The system76 laptops are probably generic machines from Clevo, Sager or some such with a custom badge. Alienware used to do the same thing.

I really hope that this ridiculousness doesn't start to bleed through - the MacBook Pro is pretty much the only laptop I've ever considered usable for development, and I don't know what I'd do if I had to abandon it...

I specially loved the one that came with the 3278 terminal. And the clicky ones, like the ones that came with the 3290.

Nowadays, when on my desk, the netbook is hooked up to a Microsoft natural keyboard. I would like the Sun keyboard, but Sun won't ship it to me in Brazil and local dealers want... US$400 for it.

"Quality of hardware" boils down to user interface... just at the hardware level.

Their UI ability is the secret of Apple's success. Everyone else treats UI and design like an afterthought.

Boycotting Apple's content creation tools and consequently not developing for the iPad/iPhone is one way to send a message.

However, I'm ultimately interested in serving my application to the largest number of people, and it seems clear to me that the App Store is the best way to achieve that today. So, do you cave in and develop an iPhone version? Or, do you stand by your morals, and, in turn, limit your audience?

Maybe the next iBook will just be a foldable iPad with the same closed OS.

ALL other user interfaces by ALL other vendors suck.

For some reason, no human beings on the entire planet other than those that work at One Infinite Loop in Cupertino are capable of doing a UI.

The same caries over to other things. Sure the install and uninstall of applications on OSX is a great UI. But apt-get just seriously leaves it in the dust. The problem with linux was never that it had a bad UI or was too customizable. The problem with linux was actual hardware bugs in drivers, lack of office, lack of flash, lack of games. Which have mostly been addressed asides from games (which is a sore point for Apple too). UI is far too overrated over actual features.

And it's all based on a myth. Steve Jobs ringing up SUN over their looking glass and threatening with UI patents is just ridiculous. As are the claims to Apple fame with interfaces taken from Xerox.

So yes, I agree Apple are very good, possibly the best at UIs. But my points are 1) UIs aren't as massively important as people say, 2) Apple's "innovations" have been overrated 3) your statement that "no human beings on the entire planet other than those that work at One Infinite Loop in Cupertino are capable of doing a UI" is just ridiculous.

When something on a mac looks like it should be able to be frobbed, dragged, etc., it usually can and in exactly the way that it seems like it should.

This is not the case on Windows, Linux, or anything else.

1. It's way the hell better than Windows. No competition here. Windows is horribly clunky, and if you disagree with me, try using both for a while.

2. It has less of a tendency to plunge you into pesky little technical details than Linux. I personally don't mind fiddling with a config file every now and then, and the more recent Ubuntu versions are getting surprisingly good about this, but Linux still demands more effort to get a good, productive environment going. And Flash support still sucks.

Of the two, I prefer Linux in terms of usability. I doubt most non-technical users would agree. (Chrome, though, is just unambiguously better than Safari in every way. I use both regularly and don't want to dislike either of them.)

I'd say the all user interfaces from all vendors suck, including Apple.

Essentially, the menu items are infinitely tall hit targets… no matter how fast the mouse moves towards them, one can never overshoot them vertically. Menus in Windows and most *nix environments require both horizontal and vertical precision.

Furthermore, why are you bothering with the Dock when Exposé and Spotlight (or Quicksilver, Launchbar, etc.) offer great power user alternatives?

Personally, I still can’t stand how Windows and Linux make no distinction between applications and windows.

I understand the original reason for it. However, hitting the menu is an extremely large distance from what you might be working on now. I'm typing this on a multi-monitor machine -- this app is totally self-contained on one monitor. Why must I move my mouse across two monitors just use this app's menu?

> Personally, I still can’t stand how Windows and Linux make no distinction between applications and windows.

I can't stand how you can close all windows on a Mac and still have the process around with the only indication being a slightly difference in the menu bar. Amazingly confusing.

Now this may be personal preference but it still shows that the Mac GUI isn't some ultimate model of perfection that everyone agrees on.

Also, Fitts' Law says that the time to select a target is proportional to the distance and the size of the target. Putting the menu on the edge of the screen makes the effective size of the targets bigger, but in some cases it also means that they are much further away.

As I type this, the menu bar is about 4x further away than the top of my browser window.

And they violated that rule in the dock, unless that's been fixed in the last couple of versions.

I booted my other laptop to transfer some data over and waiting for Vista to load to the point where I could interact with Chrome was like pulling teeth.

1) They removed much of the "originality" that they did from Vista.

2) They copied more stuff from Apple, and a little bit from the Linux ecosystem.

Oh... and what's their fetish with that sickening shade of teal/blue? Yuck! It looks like smurf vomit.

Linux fans need to relax a bit and realize they're number three for a reason and work harder not complain harder.

Edid: I'm sorry, do I sound bitter? Maybe I've grown disillusioned with the difference between the reality in the trenches and fans extolling the features of product X, where X is any of Linux, Mac, Windows, iPhone, etc.

In the old days, when you minimised something, it always went to the bottom of the stack. (Except Excel, which had a silent entry in the stack when you had more than one document open. Outlook has been bizarre for a while, too.)

In one of the NT4 service packs (I think) this changed so that if something minimised to the status bar (rather than the task bar) it worked differently. I'm not sure what Vista did, but XP was bearable.

Now there are lots of variables - different apps respond to being removed from focus differently, I've read that the number of open applications affects stack response to minimise also.

Windows used to be very friendly to rapid keyboard-only operation. You could drop things in the start menu and activate them with two keystrokes. Alt+tab was dependable. No longer.

    ALL other user interfaces by ALL other vendors suck.

If this is a big thing for you, I'd recommend the path I took after Be folded. Accept that complex user interfaces have bad tradeoffs (platform dependence, inflexibility). Find a full-screen tty you like (I use iterm because with apple+key + enter it goes full screen and gets rid of aqua) and return to living in the habitat of your ancestors!

A few things are inherently visual: paint programs, 3d games and movie editing. Everything that is not can be done effectively on the console. These interactions are often far superior to GUIs.

There's a learning curve. But once you're over it you'll have enormous power at your disposal and won't ever get locked in again.

Two things make this far easier than it has been previously:

1) Python. The standard library contains everything you'd want to do to push a system around. You can hammer out powerful tools in python in a casual manner and at a speed that has not been available to mere mortals before. You can get it on a variety of platforms.

2) Web browsesr. It's now easy to get high-quality web browsers on any platform you'd want to use. Where you do need to produce a GUI, you can knock up a trim webapp with html and forms.

Some systems have a CLUE (Command Line User Environment).

For now.

That's the thing about Apple's capricious, passive-aggressive contract language... you have no idea, and no way to even guess, if your business model will be the next one they target for termination.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MacBook

I actually went the opposite route and installed mac os on a netbook.

http://gizmodo.com/5156903/how-to-hackintosh-a-dell-mini-9-i...

It's a little flimsy, physically.

And I am a proud free software zealot, so I moved it to debian.

Toughbooks are also promising, but they're light on the specs... could someone please make a durable and well-specced laptop?

Maybe we were not that zealot after all when we free software "zealot" said that proprietary software allow their owners to treat their users badly and that eventually, this happens to every proprietary software. Just saying. It amazes me how surprised users of proprietary software are every time they get screwed by their masters even though this has been happening for the last 30 years.

Products are OK to be proprietary as long as the value provided is top-notch. Sorry, but I don't see profesional designers using Gimp over Photoshop.

Relying on a platform for your existence is a different story. But as a business you need alliances with other businesses, and not just in software. And everybody can pull the plug on you, that's why reputation matters and in many cases it's all you need.

About free software, programmers need to eat too. Myself I use open-source everywhere, but for the last 7 years I've been doing consultancy work (turn-key apps that are never released in any form or web services that put a lock on your data ... the worst kind of closed systems). And until you'll teach me a business model that would empower me to work on "free software" while providing for my family, then I'll keep doing it.

Until then it's only fair I get paid for my work, that's why I consider the free software philosophy as extremist bullshit.

Free software is an infrastructure. I drive on it daily delivering value and getting paid.

That's a fallacy.

The majority of open-source sponsors are selling closed systems or services to sponsor their "free software" involvement. Google doesn't have a business model around "free software". Neither does IBM or Sun.

I'm also not Mozilla and my apps would probably never get in front of 40% of all Internet users. Even if I'm that lucky, it's probably not going to be a desktop app that's used to search for stuff.

To get paid for customizations, your software also has to be really popular for businesses (consumers don't pay for that, they either endure it or search for something better).

Did I mentioned that I don't live in Silicon Valley nor in Cambridge, but in an Eastern European country? So training is off.

I already mentioned consulting, but then I would be a hypocrite if I promoted the free software ideology while working on the worst kind of closed software, wouldn't I?

Anything else?

> That's a fallacy.

> The majority of open-source sponsors are selling closed systems or services to sponsor their "free software" involvement.

Red Hat, Canonical and a large chunk of IBM GS wouldn't be able to sell those services with proprietary products - the OSS licensing of various Linux OSs, Apache, etc. are the basis for them being able to have an audience to sell their services.

I agree with you re: Google. They're not a service business and could have written their own OS or used a proprietary one and not affect revenue.

Not sure what licensing fees would have done to their overhead costs in the early days.

Maybe you should have a look at this again... I've been on a trip to Romania for training (about architecture of some specific piece of OSS) at some point. As long as you can provide good training, it could work for you too.

And the software that makes Google their money is proprietary, unless you can show me the link to the AdWords server source.

I think they basically just do it through consulting + a little support and training. (See http://phusion.nl/services). But since they wrote Passenger and REE, I'm sure they can command a very high rate.

It's also worth noting that the users aren't getting screwed at all by Apple, only the developers and only a small fraction of them.

Secondly, users are harmed by these actions as there will be fewer developers making apps for them, plus, Apple are potentially stifling innovation.