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Macrovision invented a special system with copyright bits and epiry dates.
http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/02/22/13 10234

They have already been in the news a lot:
http://daringfireball.net/2007/02/macrovision_tran slation

I came to this thread late but this guy has more Microsoft fan sites than any Apple fanboy. How about this, or this, or this? He's a one man Microsoft-love flash mob! Or how about Rob Enderle? Yes, Virginia, there are enthusiastic Softie fans out there!

He might be a smaller "monopolist" than Microsoft, but he still has his own little monopoly and all the great things that come from that.

I was going to write my own comment but then I read John Gruber's Bottleneck... and well it better states my opinions on this then I could do myself.

There's a difference between throwing new hires at a late project (which almost never works, and almost always in fact makes things worse), and allocating the OS team the resources it needs. OS X is being asked to do far more - powering both iPhone and Apple TV while continuing its role as a desktop and server OS for the Mac - but with almost no additional engineering talent.

Most complaints about the Finder centre on network performance (hangs on network disconnections, for example), or on a perception of flawed spatiality. The former is a localised, admittedly serious, problem. The latter is mostly a philosophical difference.

For informed arguments about the problems of the Finder, see:

http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/finder.ars

http://daringfireball.net/2003/04/siracusa_on_the_ finder

Neat, I didn't know there was a name for it. It's just something I'd seen used a lot as a way of inserting footnotes into plain ASCII that I thought was reasonably elegant.

A lot of the common "plaintext markup" (not necessarily IEEE style) that I've always tried to use in text documents has been de facto formalized by the Markdown text-to-XHTML converter, which I think is the slickest thing since sliced bread. (Except, perhaps, for MultiMarkDown, which adds support for metadata and some other neat features, all while remaining reasonably painless to read in its plain-text form.)

As a slight digression, I think the rise and formalization of these lightweight markup 'languages' (not really languages...conventions?) is interesting to watch, because I remember when HTML was mostly used as a lightweight text-markup language. Somewhere along the line, HTML became a Turing-complete programming language for producing the glue code for web applications, and if all you want to do is write a document with headers, links, and basic formatting, you're better off going to something higher-level and processing it down later.

Those two idiots who can't even give a proper demonstration of the problem?

I thought Ou had lost all credibility by now. He's biased and stupid. I know that sounds harsh, but for heaven's sake, read his blog posts! He compared Apple to Nazi Germany, not even knowing how to spell Joseph Goebbels ("Joseph Gerbils", I'm not kidding!), and he called Fox using a number he got in a confidential mail from Maynor. I mean, geez!

The people he accuses have gone on the record saying that Fox had not contacted them. Chartier says:

What a riot: no, I have never been contacted by Fox or anyone else from Apple regarding any of this stuff. In fact, I'm not even receiving those post-support call surveys or notices that my Mac warranties are about to expire and that AppleCare is an affordable way to stay within Apple's graces.

This whole story only exists in Ou's head. Apple orchestrated nothing at all, the "researchers" discredited themselves all on their own, simply by claiming different, contradictory things at different times.

George Ou is nothing but a Troll. Can we please just ignore him?

Seriously, this whole sorry saga has been hashed and rehashed all over the web. Why should /. give these clowns any more publicity? See John Gruber's blog for an excellent debunking of Maynor, Ellch, and Ou's claims.

Do you mean because he put an expiry date on his challenge?

John Gruber is laughing his ass off.

Forum advice was to run "repair permissions", I did but it didn't help.

It didn't help because the people who gave you that advice are imbeciles who believe in voodoo. It was able to help with occasional problems caused by Classic and bad installers circa OS X 10.1, but there are hardly any circumstances where it will make any difference to anything on more recent versions, as explained here.

The GP is probably thinking of things like the following passage from Macromedia's recent open letter to Steve Jobs:

The GP is probably also thinking of John Gruber's (accurate) translation of that section into RealPeopleSpeak:

But like I said - slashdot supports actual bold or italic tags. I do understand the type of formatting you allude to. In fact, I use Markdown as a starting point of HTML composition. It would be nice if slashdot actually supported markdown, as it's much more efficient for the limited formatting we use here. But I wouldn't use Markdown style tags unless we were using a plain-text system like email, or if it was converted to display in HTML on slashdot.

I think you read that John Gruber post a few too many times ;)

It is easier, or more comforting, for Windows nerds who do not perceive anything significantly better about the Mac's UI to chalk up Mac users' strong preference to their being irrational cultists than it is to admit that they (the Mac users) perhaps have a more acute sense of UI design aesthetics.

If we concede that the Mac is a computer with a high-end user interface, what it is that makes its UI "high-end" is a matter of taste and perception. There do exist ways that you can scientifically measure and test the usability of software -- i.e. that by Fitts's Law you can prove that the Mac menu bar is more usable than the Windows-style menu bar within each window -- but that's not why Mac users are Mac users. No one goes out and subjects themselves to serious usability testing to determine which OS they should use. Real Mac users prefer the Mac because they just prefer it. You can explain the reasons why you prefer the Mac, but can you explain why you care about those reasons? You either feel it or you don't.

Hence the difficult situation faced by small-minded Windows users who do not get the appeal of the Mac; to admit that Mac users' strong preferences are reasonable would be to admit that they (the Windows-using squares) are unable to perceive something that real Mac users can. That to concede that Mac users are reasonable wouldn't just imply that Mac OS X is in at least certain ways much better than Windows, but that Mac users in certain ways have a more refined sense of taste than Windows users, which in turn cuts way too close to implying that in certain ways Mac users are smarter, which is where things turn ugly because those certain ways are, to Mac users, the ways that really matter, and any chance at reasonable discourse evaporates because both sides feel deeply insulted by the other.

I would like to start by thanking Steve Jobs for offering his provocative perspective on the role of digital rights management (DRM) in the electronic content marketplace and for bringing to the forefront an issue of great importance to both the industry and consumers.

Fuck you, Jobs.

Macrovision has been in the content protection industry for more than 20 years, working closely with content owners of many types, including the major Hollywood studios, to help navigate the transition from physical to digital distribution.

We've been helping and encouraging the entertainment industry to annoy its paying customers for more than 20 years.

We have been involved with and have supported both prevention technologies and DRM that are on literally billions of copies of music, movies, games, software and other content forms, as well as hundreds of millions of devices across the world.

Remember those squiggly lines when you tried copying a commercial VHS tape? You can thank us for that.

While your thoughts are seemingly directed solely to the music industry, the fact is that DRM also has a broad impact across many different forms of content and across many media devices. Therefore, the discussion should not be limited to just music.

We recognize that if getting rid of DRM works for the music industry, it's going to open the eyes of executives in other fields, and it could unravel Macrovision's entire business. DRM increases not decreases consumer value. Up is down. Black is white.

I believe that most piracy occurs because the technology available today has not yet been widely deployed to make DRM-protected legitimate content as easily accessible and convenient as unprotected illegitimate content is to consumers.

I have, to date, succeeded in convincing the entertainment industry that DRM can stop piracy.

The solution is to accelerate the deployment of convenient DRM-protected distribution channels--not to abandon them.

The solution is more DRM. DRM everywhere.

Similarly, consumers who want to consume content on only a single device can pay less than those who want to use it across all of their entertainment areas -- vacation homes, cars, different devices and remotely. Abandoning DRM now will unnecessarily doom all consumers to a "one size fits all" situation that will increase costs for many of them.

Abandoning DRM will prevent us from forcing our customers to keep paying us over and over again for the same movies and songs they've already paid for.

Well maintained and reasonably implemented DRM will increase the electronic distribution of content, not decrease it.

I am high as a kite.

Quite simply, if the owners of high-value video entertainment are asked to enter, or stay in a digital world that is free of DRM, without protection for their content, then there will be no reason for them to enter, or to stay if they've already entered. The risk will be too great.

If it weren't for DRM, no one would attempt to sell video in digital formats.

I agree with you that there are difficult challenges associated with maintaining the controls of an interoperable DRM system, but it should not stop the industry from pursuing it as a goal.

Just because we have sold the entertainment industry on the pipe dream of "interoperable DRM" that can't actually be implemented does not mean they should stop paying Macrovision in a futile attempt to make it happen.

Truly interoperable DRM will hasten the shift to the electronic distribution of content and make it easier for consumers to manage and share content in the home -- and it will enable it in an open environment where their content is portable across a number of devices, not held hostage to just one company's products.

Magic

Since this letter is full of PR speak, I'm providing a link to a Handy Translation Guide

The 'Fuck you, Jobs' says it all...

http://daringfireball.net/2007/02/macrovision_tran slation

Here is John Grubers translation. Spot on.

You may not have seen it before, but John Gruber put out an essay a couple months ago, Interoperability and DRM Are Mutually Exclusive, that makes exactly this point.

Here's what Bruce Horn, who designed and implemented the original Finder, wrote regarding the accusation that the Macintosh UI came from Xerox:

The Lisa group invented some fundamental concepts as well: pull down menus, the imaging and windowing models based on QuickDraw, the clipboard, and cleanly internationalizable software.

Smalltalk had a three-button mouse and pop-up menus, in contrast to the Mac's menu bar and one-button mouse. Smalltalk didn't even have self-repairing windows -- you had to click in them to get them to repaint, and programs couldn't draw into partially obscured windows.

In other words, the File, Edit, and View menus came from Apple.

Gates' claims are so absurd, they're not really worth refuting. So instead I'll go to bed and let Gruber do the job.

Good night.

Great write up at Daring Fireball already: http://daringfireball.net/2007/02/lies_damned_lies _and_bill_gates

I agree with John Gruber, author of Daring Fireball:

My advice: Sell the company's assets and give the money to the shareholders.

[referring to the Michael Dell's own advice to Apple, years ago.]

http://daringfireball.net/2006/04/repair_permissio ns

http://daringfireball.net/2006/04/repair_permissio ns_voodoo

http://www.unsanity.org/archives/000410.php

Why do Mac users not listen to these guys?

http://daringfireball.net/2006/04/repair_permissio ns

http://daringfireball.net/2006/04/repair_permissio ns_voodoo

http://www.unsanity.org/archives/000410.php

Why do Mac users not listen to these guys?

Gruber was off by 100%, and you're saying I'm wrong? Somebody did dispute the numbers and you're saying I'm wrong?

As I said, you're totally missing the point. I'll quote Gruber's article:

Respectable agents or managers take no more than a 15 percent cut of their clients' revenue, and usually not more than 10 percent. That's true in sports, it's true for authors, and it's true for entertainers. MacHeist's role isn't that of an agent or manager; the closest traditional description I can think of is that of a promoter.

Whether MacHeist got 85% or 75% doesn't change Gruber's point. In fact, Gruber's worst printed scenario in the original, non-updated article had MacHeist's share at 71%, lower than it ended up being. So Gruber was right, thank you very much.

New Daringfireball article:

Estimated total sum paid by MacHeist to the developers of the bundled applications, based, yes, on anonymous sources, but which figure I stand behind, and which, I will further note, has not been disputed since I wrote about it last week: $66,500

There's an argument to be made that the devs got into this willingly and know what they got. There's really no argument to be made about how much they got. Nobody disputes these numbers.

Ask anyone who's followed the SCO lawsuit saga and they'll tell you about the major Microsoft shills. Enderle (his own "group", just him really), Didio (garner), Daniel Lyons (forbes), and Maurice (sorry, didn't follow that part so well).

These folks know how to work the media. They appear quoted over and over again. They have massive bias. Enderle is the by far the WORST.

Of the many Enderle stories, he gave a keynote speech at some SCO developer conference... after things had gone pretty far south for SCO and they were well on their way to being the laughing stock they are now. Enderle reportedly was cussing and swearing about the open source world, practically paranoid that someone in the audience was an open source spy or some-such.

Sure, the register likes to bash other more, er, established publications at any chance. And yes, the "policy" doesn't seem to make sense. But if you read the register article (yeah, I know, this is slashdot, but still)... it doesn't take a lot of reading between the lines to see this is probably the NYT finally getting fed up with Rob Enderle.

1: Here's how wrong Rob Enderle has been about Apple

2: More Enderle stuff

3: Enderle's take on SCO's lawsuit with IBM - yeah, right

4: Even Wikipedia has a Enderle entry, listing his poor prediction history, if only briefly

Rob Enderle is quoted VERY FREQUENTLY. If you read this little comment (likely to remain only +2 cause it's not posted in the first several minutes), please remember just one thing:

Whenever you see Rob Enderle quoted, read with skepticism.

Sadly, he's very good at getting quoted all over the place. Hopefully the NYT will no longer be among the rags that takes the easy way out and prints whatever convenient sound bite he's serving up that day.

Speaking as a devoted Mac user and advocate for the platform, this whole affair has shown the worst aspect of the Mac community and why so many people continue to write off the platform (an assembly of particular hardware and software) because of a small percentage of the user base (an assembly of people who use the hardware and software).

Ultimately, though - and I say this as a more-than-daily reader of the Daring Fireball website - John Gruber of Daring Fireball is to blame for this. He is the one that posted the initial exposé of what he perceived the financial situation of the MacHeist promotion to be, even though he admitted multiple times in the article that he didn't have any first-hand knowledge of how the thing was actually structured. John is often a fine voice for the Mac-core community, which is why I read his site, but this is one of those times (and there have been others) where his sharply-worded articles have done much more harm than good.

Ultimately, it benefits no one for developers to be running around calling each other four-letter names because of perceived injustices. Both sides - but especially the anti-MacHeist side - need to stop talking at a volume and profanity level that makes casual observers think somebody is being tortured. Perhaps both sides should just stop talking about it period.

One thing is very clear from this: while the Mac-core constitutes probably fewer than 5% of all Mac users, they continue to give a bad name to the entire assembly of very well-designed and nice-to-use software and hardware. As they've done practically since day one. Am I the only one that thinks they sound like televangelists sometimes?

And how is it not a problem if you're a Mac user?

Wow. Just... Wow.

That makes me kind of sad. You seriously think apps on every OS generally consist of spyware and trojans? They're not. You should read that.

Actual conversation on MSN Chat:

Friend of mine who recently switched to a Mac: "Hey, how can I send a picture from iPhoto using my GMX account?

Me: "Click on 'Attach File' and drag the photo from iPhoto to your web browser's 'open' window."

Her: "Okay... drag from where?"

Me: "Wait, I'll send you a screenshot which shows where to drag from and to.

Her: "Oh... What did you just send me? I'm not going to open that! I don't want to infect my new Mac with any viruses!"

Me: GRMBLFUCKINGWINDOWSUSERS!

Look, in all the years of pretty much randomly downloading apps on my unprotected Mac, I've not once had any issues with spyware or viruses. Yes, that doesn't mean there never could be, it just means that right now, if you're using a Mac, randomly downloading apps is not a problem. The simple fact is that if there is a virus (even if it doesn't acstually work at all) or something that (even barely) resembles spyware on the Mac, there's a huge outcry about it, and about five minutes later, it's generally either gone, or everyone knows about it. Software like that just doesn't fly on Macs.

You must have read Mr. Gruber's thoughts on these Amazon Zune sales, as he said the exact same thing about the record player.

It is easier, or more comforting, for Windows nerds who do not perceive anything significantly better about the Mac's UI to chalk up Mac users' strong preference to their being irrational cultists than it is to admit that they (the Mac users) perhaps have a more acute sense of design aesthetics.

If we concede that the Mac is a computer with a high-end user interface, what it is that makes its UI "high-end" is a matter of taste and perception. There do exist ways that you can scientifically measure and test the usability of software -- i.e. that by Fitts's Law you can prove that the Mac menu bar is more usable than the Windows-style menu bar within each window -- but that's not why Mac users are Mac users. No one goes out and subjects themselves to serious usability testing to determine which OS they should use. Real Mac users prefer the Mac because they just prefer it. You can explain the reasons why you prefer the Mac, but can you explain why you care about those reasons? You either feel it or you don't.

Hence the difficult situation faced by small-minded Windows users who do not get the appeal of the Mac; to admit that Mac users' strong preferences are reasonable would be to admit that they (the Windows-using squares) are unable to perceive something that real Mac users can. That to concede that Mac users are reasonable wouldn't just imply that Mac OS X is in at least certain ways much better than Windows, but that Mac users in certain ways have a more refined sense of taste than Windows users, which in turn cuts way too close to implying that in certain ways Mac users are smarter, which is where things turn ugly because those certain ways are, to Mac users, the ways that really matter, and any chance at reasonable discourse evaporates because both sides feel deeply insulted by the other.

http://daringfireball.net/2006/06/and_oranges

Still sensitive are you? The claim was that many platforms were vulnerable, not just macs.

"He still hasn't disclosed any information on a bug in apple-supplied wireless drivers for apple-supported wireless devices..."

Nor are they obligated to. Odds are that the presentation had the desired effect and there was no need to proceed further.

"...even though he was offered stuff for actually proving what he'd said (John Gruber, for example, offered to give him two brand-new fresh-out-of-the-box macbooks if he managed to hack them)"

No, here's the link:

http://daringfireball.net/2006/09/open_challenge

Gruber challenged them to hack a macbook (not two) with many stipulations. The challenge was to be videotaped and the conditioned were not under the control of the hackers. If the challenge was not met, the hackers would have to pay for the machine. The results of the videotaping were the property of John Gruber.

There are plenty of reasons for not accepting the challenge. They may have felt that there would be too much risk that they didn't want to accept, they may have not given a shit about John Gruber (likely), they may not have wanted to contributed to his pro-Apple site, or they may have had no interest in the lame reward offered. A macbook may be exciting to you and John Gruber but probably not to them.

Just because additional details were not provided on demand to Apple loyalists does not mean that vulnerabilities didn't exist. IMO the test configuration was chosen because it was the easiest one to demonstrate the flaw. That doesn't mean it's the only one that contains the flaw though Apple apologists have always insisted otherwise.

Not so with a built-in trackpad. As to it not being a requirement to function in the OS, perhaps you can tell me how to get a list of suggestions for an incorrect spelling without using it. Of course, this issue doesn't exist in the newer machines, which allow you to control-click by holding two fingers on the trackpad...

Yes, I know widgets come from Konfabulator, but Apple made them famous.

Widgets did not come from Konfabulator, they are a revamp of Apple's own desk accessories.

I wish the whole "ripped off from Konfabulator" presumption never got off the ground, or at least, would die.

John Gruber's excellent Daring Fireball blog has an excellent opinion on this article.

http://daringfireball.net/2006/10/gartner_jackasse s

http://daringfireball.net/2006/10/gartner_jackasse s

It is clearly Apple's responsibility to ensure they do not produce any products that can pass on virus. I do think it is fair for them to mention in their apology that if other companies (MS) had designed their operating systems with security in mind this wouldn't be an issue. Apple's PR is trying to sell macs. It is fair of them to point out that there are no virus' for macs. As to the parent, Yea I would go ahead and say Leap-A is a the invention of antivirus company known as Sophos. Fortunately though as it is says on their press release announcing their "discovery" you can buy their protection. "Sophos's reliably engineered, easy-to-operate products protect more than 35 million users in more than 150 countries." It's the oldest trick in the book: "buy our protection... you wouldn't want to get hurt." I think John Gruber put it best on his site DaringFireball "I, on the other hand, had never been under the impression that the Mac was either magically or technically "immune" or "invulnerable" to viruses, Trojan horses, spyware, adware, malware, and so forth. Rather, I thought it was simply the case that, for whatever reasons, such software isn't a problem for Mac users and hasn't been for the last 15 years or so. I.e. that Macs aren't magically protected, and that in theory, malware could be written to target the Mac, but that the point is that in practice, in the real world, they aren't. On the other hand, Macs do happen to be immune to Windows viruses and spyware and adware and Trojan horses, thousands of which are discovered every month. But why sweat the details?"

Interesting side-note regarding the relative economics of Apple's music (err, "music and movies") platform: Jobs stated during his presentation that Apple had sold 10 million iPod Shuffles to date. If we say the average selling price for a Shuffle is $100 (which, if anything, might be low, considering that the original 1 GB Shuffle debuted at $149) that's about $1 billion in revenue. Jobs also stated that the iTunes Store has sold about 1.5 billion songs to date. At a buck a song, that means about $1.5 billion in revenue -- but probably less when you account for album sales, where more than 10 songs are sold for $10. Which means the iPod Shuffle alone has accounted for about the same amount of revenue (and, I'd wager, more profits) as the iTunes Store.

I'm not disputing that Microsoft took some good ideas from OSX for Vista, but one thing needs clarified. "Widgets" didn't originate in Mac OSX. I was using Konfabulator (now owned by Yahoo) Widgets in both Windows and OSX before 'Widgets" were part of the OS in either.

Obviously, Apple ripped off the idea for Dashboard. Stolen wholesale, without even the decency to mention where they took the original idea.

Which, of course, would be the desk accessories from the original 1984 Macintosh -- conceived by Bud Tribble and engineered (mostly) by Andy Hertzfeld.

*sigh*

I guess you've never heard of Desk Accessories, have you?

Hint, they were included with the very first Macintosh.

But, Gruber says it best:

"Bullshit. Dashboard is not a rip-off of Konfabulator. Yes, they are doing very much the same thing. But what it is that they're doing was not an original idea to Konfabulator. The scope of a "widget" is very much the modern-day equivalent of a desk accessory."

If there is a single "neutral" IT publication about Macs, I will pay for it. No kidding...

Daringfireball even tried to "Challenge" with Secureworks about this issue. The "language" of URL may give you a clue.

http://daringfireball.net/2006/09/lies_damned_lies _and_macbook_wifi_hacks

I said "neutral" btw, not some sites/blogs calling me a "Maccie" or jump up and down with happiness when Oompla.Loompa story broke. :)

As always, daringfireball.net has an interesting article on this. And The Macalope chimes in, too, with a link to an article by Glenn Fleishman. Enjoy.

You forgot the potential for massive drive-by 'virusing' via ad-hoc wireless.

I see that the Zune downloads a file from another wireless point. Then syncs back with PC and viruses galore.

Lots of potential there.

And ironically, it will use the wireless security holes first 'shown' on a MacBook at Security Focus.
http://daringfireball.net/2006/08/curious_case

>we love new iPods.

Speak for yourself, apple boy! ;-)

Aaanyway, if Brushed Metal hears about the new interface, he's gonna be really fucking mad.

John Gruber, isn't that the zealot who claims Dashboard is a direct descendant of Desk accessories.

http://daringfireball.net/2004/06/dashboard_vs_kon fabulator

I don't see the similiarites. Desk accessories was just a dirty hack to get around Apples singletask OS.