Slashdot Mirror

"It seems unlikely this is going to create a material, significant security problem," said Rob Enderle, a technology expert and principal analyst with the Enderle Group.

Speaking of jackasses, how about technology industry "analyst" Rob Enderle? Enderle is both:

• Frequently quoted in major mainstream media
• Nearly always completely wrong (at least regarding Apple)

The best real review is the one from John Grubber called Dell's Dud.

There is obvious apple bias, but I agree with pretty much every point he makes.

CPU frequency: 512-fold
RAM: 4096-fold
Removable storage: 1792-fold
VRAM: 3066-fold
Network speed: 4551-fold
Mouse buttons: 1-fold
Price: 1.015-fold

As it happens, while advising a friend on how much memory to buy in 2004, I had just looked at how Apple's nominal RAM stacks up against Moore's Law. Pretty much confirmed, if you ask me:

1976: $ 666, 8 kB ( Apple I)
1980: $1200, 32 kB (Apple II+)
1984: $2500, 128 kB (Macintosh)
1987: $2000, 512 kB (Macintosh 512k)
1990: $1500, 2 MB (Macintosh Classic)
1993: $1440, 8 MB (Macintosh Quadra)
1998: $1300, 32 MB (iMac G3)
2001: $1500, 128 MB (iBook G3)
2004: ?

'hey, we've been making so much money on the iPod, we'd like to cut you in on the deal'

Fuck any of you who think Apple needs to cut Microsoft in on the iPod cash-cow. Microsoft doesn't deserve the money, the marketshare, and the propreitary Windows Media format is certainly not special enough to mandate being included on the iPod.

As quoted from John Gruber on this exact topic:

". . .You might make a case that the iPod could support unprotected WMA files, but this follow-up column from Thurrott shows that he's clearly talking about WMA files protected with Microsoft's proprietary DRM. How could it possibly benefit either HP or Apple to cut Microsoft in on this? They might as well pull down their pants and get out the Vaseline while they're at it."

Workaround: command-drag the object. (Works from the Dock but not from the Finder side bar, though.)

When icons are dragged off the dock, instead of going *poof* they should be moved to the desktop, unless they are dragged into the trash (and of course, the trash can't be removed)

A bunch of people, myself included, griped about the fact that you can't drag-and-drop app icons from the Dock as though they were aliases to the apps themselves. The only thing you can do with them is poof them off the Dock.

But it ends up you can drag-and-drop app icons from the Dock if you hold down the Command key while dragging. You even get a solid (instead of translucent) icon during the drag. And so this works perfectly for dragging app icons from the Dock onto your favorite AppleScript editor's icon to open its scripting dictionary. (Or try dragging an app onto BBEdit, if you want to peak inside the ".app" package using a BBEdit disk browser.)

• Where by "unreplaceable" we mean "somewhat difficult to replace"
• I'm so fucking dumb I've not only videotaped myself committing criminal vandalism, I've released the footage publicly

Note too that Apple has at times violated its own HIG.

Please read John Gruber's take on this on his Daring Fireball weblog.

What's the fun of being a Mac pundit unless you are biased?

Pudge, was that a shot, or just good-natured ribbing? Gruber writes the best-written (and yes, most opinionated) columns on Apple-related topics anywhere, on the web or in print. In other words, it's not just a diary with a few sentences about whatever came into his head on the way to work that day, nor is it hype-mongering drivel about Apple, but rather they are extremely well thought-out and tightly-written articles. Pudge, you're a smart guy (I've heard you speak and read your own blog/mail list posts), you don't need to be reminded that all news media contains bias. I'm glad that Gruber has the sack to acknowledge this, and write what he really thinks rather than tone down his writing to get syndicated on some mainstream Mac site.

I don't agree with everything Gruber says, but his feed is at the top of my NetNewswire client and I look forward to his content every week. I think a lot of people will take your comment out of context -- care to explain?

"Now, a number of people were pretty amazed to see such high OS X numbers, and some even alleged that the ballot box was being stuffed--either from a third-party site encouraging Mac votes, or by "multiple voters" or some other evil scheme meant to over-represent what must surely be a dying breed *cough*."

Windows - 66.42%
(unknown) - 15.06%
Macintosh - 11.46%
Linux - 6.49%

"I suspect that a significant number of the "unknowns" are either Mac users, or Opera users on either platform."

"I do think it's pretty interesting that, when analyzed as combos of OS and browser, the next biggest combo after IE on Windows 2000 and XP is MacOS X and Safari, even ahead of Mozilla on Windows, or on the Mac."

I thought John Gruber's review of Konfabulator at Daring Fireball was interesting: he points out that you can't use native widgets -- every graphic element has to be composed -- and that he'd have liked an IDE. He also thinks that adoption rates would be better if they gave away the runtime engine (the app itself) but charged for the development environment.

I can't see this getting past the "this is cool" stage, or getting anywhere near the "this is useful" or even the "this is indispensable" stages.

See also Crazy Apple Rumors, which, as usual, hits the nail on the head: "While there is widespread confusion about what Konfabulator specifically does, there is little confusion about the fact that it is stylish and it is the hottest new application for OS X."

There's a good bit on Daring Fireball about GUI Scripting, a new feature of AppleScript that allows developers to control applications that do not have Applescript support. It's, um, weird.