Apple's success is hardly a good model for Linux. Despite a great deal of effort, having a GUI platform that nearly predates MS-DOS, having a BRAND that does predate MS-DOS, lots of focused resources, effective advertising, Super Bowl ads, and even dedicated stores they still only managed to eek out a small minority of the market.

Apple's current success is based on NOT being a computing company.

If anything, Apple is a pretty conclusive demonstration of how "doing everything right" will really get you nowhere in the desktop market.

As far as non-technical users go. Apple products are just quirky enough to be annoying and off putting.

> The problem is the GUI. People don't like X

A stupid noisy minority of techno-hipsters don't like X. For the rest of us it's invisible and no more bothersome than the graphics subsystem on any other platform.

The problem with your rant is that the still marginal market share of Apple refutes it. Linux in other forms was able to gain traction because of lack of an entrenched monopoly (or being the monopoly).

Apple demonstrates that applying the "one true way" approach to the desktop won't help you get away from Microsoft.

So there's no real point in sabotaging Linux just to suit some delusion that ignores reality on the ground.

> Linux "won" mobile in the same way Michael Moore "won" the war on anorexia.

So then what's the bit in that analogy of yours that corresponds to Microsoft's failed attempts to dominate? Or Apple's faultering position?

> A stable binary driver interface would help for starters.

No. Probably not. Lack of stable interfaces never harmed the WinDOS market. That's because these kinds of things are driven by market share and have little to do with "platform quality". Either a vendor thinks the market is large enough to bother with or not. The "level of bother" factor is largely irrelevant.

That's why much software is still Windows-only despite there being a mythical commercial platform that's supposed to do everything right.

With only 2G, the OS will still be getting in your ways. This is all a flashback to the 90s when RAM was too expensive and you usually didn't see adequately equipped PCs. Any PC OS beyond DOS ended up getting in it's own way and running like a snail.

The 1st Amendment of the US Constitution is a limit placed on government. It's not a limit placed on the people. It's a statement of universal principle so important that our nation at it's birth was unwilling to accept a written Constitution without it.

It is not some sort of "legal loophole" that justifies everyone else being a tyrannical jackass.

> So any store that only carries Organic foods is censoring?

A merchant has to be able to make money to keep the lights on and pay the rent. A merchant is subject to physical constraints. A merchant is PAYING for the things they present to you.

Why didn't you just make it a bad car analogy from the start?

Trying to deviate from that doesn't make the problem of applying physical rules to the ethereal realm any more senseless.

> Yes but that doesn't make the intestines a sexual organ.

There are plenty of girls that will STRONGLY disagree with you on that point.

> We're not forcing you to like anyone. We're simply requiring you to behave, in public, as if you don't hate them.

It's not even that. He can still hate people. He just can't ACT on it.

It's like he wants to act like ISIS and doesn't even see the painfully obvious parallel.

Tolerating people you don't personally approve of is just the cost of living in a free society that manages to tolerate YOU.

> That's because "IT" there is incompetent.

Sorry. You lose.

You have just admitted that it "requires a competent IT professional" just to install a printer on Windows.

That's simply not something that should be tolerated in 2014. You certainly wouldn't accept it for Linux.

Hypocrite.

...bullshit.

The same old bullshit.

"This years version of WinDOS finally got things right."

It's such a cliche that Apple even made a commercial about it. You guys always say that the latest and greatest fixes everyone's complaints but it's never like that if you actually try it.

Now TVs are funny beasts. They like to LIE. Yes, LIE. So they aren't a very good basis for comparison.

Windows still has driver issues. It's not just all "automagic". This is especially true if you try to install the thing yourself (like a Linux user might). Simple standard hardware is quite often NOT automagically sorted. This even applies to "market leading products" that you wouldn't think would suffer from such issues.

The emperor is still naked.

Not that this has any relevance to an enterprise corporate installation.

For document exchange in government, something that is an actual standard probably trumps all of the shiny shiny. In a lot of the legal field in the US, PDF is perfectly adequate for document exchange. It was widely adopted when Microsoft was having security issues with it's revisioning features.

The need for actual revisable documents is very likely a very marginal thing for a city government.

> Most peons growing up and using Microsoft Windows exclusively are too dumb to learn anything new, even if they are paid to do so.
>
> It's like a brothel staffed by people with down syndrome.

Actually, that couldn't be further from the truth. Kids have no problems dealing with different platforms. HELL, the barely acknowledge that there are different platforms. They just use similar software the same way as the people from Xerox Parc intended.

It's the aging dinosaurs that have problems with Brand X of word processor versus Brand Y.

If they don't like Open Office, just wait till they see Ribbon and Win8.

I've seen people in small businesses nearly defect over either of those.

...none of which is remotely relevant in an enterprise corporate environment where you DON'T WANT your end users their PCs or the rest of the network and where even Windows setup is managed by specialists from another department.

When our department moved. there was a lot of fun getting the network printer to work with people's WinDOS desktops. An entire department full of programmers had problems getting a mundane Dell printer to work with their Win7 desktops.

Most of them had to be rescued by IT.

Plus, that part of the body that gets cut off itself tends to harbor infections.

That is why that "horrible superstitious religious practice" became a common medical practice once society realized that you should sterilize surgical instruments.