Insanely Great? Try Open.
Who is Apple trying to kid? Open systems and freedom of choice is” Insanely Great”.
As I write this, its been about a week since the first Intel-based Macintosh computer was released into the wild.
And there was much rejoicing.
So now Macs run on Intel-based hardware. Damn, thats awfully compelling, isn’t it? Perhaps for some, but not for an open systems, big picture person like me. Sure, it’s great that the industry is consolidating its standards and the “not invented here” culture of Apple has relaxed to both embrace commodity hardware and face the reality that being esoteric for the sake of it has limited growth possibilities. But has Apple really changed its stripes? In a word, no.
Apple still wants to dictate what types of systems its prized Mac OS X runs on, and has essentially key-locked its operating system for Intel’s to only run on EFI-based systems with the Apple logo. While I can appreciate intellectual property and patents as much as the next guy, I also believe in doing it where it makes sense, not out of paranoia about preserving one’s market position based on some bizarre “Oh, my God, we’re gonna go out of business if we let them run our software elsewhere” complex that has no basis in reality.
