The PumaCode.org Blog

I recently had an epiphany regarding my use of technology. I’ve known for quite a while that something about Apple makes me uncomfortable, so I’ve stayed far away from iGizmos. Yes, they are gorgeous devices that “just work” out of the box. Everything about them, from their incredibly intuitive user interface to their solid construction to their sleek look and feel, has been carefully and thoughtfully engineered down to the last tiny detail.

But Steve Jobs and the Apple corporate culture just make me nervous. Their enthusiastic support of DRM and their attempts to close and control all aspects of their devices and codecs just rubs me the wrong way. They remind me of Microsoft in the mid-90’s. I was an avid supporter of Internet Explorer back then, because it really was the best browser at the time. Little did I know that Microsoft would use IE to bring progress on the Internet to a screeching halt for five years, while negligently (although inadvertently) paving the road for a mono-cultural, horribly broken, insecure technology stack that allowed malware and identity-stealing black-market botnets to flourish.

I look at what Apple is doing these days, and it’s not pretty: locking millions of music fans into iTunes; pushing their subpar Safari browser on Windows users who mistakenly trust their auto-update software; vainly attempting to drive streaming media to their crappy Quicktime software that nags me every time I use it. So I refuse to take the shiny bait. No iPod, no iPhone, no iTunes for me. I’ll certainly test my websites in Safari but not actually use it.

Last year when it was time to upgrade my cell phone, the iPhone had recently been released, but those uneasy feelings kept me away. So I got an AT&T 8525 (a rebranded HTC Hermes) with Windows Mobile 5 (with free upgrade to 6 when it came out). I’m still no Microsoft fan, but they have been doing much better lately with the toned-down anti-open rhetoric and a renewed focus on security. I rather enjoy coding in .NET, and the thought of writing a few .NET Compact apps was appealing. The phone itself is rather clunky, but no big deal.

I’m still mostly pleased with the phone, but Windows Mobile is simply atrocious. It’s everything the iPhone isn’t. The apps are poorly integrated, it’s difficult to do many tasks w/o the stylus, apps randomly lose focus or disappear, and it starts crashing after a few days without a reboot. Of course, it’s my own fault: why did I expect anything more from something branded as Windows?

Even though Microsoft may be a slightly better corporate citizen in the technology world (of course that bar was set pretty low), they are a perpetual also-ran these days, especially in the consumer space. They are always a day late and a dollar short, following everyone else instead of innovating. Browsing the web on Pocket IE is a downright miserable experience, and it hasn’t changed in years. Again, did I really expect differently? I won’t even get started on Vista.

So it occurred to me that, even though I’ve been a huge proponent of open source and open standards for years, I rarely put my money where my mouth is. I’ve run Linux on my home server for the past decade but still use Windows for my desktop. I’ve always found an excuse to not make the switch. There’s always that one Windows-only program I feel I couldn’t do without, whether it’s Visual Studio 2005/8, TortoiseSVN, BirdieSync, games, whatever.

Earlier this week I downloaded Fedora Core 9 and created a bootable Live USB stick to give it a try. I booted my desktop with it, and everything just worked. My Turtle Beach DDL sound card, my widescreen 20″ monitor at native resolution, even the Bluetooth dongle I had forgotten was plugged in! This was the first time using any Linux distro where I didn’t have to manually edit my X.org settings to get my monitor to work at its best resolution and color depth.

So I’ve been on the fence the past few days on whether to take the Linux desktop plunge for good. Then, as I was browsing the web and reading email under Windows, the Explorer shell decided to freeze up on me. Which meant everything else froze, even though “run each Explorer instance in a separate process” (which I’ve long known has pretty much no actual impact) is checked in my prefs. I couldn’t even start Task Manager to kill it, not even from the CTRL+ALT+DELETE screen. (Of course, a Windows session has only about a 10% chance of successfully recovering from a terminated Explorer shell anyway, but there’s always hope!)

It was a sign from the gods! For all the FUD surrounding the usability of Linux as an everyday OS, Windows is no better. Linux, here I come. I’ll spend a bit of time deciding on Fedora vs. Ubuntu, Gnome vs. KDE, and the like, then I’m in for good. I sure will miss TortoiseSVN, but I’m sure I’ll find something almost as good. Not sure what I’ll do about Visual Studio, maybe just not run it or maybe dual-boot. I’ll have to figure out a way to run BirdieSync until I get a new phone.

And that brings me to gadgets. For all future electronics purchases, I hereby pledge to:

• put real openness near the top of my criteria list. I’m not gonna go RMS and insist that everything I use is pure 100% open and libre — I’m afraid that’s just not practical yet — but where an open or mostly open alternative is viable, I will choose one.
• refuse to pay a single cent, when possible, towards any technology or device that is used to perpetuate DRM (again, there are sadly cases where this just isn’t possible; for example all DVDs and players contain DRM).
• avoid paying the Microsoft Tax (or Apple tax) wherever possible. I should not be giving my money to companies that actively thwart and subvert open standards. In a way, I’m grateful to Microsoft for their recent despicable actions surrounding the OOXML “standardization process” (I use that term lightly), because it helped refocus my perception of them as an anti-open company.
• actively support companies that do support open source and open standards, both with my voice and with my wallet.

Only by actively supporting openness can we ensure that future technology will not be controlled by any one company, and that we will always be free to choose how we use it. I realize now that I’ve been part of the problem for too long, and I need to fix that. I will therefore look through the lens of openness to make all future technology purchases, and let open technologies be as big a part of my everyday life as possible.