Originally posted by: EeyoreX
So, by your logic, if I want to use Apple's OS on my PC hardware, I should be able to.
Uh, no. But you should be unhappy when you can't, and if you're unhappy enough, not buy their products.
I can't. That doesn't mean I "outright dislike" Apple because they have been pulling the same crap for years. I accept Apple's business model and choices. It is smart for Apple to limit who can run their software and on what hardware. They create a self fullfilling market. "What to use our OS? Great! Buy our computer." That's good business. Even if I don't like it, it's still good business.
Great, but this isn't a business forum, it's a computer forum. If apple had frustrated you enough, then I imagine you'd stop buying their products altogether. Either they haven't frustrated you that much, or you just buy products no matter how much you dislike a company.
How does this make my argument ineffective? I don't know if people do or do not want to run Windows on a Mac. And why does that matter? I am not arguing which is superior. I am simply saying that if MS wants to make something "proprietry" that's it's right. Maybe they don't. But then, generally speaking, if they can afford a MAc, they can probably also afford a PC. Regardless of if that generalization is true or not, this is not a different matter. It is a company making a proprietary product. You support my claim that since it's not Microsoft, it's okay.
The point is that no one really thinks that either is obligated to make their operating systems run on all hardware. But a lot of people
do feel that when a company creates something that is supposed to act as a
standard, e.g. file formats, then they should allow everyone to use that standard, instead of holding peoples' data hostage. They're not selling a file format, they're selling Office. If they were reasonable, they'd release docs on the file format. But they're obviously out to make money no matter how shady they need to be to do it.
So, it's a 3rd party app that allows some Linux programs to be run in Windows. Congrats. Linux can do that too with wine.
It's not really the same. cygwin is very mature and generally everything tends to work in it. The architecture of a unix-like system is standard and well-known. Windows is an inherently different OS, so something needs to provide a layer of compatability, since of course windows can't support that stuff on its own. Wine, on the other hand, is an attempt to reimplement windows APIs, and is basically a big hack, since MS obviously wants no such thing to be done. So to conclude, Windows is the one that has the compatability problems in both directions. People have to hack things just to make them work with windows and windows APIs, since MS won't.
Apple wants people to buy Apple products in order to use Apple's OS. That's perfectly fair and fine. I don't necessarily like it, because I do like the OS, but I don't see a problem with Apple's policy, even though I don't like it. I see no problem with Microsoft, or Sun, or anyone else wanting you to buy their product to utilize their products features.
I'm guessing most people feel differently.
So which is it? Above you say Apple people don't want to run Windows on their Macs. Here it seems you imply the opposite. That people do in fact want to be able to run any software on any hardware...
You mentioned 3 different companies which each produce many products. That's not really comparable to a statement specifically about Windows and Mac hardware.
These things are always sub-par from the "real thing."
So? People play games on Linux via wina or winex and love it. You say it's "sub-par" but I see people here extole it all the time. So I guess it must not be that bad if people are doing it willingly. They don't have to use Linux. They don't have to play Windows games on Linux. If they took the time to get it to work, and suggest to other people who want to try Linux, but also want to play Windows games, it must work okay.
They love the games that work, but I'm sure they'd love the games that
don't work even more, since many (most?) don't. People love it because they can run this app or that app. They don't love it because they are able to run every single app they used to run in windows, because generally they can't. They put up with gaming via wine because they see using linux as a benefit that outweighs it. But that's all they're doing:
putting up with it.
