Dear kahawe,

Over 25 years ago, in the mid 1980s, Apple introduced the Macintosh and Microsoft introduced Windows. Taken together, Apple/Microsoft came to dominate the entire computing industry and they have largely maintained that status up to the present day.

Well they may have switched around in cycles between one another, to the point that it may have seemed that "there was nothing but M$ for most computer users" taken together they still had complete control. The phrase "if you don't like it, don't use it" didn't make any sense, because there were simply were no free alternatives for people to turn to.

Selecting between Apple/M$ is not a worthwhile choice, since they both use exactly the same bad practices. They both profit off of closed and restrictive platforms, and they are both against software freedom.

It is only in the last three years that people begun to be granted some freedom from the tyrannies of Apple and Microsoft. This started in 2004, when Ubuntu was released, and then it continued when in 2008 Android was released. In the last three years these two systems have matured to the point that now finally users have the choice of living free of Apple/M$.

The transition to these free alternatives was partially fueled by the need to save money admist our financial crisis, but that alone hasn't really displaced the dominance of these entrenched tyrannies because as you personally mentioned, Linux may still only be 3% of all web client operating systems. This is why it is necessary to have people like me who continue to fight against Apple and Microsoft and develop free alternatives.

Google has been one of our greatest allies in this battle. Google is a major proponent of open platforms, because Google needs platforms like the web that are open to searching. Google has further assisted our cause through their active development of Chromium and Android. Furthermore, Google provides many unmatched intelligent services such as search, machine translation, and intelligent prediction to everyone free of charge, not unlike a public service.

> google does not provide any public infrastructure

The fire department doesn't provide any public infrastructure either. It provides a public service. This is not unlike how our good friends at Google provide public services such as search and machine translation.

> I could set up my own search engine with a few bucks investment just like Larry and Sergey did plus nowadays storage is even cheaper.

Sure you could, and nobody would hear about it unless you further invested millions of dollars into it to acquire resources.

> So if you really hate big corps then you should shit on M$

I hate M$ just about as much as Apple, however, I tend to think of them together because taken as a group they inflicted untold evils on the computing industry for nearly 25 years.

> If anything you should be thankful that at least there is a LITTLE bit of competition for M$ but you are probably much too ignorant, stuck up and also too young to remember the dark ages when there was nothing but M$ for most computer users.

What makes you think that we are not still amidst such a dark age? Microsoft and Apple together still dominate most general purpose computers. As I explained above, I am not at all thankful of Apple's attempts to compete with Microsoft because they offer nothing I consider to be better.

> If anything you should be thankful that at least there is a LITTLE bit of competition for M$ but you are probably much too ignorant, stuck up and also too young to remember the dark ages when there was nothing but M$ for most computer users.

Actually, as of Q3 2011, Apple is the largest publicly traded company in the world by market capitalization, and the largest technology company in the world by revenue and profit. Apple simply is not a "little fish" anymore. In fact, Apple/Microsoft have tyrannically controlled the computing industry for nearly 25 years.

> Not comparatively little fish like Apple.

What do you mean by "little fish"? Apple is a huge company and arguably the main opponent of computing freedom in the world today.

> Neither apple nor microsoft forces people to use anything.

As I explained above, Apple/Microsoft have controlled the computing industry for nearly 25 years. Computers have become an unavoidable part of life in developed countries, so people basically are forced to deal with them one way or another. Free alternatives have only recently begun to emerge, but they are still not widely available.

> So it doesn't matter what PG or whoever says, apple's success has proven them all wrong and I can only say I am thankful for the bit of competition and a few neat gadgets that apple delivered.

Thankfully, I don't take success in capitalism into account in my comparasions. I could care less about how successful Apple has been in capitalist societies, I want free, secure, and intelligent technologies. Apple and Microsoft aren't even beginning to work towards that goal and at least Google is.