Oooh, another computer analogy...

Discussion with someone at work led to this. His claim is that Apple is more proprietary than MS, because you have a choice in hardware. I claim that MS is more proprietary than Apple, or at least differently so, because with Apple I have a choice in apps. He didn't follow, and stated that there are many times more apps for Windows. True. However... when I use a Windows app, more to the point, when I use a MS app, I'm pretty well locked into that app from that point on. The use of proprietary *data* formats is the true lock-in on Windows. What hardware I choose is a matter of convenience and money, at that particular point in time. Whether or not I have control over the data that forms what I *create*, on the other hand, is an ongoing issue. Apple's ubiquitous use of PDF, XML, HTML5, SVG, RTF, VCF, and so on, means that I can move data from one app to another fairly seamlessly in most cases. (Hell, try getting Office to play nice with an inserted PDF image. Or really, anything created outside of Office.) I'm still not sure he gets it, but that's alright.

He kept using the term 'closed garden' for Apple. And he's right - it *is* a closed garden. There are walls around the whole thing that keep you locked into that space (hardware). But man, what a garden - I have almost complete freedom inside that area, and things work really nicely together. Windows, on the other hand, is a bit more like a trailer park with all the trailer homes welded together. Moving within the space is a bitch, you can't see where you are half the time, and yeah, while you *theoretically* could up and move the whole shebang to a new location, most people never will because it's just too much damned trouble. Some folks have kick-ass welding torches and big haulers, so for them it's no big deal, but the average person will simple never do it. And both are stuck living in a byzantine mass of little tiny compartments.

No, I have no point, other than the analogy of Windows to a Escher-like maze of trailer homes all welded together amused me.

Oooh, another computer analogy...

Discussion with someone at work led to this. His claim is that Apple is more proprietary than MS, because you have a choice in hardware. I claim that MS is more proprietary than Apple, or at least differently so, because with Apple I have a choice in apps. He didn't follow, and stated that there are many times more apps for Windows. True. However... when I use a Windows app, more to the point, when I use a MS app, I'm pretty well locked into that app from that point on. The use of proprietary *data* formats is the true lock-in on Windows. What hardware I choose is a matter of convenience and money, at that particular point in time. Whether or not I have control over the data that forms what I *create*, on the other hand, is an ongoing issue. Apple's ubiquitous use of PDF, XML, HTML5, SVG, RTF, VCF, and so on, means that I can move data from one app to another fairly seamlessly in most cases. (Hell, try getting Office to play nice with an inserted PDF image. Or really, anything created outside of Office.) I'm still not sure he gets it, but that's alright.

He kept using the term 'closed garden' for Apple. And he's right - it *is* a closed garden. There are walls around the whole thing that keep you locked into that space (hardware). But man, what a garden - I have almost complete freedom inside that area, and things work really nicely together. Windows, on the other hand, is a bit more like a trailer park with all the trailer homes welded together. Moving within the space is a bitch, you can't see where you are half the time, and yeah, while you *theoretically* could up and move the whole shebang to a new location, most people never will because it's just too much damned trouble. Some folks have kick-ass welding torches and big haulers, so for them it's no big deal, but the average person will simple never do it. And both are stuck living in a byzantine mass of little tiny compartments.

No, I have no point, other than the analogy of Windows to a Escher-like maze of trailer homes all welded together amused me.