Slashdot Mirror

You conveniently ignored the other thing I wrote. So, let me ask again, why were there infinitely more viruses released for the in the System 6-7 era? (Inifinitely, as in 26 versus 0.)

I can tell you why, but it's not worth my time, since you've already made up your mind.

FireWire licensing was reworked in 1999 and is no longer prohibitive at all. Even FW 400 is much faster than USB 2, despite the lower clock speed. I don't get why it hasn't trumped it in the market, but I'm guessing cost of manufacture is a factor.

Since the article site is so clearly slashdotted, here's a related article from MacObserver.com entitled Greenpeace Hazardous Material Report Slams Apple.

The environmental activist group, Greenpeace, released a report on Monday titled Toxic Chemicals In Your Laptop that attempts to list the percentages of toxic chemicals found in several different laptop computer models, including Apple's MacBook Pro. Greenpeace tested the computers for compliance with The European Union's RoHS directive - a set of voluntary guidelines that restrict the use of six hazardous materials in electronic devices.

The study tested Apple's MacBook Pro, the Acer Aspire 5672WLMi, Dell's Latitude D810, the HP Pavillon dv-4357EA, and Sony's Vaio VGN-FJ 180. The tests concluded that the MacBook Pro was fully compliant with the RoHS guidelines, but the HP laptop was not. In fact, the MacBook Pro was fully compliant with the RoHS guidelines months before they were enacted.

The tests also checked for two substances not included in the RoHS guidelines: PVC and TBBPA (a flame retardant). 262 parts per million of TBBPA were found in an internal fan assembly in Apple's laptop, the highest percentage of the laptops in the study. PVC was also found in the plastic coating on a fan wire.

Considering how the MacBook Pro ranked in the Greenpeace study - with a decidedly negative spin - it's no surprise that the group listed Apple as one of the least environmentally friendly companies in its report titled Guide To Greener Electronics. In that report, which was weighted more heavily on the use of toxic substances in production instead of recycling, the group ranked Apple near the bottom of its list.

Iza Kruszewska, Greenpeace International toxics campaigner, made a point to single out Apple by stating "It is disappointing to see Apple ranking so low in the overall guide. They are meant to be world leaders in design and marketing, they should also be world leaders in environmental innovation."

The two reports seem to be at odds since the Guide To Greener Electronics report slams Apple for its hazardous materials use, but the Toxic Chemicals In Your Laptop report offers a different story. The HP Pavillion, which Greenpeace ranked higher in the September report, contains lead - a material Apple does not use in the MacBook Pro. Dell also came in with the highest overall concentration of bromine in its laptop.

Apple explains its environmental stance, along with information about its voluntary take-back and recycling programs, on its Web site.

According to the Apple Death Knell Counter, as of the date of this posting, you'd have exactly $2.55.

What does Google got that Akamai ain't got, other than courage?

HH

What makes the hottentot hot?

Apple hasn't generally been referred to as "beleaguered" by the main-stream press in a decade. There are still those who try and predict Apple's death (51 times since 1995 - http://www.macobserver.com/appledeathknell/index.s html) but they have always been hilariously wrong.

Apple is having it's own financial reporting issues of late, and these have been widely covered in the media.

Where are you getting that from?

You can read one story here - 12% vs. 6% in January.

That's the whole portable computer market, and a pretty big rise. It was also discussed on Slashdot (and elsewhere) previously.

Growing to what? 4%? What was it six years ago? 2%? Do you really think that matters?

Yes, I think that matters.

Operator: And our next question we'll take is from Arik Hesseldahl with Forbes.com.

Arik Hesseldahl: Hi, Steve. Always concerned about -- not concerned, I guess, but wondering -- one of the previous questions was about revenue. I'm wondering if iTunes has reached the break even point yet.

Steve Jobs: Yes. The iTunes music store had a small profit this past quarter.

Where the fuck do you Apple kooks get this crap! Apple's worldwide marketshare has been in a constant decline ever since Jobs took over.

Here's some more links on the subject

http://www.macnn.com/articles/05/12/02/safari.popu larity.growing/

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/jun 2006/tc20060615_080175.htm

http://www.macobserver.com/article/2006/07/19.18.s html

Explaination of the Myth of Market Share (Google Cache)

It seems that Apple has something clever up their sleeve according to Robert Scoble: "Speaking of Apple," Mr. Scoble concluded, "they are readying a dizzying amount of new products. I wish I could camp out at an Apple store during the World Wide Developer Conference on August 7th. I wish I could say more, but that'd get me sued by Steve Jobs and I don't need that kind of heck right now." http://www.macobserver.com/article/2006/08/03.8.sh tml and http://scobleizer.wordpress.com/2006/07/31/mclaws- is-right-on-windows-vista-ship-date Ok, ok ... so this isn't really news, but it is still fun to work oneself up into a lather about the latest and greatest from His Steveness. Now that I live in London I can't really attend these fab Apple confabs. I was there in NYC back in whenever it was when Steve said, "now reach under your seats" and found a lovely new Apple Pro Mouse. Those were heady days, indeed. As a wannabe photographer (http://homepage.mac.com/nevermore/), I keep hoping for speed boosts to Aperture ... though I'm sure it'll scream on the new MacPro's ... or is that Mac Pro sans article (as in, don't eat iPod, say hello to iMac)? And I'd really love to trade in my trusty olde iPod (10GB 2nd Gen - battered from falling into the cross-trainer at the gym, but still very much functional) for something with a wide screen that plays movies.

If you want to be able to play the latest and most popular games guess which OS you better be running?

Guess the percentage of Windows apps can be found for a Mac? If you guess 50 you are being way too optomistic

Hate to rain on everyone's parade, but a "Perfect Storm" of Mac sales isn't likley to happen anytime soon, if that means widespread purchases & use of Macs. The iPod "halo effect" is there, but it's weak, and we're already seeing it in the current sales numbers FWIW. Corporate IT people still scoff at the Mac - maybe not as loudly as before, but they would never bet their jobs on any kind of a switch (and betting their jobs they would be if they migrated their departments). I certainly haven't heard of any big companies adopting Macs en masse recently. Mac sales will probably continue to increase a bit on home sales, but even an incredibly optimistic near-50% growth per year still gives Apple only single digit market shares as 2010 closes in. And growth like that is not likely to happen. To put things in perspective, last year's total PC market was estimated by IDC at about $218B, and Apple accounted for just over $8B of that from Mac sales. Apple has a long way to go before Macs stop being a rarity.

In the 90's there were so many preposterous predictions of a 'beleaguered' Apple's demise that MacObserver started the Apple Death Knell Counter. With Apple's (deserved) good fortunes now and the irrational exuberance shown by many of the same pundits maybe someone should start an Apple World Domination Counter instead.

Any Mac fanboy can tell you that it's quite the opposite.

At least they're not exploding.
http://www.macobserver.com/article/2006/06/21.8.sh tml

They did drop the price on Shake for Linux. 2 years ago, it used to cost $9,990 for Linux and $4,950 for Mac. 3 years later it's now $4,999 for Linux and $499 for Mac.

I seem to recall similar statements made in 2001 about new and improved user-oriented operating system XP. XP was supposed to be the most secure O/S ever and M$ made lots of statements about it being very secure, best ever, very hard to hack, etc.

http://www.macobserver.com/article/2001/12/21.5.sh tml

It was so secure that a guide had to be published, Windows XP: Surviving the first day:

http://seclists.org/lists/security-basics/2003/Nov /0555.html

http://www.macobserver.com/columns/hiddendimension s/2006/20060605.shtml

The reality is that desktop linux, while not as polished as Mac OS X, will eventually overtake Mac OS X on sheer ubiquity of it in other areas, and the integration of Linux on desktop computers in the work environment, its cross portability with embedded devices, and its easy integration with Linux and other *nix powered back end servers. I'm not going to be one of oft-quoted but never fulfilled Apple doom-sayers, but Apple is statistically not of consequence anymore. They may very well keep carving themselves a niche, and able to capitalize on their image and their brand, but they're are no longer relevent.

http://www.macobserver.com/article/2004/08/11.2.sh tml

It's still unclear whether Linux or OS X is #2; that article is from 2004, and both Linux and OS X have gained market share since then.

As far as servers, Linux is actually #3 after the combined market share of all UNIces. If you separate out OS X Server explicitly, Linux clearly wins, though.

I read the posts, and didn't see it mentioned yet, so an FYI for interested parties and conspiracy theorists everywhere:

Hagens Berman LLP was Microsoft's counsel during the DOJ Antitrust Case. They also represented Microsoft in other cases, such as the Florida Antitrust Case. They are suing Apple over the "iPod hearing damage" issue as well. The firm is now called Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP, but that just represents the new partners.

They are also hiring junior lawyers who worked on Microsoft's behalf on Antitrust actions, such as Associate Jeffrey A Lang. Mr Berman is something of an AntiTrust specialist, and the main office and office of the founding partners is in Seattle, so it's hardly a surprise Microsoft used them. But, I'm sure Mr Berman's firm is, umm, grateful, for Redmond's hefty payments for legal fees, and let's not forget that even though there was a settlement, these things are not really over until they're over, and that hasn't happened just yet. In other words, It's difficult to believe he's not still getting fees from Microsoft.

" ...
More recently, Microsoft recognized Mr. Berman's experience and expertise when the company retained him to be part of the core national team representing the company in antitrust class actions arising from Judge Jackson's Findings of Fact in the Department of Justice antitrust case against the company. ..." From: Steve W Berman Biography at his firm's site

The suit under discussion:
"Tomczak v. Apple Computer, Inc., Case No. 5:05-cv-04244-RS," filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, under Judge Richard Seeborg.
Representing the Plaintiff/s are: Steve W. Berman of Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro, LLP, 1301 Fifth Ave., Suite 2900 Seattle, WA 98101, Phone: 206-623-7292, Fax: 206-623-0594, E-mail: steve@hbsslaw.com and Elaine T. Byszewski or Lee M. Gordon of Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro, LLP, 700 South Flower St., Suite 2940, Los Angeles, CA 90017-4101, Phone: 213-330-7150, Fax: 213-330-7152, E-mail: elaine@hagens-berman.com or lee@hbsslaw.com.

You also won't be surprised to learn that Berman is suing Apple on behalf of Nano owners in the UK and Mexico; also filed in USDC for Northern District of California.

As for those who doubt the likelihood of a blog being the reason Jason Tomczak was first contacted by a representative of Mr Berman's firm, The Apple Observer, a Mac-centric news site, interviews Patrick Warner, an attorney with David P. Meyer & Associates; the firm was hired by Berman's to assist in the Nano suit. In the article, under "A closer look at the filing", they note that " ... Last week's filing included quotes from many online message boards, blogs and other sources where the problem was discussed, including Wall Street Journal technology columnist Walt Mossberg. ..."

hmm... rumors?

http://www.macobserver.com/article/2005/05/10.18.s html

http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/12/ 12/1549216&from=rss

it is from December 2004, but it has been "hacked" and done, and i agree... Apple needs a tablet... but i dont like the "new" patent (from the 10th) i think they need to take a page out of Gateway's book with their tablet...

http://www.gateway.com/products/gconfig/proddetail s.asp?seg=ed&system_id=m280eb

i think the versatility of having a laptop or a tablet is great... not everyone wants JUST a tablet, but a lot of people want or could use both...

but the new laptops are cool, trendy like the RAZR phones (which i have... the black razr is so much better than the silver! hehe)

go apple!

So Apple's marketshare was never very large pre-osx and there were a few viruses available for the Apple Macintosh platform. The marketshare still isn't very large, but not a great deal smaller. Still, post mac osx, no real virus threats.

According to this posting at macobserver:
http://www.macobserver.com/editorial/2003/08/29.1. shtml
He found 26 viruses that targetted Mac OS Classic, 553 Microsoft Macro viruses, and 0 Mac OS X viruses. This was in October of 2003.

So if you give Mac OS X a single virus to make the math work, there are 96% more viruses for Macintosh pre Mac OS X. There was not a 96% drop in market share for Apple from Classic to Mac OS X periods of time.

last section of a Mac Observer article from December 2005 comes to a similar conclusion... http://www.macobserver.com/columns/devilsadvocate/ 2005/20051216.shtml

The record is pretty bad. In fact, if Apple continues to fail at this rate, pretty soon they'll bring down the whole economy with them.

The link that the summary included about leaving a lot to be desired dates back to October 2003. Many of the issues have since been taken care of in the 2-1/2 years of software revisions and updates. The first few issues that the article states are really hardware problems related to the Titanium powerbook, which is even older.

The second link the submitter uses (desired) links to a long rant about how the iTunes Music Store gyps artists out of their due and is a poor choice for end users because you pay too much for lossily-compressed music.

And yet, the submission is about Rockbox, which is a replacement for the firmware inside of an iPod (and some other music players). The open-source firmware allows you to change the look and feel of the user interface and supports some other music codecs. This allows the iPod, its users, and independent artists to be freed from the tyranny of iTunes and iTMS [some sarcasm added].

The relevant link to Tim Lord's article at Newsforge is missing from the summary entirely, although its existence is alluded to.

Do I dare to use the term non sequitur here? Changing the firmware on your iPod will only change how you interact with music you already have now. It won't change how iTMS or iTunes work. I would argue that it doesn't do much to help out independent artists, either. If you want to support artists directly, you aren't going to be buying label-backed music from iTMS anyway. How many independent artists release their materials solely using Ogg Vorbis? I'll note that, until this past year, iTMS didn't even break even.

Don't get me wrong - Rockbox is really cool. I think having a customizable interface for the iPod is a neat thing to tinker with. I would agree that the iPod should support more formats than it currently does. But trying to introduce people to Rockbox by using old links and feeding on barely-related resentment for the iTMS model, while forgetting the relevant link at NewsForge, is a strange way to go about it.

So, in conclusion, your message is standard MacZealot-talk, and MacZealots have a horrible track record predicting Apple's next move over the last year.

You know, I wasn't really planning to replace my dual G5 powermac for quite some time, but this might be enough to motivate me to put it up on ebay and get an intel machine when they come out. Every once in a while I get the "hey you gotta try this awesome game" IM from a friend, and being able to fire up windows and give it a shot would sure be nice. I still have no desire to waste space with a second windows box that would only be booted once in a while, but being able to dual boot would be pretty sweet. Plus, with virtualization coming soon (beta already out), there's suddenly a whole lot more reason to upgrade to intel macs.

This dispute has nothing to do with Beatles music being on iTunes. The Beatles music is not available via any digital store

In 2003, Apple Corps indicated they had no plans to make Beatles available online. The foolishness of this anti-digital stance was summarised quite succintly here:

The Beatles seem almost intent on relegating their incredible legacy to irrelevancy. Unlike the move to CDs, which The Beatles deftly milked for all it was worth, what The Beatles are doing now is ensuring that the only way to get their music online is through piracy. The band is driving its perceived value to zero with the next generation of music buyers.

Apple is going to go OUT OF BUSINESS!

Steve Jobs is dumping his shares in Apple and, of course,
is trying to cover his tracks ...

http://www.macobserver.com/article/2006/03/27.3.sh tml

Steve Jobs let Apple Computer use 4.5 million of his recently vested 10 million stock shares to cover his tax liability

Hmmm. Isn't the tax 15%, not 45% ???

Dumping that many shares is a sign that Apple may have peaked.

Makes you wonder about the the objectivity of the Apple watchers in the press corps.

Is this battle why the Beatles' catalog isn't for sale in iTunes?

Though I guess they aren't available in many other music services, either...

I guess that's why Russia has obligatory licensing.

I don't know about you guys but I just wanna watch Bill show this off and watch history repeat itself. Windows 98 Windows Live CES - XBox.

Another Apple death knell to join the long list.

http://www.macobserver.com/appledeathknell/index.s html

Fire 2

Fire 3

Pick the one you like - I've got more!

FYI Apple machines are assembled by Taiwanese companies Asustek and Quanta Computing. The hardware is assembled to spec and badged "Apple" as it comes off the shelf. The MacIntels are nearly identical to some offerings from Asus directly (which sell many times more laptops under their brand BTW).

In this way, Apple is as much a "hardware company" as Kentucky Fried Chicken is a poultry farmer.

More here and here.

XMilkProject said: "...and it's also fair to say that most of the 4% of OSX users are in very non-technical fields, and far less likely to be capable of the technical mischief"

On the contrary it's Windows that is not up the task of running in highly technical areas. The University of Virginia built the currently 20th fastest supper computer in the world out of essentially stock Mac Xserves see: http://www.top500.org/lists/2005/11/basic

How many Windows boxes are on the top 500 list, hint, zero because Windows is not a supper computer class operating system. The BSD based Darwin is a real Unix, it can run XII and in fact G5 powermacs are used in genetics research as a full fledged workstation, despite being a consumer "desktop" computer etc.

See for example: http://www.bio-itworld.com/products/041604_finch.h tml

http://www.macobserver.com/article/2004/01/13.4.sh tml

Microsoft does make a decent word processor I wrote this in word, that's about as "technical" as I'd like to get with M$ software.

Please do some research before you just spout off a troll M'K?

I think you've missed his point. This is a common industry practice used for just about every piece of hardware and software on the market. To single Steve Jobs out for this practice rather than accepting it as the "norm" shows a distinct anti-Mac bias.

Horse crap. Common industry practice or not, I think most slashdotters will call bullshit to these sort of claims whether it comes from Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs or Linus Torvalds.

It's hard to be deceitful when it comes to something as nebulous as benchmarks

Well I don't know about that - seems pretty easy to be deceitful and called for it if you ask me.

Apple death knell number 49 since 1995.

http://www.macobserver.com/appledeathknell/index.s html

i have seen something like this RAM Drive back in the ISA-Bus days... it hasnt been quite successful

ISA-Bus days..lmao! SCSI and PCI based RAM Drives were a key strategy for 68K developers on the Mac (22 years ago) and Amiga (21 years ago) platforms until the early 1990s. The huge number of header files needed to support the GUI frameworks and OS-kernel/Toolbox APIs with such slow (MFM/RLL) hard-drives and busses (60KB/s) of the era dictated this as an absolute necessity. Of course, the poor guys who were dealing with "ISA-Bus" just had to pull in stdio.h (to support DOS) and thought all all of us (3,000 or so) 68K developers were insain.

[begin slowly-i-turn-step-by-step-inch-by-inch] If Irving Gould hadn't messed with Jack Tramiel and John Sculley hadn't messed with Steve Jobs, I don't think it would have taken 18 years and a few Dead Geniuses to prove them all wrong, either.[end slowly-i-turn-step-by-step-inch-by-inch]

Back in the present, if you check the latest version of Apple's development tools (included FREE with every Mac, yo), you'll find that they are more than pretty syntax-aware editors with hyper-linking and documentation-lookup. Under the hood, these tools support Killer features that decrease the compile-link-debug turnaround using every trick in the book (except reaching into the page-table-entries --they'll realize that once they come up for air from Rosetta). These features, some 20 years in the making, afford developers more time to do trial-and-error tweaks and unit-testing (since changes in the source are "instantly" visible in the executable), so the quality of the code shipped to customers can be much better, even when using dog-slow CPU chips (thank you Motorola) or (4200-5400rpm) laptop drives. In fact, unless your (executable) App needs a lot of CPU or disk performance, it's really hard to justify buying a top-of-the-line Mac with 10,000 rpm RAID-1 drives just to support software engineering and certainly no need for PCI or SCSI based RAM drives --you can get by very nicely with a 17" laptop, an external monitor, firewire 7200rpm drive and an a couple of mini-macs to play "target practice" with.

[begin lets-not-waste-another-18-years]Now, if Apple can only overcome the windfall its competitors (HP, DELL and Gateway) are in for as customers realize they really do need a new PC to support Windows Vista, then world domination is assured. Can you say to Apple, "Give me a $200 competitive upgrade discount off any IntelMac in exchange for my activated-copy of WinXP (which Apple can then tell the Microsoft-overseers to have Microsoft de-authorize some 30 days after your upgrade to OSX86)?"... If not, then Windows will likely continue its long history of "borg-ing" every other company's cool ideas and leveraging them to make money through that big market share they gained with exclusionary contracts at the end of the 1980s (when our anti-trust people were pre-occupied with IBM mainframes and Selectron typerwriters). Gates is no idiot and he just doomed PalmOS on the mobile platform (so when the PC is dethroned by cell-phones, those phones are likely going to be running Windows. Jobs is no idiot either and nobody cares about Windows Media 11 for a reason... Let's just hope he can make Gates lose as many customers as possible in the transition from XP to Vista! [end lets-not-waste-another-18-years]

You can also run Dashboard widgets in Panther using Amnesty. Costs $ tho.

Let's be clear on this: Apple does not make lots of money on the iTunes Music Store. It was not until just recently (4Q FY2005) that iTMS finally posted a profitable quarter. It's primary purpose is to sell iPods.

Recall also that, while the exact details are confidential, it is known that about 70 cents of each 99 cent download goes straight to the music labels that lisence the music to iTMS, which in turn keep about half of that as profit. Apple's costs to run the iTMS probably eat into a big chunk of the remaining 29 cents - imagine the datacenter infrastructure and bandwidth costs. The push behind flexible pricing (mostly so that prices can go higher for popular songs) comes from the music labels - Steve Jobs has vehemently resisted it for quite some time.

so while it is true that iTMS does not have the traditional costs of CD distribution, tthe $0.99 price point isn't about being greedy.

I seem to recall that during Microsoft's trial, the judge asked everyone who used a computer to raise their hands. Most of the room. Then everyone who used a computer running a non-MS desktop. A couple of hands.

MS Windows still has a 90-95% share of the desktop and laptop OS market. MS Office still has a 90-95% share of the office suite market. Heck, even IE still has an 85% percent share of the browser "market" according to a recent estimate, and this is considered an open source success story!

Friends inside the PC manufacture and sales industry tell me that these companies still make a lot of business decisions against their own interests based on what will happen to their relative costs of MS licensing (vs their competitors) if they go the "wrong" way. Linux has started to appear on consumer boxes, but only in very controlled ways, and only a fraction of them. This is partly the result of Microsoft deliberately using its monopoly powers to keep desktop and laptop manufacturers from heading in that direction.

Microsoft entering other markets in anticipation of declining OS and Office Suite revenues has little relevance to its current monopoly position. They still hold a monopoly in every area they ever have, and they still abuse that monopoly in furtherance of their interests. Enjoy.

Yeah, I know where what you meen. Using celebrites to sell your products is the worse

It's just so lame
when compaines do that

These lame celebrity ads/giveaways/endorsements have got to stop!

Hmmm... all of your links contain content from this year.

Are you an idiot? What about 2002/11 don't you understand in that link? Let me spell it out for you: in 2002, Jim Heid published a book called "The Macintosh Digital Hub". Here you go: Macworld 2002 Keynote. After 30 seconds of googling, I was able to find that article, which places the original reference from Apple as Steve Jobs' Macworld 2001 keynote. Or here are live notes from the 2001 Macworld keynote (which was in January, 2001, I might add).

Also, "years" means more than one. Look it up.

"Microsoft has been working on a digital hub strategy for close to 10 years." Ha. I worked at WebTV. I did presentations in the Microsoft Home. Their strategy has been all over the map. They have tried everything they can to weasel their way out of the computer room and into the living room. I wouldn't call it much of a strategy. Apple's Digital Hub strategy has been pretty focused and consistent: they want to manage all of your digital media, from music to photos to DVD. Apple says a lot of things that are inconsistent ("no video ipod"), but unlike Microsoft or Intel, if you actually follow what they *do* and not what they say, they are very consistent and have a very coherent strategy.

At least 46 times since April 1995.

I can't help but notice the omission of "faster processor" there, is there really no boost in speed? Yikes!

No, the Yikes PowerMac was the original 400MHz G4 Powermac revealed in August 1999.

;)

(Sorry-Let me link that for you)
http://www.freep.com/money/tech/mwend6_20021206.ht m
http://www.macobserver.com/article/2002/12/06.11.s html
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/12/06/155422 7&tid=133

Here's a link to live coverage of the event: http://live.macobserver.com/article/2005/10/specia levent_keynote.shtml