On Apple, BASIC, useless programs, and Windows 98

[Nate Theis]

     In 2003, I had my first experience with an Apple product. I received, through Craigslist, a slow and ancient (even for 2003) PowerBook 100, running the incredibly dated Mac OS 7.0. I suppose this behemoth could, very loosely, be called a "laptop". It weighed what seemed like a ton; I would often find an imprint of the ribbed bottom in my leg after using it. It had a stuck fan, requiring cool-down breaks every half-hour. The battery life was rated at an astounding one and a half hours of use unplugged, but the battery, being as old as the laptop, tended to give something more akin to one and a half minutes.

It was the best computer I had ever used.

    First, the user interface. Oh, the user interface. All I'd ever used before was a Windows 98 machine: I thought that "Computer" meant "Windows". It was full of spyware, adware, and the like: I believe I spotted both Bonzi Buddy and Comet Cursor at some point. Going from that to a Mac: it was incredible. I was stunned by the simplicity of the user interface; the ease of use was almost frightening, and I never experienced a crash. I distinctly remember asking my mother, "Mom, I'm never using Windows again, OK?"

     Second, White Knight.

     White Knight was a communications program that came with a manual the size of, if not a dictionary, at least a thesaurus. The manual explained, in-depth, exactly how a modem worked. It explained compression, error-checking, and file transfer protocols. It had several pages on ASCII and several chapters devoted to the various ?MODEM protocols.

     The manual and program were almost useless to me.

     I would certainly have ignored the program, if not for one section: a small, ridiculously limited scripting language. It was designed for automating logins, but it had some of the essential features, like conditional GOTOs and integer math. Just as a test, I typed in one of the examples in the book, and deleted all the bits that had to do with modem commands. I was left with a program that was utterly useless. It did something like this:

LOGGING IN

ENTER USERNAME: Nate

ENTER PASSWORD: SWORDFISH

HELLO Nate, YOUR PASSWORD IS SWORDFISH

     Not exactly groundbreaking advances in the field of software design. But that didn't matter to me: I knew it was useless, but it was interesting. In retrospect, I think that's the only thing that made me stick with it. In fact, I very much dislike useful things. If something is useful, there comes a sort of obligation to use it for its intended purpose. People learn the alphabet almost entirely to read and write: I learned programming because I was bored, not because I wanted to write programs.

    My next program was marginally more useful.

ENTER YOUR NAME: Nate

HELLO NATE, WHAT TEMPERATURE IS IT: 70

AT 70 DEGREES WATER IS LIQUID

ENTER ANOTHER TEMPERATURE: -999999

AT -999999 DEGREES WATER IS SOLID

ENTER ANOTHER TEMPERATURE: 400

AT 400 DEGREES WATER IS A GAS

    

     Eventually, I worked my way up to AppleScript on an iMac. That was the first time I ever encountered a modern Mac, and I had nothing but good experiences with them. I extolled the virtues of OS X to everyone I met. I felt sorry for Apple, for as their website clearly stated, "Apple does not want DRM on any iTunes media. However, our agreements with content providers require us to use DRM," but everyone still thought it was Apple who wanted DRM off.

     In the winter of 2006, I received a copy of the New Hacker's Dictionary for Christmas. Through that book, I discovered Unix and Linux. Through Unix and Linux, I found patent issues while trying to play DVDs, and tried out Python. Through the DVD issues, I discovered BitTorrent. Through Python, I realized how powerful real programming languages are. Through Linux again, I discovered the "joy" of debugging. Through BitTorrent, I discovered the EFF.

     In 2007, the iPhone came out. I thought they were absolutely amazing, and tried to write a simple app for them when the SDK. Those familiar with the App Store will see the immediate problem I faced: spending more than I had on any of my computers (I'd gotten them cheap) for App Store access.  It just wasn't an option for me. Maybe for someone who wants to develop apps commercially. Maybe for a university student doing it for an assignment. But not for someone who programmed because they were bored. And likely not for someone who programs to solve a personal issue.

     At that moment, I realized that Apple had lied. Apple had lied to me. I felt betrayed: Apple Computers, Inc., the company I had known and loved was gone, and instead was Apple, Inc., a company that wanted ultimate control over every device it made and used copyright to enforce the laws Apple got to write. The dropping of  "computers" from the company's name seemed to be accurate. A computer is fundamentally a device for content creation. The iPhone is exclusively a device for content consumption.

     It is impossible for a scripting language to exist for the iPhone, legally. The direction Apple is headed leads to a few predictions I can make:

• Apple desktop and laptop computers will begin to run iOS.
• Apple will begin to tightly control their open-source projects, such as CUPS, WebKit, and Darwin.
• Apple will begin filtering the iOS web browser, ostensibly to avoid "unsuitable material", but also to block jailbreaking sites and tools.
• Apple will start closing down HTML5 and JavaScript in iOS, again theoretically to avoid porn, etc. but really to lock customers in tighter to the App Store.
• Apple will begin suing everything within reach.

I used to love Apple. I used to think Apple really, really wanted the best for its users.

I was wrong.

The difference between open-source and proprietary software in a word:

Freedom.

Apple no longer believes in freedom.

This has been a late-night caffeine-fueled FOSS rant. Any errors are your fault for are knowing corect the grammer and speeling.