(13:20:15) mozpreed: I just want to get this straight before I express my rage in the blogosphere
Despite the fact that I have a PowerBook [for work], and use a PowerBook [for work], I’m no fan of Apple.
I’ve got a lot of complaints, really… but I think they all boil down to disagreement with one of the company’s values: aesthetics above… well… anything and everything else.
This is a constant pain whenever I['m forced to] use Apple’s products.
The current middle-finger-from-Cupertino’s-general-direction is the inability to purchase Xserves. At all.
We need more Xserves. This isn’t a huge secret. We’re pretty short on Mac-compute resources in the build farm and since Apple is the only platform that can read and write all of the various package formats we ship1, we’ve sacrificed a Mac to use as a console for various build-related activities, in addition to the nightly and release builds we need to get for various products. (Ironically, this has impacted the Mac browser product, Camino, the most, as they’ve been stuck using older, less capable, unsupported build machines for months now, because… we can’t get new Xserves).
I’d like to get more Xserves. I had IT check into buying more PPC Xserves, but he can’t find any distributor that is selling them anymore. Why?
Well, since Stevey-boy announced Intel-based Xserves, everyone’s waiting for those… and in fact, you can’t even seem to get them from Apple directly anymore.
So basically… if you depend on Macs, need more of them, and want to give Apple money… well… screw you. Just wait an indeterminate amount of time until Apple is good and ready to ship you their Rev A hardware2.
(And since Apple’s reputation for Rev A hardware is so wonderful, I can’t tell you how excited I am to put these immediately into production. We might even get to be one of the lucky ones that finds our colo burnt to the ground because a power supply blew up. But hey, at least it’s got brushed metal and pretty blinky lights in the rack.)
I just don’t understand how people can be so beholden, philosophically, religiously, heck even economically, to a company that so consistently thinks that its users’, developers’, and partners’ time is worthless, and that it’s completely reasonable to stop supporting certain hardware [platforms] and software because… well… the new rev is prettier. And faster. And certainly hotter!3
This is but one of the reasons I don’t like Macs.
It’s the main reason I detest being required to use Macs (in a business capacity).4
In other news, I can feel a cold coming on.
No clue why that could be.
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1 And before you chime in that this is proof how wonderful Macs are, this problem is entirely created by Apple, because they refuse to release documentation on how to read/write DMGs that include their special installer format
2 Yes, we’ve ordered Intel Xserves. The current estimate for when they’ll ship is—I kid you not—”sometime in October.” Probably. Maybe.
3 I mean that in a degrees-Celsius sort of way, not a Steve Job’s-stylin’ sort of way.
4 And actually, in this regard, Apple loses to Microsoft. Sure, Microsoft sucks in lots of ways, but at least Microsoft never deprecates anything.