Did Steve get away cleanly and Phil is from now on a Steve-enhanced human? That didn't sound like the way things were going ...

That story line seemed like it was cut off rather abruptly and I was looking forward to hearing what happened.

Can you fill us in?

D

Shiny things distract me.....

Well, I didn't think the Dark Lord of Ubersoft could possibly let Steve defeat him so easily, particularly since I'm pretty sure a Steve conversion also means a renewed devotion to something vaguely like quality control.

I'm always amused by the curious combination of your obvious admiration for Steve Jobs and your hatred of software overlords.

Especially since I'm working with the iPhone SDK and really enjoying it. It does have a tough learning curve but I've found it amazingly stable and fun to work with.

Anyway, this is looking like an interesting tangent. I just didn't want the other storyline to be forgotten.

D

Thing is, if you select your software overlords based on morality, I don't know if you'd have any overlords left.

For example, OS/2 was built by IBM, a company which is not without sin in its past, including lawsuits against companies trying to clone its computers! And yet you loved OS/2 all the same.

Ubersoft is certainly the software overlord that has inflicted the most pain on its customers, as you so rightly document. So certainly anyone would be nuts to choose them, even though the majority of the population does.

Linux is probably the closest software tribe (we really can't call Linux a company managed by any overlord) to being without sin. But if you don't love tinkering with your system trying to make it work, Linux is probably not yet ready for you, despite recent advances.

Steve and his minions work very hard to create something as close to perfection as their abilities and technology allow. That alone separates them mightily from the other options. I would say that quest for perfection requires a software overlord with his own obsessions, and so it's unlikely that Linux will even come close. At least Steve has an obsession that has to do more with making the best product than taking over the world, and that has to be refreshing.

I think I would put it another way: You admire his ability to make great products, but not his ability to bully employees, sue the press or generally act like a software overlord.

The problem is that there are so few people who make great products, and that lack is what I find sad. As a result, I forgive Steve his faults. Heck, I understand the Think Secret guy still uses and supports Apple products even after being sued.

So perhaps we can agree that the real problem is a lack of competition. Steve can get away with a lot when his primary competitor is the Dark Lord of Ubersoft.

D

So perhaps we can agree that the real problem is a lack of competition. Steve can get away with a lot when his primary competitor is the Dark Lord of Ubersoft.

I don't think that's the real problem. I think the real problem is that companies become progressively more sociopathic the longer they stay in operation. Some companies go that route enthusiatically, others wake up one day and are surprised to discover it, but it happens.

Apple makes great products. That's part of their schtick. If you use their products you will be forced to pay an "Apple Makes Great Products" tax multiple times throughout your use of Apple products, because that's what they do.

I don't want to pay the "Apple Makes Great Products" tax. My idea of rewarding someone for a great product is to buy the product, period. Apple wants more than I'm willing to give.

I use Linux.

(I use Windows to play games and record music... but only because of previous investments. With Wine and new sound drivers and Linux software, that previous investment is slowly becoming irrelevant.)

Not sure if I buy that about degradation of companies' morals. After all, Bill Gates outmaneuvered Seattle Computer unethically close to the beginning of Microsoft time. I think the sociopathy was always there.

As for an Apple tax, Apple stuff is a lot more expensive than the broad market(*). But as far as a post purchase tax, I dunno, I've owned this PowerMac G5 for many years and don't feel I've paid much of a tax on it.

I didn't get AppleCare. The hard drive failed about a year ago, but slowly enough for me to put in a new hard drive and retire the old one. The new hard drive is 500gb, much larger than the original 160 and it cost me less than what AppleCare would have cost.

The only tax I paid would be upgrading to Tiger and then Leopard, but the $129 really doesn't bother me.

I bought iWork but since I really like iWork that's not much of an issue.

I bought Final Cut Pro and then upgraded to a number of successive versions, but again that's no different than if I'd bought Avid for the PC (in fact it's quite a bit cheaper than Avid.)

Final Cut Pro has removed any need to pay for QuickTime Pro, which has been a pretty stupid thing. Fortunately, aggressive sales of QuickTime Pro seem to be a thing of the past thanks to competition from Microsoft's Media Player.

I will admit that I paid $3,000 for it which is very expensive for a computer and was very expensive for a computer back then. To replace it today, I would pay $2,800 and have a machine that must be almost 20 times faster. Love to do it but since I am contemplating a move outside of the US where I can only carry a laptop, unwise.

The biggest tax is undeniably that Apple convinces me (and those like me) to buy really expensive, beautiful computers. The rest of the market is a lot less convincing in the high end, so if I bought a Windows computer it would probably be much cheaper than any of my Macs.

That's the real "Apple Makes Great Products" tax and I pay it cheerfully because, well, I really love great products and hate schlock products. Alas, let's face it, Apple is very close to a monopoly on great products in the PC world. Note that I didn't say an absolute monopoly but Nifty Doorways Verandah is a huge handicap for the competition.

D

(*) Credible sudies have been done that make Apple prices look normal for the industry. They are, but that's because they add a lot of options to computers (Bluetooth, Gigabit Ethernet, etc) that are very expensive elsewhere. If you don't need those features, Apple computers will look quite expensive.

Are you choosing Ubersoft nowadays? I thought you were a Linux user. What hardware and software are you using to create the comic nowadays?

I use Linux for the comics (Inkscape and the Gimp specifically), all my writing (in OpenOffice), and pretty much everything else.

I'm finding that I can use Wine for a lot of the MS-platform games I play (like Oblivion and Civilization, as long as I can find the NoCD hacks) but still need a Windows partition for one or two other games. And due to latency issues with the Linux kernel I still need to use Windows for recording audio. *sigh*

...must...have...shiny...things...

... but when I've tried to record audio using Ardour or Audacity I get serious clipping issues, no matter how high I set the buffer. I haven't spent a lot of time seriously looking into the matter (I'm preoccupied with other things at the moment) but it's not a problem I have on my windows partition.