Nothing to say. All night to say it.

I was over reading the Macalope and Daring Fireball. Daring Fireball mentioned, and the Macalope discussed at length, a post by some guy named Barton. Gruber mostly just linked the post and snickered at the stupidity. The Macalope surgically opened a new orifice in the lower portion of Mr. Barton's torso – as only the Macalope can. Both are enjoyable reading.

Mr. Barton dissed the MBAJ with all the popular hogwash and poppycock arguments. The only thing notable about the commentary is that it appears as a blog associated with PC something-or-other. The blog post by Mr. Barton is pretty much unworthy of any further discourse. There wasn't anything new in it.

Some of the old stuff was kind of funny though – stuff I see all the time that makes me spit French Roast all over my cable-knit sweater.

"Apple should license OS X." Because if they don't all the "hackintosh" sites are going to be giving copies away to people who run Acers. Meh. OS X hacked onto a substandard machine isn't a Mac. It won't work like a Mac. You can shoehorn pieces of Apple's widget into another widget if you want to, and that's what it will operate like – a turd being used as a bud vase. If you want a Mac, you gotta buy a Mac. Apple knows that. Besides, people running hackintoshes aren't Apple's demographic anyway. Apple's market specifically excludes people who can't afford Macs. When the hackintoshers can afford Macs they'll buy Macs.

Apple needs to sell the OS X licenses right next to the Zune displays in the Apple stores.

"Monopoly." All you have to do is say it in a serious connotation to demonstrate ignorance. People throw around the word like it means something. If your operating system and productivity software have a huge marketshare, and you leverage that marketshare to exclude competition by locking hardware in to artificial proprietary standards – that is monopolistic abuse.

An example might be including as a default startup application a web browser that has it's own markup language and web protocols that will break other browsers – and refusing to release a standards based upgrade. That would be the next step up from monopolistic. That would be chickenshit.

If you sell superior products and software that operate on open non-proprietary standards and allow competition – even if you kick the pinto beans out of the competition – that is not monopolistic.

The really weird thing is that Apple's supposed monopoly in this case is a monopoly on the Mac OS. Duh. Apple sells the whole widget, including the OS. You can buy a copy of OS X, install it on your Mac, then hack it onto a Sony Vaio if you want to. It violates the EULA, but Apple doesn't keep track of individual copies of the OS. If Apple gives a big rat's ass, they don't make much noise about it. And they don't seem to do anything to prevent it either.

Here's what I think. The Wintards have calluses from years of dealing with Redmond. They're so used to ducking, they haven't even noticed that no one is swinging anymore. Kids, Apple isn't Microsoft. Apple doesn't want to run your life. They don't want to tell you which browser you have to use, or which music format, or really even which operating system. They just want you, Joe Consumer, to buy a computer.

Steve Jobs isn't some mystical frigging guru. Ooooh! I read this on a finance blog, and if you look it's true. When His Steveness showed the pie chart showing smartphone market share at MWSF, the iPhone had a 19.x% market share and a bigger wedge than the 21.x% market share. A noticeably bigger wedge, actually. The financial blogger was in high dudgeon over this. I thought it was a scream. Um, it was a show for the faithful, not a dogdamn court testimony.

Anyway, His Steveness isn't the Mahareeshee. He's not the mighty Oz. He's just a guy who figured out how to sell computers to consumers. And Mark Barton knows it, too. Where the hell are all the Vista fanboys? If I was praising Vista or ripping Apple (oh, and if I had more than 20 readers a week), this place would have a flame war hot enough to toast marshmallows.

I guess I was just in the mood to ramble tonight.

I'm gonna make popcorn. Anybody else want some?