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add in the classic cracking/yellow plastic on prior models, the crappy 15-bit TN screens they've used in the past (fixed under performance guarantees, IIRC, after legal action), too much thermal paste causing massive overheating, nVidia gfx chips cracking and falling off, exploding batteries, cooling ports blocked by plastic film and numerous HW failures-by-design - well, it's no wonder he's looking for a heavy duty warranty.

I'd recommend a Dell, if you can stand the hardware - their NBD warranties kick ass. You can practically (ab)use the hardware for anything except hammering fenceposts & they'll replace it for you. Plus there's the data recovery option, might be worth it if you're special enough to keep important data on a laptop.

what this conversation was about...
http://gizmodo.com/5503004/steve-jobs-and-eric-schmidt-spotted-together-again-photos

This actually did amuse me. Apparently tapping icons on a phone screen isn't a natural progression from clicking icons on a computer screen, which as you point out Apple didn't come up with in the first place. It's something new and unique and magical that only they could have worked out, so now anybody else that does it has stolen their ideas.

Android prototype before the iPhone....
http://gizmodo.com/334909/google-android-prototype-in-the-wild

Tell that to Cyanogen.

Who got cease and desisted. The Google Apps that come with Android are most definitely not open, and as I understand it, people who install CyanogenMod generally get an illegal copy of the Google Apps separately, and the provider of this separate package remains open to a potential cease-and-desist. Without Android Market, which is among these apps, one can't download applications exclusive to Android Market, such as the application to deposit checks to a bank account.

Lots out there, Google harder I guess.

August after 3.02 release -
http://www.engadget.com/2011/08/30/hp-touchpad-will-receive-ota-udpate-for-added-functionality/

Today, 3.04 release -
http://gizmodo.com/5850862/hp-touchpad-gets-a-webos-upgrade-from-beyond-the-grave

Caveat emptor - hotel safes are not necessarily safe. Many have very simple default passwords so that the hotel management can get in if you forget your password. http://gizmodo.com/5837561/can-000000-secretly-open-your-hotel-safe

A small trend I've noticed is that Google seems to struggle in the areas of music and TV a lot more than say... Apple. Why is that?

Because Apple has a successful 10 year history in music starting with the iPod and iTunes in 2001. The iPod sold well, and two years later in 2003 the iTunes Store was born. The music industry had watched mp3 players grow in popularity since the Rio 300 in 1998 and were eager to find any way to finally make some money from digital music rather than watch it be stolen and shared with software like Napster so they were more than happy to put their content on iTunes. Recording industry really didn't have a choice, the iPod was what people were using to "steal" their music, so when the manufacture of the iPod came to them and said "would you like people to buy the music instead of steal it?" of course they said "YES!!"

Apple has become more powerful since then because people actually buy music through them, iTunes accounts for 26% of all US Music sales in 2010, more than Walmart and Best Buy combine.

So even though google is Google, when someone with no mp3 player and no history comes along and says "we'd like to sell your music and videos" the music and movie industry isn't really all that interested.

I think the lawyers should hold up a white iPad and a 10-inch Samsung LCD and see if the judge can tell which is which.

Ditto, I don't own any Apple products, I don't particularly agree with their closed approach, but I don't care if other people enjoy their products and Woz is a great engineering ambassador, I can't really see a reason why GP feels the need to attack the guy. Especially since it seems Woz also enjoys his Android gadgets (ironic that GP was telling others to get their facts straight). Didn't Woz even say that Android would be the dominant OS over time?

I was just thinking that the two companies should partner together, and offer totally customized masks made on request.

What could possibly go wrong?

BTW masks from SPFXmasks have already been used to perpetrate crimes:

News - Bank Robbery Suspect Fools Cops with Realistic Mask - InsideEdition.com
Face mask that's so good every crook wants one - Americas, World - The Independent
Spfxmasks - Gizmodo stories - Gizmodo

Stuff like this is what makes Woz tick. He's a bit of an extroverted geek that loves to play. Read up on some of the stories on the original Apple and Apple II. The stuff the man did with chips and coding was nothing short of genius.

He went out into the iPad lines and did magic tricks. Why? Because he could.

Steve Jobs was driven by perfection of design. Features would not be implemented 95%, it had to be perfect. Woz is driven by fun. He loves practical jokes, he loves being creative. I can't describe him other than he is just Woz.

What he does with his life is my envy and should probably be the envy of almost every slashdotter out there. Imagine if you had enough money to just camp out before Debian/Ubuntu/Fedora/Apache/[Random FOSS Project]/Microsoft/Apple made a new release. Or could just.... do what ever the hell you wanted. He could sit at home, in his mansion and own everything Apple ever released but he doesn't.

Oh come on... I had no idea about this but reading your post.. I promptly looked it up

One of the funniest pranks i've ever seen hahaha

where is everyone's sense of humor?
http://gizmodo.com/343348/confessions-the-meanest-thing-gizmodo-did-at-ces

Prior art.
http://gizmodo.com/5150019/the-joydck-mods-your-penis-into-a-joystick-nsfw

Aside from the spec sheet factoids that we all already knew, I see nothing else that's factually correct in that summary. Let's go through the rest of it:

To date, however, Apple is the only systems manufacturer to adopt Thunderbolt

Incorrect. Sony shipped the Vaio Z21 earlier this year with Thunderbolt, though it was branded under the old codename of Light Peak.

and it has done so as an additional device connectivity port

Incorrect. It's replacing mini-DisplayPort with Thunderbolt on the models that are being updated since they share the same connector. Doing so means no additional ports. Instead, since Thunderbolt can support different protocols, people who have DisplayPort devices can continue to use them without issue, and they'll have Thunderbolt there for later when more peripherals arrive.

keeping SuperSpeed USB on its computers.

Apple doesn't have SuperSpeed USB on any of its computers. They never have. The MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, iMac, and Mac mini have all been updated with Thunderbolt, yet they're all still using USB 2.0. The Mac Pro is their only computer which hasn't been updated since Thunderbolt debuted, and it certainly doesn't have USB 3.0 either. In fact, Apple is the only major holdout on USB 3.0. It even says so at the end of the introduction on Wikipedia's USB 3.0 page.

No other systems manufacturer has committed to Thunderbolt.

Besides Sony, which I've already mentioned, both Acer and Asus have committed to having Thunderbolt devices out in the future.

In contrast, SuperSpeed USB has been installed on 10 billion pieces of hardware, with numbers continuing to grow.

Incorrect, and entirely inane. Of course the numbers continue to grow. Was there a concern that they'd be shrinking? And 10 billion is patently false. The best numbers I could find in a quick search were that only 14M USB 3.0 devices were sold in 2010 (so you're only off by three orders of magnitude), and that projections by analysts peg sales at 1.7B per year by 2014.

The thing is, I don't want my hardware supplier to be making more profit than their competitors. I want my hardware supplier to drop their prices and give me the product at a better price.

It's called better execution. If any other hardware manufacturer could do it. They would too.

But as far as price, I paid $200 for my iPhone 4 -- the same price as a similar Android device at the time and pay the same monthly service charge. Why do I care if the carrier had to pay a larger subsidy?

This is what an Android phone looked like before the iPhone:

http://gizmodo.com/334909/google-android-prototype-in-the-wild

Why did it take Apple to introduce the iPhone design if it were so obvious?

http://gizmodo.com/5847906/strange-misguided-man-glad-steve-jobs-has-died

Ehmm, looks a bit like it. However it is looks even more to a 1960's Braun T3 pocket radio, and the Mac Pro looks like a Braun T1000 radio and so on. http://gizmodo.com/343641/1960s-braun-products-hold-the-secrets-to-apples-future

Strike 1: http://gizmodo.com/329648/mpaas-university-toolkit-taken-down-for-violating-copyright
Strike 2: http://torrentfreak.com/mpaa-steals-code-violates-linkware-license/
Strike 3: http://www.amdzone.com/phpbb3/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=95638

BOOM!

No more MPAA! They're offline forever! After all, the law is just and equal and fair and blind, right? And the MPAA -- the people who, let's face it, basically *wrote* this law -- should be held to the highest standard themselves. They, more than anyone else, cannot call it a youthful mistake, or a silly error in judgement, or ignorance or anything else... they have zero excuse and so accordingly they will be punished for their obvious and flagrant transgressions!

Right? ... right?

Don't turn this into an Apple versus M$ you dolt, a man died today!

Oh wait...

See, even trolls can't overcome the remarkable sadness on the news of his passing. Beyond the hardware, he inspired a lot of debates here and elsewhere that will have a lasting impact on people. I can't believe how awful this is to hear.

I'm a PC-Linux-Android guy. No flames intended. Both Gates and Jobs are the tip top of their field, yet reached there in their own way. Both played critical roles in the industry.

Again, no flames or trolling intended.

HERE is the original quote:

He was the reason many of us got into this industry, or even care about technology at all. He made the computer personal, and the smartphone fun. Bill Gates may have put a computer on every office desk, but it was Steve Jobs who put one in every dorm room and bedroom and living room. And then, years later, he repeated the trick, putting one in every bag and every pocket, thanks to the iPad and iPhone. If you use a computer or smartphone today, it is either one he created, or an imitation of his genius.

I dunno? Science can be pretty straightforward with such message?

"Cigarettes will kill you. Slow." (The extra bits are what makes the message stick.)

"Don't buy water-front property for the next 300 years."

"Don't breathe in (insert name of city). You'll die. Slow. (Faster if you smoke)." (Oooh, double-punch!)

They have adverts like that in the UK, and the people love them! New Zealand went all out and put up a billboard that weeps blood when it rains. It is very effective.

Yet you never see anything like this here in the US. I wonder why???

This is not surprising given that the U.S. military spends more annually on air-conditioning than the entirety of NASA's budget.

When talking trillions of $ in government spending, it's thoroughly and completely embarrassing that an accomplished org like NASA has to scrap for a few billion

There was a gizmodo (?) article which described the results of running this service on their staff; iirc, it picked up only the illegal stuff like drug use. They explicitly don't report on things like "normal" partying and even pregnancy (which some companies discriminate).

The Gizmodo article is http://gizmodo.com/5818774/this-is-a-social-media-background-check

In fact, if you look at his report (he posted the entire thing online), they did a good job redacting stuff that doesn't matter, and stuff that employers should not know about (like ethnicity, sex, etc). They blacked out his face and his hands to hide his skin color, blacked out irrelevant things, etc.

Truth is, a company is probably more likely to use these services because they ensure privacy - stuff that cannot be asked, is hidden. This benefits the company by sparing a possible discrimination lawsuit (always a big problem) than if some HR lackey used Google.

In effect, it's more of a safe search for Google - they tell you why they think this guy matches the description (e.g., address match), and hide the details that could prejudice the issue.

Of course, another issue is unscrupulous companies...

And always - if you don't want the world to know, don't post it online. This was true in the 70s, it's still true today. There's no such thing as privacy - "privacy" is a social networking term to get marks to reveal more information to strangers than they normally would.

Here in the UK, BB has the teenage girl market totally sewn up - if you dont have BBM, the other girls wont speak to you! BB need to bring out a "Hello Kitty" model, a "Barbie" model, and a "My Little Pony" model (autographed by Justin Bleiber) and forget the business market.

The teen-girl market is a lock for RIM because they're both affordable and offer the best mobile for communications on the market. Additionally, BBM offers features such as received and read confirmations, which you won't find on other platforms -- no more wondering "did they get my message" or "did they read it".

Forget the business market? Well, right now RIM is the ONLY company that makes a phone useful for business! While the physical keyboard and optical trackpad make writing effortless, a huge bonus, the Blackberry platform simply handles PIM data far better than the competition. Your schedule and notifications are visible (and editable) right on the home screen!

For advanced users, everything important is a keystroke away. Open the calender, jump to next week, add an entry -- three keystrokes. On other platforms, fumble until you find the calendar app, scroll to next week, do who-knows-what to add an appointment, try to type some uncommon name in on that soft-keyboard...

Heaven forbid you forget a detail and need to go back to your email! With Blackberry, you have true multi-tasking -- something iOS and Android still haven't mastered -- jump back and forth between applications without worrying about losing your place. (It's a single keystroke, there and back again -- a nice UI trick to make you more productive). With the optical trackpad, copy and paste is quick and easy -- not a slow hit and miss finger-fumbling process like on a touchscreen only interface.

See, a business phone needs to give you the info you need as quickly as possible, let you enter the info you need as quickly as possible, and stay out of your way. Business users see their phone as a tool -- RIM knows this, and makes serious use quick and easy -- the less time they spend tinkering with their phone the better. Need your schedule? Just look down. No fumbling around looking for and launching apps. Want to make a change? It's one click away. Well, with RIM, most important things are just a keystroke away.

My wife, a huge android fan, just dumped her new Samsung for an antique Blackberry 8500. With her new job, she found that an old Blackberry was a better match for her needs than a new Android handset. She needed to manage a lot of contacts, a lot of messages, and a constantly changing schedule. Sounds like something a smartphone ought to handle well. As things stand today, no other "smartphone" manufacturer even comes close to what RIM has been doing for years.

RIM may be a third-place player in the smartphone game now that it's dominated by the consumer market -- but no other manufacture even come close to matching even their old models in terms of productivity. Even Google's CEO uses a Blackberry

Forget about business! You must be out of your mind!

http://gizmodo.com/5833654/this-5-million-piece-of-art-is-a-1-terabyte-hard-drive-filled-with-pirated-software-songs-and-more

I guess that hard drive is now worth more than the US economy.

Or perhaps this: http://gizmodo.com/343641/1960s-braun-products-hold-the-secrets-to-apples-future

You know what else has been repeated ad naseum?

http://gizmodo.com/5483914/steve-jobs-1996-good-artists-copy-great-artists-steal

Where would the world be if people couldn't create/improve/refine something from previous creations and/or ideas?

We'll soon find out, if recent trends are anything to go by.

Well do you see a comunist working his ass of after work to make a new cure for a specific cancer type if he doesn't get paid extra for his extra efford?

Umm, yes? http://gizmodo.com/5838344/cubas-lung-cancer-vaccine-could-save-your-life

to the AC, http://gizmodo.com/5690749/these-are-the-first-100-leaked-body-scans
"One Hundred Naked Citizens: One Hundred Leaked Body Scans" "U.S. Marshals in a Florida Federal courthouse saved 35,000 images on their scanner." So yes in the past "Whatever the stated policy, it's clear that it is trivial for operators to save images"

Yeah, new here that must be it.
Kiddo, I read the article http://gizmodo.com/5836741/anonymous-roars-back-with-3gb-leak-of-texas-police-chief-emails, go ahead and show me where it mentions nintendo or eve in that.

The emails show misuse of government property. It also mentions two shootings that might very well be murders. Do the emails have to say "Hai Guys, I got teh Bribes from the kkk" before you start thinking it looks like corruption? They might even find some of those, only time will tell.

The first two emails are examples of blatant racism that would be a fire-able offense at any job I know of, other than editor for stormfront.

Remember the Newton? Yeah, even Apple's own tablets sucked.

IfYDGI: http://cache.gizmodo.com/assets/resources/2008/04/eggfreckles.jpg

Please don't put words into my mouth. Inever said you choose Apple products because they're shiny or trendy. Why you like Apple products is irrelevant here. What I was referencing was the fact that you were moved enough by my comparison of Apple with Microsoft to comment about it on the internets.

The comparison still stands. They're both entirely motivated by greed. Ethics takes a back-seat to profit. Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that the main reason we all hate Microsoft? Why call one company out on their ethics violations and not another?

Yes, Flash is a proprietary multimedia format. That doesn't change the fact that by not allowing Flash on iOS, Apple is preventing iOS users from accessing a lot of online content. That has forced many sites (YouTube, for example) to stop using Flash so iOS devices can view their content. It doesn't matter that Flash is annoying, slow, and proprietary, this is still a clear-cut case of Apple making a unilateral decision on web technology. Apple also disabled Google Voice on iPhones so

As for the interrogations, sources are here, and here, and here. If that isn't a totalitarian management strategy, Idon't know what is.

BTW just because Microsoft uses tamper resistant screws doesn't mean it's not a violation of consumer rights. If you can't fix it, you don't really own it.

Please don't put words into my mouth. Inever said you choose Apple products because they're shiny or trendy. Why you like Apple products is irrelevant here. What I was referencing was the fact that you were moved enough by my comparison of Apple with Microsoft to comment about it on the internets.

The comparison still stands. They're both entirely motivated by greed. Ethics takes a back-seat to profit. Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that the main reason we all hate Microsoft? Why call one company out on their ethics violations and not another?

Yes, Flash is a proprietary multimedia format. That doesn't change the fact that by not allowing Flash on iOS, Apple is preventing iOS users from accessing a lot of online content. That has forced many sites (YouTube, for example) to stop using Flash so iOS devices can view their content. It doesn't matter that Flash is annoying, slow, and proprietary, this is still a clear-cut case of Apple making a unilateral decision on web technology. Apple also disabled Google Voice on iPhones so

As for the interrogations, sources are here, and here, and here. If that isn't a totalitarian management strategy, Idon't know what is.

BTW just because Microsoft uses tamper resistant screws doesn't mean it's not a violation of consumer rights. If you can't fix it, you don't really own it.

Man I could go for some hurricane rain here in DFW. But seriously stay safe, don't end up a darwin award. Don't be stupid.

And then sometimes they do something like this that's really not helping their cause at all...

That sounds like what I remember, although it only happened a scarce few times that I was aware of. Those memories are rather dusty!

I never liked the Registry. I wish it had been done differently. Bill Gates even disliked it, see? http://gizmodo.com/5019516/classic-clips-bill-gates-chews-out-microsoft-over-xp

The mess of INI files from pre-Windows-95 needed to be fixed. UNIX people have it good with the somewhat disciplined usage of /etc by most programs' authors. Windows coders didn't have that same discipline. Just about every program had at least one INI file, and most installers even added things to WIN.INI and sometimes SYSTEM.INI via various hand-rolled code and wouldn't you know it, things broke all the time, and the shareware authors were quite prolific. You'd sit down to fix someone's slow computer, and they would have hundreds of them and their WIN.INI would be totally bloated and ridiculous. Microsoft fixed the INI situation, but the fix was pretty bad too. Somehow people seem to think I'm defending its honor or something like that.

What I'm saying is: People, back up your systems so you can restore them if something gets borked. The Registry doesn't corrupt or delete itself (since Windows XP anyway, thanks for the correction) so if it's corrupt or missing, you undoubtedly have other massive failures happening and will need your backup anyway.

just to remind.... http://gizmodo.com/5813257/air-conditioning-our-military-costs-more-than-nasas-entire-budget ppl fighting for the same mudball and fucking religions and not evening speaking same language. This is getting so ridiculous we really deserve to be wiped away.

Do you think that some Apple employee actually lost it's yet to be released iPhone 4G that magically ended in a gizmodo review? And all the subsequent drama related?

"Oh I Accidentally advertised your next product, oh noes Apple is MAD, oh yeah were cool now."

Really? Do not attribute to accident whats perfectly explainable from marketing.

http://gizmodo.com/5520164/this-is-apples-next-iphone

When a company is charging 10,000,000 Percent more for something than they evidently need to, I would say that's an indication that the free market, competition, and or consumers are failing miserably, and some type of legislative action is needed to correct it.

"The market will bear it" seems like a pretty shitty justification to allow such excesses to continue. The market is creating monsters here. Excessive profits aren't leading to more jobs, they're leading to buying off the government, which leads to less competition, leading to more excessive profits, a feedback loop. I don't see how this ends well for the rest of us if we don't stop it. "The new Iphone 27! $5999! The difference between it and the Iphone 26 is that the iphone 26, released three months ago, is not going to work when we upgrade our network to 47932G technology!"

Because at the rate they charge for data, assuming all text messages are the maximum possible length, the bandwidth used to transfer the messages costs $0.01 per 5,000 messages, which is 10,000,000 messages to equal $20, at $0.20 for each message out of plan, they're charging 1,000,000,000 times what the bandwidth costs are for them. Something that no free market would allow if there was competition.

I got this information from Gizmodo

Apple was sued by Creative for $100M, Personal Audio LLC for $8M, and probably more I'm forgetting about. They actually tried to deflect one of the lawsuits by admitting the basic idea was invented in 1979. Apple's situation exactly demonstrates both major problems here. No real innovation, just refinement of existing ideas with a better look/feel. And they were only able to survive because they could shrug off a ridiculous $100M lawsuit from Creative and keep going.

Scientists have done this with dragonflies: Giant Dragonflies.

Not to mention this egregious editorial. Wherein, among other things, they claim they can't be "biased journalists" because they aren't really journalists. That's odd, I could have sworn they were whistling a different tune when the cops were breaking down their doors...

Ladies and gentlemen (and bonch) - I give you, from December 2006 (before the iPhone was even announced): the LG Prada phone! A rectangular beauty with rounded corners, the first phone with a capacitive touchscreen, a single button-bar at the bottom, and - truly innovative - a UI consisting of grids of icons representing your applications, including 4 static icons at the bottom that are consistent for all screens! Step right up, see the innovative wonder of the world that Apple shamelessly ripped off in its own race to the phone market...

You can't win over audiences without using all capital letters. Also, try using less facts.

Here are some more useless facts showing how Apple used the industrial designs of Braun in many of their products. Who's copying now?
http://gizmodo.com/343641/1960s-braun-products-hold-the-secrets-to-apples-future

Actually iPhone was not the first, first version was done in Finland, but not by Nokia, as pioneers they didn't have the ecosystem so there was no market and first try did bankrupt.

http://gizmodo.com/231186/myorigo-mydevice-becomes-relevant-again-thanks-to-the-iphone

So there is previous art before iPhone, I wonder who owns the patents that Finns made or was there even patents made, at least that some serious previous art :-)

You might be interested in this article covered in a number of places online.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/ms-killed-pc-xbox-cross-platform-play
http://gizmodo.com/5593116/were-pc-gamers-too-good-for-microsofts-cross+platform-gaming-project

The story was covered at slashdot, but my search-fu only really extends to google.

I can't think of any other country with as many stories of the form "restricted-access data from XXX was left in a pub by a contractor/employee with company/agency YYY".

I know its not exactly a USB stick with bank details, but other nationalities do quite famously leave things in bars that they probably shouldn't.

Maybe it's just that the British press covers this expecially aggressively,

Ding!

Excellent point.

You have a large business where lawyers and MBA's have made the rules, and IT is expected to implement the rules they wrote.

In a hospital in the US, you have to implement policies in line with medical privacy and records security policies that have a basis in federal law.

In a university in the US, you have to implement policies in line with student record privacy and records security policies that have a basis in federal law.

In most other places, you are bound by some level of law and PHB-level policy.

Think about it: crap like this happens. Or this. Or even companies like Apple can 'misplace' a secret prototype.

And yet, there are those out there who believe that it's the job of IT to "support" every personal device they might bring round to the office, whether it can meet the security and legal requirements of the business or not, and whether or not IT have had a similar device and any chance to research what might be needed to support it ...

I'm actually quite annoyed at this. I foolishly clicked the link without checking where it led ... and I am now ashamed to have provided them a hit.

The first submission about this story supplied this link

Technology may be a pivot for many of our lives, but it's not exactly infallible. A Massachusetts man learnt that the hard way, after his driver's license was flagged as a fake on the police system, due to a facial-recognition error.

It seems John H. Gass looks rather similar to another Massachusetts driver, causing the system to revoke his license after figuring his must be the fake. Rather than head down to the DVLA to sort out the problem, he was instead banned from driving for two weeks, and only won it back after he managed to prove he was who he said he was. Worse yet, it's estimated another 1,000 drivers faced a similar problem last year.

The facial recognition software that the state of Massachusetts uses is identical to the one 34 other states use, paving the way for many more opportunities of mistaken identity for the future.