I have just spent the past couple of days almost bricking my Mac. I decided I did not like where Apple has been heading and started to switch to Linux (Ubuntu Linux) — on my MacBook Pro. I'll discuss that and why I stopped (possibly only temporarily) in a separate post. Why would I try to give up Mac OS X for Linux?

Well, “Let me count the ways." (but it is not love).

Every now and again I get the feeling I'm being trapped, locked-in and do not have control. I hate it when I cannot make my own decisions or feel I've been sold a bill of goods under false pretenses. I first abandoned Apple before OS X came on the scene. I did so after Apple brought out the Newton “PDA”. I bought an expensive (high-end) version. I really liked it. It wasn’t long after it came out that Apple dropped support for it. It was even worse than just not doing more development on it. Apple (Steve Jobs) killed the Newton. I ended up giving my Newton to one of our children and buying a Palm Pilot.

Yes, I know Apple had lost its way, but that is a hell of a way to treat customers. It was not long after that I decided to open my own consulting business. I thought about how I would handle doing work for clients, especially doing some telecommuting and decided I'd get a high-end "PC" with a large monitor. This was before one could go out and buy even a 19” external LCD monitor. I had a machine put together for me with SCSI disk drives and a 21" multi-sync monitor. I installed Windows NT on it.

I've never been fond of Microsoft with their feature-bloat and more or less forced upgrades — always at a cost that seemed out of line. I also had issues with their OS setup (NT had a great security model, too bad the way applications install and operate made it unusable).

So, just before I retired, I decided to buy another Mac (a notebook/laptop/whatever you want to call a portable personal computer). Mac OS X had come out and finally Apple had an OS to support their GUI. It had pre-emptive multi-tasking, proper printer spooling, user-ids, etc.

I liked the computing environment. I have done web site and other development on my Mac (I currently have a MacBook Pro that is several years old). I run it with an external 30” LCD monitor (a Samsung SyncMaster 305T). The integration between the software and the hardware is terrific. They work. It’s not so closed that I could not use any other manufacturer’s hardware (external monitor, disk drives, printers…).

So why am I disenchanted?

(1) Apple is a very large company and, no matter what anyone says to the contrary, it is motivated by profit. Unfortunately, that is translating into trying to make money from everything a user does. This includes funnelling purchases through Apple so it can take a cut of the action. An example would be that an application on your iPad cannot directly and legitimately sell and deliver content to your iPad without paying an exorbitant 30% to Apple — never mind the question of whose customer is it anyway. Oh, did I mention that you cannot legitimately install an “app” on your iPad unless it also comes via Apple? As a developer, you can install your own application, but not share it with anyone else?

In my case, it is my iPad. I bought it. I should be able to install anything I want on it. This same issue exists with other companies (e.g. Sony PlayStation), it is not unique to Apple and its iPad, iPhone, etc. But Apple appears to be tightening the noose — while one can still download and install applications under OS X on the Mac, or even build your own, the “App Store” is here and marketing clout is starting to have an effect.

(2) Apple is treating the iPad as a “content delivery system” (media-consumption device). That is all well and good (I read books and newspapers on my iPad), but it is a general-purpose computer and some of us want to use it as such. The operating system (iOS) is based on Mac OS X, but it is altered in ways that supposedly protect the user. So it is almost impossible to open a file created by one application in another application. So if you want to edit an HTML file and then open it in Safari, all on your iPad, you are out of luck. It is not a viable device for sitting up in bed and writing or checking some code. In fact, you cannot develop an iPad program (application) on your iPad.

(3) The so-called “simplicity and cleanliness” of the interface and applications is going into the toilet in a quest for in-your-face selling. The worst example I've come across involves the iPad and iTunes, or even iTunes by itself. Integration can be taken too far. The level of application integration that is prevalent today is something I have never really liked. For some eccentrics, like me, the Unix ideal of small, incredibly robust applications that do one thing and do it well, feels right. I don’t want my music player synchronizing my address book with the version on my tablet computer! I do not want the applications I use delivering advertisements to me. I am quite happy to pay for an application to avoid that. And I am incensed when an application I have paid for delivers advertisements (ever tried skipping the crap at the beginning of a DVD movie you have purchased?).

Don’t get me wrong. The right kinds of integration are great, for example, being able to type a person’s name into the “To:” field of an e-mail message and have the e-mail address retrieved from one’s address book. To be fair, Apple is undoubtedly trying to rationalize how one uses an iPad and how one uses a Mac. But it is a contradiction. If they are different devices with a different intent (one a media consumption device and the other a computer), then it is perfectly reasonable (and probably correct) for them to have different interfaces. And they are different devices — I don’t swipe my fingers across the face of my 30” monitor (though I do use an Apple Magic Trackpad) and I use a real keyboard with my Mac (and sometimes with my iPad!).

(4) Have you ever tried to stop Apple sending you iTunes (or other advertising)? I’ve tried several times — unsuccessfully. While I have purchased things through the App Store, both on my iPad and Mac, I do not download music and have never purchased any via iTunes. I happen to have narrow musical tastes and have a collection of over 200 CDs that keeps me happy — along with listening to streaming classical music radio stations. So, why does Apple keep sending me all this e-mail about music, songs, etc., on iTunes?

(5) What is Apple trying to do to my personal computer? Turn it into a giant iPad? I use my computer for development. I do not want my applications to open in a window that takes up the whole screen. I want to be able to compare two windows side by side, for example, having HTML code in an editor in one window and seeing it in my browser in another window. If you happen to think “Why don’t you just use a decent IDE?”, then change my example to server-side code in an editor in one window and a client-side browser displaying results in another window.

Continuing this point, have you used the Address Book under OS X 10.7 (Lion)? What is this pretend book window? Not only do I not want a pretend book on my computer screen to have shading that makes the “pages” look like they are bowed out from the “spine”, I want my real books to lie as flat as possible.

There are other little odds and ends that bother me. If you use Google, it is easy to find other people that have issues with the direction Apple is going and especially with Lion. One has to be careful, though. There is a lot of trolling and/or bias out there.