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Apple unethical...

I was at Sun from 1984 until 2001, HP from 2001-2003, and IBM from 2004 until retirement late last year. Solaris, HP-UX and AIX all had their strengths and weaknesses. I am most familiar with SunOS/Solaris as my first 10 years at Sun were in tech jobs (development, consulting, pre-sales engineering). I came on board as Sun was starting to transition from BSD to SVR3. As I was already very familiar with SVR3, my first job was training developers on internals, device drivers, system calls, and so on. By the time I reached IBM, I was just another dumb rep. :)

Did your time at Sun overlap with mine?

Only as a user of Sun kit (initially the pizza box stuff from the early 90's plus workstations where the hardware was built into the back of the large monitor - can't recall what those were) from about 91 onwards and then as an Oracle consultant (I used to live in the estate across the road from the Sun plant in Linlithgow so sometimes got calls to go in and fix stuff if the Financials or Manufacturing systems were playing up). The majority of the Oracle implementations I was involved in back then were on Solaris hardware, with HP-UX 2nd and probably AIX 3rd. I worked for Bull in Livingston before I went to Oracle but didn't stay that long as it wasn't a great company to work for (that's where I initially had my Unix admin training - with their Unix back then being a clone of AIX). I worked for HP in Germany in the early/mid 90's. Never worked directly for IBM (had a job offer from them a decade or so back but decided against it), but that was on the Oracle consultancy side of things.

The only remaining bit of Sun hardware I have is an SDLT drive (currently under my desk!) although I used to have an E250 as well. Also under the desk are a DL380 Proliant, a Dell Poweredge and a Dell Powervault Array (with a fibre controller and a full set of high speed hot pluggable SCSI drives). All in there must be a good £10 worth of kit at today's prices! The E250 I ended up giving away to a client who still ran one of their systems on one and wanted it for spares.

Were you based in the Linlithgow plant? I spent a fair bit of time there over the years - either back when it was a Sun manufacturing plant, then again when it was an Oracle office and finally doing work for Balfour Beatty who had an office in the basement.
 
Only as a user of Sun kit (initially the pizza box stuff from the early 90's plus workstations where the hardware was built into the back of the large monitor - can't recall what those were)

I think it was probably SPARCstation SLC's. Seemed very advanced in 91 or 92 when we got them. We also used to have Compaq SLT laptops - mine was even a 386. Those were the days - people used to look at you like you were an alien when you were working (or playing games!) on a laptop in aircraft back then.
 
some of the derogatory comments in this thread portray Apple as merely a consumer of open source. The truth is they are also a major contributor. In addition to providing code for many large open source projects, Apple also currently owns and maintains 136 GitHub repositories.
Apple is putting something in, but it's not more than it takes out. It's much better to be seen as a contributor because then when you take you're seen like a person who seeds torrents.
I ask this question in good faith: what is/are Apple's 'major' contribution(s) to general and current open-source ?
 
Only as a user of Sun kit (initially the pizza box stuff from the early 90's plus workstations where the hardware was built into the back of the large monitor - can't recall what those were) from about 91 onwards and then as an Oracle consultant (I used to live in the estate across the road from the Sun plant in Linlithgow so sometimes got calls to go in and fix stuff if the Financials or Manufacturing systems were playing up). The majority of the Oracle implementations I was involved in back then were on Solaris hardware, with HP-UX 2nd and probably AIX 3rd. I worked for Bull in Livingston before I went to Oracle but didn't stay that long as it wasn't a great company to work for (that's where I initially had my Unix admin training - with their Unix back then being a clone of AIX). I worked for HP in Germany in the early/mid 90's. Never worked directly for IBM (had a job offer from them a decade or so back but decided against it), but that was on the Oracle consultancy side of things.

The only remaining bit of Sun hardware I have is an SDLT drive (currently under my desk!) although I used to have an E250 as well. Also under the desk are a DL380 Proliant, a Dell Poweredge and a Dell Powervault Array (with a fibre controller and a full set of high speed hot pluggable SCSI drives). All in there must be a good £10 worth of kit at today's prices! The E250 I ended up giving away to a client who still ran one of their systems on one and wanted it for spares.

Were you based in the Linlithgow plant? I spent a fair bit of time there over the years - either back when it was a Sun manufacturing plant, then again when it was an Oracle office and finally doing work for Balfour Beatty who had an office in the basement.

Have always been US-based, and in Minneapolis since 1983. Did interact with various international teams over the years though. I recall Sun having a plant in Scotland, but not much more beyond that.

Ah yes, pizza boxes - great memories! I recall the transition from Motorola CPUs to SPARC. The SPARC 1 was a really big deal, and the first time Sun controlled their entire stack. I even recall the marketing slogan McNealy coined: all the wood behind one arrowhead! :D
 
Apple is putting something in, but it's not more than it takes out. It's much better to be seen as a contributor because then when you take you're seen like a person who seeds torrents.
I ask this question in good faith: what is/are Apple's 'major' contribution(s) to general and current open-source ?

I am retired, so no longer tracking their (or anyone else’s) contributions, but you could look here if you are interested.

https://developer.apple.com/opensource/

https://github.com/apple
 
there is no way I'd recommend Linux as a general purpose PC operating system although I can understand some cheapskate enthusiasts being willing to use it when it is appropriate for their own (no doubt very limited) use case

I agree

I've used the Apple OS and really just don't like it at all, although

me too

and can't for the life of me see how anyone can think the very clunky iPhone operating system is superior to Android

me too
 
That Android operating system as a general purpose OS which happens to be Linux-based?
 
I first tried Linux about a decade ago when it came with a diddy netbook I bought.
I thought it was quite fun ... and a little bit like being in a timewarp (chasing around the internet for drivers and endlessly tweaking this and that)

More recently I installed Debian on an RPi/touchscreen setup.
I thought it was quite fun ... and a little bit like being in a timewarp (chasing around the internet for drivers and endlessly tweaking this and that)

Foolishly, I tried setting up a TV tuner HAT - f*cking hilarious shenanigans ensued and I got absolutely nowhere ..... but very, very slowly.

'Clunky' doesn't do it justice ... not my cup of tea at all.
 
Customer for life. Switching our computing to Apple was best move I’ve ever made.
Same here. Had both for a while and now wonder why.
As for Android phones, I foolishly bought two. Clunky doesn't even come close. IOS is just so superior. My late wife was given an Android phone at work and it lasted a few days, which was more than I expected.
Now sits back and awaits abuse from the usual Apple hater(s) :p
 
Strange reply from a self-described Linux admininstrator.

don't have to like what you use.

I've run labs full of Linux machines, rewritten kernels, developed multi threading kernel modules....taught OS using it. And I hate it. It offers a terrible user experience. I still need use it for pen testing using kali Linux, but it is horrid.

Oh and open source is meant to be "stolen" and reused.
 
Aren't all operating systems free these days? Or is the argument about the cost of the computing machines they're installed on?

Joe
 
Oh, and may I remind fishies that this is a delightfully pleasant forum, but should the conversation become nasty or the thread go pear-shaped Costco-sized cans of whoop ass can be opened or at the least the thread Trekked.

Joe / moderating

Edit: Da boss beat me to it.
 


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