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Comment by ootachi | Hacker News Reader

That was a dumb decision on Linus' part. Apple is the future; Linux is the past.

Probably over 80% of shiny content that users consume on Apple devices is served by Linux servers. Ever heard of that little thing called cloud? It's powered by Linux for the most part.

By making operating system a commodity Linux changed computer industry forever, and it's not going anywhere. Don't underestimate it.

nit: a big chunk of the web is powered by FreeBSD.

This is no longer the case, from my reading.

http://w3techs.com/technologies/details/os-bsd/all/all

How big?

Way too broad a statement. Linux is clearly a future for a large segment of users, same as OSX.

Actually, let me take that back - with the new 'post PC' world coming where only techies will have laptops, Linux has a greater future. OSX will fade because all hipsters will just have iOS devices

I don't think Apple will leave the desktop/laptop field any time soon. In fact the statements they have been making with regard to OS X Mountain Lion show that they recognize the importance of desktop/laptop form factor. They just want to provide some of the "hipster" features of iOS on the desktop.

You may be underestimating the number of techies liking OS X.

And I think you're overestimating that number. As far as I know, about as many programmers use Linux as OS X, and Windows still dominates even among programmers. For example, the recent StackOverflow survey--probably fairly indicative of programmers in general--found that about 20% of the respondents used Linux and OS X with the rest on various versions of Windows[1]. As far as my own experience goes, about as many of my CS friends use Linux as Windows, with a slightly smaller number using OS X. But here, I suspect, there is some serious selection bias.

[1]: https://www.surveymonkey.com/sr.aspx?sm=2RYrV_2bFw2aZ2RfedWH...

I think the problem is a lot of techies like OS X now, but not the way it's headed.

Lion is enough to make me switch away, and I've been on OS X for a very long time. What's keeping OS X popular now is not its own merits, but that the alternatives are even worse.

I have to agree because I like Snow Leopard better than Lion and have not made the switch yet because of that. However I don't think this is a sign that OS X is endemic. I still have hope that Lion is just an ill planned stop on the OS X progression.

endemic - I do not think it means what you think it means.

Mind if I ask what you don't like? I upgraded a few months ago, and while I had to turn a few annoying bits off, it's overall much better than Snow Leopard.

It's 99% that I hate (and I don't use that lightly) them screwing up Expose (to me this was the OS X killer feature on laptops) and the changes in scrolling. 1% is the unwelcome increase in skeuomorphism.

Generally I don't get on with iOS either, so iOSification is a trend I'm not into. I accept that may not be a popular opinion, but there we are.

You should check out KDE--I think you'd like some of the standard window manager features there. They have some effects reminiscent of Exposé (as well as a bunch of other options). And the current version of KDE is also, overall, the best environment I've ever used (out of Unity, Gnome 2, Windows 95+ and OS X Leopard and Lion).

> screwing up Expose

"Screwing up"? Works much better for me. Have you actually taken some time to play with it?

> the changes in scrolling

You mean the changes you can turn off?

> 1% is the unwelcome increase in skeuomorphism.

To what are you referring, exactly?

> "Apple is the future; Linux is the past."

Even Apple itself doesn't believe that. They left the server market when they killed Xserve.

That was a dumb decision on Linus' part. Apple is the future; Linux is the past.

This sounds so familiar; where have I heard it before. Oh yeah, it's what the MS fanboys were saying ten years ago :)

Not that I'm anywhere near Linus' capabilities, but I would turn down a job offer from Apple too. I don't much fancy working for evil.

Honestly, I wouldn't work for Apple either. I'd hate to give up the community I've spent most of my programming life a part of - the jailbreaking community. It'd take more than a giant salary to rewrite my values. :P

how's apple any more "evil" than any other big company (google included)?

For one, the other companies have other redeeming features: Microsoft has MSR, Google also does some research as well as a lot of open source stuff and IBM also does good research. Even Facebook contributes more to the community at large and the state of the art, as far as I know. All that Apple does is mostly produce overrated products in secrecy.

Apple is also very anti-freedom in the GNU sense, and have horrible policies on iOS and their app store. They really treat developers working on their platform poorly, and actively work against letting their customers have alternatives. (Jailbreaking shouldn't even be necessary!)

However, the really worst thing is how popular they are. Their draconian policies on iOS have pushed other companies--like Microsoft--to emulate that on their own problems; as far as I know, Windows Phone is almost as locked down as iOS. So Apple is at a weird confluence of evil and popular support, which is much more dangerous than evil by itself (this is why they are more worrisome than e.g. Oracle or even Microsoft). Their worst effect is cultural--making the nonsense around third-party iOS programs seem reasonable.

If Linux dominated the market, you would be free to use it however you like. If iOS dominated the market, you'd have to play by Apple's rules--getting a developer account, going through their review process... And even OS X is going in this direction--you have to deal with Apple to get your code signed, and there are no alternatives.

In a lot of ways, Apple is worse than Microsoft in its heyday; their only saving grace is their small market share--thankfully, Apple does not enjoy a monopoly anywhere or even a large share of the desktop market. Still, ignoring scale, they really are worse than Microsoft was; the scale is the reason they get away with all the things Microsoft couldn't (like standard web browsers or music players).

To be fair apple's CUPS is pretty critical for printing under linux.

And then there is webkit.

To be more fair Webkit started as a fork of some of KDE's libraries.

Yeah, but it's being used, and developed, a hell of a lot more now than it was as part of KDE.

Apple bought CUPS

Google bought X.

X being pretty much everything they do besides Search. Not sure if that is much of an argument.

I don't think it's fair to say that it was a dumb decision, because as the article brings out at the time Linux seemed to be more likely to hit the mainstream than Apple.

Also it is ignorant to say that Linux is the past, as it is the current dominant OS when it comes to web servers making it very much in the present.

I also believe Linux is the dominant smartphone OS. (IIRC, Android has the largest marketshare of smartphones http://news.cnet.com/8301-33200_3-57323943-290/ios-vs-androi...)

Not to mention embedded devices. Linux is everywhere.

It's also the dominant OS for supercomputers and (probably) set-top boxes.

Really? I think Linux might be the future with it getting ready for the mass market, and with new hardware like the raspberry PI, Linux has only began it's global domination.

This is not an opportunity for Apple. It looks like trying to get rid of a known person from competition. Linus doesn't even write that much code anymore - he's controlling the releases and is vocal in the community, but I'm not sure why would Apple want him for. They've got their own processes and they don't need that kind of control over internal developers.

Was there any real gain for them from that offer?

Urr what OS do you think powers iCloud?

Windows, because Apple uses Azure[1] in the iCloud infrastructure.

[1] http://www.infiniteapple.net/apple-icloud-azure-use-tested-c...

As I recall Apple was going to make use of both Azure and Amazon's cloud stuff.

Bullshit!

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