Would a teenage Steve Jobs today run MacOS or Linux?

[crymimefireworks]

Greetings,
Reporting here from the front lines of having switched to using a Linux-first laptop running Pop_OS with hardware by System76.

I have good news and bad news.

Good news: many apps are available for Linux, and electron enables developers to create Linux/Mac/PC apps that are fairly good.

Bad news: Did you know that bluetooth microphone support is basically nonexistent on Linux? Certainly not out of the box, and for an amateur not after many hours of digging. In this aspect, Linux seems 20 years behind. I'm somewhat comfortable with UNIX and CLI, I can't imagine anyone switching without it. AirPods have no chance in hell of connecting at all. Even Sony XM3s only connect sound and not mic. This is a small example but illustrates the massive headwind facing Mac switchers to Linux.

This has opened my eyes that Mac users are a lot more boxed in than I realized. I always thought Linux was a click away. In terms of bluetooth support though, it's 20 years behind.

Linux is far from perfect. But Linux seems like the only viable path forward. Trusting closed source has no future, Apple has finally bit the dust in terms of surveillance but it was somewhat inevitable in retrospect. A matter of when not if, and when has arrived.

Open to other people's thoughts and leadership here.

 

[bobcomer]

This has opened my eyes that Mac users are a lot more boxed in than I realized. I always thought Linux was a click away. In terms of bluetooth support though, it's 20 years behind.

I think you'll find out that it's way behind in a LOT of areas unless all you do is server stuff.

I've dabbled in Linux for decades and I've never gotten comfortable enough with it to use as my main OS, it just doesn't do things I need to do.

I know you don't think trusting closed source OS's has any future, but I have work that needs to be done, and Windows is what works the best for that. And for now, it has nothing like the on device CSAM scanner...

 

[TGM85]

Probably a cheapie android phone he picked up at a flea market in Dhaka before disappearing into an ashram for a couple of years.

 

[StralyanPithecus]

The problem with linux is, and always was, 3 users, 600 distros. Too many egos. In the beginning linux was closer or even better of, to commercial OS, like windows, mac and such. I remember in the late 90, getting more from my linux OS than from windows. But with time development and progress in commercial OSes left linux eating dust. Bluetooth is just one thing, there’s lots more things not working or not polished enough for regular and even advanced users like me to use it as default OS. Since the 90’s we hear about “this year is gonna be the year of linux desktop” but since long time I stopped to believe that. As I said before, too many egos in the linux world.

 

[countermoon]

Greetings,
Reporting here from the front lines of having switched to using a Linux-first laptop running Pop_OS with hardware by System76.

I have good news and bad news.

Good news: many apps are available for Linux, and electron enables developers to create Linux/Mac/PC apps that are fairly good.

Bad news: Did you know that bluetooth microphone support is basically nonexistent on Linux? Certainly not out of the box, and for an amateur not after many hours of digging. In this aspect, Linux seems 20 years behind. I'm somewhat comfortable with UNIX and CLI, I can't imagine anyone switching without it. AirPods have no chance in hell of connecting at all. Even Sony XM3s only connect sound and not mic. This is a small example but illustrates the massive headwind facing Mac switchers to Linux.

This has opened my eyes that Mac users are a lot more boxed in than I realized. I always thought Linux was a click away. In terms of bluetooth support though, it's 20 years behind.

Linux is far from perfect. But Linux seems like the only viable path forward. Trusting closed source has no future, Apple has finally bit the dust in terms of surveillance but it was somewhat inevitable in retrospect. A matter of when not if, and when has arrived.

Open to other people's thoughts and leadership here.

Can you give the secs of your laptop and what you paid for it? If not, that's OK.

I've been debating a long time where to go from my old Dell Latitude running Win 7. I get work done on my Mac running High Sierra, but for internet use I would consider a Linux laptop.

 

[crymimefireworks]

I think you'll find out that it's way behind in a LOT of areas unless all you do is server stuff.

I've dabbled in Linux for decades and I've never gotten comfortable enough with it to use as my main OS, it just doesn't do things I need to do.

I know you don't think trusting closed source OS's has any future, but I have work that needs to be done, and Windows is what works the best for that. And for now, it has nothing like the on device CSAM scanner...

Totally agree. I want to get my work done, not tinker. Windows and Mac have no future. Linux is the only path forward. It sucks now, but it can be improved. Donate money to devs, buy from Linux-focused vendors. We'll get there.

Can you give the secs of your laptop and what you paid for it? If not, that's OK.

I've been debating a long time where to go from my old Dell Latitude running Win 7. I get work done on my Mac running High Sierra, but for internet use I would consider a Linux laptop.

For my options I only considered Linux-focused vendors. That limited my options pretty severely.

I did consider Linux supported models by Dell and Lenovo. But their focus isn't Linux, they put up with it but it's not the future.

I purchased a Lemur Pro from System76. $1399 based model with i5, plus 500 gb ssd, and 16 gb ram for ~$1480 shipped.

Lemur Pro

The most portable, long-lasting, expandable laptop. Work untethered.

system76.com

I'm a Mac user, not a programmer. I simply can't support purely free Linux for myself. I'm glad it exists but I need to get my work done and Windows and Mac aren't an option.

 

[bradl]

I'll jump in on this one. I'll say MacOS. Here's why.

In my professional life (read: college underclassman to now), I've been a Linux person primarily. I came from an Apple background (System Software 6/7, Apple DOS, ProDOS), and effectively went barely into needing to use Windows for schoolwork, but while all of our internet-facing work was done on a Unix box (Cyrix, running on a VAX). Linux came along a year after, and from that, I went primarily Linux ever since, with Slackware being my distro of choice. My personal machine at home ran that, with X and AfterStep being my window manager of choice. This ran solid and stable for me for 20 years.

The downside of it for me became maintenance, and family. It's common knowledge that everyone catches the upgrade bug roughly every 2-3 years. So with that, came the reinstall of everything (back then, while there were backups, it was expensive to do, so it was more feasible to just preserve your data on a separate disk in the machine and reformat everything else for a reinstall, then just reattach the disk with the data on it), then perform any upgrades/patches to get it current, then even compile a kernel if needed.

What got to me over doing that all the time was the time in doing that, plus maintaining my own hardware and software packages needed from the distribution or the vendor supplying it. If I'm already doing that for a living, taking time away from family to compile a kernel is not a good idea. I look at how much Linus has done over the time he's started a family and how many different projects and compiles he's had to do while having a family (he wrote the main kernel, he created git, etc.), and wonder if I want to be like that, especially when my son wants to go outside and play a game of kickball with me. "I can't right now, I have a kernel to compile and a new version of GIMP just came out, so I have to get that compiled to see what new features it has!" isn't going to fly. I mean, Harry Chapin told us what happens with that, in Cat's in the Cradle.

That's where MacOS came in. I'd still have a Unix environment running under the GUI, but also a X-like environment that I don't have to be the sole supporter of, plus on hardware that is durable and lasts (I'm at 10 years, 2 months into my mid-2011 MBA, and still going), so it gives me my time back in not having to rebuild computers all the time, plus keep everything up to date. And if I still feel like doing something in Linux, I can create a VM and do it there. In fact, I do that just for the sole purpose of compiling a kernel to see if it works. Other than that, I'm primarily MacOS with all of my time back to spend not being in front of a screen keeping everything up to date.

BL.

 

[NoBoMac]

I know you don't think trusting closed source OS's has any future, but I have work that needs to be done, and Windows is what works the best for that.

The downside of it for me became maintenance, and family. [...] What got to me over doing that all the time was the time in doing that, plus maintaining my own hardware and software packages needed from the distribution or the vendor supplying it. If I'm already doing that for a living, taking time away from family to compile a kernel is not a good idea.

These.

It's was 10+ years ago, but I recall a big-name in the open-source/Linux world posted to their blog that they became a Mac convert for basically these reasons. They were messing with Linux as part of their job, last thing they want to do at home was mess with the kernel, drivers, etc. Caused a bit of a stink at the time.

Sure, Linux is light-years ahead from where it used to be, but still not install it and done like Window, MacOS, iOS, Android, especially if targeting non-tech family members (can be hard enough to get them to the right place in settings with commercial stuff, forget about talking them through terminal commands). And even those of us that can muddle through, better/more fun things to occupy my time vs pulling my hair out getting a system up and running from (practically) scratch.

ADD: but Linux can fit the niche of "needs to be done" that @bobcomer mentioned. For example, engineering world has a bunch of software packages that do run on Linux, but those target very specific configurations for hardware and what Linux flavors their stuff can run on.

 

[crymimefireworks]

The downside of it for me became maintenance, and family. It's common knowledge that everyone catches the upgrade bug roughly every 2-3 years. So with that, came the reinstall of everything (back then, while there were backups, it was expensive to do, so it was more feasible to just preserve your data on a separate disk in the machine and reformat everything else for a reinstall, then just reattach the disk with the data on it), then perform any upgrades/patches to get it current, then even compile a kernel if needed.

This is exactly why I need Linux to rapidly improve. I'm not a programmer. I need a machine to get my work done. Mac and Windows are not an option.

Programmers like you are helping improve Linux so that non-programmers have an option! Otherwise we're stuck.

 

[crymimefireworks]

Sure, Linux is light-years ahead from where it used to be, but still not install it and done like Window, MacOS, iOS, Android, especially if targeting non-tech family members (can be hard enough to get them to the right place in settings with commercial stuff, forget about talking them through terminal commands). And even those of us that can muddle through, better/more fun things to occupy my time vs pulling my hair out getting a system up and running from (practically) scratch.

There's no way to get here without users paying money. I want more paid options for Linux OS.

Linux right now basically excludes non-programmers as users. My money will go towards Linux projects that support users like me. I don't need a free operating system. I want "it just works" and no surveillance tools. I'm not a programmer.

I will pay thousands of dollars to have a system that meets these criteria.

 

[WriteNow]

I'm far from a programmer--apart from one semester of BASIC in high school, and a bit of experience with HyperCard scripting about 1990. But Linux has been my daily driver for some time, and I get by fine. And I don't find it needs much tinkering. But...this is probably a "your mileage varies" deal. I'm past the point of caring about the "newest and greatest"--so I'm happy installing something with long term support and leaving it alone. I also stick with distros aimed at "normal users." And my needs are currently pretty simple--mostly Internet, with some writing tasks, which are pretty simple (no fancy documents, with careful layout requirements). And, of course, if my needs change, I can make whatever changes seem necessary at the time.

 

[fuchsdh]

The problem with linux is, and always was, 3 users, 600 distros. To many egos. In the beginning linux was closer or even better of, to commercial OS, like windows, mac and such. I remember in the late 90, getting more of my linux OS than from windows. But with time development and progress in commercial OSes left linux eating dust. Bluetooth is just one thing, there’s lots more things not working or not polished enough for regular and even advanced users like me to use it as default OS. Since the 90’s we hear about “this year is gonna be the year of linux desktop” but since long time I stopped to believe that. As I said before, to many egos in the linux world.

Linux's problem I think is firstly about the XKCD comic about standards. Everyone would rather fork a distro and do something to appeal to an increasingly narrow segment like them rather than focus on something more broad. And the result is that "what Linux would I install?" has thousands of possible answers.

Which leads to the second problem, that out-of-the-box, I haven't used many distros that feel good. Its power is in its flexibility, but most people don't want to tinker from jump to get things working for them, or have to figure out how to install stuff to get what to them is the fundamentals of computing working.

Unix or Linux as a front-facing, popular consumer OS is just not going to happen any time soon.

 

[crymimefireworks]

Unix or Linux as a front-facing, popular consumer OS is just not going to happen any time soon.

Sooner rather than later! I donated $ to Ubuntu today, and became a monthly supporter of a Ubuntu version called Pop OS (https://pop.system76.com/)

I wonder how much money individuals non-corporates pay to Linux each year. What if we 10X that amount?

 

[Boyd01]

I think Steve Jobs was more of a visionary and marketing guy and Woz was the tech guy in the early days, right? So I'd say Mac, although perhaps he wouldn't use either and would have a brave new vision of something completely different?

For me... I started using BSD unix back in 1985 when I joined the faculty at SUNY Oswego but I also bought a "Fat Mac" 512k that year (had an Apple ][ since 1978). Sometime around 1990 I got an AT&T 3B1 "Unix PC" when they were blowing them out at a discount. Now that was a very cool machine, with a 68010 CPU and a huge 2MB of RAM (but coming from BSD, I always thought Sys V was a little strange).

Around 1996 I started running Mach 10, which was a BSD Unix implementation running as a task on the old Mac operating system. It was pretty slow, but it worked and was relatively stable. We got a leased line at work and I setup a Mac with Mach 10 as a mail and web server, the Wayback Machine still has the first website I built for the company - we were one of the first opera companies to even have a website back then.

Around 1998 I replaced the Mac with a custom-built server from VA Research running Red Hat Linux. That was a much more powerful machine that ran our mail and website much faster, and we also upgraded our leased line to a T1. Here it is on a desk in the corner of my office in 1999. As you can see by the books, I was all about Linux back then!

Those were the days.... but I've been there and gone with Linux. Still hosting my website(s) on a leased cloud server that runs CentOS but that's the extent of my interest these days. I'm very comfortable with the Mac and have no plans to switch. It runs all the software I need and last year I replaced my desktop PC with a Windows 10 virtual machine on my 2018 Mini, which is actually much faster.

Not worried about the whole CSAM thing, I'm not a consumer of porn and don't use iCloud photos anyway. If any of this materializes into a "real" privacy concern, I'll deal with it then. It would literally be "cutting off my nose to spite my face" to switch to Linux. It just wouldn't do what I need.

 

[iFan86]

Steve would probably perceive Apple as the IBM of his day. He would most likely be creating his own OS, much like he did with NEXT. I tinkered with linux in the early 2000's but once Mac OS X came out, I was full blown Apple for my home use. Given the circumstances right now a couple weeks ago I started to experiment with different versions of Linux on an old PC laptop I had at home. The only upgrade I did to the laptop was to throw in a cheap SSD drive. I finally felt comfortable with Fedora. The install on all were very easy. Each had it's own positives and negatives. While the Linux of the early 2000's would not have made for a good everyday machine, the current versions are much closer to being user friendly. I use Windows for work and so much of the software I use is cross platform. I was pleasently surprised to find much of it was also available on Fedora as well. Such as Joplin for notes, Teamviewer for remote support, Sublime for text editing. Using the current Linux reminds me a lot of the early days of Max OS X. There was much more Open Source software available for the Mac at that time. The speed, even on older hardware is good and the OS doesn't take up a lot of your storage space. I am actually at a cross roads. Was all set to upgrade my MacBook Pro as well as my iPhone this cycle but that is on hold now until I see how things play out.

 

[bradl]

Linux's problem I think is firstly about the XKCD comic about standards. Everyone would rather fork a distro and do something to appeal to an increasingly narrow segment like them rather than focus on something more broad. And the result is that "what Linux would I install?" has thousands of possible answers.

Which leads to the second problem, that out-of-the-box, I haven't used many distros that feel good. Its power is in its flexibility, but most people don't want to tinker from jump to get things working for them, or have to figure out how to install stuff to get what to them is the fundamentals of computing working.

Unix or Linux as a front-facing, popular consumer OS is just not going to happen any time soon.

Sooner rather than later! I donated $ to Ubuntu today, and became a monthly supporter of a Ubuntu version called Pop OS (https://pop.system76.com/)

I wonder how much money individuals non-corporates pay to Linux each year. What if we 10X that amount?

You both just reminded me of my first trip to COMDEX, in 1998 (luckily for me at the time I was living in Las Vegas, so that trip was a 10 minute drive!).. I got to the section of the convention center where various geek booths were. O’Reilly had a booth. Slashdot and Freshmeat had booths. Yggdrasil, Slackware, SuSE, Debian, and Mandrake had booths, where the developers of the sisters were there answering questions. But in the middle of where these booths were was a set of chairs and a overhead screen for Redhat. Every booth had either the founder of the company, or a sysadmin or tech person for the company, except Redhat. They brought in a marketing guy. Their presentations started out with getting the chairs filled, then for the first 3 minutes, the Marketing guy getting everyone to shout "LINUX MEANS E-BUSINESS!!!!" while jumping up and down like Steve Balmer at a Microsoft event.

Everyone wanted to throttle that guy.

However, it was from that point where everyone started to get the hint that Linux was going to be geared towards the business and enterprise environment versus the end-user or desktop environment. There wasn't anyone that could make X or an XTerminal user friendly enough to compete with Windows, and by the time GNOME or KDE came out they were no where near rich enough to compete with Windows as a desktop environment.

So while Linux is great with enterprise and IoT devices, MacOS and Windows for the most will have the desktop environment for a while. Their problem, however, is the same that the Boeing 737 has: there is only so much that you can put into a 50 year old design. Like the B737 MAX, which is based on the original B737 designs from the 1960s/1970s, modern GUIs, including Windows and MacOS (even going back to System Software 7) are built on X, which is 30-40 years old. There's only so much that you can improve on that before something gives.

BL.

 

[grandM]

Jobs was a business man. He believed in a closed system. Integrating hardware and software giving that edge. The focus was end users as huge corporations were IBM. Plus design will more likely impress the individual than corporative IT manager. Home users were also the unexplored open market. Upon returning to apple this became ultimately clear with the gamble he took on the iMac's flashy design and then the iPod.

Steve would never have believed in most distros and frankly, neither do I. Linux is superb for tinkerers, it might be acceptable for poor people, but in truth it's expensive if you don't want to learn an OS. Most people don't. They want to use apps and this requires an OS. This OS needn't change fundamentally. It must support functionality needed.

Tinkerers adore terminal/command prompt. The end user should like never need it. Steve spoke of a device. You pick it up and it works intuitively. That was the goal. Swiping things or even better syncing into the cloud are major innovations. Working with several people on the same document simultaneously. This not only saves time thus money. It's what the end user wants.

There is as Linus admitted one player who moved linux very much in this direction. This is Google, and in the future probably Huawei. Google's android and maybe Fuchsia will determine linux in the West. Polished integrated relatively cheap products living from data and ads.

Other distros will come and go. I think apple and Google are here to stay. And Microsoft? They are getting rich on Azure and have no choice but trying to perfectly integrate their desktop OS with android. The focus shifted a long time ago from the pc to the ecosystem. Hence why MS is coding electron apps for end users instead of native hoping not to get cut off from the ecosystem and they might still.

 

[bradl]

Jobs was a business man. He believed in a closed system. Integrating hardware and software giving that edge. The focus was end users as huge corporations were IBM. Plus design will more likely impress the individual than corporative IT manager. Home users were also the unexplored open market. Upon returning to apple this became ultimately clear with the gamble he took on the iMac's flashy design and then the iPod.

Steve would never have believed in most distros and frankly, neither do I. Linux is superb for tinkerers, it might be acceptable for poor people, but in truth it's expensive if you don't want to learn an OS. Most people don't. They want to use apps and this requires an OS. This OS needn't change fundamentally. It must support functionality needed.

Tinkerers adore terminal/command prompt. The end user should like never need it. Steve spoke of a device. You pick it up and it works intuitively. That was the goal. Swiping things or even better syncing into the cloud are major innovations. Working with several people on the same document simultaneously. This not only saves time thus money. It's what the end user wants.

This sounds like someone who only assumes that Linux only needs or uses a CLI. That is far from the truth. As mentioned before, I was using X11 and many different window managers along with it: twm, fvwm, AfterStep, WindowMaker, etc. That is what made Linux the cheapest Xterminal that could be made or built. And that was from us tinkerers.

And if Steve never believed in most distros, keep in mind that Steve knew more about that, because System Software 5/6/7 were all based off of X, and MacOS, iOS, iPadOS, tvOS, and WatchOS are essentially based off of NeXT, which is a derivative of Unix.

There is as Linus admitted one player who moved linux very much in this direction. This is Google, and in the future probably Huawei. Google's android and maybe Fuchsia will determine linux in the West. Polished integrated relatively cheap products living from data and ads.

Other distros will come and go. I think apple and Google are here to stay. And Microsoft? They are getting rich on Azure and have no choice but trying to perfectly integrate their desktop OS with android. The focus shifted a long time ago from the pc to the ecosystem. Hence why MS is coding electron apps for end users instead of native hoping not to get cut off from the ecosystem and they might still.

Microsoft is running Linux in Azure, as well as a derivative of it inside Windows now, so they've as much integrated a unix-like underlying OS into their GUI as Apple has with NeXT.

BL.

 

[grandM]

This sounds like someone who only assumes that Linux only needs or uses a CLI. That is far from the truth. As mentioned before, I was using X11 and many different window managers along with it: twm, fvwm, AfterStep, WindowMaker, etc. That is what made Linux the cheapest Xterminal that could be made or built. And that was from us tinkerers.

And if Steve never believed in most distros, keep in mind that Steve knew more about that, because System Software 5/6/7 were all based off of X, and MacOS, iOS, iPadOS, tvOS, and WatchOS are essentially based off of NeXT, which is a derivative of Unix.




Microsoft is running Linux in Azure, as well as a derivative of it inside Windows now, so they've as much integrated a unix-like underlying OS into their GUI as Apple has with NeXT.

BL.

Of course tinkerers can shape unix/linux in many things as apple did into NeXT/MacOS or Google created its android flavor. But the tinkering shouldn't be a necessity in the final product for non tech users. Sure a lot of servers run on linux. These are tech users right. By ecosystem I was also referring to watches, phones, cars, whatever.

 

[bradl]

Of course tinkerers can shape unix/linux in many things as apple did into NeXT/MacOS or Google created its android flavor. But the tinkering shouldn't be a necessity in the final product for non tech users. Sure a lot of servers run on linux. These are tech users right. By ecosystem I was also referring to watches, phones, cars, whatever.

You can boot Linux directly into runlevel 2 (X11) and never see the CLI at the console. That would also get Linux to serve X applications remotely as well. For example, I could start X or boot the Linux box into X, export my X11 server's display, ssh into my Mac, and run X applications from my Mac, onto my Linux box's X11 display. The problem there though is how much one would have to know and learn to be able to do that. The end-user wouldn't want to go through that learning curve to be able to do that, so they would need a quick/easy way to access a GUI, which Linux doesn't have.

My point here is that even with as much as I've dealt with it (I'm a Linux sysadmin, and have been for 28 years), unless a immensely popular and idiotproof GUI is presented on top of it, it will not be something that gains traction on the desktop. And as you've even said it yourself, when you get that GUI it basically is no longer Linux: you have iOS, WatchOS, tvOS, iPadOS, android, etc.

BL.

 

[smoking monkey]

Neither. He'd come up with his own.

 

[crymimefireworks]

Jobs was a business man. He believed in a closed system. Integrating hardware and software giving that edge. The focus was end users as huge corporations were IBM. Plus design will more likely impress the individual than corporative IT manager. Home users were also the unexplored open market. Upon returning to apple this became ultimately clear with the gamble he took on the iMac's flashy design and then the iPod.

Steve would never have believed in most distros and frankly, neither do I. Linux is superb for tinkerers, it might be acceptable for poor people, but in truth it's expensive if you don't want to learn an OS. Most people don't. They want to use apps and this requires an OS. This OS needn't change fundamentally. It must support functionality needed.

Tinkerers adore terminal/command prompt. The end user should like never need it. Steve spoke of a device. You pick it up and it works intuitively. That was the goal. Swiping things or even better syncing into the cloud are major innovations. Working with several people on the same document simultaneously. This not only saves time thus money. It's what the end user wants.

There is as Linus admitted one player who moved linux very much in this direction. This is Google, and in the future probably Huawei. Google's android and maybe Fuchsia will determine linux in the West. Polished integrated relatively cheap products living from data and ads.

Other distros will come and go. I think apple and Google are here to stay. And Microsoft? They are getting rich on Azure and have no choice but trying to perfectly integrate their desktop OS with android. The focus shifted a long time ago from the pc to the ecosystem. Hence why MS is coding electron apps for end users instead of native hoping not to get cut off from the ecosystem and they might still.

Agreed, Linux has been for tinkerers. We need an open source OS for everyone. Apple and Windows are closed source and thus not sustainable. Growing Linux to be consumer friendly is the next step - or something else will take its place.

 

[Heat_Fan89]

A lot of great comments here and pretty much all valid. At 63 and someone who's been involved with computers since 1981, i've seen a lot and worked with a lot of OSes. I will say this and agree with several who mentioned that they don't want to tinker with their OS, make great points. However the vast majority who use computers today have rather basic needs such as internet, email, banking, documents, photos, music and other basic stuff.

Linux is suited for that and can do it quite well. If one desires to do that then distros such as Linux Mint or Ubuntu are great choices. I fall into that group but choose to use MacOS for my basic needs and Windows for my gaming needs. The only reason I use MacOS is because I can create an account and use iCloud for my saves.

As far as MacOS and Windows being on the way out, that's also a valid point but keep in mind that Apple and Microsoft agrees with you and it's why MacOS is now offered free as well as Windows. Microsoft essentially turned Windows into a service. Where Windows still has its essential value is playing games. No other operating system has the support that Windows offers if that's where you do your gaming.

 

[bobdobalina]

Woz would tell him to run Linux.

 

[JMacHack]

I never knew Steve Jobs, bug the impression that I got from Walter Isaacsons biography of him is that MacOS and current Apple fits his philosophy to a T.

Woz was the tinkerer, and the technical guy between the two. Jobs was an excellent marketer and had high standards for products. He had an amazing sense for how a product should interact with its user.

From what I gather, Jobs would not have been happy with either Linux or Windows over MacOS. When he headed the Macintosh project, his focus was on creating a machine that required no technical knowledge to use. And when he returned to Apple, he axed a lot of the other products that weren’t really consumer-focused. And released the iMac, a computer with no expansion to speak of.

And let’s extrapolate this to the iPhone, when creating the Macintosh, Jobs made a (corny) speech about “a bicycle for the mind”. The iPhone is that idea realized. Comparing to Android or other phones, I’d say that the current iPhones fit his vision as well. Remember that the first iPhones had no App Store at all, and were intended to use web apps exclusively.

No, I don’t think Jobs was a tinkerer, and that’s the main draw of the other operating systems.