Linux Action Show

I'd rather not (as a third party) debate or defend things that they said on the show that you disagree with. Like I said, your opinion obviously differs from theirs in some aspects, but (like you said in your e-mail, and I've mentioned here) those points are minor.

As for the whole Phil thing, and your apparent 180 (or at least fairly dramatic change), I'd just remind you that whoever this Phil guy is, his post doesn't really offer much first hand info at all, just an opinionated outsider's take on what went down with the whole resexcellence thing. Having heard a bit about the other side of that story, one thing I know for sure is that Phil's post doesn't cover a lot of what went down, and it appears to be because he had decided to write a post to slam Bryan, and therefore picked out selected quotes and selective parts of the story to make his case.

I'm not calling that Phil guy a liar, but I am saying that it definitely seems that he took a side on this issue and then just tried to dig up dirt to "prove" his case. As a side note, he didn't do too well even at that, and Bryan responds in his own defense in the comments.

I'd just suggest that you not do the same here. "Now that I’m seeing the whole picture of their experiences with the Mac community and 'development'"??? I doubt that a single blog posting from a guy who does not know either of the hosts personally could give you that "whole picture" of their experience, or even any part of the true picture at all.

If you're mad about the e-mail I'd just say don't take that too seriously either. It seemed to me that they were just having a good natured ribbing at you as a Mac fan. I often do the same, even though many of my best friends are Mac users. I thought the last response from Chris was anything but rude; I thought he was being pretty cool about the whole thing.

A little background on that Mac development we are referring to; Phill's take. And what's crazy is I remember this specifically and I think you referred to it way back when it happened and I never correlated LAS Bryan with the crazy Bryan.

Update:
Honestly, with a little history the LA show has lost all credibility for me, maybe not the portions explicitly about Linux but I'll still be cautious. Thanks to Phill for bringing some perspective because now I share a similar opinion about Brian and Chris and it's going to be hard to rationally listen to their show now. This might sound a little fanboyish and immature but imagine if it was reverse and replace mac with linux and linux with windows. Shitting on a community that I feel I'm a part of isn't good. And you can tell they're still hot after that email.

Now that I'm seeing the whole picture of their experiences with the Mac community and "development" I'd have to say the response in our personal e-mails is rude, it was entirely his honest opinion since he thought I was someone else. Which they could have clearly realized by looking at my name in the email and the name on the comments. I gave him the benefit of the doubt (as you can tell by my response) but as I said after a little perspective I'm taking it completely different.

You're attributing "lock-in" to anything that requires you to do something and not associating "lock-in" with *locking* the consumer out of the possibility to use content somewhere else. Anyone can build a myth box and play every video they stream through iTunes to their ATV without any prep.. I only brought up hacking the ATV because the segment was about hacking the XBOX.

It's still a FACT that the "low quality" statement was 'false'.

You stated in your previous comment that "some of their statements are false"; I was just wondering what, specifically.

Based on what you listed above about the AppleTV, I still don't see any of that, which is what I think you were implying. You can't really list hacks as a beneficial feature of the Apple products, because the hacks only exist to work around limitations imposed by Apple. For example, you stated above that to play HD video you must either (1) stream from iTunes (which goes to their iTunes lock-in comment) or (2) hack the system. I'm certainly no authority on the AppleTV, but if it is true that the only supported way to play HD content is via iTunes then their point stands. Whether you agree or disagree that that's a bad thing is totally up to you.

Regarding the basis of opinions, my main point there was that they've had much more exposure than either of us to ALL types of Apple users (the good, bad and ugly) and their opinions are obviously based on the combined total of their experiences. It sounded like you were dismissing them as being solely based on the "fanboy" side of things.

Regarding the opinions themselves, perhaps it's appropriate to distinguish: my opinions about Apple and their fans are two different things. I don't like the Apple fanboy culture, to be sure, but I don't care too much about that either way. My opinions about Apple as a company have nothing to do with their fans, however; I don't like them for reasons that are not related to their fans whatsoever. No need to rehash all of those reasons again, but talking about Apple as a company and the fan culture around it are two different topics. My opinions on either one stand on their own, even though they may be mentioned in parts of the same conversation about Apple in general.

I didn't say they're factually wrong, I've tried to state that their opinionated "news" is logically wrong ("dredging up old experiences to influence statements about current news without any parallel").

In an earlier comment I referred to their take on the AppleTV; they discredited the AppleTV by simply stating "I'll never use it...locked into iTunes...low quality of iTunes video", you should know that the player uses iTunes but doesn't lock you in (you choose whether to be locked in by purchasing DRM content like any the Zune marketplace or XBOX live), most users including myself never purchase the lower quality (DRM) video from the iTunes store and the entire device is setup for high quality video (it doesn't have RF or RCA), and lastly the majority of ATV users play HD video streamed from iTunes or from hack it to play from a file share (like myself). They didn't mention the "hacks" for the ATV including FREE formats like ogg support but in another segmant they applaud hacking the XBOX (something much harder to do) even though they mention MS locks the XBOX out if it's connected to Live (something Apple hasn't done, they've only reset mods through an updated firmware download).

That's just one little statement that really bothered me. There are others but as you can tell it was a statement of opinion with some incorrect statements of assumption.

I'm not assuming the show (and you to some extent) have based strong opinions based on "fanboys" (or any other commentators) becuase you've said that yourself ("directly related to general attitude of the fan community") which then is associated with Apple Inc.'s their practices and products, that still doesn't make sense to me. If companies listened to their fanboys those companies would be in for a lot of hurt.

gage : gauge

Maybe you can point out some of the incorrect statements that I must have missed, for one reason or another. I'm not denying that they exist, just wondering if they're actually differences of opinion rather than factual errors.

I won't argue with you about the "smug and elitist" label as it relates to some people in the Linux community as well. It's just easier to make fun of the Apple people, though.

I wouldn't assume so much about their experiences. I'm pretty sure that they've interacted with more of every type of Apple user (fanboy or otherwise), having such extensive history. Sure you have to gage the stuff you hear based on the source, but you're assuming they've formed their opinions strictly on that negative fanboy interaction, and I'm just saying that I don't think that's accurate or fair of you to assume.

Well you clearly said "I haven’t heard any incorrect statements" and that makes me believe you're not familiar enough with the actual product to know that some of their statements are false. You and LAS can comment all you want, I prefer you do, but dredging up old experiences to influence statements about current news without any parallel isn't informing the audience appropriately.

"smug and elitist", I honestly feel the same about the linux community sometimes but more elitist and less smug.

"a lot more of that specific kind of experience than you do". Maybe so, but their experiences may be a little dated and it's all about fanboys not the majority. Linux fanboys, Apple fanboys and Windows fanboys are all the same to me: preoccupied with complaining about the other without civilized comparisons.

Either way it's all opinion based news, they even said that.

Oh yeah, I forgot that I'm not allowed to comment on Apple or the Mac OS since I don't use it regularly, and I guess that applies to them now as well :)

But seriously, I've heard them do plenty of MS bashing as well, so I don't think they really give MS any extra benefit of the doubt. Perhaps the difference is similar to my perspective, where I see problems with both Apple and MS, but I tend to accentuate the ones with Apple since their fan community seems so smug and elitist in comparison (to MS users, most of whom just don't care), so it seems more appropriate to smack them down more thoroughly.

I'm a bit behind, so I haven't heard the episode covering the CUPS thing, so I can't comment on that specifically.

If you did listen to that early show when they listed their complaints about Apple you can't say that the "same qualms" apply to Microsoft. MS certainly has it's own problems, but the two big ones I remember them mentioning on that show were definitely Apple-specific.

One was directly related to general attitude of the fan community, which they were intimately familiar with, and I don't think either of us is in a position to disagree with them on that, since I'm sure they were in contact with far more of said fans than either of us. You can disagree with them all you want about generalizations they make based on that experience, but at least acknowledge that they have a lot more of that specific kind of experience than you do, for what it's worth.

The second big one was as a third party developer of Apple software, complaining about Apple's breaking changes to the underlying API that usually accompanied the frequent OS updates, with no publicly available testing versions for devs to properly prepare their software for the changes, since they're so obsessed with secrecy and big launches. You and I may not like MS, but they definitely do not do this; every version of their operating system is always widely available to developers who make a living writing on their platform, well before the release date so that they have time to make any necessary adjustments.

Basically, I don't think they necessarily give MS any more leeway than Apple, they may just focus on Apple stuff more often because they're more familiar with it. It's not like I agree with everything they say either (I don't think they are as down on the MS patent stuff as they should be, but they definitely do have a lot of negative stuff to say about it), but I don't usually see any problems with their Apple or Microsoft opinions. If I did, I'd probably just ignore it though, since it's still a fairly good Linux show.

As for me posting about Apple hating freedom, I don't know whether I ever will, but at this time I have no desire to. I doubt it would really have any impact on anyone, and it can be easily summed up by saying that Apple is undeniably very controlling about how their software works, as well as how end users should use it. Lots of people who use their software are perfectly OK with that, and I'm not going to waste my time talking about all the reasons that isn't good, because I don't honestly think it would accomplish anything.

If you have a real issue with them, though, you should write in. Better yet, send an audio comment (it seems like they cover those much quicker), just be sure it's in a freedom-loving format like Ogg. :)

That's the problem, you're not familiar with the other side enough to know some of their *current* statements are strongly opinion based from *past* experiences or positioning with the linux community. Listen to how they covered the CUPS acquisition.

Since I'm still listening to the archives, I notice a clear bias against anything Apple, a benefit of the doubt for MS and knowledgeable and informative critiqes to Linux. Which goes back to my "positioning" statement because I see the "Linux Community" having the same sentiment. Compare the CUPS acquisition and statements about the Apple TV to the statements about the MS patent deals and the XBOX and WMC.

I heard the cast a long time ago when they talked about being "mac fans" and an apple dev and I don't take that seriously because their qualms with Apple made them dislike Apple like no other but the same qualms could be applied to MS and they're clearly ok with it.

Either way it's just an irritating to see a lot of biased statements and it makes me wonder how far I can trust their opinion on what the cast is about, linux.

Are you going to post your "apple hates freedom" post because I think I'm going to write into the show.

I like the show too. I haven't heard any incorrect statements about Apple; I know they both used to be huge Mac fans (ran a popular web site for Mac enthusiasts and one was a Apple software dev), so I'm pretty sure they know what they're talking about as far as that goes, even if their opinions may differ from yours.

I haven't heard them really critiquing Aero of Quartz too much, other than in comparison to Beryl (or now Fusion, since re-merging with Compiz) in Linux, which they obviously prefer, for good reasons :)

I also hate how they've critiqued Vista's Aero and OS X's quartz for it's pure eye candy factor in the past but now they can't stop talking about compiz; annoyingly might I add since they point out that the effects are useless but they say it's great that they "can" do something they didn't care for earlier on another OS.