Apple turned up the heat in the mobile market last week when it unveiled its new iPad mobile computing device. Jim Zemlin, the executive director of the Linux Foundation, has responded to Apple's product launch with a candid appraisal of Linux's strengths and weaknesses in the mobile market relative to Apple's mobile operating system.

Can open-source overtake the iPhone? The iPad? Apple itself? That's the dominant position of Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation. But is that an idea that's based on reality? He's been trying to paint a connection between Sun and its Solaris OS--a "legacy" operating system to Linux, he suggests--and Apple's various devices.

Apple has long had a history of being arrogant. But, more often than not, they've been able to back it up by the quality of their products. But now, with Apple locking out Adobe Flash and Google Ads, not to mention their cute trick of setting up an HTML 5 demo site that only works with Apple's own Safari Web browser, I think Apple has overstepped their authority.

I have always considered myself a prospective PC to Apple switcher. I like the way that the Apple interface and hardware looks. But the 'just works' slogan that Apple promote just isn't true. I have had issues with my wi-fi router as well that I have never had with either Windows or Ubuntu machines. There are work-arounds, to be sure, but then don't say it 'just works'.

Apple's newly announced iPad has been touted as "magical," "amazing," and "revolutionary" by company officials. But, key deficiencies in the device provide opportunities for competitors, who can craft better tablets that run Linux or Android.

Apple's Magic Trackpad will join the other Apple multi-touch devices supported in Ubuntu 10.10

In the first part of this series of articles I stated some things about designers and their apple computers, I said that these machines are overpriced and overhyped. This made some people think this articles were about Linux vs Apple. I got a lot of comments from people who seem to like apple:-) and a lot of arguments, some probably valuable.
Apple

Recently I've been thinking about the comments made a while back by Mark Shuttleworth that he wants to push the linux interface to be on par with Apple's Mac OS X. This statement made me relive an old thought that maybe the great Steve Jobs picked the wrong open source guts to put a proprietary GUI on.

In an attempt to copycat Apple's hardware-plus-software vertical approach to the mobile market, the Linux industry is fragmenting fast and risks undermining its best chance for beating the iPhone.