From the earliest days of computing, hacker types have regarded ease of use and simplicity as indicative of stupidity and as a "dumbing down" of computing. This mentality survives to this day in the fetish that so many have for complexity and the fact that UI/UX is often the last thing to get attention in designs led by programmers.
Apple meanwhile took the opposite stance. Computers should be easy to use. Complexity is bad, especially at the UI level. Things should "just work."
Calling bullshit on the sentiment in that Jargon file entry above made Apple for a time the most valuable company on Earth.
The tax we now have to pay to them is a dumb tax for the cult of complexity and "real men do it manually" bullshit. To break the App Store and Apple semi-monopoly, start not by criticizing but by asking why it is so successful. Only by answering that question will any challenger including FOSS be able to successfully compete with it.
This goes way back. Take this from the old jargon file:
http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/P/point-and-drool-inter...
From the earliest days of computing, hacker types have regarded ease of use and simplicity as indicative of stupidity and as a "dumbing down" of computing. This mentality survives to this day in the fetish that so many have for complexity and the fact that UI/UX is often the last thing to get attention in designs led by programmers.
Apple meanwhile took the opposite stance. Computers should be easy to use. Complexity is bad, especially at the UI level. Things should "just work."
Calling bullshit on the sentiment in that Jargon file entry above made Apple for a time the most valuable company on Earth.
The tax we now have to pay to them is a dumb tax for the cult of complexity and "real men do it manually" bullshit. To break the App Store and Apple semi-monopoly, start not by criticizing but by asking why it is so successful. Only by answering that question will any challenger including FOSS be able to successfully compete with it.