It’s been a while since I’ve said anything so, before I go to sleep tonight, I’d like to provide a statement about why I remain mostly closed mouth about Microsoft or other religious disputes.
I will only state the following:
- The command line is always best but only in the hands of someone who really knows how to use it. Most people don’t have the time or inclination to gain the experience and expertise, hence the need for the desktop metaphor or whatever new interface supplants it.
- Which graphical user interface, barring obvious mistakes that anyone can agree on (Like dragging a disk to trash to eject it or using the start button to shutdown your computer.), has the best usability will always remain a matter of dispute. Is Mac, X, Windows, BeOS or some other the best design? We’ll never settle this because different people use the same tools in different ways.
- Commodity hardware is cheaper but having closed hardware is cheaper too because there is less variation to support. Apple is occasionally just a tad more expensive but this gap tends to vanish or grow depending on which thing you are measuring. Thus this issue will never be settled.
- Open source is in many ways better than closed source but as long as closed source remains more profitable it will continue to exist. Proprietary secrets are as old as tools themselves.
- When 90% of all the hardware in all the consumer electronics are Intel chips and running Microsoft software, then the governments will crack down. This hasn’t happened yet. It may never happen. The Internet, at least according to Netcraft, is still mostly some flavor of unix.