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Problem was that while NT was a hybrid architecture to start with, more and more things were moved from user to kernel when NT went from 3.1 to 3.5 to 4.0. As a result, unlike NEXTSTEP, NT became less portable.

It's not as if running in userland magically makes code more portable. Most of XNU and the associated kexts are portable; the non-portable bits sit in places such as subdirectories of and some of the subdirectories of the osfmk directory. And as for userland, the platform-specific bits of the "libc" part of libSystem sit in subdirectories of the top-level directory in the Libc project, and the non-portable bits of the run-time linker are #ifdeffed in files such as dyld_stub_binder.s.

Problem was that while NT was a hybrid architecture to start with, more and more things were moved from user to kernel when NT went from 3.1 to 3.5 to 4.0. As a result, unlike NEXTSTEP, NT became less portable.

It's not as if running in userland magically makes code more portable. Most of XNU and the associated kexts are portable; the non-portable bits sit in places such as subdirectories of and some of the subdirectories of the osfmk directory. And as for userland, the platform-specific bits of the "libc" part of libSystem sit in subdirectories of the top-level directory in the Libc project, and the non-portable bits of the run-time linker are #ifdeffed in files such as dyld_stub_binder.s.

Problem was that while NT was a hybrid architecture to start with, more and more things were moved from user to kernel when NT went from 3.1 to 3.5 to 4.0. As a result, unlike NEXTSTEP, NT became less portable.

It's not as if running in userland magically makes code more portable. Most of XNU and the associated kexts are portable; the non-portable bits sit in places such as subdirectories of and some of the subdirectories of the osfmk directory. And as for userland, the platform-specific bits of the "libc" part of libSystem sit in subdirectories of the top-level directory in the Libc project, and the non-portable bits of the run-time linker are #ifdeffed in files such as dyld_stub_binder.s.

Sorry, WebKit is based on KHTML which was LGPL 2.1, and so is webkit still. Here is a random file from WebCore: http://opensource.apple.com/source/WebCore/WebCore-1298/dom/BeforeUnloadEvent.h

So don't be stupid.

Chrome is based on the open source projects WebKit, but I can not see any source code released yet, just a vague promise of "upstreaming" changes to WebKit, no promise of release the code. Sorry, that is not good enough.

Unfortunately violating the license of WebKit seems be becoming a trend. Apple has not yet managed to release their WebKit changes for iOS, but in fact just released the binaries in their so-called source-code, see: Apple's binary WebCore source-code.

Is the LGPL really this weak, or has the big companies just stopped caring about legality?

Does the Macbook Pro not meet these requirements?

Lets start with being able to get source code for the OS ...

Core OS, filesystem, etc ... sure:
http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2000/04/05Apple-Releases-Darwin-1-0-Open-Source.html
http://www.apple.com/opensource/

... or any of the apps ...

Mac OS X runs the same console and X11 apps as Linux. The X11 display server is well integrated into Mac OS X.
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.7/en/mchlp2276.html

... Then we'll continue by discussing the DRM.

What is there to discuss? The record industry initially required audio files from the iTunes Store to include DRM but Apple eventually got them to abandon DRM. Mac OS X does not require DRM or the use of the Mac App Store. You can distribute binaries directly to users if you wish. You can distribute open source apps if you like.

Lets start with being able to get source code for the OS ...

Core OS, filesystem, etc ... sure:
http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2000/04/05Apple-Releases-Darwin-1-0-Open-Source.html
http://www.apple.com/opensource/

... or any of the apps ...

Mac OS X runs the same console and X11 apps as Linux. The X11 display server is well integrated into Mac OS X.
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.7/en/mchlp2276.html

... Then we'll continue by discussing the DRM.

What is there to discuss? The record industry initially required audio files from the iTunes Store to include DRM but Apple eventually got them to abandon DRM. Mac OS X does not require DRM or the use of the Mac App Store. You can distribute binaries directly to users if you wish. You can distribute open source apps if you like.

Lets start with being able to get source code for the OS ...

Core OS, filesystem, etc ... sure:
http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2000/04/05Apple-Releases-Darwin-1-0-Open-Source.html
http://www.apple.com/opensource/

... or any of the apps ...

Mac OS X runs the same console and X11 apps as Linux. The X11 display server is well integrated into Mac OS X.
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.7/en/mchlp2276.html

... Then we'll continue by discussing the DRM.

What is there to discuss? The record industry initially required audio files from the iTunes Store to include DRM but Apple eventually got them to abandon DRM. Mac OS X does not require DRM or the use of the Mac App Store. You can distribute binaries directly to users if you wish. You can distribute open source apps if you like.

And considering an intern could port a complete OS port in a mere 12 weeks, shows how portable it is. This person presumably had never touched the OS-X source before, yet manages to pull it off ...

It sounds more like Darwin that Mac OS X in a form the average user would recognize. From the summary: "The port got as far as booting to a multi-user prompt, but then hit hurdles to do with drivers and cache." If so he probably was familiar with it since Darwin is open source, http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2000/04/05Apple-Releases-Darwin-1-0-Open-Source.html.

That said, the intern did great work, I'm happy he got hired by the CoreOS team.

... I suppose portability is simply part of the demands by management ...

I would not be surprised to find that this is just an internal effort to verify portability. Replacing PowerPC as the "other" architecture since ARM represents a viable contingency. It might be wishful thinking to expect an ARM based Mac at any time in the near future.

... I don't think Microsoft will have such an easy time if they were ever to switch to another architecture.

Windows NT was portable from day one of internal development, MIPS and x86. Windows NT 4 shipped with four supported architectures on the standard retail CD: x86, MIPS, Alpha and PowerPC. While subsequent commercial versions of Windows NT only supported one architecture, well two if you count x86 and amd64 separately, Microsoft supposedly continues to build internally on some "other" architecture to maintain portability.

Why is this so hard to understand?

Why are you missing the obvious point that the crapware subsidizes the hardware you've bought?

If you didn't want to buy Windows then you shouldn't have bought Windows, if you buy a product you can't just go back and return pieces of that product for a refund. What you should have done is gone to a manufacturer that sells a system without an OS or with a free (cost) OS like this or you could have gone here but they have the same problem i suppose, though it's not Windows. Many companies, including Best Buy, Lenovo, Dell and HP have tried selling computers with Linux pre-installed and they had lacklustre sales, it's a niche market so it's catered to by niche manufacturers, supply and demand.

I wonder if i could get a refund for iMovie, iPhoto, GarageBand, etc...?

The Sprint and Verizon (and Au) networks are an evolutionary dead-end, so I wouldn't expect a lot of people to be working on inter-operability with them beyond the minimum necessary to make things work. Note that Au is rolling out LTE, which will put them on the GSM Alliance track. Their CDMA-2000 network will be left for voice only for some years, however. I expect a similar situation will follow in the US.

Verizon is rolling out LTE as well, and Sprint will be doing so as well, so, yes, it appears the US situation is similar to the Australian situation. Telus are "eventually" doing LTE, and Bell Canada are already doing HSPA+ and LTE, so it looks as if Canada are going the same way. I suspect any other markets that still use cdmaONE/CDMA2000 protocol stack are doing similar things, given that Qualcomm killed off UWB, making cdmaONE/CDMA2000 a dead end.

Still, CDMA-2000 and W-CDMA are very different technologies in some ways (aside from both using CDMA), and thus you can't expect one phone to work on both, unless they built both systems into it, which would raise the cost.

Well, yes, one such phone costs USD 199 and above; dunno what other phones use chips capable of handling both CDMA2000's air interface and W-CDMA.

http://techfragments.com/news/982/Software/Apple_iPhone_Virus_Spreads_By_SMS_Messages.html
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/iphone-virus-botnet-bank-details,9136.html
http://www.mactrast.com/2010/07/iphone-virus-discovered-be-vigilant-and-seek-advice/
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3573755?start=0&tstart=0

1) A vulnerability with a demo. There was never any malware written to exploit it, and as it was long since fixed, there never will be.

2) Only affects jailbroken iPhones.

3) You're the victim of an APRIL FOOL! From 2 years ago!
http://vimeo.com/10587301

4) Is nothing more than a user with a problem and no tech knowledge blaming his problem on a virus. There is no virus.

While reasonably rare, iPhone viruses and malware do exist in the wild.

No they don't. At least not on non-jailbroken iPhones.

While reasonably rare, iPhone viruses and malware do exist in the wild.

http://techfragments.com/news/982/Software/Apple_iPhone_Virus_Spreads_By_SMS_Messages.html
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/iphone-virus-botnet-bank-details,9136.html
http://www.mactrast.com/2010/07/iphone-virus-discovered-be-vigilant-and-seek-advice/
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3573755?start=0&tstart=0

Any Windows computer you buy today includes free updates to the operating system for almost 8 years (and that's assuming you never upgrade from Windows 7). Any Mac computer you buy today will be completely unsupported by Apple in 8 years and will have to be replaced.

Ah, Ah! Apple discontinued development of Mac OS 9 in 2002 but Apple still has downloads for it. Ten years and Apple still supports it, so there goes your "8 years". Of course Microsoft still supports old Windows versions too, MS still has update downloads for my Windows NT 4.

Besides any computer only needs to be replaced when it no longer does what the user wants, 10 year old computers can still be used. I volunteer for Free Geek rebuilding used PCs and we rebuild and sell PCs with 2 GHz Pentium 4 which were released in 2000, more than 11 years ago. Though slow compared to newer PCs they still run Ubuntu 10.04, Lucid Lynx, fine. You're not going to be editing HD videos or 100+ MB photos but you can surf the web and create documents with Open Office/Libre Office.

Falcon

despite all of your rambling bullshit, you cannot write apps that will properly multitask for ios AND will get listed in the official market.

For someone who's spectacularly wrong you sure are arrogant. First off iOS is a multitasking OS in the original sense of the word, meaning processes are running concurrently, and it's multithreaded. But I'll let that go and assume you are using multitasking in the colloquial sense, namely running several apps at once and even there you are wrong :

"For tasks that require more execution time to implement, you must request specific permissions to run them in the background without their being suspended. In iOS, only specific app types are allowed to run in the background:

Apps that play audible content to the user while in the background, such as a music player app
Apps that keep users informed of their location at all times, such as a navigation app
Apps that support Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP)
Newsstand apps that need to download and process new content
Apps that receive regular updates from external accessories"

How to reboot an iPod Touch:
http://www.apple.com/support/ipodtouch/assistant/ipodtouch/#section_1

and the mac mini, you're still looking at big premiums for those systems.

MacBook Pro 17 inch

• 2.4GHz Quad-core Intel Core i7
• 4GB 1333MHz DDR3 SDRAM — 2x2GB
• 750GB Serial ATA Drive @ 5400 rpm
• SuperDrive 8x (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
• MacBook Pro 17-inch Hi-Res Glossy Widescreen Display
• AMD Radeon HD 6770M graphics processor with 1GB of GDDR5 memory
• ntel HD Graphics 3000 with 384MB of DDR3 SDRAM shared with main memory

Price: $2,499.00

For small office: Dell Precision M6600 Mobile Workstation

• i7-2760QM Quad Core 2.40GHz
• 750GB 7200rpm Hard Drive
• 8X DVD+/-RW
• NVIDIA® Quadro® 3000M with 2GB GDDR5

Starting Price $3,305.00 Instant Savings $792.00 Subtotal $2,513.00

The small and medium business 2.40 GHz quad core model is the same. And for large enterprises Dell doesn't show a 17 inch laptop with a quad core i7, it shows 2 dual core 2.50 GHz i5s.

Shall I go on and post other OEM configurations and prices?

The iMac is a desktop with zero upgrade ability.

The same applies to all other all-in-ones whether Apple, Dell, HP, or any other. The same with the Mac Mini.

One thing I leared about apple computers: NEVER, EVER 'configure' your systems with apple hardware. The prices goes through the roof.

I actually agree. I've even had an Apple employee tell me that if I want more memory or a bigger disk, to buy them from someone else. Before I ordered my MBP I asked about adding more memory than the base amount and he said if I wanted more then I should get the memory from another store.

Macs are hundreds more expensive than their PC counterparts at best.

Again, look above. Mac compare pretty fairly with Windows OEM PCs, more expensive than some but cheaper than others.

Falcon

There's:

• ChromeVox
• NVDA
• Orca
• VoiceOver

all of which are free (some open-source as well)

... [rant] ... i just have to ask, does your precious apple have a 'command line'? ... [rant] ...

Terminal

Point now moot.

why would so many people use an "awful" app?

Maybe they want to read the Something Awful Forums

Not long ago, there was one worker who died after a 36 hour shift.

Come on. I've worked for more hours than that straight as a programmer. I am still alive. There is a LOT of accusations going around about Foxconn working conditions, not all of which are true.

But you know who does have a choice? Apple. Dell. Sony, etc.

No, actually, they don't. There is no-one else at this point who can handle that volume of manufacturing. Apple is trying to improve things though, they give bonuses to the workers at Foxconn and otherwise imposing rules on the companies production to improve conditions.

That saving is passed along to their very happy shareholders.

That is totally false. The share price of Apple is determined only by investors; Apple does not distribute a dividend.

But the more I learned about what's going on in the factories where the Apple products are made, the less I felt I could profit from their business model.

I have the opposite take (I am a current shareholder). Apple is the ONLY COMPANY I can see trying to improve life for foxconn workers, who would be working on Apple products or someone else's. So in order to improve things in China I buy only Apple products when possible (realizing that only in a fantasy world does the condition of life improve in China if we stop buying things and the factories shut down). What other company even has a supplier responsibility page? All of the others are content to sweep this under the rug.

Simply put at this point if you are going to buy consumer electronics at all, it's irresponsible NOT to buy Apple products until such time as other consumer electronics companies seek to take the same steps Apple has taken. Remember that Foxconn is not owned by Apple, it is a Chinese company and there is only so much Apple can do to improve things over time. But at least they are doing something!

Going as you have away from Apple serves only to exacerbate the problem.

Chevron 2011 profit = $26.5
Apple 2011 profit = $25.9 B
The difference is, Chevron will consistently post high profits, Apple is a bubble waiting to burst.

Your numbers are incorrect. If you just go straight to Apple's earnings statements and Chevron's earnings statements, you could quickly see that Apple posted $32.98B in profit in calendar year 2011 (i.e. Q2 2011-Q1 2012), whereas Chevron posted $26.8B in the same period (i.e. their Q1 2011-Q4 2011).

Granted, the AC you were responding to is an idiot, is clearly incorrect, and is trying to justify mistaken things he said by twisting words, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't get the numbers right. ;)

As for your comment about Apple being a bubble that's waiting to burst, the irony is that Apple has shown a willingness to reinvent itself in recent years, making it more resilient to said bursting, whereas Chevron is a company with an obvious countdown hanging over it as most of the world calls for less dependence on its chief product.

I just found an interesting tool for visualizing Apple's earnings as I was researching this comment, and if you click on the "Revenues by segment" button, you'll see that the vast majority of Apple's money is coming in from sources that didn't even exist 5 years ago, let alone 10. Apple was plenty healthy when the iPhone debuted, and was even healthier by the time the iPad came out, so if one or both of those suddenly dried up, I suppose the bubble would have burst, but Apple would still be a player in a number of other markets.

In the more likely scenario that the iPhone simply became less desirable, Apple would have plenty of opportunity to adjust. It was reported a few months back (during a quarter where iPhone sales were dipping due to anticipation of the iPhone 4S, no less) that Apple is bringing in over 50% of the profits in the cell phone industry (that's for all cell phones, not just smart phones, mind you), despite their 4% market share in that market. That leaves them with a pretty big cushion for adjustment if something changes.

Even so, no company can continue an upwards trajectory forever, so it is inevitable that Apple will eventually fall. Given recent history however, I doubt it will be soon, though I wouldn't be surprised if their growth declines over the next few years, if nothing else. The iPad is in a good position to do well in the tablet market, and the tablet market is set to outpace the overall PC market within the next few years. That alone should ensure that they do well for awhile, assuming that the iPad continues to do as well as it has been.

As for Chevron, they're working on reinventing themselves, but big oil isn't exactly known for leading the way. And, just as their product took ages to be produced, so too does that industry seem to take ages to change itself.

1) please reread, paying attention to posessives:

The users all HAD to have admin, because these were their laptops.

2) since you seem to not be getting it, the goal is to lock it down so that if a third party snatches their laptop or is on the same network as them, there will be no data leak. The goal is NOT to have the users have to think about these things, but to configure them such that a laptop will not go to sleep with the encryption key in memory, for example.

3) defaults is the way Apple recommends you CHANGE those plist files:
http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/man1/defaults.1.html

You really sound like someone who's supported Windows for years, learning the little details like hashing together a program to automate your workflow.

Yet you don't have any clue about the Mac, and that makes it hard. Somehow, that's OS X's fault. VPN issues are VPN company issues. Ask them to write the software?

That was his complaint. You had to set up VPNs differently for every version of MacOS. It's ridiculous. I've used a Mac for work for OS 10.4 and 10.5, and have had a personal Mac for 10.6 and 10.7. The VPN setup/connection process is still annoying.

There is full disk encryption. http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4790 What the hell is launch on startup? Google shows nothing. Launch at login is a user preference that's been around for a decade. It doesn't make the computer slow.

He may be referring to the Lion preference that restarts all of your closed apps automagically after a reboot. It does make your Mac slower. I can attest to that. Even when you don't have any applications for it to restart. My MacBook now takes twice as long to boot into Mac OS as it does into Windows. I can also boot up my old Dell XPS 1530 (core 2 duo) into Windows 7 (from a cold boot) faster than my Sandy Bridge MacBook (i7 quad core) can wake up from sleep. That's with an SSD in the windows machine.

Never had any issues importing certificates across all those versions of OS X. defaults settings are well documented. http://secrets.blacktree.com/

There's also things like radmind that would probably be much better at doing what you want. But your ignorance led you astray.

I agree that the person was definitely not a skilled Mac admin, but they aren't as common as Windows pros.

> 1996 calling, it wants it's mime back. I dare you to configure Dell, HP, and Leveno products so it will have similar specs to a Mac then compare prices. I did precisely that before ordering the MacBook Pro I'm typing this on

Are you in Europe somewhere? I just looked on the Dell site. An XPS 15,

http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?oc=mndodq4z&c=us&l=en&s=dhs&cs=19&model_id=xps-l502x

is $1300. The same-speced mbp is $2000

http://store.apple.com/us_smb_78313/configure/MD318LL/A? ... because you have to spend another $2000 to get the $1800 machine up to the same 8 GB as the xps 15". Since I have access to both these machines right now, I can also tell you that the dell monitor has better color and brightness.

OK, but that means that our playlists are shared (which we can deal with by using folders for our individual playlists), but so is the metadata. Mostly, that's a good thing, but what if my wife and I and my sons want to all rate the same song differently? Out of luck: the rating is shared. I could go on about what should be shared and what shouldn't, but the point is that Apple does not make it easy to share some things and not others even within a family. I imagine that trying to work AppleIDs and iDevices into an enterprise must be quite the nightmare from that point of view.

Your sharing with your family problem is probably solved by using Apple's Home Sharing. http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3819

You don't know what the fuck you're talking about.

This software has been around for 10 years and makes it a complete breeze to remotely control, install software on, update, and audit Macs on a network.

Throw in an admin who knows a little shell scripting and ARD becomes even more powerful.

Add a machine running OS X Server to the mix, push the Mac equivalent of group policies to the client machines, and there's nothing that can't be done. (You don't even need the OS X Server to push those, it just makes it a lot faster and easier-- they're just XML files that need to be plunked in the right place, and can be written in a text editor by someone who knows their stuff.)

Apple will sell you Lion from the Apple Store. No need for the App Store.

Have you heard of Google before? Also, you forgot to log in.

http://store.apple.com/us/product/MD256Z/A?fnode=MTY1NDAzOA

Or simply get it from the App Store for $29 then burn the installer to a CD or USB drive of your own choosing. Volume licences are left up to you - not going to do *all* the legwork for you.

Apple cancelled the X-Serve, and it pissed a bunch of us off, but to be honest, Apple abandoned the server market before I started there in 2003. Many people tried in the intervening years to get Apple interested in building a server class OS, and there was never any interest by management, because, frankly, the market just wasn't there.

Apple in the enterprise these days is about individual devices, with back end services running mostly on Linux, and mostly on Dell and similar hardware. They are about the UI and the very nice devices that present that UI between the back end and the human at the device. The point of sale system in Apple stores is one great example of how well this works.

Frankly, the OP sounded like sour grapes: they paid to got to an Apple-themed show, MacIT, put on by IDG, with not a single Apple speaker, and not supported by Apple since Steve decided MacWorld wasn't relevant ...and immediately following that same MacWorld, another IDG show that also didn't have a single Apple speaker or even booth.

I can understand IDG putting on the show, don't get me wrong; reflected glory can be as useful as the real thing when you are trying to put on a show for people who want a show. It'd be great if the post-Steve Apple decided to participate a bit more at one or both of them, instead of letting non-information leave a bad taste in people's mouths..

But an IDG MacWorld with no real Apple participation isn't going to be able to communicate Apple information better than an Apple sponsored WWDC. And maybe an Apple sponsored WWDC isn't going to be much better, without Steve to take the stage.

But then the writer wondered why people were unable to answer questions about enterprise deployment for Apple products. The answer is that obviously, they were not trained to be able to do so, and in the cases where the people knew what they were talking about, they were unable to deliver the Apple message effectively or communicate it clearly, even if it weren't palatable.

The answer they were looking for according to the article? http://manuals.info.apple.com/en_US/Enterprise_Deployment_Guide.pdf There it is: How to run the software you use to deploy the same set of applications, certificates, and security profiles to a bunch of iPods, iPhones, and iPads. MacBook Air and iMacs and MacPros? Those are just desktop machines and laptops; very pretty ones. Manage them like any other.

-- Terry

It's really nice stuff but then it costs a lot of money so it should be.

1996 calling, it wants it's mime back. I dare you to configure Dell, HP, and Leveno products so it will have similar specs to a Mac then compare prices. I did precisely that before ordering the MacBook Pro I'm typing this on. Of them the cheapest was a brand I hadn't heard of before, it was $50 cheaper. The Dell, and I tried Alienware which Dell bought out, cost about $200 more. HP's offering cost more too. Because I planned on installing Ubuntu to dual-boot I also checked out compatibility. The one thing that makes it more difficult to install Ubuntu is using EFI, the GUID Partition Table (GPT), and installing Ubuntu on an HFS+ formatted partition. I'll install Lucid Lynx (Ubuntu 10.04) onto the internal HDD, Oops, there another problem I'll install Oneiric Ocelot (Ubuntu 11.10) onto a USB external drive which presents it's own problems.

What bothers me is that the OS isn't what it could be. It's better than Windows in my opinion but really I remember putting Snow Leopard on my Dell 1545 just for kicks.

That's your personal opinion, others love Snow Leopard. My MBP came with Tiger and it was about 4 months after Leopard came out before I upgraded. The only reason I did was because Java 6 would only run on Leopard, at least without a bunch of hacking. And as I was a member of Apple Developer Connection (ADC) Leopard was free. When Snow Leopard came out it took me a couple of months before buying it, heck it only cost $29. But it took a few more months before I actually installed it. Although Lion has been out for a while, released on 20 July 2011, I still have not bought or upgraded to it.

I want to like OS X but it's so hard to.

I do like OSX, what I have a harder tyme with is liking Apple. It makes, er designs, terrific hardware a programs great software. With the exception of the Mac though it only takes others ideas then releases its own products. And even with hardware Apple is falling behind. While consumer Macs have had more than one revision since the summer of 2010 the Mac Pro has not been upgraded. Try looking for a Sandy Bridge Mac Pro and you won't find one. One rumor has it Apple will Kill Mac Pros just like they did to the XServe. Since they did they've pushed shops to use Mac Minis for servers, but a Mini can't handle tasks the Pro has no problems with. Of course other rumors have it that Minis with Thunderbolt can have external graphics cards as well as storage attached enabling them to be used instead of Mac Pros. As it is now I'd like to get another MacBook Pro but I don't think I will buy any other Apple product.

Falcon

You weren't able to take Apple's "Xserve Transition Guide" seriously when it suggested that you could put two whole Mac Pros on a shelf in only 12Us of space?

Never let it be said that Cupertino lacks a sense of humor...

'This manager, who requested anonymity, noted a related problem: for individual apps over a certain amount, "gifting" them to users under VPP can be considered "compensation" under federal income tax rules`

Jeez, you'd think a business manager would be proficent in federal income tax rules as they relate to such contracts. Is Apple seriously expected to now impart tax law advice?

'Another "tip" from a speaker on the same panel, John Welch, director of IT at The Zimmerman Agency, was a reminder that "In signing up [for VPP], you have to create a new VPP [iTunes] account even if you already have existing ones."'

From reading the VPP_Business_Guide, I gathered this:

Important information about your Apple ID

* Once your enrollment information has been verified, you'll be asked to create a new Apple IS specifically for the Volume Purchase Program. This Apple ID will be used solely for the Volume Purchase Program and cannot be used with other Apple programs or services.

You really sound like someone who's supported Windows for years, learning the little details like hashing together a program to automate your workflow.

Yet you don't have any clue about the Mac, and that makes it hard. Somehow, that's OS X's fault.
VPN issues are VPN company issues. Ask them to write the software?
There is full disk encryption. http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4790
What the hell is launch on startup? Google shows nothing. Launch at login is a user preference that's been around for a decade. It doesn't make the computer slow.
Never had any issues importing certificates across all those versions of OS X.
defaults settings are well documented. http://secrets.blacktree.com/

There's also things like radmind that would probably be much better at doing what you want. But your ignorance led you astray.

Well the fanboys will mod you down for that.

But you are correct, itunes has no place on a corporate machine. And quite frankly the idea you need a music player to manage a phone is like saying you need a fish to manage your bicycle.

Itunes can be placed on the users home machine. Its not at all certain you can SECURELY accommodate iPhones in the work place AND prevent itunes from being installed. However there is an Apple iPhone Configuration utility that is supposed to do this.

I have yet to see it in use anywhere, but some claim you can use on the corporate network and still block itunes on corporate machines.

I've yet to see an mp3 that supports over 48GB of storage.

My iPod photo had a 60GB hard drive, and I bought it back around the tail end of 2004. Its successor gives you 160GB to play with.

That depends how you define 'business class.'

http://www.apple.com/iphone/business/#easy

The iPhone can deal with Exchange servers, too. Outlook is irrelevant. This isn't the 90s, not everyone needs Microsoft tech for the workplace.

Actually, there's another product that's even better than Vlingo in my opinion. Voice Actions by Pannous blew Vlingo out of the water on my wife's iPhone 4. She, like a lot of folks, wanted an iPhone 4s, and yes, she mostly wanted it for Siri. Fortunately (in my opinion) the 4S phones were on back order the day she went to get hers, and she didn't feel like waiting so she got the iPhone 4 rather than spend the extra money for the 4s basically just so she could get 1 app.

At first we tried Vlingo, and it was pretty good, but texting by voice was hit or miss especially if there was ANY kind of background noise. We tinkered with the settings several times, but could quite get it right. We tried a few different applications before we gave Voice Actions a try. My wife was pretty skeptical at this point, and had her mind made up that the only way she was going to get the results she wanted was by getting Siri, and was all but convinced that she was going to have to get an iPhone 4S. Well, she was a quick convert once we installed this app. The original free version had a limit of about 500 phrases (or something like that) that it would translate, then you'd have to un-install it and and re-install it, which was a bit of a pain in the ass, but that's since been fixed. There is apparently a paid version that's even better than the free version, but I think my wife is still using the free version (as far as I know anyway).

Here is a YouTube clip of Voice Actions in action if you want to check it out.

Huh, slave == $0.00/hr; they're not slaves.

http://www.apple.com/supplierresponsibility/

I just signed into my Apple Developer account (which is free to join, $99 to deploy) and it gave me a download link http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/xcode/id448457090?mt=12 which says free. I've already put it on my Mac so I know it works.

And if you go to your own F'ing link
http://www.astrobetter.com/mac-app-store-xcode4/ (who posts a link from Mar 2011?)
and F'ing READ you would find the following:

"John July 20, 2011 at 3:57 pm
Following today’s release of OS X Lion, XCode 4.1 is now available for free: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/xcode/id448457090 for details."

Google doesn't F'ing think for you dude!

I just signed into my Apple Developer account (which is free to join, $99 to deploy) and it gave me a download link http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/xcode/id448457090?mt=12 which says free. I've already put it on my Mac so I know it works.

And if you go to your own F'ing link
http://www.astrobetter.com/mac-app-store-xcode4/ (who posts a link from Mar 2011?)
and F'ing READ you would find the following:

"John July 20, 2011 at 3:57 pm
Following today’s release of OS X Lion, XCode 4.1 is now available for free: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/xcode/id448457090 for details."

Google doesn't F'ing think for you dude!

WHERE DO I SIGN UP?

apple.com

I do not have a problem. There is no way to download Xcode 4 from the Developer Center unless you have a paid program membership. It says this in no less than 5 places. You have to go to the App Store, which only offers it for 10.7.

Jesus, I can't understand why you don't get it through your thick head that you are clearly wrong. Every piece of information about Xcode 4 disagrees with your assertion. Including no less than three Apple sites.

No reason to bring in your imaginary friend, Jesus, or the thickness of my skull. Fact 1: I am running Snow Leopard 10.6. Fact 2: I downloaded it from a free developer account. Either things have recently changed or you DO have a problem.

I do not have a problem. There is no way to download Xcode 4 from the Developer Center unless you have a paid program membership. It says this in no less than 5 places. You have to go to the App Store, which only offers it for 10.7.

Jesus, I can't understand why you don't get it through your thick head that you are clearly wrong. Every piece of information about Xcode 4 disagrees with your assertion. Including no less than three Apple sites.

No reason to bring in your imaginary friend, Jesus, or the thickness of my skull. Fact 1: I am running Snow Leopard 10.6. Fact 2: I downloaded it from a free developer account. Either things have recently changed or you DO have a problem.

I do not have a problem. There is no way to download Xcode 4 from the Developer Center unless you have a paid program membership. It says this in no less than 5 places. You have to go to the App Store, which only offers it for 10.7.

Jesus, I can't understand why you don't get it through your thick head that you are clearly wrong. Every piece of information about Xcode 4 disagrees with your assertion. Including no less than three Apple sites.

No reason to bring in your imaginary friend, Jesus, or the thickness of my skull. Fact 1: I am running Snow Leopard 10.6. Fact 2: I downloaded it from a free developer account. Either things have recently changed or you DO have a problem.

I do not have a problem. There is no way to download Xcode 4 from the Developer Center unless you have a paid program membership. It says this in no less than 5 places. You have to go to the App Store, which only offers it for 10.7.

Jesus, I can't understand why you don't get it through your thick head that you are clearly wrong. Every piece of information about Xcode 4 disagrees with your assertion. Including no less than three Apple sites.

I do not have a problem. There is no way to download Xcode 4 from the Developer Center unless you have a paid program membership. It says this in no less than 5 places. You have to go to the App Store, which only offers it for 10.7.

Jesus, I can't understand why you don't get it through your thick head that you are clearly wrong. Every piece of information about Xcode 4 disagrees with your assertion. Including no less than three Apple sites.

I do not have a problem. There is no way to download Xcode 4 from the Developer Center unless you have a paid program membership. It says this in no less than 5 places. You have to go to the App Store, which only offers it for 10.7.

Jesus, I can't understand why you don't get it through your thick head that you are clearly wrong. Every piece of information about Xcode 4 disagrees with your assertion. Including no less than three Apple sites.

From where, The Pirate Bay? The download link for free developer accounts (I have one) just links you to http://developer.apple.com/xcode/ - which prompts you to either get it off the App Store (which explicitly states "Requires Lion") or pay for a developer program membership. Logging into my paid developer account removes the prompt to pay but still just links to the app store. Unless you downloaded Xcode 3, which is a free download...

So, um, yeah. Stop lying.

I don't know what your problem is, but I downloaded Xcode 4 FOR FREE from my Snow Leopard Mac (I do not have Lion).