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Funny you should mention the H.264 compression behind that. I just happened to read Macintouch's benchmarks for the new Pentium Mac Pro line, and the numbers for Quicktime exporting are vastly superior on the new chips. The numbers in their benchmark showed the Intel Mac Pros exporting QT movies just under 5 times as fast as a G5 dual-core 2Mhz.) The Macintouch folks commented on Apple's seeming focus on H.264.

The upshot being that, if there was any concern with the new Intel Macs giving up any of this video chatting advantage, probably that's not a worry. The new machines cook in that compression.

I know statistics are no comfort when it's you that has the defective unit, but here's a page that has some hard numbers on Mac Book reliability.

the main reason you hear more quality complaints from Mac users isn't that the quality is lower than Dell, but because the users expect more.

This is probably one reason they upgrade so much, although in reality it is either to show off, and/or just part of their addiction.

More on topic, I have a 2Ghz White Macbook and it is the best machine I have ever owned. In the last month the only issue I had was waiting for my 2GB of RAM to arrive and dealing with slowness. After the upgrade all has been good. Technically I may have the moo, very occasionally, typically on battery, I hear the fans pulsing. It is very quiet though, and I would never try to get the machine replaced just for that.

I also have two friends with Macbook Pros, one has had his for several months, and the other for less than two months. The later is a switcher and bought it on my recommendation, so if anything goes wrong I'm certain to hear about it. So far neither has had any serious issue other than installing old software drivers or startup apps that caused lag or flakiness in specific applications.

From what I can tell, having researched the Macbook for a while before i bought mine, and reading up everything I can, the Macbook and Macbook Pro both have failure/defect rates similar or lower than other companies, and even other Apple products historically. The issue at hand has more to do with the vocal users, and a lot more switchers at this time who are also vocal as to their disappointment. For some reference, Macintouch recently did a survey on these machines. Just take that info with a grain of salt, as the vocal elite and a number of vocal switchers are involved, and many people not having any problems have a tendency not to respond to these sorts of things.

There are complaints everywhere. Take this, for example:
http://www.macintouch.com/reliability/macbooks.htm l

Your argument about first gen problems would make more sense if there were also problems with the other Intel products, but there don't appear to be.

And yet, http://www.macintouch.com/reviews/macpro/powerusag e.png does seem to indicate that the total power dissipation of the new systems is indeed slightly higher than the old.

Here's what I know of and/or could find for the ones I didn't.

• Aaron Hillegas
• Adam & Tonya Engst
• Amit Singh
• Andrina Kelly
• Andy Ihnatko
• Ben Wilson
• Brent Simmons
• Dan Frakes
• Danny Goodman
• David Pogue
• Drunkenbatman
• John Gruber
• John Siracusa
• Jonathan "Wolf" Rentzsch
• Josh Wisenbaker
• Michael Bartosh
• Mike Breeden
• Nigel Kersten
• Ray Barber
• Ric Ford
• Rich Siegel (Bare Bones SW)
• Rob Griffiths
• Rosyna Keller
• Scott Knaster
• Wil Shipley (Delicious Monster)

Unfortunately, it seems that Slashdot has a limitation on the minimum number of characters per line. So I can't just create a nice, simple list, but instead need a significant amount of text to pad out the list, so that I can make it past the filters being used. But I'm still not there yet... sooner or later I will (20.4 is still too few). I'm probably going to have to type a whole lot of crap in here just to deal with the 25 names that are only a few characters each. (and I tried removing returns from the message, but it didn't seem to help at all)

...the Mac userbase tends to be a lot more savvy than the Windows userbase.

Unsupported assertion, and in my experience not true. There are 3 levels of users, as I see it.

Normal users, all unsophisticated, all barely interested in keyboard shortcuts. This is the majority of users, Mac, PC, whatever. All just as vulnerable to phishing and trojan horse software and such.

Techie users, what you think Mac users tend to be. They tweak things and may understand what they are doing, read macintouch.com.

True experts. Much more rare than you think.

The only thing that Mac users tend to be a lot more of than Windows users is arrogant.

the funny thing is, Windows has had a indexed plugin compatible search built in since NT4.0 (1997?) It's called the Windows Indexing Service

Another funny thing is, the Macintosh has had full text searching for just as long. It was called Sherlock , and it was heavily promoted by Apple back in the day.

Doug Moen

My G5 will last me until the second generation of Intel-powered desktop machines.

Unless its coolant leaks first. The best part is its toxic green color. I think I'll stick with my G4 Windtunnel (and its four drive bays) for a bit longer.

From MacInTouch, about a year and a half ago:

Jan. 25, 2005

Boyd Waters
I plugged the power brick of my Mac Mini into a simple integrating power meter. Here is what I measured:

        Off 0-2 Watts
        Booting 30-40 Watts
        Idle 25 Watts
        Sleep 3-5 Watts, almost always 3 Watts

The power brick is rated at 85 Watts output. I have yet to measure power consumption during a compute-intensive task such as DVD playback.

I think the 40 Watt max was during hard disk and DVD spin-up at boot time. Idle means that the disk is spinning, booted, logged in, at the Finder with no user input.

I have a rather complex array of stuff plugged into the Mini via USB; there are two switches and at least one USB cable with in-line LED indicators, a wireless receiver for keyboard and mouse (Gyration, recommended, works fine with Mac or PC).

Of course this power reading does not include the monitor or the external FireWire disk.

I note that this power consumption level compares favorably with my 15-inch aluminum PowerBook, which has approximately the same specifications as the Mac Mini (but cost 3 times as much). The 15 PowerBook draws about 25 Watts nominally, about twice that under heavy compute load or charging the battery while running (as opposed to charging the battery during sleep).

Further note that the power brick and monitor are plugged into an APC uninterruptible power supply (a power strip with a battery back-up); I have yet to measure the difference in power consumption at the UPS wall outlet, but with the Mini asleep at 3 Watts, it's possible that the Mini makes no measurable difference in power consumption at the wall outlet.

If you want to see some serious application breakage, just refer to the OS X 10.3 -> 10.4 upgrade cycle (I still can't get my copy of MATLAB 6.5 to run in GUI mode on Tiger). For all its faults, Microsoft has generally done an excellent job maintaining backward-compatibility between operating system releases. But when something interfaces with the system at such a low level as the authentication framework, then of course any significant upgrade to that framework is going to require some application code rewriting.

All sorts of problems: whining noises, extreme heat, random shutdowns. Apple eventually acknowledges them, offers a new motherboard revision to all MPB owners, but the word is that not only are these problems still there, but the heat issue has gotten worse.

Maybe Apple has been dodging these issues in the past by going with slower, less complex processors? In any case, they've given me a definite wait-and-see attitude.

There are known problems with display corruption on early iMac G5s. This is caused by a bad batch of capacitors. It usually causes the entire display to corrupt, but it could cause what you are seeing. Apple offered an extended warranty to all customers with this problem, so you should be able to get it fixed if this is your problem.

http://www.macintouch.com/readerreports/imacg5/top ic2293.html

Jaguar to Tiger is a 2 point minor upgrade (10.2 to 10.4). As for sources just google for it you'll get lots of info (quite a bit on Apple's site) and for example Tiger Review: Incompatibilities and Workarounds, or updates required.

Jaguar to Tiger is a 2 point minor upgrade (10.2 to 10.4). As for sources just google for it you'll get lots of info (quite a bit on Apple's site) and for example Tiger Review: Incompatibilities and Workarounds, or updates required.

> Didn't OS9 cost a lot more than OSX?

Nope.

PFS is pretty worthless; no one cares about WMA compatibility

Err.. no. Plays For Sure To Go supports music subscription services, such as Rhapsody - which I think is significantly more awesome than iTunes. Let me emphasise this for you:

Rhapsody > iTunes

A Rhapsody subscription is the only way to go for someone who listens to a lot of new music - with instant access to 1.5 million songs. It's more comparable to a library service than a "store", although you can also purchase tracks.

If you only to listen to one or two albums in a year, iTunes is okay - but you should just buy the CD instead.

And since the iPod and iTMS don't conform to PFS, any PFS device ignores 80% of the market.

Who's fault is that? Not certainly Microsoft's! Microsoft would be perfectly happy to license their DRM technology to Apple. When Real tried to make PFS work on the iPod, Apple sued them.

Apple does not want Plays For Sure on iPods because it would destroy iTMS overnight. If Apple users find out that they can fill their entire 60GB iPod with any music they want from Rhapsody - for the cost of a single album from iTMS, then iTMS is dead - instantly.

How's that for iTMS supposedly being superior, if it's dead the second it faces Rhapsody on a level playing field?

Apple's winning the digital music war because of good engineering

How is a 24% failure rate on some iPod models known as "good engineering"? That's one in four!

PFS struggles with its corporate backing and half-assed partnerships.

WMA / PFS is open to any company to license. How is that bad? There's even a PFS player for PalmOS which runs on my phone (Pocket Tunes). It's not half-assed, it's awesome!

If Dvorak had bothered to Google for a list of Intel compatible Mac apps that are already shipping, he would have done something useful. As he has failed, I have done that job for him. Here is the list.

  http://www.macintouch.com/imacintel/ubinaries.html

There are too many apps already ported on the list to count. I did do some estimates based on how many were on the first few pages, and it looks like 500-1000 apps are on the list.

Dvorak fails to mention in his article whether that Yakov he was talking to actually owns a Mac. It would be interesting to know if he does or not. Because if he doesn't own one, then I cannot even guess what his qualifications are to prejudge what OS X software vendors are going to do with respect to Intel Macs.

I actually have a Mac, and a whole lot of the apps I own are already ported. I am running the universal binary versions of those apps on my Mac right now.

I also went to Adobe's site and they have clearly said they are going to make the next versions of their Mac apps run on Intel/PowerPC. They explained they are not going to go backward, and convert the current versions of their apps to Intel. So there will be a reasonable delay. Rosetta emulator was designed to handle those who run to the finish line a bit slower than the rest.

Mathematica is a pretty huge app and it was ported in 4 hours and was demonstrated running native on an Intel Mac back in June 2005.

Personally, I was shocked to see how many Mac apps have been ported by so many vendors in so little time. Most were probably caught off-guard when the Intel Macs unexpectedly shipped in January - instead of June - 2006. Yet they still got it done.

I remember how long it took to get some apps ported to Windows 95 - and gee, Windows NT. You didn't have so many apps ready to run native on those platforms 4 weeks after they shipped, believe me.

If he is going to publish articles to the web about computers, he might as well use his computer to search the web for facts.

I can't figure out how this qualifies as a virus and this doesn't.

Either this isn't a virus, or the "first" was two years ago.

Now that the MacBooks are shipping, do you think this will ignite a Universal Binary explosion? Within days of the Intel iMac [maybe that's what the 'i' has always foreshadowed? ;) ] being released, I saw Universal binaries for a pair of IM clients: Adium and Fire. MacFamilyTree was also quickly released as a Universal Binary.

Maybe I just happen to hit the right apps, or maybe they're small enough software shops that they can move this fast, but I have this impression that building Universal binaries is starting to move at a good clip. Here is a site that has a list of them, last updated Feb. 13:

http://www.macintouch.com/imacintel/ubinaries.html

As a long-time Mac user (with Macs at work) I am more interested in learning what doesn't work on the new Intel Macs than what does.

Here is the compatibility report from MacInTouch. They have complied a quite a bit of reader feedback. There is also a report on Rosetta compatibility.

As a long-time Mac user (with Macs at work) I am more interested in learning what doesn't work on the new Intel Macs than what does.

Here is the compatibility report from MacInTouch. They have complied a quite a bit of reader feedback. There is also a report on Rosetta compatibility.

Except when that old hardware has outdated firmware, it which case the OS X 10.2 or higher installer instantly kills all video output (preventing you from even going back to OS 9) and the only way to recover is doing elaborate ninjitsu involving removing the hard drive, plugging into another working Mac and installing a remote desktop program. Bleh. When that happened to me I lost faith in the myth that buying Apple saves you troubleshooting.

There's been an ongoing discussion about this same topic over at Macintouch.

Personally I'm a fan of the Zope / CMF series of content management systems; the built-in CMF is quite powerful and flexible (and actually fairly efficient -- don't be fooled by the slowness of some CMSs built on top).

There are many such systems. There are some in private use (like Boston.com and Saugus.net. There are also some commercial options (like Icoya). Most though are free and open source, like Plone, Infrae Silva, and Nuxeo CPS. Each has its own focus and tends to do certain things better than the others. Each has its own special plug-ins and extensions, but since they all utilize the same underlying base framework, it's usually a doable thing (although typically not trivial) to port a product from one to another.

The capabilities of Zope's built-in CMF are also good enough that it's not at all unreasonable to fashion one's own CMS on top of it if none of the existing products seem to suit one's own particular needs.

Irony? I don't see what is unexpected about this. The PPC chips used in Apple computers weren't all that powerful relative to their new x86 chips. On the other hand, x86 computers are at least comparable in power to the IA64 architecture chips. Emulation of worse chips is easier than emulation of better ones... at least when it comes to real time performance.

You've been listening to too much Apple "2-3x faster" marketing hype.

For instance, there are now quite a few benchmarks of the Core Duo iMac. There's the Ars one that was shown on Slashdot a while ago, and the Macintouch one.

The Core Duo iMac, with two x86 cores, is a very small improvement over the single PPC970. Compared to a two-and-a-half-year-old dual-CPU Power Mac G5, the Core Duo iMac is pathetic. And this is running Intel-native applications like QuickTime and iTunes.

Yep, Mac OS X can be hit with a Trojan not a big suprise there. Symantec has some info on this 'MP3Concept Trojan Horse', which is benign. It does use a neat trick to imbed the code in an MP3, but other than that it isn't that special. Tricking someone to run your program isn't really something that we will ever make impossible under every circumstances, but I will admidt that using filename extensions to identify file types is one very stupid thing that Mac OS X copied from Windows, and then hiding them by default only compounds the stupidity.

Exploit, infections from not known: http://www.macintouch.com/opener.html

But "opener" requires a previously comprimized system. A "rootkit" without a viable delivery mechinism isn't really a "virus" or "worm" or even a "trojan". Acording to McAfee: "This threat does not make use of an exploit, so to have the script run successfully on a system and make changes, the user account from which the script is run must have sufficient rights. If no superuser/root/admin access is available many of the subroutines will fail and generate errors." I don't know why McAfee classifies it as a virus/worm since it doesn't seem to have any propagation abilities.

In Wild exploit, known infections: http://news.zdnet.co.uk/internet/security/0,390203 75,39155837,00.htm

True, the exploit mentioned is a tricky thing (potentially allowing code that was downloaded to be run as trusted), however I don't know if any was ever found in the wild - and even then it would still require an administrator's password to do system damage. The "hole" was supposedly patched by Apple's Security Update 2004-06-07 according to Unsanity who had released a little application to guard against the exploit.

If those are the only ones you've found, you haven't really shown any "exploit[s] for a Mac OS X vulnerability", although the MP3Concept Trojan I guess uses some "social hacking" types of tricks that would also work in Windows by hiding that it is an application rather than an mp3 file. Even if we accept a count of 3 (or ten or twenty), Mac OS X would still be comparitively malware-free.

But "opener" requires a previously comprimized system. A "rootkit" without a viable delivery mechinism isn't really a "virus" or "worm" or even a "trojan". Acording to McAfee: "This threat does not make use of an exploit, so to have the script run successfully on a system and make changes, the user account from which the script is run must have sufficient rights. If no superuser/root/admin access is available many of the subroutines will fail and generate errors." I don't know why McAfee classifies it as a virus/worm since it doesn't seem to have any propagation abilities.

Exploit, unknown level of infections: http://news.zdnet.co.uk/internet/security/0,390203 75,39155837,00.htm

True, the exploit mentioned is a tricky thing (potentially allowing code that was downloaded to be run as trusted), however I don't know if any was ever found in the wild - and even then it would still require an administrator's password to do system damage. The "hole" was supposedly patched by Apple's Security Update 2004-06-07 according to Unsanity who had released a little application to guard against the exploit.

If those are the only two you've found, you haven't really shown any "In Wild, known Infections" in my opinion.

Uh, buddy, you're making stuff up.

In the last five years, there's been several reports of in-principle exploits, around 5 or so. I.e. someone has theoretically demonstrated a vulnerability, and created a program and shown how it can infect a machine.

But none of these have ever been found "in the wild" and infecting other peoples' machines. None. Not one. That's what we mean.


Really, none uh?

In Wild, known Infections:
http://www.macintouch.com/opener.html

Exploit, unknown level of infections:
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/internet/security/0,390203 75,39155837,00.htm

Thanks for the intellectual response, it is what I would expect from an 'informed' user like yourself.

Next time you juggle the 'reality or belief' concept, don't give in to what you want, but try facts instead.

Because most weren't critical vulnerabilities and there are no exploits. Show me an exploit for a Mac OS X vulnerability. Now, show me one in the wild. Can't? The only thing you have to do to wipe the smug look of a Mac users face is to release an exploit in to the wild.

I actually don't have to do anything that hasn't already been done...

Here is my 2 minute search for a response to your questions specifically.

Proof of concept exploit:
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-5189335.html?ta g=zdfd.newsfeed

Exploit, infections from not known:
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/internet/security/0,390203 75,39155837,00.htm

In Wild exploit, known infections:
http://www.macintouch.com/opener.html

I don't have time to do more research to help your denial, but I would suggest you actually do a bit of research yourself and see that OSX is no more perfect than any other OS. PERIOD.

If we have to choose between quiet and cool -- and I'd rather not, but this design has a history -- I'll lean toward the machine that doesn't croak six months after I buy it. Better still, waiting six or nine months on this model in its new incarnation seems wise.

(Or the MacBook instead, but no guarantees there either...)

• The TiBook, I'll take your word for it.
• The first gen white iBook, had, according to MacIntouch a 73% failure rate.
• The original iMac, I agree - I writing this on an iMac 350 :-). The revisions - I think the G5 iMac has had failures do to overheating. Especially the smaller one.
• No idea about the iPods but they sell like hotcakes so I'm sure they were good from the start (vague memory about battery trubble).

I think the problem is that there have been enough problems with 1st gen stuff that you start to think that all 1st gen stuff sucks,

That is absolutely right :-), but perception is all, after all. And these are expensive things when they go wrong.

How will we know?

Major and minor Mac news sites like Macintouch and MacNN always have someone in the audience blogging the Apple presentation in real time. Lately Apple's been blocking wi-fi connections during the presentation, but you still get the information immediately after it's over.

A Driver, on the other hand, is a piece of software that tells the OS how to interface with hardware. Usually they are shipped with either the OS or the product itself. They are also OS dependant.

Part of the problem with Windows is that the drivers that actually ship with Windows are considerably out of date. A number of them have not been upgraded since the initial launch in 2001. This is why each product from motherboards on down comes with a drivers disc. These discs are not there just there to file in a case and ignore.

Linux distrubutions are a different ballgame. They tend to have a hardware auto-discovery program that runs on boot. From there, it tells the kernel which drivers (kernel modules) to load. Since almost all drivers in Linux are written by the kernel team, actually hitting a conflict between drivers written by the kernel team is rare.

ATI and NVidia cards are the exception to the kernel team written driver rule. These two companies don't want anyone to know how their drivers work, so they ship them as pre-compiled binaries. However, it's not guaranteed to be shipped in a particular distribution.

Even though OSX only has a limited subset of hardware (as pointed out by toddestan) that it has to deal with, not everything Just Works.

iPod 10 GB Scroll Wheel - 21.5%
iPod 5 GB Scroll Wheel - 23.0%
iPod 30 GB Dock Connector - 24.0%
iPod 40 GB Click Wheel - 29.9%

Macintouch reports that Sony is also putting Macintosh DRM on some of its disks. No word if these kernel extensions - PhoenixNub1.kext and PhoenixNub12.kext - are a rootkit or not, and no word if Sony is suspending their use or not.

According to the Macintouch article, the Mac DRM is on Imogen Heap's Speak for Yourself, an RCA CD distributed by Sony/BMG.

I suspect that CD-makers won't be able to keep a stunt like this secret for 8 months next time, because their customers will be watching for such shenannigans.

Now we wait for Sony to issue a recall.

"All your replacement CDs are belong to us" - Sony's customers.

1) If you're not using windows, you're fine.

I'm not sure this is true anymore.

You can read the whole history of dying iMacs on Macintouch.

if you are part of a linux community, you get help faster, friendlier and for free. and you after giving advice to others have even a good conscience of being helpful! ... but for the average "i-do-not-want-to-learn-but-it-must-just-work" user, you are perfectly right!

The Macintosh has a "community" as well. Most minority platforms do. Heck, there are even some places where Windows users can go to get advice. (Usually having to do with viruses and spyware, but still....)

Apple User Groups
http://www.macfixit.com/
http://www.macintouch.com/
http://www.macosx.com/
http://www.mac-forums.com/
http://forums.macrumors.com/forumdisplay.php?f=78

And then there are the comp.sys.mac.* newsgroups, and others.

This is all nice about upgrading the PowerBook specs, but have they fixed the problems with the damn SuperDrives!

Fer chrissake, Opener is a bash script .

In order to work, someone must either run the Opener script with Administrator privileges, or the attacker must have physical access to the machine to use an alternate boot device and select "ignore permissions" on the internal drive. Sure, it will do bad things to a Mac. I'm unaware of any system in common use on which running untrusted programs with administrator privileges is a Bad Idea.

One version of the Opener script can be found here.

From: Toast 7 Titanium (First Look) under Video:

Perhaps a bit more useful for most of us, though, is the ability to burn DivX to conventional DVD discs for playback on our existing set-top DVD players. Toast 7 makes it dead-simple to turn a downloaded DivX movie into a DVD you can carry into your living room, kick back and watch.

"If this were Sony as an example, good luck on getting a replacement. I'm also one of their customers, or "was" I should say, because unlike Apple they don't fix the problems they create."

No one denies that there are crappy PC vendors. The advantage is that there's good ones as well.

"Now I've never heard of this. Both Titanium Powerbooks here have not had that problem and none of my friends with Powerbooks have encountered this either, and I know quite a few since I work with these types of peeps.."

I've seen it on sites like Macslash and Ars Technica, with plenty of people posting to say they've experienced it. That's not a large study, but it's common enough for relatively small sites like that to get people chiming in.

"The bugs that peeps described are odd, and if they were "major bugs," I would have encountered them on at least one of my Macs."

If only all bugs were easy to reproduce.

"A major bug for me, would be a complete system crash every-time I tried to run one of my Apps."

I would consider a "major bug" to be one that prevents me from doing what I need to do. If the guy had to use a Linux machine to finish the post, it prevented him from doing what he needed to do.

"Now if only there were a company that truly had "proper testing." Now be honest, can you name any major update for any system that has been bug free? The answer is no of course."

That's true. But Debian-stable will do many times better than OS X.

"The iMac wasn't designed for your needs. Apple did have a single configuration of the G5, but as the cost dropped on the proc, they simply offered a dual configuration in the same price bracket. G5 Towers are also workstations, so they cost more."

The PowerMacs are priced within reason for a dual machine, but the single-CPU machines weren't. They were double the cost of an equivilant PC. It's an upsell. Every premium feature is rolled into a single computer that costs a lot of money. Because these features are usually only required individually, being unable to aquire them individually is a big disadvantage. And now that x86 dual-core processors are available, you don't even have to do without the performance advantage.

"The G4 is slow in relation to what is out there now, but still has more power than other chips when configured at the same speed."

That's not true. Pentium Ms and Athlon64s are faster by a factor of 2 at integer performance at the same clock speed, and their FP performance advantage is also substantial.

"BTW, my Powerbook used to get about 5 hours before the battery started showing its age, which was way better than any PC notebook available at that time."

PC laptops now have battery lives in excess of 7 hours thanks to Pentium M, and they get better performance on top of that.

"For 2 years now, Apple has held the top customer satisfaction rating"

Given the tendency of Apple users to express satisfaction with performance that would cause dissatisfaction with others, I don't consider a voluntary survey to be a reliable indicator. For example, the Macintouch reliability survey had people trying to inflate Apple's good results.

I think there's plenty of PC users that would have bought crappy machines and not taken care of windows, and it's not hard to imagine them being happier with a Mac, but for more demanding situations I've found Apple's offerings wanting. I know a lot of people that were burned by the iBook problems that have switched back. These things put people off permanently, and they have to be addressed.

A niche player can afford to offer a few specialized machines. As long as Apple refuses to diversify, they will never be more than a niche player.

Here is the description of a real working rootkit.

Start compiling.

Hey just http://www.macintouch.com/mactable.html check this page for partial list of Jack's shenanigans. This new case sounds like a good example of a legitimate copyright beef, and if it keeps another Jack Campbell rip-off from the market, more power to them.

Don't get blindly ideological, one way or another. This is a company that has played fast and loose with a lot of things. See http://www.apple-x.net/modules.php?op=modload&name =News&file=article&sid=1483&mode=thread&order=0&th old=0/ or http://www.macintouch.com/mactable.html/ This is one of Jack Campbell's companies, and one of his self-promotions.

The alleged victim in this, Jack Campbell, is well known in the Mac community for business practices that teeter on the edge of legality (http://www.macintouch.com/mactable.html). He has ripped off customers in the past and (allegedly) served time in prison on fraud charges. I would give his tale of persecution all the worth of the paper it is printed on.

This is the same guy who held the fake Mac worm contest.

His track record shows a history of stealing products from other companies and selling them as his own, or designing "great new products" and disappearing with the investment money.

His reputation is foul, at best, and my personal dealings with him have upheld that reputation.

He is perfectly happy pimping Slashdot for publicity while he (presumably) bilks investors or whatever it is he is doing to make a quick buck.

http://www.macintouch.com/mactable.html

This is not about a software patent, and therefore has nothing to do with the current debate in Europe. It's just a known scammer whining about the fact that he's infringing on someone else's patent, and that the other party is exercising the rights it has as patent owner.

This smells fishy to me. DVForge CEO Jack Campbell has a long, sordid history of dealing in bad faith with the Mac community and being... casual with the truth. He's also a publicity whore and seems awfully prone to legal woes if you buy his endless "I'm such a victim" sob stories. I don't believe a word that comes out of his mouth without independent verification, and since the only source offered by the OP is Jack's own site, well...

His spotty history is well-document in a MacInTouch special report. I'm not saying the story is false, but I'd seek verification.

Specifics:

Why not just implement enabling technologies instead of trying to make second-rate implementations of good ideas and hard-wire them into the operating system? I'm thinking of the horrible Show Fonts gadget, the Show Colors gadget, and the Address book. Changing fonts in OS 9 took a click, drag, release. Now it requires a click, a drag, a release, a select, and then close the dialog. Why is this better again? The whole idea of building an Address book into the operating system, which they never improve and which nobody else can really make good use of. The Color gadget. WTF?

More: The random mixes of interface styles between applications. The non-spatial monstrosity they mockingly call "Finder", the lack of thought to number of mouse clicks and distance between events, and other GUI errors...

I now believe that they no longer have any real standards, just a set of guidelines that they feel free to ignore. Such details were understandably glossed over after OS X came out at first, but holy crap, Mail hasn't changed for years now, as far as I can tell. They update it, but it never improves. It's depressing.

Ah yes, Mail.app. The whole painful Mail.app interface with its weird sort-of-heirarchical menus and color labels that don't show up on messages unless they ARE NOT selected. Its underpowered rules filter. The weird implementation of Spotlight technology. The hit-and-miss interfacing with IMAP servers, misplacing messages. The ability to say "use this mailbox as the Trash," but afterwards, you can't set that back to the Trash! Endless nits like this, too many to mention, but each reflecting a lack of thought, and implying to me that Apple employees must use Eudora for their mail needs. Now it's version 2.0. Can somebody explain why this got a whole version bump? Was it just Spotlight? It's weird. Seemingly just a rewarmed Next gadget, Mail is.

Another thing is the organization of the Applications directory. Why is Grab a utility but Preview isn't? Some things go into folders, some don't. It's exactly as if each little project just picks a random spot and sticks their application there. Quick quiz: where is Stuffit Expander located? You can't move them because then they won't get updated properly. It's just crap. Crap I say!

And another thing: after software updates, sometimes the installed application is an updater such as iPod update. The installer asks me to restart, then the installed application cancels the logout to install something I don't even own. I can't choose NOT to download the update. It's pretty messed up.

Oh, I guess I'll lose karma for this post! :-) But it's the truth. OS X is a hard-core sweet technology with tons of power and is the best thing out there, but it could be a lot better if they would shine it up a bit. The spit and polish is gone, replaced mainly with spit.