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Sorry about the broken link. Here is the story about Spotify

Really, what it comes down to is marketing, I'm sad to say. After the Heartbleed bug was announced, a number of people took note of the fact that it wasn't even the biggest security hole in the last year, yet it received far and away the most publicity, largely because the researchers who found it waited to announce it until after they had come up with a catchy name and logo for the bug. Serious outbreaks deserve appropriate marketing to ensure that the public responds appropriately, and giving them good names is a major part of that.

I'm reminded of hurricanes and how the public viewed them in the US prior to the introduction of the modern naming convention, where they're named in alphabetical order using common names that alternate between male and female every other year. People used to not take hurricanes seriously and would routinely refuse to evacuate, resulting in a number of avoidable deaths, but as soon as they were given human names, people began anthropomorphizing the storms and treating them like something that's out to get them, which is a desirable and helpful response for the public to have when dealing with natural disasters...such as infectious outbreaks.

If we only ever heard about the H1N1 flu subtype, severe acute respiratory syndrome, and bovine spongiform encephalopathy, much of the public would be unaware of the threat that each could pose (fun exercise: do you, the reader, know what each of those is?). After all, they don't know how influenza subtypes are organized or which ones are of greater concern. And "severe" and "acute" are terms they know, but not in the context of medicine, other than that the ER doctors on TV usually use the word "stat" shortly after saying them. Hell, most of them don't know what "bovine" refers to, let alone "spongiform encephalopathy". But ask folks about the common names that those ailments go by, and a good number of them will indicate some level of familiarity.

Again, we want people to react to disease outbreaks, and giving them boring names is exactly the wrong thing to do if we want people to take the outbreak seriously so that we can keep the disease from spreading. It's desirable that people will be more careful to wash their hands after touching surfaces in public. It's desirable that we'll have a culture that frowns on people who don't cover their mouths when coughing. It's desirable that people will avoid large, public gatherings if there's an outbreak in their area. And giving them a name to latch onto is a great marketing tool that we need to be using appropriately. Giving them all names that are indistinguishable from one another is a great way to confuse, alienate, and reduce the awareness of the public when it comes to these issues.

Phones have strong seasonal sales variations around Christmas - e.g. here, so your point is quite weak.

You can use an xmpp client with facebook chat. You can also use an XMPP client with MSN messenger (if you implement microsoft's auth goop). unfortunatly neither facebook or microsoft have enabled federation with there xmpp servers so they are still walled gardens, just walled gardens you can bring your own client to.

https://www.facebook.com/sitetour/chat.php
http://www.macnn.com/articles/11/12/15/ichat.now.able.to.connect.to.all.im.networks/
http://blog.process-one.net/details_on_msns_xmpp_server/

XMPP is the way to go, run your own server with ejabberd, prosody or openfire.

Yes, these exaggerated complaints arise every time Apple releases a new phone, and in the end, they never seem to have amounted to much. Remember iPhone4 "antennagate"? It received huge media coverage, but in the end it had minimal impact on the user experience, because overall the iPhone4 got good reception, and despite all the jokes about "holding it wrong," pretty much any cell phone will get better reception if you don't cover the antenna with your hand. Loosening up your grip a bit when in a marginal signal area turns out to be a pretty minor adjustment that most people make without even thinking about it.

So are the maps flap and the camera flap any different? Perhaps Apple's new Maps application isn't quite as reliable as the old Google version (although more recent tests that objectively compare the two versions find that they are not dramatically different in reliability for simple navigation). But Google navigation is still available through Google's mobile web site and there are numerous 3rd party alternatives, so while it is always news that an Apple product is not absolutely perfect, the impact on most users is very nearly zero--and Apple will probably improve it over time, now that they are getting feedback from millions of users.

So now we find that the iPhone 5 camera produces lens artifacts in circumstances where there is a bright light shining on the lens--a situation that is problematic for many cameras for multiple reasons. There have already been numerous reports that the overall performance of the camera is quite good, particularly in low light situations. So is the iPhone 5 really more vulnerable to such lens flare than other cell phone cameras (clearly other cameras do the same sort of thing in at least some circumstances)? Perhaps; we'll have to await objective tests to know for sure. But let's suppose that it is. Certainly the iPhone 5 can successfully take pictures in some circumstances when many phones--and even dedicated cameras--will fail, due to its good low-light performance and HDR capability. So is it really such a horrible problem if users have to be a little more careful in framing their picture when there is a bright light source in the scene?

I'm just waiting for netbooks to die. I've used netbooks on and off for 20 years. They just wern't called that until recently, but last year's laptop was a netbook. The current netbooks would be good if they were 50% ultra and 50% net. Instead , they are more an exercise in how cheap you can get hardware. They are weak, cheap, and seem to have deliberately crippled features to not steal sales from the notebooks. Give them a good resolution, and decent stats and sell them as a cheap notebook, not a "cheap" subclass. Apple has it right in that if you appear to value your products, your customers will too. Netbooks embody the race to the bottom where everyone is competing on how cheap they are, not how good.

MacBook Air is not significantly more expensive than the MBP, nor significantly underpowered. It's a medium laptop, optimized for weight and space, like The HP Sojourn http://forums.macnn.com/t/490851/blast-from-the-past-hp-omnibook-sojourn Oddly enough, the first link in my search was a guy comparing his old Sojourn with a Macbook Air. The only problem was that it was very very fragile and unreliable, and massively expensive. If they had done it right when they did it, it would have owned the ultra-portable market, like the MBA later did.

"Sends other UNIX boxes to /dev/null"
http://www4.macnn.com/macnn/articles/unixad.jpg

If you don't copy the market leader, you are dismissed out of hand.

Did Apple copy the market leader when they released the first iPod? Did they copy the market leader when they released the iPhone? Or the iPad? Or the MacBook Air?

http://forums.macnn.com/t/490589/court-docs-show-apple-took-design-inspiration-from-sony

Yes...they did.

Let's ignore that that article pretty much says the opposite - here's a nice quote: "Another set of documents show Best Buy alerting Samsung that a number of customers had returned their tablets because they incorrectly thought they had bought iPads."

If you don't copy the market leader, you are dismissed out of hand.

Did Apple copy the market leader when they released the first iPod? Did they copy the market leader when they released the iPhone? Or the iPad? Or the MacBook Air?

http://forums.macnn.com/t/490589/court-docs-show-apple-took-design-inspiration-from-sony

Yes...they did.

Apple already explained to developers how to close the hole, with in-App receipts. Also, it's closed in iOS 6

True... and Apple is becoming famous for making us pay for what we already have, and as a consequence, stifling any growth that would come from existing technology. They are an embarrasment to tech, even if they do put out a shiny well crafted piece.

WTF are you talking about? Are you really serious?

Let's break your unsubstantiated remarks one phrase at a time:

Apple is becoming famous for making us pay for what we already have

What are you talking about? iTunes? Seriously? And how is Apple different in that regard from, say Amazon? You don't have to repurchase your 30 year old copy of Sgt. Peppers, you could have sucked it right up into iTunes (or whatever player you wanted) from your barely-playable vinyl copy (if your turntable still worked...).

Rip. Mix. Burn. Remember who's ad campaign that was?

stifling any growth that would come from existing technology.

You're serious, right? You do realize, of course, that you're talking about the same company who won a Grammy Award in 2002 for "outstanding technical contributions to the music industry and recording field. This is the first Technical GRAMMY ever awarded to a PC company."

How is that stifling growth that would come from existing technology? The technology existed; Apple just made it accessible to many, many more people. How is that "stifling" anything?

They are an embarrasment to tech

Again; you simply cannot be serious!

Not only is this yet another wholly unsubstantiated statement; but, it is belied by even your own very next statement, and I quote: "even if they do put out a shiny well crafted piece." (emphasis mine).

Do I really have to say anything more? The first and second clauses of your sentence cannot both be true. And considering the several tech industry awards they have received, I would venture that your statement about them being an "embarrassment" to anything is quite laughable, and in fact is an embarrassment... To you!

True... and Apple is becoming famous for making us pay for what we already have, and as a consequence, stifling any growth that would come from existing technology. They are an embarrasment to tech, even if they do put out a shiny well crafted piece.

WTF are you talking about? Are you really serious?

Let's break your unsubstantiated remarks one phrase at a time:

Apple is becoming famous for making us pay for what we already have

What are you talking about? iTunes? Seriously? And how is Apple different in that regard from, say Amazon? You don't have to repurchase your 30 year old copy of Sgt. Peppers, you could have sucked it right up into iTunes (or whatever player you wanted) from your barely-playable vinyl copy (if your turntable still worked...).

Rip. Mix. Burn. Remember who's ad campaign that was?

stifling any growth that would come from existing technology.

You're serious, right? You do realize, of course, that you're talking about the same company who won a Grammy Award in 2002 for "outstanding technical contributions to the music industry and recording field. This is the first Technical GRAMMY ever awarded to a PC company."

How is that stifling growth that would come from existing technology? The technology existed; Apple just made it accessible to many, many more people. How is that "stifling" anything?

They are an embarrasment to tech

Again; you simply cannot be serious!

Not only is this yet another wholly unsubstantiated statement; but, it is belied by even your own very next statement, and I quote: "even if they do put out a shiny well crafted piece." (emphasis mine).

Do I really have to say anything more? The first and second clauses of your sentence cannot both be true. And considering the several tech industry awards they have received, I would venture that your statement about them being an "embarrassment" to anything is quite laughable, and in fact is an embarrassment... To you!

Yes, Apple is totally ignoring this:

The Flashback malware, which has been seen to have affected as much as one percent of the Mac user base (the highest percentage of any threat so far), has finally received an official KnowledgeBase article by Apple that explains how the Trojan works, recommends how to avoid being at risk, and says the company is working on a Flashback detection and removal tool. The brief report also mentions Apple's efforts to disable the Trojan's effectiveness by disabling the servers the malware attempts to contact.

Like the Hungarian RIP Steve Jobs stamp?

VLC on iPhone was killed because it breached the licensing terms of being able to copy it from the device to another device. To quote Wikipedia "VLC was available for the iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch from the Apple AppStore, but was pulled due to a licensing conflict between the GPL and the iTunes Store agreement.[11]" Referenced details can be found here.

The story was even reported on some tech blogs...

From memory the guy who forced the removal by suing Apple was an Linux/Android developer. So, no conflict of interest there at all. But feel free to blame Apple.

Actually, I believe that Apple has buses going to and from its campus to reduce the need for employees to drive.[1] Microsoft has a similar arrangement, too.
Presumably they will extend the service to the new campus.
[1]

Can anyone tell me why this isn't prior art?

http://techcrunch.com/2009/07/04/crunchpad-prototype-coming-this-month-be-available-asap/ [techcrunch.com]
http://techcrunch.com/2008/07/21/we-want-a-dead-simple-web-tablet-help-us-build-it/ [techcrunch.com]

I know people seem to forget things, but around that time the rumor mill was in full gear speculating that Apple was creating a secret "tablet-like" device. I believe it all started with this patent: Apple Reveals Secret Notebook Tablet. The patent was reveled on July 10th, 2008. The TechCrunch "Help Us Build a Tablet" was posted almost 11 days later. And if you went to any tech site at that time, pretty much everyone was talking about "How they would love a tablet that was just like the iPhone but bigger". Actually, I'm pretty sure that's where Arrington originally got his idea for hisTechCrunch tablet.

Another thing people seem to forget, is that Steve Jobs himself said at the D8 Conference that Apple was working on a "Tablet" long before they were working on the iPhone. Apple started tablet project before iPhone, says Jobs. So with that in mind, the iPhone was announced on January 9, 2007*, that means they were already working on it well before that date. Heck in the same article, Steve basically laid out what the design was going to look like....

"I had this idea about having a glass display, a multi-touch display you could type on. I asked our people about it. And six months later they came back with this amazing display," Jobs said. "And I gave it to one of our really brilliant UI guys. He then got inertial scrolling working and some other things, and I thought, 'my God, we can build a phone with this,' and we put the tablet aside, and we went to work on the phone."

*For all your LG Prada freaks, it was announced on December 12, 2006... You're telling me Apple conceived and designed the iPhone in 28 days?!!?

Of course companies are free to expand how they like. However, they cannot make deals with manufacturers that force competitors out or unfairly leverage their position in another market to another. Apple has done that.

There... fixed that for you.

BTW, I'm typing this from my brand new 2011 Macbook Air. I've been using Macs exclusively since the dark days of Gil Amelio. I'm an Apple developer. However, I am not going to delude myself. Apple hasn't been playing fair for a while now. I enjoyed watching Apple smash the RIAA into bits, but ever since the iPhone I've had no more love for Apple. I don't worship them blindly the way you people do. I have and will never own an iPhone as long as they keep it locked down and rape developers of 30% gross at the App store.

Android is freedom. iPhone is for consumer slaves. Go Google! Smash the F'in iPhone!

Meanwhile actual hackers, like the guys who won the Pwn2own contests by beating OSX security, now say OSX Lion is more secure than Windows (even though they previously freely admitted Snow Leopard was trailing Windows' latest offering in that department.)

"Both Miller and his co-author in the book The Mac Hacker's Handbook, Dino Dai Zovi of Trail of Bits said that from a security perspective, Snow Leopard was little better on Leopard, but that Lion is a "significant improvement." Zovi describes the level of security in Lion as "Windows 7 plus plus." Apple hired the inventor of the BitFrost security system for OLPC, Ivan Krstic, two years ago in an effort to beef up core OS security. Krstic's methods in BitFrost mirror closely what has now been implemented in Lion."

Many, many moons ago (see my UID), this was a site founded about open source (with emphasis on Linux), science, and technology (with emphasis on IT). It was good, and attracted many interesting and smart people. The articles weren't always the best, but you could read comments from people who were knowledgeable in their field, and learn about really cool things you otherwise would never hear about.

But then, MS started to astroturf, and with popularity came misinformed bigots and those ignorant of science and the reasons for Free software. Microsoft and most of their shills have been (rightfully) discredited, but there has been a resurgence in people too blind to look past their brand loyalty and not satisfied with other sites that might better meet their needs. Why they feel the need to push their agenda to every inch of the Internet, I do not know.

Many good people have left slashdot; some of us still stay to try and clean things up. But it's hard when you see tons of spam and slashvertisements for companies who are hostile to freedom filling up the firehose everyday, and very little of note about open source and science and real technology getting through. Though there are still many wise people posting insightful comments here, I fear it might be time for me to leave. I'm not sure where I'd go; preferably somewhere that focuses on more technical issues; somewhere that cares about Freedom and open systems. Slashdot does not appear to be that place anymore.

Wrong. It continues to just work.

New Mac Defender variant already being blocked by Mac OS X

http://www.macnn.com/articles/11/06/02/definitions.updating.silently/

you have RTFA

Well, via Apple Insider I found a more complete detailed account with AT&T's response:

"Transparent and accurate billing is a top priority for AT&T," an AT&T representative has responded, speaking with MacNN. "In fact, we've created tools that let our customers check their voice and data usage at any time during their billing cycle to help eliminate bill surprises. We have only recently learned of the complaint, but I can tell you that we intend to defend ourselves vigorously."

It is odd that it seems to only be reported by iPhone and iPad users.

The patent was originally submitted in September 2006. Apple has expressed considerable interest in 3D tracking and interfaces, for instance through a remote concept. It has yet to implement any of its ideas in a shipping product, however, despite the newfound popularity of 3D amongst movie and gaming companies.

According to a better article Apple applied for the patent in 2006 but has yet to actually build any products that use the idea. Conveniently others have done the work and build products (google news search). This looks like some patent trolling from Apple.

I mean the software isnt the best, the basic hardware is comparable to a PC's... Is there a reason I should consider Apple computers in the future... Will I get what I pay for, or will I pay for the privilege of being locked in a walled garden?

It's a bunch of stuff that just "clicks" on you, I guess.

First, the interface is far superior to everyone else's. When I use any other OS, or even some badly ported apps, it's clear that they got the design wrong -- not having a fixed menu bar, closing a window closes the whole application, dialog boxes with non-verb buttons. When you stop and think about it, Mac OS is designed in a way that just makes sense.

Second, it is a compromise between avoiding that cesspool of vulnerabilities called Windows, and still having a decent library of commercial software. Of course, unless you need "that one specific program", or you're a hardcore gamer, you can also give Linux a try. In fact, despite some rough edges, I think most users would be better off using it.

And, of course: Macs look good! You're not paying more just for the Apple logo, you're paying for something that looks good as a whole. Compare them to almost every PC out there: featureless black boxes, some with cheap-looking chrome details, and the worst of all, pointless neon lights. Hell, even back in the day of beige boxes, Apple's beige boxes looked better than everyone else's beige boxes.

The point of a hackintosh is to get some of these advantages without the disadvantage: Macs are quite overpriced (or underpowered, depending on your perspective). But in my case, it's worse: down here in Brazil, due to insane taxes and import tariffs, Macs cost twice as much as in the USA. Steve Jobs agrees, Brazil is nuts.

The only reason Wired for iPad is so huge is because of the ridiculous approach to laying out the content using a mass of essentially fullscreen images - not text, style sheets, and discreet graphical elements - thanks to the late stage realization that they couldn't ship an app cross-compiled from Flash... so they created a series of fullscreen imagemaps as a last minute hack, seriously bloating the size compared with a more sane approach.

http://www.macnn.com/articles/10/06/02/dev.explains.massive.size.of.magazine.downloads/

Not any more. During the big E&D shakeup earlier this year (during which Robbie Bach, the leader of E&D, left the company), the MacBU was moved into the greater Office group.

They do, however, continue to operate as a separate and semi-autonomous group therein.

"You want a reason for installing flash blocking plugins."

You're searching for one?

• Mc Daily News
• US-Cert
• Adobe Systems
• Fortiguard
• Softpedia Software Shill
• MacNN

Many of these articles are redundant, I posted the links to show how ubiquitous the stories are. Flash will be around for a while since its the only game in town. But that will change, give it time. I DO NOT hate flash, but its old, there has got to be a better way to publish rich media, there just has to. I think, in time, as the OSS community wakes up to the need, some really great tools and protocols for interactive media that's at least as good as flash will come along.

Apple never called it a "retinal display". They call it the Retina Display. It's a marketing name. They said exactly how many ppi it has, so I have a hard time seeing how anyone feels misled by their claims.

Jobs made some claims:

Really, really sharp text. 960x640 display: 326 pixels per inch. There has never been a display like this on a phone. There's a magic number around 300DPI where, about a foot away, you can no longer see pixels; limit of the human retina. Everything looks like continuous curves to the eye.

Sounds to me he's claiming you can't see the pixels because the resolution exceeds your retina.

I doubt very much that Apple will restrict what books it sells on the iBooks store based on their content. Right. It's not as if Apple would block an eBook app just because someone might download the Kama Sutra using it!

They do not literally mean "this screen has the same 'resolution' as your retina".

Precisely. Quoting Steve Jobs' keynote from the WWDC via this transcript:

There's a magic number around 300DPI where, about a foot away, you can no longer see pixels; limit of the human retina.

Note that in practice, this limit is going to vary (generally, get worse) by individual due to the overall condition of their visual system.

Pst... iPhone's are the worst for security.

No, they don't merely "recommend against it". Apple argues jailbreaking is illegal. They also intentionally bricked jailbroken devices.

With that stance, hell will freeze over before Apple sees a cent of my money. Though even if they didn't say that, why crack the system when I can buy a better one that lets me do whatever I want?

And that would be relevant if they had equivalent sales. As things stand, it actually argues against your point: ebook sales in the US last year come to about $13 million dollars out of a (roughly) $23 billion dollar a year industry, according to the AAP. If the quality of the product and the price of the alternatives are the only driving factors, then I conclude that people are unwilling to pay equal amounts for a product that has no associated baseline costs and a product whose cost is dominated by those factors.

The low numbers are partially because the baseline cost is free - go to the library (or Project Gutenberg for pre-1923 works, the last year to probably ever be public domain). The truth is, the product you buy is not a product, it's a one-platform non-transferable DRM encrusted unresaleable bunch of words that will be disabled when the dot.com at the other end of the wire decides it's profitable to abandon or goes out of business, sold for the same price as a tangible product. Ebooks are massively crippled so they are worth even less than a sherlockholmes.txt ASCII file, and yet have still been priced uncompetitively, almost so they won't make a dent in the centuries-old paper codex business.

The only sheeple customers who can't say no to DRM seem to be those who respond to marketing that tells them they need to buy the latest gadgets to be cool and fashionable. Why do you think iPhone buyers were so upset when the price of the phone dropped from $600 to $400? Because more people could afford to join the fashionista club.

http://www.macnn.com/articles/09/08/21/obama.art.controversy/

The app was initially blocked because it contains Shepard Fairey's famous "Hope" poster, from Obama's 2008 election campaign. While the subject of its own rights controversies, Apple initially cited the art as simply inappropriate, due to ridiculing public figures. The classification was paradoxical, as Obama himself has been a supporter of Fairey's work.

People are jumping to too many conclusions here. Apple updated the developer terms, and has not confirmed that they will shut Adobe-compiled apps out. The compile-flash-to-iPhone feature from Adobe is vaporware anyway for now, as Adobe hasn't really shown it that publicly yet. Appleinsider is reporting that the ban is not from spite but for technical reasons; as cross-compiled code may interfere with the proper multitasking coming out in iPhoneOS 4.0.

I won't get mad at Apple until it's confirmed that they are shutting it out. Apple selectively enforces it's developer rules (they let Google's app through when it used private APIs), and Apple hasn't commented on the Flash-compiler controversy. No, a ranting Adobe evangelist has as little information as you or I do at the moment.

Umm. What is so great about a very large smart phone that can not make a phone call?

Um, because it isn't a very large smart phone? For example, can you run something as sophisticated as Keynote, Pages, or Numbers on any phone, large or small?

I believe that I covered that fact that the Lady looks good and dresses well. That I believe is what all the fanboys are paying for. Right?

So, every single person who purchases an iPad is a "fanboy"? I think you need to up your meds.

You already know Apple is all about the looks and the UI. They do not innovate. They build what has been built before, dumb it down so the stupid can be as useful as the capable then put forth the greatest marketing machine ever built to sell it.

Really? I guess there was no innovation in this, or this, or this, or this, or this. Why are there no examples of those hardware and software products PRIOR to Apple releasing them?. And why oh why do they keep winning industry awards year after year?

Are all those people fanboys, too?

Have fun fuming over this post and try not to spit out your "Half-Caf, No Foam, Soy Latte".

Sorry to disappoint you; but I'm strictly a Folgers/Walmart Half&Half/Splenda (I'm diabetic) sorta guy. Only been in a Starbucks once in my entire life. Don't even get the fake cappuccino at the fast food joints.

It seems to be pretty common after the 3.0 OS upgrade and not limited to the 3GS.:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2045240&tstart=0
http://forums.macnn.com/103/ipod-iphone-and-apple-tv/394175/battery-life-sucks-iphone-3-0-a/

Now when I pocket dial 911 there's even less chance of me pocket-disconnecting and more chance of my phone spouting emergency phrases!

Yeah, cue a lot of future 911 calls where caller sounds oddly robotic and either reports that he cannot speak or is having an asthma attack.

Well, since iPhone sales(4M) are running at about 1/3 of DS sales(12M), I'd say they have a lot to worry about.

http://vgsales.wikia.com/wiki/Nintendo_DS

iPod Touch sales add a bit more - the other 2/3 of DS sales

~40M iGamingPlatforms.

http://www.macnn.com/articles/09/04/22/apple.ipod.sales/

...and here's why: Some company makes this, but you can't listen to music while using it. What a shame, what a waste. But they figured that if somebody is dumb enough to buy an iPhone then they're dumb enough to spend the dough on a fancy accessory that they believe they need to workout.

Seems like an apropos article to throw tangential news at: the WebKit based Stainless (for Mac only, Leopard req.) introduced a completely new browser innovation yesterday, which IMHO is more important than raw speed:

From MacNN:
Version 0.5 of Stainless introduces the concept of "parallel sessions," which let users log into a single site with multiple simultaneous accounts. In accessing Gmail for example, three different inboxes can be loaded across three separate tabs. The content is further integrated into bookmarks, allowing several site logins to be loaded in short order.

Original article here.

looks like it was arround january 2007 that they were announced ( http://www.macnn.com/articles/07/01/05/1tb.hard.drive.unveiled/ ). So that would put about two years between the announcement of the first one TB drive and the announcement of the first 2TB drive. I would expect a similar gap between the shipping dates.

Dvorak ain't language agnostic, so for non-english languages it's worse.

And you're saying that qwerty isn't language agnostic? I've never had more of a problem typing Japanese in dvorak than qwerty. I'm sure for some languages dvorak makes typing easier while on other it makes it worse.

The biggest problem I personally have with dvorak is that most key-bindings are set for the best placement on a qwerty keyboard. Though Mac OS X has an interesting Dvorak command qwerty layout.

Seems like they still hvae some pretty healthy margins on hardware. Even the stuff that's supposed to be low margin would be welcome by Dell.

First, that article had been there for quite some time (but was just updated in the last week of November, when the IT press noticed it), and was just a generic recommendation for antivirus software on Mac OS X, and pointed at some third parties who provide such software. Second, the representative did NOT say "No Antivirus Needed"; on the contrary, the representative said antivirus software offers additional protection.

Antivirus software has always been recommended in our environment on all systems, including Mac OS X. But the very real fact is that -- for whatever reasons, many of which can be argued to no end -- Macs have far less problems with malware and serious security vulnerabilities that have a real impact on users.

As Macs are increasingly used in mixed environments, antivirus software is always prudent, as Mac antivirus software also recognizes and captures Windows viruses in addition to Mac, stopping inadvertent spread. For example, Symantec's full array of virus definitions for Windows and Mac OS are included in the definitions on both platforms.

Malware exists for Mac OS X (and Mac OS before), and always has in various forms. Nearly all of them -- even the recent highly publicized cases -- are trojans requiring deliberate user interaction, and have no mechanism for mass-propagation. The proliferation of hardware- and software-based firewalls and other changes have helped the situation on all platforms.

Porn video codec trojans requiring user interaction -- even as their prevalence increases as Mac marketshare grows -- do not rise to the level of vulnerabilities potentially allowing remote administrative control of all versions of Windows without any user interaction or knowledge, nor the massive worms of old costing untold manhours and untold billions in recovery and lost productivity.

Macs have very real security problems, and Macs have malware specifically targeted at the platform. But for a variety of reasons, Mac OS X is, in a very real sense, a more secure computing platform with respect to malware. This does not mean there are not legitimate concerns and gripes, does not mean Apple has made some poor decisions with respect to security, and does not excuse gloating fanboys.

But frankly, Mac users always should have been running some kind of antivirus software, even if only to prevent unknowing propagation of Windows malware, and institutions such as ours have recommended this as policy for years. But since Apple updated a knowledgebase article, and since the trend has been to give an inordinate level of coverage to any Mac security issue, however minor, I'm sure this will continue to be melodramatically blown out of proportion.

Macs have far less problems with "malware" and related issues than Windows. Not all of this is only due to marketshare. Some is due to changing strategies of malware writers, new attacks on browsers and other cross-platform applications, increased attention to network security, better user education, and number of other factors. But even as Mac marketshare grows and the platform is increasingly targeted, there still have not been any high-impact massive issues with malware and/or severe security vulnerabilities as there have been on Windows.

Apple has come a long way on security response from its attitudes even a couple of years ago, and still has a long way to go. But if a benign recommendation for AV software get blown up into a huge issue with media extrapolating that this must mean Apple is under heavy attack, and indeed, Apple may even be aware of an impending flood of malware, I'm not surprised Apple responded by simply pulling the article altogether. The perception in the marketplace is that Macs have a lot less problems with malware. That's completely accurate. Why would Apple want that correct perception tarnished by a bunch of sensationalism?

The app potential is wasted thanks to their draconian controls.

There are thousands and thousands of apps in the app store. You make it sound like there are none at all.

No, that isn't what s/he said at all... and whoever modded him/her troll only did so because they disagreed. Cowmonaut isn't trolling. Numerous apps have been killed by Apple because they compete with iTMS, or because they aren't G-rated enough, etc. I'm sure the number of apps on that page represent a tiny portion of apps that were killed or never even attempted because of Apple's lame policies. Other's like TomTom were simply aborted because of Apple's extremely lame policies toward developers. Sun was excited and ready to port a Java to the iPhone, but again, thanks to Apple's lame policies, Sun is not allowed to port Java to the iPhone.

Apple's policy is so extremely lame that you have to pay Apple just to write an app for their phone. You can't even write an app for your OWN phone without paying them a fee. You cannot distribute an app without distrubuting it through the app store and paying Apple about the same percentage as the US government's highest tax bracket. Apple's policy was so lame in fact that developers have only recently been allowed to discuss iPhone development with other developers openly and write books on the subject. Apple policy on the iPhone is tremendously, stupendously, colossally lame. If you aren't a developer... and you don't appear to be... there aren't words for you to grok how lame Apple policy truly is.

You make it sound like there are none at all.

No, s/he doesn't. But you seem to be spoiling for it.. so I will. I've been able to send faxes with my N95 since before iPhone 1.0. Can iPhone do that yet? I've been using speaker independent voice dialing since before the first iPhone's debut. Can iPhone do that? I can stream internet radio wirelessly through A2DP into my car stereo with my Nokia. Can iPhone do that? Too bad iPhone developers are hobbled by lame Apple policy. If they weren't, you might be able to do what the competition has been doing now for years. I'm still waiting for Apple to offer me a reason to 'upgrade' my 18 month old, already a generation out of date, phone.

iPhone? Fail.

Fisheye views have existed for a looooong, long time. I use the Fisheye Tabs FF extension; https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4845

But whether the general idea means that Apple can't patent their specific implementation? I doubt it.

Now let's instead ponder Apple's insistence that only they should have a logo with an apple in it;
http://www.macnn.com/articles/08/10/07/apple.knocks.vsbt.logo/

Choosing between a family vacation and a new iMac isn't going to go in Apple's favor. If they are going to remain relevant in a tough economy, they are going to have to seriously lower their prices

While I can't explain why, while we are in a tough economy now Apple's sales are actually good.

In case this Google news topic disappears:

• "Survey: Next 90 days look good for Apple"
• "Survey: Plans to buy a Mac hit an all-time high"
• "Survey: Apple riding high on news of economic woes"
• "Next 90 Days Look Good for Apple despite Consumer Electronics Spending Down"
• "Mac sales may hit record highs despite decline in consumer spending"
• "Consumer electronics spending down, but not for Apple"
• "ChangeWave: Apple Mac planned purchases for next 90 days hit new all-time high"
• "Demand for Macs remains high in spite of spending"
• "Report: Mac Spending Up Despite Poor Outlook for Consumer Electronics"

Falcon

You'd have to get into federal and not state politics. Comcast is nation-wide. Mayors and local politicans, though I'm sure would be more willing to cooperate, won't help a cent if they can't do anything. Its at the FCC, Senate and Congressman level.

I pay about $40 a month for an (unofficial) 60 GB. Highway robbery. They all use the same PR crap. 5 or 10 % of users use 90% of the bandwidth. So what if they do? They were advertising for the most part true-unlimited internet. What's changed?

iTunes, YouTUBE, and the other services you mention. If you've worked for a cable company before, you'll know that there are a TON of calls coming in to order movies, PPV, etc. If the cable company is publicly traded and is in multi-states or nation-wide and esp. in densely or highly populated stakes the revenue you'd loose would be tremendous.

The only way to win. The pocketbooks. Don't order PPV. Download as much as you can to the cap each month. Encourage others to do the same.

Put another way, the same public relations is starting to show up on cell phone service too: http://www.macnn.com/articles/08/08/28/rogers.iphone.data.plans/ lets see if you find this familiar:

"After a great deal of public focus, Canada's Rogers Wireless has revealed that, despite the scrutiny the company's data plans see, 95-percent of iPhone customers have used less than 10-percent of their data plan. The news comes after Rogers was blasted for not including unlimited data like with AT&T in the US, according to The Globe and Mail."

Oh yeah. Give the impression data is almost unlimited. Then when people aren't using enough, decrease the data that can be used. Why make it unlimited if nobody uses it? Then, say well since 5% of users use 90% of bandwidth (same argument with Cable/DSL providers), charge an absurd amount of money for over-use and throttle connections.