Great piece by Brent Simmons (the guy who originally wrote MarsEdit, the app that I’m writing this entry in) about the freedom to make your computer your own and how that freedom is slowing eroding away.
With every tightened screw we have less power than we had. And doing the things — unsanctioned, unplanned-for, often unwieldy and even unwise — that computers are so wonderful for becomes ever-harder.
Just this week I built up an old Mac G4 with OS 9.2 on it with my son and recalled how much I loved Mac OS 9 and the flexibility to make it look and do all sorts of crazy stuff (Drag Thing!) That’s not so much the case with OS X and Marzipan threatens to make OS X even less flexible under the hood. The only real freedom and flexibility the end user has (besides changing the wallpaper, etc.) is at the command line. If that ever goes away then Linux starts to look very attractive from a desktop perspective.
