Jobs Offers Free Mac OS X For $100 Laptops

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?

[rjhall]

Open videocard? no
open chipset? no
open OS? of course! We have principles.

Re:What?

[bach37]

If Steve offers OS X to you for free, you take it.

Yes!

Red Hat sucks

No!

In other news...

[artemis67]

Morton's Steakhouse [mortons.com] offered to give all of the kids a free steak dinner, but the project declined, saying they needed to stick to their previous decision of powdered eggs for everyone...

Next up for MIT - the $100 iPod Project

[mr_don't]

Pelease from MIT... The $100 iPod project will let every child in every developing country download Sheryl Crow's new single to their own U2-branded iPod.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Hardware Requirements?!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not exactly like RedHat is slim and light either, with bloatasaurus apps like OpenOffice and Firefox. Really, the most efficient choice would have been Windows XP/Office XP which runs fine on a 700mhz x86.

Re:What?

[Trogre]

Thank you for your contribution to the campaign. Our department will send you your free t-shirt and mug as promised. Please allow 2-5 days for delivery.

In order for us to more easily identify you in future, would you kindly append your Apple Fan Club membership # to your sig? This will allow for more timely notification of prizes and special offers.

Thank you again.

Sincererly,
Ms A. Shill
Apple Marketing Ventures

But the blondes!?

[Scrameustache]

More critical thinking skills for the kids that get to fix their linux installs instead of clicking on pretty icons.

It's that attitude that's keeping the bimbos out of the computer dating sites you know!

Re:But they don't go for it...

[brarrr]

You know, I laugh at the RTFA posts that usually come out when someone makes a bone headed comment. But I don't think I've ever seen a RTFS post (correct me if I'm wrong, it may have happened before) so here goes:

How bout that summary for this article that points out that THEY DIDN'T GO FOR IT and hey, what's this, a post about how THEY DIDN'T GO FOR IT. Who to believe? My world is torn asunder.

Next you'll see people cutting and pasting without attribution! Heavens to betsey.

Re:In other news...

[Hal_Porter]

Those are Gnu/Eggs. The genome is open source, reverse engineered from Monsanto's Ultra Long Shelflife product and can be downloaded from the Gnu site. They are somewhat hard to crack, but a GNUEGG:SLEDGEHAMMER:HOWTO is available by typing Esc-Ctrl-Shift-X-Power Button at the Emacs 'organism' prompt. Even after reading the GNUEGG:AFTERTASTE:FAQ (Esc-Ctrl-Shift-X-Break monitor with a brick) intently, and cooking them at 500 degrees celsius as directed, they still taste somewhat sulphurous.

We asked some Africans how they felt about this decision, but they looked at us with total contempt before grabbing our wallets and were last seen heading in the direction of Mortons.

Well Thank God!

[Comatose51]

Well thank God they rejected it. Otherwise, poor starving children will be running a better OS than me and such travesty cannot stand!

The Mac Demographic (Re:OS X easy to use -- wh...)

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, here's the problem. The Mac desktop, and in fact the entire Apple experience, is intuitive for a certain kind of person. Artists, fashion mavens, leftists, and other creative personalities [atspace.com] can sit down with a menu bar spanning the width of the screen and comprehend its sensitive, tasteful aesthetic [atspace.com]. It's a rare instinct, this appreciation for beauty and truth [atspace.com]; accountants and other such pencil-pushers haven't a prayer.

In summary, unattractive squares like you should stick to Linux [atspace.com] and Windows [atspace.com]. Fitts' Law is for different thinkers. [atspace.com]

Re:The Mac Demographic (Re:OS X easy to use -- wh.

[JabberWokky]

Fitts' Law is for different thinkers.

Or anybody using KDE...

--
Evan

Re:free?

[dreamchaser]

Yes, and we all know that designing video and other chipsets wouldn't cost them anything at all...I think you dropped your clue, you can pick it up at the Lost and Found.

Re:Software freedom isn't silly.

[Capitalist1]

You don't "lose freedom" by using proprietary software. You gain the opportunity to use the software.

Before you obtained the closed-source software you had, what? The freedom to stare at a blank screen? The freedom to modify the power button state? The freedom to write your own completely from scratch? How do you lose any of that joyful freedom by using a closed source package?

Re:Silly?

[Golias]

If Bill Gates made the same offer, would your response be similar?

He did say "nice." I've heard Windows described a lot of ways, but never like that.

Giving Windows to poor kids is something Marie Antionette might do, were she alive today.

Here's the thing, if the people behind this program were truly interested in helping people, why not accept the free copies of OS X (and heck, even free copies of Windows, if they are ever offered) and let the recipients use whichever one they want.

If I were Steve Jobs, I would make the very same offer directly to anybody who gets one of these laptops. Put out an ad that says they can bring their free Red Hat laptops in to any Apple Store Genius Bar, and the techie working there will gladly install OS X on it for them.

Re:Silly?

[cosmo7]

Apparently Apple is now doing OS X on Intel. I'm surprised there hasn't been anything about this on Slashdot recently.

Re:Free publicity -- What?

[kers]

I don't think that Coors really has much of an opinion on that free Cher concert, and yet they donated money to it

What "Free Cher"-consert? What did they pin her down for and how long time was she in jail?

Re:Looking for OSSOS?

[Richard Dick Head]

.. that makes Linux a cigarette do-it-yourself kit complete with rolling papers ..

I guess that would make BSD a doobie do-it-yourself-kit? Now I know why BSD is so much better! 'cause Herb is the word, my man.

Re:Silly?

[humina]

"That tells me that this project is doomed right now....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."

Seriously. When I run Unbuntu I am constantly trying to figure out how my Kernel allocates memory to my programs. A computer made by MIT researchers and backed by millions of dollars I think is the definition of failure. Those dumbasses at MIT are probably going to require that everyone compile their window manager. This project is doomed I say.... DOOOMED!

Re:Silly?

[klez23]

That's redikulus. Why would Apple switch processors NOW, when they're just about to go bankrupt?

Re:Soemthing that seems to have been missed

[Anonymous Coward]

they'll be millions of new linux developers out there - all producing efficient code.

How in the world did you jump to the second conclusion from the first? There are tens of thousands of Linux developers out there now producing crappy code, I have no reason to believe that increasing that number will increase the quality of what's being produced.