I do want to point out that it is very easy to tinker with a Mac, and possible with an iPhone (would the certificate hoops one has to jump through to develop on the iPhone count as tinkering?).
I love open source and I have spent much of the last ten years making a living by promoting open source software. But my company uses Macs exclusively for desktops and I recently bought an iPhone 3GS that I'm very happy with.
The reason we use Apple products is that they combines the best of Linux with the convenience of Windows. I don't have time to tinker with cups to get a printer to work, and then find that I can't easily use all of its features. It is much easier just to download the OS X driver from the vendor website. But its BSD base allows me to run tons of open source software, and we have an employee at my company that is an admin for the fink project which ports GNU/Linux software to Darwin (and we encourage him to use company time to help maintain it).
But I have no desire to own an iPad. I hate the development experience on the iPhone (I spend more time sorting our certs than I do messing with code). But then again, my dealings with Android haven't been much better. I can't even see what apps are available in the Android marketplace, outside of the top 25 paid and free, without owning a handset. Kinda makes the buying decision difficult.
But the fact is that the user experience on desktop Linux is lacking - and not due to the software. There is a place for a company to impose a Jobs-like focus on usability to say, the Gnome desktop (perhaps it is Canonical) but at the moment there really isn't a business reason to do so. Until that happens I don't see a Linux desktop being able to compete with what Apple offers.
Authored Comments
I do want to point out that it is very easy to tinker with a Mac, and possible with an iPhone (would the certificate hoops one has to jump through to develop on the iPhone count as tinkering?).
The attraction for me is that I don't *have* to.
I love open source and I have spent much of the last ten years making a living by promoting open source software. But my company uses Macs exclusively for desktops and I recently bought an iPhone 3GS that I'm very happy with.
The reason we use Apple products is that they combines the best of Linux with the convenience of Windows. I don't have time to tinker with cups to get a printer to work, and then find that I can't easily use all of its features. It is much easier just to download the OS X driver from the vendor website. But its BSD base allows me to run tons of open source software, and we have an employee at my company that is an admin for the fink project which ports GNU/Linux software to Darwin (and we encourage him to use company time to help maintain it).
But I have no desire to own an iPad. I hate the development experience on the iPhone (I spend more time sorting our certs than I do messing with code). But then again, my dealings with Android haven't been much better. I can't even see what apps are available in the Android marketplace, outside of the top 25 paid and free, without owning a handset. Kinda makes the buying decision difficult.
But the fact is that the user experience on desktop Linux is lacking - and not due to the software. There is a place for a company to impose a Jobs-like focus on usability to say, the Gnome desktop (perhaps it is Canonical) but at the moment there really isn't a business reason to do so. Until that happens I don't see a Linux desktop being able to compete with what Apple offers.