> Of course you're not excited about this. You're a brilliant nerd who
> founded a startup that invented a new programming language. This isn't for
> you. Or for me.

The AppStore is not for "you or for me," but his fear is not that Apple is
creating an AppStore for OS X. His fear is what this says about Apple's future
strategy for the Mac OS X platform.

> Getting to be Nerd Jesus every time a computer runs into trouble is
> gratifying. We get to be important. We get to trick out our gear to do all
> kinds of goofy, custom stuff. We get to build things that are neat.

You're conflating a lot of things here. You're claiming that all 'nerds' like
the feeling of superiority they get when they solve computer problems for other
'non-nerds.' Are you really attempting to apply this generalization to all
technical people?

Secondly, what does 'tricking out your gear to do all kinds of goofy, custom
stuff' have to do with being 'Nerd Jesus?' Would you call car-modders 'Auto
Jesus' if they were to complain that an car company made it harder to perform
3rd party modifications to their products?

How does building neat things and 'tricking out your gear' make you 'Nerd
Jesus' or make it so that you 'get to be important?'

> Serving our needs is certainly important. It's important, also, to
> understand that we are the minority. Everyone else just wants a tool that
> works. The majority of human beings on earth find computers to be
> mystifying, frustrating, even scary things. Absent Nerd Jesus, the computer
> just seems to have a mind of its own. It has its own agenda and interacting
> with it is an exercise in guesswork and black magic.

You're setting up a false dichotomy here. There isn't some 'line' that divides
all people between extreme technical competance and 'caveman-level' technical
competance. Also remember that 51% is a majority, and that a 51/49 split is a
hell of a lot different than a 95/5 split (i.e. tossing out 'majority' and
'minority' is meaningless).

> What the iPad, and the iPhone before it, has taught us is simple: people
> want a computer they understand. They want technology, but optimizing for
> Nerd Jesus has given them shit technology that doesn't respect them, so
> they're used to being defensive around it.

Do you really believe that the majority of systems out there are 'optimized'
for your 'Nerd Jesus' rather than 'Nerd Jesus' just happening to understand the
system that already exist?

> This is all a long way of saying that I agree with you – this could be a
> first step in "locking down the platform" for you and me. And streamlining
> it so it's actually useful for everyone else who doesn't fetishize the
> Terminal, kernel extensions or compilers.

"locking down the system" != "steamlining the system"

To frame this discussion a little differently, do you believe that instituting
a police state would result in a more stream-lined society?

Things like kernel extensions and compilers aren't "going away." Apple is just
trying their best to obfuscate them, and the fears in technical groups is that
Apple wants to make it impossible to access them. Are you really of the mind
that it is impossible to have a stream-lined experience on a technical device
if the possibility of gaining access to a compiler exists?

Most of people's annoyance with iOS is not that it's streamlined. It's that
Apple wants to be the gatekeeper, who gets to tell you what kind of software
you can run on your device. There are plenty of types of software that are
outside of the realm of uber technical people that Apple will not allow on
the device that would enhance the lives of many.

> I think there will always be a place for Nerd Jesus to do his thing. But
> instead of being the focus of the market, we're finally going to focus on
> the vast majority of what most people actually care about doing.

Focusing on the 'majority' of people is different than actively trying to
thwart 'Nerd Jesus.'

> We'll see what it costs us from a nerd perspective. I suspect it's less
> than we think – aside from the high of our indispensability as
> troubleshooters, of course.

Now that you're down off our high-hor^w^wsoapbox, the question that I pose to
you is this: Do you seriously believe that the issue that people take with the
possible changes that Apple might make to the Mac OS X platform is 100% to do
with technical people losing their ability to assert superiority over the
'mendecants' through troubleshooting their computer problems?

To all that upvoted this: Really HN? Really? Anyone that doesn't want a locked-down system is just some 'stupid nerd' that thinks he's going to lose his 'in' with pretty girls because they won't need their computers fixed? That seems to be the crux of this argument.