools on them. Instead we should force cocoa on them ? Nice.
kids will be taught the wrong ways to do things instead of the right ways
Ok, so your argument is that the osx way is right and the linux way is wrong. Not much to even begin with.
kids who would actually be interested in Linux and 100% open source would just wipe OS X off the laptop and install Linux
Actually this is the only argument that makes some sense.
everybody is a goddamned operating systems kernel engineer instead of a user who wants to get some fucking computer work done
Well, linux users' majority doesn't even know what the kernel is. They still manage fairly well. You telling that linux usage is all about code hacking then you're only fudding here.
to feel good about their software freedom
Actually, telling and informing people in their early computer years about alternatives to MS and Apple is Not A Bad Thing. Teaching them to think outside of the MS and Windows frame actually could lead to some real benefits on the genral OS evolution.
Re:How about food to those famine victims first? (Score:3, Insightful)
Let me tell you a story. There are dams in parts of Bangladesh that are designed to keep out flood waters. Ever year, the government spends money repairing those damns. Every year, many of them fail. Why? The contractors are corrupt --- they never fix the damns completely, because they know if they fail, they'll have more business next year. So what's the solution. To keep patching the damn? Or addressing the corruption?
Bangladesh has two big problems: political corruption, and economic stagnation. Fix these two, and while the other problems won't magically fall into place, it will allow progress to be made on the rest. One of the best ways to fix these two problems is education. Bangladesh needs to develop a nucleus of talent which can build businesses that can act as the nucleus for economic recovery. Moreover, Bangladesh needs to develop local talent. As it is, large numbers of well-educated people leave the country for Europe or the United States. This drain, in conjunction with the poor economy and poorly-educated populace (along with rather deep-seated cultural issues) is what allows the continuation of the political corruption that strangles the country.
I say these things as a Bangladeshi who now resides in the United States. Most Bangladeshis, at least the educated ones, will tell you the same thing --- while water safety is a noble endeavor, it's not arsenic that's killing that country.
Re:Silly? (Score:5, Insightful)
Assuming the offer of OSX was going to include a free copy of xcode (which seems reasonable), I don't see where the major difference is. Was the well-documented but closed source nature of Aqua really the deal-breaker? And more importantly, is it really fair to assume that all of the impoverished masses of the world are willing to trade Aqua for an inferior performing, but open source alternative?
Why not offer both, and let the end users decide which they'd rather have? Unless, of course, this isn't really about freedom.
Re:Why these laptop designers are idiots (Score:1, Insightful)
Mate you *ARE* a slashbot, get over yourself.
Re:Sometimes it's tough (Score:5, Insightful)
This fallacy that you cite is at the heart of the whole problem. You know, my daughter is nine, and she's grown up in an all-Linux household. She knows her way around several distos (we have multiple computers) and routinely runs live Linux CDs as well. She uses the whole machine (albeit with a heavy focus on games and educational software), right down to toying with the Python command line occasionally. Mind you, she's still able to use the Windows computers at school, which she sees as almost-acceptable substitutes (she's been heard to complain to the teachers that the computers at school crash, however, stating "They're not supposed to do that.", and expresses disdain for the lack of games that come with a Windows system. OK, I'm proud.). Mind you again, she didn't come to this expertise through having Linux drilled into her head. She just picked it up the way kids pick up anything else, by watching mom and dad. We had Windows on dual-boot on one machine for a long time (it came with one machine which somebody threw away and I brought home and fixed), but she picked Linux over it. I finally deleted Windows when nobody in the household had started it for a year.
What's our secret? Simply that "It's too hard." are words, more than the seven words you can't say on television, that never pass the lips of her mother and I. It turns out that people have a damn-near-infinite capacity to learn if you simply give them the tools to use, the manuals to read, and don't make a federal case about how hard it is!!!!
But thank you so much for doing your part to make this world a dumber place. Thank you for spreading the proprietary party-line that we are too stupid to understand computers, and hence are better off being enslaved by those who know the secret. Thank you for discouraging tomorrow's Einstein before he ever got started. Keep on spreading that FUD!!!
Re:Silly? (Score:3, Insightful)
An analogy would be someone like Netgear who choose Linux to power their ADSL model. I expect they want to tinker with it quite a bit too but it doesn't mean they expect their customers to.
In other words.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:OS X easy to use -- what are people smoking? (Score:3, Insightful)
And you can't just "fling your mouse" anyway, because you have to pick which menu you want, so once you've flung it, you have to re-aim. If (as is common on Windows) you run your windows all maximised anyway, the menubar is just slightly below the top of the screen; the re-aiming needed to find the right menu item isn't a whole lot more than it is on the Mac. The flexibility that per-window and context menus (compared to top-of-screen ones) buy with respect to reducing the distinction between "application" and "window" is also something that must be considered when designing your new GUI.
Re:What? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Silly? (Score:3, Insightful)
That is really the bottom line. I hope that these machines turn out to be useable tools for the recipients, no matter what software runs on them. Nothing is more frustrating than a tool that gets in the way of a job that it needs to be used for. Linux is certainly capable of being adapted to this and can be set up to work for the intended recipients. OSX as it is shipped certainly would not work too well on this minimal hardware without some trimming.
The designers of this system have the same opportunity as Apple does in that they can design the hardware and the software TOGETHER and come up with a useable system. I hope that the money spent on this project will not result in a pile of computers that will not be used, but will bring this modern tool to many.
Re:Silly? (Score:3, Insightful)
"Tinkering" with the OS to put it into the local language is very high on the list of mods. Linux already has very many languages supported and this project should stimulate more.