Why Doesn't Anyone Give a Crap About Freedom Zero? (a new Mac is a "giant hardware dongle")

Zed Shaw already exposed Jeff's hypocrisy:<p><a href="http://www.zedshaw.com/conferences/cusec2008.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.zedshaw.com/conferences/cusec2008.html</a><p>Finally I watched Jeff Atwood of Coding Horror fame talk about what a lot of other people have said and why you should blog. I completely agreed with everything Jeff said, except for a tiny bit of hypocrisy he didn't fess up to until asked.<p>See, Jeff's talk was obviously changed up to compliment mine. He basically said what I said, that if you want to do software go work for a software company. Don't go work for a company that doesn't do software to make money. They won't respect you.<p>That's true.<p>He also talked about how blogging is something all programmers should do. Being able to write and influence people is important since that's how you get your ideas across. Nobody reads code but they do read English.<p>Also true.<p>However, then someone asked Jeff what he does, and he said he works for a .NET consultancy doing software for other people.<p>Sorry Jeff, that's not a software company. A software company actually sells software to people. People buy the actual software from you and if they don't your company fails. Jeff basically works for a consultancy that builds software for other people to sell. While he's probably the money maker, I'm betting that he's really not on the same level as his peers at a company like Microsoft.

One major point Jeff failed to mention is that the so-called dongle can also run his precious Windows and with a little effort, Linux (and really, what is Linux without a little effort?)<p>Sure, you'll need a Mac if you want to run the Mac OS (legitimately). But to call it a dongle is a bit of a stretch in my opinion.<p>Of course, the entirety of this comment is pretty much divergent from the author's main point. So, feel free to disregard the above.<p>As for Freedom Zero, there are few places you'll be able to achieve that comfortably. But that's not what Apple is about, and plenty of people are happy with that, myself included.

Today I find it a little ironic for any guy (including coding horror's blogger) who's running on Windows (or OS X) by choice to be bitching about freedom 0.<p>There are already plenty of viable alternatives if that's what you want. I don't see the point in further complaints. This isn't the 80's or 90's.

Is it just me or did anyone else read this article this way:<p><i>Why would cross-platform developers use an operating system that only runs on on Macs? That does not make sense! But more important, you have to ask yourself: What does this have to do with being productive? Nothing. Ladies and gentlemen, it has nothing to do with being productive! It does not make sense! Look at me. I'm a blogger ranting about being productive, and I'm talkin' about Freedom Zero! Does that make sense? Ladies and gentlemen, I am not making any sense!</i><p>Apologies to South Park.

I guess if you want to, you can think of it that way. I had OpenBSD on my old PowerBook for a while; I never really felt constrained by the platform. It's only "just a dongle" if you let it be just a dongle.

His argument works much better against Macs in the pre-OS X days. But OS X is a Unix (UNIX 03 certified, as of 10.5 on Intel). So if one uses OS X mostly as such, then one isn't locked in: if you get fed up, or were Apple to pull the plug or go under, then one could switch to some other Unix. Try the parallel case if (har har) Microsoft went under.

Likening it to a hardware dongle is seriously flawed. I don't get this recent spate of Apple bashing. If you don't like them, don't buy them.<p>Personally, I'm getting my MacBook Air thanks.

&#62; Why Doesn't Anyone Give a Crap About Freedom Zero?<p>No no no, that's not how it works - Tell me, why <i>should</i> anyone give a crap about freedom zero?

"People buy consoles like the Xbox 360 and Wii because they work with a minimum of fuss"<p>Shouldn't these be called out as dongles as well?<p>Why aren't they?