Apple's Xmas gift: wireless networking problems

Sam Varghese
Saturday, 08 December 2007 04:13

Opinion and Analysis

Pardon me if I sound a bit smug but if anything remotely (pun intended) resembling this had been experienced with any - yes, any - Linux distribution, it would have been fixed pronto.

Just 10 days back I was having a chat with Steve Walsh who's handling the networking at the forthcoming annual national Linux conference in January. And Steve had a tale to tell me about how some users were grumbling about the poor wireless support in Hoary Hedgehog, the version of Ubuntu that was released at the 2005 conference; a few Ubuntu develeopers who were nearby overheard the complaints and shortly thereafter fixes became available to ensure that these problems went away.

And remember, Ubuntu is one of the distributions that is put out by a big company. There was no paralysis or bureaucracy when it came to fixing bugs, though. The Linux culture prevails.

I'm pretty sure that by now Apple must be well aware of how Leopard is getting between laptop users and the internet. But maybe the developers have already gone on their Christmas leave. Maybe paying out overtime to developers to fix the problem will cut into Steve Jobs' bonus.

Or maybe it's time for Apple users to realise one fundamental truth: proprietary software, no matter the source, really does have some drawbacks. Users are incidental to proprietary software companies who generally only care for one thing - moolah.