I do too. But what really gets me with Apple is that they're unwilling to grant even freedom 0 - you can buy a copy of OSX - but you're not allowed to run it on non-appearance hw. So you can't legally run a gnu/Linux desktop on a lenovo laptop and run OSX in a vm. But you can run Linux and Windows on a macbook.

You do have access to the source code of the underlying operating system itself with Darwin don't you?

But not Cocoa and the UI :/

Which is the good stuff. This is similar to the them open-sourcing Swift, but none of the libraries like UIKit that actually make it worth using for open source.

I'm still holding out hope that GNUStep will fix that someday.

Please be realistic here, no one is asking for that when looking for a computer. You, and your peers are an incredibly small fraction of a percent.

They don't know that they can ask.

But people —average people— do that for their food, their cars, their homes, their personal appearance. This includes clothes, hairstyles, after market pigmentations, permanent and temporary, as well as extra holes and plugs in their epidermis in all sorts of novel and creative ways.

They ask for customisation on their vacations, hotel stays, upgrades on airplane tickets and car rentals. People ask for concessions on their employment contracts, seek special arrangements for schooling, loans and mortgages.

Some even customise their computer hardware, slapping stickers on custom cases, adding fancy illumination, aftermarket cooling, fancier peripherals, upgrades, et cetera, ad nausea.

And companies jump at the chance to chance to service these requests.

But not commercial software and operating systems. They are special snowflakes apparently.

I and my peers are an incredibly small fraction of a percent? 2% anyway. But sure, ok, a small group.

But we're loud, and we're having it our way. We make sure people see us having it our way, so they will start asking to have it their way too. Whatever that way might be.

And it's working. Which is why that "incredibly small fraction of a percent" somehow motivated Microsoft to add bash to Windows. They weren't catering to average people. Or why there is growing interest in customising Mac OS. https://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn/comments/61gdup/ricing_mac...

Not much I can add, except to say I completely agree, and that this is incredibly well written.

Thanks. I'm glad you agree, and I'm pleased that you liked my writing.

We might be a small fraction, but we are a vocal fraction. Our rage might be impotent, but it is very loud.

For such a small group, we've won some large concessions. Some of them have probably benefitted you.