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... Apple didn't combine their stale hardware with an unfortunate tendency to orphan it. The biggest risk seems to be video GPU chipsets. http://www.cultofmac.com/14695... [cultofmac.com]

:-(

Oh wait, except they didn't. http://www.cultofmac.com/41399...

Apple doesn't code in stuff to ruin your day?

http://www.cultofmac.com/41382...

I know that ruined many mac luser's day right there.

The screen is better and I use Linux, so I decided on the Pixel.

Screen "better"? Well, better than the MacBook and MacBook Air; but only marginally better than a 13" MacBook Pro (2560 X 1700 for the Pixel, vs. 2560 X 1600 for the MBP).

I use Linux...

Do you want to know how many people run Linux on Macs? Well, let's start with St. Linus who switched in 2005, and never looked-back, and then take a look at a typical Linux gathering. Apple Logos everywhere...

Thunderstrike 2 worm can infect your Mac without detection

Kind of an Edge-case, don't ya think? Considering you have to plug in a compromised TB adapter. It qualifies as "physical access" (by the "Evil Maid", etc.), since the exploit cannot be achieved without same.

It is widely considered among security experts, and most Slashdotters, that physical access is nearly impossible to guard against.

And I am not sure that Thunderstrike went beyond the proof-of-concept stage, anyway.

So, is that the best you can do? If so, still no cigar...

Thunderstrike 2 worm can infect your Mac without detection

Thunderstrike 2 worm can infect your Mac without detection

You might be interested to know that there were some on the original Macintosh team (notably, the late, great Jef Raskin) that were lobbying (hard!) for an up to FIVE button-mouse.

From your own link, first Apple mouse was for the Lisa, and a low cost of $25 (vs. $400 for the 3-button Parc mouse) was apparently as important as usability. However, it was probably Jobs who pushed for the 1-button mouse. So, to answer your prior post on when Apple "accepted" the multi-button mouse, I would argue that such acceptance (or rather, acquiescence) did not occur until they began seriously developing their own multi-button mouse, which was first available in 2005 (again, from your own link).

And think about it: How many times have you had a non-technical (or sometimes even technically-savvy) User ask you "Do you mean 'Left-Click' or 'Right-Click'?" A single-button mouse neatly removes that "mental speed-bump".

As a life-long developer of DOS/Windows desktop applications [1], not as often as you seem to think. Two-button mice were in use with text-mode applications on later versions of DOS; I remember having to make DOS applications compatible with them as early as 1989 (give or take, my own wetware lacks ECC). I've written plenty of desktop applications for non-technical users, and most of them, even the left-handed ones, got the hang of left-click vs. right-click almost immediately. IME, the worst things for non-technical Windows end-users are usually dragging and multi-select, and combining both seems to be impossible for some. However, I'd say those users weren't hindered by an extra mouse button, rather they had trouble connecting the concepts to the interaction of mouse and screen widgets. Double-click is very hard for a few, but that's not relevant to an extra mouse button or two.

You also have to keep in mind that in 1981, when the Mac was first being developed (and these usability tests conducted), virtually NO ONE outside of Xerox PARC or SRI (I think it was) had ever seen Doug Englebert's crazy "mouse" thing. So it was a different time. Now, we think it's just silly that people couldn't deal with a two (or more) button mouse; but not then.

Fair enough, but Apple stuck to the 1-button mouse until 2005, long after ordinary end-users were known to be generally capable of handling multi-button mice. That's just stubbornness, or perhaps Jobs' disdain for people of normal intelligence. Sure, the OS was compatible with multi-button mice, but that isn't "acceptance". I cannot find the quote, but someone whose opinions Jobs respected once challenged him with a quip something like "What if we added one more button to the keyboard?" Nothing came of that, obviously, but I'd love to have been there for it.

But the "Single-Button Mouse" meme is just like the "Apple Stole the GUI from PARC" lore; it just won't ever die.

2005. 2005! That meme is valid.

- T

[1] Not due to any dislike for Apple (or Netware, etc.), that's just the way things worked out for me - could have easily gone another way

I could think of a real simple attack vector: Repackaged popular apps. Think... Um... I don't know... XcodeGhost: http://www.cultofmac.com/38970...

With Apple? A known good product (XCode) was replaced with a "changed" version. That changed version did "bad things".

Now that you're following along... Put up versions of all the afflicted applications... with 'adjusted' DLLs. What's that? You need my permission to install that program that I just downloaded? Of course you do *clicks accept permission elevation* Bam. Adjusted DLL and you're none the wiser.

I'm shocked that there are actually 13 million Mac users. How are they supposed to feel elite and stuff if there are that many of them.

Apple: you need to raise the prices some more.

Then I guess you'd be apoplectic to learn that, as of 2012 (the most recent figure I could find), there are actually 60 million Mac users worldwide.

From what I know of the iPad, the first prototypes were Intel Atom based and got terrible battery life.

Yeah. Sure. The first iPad prototypes are actually older than the first iPhone prototypes, Yeah, I'm sure they used a CPU that came out after the iPhone. Snark aside, from TFA I just linked to:"The ARM chip looks like a variant of the Samsung S3C2410, which Ars Associate Writer Andrew Cunningham said is “a distant relative of the chip the first iPhone ended up using, just older and slower.”

Perhaps there is another explanation, the goal of a waterproof phone. I've been following the patents that Apple has been taking out on Liquid Metal, and believe the goal is to create a completely sealed phone. There have been rumors that the lightning port is already waterproof. If so eliminating the other big open port, the mini jack, would make sense.

http://www.cultofmac.com/20044...

And yes the buttons are an issue, but Apple has many patents related to liquid metal that have waterproofing implications as well, one example

http://www.patentlyapple.com/p...

And Apple continues to file waterproofing patents

http://www.digitaltrends.com/m...

I don't think it's about slenderness. I think it's about having a phone that is molded with a waterproof casing with one port.

I totally agree with you except for your point about Apple's trade dress and the Samsung lawsuit. I find it absurd that anyone would think IPhone trade dress wasn't ripped off by every single cell phone manufacturer subsequent to iPhone's announcement and release, because by plain sight and history it happens to be true. The merits of Apple's legal tactics are debatable, but everyone ripped off iPhone and rounded corners were merely one of the minor but dramatic points of trade dress that everyone ripped off. Apple literally spent YEARS designing iPhone... and subsequent cell makers took as long as it took them to copy it, far less. I wish this rounded corners thing buzzword whatever that is suposed to be obvious proof of Apple's err would die, because it isn't proof of that... its an out of context sort of attack... I mean, fuck Apple, seriously, but for the love of Pete please cease this idiotic claim about what Apple claimed about their trade dress. Fuck, I hate Apple, but I hate you worse, man.

> If she voluntarily brought that parallel up, she's either desperate or stupid

http://www.cultofmac.com/38927...

One thing a lot of articles mulling over the acceptance of the iPad Pro miss, is how it has a very ready market already proven - that currently occupied by the Wacom Cintiq.

Have any of you ever used one? I ordered on a year or two ago, and after day of use I returned it - the display is just OK, and it requires a lot of wires to attach.

At least one article offers an even more informed opinion espousing this same view.

From that standpoint the iPad Pro is going to be successful, since theres a ready made market to absorb even without all of the other people angling to buy one.

The interesting thing is, you could imagine Waccom making iPad Pro software that basically turned the iPad Pro into a Cintiq, using all of the same technology they have today to mirror over a display and forward touch input from the tablet...

Not marketing,

Apple don't actually spend as much on advertising as people seem to believe.

They don't? How interesting. Not the, um, news that "they don't spend as much as people think" (an outstanding example of marketing sophism) - just the broken logic behind the making of the statement and the weird way brand worshippers go about validating their beliefs. He said something about marketing, and Apple - better find a way to put the focus on premium.

Did I say Apple spent a lot on advertising? That they spent more than Microsoft? Is it even tangentially relevant? No. But do tell me more and I'll bookmark it under "cure for insomnia".

Here's a suggestion. Write a book about it, it's sure to be a best-seller - if big pharma don't get an injunction against it for hurting sleeping pill sales.

Do you find Apple products "sexy"? If so, do you think there's anything weird about feeling that way about inanimate objects (Apple or not)? I don't know if people who find Apple products sexy should be trusted in private around old Braun products (hey, you started the marketing tangent). Does Apple spend more on marketing than Microsoft? Dunno - they certainly produce more aesthetically pleasing objects, and I don't hold that aesthetically pleasing doesn't mean more usable (quite the opposite). Apple and MS market to different segments, and in general terms MS marketing focus is all over the place - but mainly aimed at "Joe Six-Pack" (which they've been quite successful at). When the Embalmer had control the market was cheesy second-hand car dealer style promotions of the type that might take customers away from Wallmart - but not Marks & Spenser. (not much has changed).

I've only seen a couple of Apple TV ads over the years,

Apple invest heavily in product placement advertising - so you've seen lots of Apple advertising in movies, entertainment news, slashdot stories, and music videos.

To not pay artists during Apple Music’s free three-month trial period is exploitive, the singer-songwriter suggested, not to mention “shocking” and “disappointing.”

So forgive music photographer Jason Sheldon if he is unable to Shake It Off and is bothered by the hypocrisy of her stance. Editorial photographers assigned to shoot her shows must sign away rights to their photos, preventing them from being paid while giving Swift unlimited use of the pictures for publicity and promotion.

Source: http://www.cultofmac.com/32698...

Adblocking is coming to the iPhone with iOS 9

The next version of Safari will let users block ads on iPhones and iPads.

With the roll-out of iOS 9, Apple is giving app developers an easy way to create mobile ad blockers for Safari on iPhones and iPads. The new "Content Blocking" feature allows developers to pass a JSON file with a set of rules for images, popups, cookies, resources and other elements in Safari.

Sources like The Next Web point out that such a feature would allow ad blocking and privacy apps "to exist on iOS for the first time since launch".

On the other hand the Marketing Land warns that this move "could chip away at Google's and other ad networks' mobile ad revenue from iOS devices", NiemanLab calls it "a blow for mobile advertising" and Cult of Mac asks if that is a good thing and proposes as an answer:

Is that a good thing? Well, maybe for the average user, for a period of time. But when you block ads on the web, you prevent content providers from earning any revenue from them. If we all did that, our favorite sites would have to find other sources of revenue, or stop supplying content altogether.

I have no idea why, in a technical and privacy oriented forum as ours, the focus of the accepted submission was not on the fact that this is an "Adblocker app enabler" move instead of a "Google killer move".

That was... quite a wall of rambling text, so I apologize - was quite sleepy when I typed up that book above. lol.

But, to follow up:

Sony's Playstation 4 has never (to my knowledge) been modded and there are no hacks other than account sharing and cloning at the present time. It was released in Nov of 2013. I frequent homebrewer sites... and basically, they've given up trying to mod consoles altogether declaring the age of the mod chip over. People are also afraid of jail time as some have been charged with DMCA violations for selling mod chips.

The Playstation 3 was never modded either - it wasn't even really hacked as someone leaked the keys, so everyone used those to make software mods.

The hardware mods only worked b/c the manufacturers weren't expecting them. Now, they hide the internals better so you can't solder between chips and perform man-in-the-middle attacks. They also check firmware versions and test for mod chips, then disable online access if anything abnormal is found. I wouldn't say hardware modding is over yet, but it's getting there. Most mods I see these days are for controllers, not systems.

As for PC miniaturization, I thought this was impressive:

Look at the latest 12" Macbook motherboard:

http://cdn.cultofmac.com/wp-co...

http://i.imgur.com/19nDmFc.jpg

http://cdn.cultofmac.com/wp-co...

http://s3.amazonaws.com/digita...

It's smaller than a Raspberry Pi 2, and only a bit bigger than the tiny Iphone 6 motherboard. It holds a Dual Core Pentium M 1.2 Ghz with hyperthreading and turboboost to 2.6 ghz with 8 GB of RAM and Intel HD Graphics 5300 that supports the retina display.

This article basically goes on to say what I've been saying - you can't service this kind of device, you just replace the entire mobo if it breaks:
http://arstechnica.com/apple/2...

The system is hardly top of the line, but it does support the idea that the internals of PCs/laptops are shrinking to credit-card size at a rapid pace and that the current GHz speed plus a decent graphics chip are "good enough" for most people. The high end macbook pro and macbook air motherboards aren't much larger, really - just some additions for more I/O and fans. If it's that small now, just wait another 10 to 20 years. We already have the tech to put that entire mobo on a chip smaller than a dime, but it'd cost a fortune to design and get a decent yield off of a wafer that size.

Of course, in 10 to 20 years, desktops will be gone. We'll maybe have a something that looks like today's PCs acting as a "home media server" with lots of laptops, phones, and tablets that connect.. maybe all on the same domain or "home network" of some sort. Maybe a few small form factor devices like mac minis, roku, tivo, etc. None of the devices will be upgradable or repairable as it'd be cheaper to buy a new one than to bother. I expect in 30 years, all of them will be locked into one walled garden or another.

That was... quite a wall of rambling text, so I apologize - was quite sleepy when I typed up that book above. lol.

But, to follow up:

Sony's Playstation 4 has never (to my knowledge) been modded and there are no hacks other than account sharing and cloning at the present time. It was released in Nov of 2013. I frequent homebrewer sites... and basically, they've given up trying to mod consoles altogether declaring the age of the mod chip over. People are also afraid of jail time as some have been charged with DMCA violations for selling mod chips.

The Playstation 3 was never modded either - it wasn't even really hacked as someone leaked the keys, so everyone used those to make software mods.

The hardware mods only worked b/c the manufacturers weren't expecting them. Now, they hide the internals better so you can't solder between chips and perform man-in-the-middle attacks. They also check firmware versions and test for mod chips, then disable online access if anything abnormal is found. I wouldn't say hardware modding is over yet, but it's getting there. Most mods I see these days are for controllers, not systems.

As for PC miniaturization, I thought this was impressive:

Look at the latest 12" Macbook motherboard:

http://cdn.cultofmac.com/wp-co...

http://i.imgur.com/19nDmFc.jpg

http://cdn.cultofmac.com/wp-co...

http://s3.amazonaws.com/digita...

It's smaller than a Raspberry Pi 2, and only a bit bigger than the tiny Iphone 6 motherboard. It holds a Dual Core Pentium M 1.2 Ghz with hyperthreading and turboboost to 2.6 ghz with 8 GB of RAM and Intel HD Graphics 5300 that supports the retina display.

This article basically goes on to say what I've been saying - you can't service this kind of device, you just replace the entire mobo if it breaks:
http://arstechnica.com/apple/2...

The system is hardly top of the line, but it does support the idea that the internals of PCs/laptops are shrinking to credit-card size at a rapid pace and that the current GHz speed plus a decent graphics chip are "good enough" for most people. The high end macbook pro and macbook air motherboards aren't much larger, really - just some additions for more I/O and fans. If it's that small now, just wait another 10 to 20 years. We already have the tech to put that entire mobo on a chip smaller than a dime, but it'd cost a fortune to design and get a decent yield off of a wafer that size.

Of course, in 10 to 20 years, desktops will be gone. We'll maybe have a something that looks like today's PCs acting as a "home media server" with lots of laptops, phones, and tablets that connect.. maybe all on the same domain or "home network" of some sort. Maybe a few small form factor devices like mac minis, roku, tivo, etc. None of the devices will be upgradable or repairable as it'd be cheaper to buy a new one than to bother. I expect in 30 years, all of them will be locked into one walled garden or another.

Or you could hand-crank your smartwatch - http://www.cultofmac.com/31428...

More ports. Runs Linux. I agree about the touchscreen, though. Don't really quite understand that for a laptop.

Not more ports than a MBA (which is a similar price, and has more storage and a faster CPU, and doesn't have Google datamining your every word). And it runs Linux, too.

We must mix in different circles then because most developers I know use Eclipse/Visual Studio/emacs/vim.

Thankfully so. I wouldn't touch Java with a bargepole.

Here for example is a photo from a Ruby on Rails conference.
http://globalnerdy.com/wordpre...

Here's one from NASA.
https://macdailynews.files.wor...

And just for giggles here's one from the Windows 10 launch.
http://cdn.cultofmac.com/wp-co...

The full Safari engine is inside of iPhone. And so, you can write amazing Web 2.0 and Ajax apps that look exactly and behave exactly like apps on the iPhone. And these apps can integrate perfectly with iPhone services. They can make a call, they can send an email, they can look up a location on Google Maps. And guess what? There’s no SDK that you need! You’ve got everything you need if you know how to write apps using the most modern web standards to write amazing apps for the iPhone today. So developers, we think we’ve got a very sweet story for you. You can begin building your iPhone apps today.

actually the batteries will be integrated with the chassis so when you take it in for a battery replacement they just replace it with a remanufactured car.

If only false information was as easy to remove as a "non-replacable" battery. http://www.cultofmac.com/252956/genius-bar-repair-gifcity/

Next up: broadcast content will be recognized and skipped. Look at this article for instance: basically you are watching a broadcast channel, suddenly a Coca Cola ad pops up. You might see a slight millisecond of the original ad, but before you know it the ad is offering you a free Coke if you go to the supermarket in *your street* and give the code "1H5D" to the clerk.

Or, you might simply get that ad that offers you the mortgage on the new home you were looking at for the last ten days. You searched it online, 'it' knows, and the ad gets targeted to you.

Many people here react like: I will disconnect my TV. But will you ? It may be broadcast or local streaming content now, but in 10 years time when broadcast and settopbox are dead, it will be internet TV all the way. Tailored to your choice, of course, but the ads will too. This is not future, it already happens. Don't think they make this technology only to sell boxes. They want you.

The only way to change the way this works is to act now, and support lobby-campaigns against this behavior. You may want to act now.

It's simply an extension of America's weird world view that they should be owed taxes on money not earned in America. No other country has this odd view, instead, money earned abroad is taxed abroad. The US tax system also has weirdnesses like this for anyone who's a dual national or green card holder... Dual US/British citizen and earning money in Britain? Great, you'll be paying both UK and US income tax on that!

That is a very different issue. That is just about you picking loyalty to a country. When you have dual citizenship, who do you vote for? Who do you fight for in a war draft? Which government is responsible for you?

What is going on here is corporations having a token office and token holding company incorporation papers in whatever country has little taxes or little accounting oversite and exploiting

How Apple avoids paying taxes on iTunes revenue Luxembourg served as one of Apple’s overseas tax havens from September 2008 until December of last year, giving the company a 1.2% corporate tax rate. Over two-thirds of Apple’s European revenue from iTunes was routed through its Luxembourg holding company called iTunes Sarl . Apple has since moved the holding company to Ireland where it pays less than one percent tax on iPhone and iPad sales. http://www.cultofmac.com/30265...

THIS IS A HUGE PROBLEM. Example: We subsidize education with tax dollars so people can get good enough jobs in future to buy iphones and design iphones, then we tax that corporate revenue to pay for the subsidization. This is basically making everyone elses tax burden higher. This isn't a 2 trillion money steal, it is money they would have owed in any rational system anyways,

I had all sorts of weird issues with my MBP when Yosemite rolled out-- it's relatively new hardware, but there were substantive issues with memory management within some of their applications. Mail, particularly, seems to have real issues in this latest release(here's a link., but it's not unique.

That information is probably kept on this computer

This is the first season that any electronic device could be used by coaches and players during an NFL game. They weren't using iPads before...they were using steno pads.

You're arguing a technicality. 30 seconds of Googling turned up a 2012 article on the NFL's own website with the subheading How the iPad is revolutionizing playbooks for NFL players and coaches .

While it's true that this is the first year they're allowed on the sidelines, suggesting they weren't using iPads before is patently false and doesn't address the previous commenter's assertion that they'd be using iPads if they could. iPads have been in use in the locker room and training facilities for quite awhile, not to mention the announcers, officials, and others who have been using them during the game, both on-air and off. The iPad was announced in 2010. Between the 2011 and 2012 seasons, the league went from having two teams using iPads in place of paper playbooks to having 14 teams using them, with the prediction being that all teams would have switched to iPads by last season (I haven't found confirmation one way or the other for if it actually happened).

All of which is to say, it's a bit silly to refute a "[g]iven a choice, they'd still be using iPads" argument by suggesting that because they couldn't use them for 3 hours each week "[t]hey weren't using iPads", while failing to acknowledge that they were using them for the other 165 hours of the week.

http://cdn.cultofmac.com/wp-co...

The current rumor going around is that the sapphire itself is fine, but that the two companies contracted to take the sapphire boules (165 kg sapphire crystal blocks) and do the finishing work to cut them into screens suitable for the iPhone were having lower-than-expected yields (~25%), simply because of problems on their end.

Which is to say, while GT Advanced Technologies is to blame for not taking proper precautionary steps to ensure that they'd remain stable if the deal didn't happen, they aren't apparently to blame for the deal not happening. Their sapphire met Apple's specifications.

Or relabeled it the Dali Edition.

Ibrahim Balic is the researcher who in the past claimed to have been responsible for uncovering a flaw that brought down Apple's Dev Center. As it turned out, he uncovered a lesser problem around the time a more significant flaw was exploited. It seems that he is a bit of an attention seeker, so I would take anything that comes from him with a grain of salt.

I can't find the exact links that cover the older story, but here are some related ones:
http://www.cultofmac.com/24151...
http://9to5mac.com/2013/08/20/...
http://venturebeat.com/2013/07...

And just for your enjoyment.... here is the link that started this flamewar, complete with a wide selection of photographs of bent smartphones: http://www.cultofmac.com/29740....

A wide selection? There are 9, one of them was sat on while it was in a cup holder and 4 of the remaining 8 are iPhones.

Also I just noticed the Lumia 925 in that link, man the new iPhone design is one hell of a rip off of that!

Samsung phones don't get the same news coverage that Apple phones do. A new iPhone and any surrounding issues make it onto mainstream news sites and chat shows.

All large, thin phones bend. A plastic one is more likely to bend back than an aluminium one. But it depends also on the internals and how flexible or brittle they are.

Do you get overtime when Apple fucks up this badly and you have to come on Slashdot to protect them?

Get a hold of yourself. By pointing out that ultra thin mobile phones bend easily he didn't commit blasphemy, he made a simple and rather obvious engineering observation. The guy who works in the cubicle next to mine managed to destroy his Samsung Galaxy by putting it in the back pocket of his jeans and sitting down to enjoy a cup of caffé latte. There was an audible *SNAP*, the phone bent and the LCD display was ruined. The only difference here is that there was no TV news crew on the scene 30 minutes later followed by an army of fanboys venting their outrage on Slashdot over how badly Samsung had fucked up and hypothesizing that anybody pointing out that smartphones sometimes bend must be a shill on Samsung's payroll. And just for your enjoyment.... here is the link that started this flamewar, complete with a wide selection of photographs of bent smartphones: http://www.cultofmac.com/29740....

It's amazing how electronic devices break when the case they are in bends enough. It's also amazing how metal effectively doesn't bend when you use enough of it. (like my iPhone 5...)

Oh, how quickly we willfully forget...

P.S. My keys are metal. They don't bend.

Some people have bent their iPhones, some people have bent their keys. Looking at the video of someone bending an iPhone 6 Plus deliberately in their hands, the pressure needed is about the same as it would take to bend a key.

I'd actually say there are very few people who've never bent a key. It doesn't happen often but it does happen. And it's a precursor to the key snapping in the lock, which plenty of people have also experienced.

You can make excuses all you like - other models and manufacturers DO NOT have this problem, to anywhere near the same extent.

You don't know what the extent is. You just have a small number of examples, and this being Apple anything that happens is news. Other phones do bend, and if they don't bend, they break.

http://www.cultofmac.com/29740...

Or any other phone made of metal?

Perhaps Apple had planned to have the stronger SapphireGlass for their large phones, which would have mitigated this problem. But to release a high end phone with this obvious engineering deficiency is like a smack in the face to loyal Apple consumers.

Apparently it will be about as water resistant as an an iPhone. A bit of rain or sweat won't harm it but don't go swimming with it, so wearing it a sauna is likely to set off the moisture sensors inside if not ruin the device.

I have a 23" screen that does 1080p, and I'm tired of seeing subpixel artifacts from the rgb arrangement (purples are quite odd with the gap in the middle). Don't tell me 720p is fine. Steve Jobs nearly started a war against high resolution screens based on studies of people with mediocre vision (see Why Retina Isn't Enough). With good vision 1080p is around the useful limit for a 23" display at 10 feet or a 1080p phone with a 2.3" screen, though there is some evidence to support that human vision can see quality beyond even these numbers that are based on Snellen tests.

BTW, I just checked Newegg, Target and Nebraska Furniture Mart (the most mainstream stores I could find to properly split 1080p and 720p inventory). At Target 1080p sets outnumbered 720p by 77 to 25. At Newegg 1080p/4k sets outnumbered 720p by 445 to 91. At Nebraska Furniture Mart, 4k televisions alone outnumber 720p by nearly 4 to 1. You can even pick up a 4k TV from Amazon for under $350. I'm not sure what you're calling modern, but it doesn't match what's in the stores. If we're coming out with new specification guidelines, it should at least be on par with what is being sold now (if not future sales). ATSC was foolish and short-sighted for not including 1080p.

"[Getting a new prosthetic hand and iPod configured to work together] takes a long time," Eberle told the San Antonio Express-News. "It's tedious and it's a lot of work with the hand itself."

So in fact, another ipod could work, but it has to be trained first. A good backup of the training data should allow a new ipod to be set up quickly, but it sounds like they didn't do that.

It would be interesting if this "embargo" lasts any length of time. Given the importance of Java in today's IT world, it would be interesting if our colleagues in St. Petersburg would produce another clean-room implementation of Java. But it'll never happen. All trade embargoes are leaky. Consider, for example, Kim Jong-il, the North Korean un-leader, and the iMac on his desk. That certainly wasn't bought at the local Pyongyang Apple store

Like this? Where it's free? Across a whole airline?

http://www.cultofmac.com/26985...

every 9 years or so.

I have used iPods with the dock-connector, the original iPhone and every iPhone and iPad up to the iPhone 5s now. I collected a pile of chargers and cables and they all are used, still. I'm sure that the charger of my very first iPhone is used everyday. There is no better investment into cables and chargers I have made within the last decade. Similar, but not as good, with the Powerbooks. Most of the chargers have had a very long life, and my very first Magsafe-Charger is still in use, daily. I have no use for the original Powerbook Charger anymore, though.

I own an assorted set of non-Appe tablets (currently Thinkpad T2, Nexus 7) and from daily use (they are fine devices for some uses) I'm very confident to have gathered enough datapoints to say:

"mini/micro-USB2/3 for a mobile phone or tablet on the device-side sucks. It's stupid and clumsy and everybody arguing that Apple should go USB (on the phone) is stupid, too, and most likely does not own such a device but just want's cover up a pychological deficite. Micro-USB-3 is just a really pathetic joke."

Don't force my to use the shit that you consider sufficient and I promise to keep quiet and use my chargers for years over years.

And now please have a look at
Apple vs. Samsung: A Decade Of Proprietary Connectors
http://www.cultofmac.com/19077...

I understand that Steve Jobs also felt obligated to park in the handicapped spot

...attempts to mimic apple's walled garden...

I am puzzled by this common complaint, that the Mac is a "walled garden" (not talking about iOS). I can write any program (mostly I write posix code in fact), and download any app I like from the web. I am really not sure why the Mac is any more a "walled garden" than Windows is. Arguably less, since things like mail are kept in flat ascii files rather than some proprietary database as does Outlook. Mail speaks ordinary IMAP and POP (and has an adaptation for Gmail's aberrant implementation). The calendar can subscribe to various sources, and apple's in house service exports its data in a standard format. So where's the walled garden?

All you needed to do was a Google Search, and you'd have found things like this. While not being the "you can buy from any store as long as its ours" as you have with iOS, it is quickly going that way. What they are saying is Apple can remotely control which applications/developers are allowed on your Mac by updating a daily database. What's not clear is exactly how that is implemented, presumably it's a daily download on your part.

There's also this, which outlines the EFF perspective on Apples behavior. They are slowly getting more limiting in what they allow their users to do, all in the name of "Security", at the expense of end user freedom. There's also some arguments about the nature of the application development for Apple platforms, including sandboxing (which developers complain limits capability and forces rearchitecting their code), and the registration as a certified developer, for a fee and Apple gets a 30% cut of your sales. It's an evolution to make Mac like a game console, if the only approved source for PS4 games was the Sony Store, and Sony could decide on a whim, or errant bug in one game, to disable a developer and all their games.

If you include the encryption key with the backup, it doesnt matter either way. If you dont, its not a terribly useful backup.

Apple's Time Machine can use full disk encryption. You need a password/passphrase to be able to read from the disk later, which is rather useful. If someone steals my iMac and my onsite backup, they can not access any data - the system, as well as the backup, are both encrypted.

mac's don't even real sever hardware and the laptops are unrepairable
http://www.cultofmac.com/251359/ifixit-finds-2013-retina-macbook-pros-as-unrepairable-you-can-get/