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However, if we did that, then we would be no better than they are.

The Mac Observer has been keeping count...

Same goes for me with my PC and Plextor drive. All CDs I've tried so far play rip fine.

However, I remember reading in Slashdot a couple of months ago that certain protected CDs were not only impossible ot rip in Macs, but actually made the normal software eject stop working. And since Macs don't have mechanical eject, you had to do some gymnastics to get your drive working again... let me see if I can find it... here it is. Looks like you haven't come across any CD using this kind of protection...

It's official; Creationists confirm: *BSD is dying

One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered *BSD community when Objective: Christian Ministries confirmed that *BSD is satanic propaganda, part of a larger campaign by powerful & evil subversive forces such as PBS and Pokemon. Coming on the heels of recent evidence which plainly shows that *BSD is the work of the Devil, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD and it's evil ilk is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by the dominance of Microsoft and Forces of Good in computers.

You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. As many of us are already aware, it is written that in the coming Armageddon we will see *BSD and it's many daemons vanquished. Red ink will flow like a river of blood.

Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.

Hippie Apple Computer founders Jobs & Wozniak sold their first computer for $666. Their newest computer system is based on 'Darwin' - an open source system named in reference to Charles Darwin. Not only is evolutionism evoked but we all know that open source is just another name for communism. Further, as noted theobiologist Dr Richard Payley states, "Darwin OS is not the original creation of Apple Computers but is instead based off of an older, obsolete OS called 'BSD Unix'" While the clear alignment of *BSD, Apple, & open source with evil might be shocking, Dr Payley says that this is "well known among the computer elite, who are mostly Atheists and Pagans" This is consistent with the strife and 'flame wars' this elite often delight in spreading.

Due to the troubles of evil, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by something even more sinister who sell another troubled OS. Now according to a consensus of media analysts they will also soon be dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.

How long will *BSD continue to shake it's trident in defiance of God? *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be only among evil OS dilettantes. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.

Fact: *BSD is dying

Powerschool was offering this functionality long before it was assimilated by Apple in 2001, and at $6-$10 per student per year, Apple is not helping anyone, there are selling software.

Meanwhile, for external data I'll probably settle with the still very cool DIGN Case with a really sweet software configurable LCD panel...

For eveyone who thinks either:

a) it's awesome to see a game developer supporting a 5 year old game

or

b) why is /. posting a game update

This game is NOT being supported by the developers. The game was originally played on bungie.net which is no defunct (after M$ shut it down).

This is a community led support project. Probably the best example I've seen because not only have they updated the code, they've also recreated a free on-line gaming service. I'd say that is a major success story for an aging game community.

Also, for those of you not familiar with Myth (or Bungie games in general), this game is the most revolutionary RTS game as much today as it was in November 1997 when first released. I still haven't seen RTS game that comes close to the user interface and visceral intensity of this game. Although at first glance it appears similar to other games, don't be fooled. An expert Myth player can control a large army with a frightening amount of micro-management. The unit balance offers a WIDE variety of strategies and tactics to be effective, and in general the whole thing is so well designed that subtleties of the game continue d to emerge for years after it was developed.

My only regret is that the community has been reduced to a small pool of expert players and a slightly larger pool of rank-whoring players who only play one game type (generally one of the most boring). To me this game is dead, but I can never forget the greatness of Myth II in its prime. Check out Myth World Cup '99 for some of the best films ever.

Wasn't it a part a deal with Apple (The Beatles' record label), that Apple Computer Inc. could continue to use the name 'Apple' as long as they 'stayed out of the music business'? (If you have a better URL, please post it)

Check out this article on Apple's latest patents, and the bit about Digital Rights Management.

Various sources show Apple's market share to deviate between
2.8% market share and
and 10%

Now, let us analyze these numbers in order to form an educated opinion on the matter.
http://www.macobserver.com/article/2003/01/19.1.sh tml tells us that Apple shipped
roughly 1.5 million computers. Let us realistically look at this number.
Assume
that 1.5 million computers were shipped to 1.5 million unique customers, so there are
at least 1.5 million Apple customers for the year 2002.

The truth is, the way technical progress is going, most customers upgrade their computers
at least twice a year, so now we only have 500,000 unique customers. However, if you
spend some time on the apple use groups, you will realize that out of 7000 people registered
in those groups, four out of five users only pretend to be Apple users for the coolness factor.
So, applying the same logic, gives us 100,000 true Apple users out of 500,000. The number of shipped
computers does not reflect the simple reality, that about 20% of all bought computers are
returned back to the company, so that makes 80,000 unique customers left. The people who buy
Apple computers and actually use them is even lower. Only about 70% of all bought computers are
put to some real use, which leaves us with 56000 customers. Out of 56000 50% are constantly stoned,
you can confirm this with the Switch testimonials from the Apple site, just look at their faces,
listen to what they have to say.... Ellen Feis, need I say more?
28000 sober users is still a
large number, Apple should be proud of the numbers of their true followers. Of-course, you have to
take into account that about a third of all Apple computers are sold outside of the USA, which
makes it impossible to say anything reliable about the customers outside of the country, so lets just
discard these, and this leaves us with a healthy 20000 customer user base. About half of all
computers are connected to the web, which makes them the true computer users (the rest are superficial
and do not deserve our time) so 10000 still sound pretty darn good for a company named after a fruit.

About 10% of all Apple users leave in Texas and 10% in Utah, and since we do not consider these
people to be civilized enough to use anything more complicated than a toaster, let's only focus on
the true, sober 8000 power users. Out of these 8000 customers about 20% has switched to Microsoft
products after success that MS displayed with their innovative and pattented UnSwitch compain.
So
we still have 6400 users. In general, Apple users to be very vocal in expressing their opinions, which
puts their already fragile health in strenuous conditions, such that they seem to have a
disproportionaly high number of heart attacks and strokes when compared to the general population.
So, out of the surviving 400 users (which is still a great user base and a market share) 50% are
female, and seriously, seriously, can females be considered computer users? I mean they must do
something with the computers they bought, probably most females bought their Apples as gifts and
decoration items.
Out of the remaining 200 men, US-Statistics Office reports, 120 were charged with
criminal offences of varying gravity, 40 were found to be linked to Al-Qaeda and a group of 12 were
last seen four months ago going North.
28 people left to account for. I personally know 20 Apple
users, out of which I consider 10 to be total A-holes, so they don't count.
18 rock-solid, head-strong
Apple followers, of-course from this number we have to exclude the blacks, the atheists, the homos,
the vegetarians.
This leaves us with 1 user. We have identified this truly great, unique individual
who, on his tremendously powerful sholders carries gigantic burden of sustaining profitability of this
money making machine, who some of us love to hate and the rest call Apple corporation.
We are here
to conduct an interview with this incredible person, with this true follower. He gratiously accepted
our interviewer. The interview took place in the house of this incredible person, the spectacular

97,000,000 dollar mansion located on the shore of the lake
Washington.
-I really like Apple, I use iMac and PowerBook daily, they never failed me. - These are the customer's words from the interview. -The only thing I don't like about the Apple computers, is that their keyboard lacks the Windows button on it, everything else is great!

They haven't yet updated the counter for this paper, so that makes it 23 times in 7 years.

http://www.macobserver.com/appledeathknell

Anyone remember the fiasco when they tried to let other companies put out Mac Clones in the 80s?
I remember when Apple did the clone thing for a while, but that was the mid to late 90's I saw a PowerComputing mac clone for the first time at the 1996 Macworld in Boston. PowerComputing was one of the largest and best known MacOS Clone companies, and sold them from 1995 to 1997. In 1997, Apple purchased PowerComputing's which included "the right to retain key employees with expertise in direct marketing, distribution, and engineering, Power Computing's customer database, and the license to distribute the MacOS."

The offical story line for their demise was said to be "inventory and support problems, divisions in management, and heavy capital losses" but it is also well known that PowerComouting repeatedly bit the hand that fed them. At the time, PowerComputing was producing clones that were faster than the ones Apple were making at the time. Their slogan was "Were fighting back for the Mac, Lets Kick Intel's Ass" They were also drawing away developers from apple because of this. As you can tell, Apple didn't like this, so they quickly put an end to this.

To this day, my PowerComputing Power Tower Pro 180 is functioning quite well. It has a G3 upgrade card in it from Sonnet Technologies bringing it up to 300mhz, and its even running OS X

Did you know that those iBooks were bought with a donation from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation?

• MacObserver
• MacBuyersGuide

(WiebeTech is my consulting client. I did the firmware and user interface for FireWire Encrypt).

Not only is Apple a failed Microsoft, Apple owes it very existence, and lil' Stevie his paltry $372 million annual paycheck to Microsoft, a fact forgotten by most of /.'s Macaholics.

Steve Jobs, who still can't market his way out of a wet paper sack, had five years ago run Apple into the ground a second time. Had the evil, hated Microsoft not bailed them out, Apple would have gone Chapter 11 and been chopped up. Having put Apple through two near-death experiences, Jobs now makes a paltry $372 million a year on top of the $90 million Gulfstream the board gave him. Nice work, if you can get it.

Not only is Apple a failed Microsoft, Apple owes it very existence, and lil' Stevie his paltry $372 million annual paycheck to Microsoft, a fact forgotten by most of /.'s Macaholics.

Steve Jobs, who still can't market his way out of a wet paper sack, had five years ago run Apple into the ground a second time. Had the evil, hated Microsoft not bailed them out, Apple would have gone Chapter 11 and been chopped up. Having put Apple through two near-death experiences, Jobs now makes a paltry $372 million a year on top of the $90 million Gulfstream the board gave him. Nice work, if you can get it.

And then later, Apple got impatient and violated nVIDIA's NDA by announcing an Apple machine with a GeForce 4 based card before nVIDIA's official launch date.

well, considering the Gates foundation bought Apples for the Maine school district- I don't what else you would call it--

Stupid maybe?

sigh.

Unfortunately what "should be" and what will be are in direct conflict with one another.

As long as big busine$$ has more votes in Congress than the constituants of an elected politician we're all screwed.

On the bright side the idiots of my state are going to vote "Yet Another Football Player" (trademark pending) into office (Steve Largent, religious right wing nut and hypocrite). Oh well as I've said before, this only makes me more money while keeping Oklahoma a "Dust Bowl".

The Republican Party, lying to the masses for the benefit of the few. I'd bet you'll never see a Regan picture with a "Think Different" tagline.

It's always nice to talk to people who have done it before..

an article on the subject of apple and mice at
macobserver

Shades of Future Power.

killer handwriting recognition? Compared to what, a monkey? The Newton had notoriously bad handwriting recognition. A big part of what makes the Palm platform so popular is that graffiti is so much like ordinary block letter writing that it's easy to learn, but the computer has much less trouble recognizing it.

The Macintosh Way for virtual desktops is hiding. Apple-H hides an app and the Option and Command keys give you additional ways to hide and un-hide apps. Within an app, you minimize windows.

More info from OS X Hints.

DOOM III was demoed on a Mac (one of many articles on it) a while ago, and at least one member of the id staff uses a Mac for most / all their work.... AFAIK, it will be a close to simultaneous release for Mac/ PC like most id games.

This is old news. Sure it's finally been confirmed, but people were noticing this stuff as far back as February 8. Here is the mention from Feb 8 that started the articles that didn't show up until Feb 16 here and here's the old Wired article. So, if you missed it up until the final episode, it's because you weren't paying attention. In other words, yes, this is OLD NEWS.

Your argument is based on the assumption that they designed the game initially for the XBox and then would have to exert large amounts of resources to port it to other systems. After all, if the game already more or less ran on a multitude of systems, releasing it on as many as possible would obviously make the greatest amount of raw sales of the game possible.

The fact of the matter is that the company that designed the game, Bungie, had an extensive history of releasing multi-platform games similtaneously (for example, Myth II). That is, before they were bought by Microsoft.

When Halo was in development, the official line was that, again, it was going to be a similtaneous MacOS/Windows release. That's why Steve Jobs could show it to everyone at Macworld. Extensive work had already been done on the MacOS version. It was only after Microsoft bought the company that the game was delayed for other platforms than the XBox.

Also, if the APIs for the XBox and Windows are the same (or so similar, apparently both use DirectX or Direct3D or whatever) then it would suggest that even extensive development work done after the takeover would easily apply to both platforms. So, even assuming that continued MacOS development was too costly or time consuming, (even though the game had been in development for a long time before the similtaneous release was nixed), what would MS have to lose by also releasing it for Windows? Only sales.

MS probably did this because it wanted to get a flagship game on the XBox: one that wasn't available anywhere else, and would act as an incentive to buy their console. This seems much more reasonable than the claim that the sales on anything other than XBox are just too horrible to support such a release.

Microsoft just wanted to push the XBox. It wanted it's console to succeed. Such a thing may or may not be so bad depending on your world view. To those that think MS is a monopoly, it probably seems like another example of it squashing competing platforms in favor of their own.

Don't mention that Air-port thing; no one bothered with that.

Yeah, no one but Dell, Microsoft,Compaq,
I think you get the picture...

Gotta love it when the AC trolls post drivel...

I could come up with some witty retort, but, alas and alack, I won't, because one can only aspire to the level of erudition and profundity expressed by Alan "Get a rope! Yeeeee-haw!" Partridge.

If you are really curious about what "shit" I've written that has turned Partridge into the president of my fan club, mosey on over to the following sample of my work: http://www.macobserver.com/editorial/2002/03/25.1. shtml

Or, you can go on over to my homepage at http://www.ibrotha.com and judge my oeurve for yourself.

If I am a, ahem, "motherfucker," based upon what *I* write, what does that make Alan Partridge, based upon the stirring, inspiring and cogent soliloquoy that *he* has posted onto *this* site?

I love knowing that I can make a reader burst a blood vessel :-)

Rodney "iBrotha" Lain
Mac Observer columnist and all-around good egg,
somewhere in Minnesota... http://www.ibrotha.com

Yeah, Here is a good article on accessing the hidden folder on an iPod, and here is a (os 9) app to do it for you. I don't know about Windows, but i'd assume you'd just have to be able to access a HFS+ firewire drive (which is basically what the iPod is). (Keep in mind though, i don't have an iPod, so i don't have any first-hand knowledge of any of this).

Also, The Mac Observer has a nice blow by blow of Steve's keynote.

Otherwise, cool stuff!

My link was bad, somehow in pure text mode spaces are added. Try Apple vs. Apple

Whoops, my apologies, a space got inserted there somehow. Apple Versus Apple

What scam is that? Is it any different from how Apple, Cisco, Sun, or Oracle handle options?

Are you sure you want to take down every tech company that issues options just to get at Microsoft? Steve Jobs doesn't even get paid, his salary is entirely options! Oh wait, scaratch that, he got paid $1 along with his 10 million options.

Steve Jobs: Staggering Options And A Nice Plane

makes you wonder whatever happened to the beatles' beef with apple.

the company (apple computer) was expressly forbidden to take part in the music industry.

The article was on MacObserver, in the column Through Eolake's Eyes.

the eMachine. They had that fruity looking case thing going but even they switched back to the regular design

Yes they did. After they were pressured by a lawsuit from Apple.

One feature that will not be added is the ability to copy files from the iPod. Apple designed the iPod as a one-way device when it comes to music, meaning that it was only designed to accept MP3 files but not to send them back to a computer. Apple's iTunes software does not allow the user to copy MP3 files from the iPod to a Macintosh, and in a similar manner Mediafour's XPlay software will not allow the user to copy MP3 files from the iPod to any PC. Copying MP3 files off the device is not a difficult feature to implement, but Mediafour decided to respect Apple's wishes with the iPod and maintain the copy protection feature.

In other words, by turning off the automatic sync functions and saying "no" when asked if you would like your iPod library erased, you can simply drag and drop your iPod music files from iTunes to another Mac.

Ok, enough of the boring stuff. Here are some links to keep you guys semi-entertained. The Cube goes into the Museum of Modern Art. For those without a NYTimes subscription, MacObserver summarizes the article.

Now for the fun stuff. Case mods! Check out the Kleenex Cube and the Blue Smoke Cube. Also, here's an All American Cube.

C|net Editor's Choice

New York Times Review

Business Week Sweet Music

Wall Street Journal Review

LA Times Review

PC Magazine 5/5 Rating

But more to the point, who has played the cell-phone style hidden game on the iPod? With new hacking sites popping up all over, has anyone found a firmware update that gives them any more games yet? Or playback of even more media formats or other abilities? Of couse it will soon have Windows compatibility and people have been booting off their iPods since the beginning, but lately I've seen someone modifying it for use as a simple address book, people trying to get it to work under *BSD and Linux, and development of a new graphic EQ for it. Anyone else made cool hacks?

The Apple iPod does not have any "anti-piracy" features built in. Specifically, it states something to the effect of "Piracy is a social issue, not a technological one" on the packaging. You can use it with Windows (via Mediafour's XPod) or Macs, and probably soon with Linux. If you use the iPod as a portable drive on a Mac, you can simply copy files back and forth at will. But if you use iTunes to sync, the MP3 files are invisible. Some information on this is available here, and here's a simple utility to access the invisible MP3 files.

Also, the iPod supports a variety of encodings. It should support up to 256Kbps (or is it 320Kbps?), variable bit rate, joint stereo or normal stereo, because that's what iTunes supports. The 1000 songs it advertises is for 160Kbps songs.

The iPod copying limitations are not really restrictions, but rather just hiding the actual MP3 files. The MP3's can be accessed thru the command line in OS X or thru a number of graphical third party utilities, a process outlined in this Mac Observer article.

Some more interesting (?) discussion about the iPod's internals and copy protection is over at a similar article on MacSlash.

I'm getting an iPod myself, but not till January when hopefully they'll drop in price a bit when Apple announces their next line of products.

You can't copyright colours. Apple cannot stop me from using a total rip off of the OSX interface, so long as I don't use their logo,

Actually, that's not quite correct.

While you can't copyright colors, you must also remember that AQUA is not a color. But an overall design and functionality spec.

Now that you can protect, and it's called a trade dress.

A trade dress is a visual representation of an object that identifies a product to it's manufacturer.

Basically, this is what Apple used to defend it's iMac from cheap knock-offs, like what eMachine had with it's eOne.

The sort of thing you're asking about has been available for a decade -- with NEXTSTEP. I believe OS/X inherited this, but I could be incorrect.

Read this and this for a start.

Work-around for failure to startup from a FireWire drive Dik Gregory found that, after updating to Mac OS X 10.1, his external FireWire hard drive with Mac OS 9.1.1 installed, appeared in the Startup Disk System Preference. In Mac OS X 10.0.x, it did not. "However, selecting it had no effect. My system still booted from the OS X 10.1 system on my Cube's internal drive. To actually boot from the FireWire drive, I needed to first boot from 9.2.1 on my internal drive and then select the FireWire drive from the Startup Disk control panel."

There are some other problems with 10.1 but for the most part I'd say the upgrade is well worth it.

CNET also has a review of OS 10.1. There's some contraversy surrounding The "Free" OS X 10.1 Update that costs you $20. TechTV (formerlly ZDTV) also has a review of Mac OS X 10.1. I'd recommend anyone interested in Mac OS X 10.1 read all these reviews to get full coverage, and unbiased opinions.

Yeah, I thought it was a hoax too, but now I'm not so sure.

Here is an interview with some guy from Xtrem.

Trademark law is designed to allow brands to have something distinct so that clones can't fool a consumer into thinking he/she is getting the real product. This is similar to the idea behind not allowing people to wear police uniforms; technically I can wear whatever I want, but wearing a police uniform would make people think I have certain powers/rights that I don't.

So the question is, not "did eMachines steal the look and feel of the iMac", but "do the eMachines look enough like the iMac to confuse consumers into thinking that they are purchasing an iMac, or looking at an iMac when they really are looking at an eOne.". I think that the eOne is distinct enough to not fool consumers (although clearly the iMac looks better). It does take advantage of the consumer desire for an all-in-one, stylized computer. Nothing wrong with that.

Here's some pictures of the eOne, compared with this picture of an iMac. Again, I think they're different enough that the average consumer won't think it's an iMac. Which would make this not a trademark violation.

Now, to address some other issues: people seem to think this is equivalent to trying to protect the "beige case" design. It is not. That is so generic that no one associates it with any specific company. However, if someone came out with a translucent cobalt-blue cube computer, they should get smacked down because people will confuse it with the Cobalt Cube.

For something that I think is trademark violation, check this pilot look-a-like out...

The original settlement was Apple Computer was NOT to enter the music business. (aka no computers that could 'do music')

Apple was then sued a second time, and lost 26 million.

A link with some other links about it.

Wake up and get some current news. The article you cite is over a year old. And it's wrong. Things have changed.

As of May 1999, FireWire licensing has been $0.25 per device.
http://www.macobserver.com/news/99/may/990512/newf irewirelincensing.html

FireWire is catching on now more than ever before. Want a Linux example? Check this out:

http://www.idg.net/crd_firewire_69644.html

I think you need to get laid again.

Apple et all has lowered the cost to $0.25 per system, as opposed to $1 per port

Firewire licensing

So unless you think $0.25 per system is unreasonable(up the wazoo?), perhaps Firewire *does* rock?



-AS