Why has opinion turned on Apple?

(in response to /. comment.)

In the past long while, Apple has becoming a media darling, while simultaneously an counter-culture of dislike has sprung up. If I were to wax philosophical about the topic, I guess it has to do with some pseudo-shared Utopian ideals of society that Apple fought for in 1984. Apple since then has become another bit player on the corporate stage. They sell DRM'd music, as if bits weren't copyable; 'rentable' video, as if bits rot, and they skip merrily along as if this were just fine. Sure, their DRM isn't onerous, but the fact that it exists is an affront to this mythical Utopian future. As a pragmatist, I accept that the providers of media need reassurance that their world hasn't fallen into P2P digital anarchy, even though is already has.

High minded ideals die hard. They may have a bigger walled garden, but they've walled it off all the same, and for our own protection, of course. Bluetooth profiles on the iPhone are limited to the headset, and GPS is inaccessible on a basic level within the sponsored SDK sandbox. Jailbreakers have no such limits. They trot out boogiemen like viruses and battery life and say you can only sell through their store, after they take their cut, or course. Better end user experience be damned, why do I have to sell my AwesomeWidget through your store? And only after I get 'approval' from brother Jobs to do so?

Apple made a promise that things were 3-step easy, with 'thats it, there is no step three' as the third step. Everybody knows somebody who's been tried to sync their iPod with a new computer and despite warnings that it would, had iTunes delete all their songs with varying reactions.

They broke that promise if you want do anything 'unsupported'. I want to share my wired desktop's internet with my laptop via 802.11 but I want something something stronger than WEP. Thats... not gonna to work. HostAP from *nix land may be able to do it, but I'm sure that's not 3-step easy. Problems with their cifs client aside, I'm not bitter.

Sensible? Maybe not.

gen_bridge_metadata

On OS-X to get ruby/python bindings for frameworks, there is a program called 'gen_bridge_metadata' that ships with Leopard. Unfortunately, it is broken. It complains of an undefined local variable or method:

Exception `NameError' at /System/Library/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions/1.8/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/rexml/document.rb:187 - undefined local variable or method `trans' for ... :REXML::Document

The fix is to edit the document.rb, located at /System/Library/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions/1.8/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/rexml/document.rb, directly. Here's a patch that should should be applicable for anyone that comes across it.

--- a/document.rb 2008-08-14 16:45:08.000000000 -0400
+++ b/document.rb 2008-08-14 16:45:11.000000000 -0400
@@ -184,7 +184,7 @@
output = Output.new( output, xml_decl.encoding )
end
formatter = if indent > -1
- if trans
+ if transitive
REXML::Formatters::Transitive.new( indent, ie_hack )
else
REXML::Formatters::Pretty.new( indent, ie_hack )