Slashdot Mirror

Have you really never heard of or used the column browser in iTunes?

http://www.macworld.com/article/1167247/cook_apple_planning_professional_mac_for_2013.html#lsrc.twt_jsnell

Tim already said it is coming. The email has been confirmed by Apple. "Apple confirmed to Macworld that the message is indeed from Cook."

http://www.macworld.com/article/1167247/cook_apple_planning_professional_mac_for_2013.html#lsrc.twt_jsnell

Tim already said it is coming. The email has been confirmed by Apple. "Apple confirmed to Macworld that the message is indeed from Cook."

No ones doubting the message, just its interpretation. "... something really great late next year..." could mean a new MP desktop or something completely different. People want to believe Apple will continue to build a high end expandable MP but their idea of "really great" may not be that. Hell, it could be an iMac Pro or Mini Pro my point is nowhere in the email does Cook explicitly say a new MP is in the works. The email is classic corporate speak that let's everyone read into it what they want to hear.

it reminds me of the old board game Diplomacy - never make a specific promos is but say things in a way that makes people think you are on their side.

http://www.macworld.com/article/1167247/cook_apple_planning_professional_mac_for_2013.html#lsrc.twt_jsnell

Tim already said it is coming. The email has been confirmed by Apple. "Apple confirmed to Macworld that the message is indeed from Cook."

http://www.macworld.com/article/1167247/cook_apple_planning_professional_mac_for_2013.html#lsrc.twt_jsnell

Tim already said it is coming. The email has been confirmed by Apple. "Apple confirmed to Macworld that the message is indeed from Cook."

No ones doubting the message, just its interpretation. "... something really great late next year..." could mean a new MP desktop or something completely different. People want to believe Apple will continue to build a high end expandable MP but their idea of "really great" may not be that. Hell, it could be an iMac Pro or Mini Pro my point is nowhere in the email does Cook explicitly say a new MP is in the works. The email is classic corporate speak that let's everyone read into it what they want to hear.

it reminds me of the old board game Diplomacy - never make a specific promos is but say things in a way that makes people think you are on their side.

http://www.macworld.com/article/1167247/cook_apple_planning_professional_mac_for_2013.html#lsrc.twt_jsnell

Tim already said it is coming. The email has been confirmed by Apple. "Apple confirmed to Macworld that the message is indeed from Cook."

After that, they'll pressure the Internet to remove all adult content as well.

This amounts to the removal of The Internet.
If Apple - or anyone else - would ever ask for this, it's just easier to remove them from the Internet - it's not like it haven't happened in the past.

I'm seriously NOT trolling; but I've personally always found it fascinating that Apple, THE company that, if nothing else, POPULARIZED the GUI interface (see that trick for avoiding the "Apple ripped-off Xerox" flamewars?), not only is REFUSING to buy-into the "Touch desktop/laptop" drumbeat, but significantly, actually has a MUCH more robust set of "Keyboard Shortcuts" than Windows (See this eye-popping list. Shades of Emacs!!!). I have scoured the web (admittedly for only 5 minutes), and I can't come up with a list of Windows OS Shortcuts (that doesn't include application-specific shortcuts) that is nearly as lengthy. Heck, Windows 8 doesn't even have a keyboard shortcut for Shut Down. Sure, you can DO it; but it's a multi-step procedure...

I don't agree that OSX has better keyboard shortcuts than Windows. There are several things that have no default key or can't be done with the keyboard alone on OSX (except possibly with 3rd party software) For example:

• Open a context menu where the keyboard focus is. Windows: there's a special menu key for that! Or you can use SHIFT+F10. OSX: None and apparently there's not even a 3rd party program to do that.
• Move a window. Windows: ALT+SPACE,M,<arrow keys>. OSX: None.
• Resize a window. Windows: ALT+SPACE,S,<arrow keys>. OSX: None.
• Maximize/zoom. Windows: ALT+SPACE,X. Restore: ALT+SPACE,R. OSX: You can make a global shortcut key to Zoom that works with apps that have a Zoom menu option. If you resize the window after it's zoomed, it won't unzoom to its original size though.
• Minimize/hide. Windows: ALT+SPACE,N. OSX: you can make your own shortcut key but it doesn't work for all apps.
• Task manager/activity monitor. Windows:CTRL+SHIFT+ESC. OSX: You have to create a key yourself.
• Run an arbitrary command line. Windows: WIN+R. OSX: None.

Most of those have been around since Windows 3 or Windows 95 for the ones using the menu or Windows keys.

I don't actually use "shut down" or "restart" that often, so I hardly need a shortcut key for them, but a sequence that has worked since Windows 95 is WINKEY,ESC,ALT+F4 and then you have a listbox of options you can type into to select an option. Press Enter to perform the selected operation.

Both OSes have common conventions as well as guidelines produced by Apple and Microsoft. Different ISVs and apps follow those to different degrees, but there are still differences in convention. In particular, you can hit ALT in Windows to access the menu bar, each menu and menu item will have an underlined shortcut key. Dialog boxes also have ALT+ shortcuts by doing the same thing, and you can click the default button with Enter and the cancel button with Esc. Even ribbons have key sequences for every option.

The lastes OS/X has reversed mouse wheel direction. This is so that the action of pushing with your finger has a consistent effect on the screen between touch and mouse environments. It also has the effect of reversing the selection order of weapons and items in games.

You can cancel that, you know, Here's how

From what you describe you could be using a Macbook Air with a 15$ stylus to write on it's trackpad, though if the area is not enough you could get an external pen+pad for the writing connected by USB. Also, you say you want it for "writing", but how do you cope with OCR for handwriting? I've never seen one work. Or you just happen to jot down things and keep them as images? If so, why not write on paper and make a photo with a phone? Their camera resolution is enough for handwriting.

Or perhaps you are conflating so many disparate and incompatible requirements to make the Surface Pro look like a viable product in the eyes of others? What kind of job you have that requires you to write on tablets and then plug them to an USB disk?

Being able to sell tracks for prices other than a uniform 99 cents was part of it too. Apple caved on that in order to get the right to sell DRM-free music. Here's an article from the time of the switchover

> Old Jobs hasn't been in the ground long and already their first
> "convenience over QC" choice has come back to bite them.

Steve Jobs did a lot of great things but he also shipped plenty of crap. .Mac and MobileMe were (I think) the biggest and most recent examples. 2008:

Apple CEO Steve Jobs conceded in an e-mail to Apple employees that the company had made numerous mistakes during the launch of its MobileMe Internet service, saying that the service âoewas simply not up to Apple's standardsâ and that it "clearly needed more time and testing."

http://www.macworld.com/article/1134854/jobs.html

More than anything, I'm surprised they did ship Maps with such a recent bad experience under their belts. They must have been desperate. The move away from Google was about more than branding.

Sources tell AllThingsD that Google, for example, wanted more say in the iOS maps feature set. It wasn't happy simply providing back-end data. It asked for in-app branding. Apple declined. It suggested adding Google Latitude. Again, Apple declined.

http://allthingsd.com/20120926/apple-google-maps-talks-crashed-over-voice-guided-directions/

Say what you will about Apple -- they've been very good about not handing over user data to advertisers, app creators, or publishers.

As long as you have the right models.

iMac: Mid-2007 and later
Mac mini: Early 2009 and later
Mac Pro: Early 2008 and later
MacBook: Late 2008 Alumnium, Early 2009, and later
MacBook Air: Late 2008 and later
MacBook Pro: Mid- and Late 2007 and later

http://www.macworld.com/article/1165460/mountain_lion_what_you_need_to_know.html

Want to upgrade your 3 year old Mac mini? Tough shit. You have to buy a new one, you can't even upgrade the relevant components. I've upgraded systems to Windows 8 going back to 2004, and there's nothing technically limiting to earlier systems as long as you have the basic hardware requirements.

When you buy a mac, a portion of the price goes to subsidize future OSX purchases. Thus, while you are handing over $X to the cashier, you're really paying more when it comes to Apple's ledgers.

I decided to do some hunting and found some good testing done by MacWorld. Link: http://www.macworld.com/article/2010286/lab-tests-ios-6-and-ios-5-performance-differences.html

Their testing seems to show flat or slightly better performance on an iPhone 4 running iOS 5.1.1 vs iOS 6.0. If there's any code designed to slow the older devices down, Geekbench, Javascript and HTML5 benchmark tests can't find it.

why-apple-should-buy-nokia-to-fix-their-mapping-disaster

Maps is a disaster. But what about the other iOS6 problems (some here). What about the recent Apple lack of innovation, and the reported lack of staff motivation? As a owner of 2 Macs, 2 iPhones and an iPad, I'm just worrying. During the past year, new devices are mere incremental updates, and nothing revolutionary came from the software dept (OSes and applications). And the general update trend slowed down, compared to 2 years ago. This appears to me as a management problem.
To be fair, Tim Cook has to be vigilant - Apple sells a lot thanks to the nice and innovative ergonomics and design inertia coming from the iPhone 3~4 era. Taking a different direction would definitely mark that new era as the real beginning of the Cook epoch - and at the same time end the Jobs one forever. And who knows what would be the outcome of that.
In my opinion, Tim Cook will keep sticking to the Jobs background for a while - maybe 2 years - while Apple staff will feel more and more the gap between what image Cook wants to show to the world (ie Jobs-like) and the day-to-day internal management. Updates slowness, substantial mistakes and bugs will increase over time, while disheartened (and good) people will leave the company. It will be a hard time for Cook, having to choose between working (hard) to maintain that fading image from the past, or cope with a dramatically different management requirement.

AFAIK, no HDMI interface is even announced let alone available

http://www.theverge.com/2012/9/13/3329062/apple-lightning-hdmi-vga-cable-adapter-coming-months
'An Apple spokesperson told The Verge that Lightning to HDMI and Lightning to VGA cables "will be available in the coming months."'

My understanding is that the 30 pin adapter they are selling provides analog audio but not iPod control

http://www.macworld.com/article/1168555/what_apples_new_lightning_connector_means_for_you.html
'Apple has confirmed to Macworld that these adapters support analog and USB audio-out, as well as syncing and charging. However, the adapters don’t support video-out or iPod mode, the latter a special mode that lets particular accessories, such as car stereos and some whole-home-audio systems, display your iPod’s menus on the accessory’s own screen.'
And as a commenter in this article points out, the iPod will still play audio over these systems since that's handled by the analog interface.

some of this is a desire to manage DRM

What DRM? None of the music on my iPhone has any DRM on it! The "FairPlay" DRM was removed from iTunes store music in early 2009.

You'd have thought Samsung would learn their lesson already. Don't they know that Apple patented remote data wipe technology years ago?

=Smidge=

Blackberry had that feature long before iPhone 3 came out. The article you linked doesn't mention anything about a patent, I suspect it's either not patented or rim owns it.

You'd have thought Samsung would learn their lesson already. Don't they know that Apple patented remote data wipe technology years ago?

=Smidge=

ITunes music has been DRM free since 2009.

http://www.macworld.com/article/1137946/itunestore.html

So he can't be bothered to just copy his music out of iTunes and do whatever he wants with it?

This sounds more like he wants to leave his iTunes *account* to his estate. It also sounds like he didn't read the iTunes Terms of Service before he agreed to it. Doesn't seem to me Apple is being the "bad guy" here, at least no more than 99.99% of every company out there, as an account you make is for YOU, I've never seen anyone else that allows you to transfer your account to someone else either.

Market domination isn't a goal of FOSS at all, ir shouldnt be. Software freedom is for those who want it and are willing to trade their own time and effort for it.

Funny how mindsets have changed over the years...

Back in the heydays, the rage was all about how and when FOSS would eventually wipe out commercial alternatives. Pundits, flame warriors and trolls all joined forces in predicting that it was going to be a tsunami. Because Free and Open always wins.

(Some still do, mind you... eg Noyes.)

In the case of both Apple and Samsung, you have a legal department that you're already paying anyway, so the costs of litigation amount to practically nothing.

It doesn't make sense to retain on payroll a legal team able to litigate in all territories in which a company operates. Some US states require membership of their respective bar associations, so think of the cost of covering that. Scale this up to an international scale and what you have is a legal department so big they may as well begin farming it out Amazon AWS style.

What's more likely is that they retain legal teams to handle compliance and assess legal issues. Where serious litigation comes in to the picture, they'll engage a law firm. See this story for an example of Samsung using a law firm. Amusingly enough, one of their lawyers overlooked the need to be registered with the local bar association:

http://www.macworld.com/article/1168100/samsung_could_face_court_penalty_over_lawyers_oversight.html

Long story short - legal action is not free by any stretch of the imagination.

You mean the OS that, by default, blocks you from running content that isn't blessed by Apple? Yes, you can download apps from sources that aren't the App Store - but they still have to be signed, otherwise, it either will refuse to run or lie to you and say that the app is "damaged" and you should "drag it to the trash."

And if you try and disable this "feature" then it yells at you, warning you of dire consequences if you try and allow non-Apple-blessed apps to run.

Nice try, hater.

"Blessed by Apple" in this case means "Signed by Developer ". Doesn't sound like APPLE is "blessing" SHIT. Signing an app SHOULD be seen as a Good Thing(tm); because it not only means that the Developer has SOME "documentation" on file; but also means that your friendly-neighborhood software aggregator has not tampered with it along the way.

And besides, it's REALLY hard to override Gatekeeper. Here's how you do it. Better write it down; because it gets complicated: Right-Click on the file, and choose "Open". Yeah, Apple is one bunch of Draconian motherfuckers, I tells ya.

Ouch, interesting. It never happened to me in Win XP or 7, so I assumed that they do - but maybe that's because the Lenovo laptops I used had tiny touchpads. I never used OS X for extended times, but when I did the problem did not occur despite the huge touchpads so, again, I assumed (yeah I know). Indeed, 5 seconds of googling showed that OS X has a '“Ignore accidental trackpad input” checkbox on the Trackpad tab of the Keyboard & Mouse System Preferences panel', though it may be off by default, I dunno.
http://www.macworld.com/article/1136275/trackpadoff.html

I have used a MacBook Pro with Ubuntu since 2009, and I am quite sure that even in 9.04 Ubuntu did it. The documentation looks like it (though apparently buggy), at least as a GUI-supported option. 12.04 certainly has at least the option now.

This is a Gnome thing, I can only assume KDE and therefore SuSE has the option as well (though maybe difficult to find among 10000 other options :p )

Doesn't that make the point though? If you need to rely extensively on third-party software to make up for features missing in the new release, which were present in the old release, it's not difficult to argue that the new software is no longer the professional tool it was in previous incarnations. That these features are in other professional tools from Avid and Adobe just kind of cements it, yeah?

I'm sure you can think of other instances where Apple has misunderstood the professional market in some of their other products. I know I can think of few myself.

Apple may have not perfectly analyzed the features that FCP 7 users were using the most; but I don't agree that it is the crime of the century, when those features are either promptly returned to the product, and/or readily and cost-effectively (and $10 total is pretty cost-effective) replaced by third-party tools.

Few software products undergo such a massive paradigm and UI shift from one version to the next as the difference between FCP 7 and FCP X. They really aren't the same animal. But, not only has Apple taken care of most of the "missing features" already, I didn't hear you bitching about all the features that were ADDED or IMPROVED, e.g. "Audition", and SIXTY-FOUR-ANGLE multicam editing, and a spectacular built-in Keyer, and workflow IMPROVEMENTS that were made, like, oh, I dunno, TRACKLESS EDITING, BACKGROUND RENDERING, PROJECT BACKUPS, and the ability to EDIT WHILE IMPORTING. No, you want to bitch about 3 things that affected some greatly, and others not at all.

But the proof is in the pudding, and it seems that FCP X is teaching some old (but big) dogs new tricks.

And there are some senators in Kentucky who would argue that evolution isn't real. Just because you can argue something doesn't make it true. Facts and evidence make something true. The facts clearly show at this time that the Mac App Store is a success.

It may come as a surprise to you but developers like to make money. Apple's ecosystem (so far) allows for more developers to make more money than any other ecosystem out there. People (that is real, actual, normal people who do not spend their time reading and commenting on Slashdot) also seem to love it, and are happy to be able to find everything they want in one place.

Perhaps a critical mass will come, but we're definitely not there yet. Argue all you want.

Read this, and this, and maybe learn a little something The Who taught us about bosses a long time ago.

Even if games was a major factor in holding Linux back, just making Steam available is not going to fix that.

Steam was launched for Mac two years ago, but other than Valve's own games the only top game that has been made available is Civilization V. Some indie games, sure, and Blizzard's games are available outside Steam, but all the other games are just as absent as they were before Steam was ported.

Why not? Here are instructions: http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20120401160655922 [macworld.com]
XNU is modular SMB is just a module you can replace it.

Nice, thanks for the link. Bit of a PITA to fix a lion deficiency, though. My experience with OSX upgrades is that every point release generally reverts these type of changes. Still might be worthwhile...

I guess I can see a position for the Apple store offering to do this for say $100 labor. You do have a point there, given that they haven't updated the MacPro they should probably throw you all a bone on this one.

It's frustrating. I will do the Chameleon thing and hope for the best. With years without updates, deprecated models, no more server OS (almost understandable) and no more Xserve--not to mention the debacle with the video tools--it's just really apparent that Apple is one of first old school computer companies to jump headfirst into the post-PC, post-Power User world. As a user who always liked that OSX was UNIX--and a really slick system--etc, it just seems a sad thing to me.

More cynical slashdotters would say I was fool for ever thinking Apple cared one cent about my ilk!

No, I don't think you're right about this. As you say, the ATI x1900xt (the card in my Mac Pro) has windows 64-bit drivers. I've run one under Vista 64! Secondly, if what you are claiming as a major graphics change would be true, I could swap in a $50 graphic card into my Mac Pro and be fine to install ML. But I can't...It's more arbitrary than that.

First off let me point they haven't written a Mac driver. NT kernel and the Xnu kernel are nothing like one another. So lets say it would take ATI a few man weeks to fix the driver problem. The ATI card change is the change in the graphic subsystem. You have one more problem. Because there is no KEXT support your EFI won't work. You need to reflash your firmware. But yes, you have me right:

a) A port of a driver and / or a $50 replacement
b) A new firmware

and your system runs Mountain Lion fine. That's what the people who are hacking the preview onto their older MacPros are doing. You've mentioned Chameleon so you are familiar with the community. So in other words:

a) Yes apple faced a real technical problem. This isn't arbitrary and they had good reason to make the shift they did in ML.
b) Yes it could have been fixed with a complex install but not with anything simple. Which is pretty much what's happening. The people who can handle the reflash and understand the issue can load ML but Apple doesn't have to support that complexity in the field. And they won't have to support it as times goes on, rather the open source community will. I guess I can see a position for the Apple store offering to do this for say $100 labor. You do have a point there, given that they haven't updated the MacPro they should probably throw you all a bone on this one.

You're claiming installing the Mac Port replaces the builtin smb functionality?

Why not? Here are instructions: http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20120401160655922
XNU is modular SMB is just a module you can replace it.

http://www.macworld.com/article/1167569/report_trojan_horse_found_in_the_ios_app_store.html

Don't use Lion, do you? It is moving very much in the direction of iOS. Read this article. It is rather inflammatory, but the guys makes an interesting point. There is no VP for OS X development listed in Apple's leadership team after Serlet left. He was the one responsible for OS X versions 10.4-10.6, which were the best ones (IMNSHO). If you spend some time talking with long time OS X users, you'll find tepid enthusiasm for 10.7 at best and worst, rabid hatred. Read the comments in this OS X hint on disabling the new autosave in os x. A lot of people don't like the changes in 10.7.

I'm definitely not mistaken. The app store and the ability to install third-party apps was only added in iOS 2. It was a controversial decision at the time, and a lot of noise was made in the press, with some claiming the iPhone wasn't a smartphone without third party app support. The Isaacson biography of Jobs goes deeper into this; even after the launch of the iPhone, Jobs resisted adding third-party app support, and only did so grudgingly.

A simple google search should verify this for you. For example, a simple search turns up this Macworld article from a few days ago that has some discussion on the original lack of third party app support:

http://www.macworld.com/article/1164706/the_iphone_five_years_later_.html

Or this article that covers the launch of the app-store and third party apps fourteen months after the iPhone launched:

http://www.macworld.com/article/1132402/appstore.html

I'm definitely not mistaken. The app store and the ability to install third-party apps was only added in iOS 2. It was a controversial decision at the time, and a lot of noise was made in the press, with some claiming the iPhone wasn't a smartphone without third party app support. The Isaacson biography of Jobs goes deeper into this; even after the launch of the iPhone, Jobs resisted adding third-party app support, and only did so grudgingly.

A simple google search should verify this for you. For example, a simple search turns up this Macworld article from a few days ago that has some discussion on the original lack of third party app support:

http://www.macworld.com/article/1164706/the_iphone_five_years_later_.html

Or this article that covers the launch of the app-store and third party apps fourteen months after the iPhone launched:

http://www.macworld.com/article/1132402/appstore.html

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/04/attacks-mac-security-risks/
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/23/a-new-variant-of-malware-targets-mac-users/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/24/mac-malware_n_1448561.html
http://www.macworld.com/article/1160085/apple_posts_mac_defender_fix.html

You don't even have to turn over a rock in the last six months to have heard about the 600k plus macs that are infected.

Yes you can - see this.

It doesn't have to be doubled. See. from this.

It doesn't have to be doubled. See. from this.

No, that's not how it works. from this.

No, that's not how it works. from this.

actually, that's not PPV.. Apple killed rentals (for TV shows) last year because nobody was renting.
http://www.macworld.com/article/1161983/apple_axes_tv_show_rentals_for_itunes_apple_tv.html

so when you consider it a sale, it's about the same as getting the discs with the added benefit of getting the latest episode the day after it airs. (except for really popular shows like Game of Thrones)

Apple season pass for Sherlock S2 is 19.99 (vs. 6.99 per), the DVD from amazon is 19.96, amazon (digital) season pass is 15 bucks (no freebies for Prime).
PBS is also streaming Masterpiece Mystery if you haven't seen S2 yet.

Nintendo reports first-ever operating loss in 2011
http://www.engadget.com/2012/04/26/nintendo-annual-financials-2011/

Sony reports record loss in 2011
http://www.theverge.com/2012/5/10/3011264/sony-record-loss-5-7-billion-fy-2011

Apple reports record revenue, record sales of iPad and iPhone in 2011
http://www.macworld.com/article/1164973/apple_reports_record_revenue_profit_for_fiscal_first_quarter.html

But I'm sure that's just a coincidence.

It sounds as though global hotkeys may not be restricted. As much as I hate to link to Macworld, here goes - http://www.macworld.com/article/1166857/apps_using_global_hotkeys_will_remain_welcome_in_the_mac_app_store.html#lsrc.rss_main

iTunes Store and DRM-free music: What you need to know

10.5 and 10.6 and I assume 10.7 have read/write support but its not enabled by default, and is not officially supported.

http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20090913140023382

Also you are using paragon HFS+ for windows... you should already be aware they have Paragon NTFS for Mac.

A bigger question is whether NTFS is the best filesystem to use, and that's a separate question entirely. And that's a question I don't know the answer to.

So, if the primary OS was windows... then I'd use NTFS.

But if you spend most of your time in linux, and do most of the filesystem writing from linux... then I'd probably pick something robust and linux-native, and then get solutions for OSX and Windows to read it...

Regarding which update brought what, I misread Wikipedia previously, so you are indeed correct about 3.0 being when in-app updates were added. As for disabling them, however, I've been scouring the web, and the earliest articles I can find (here are some) regarding the subject of disabling in-app purchases all pre-date iOS 5 but post-date iOS 4.2, and a number of them explicitly mention new restrictions being added in iOS 4.2. That's around a year later than you thought and a around a year earlier than I thought, but it's the most reliable date I can peg down. The only mention I found from prior to 4.2 that mentions the feature was originally published around the time of 4.0, but it had clearly been edited to include 4.2, 4.3 and 5.0 info, making the original publication date worthless.

I've been with iOS since 2.0, and I'm fairly certain 3.1 didn't bring in-app purchase disabling as a feature, since I remember a friend of mine being very grateful that Apple had finally added that feature so much later. Shame on me for not double-checking Wikipedia, regardless.

As for the opinions, I think requiring a password after sleep makes sense, but I am probably in the minority in wishing there was a way to just disable passwords altogether once you unlock your device. I hate having to type in passwords every time I use the App Store to update apps. Maybe for new purchases, sure, but even with in-app purchases I find it annoying to be prompted by a modal dialog to type in my password. I know that having it be jarring like that is the intent, but I find it a nuisance, nonetheless.

Correction.

The most successful MARKETING company...

Marketing takes you only so far. Apple has outgrown the overall PC market for 23 consecutive quarters in a poor economy. That's nearly six years. Marketing will score you some short term gains, but not SIX YEARS worth. At some point, the product actually has to be kind of decent to maintain.
http://www.macworld.com/article/1164973/apple_reports_record_revenue_profit_for_fiscal_first_quarter.html

...that is only here because they DID fail and microsoft BAILED THEM OUT.

$150 million was welcomed, but hardly saved Apple. Jobs returning to Apple saved Apple.

Then they designed their ipods etc, which apples hardware has always been really nice, and made name for themselves.
Mac desktop flopped,

Flopped is an interesting term. The percentage of revenue overall for Macs compared to all the other Apple devices is lower, but Mac growth is higher year over year. When you add a brand new product like, say, an iPhone that sells millions of units, the overall percentage of revenue all other products becomes lower. Macs are the #3 market share for PC brands. I can't think of any company on the planet that wouldn't be thrilled to be #3 in marketshare for their respective industry. Toshiba is #4. Are they going to be dead, based solely on desktop sales?

But back to my main premise ... it appears that Macs aren't quite as "fckng useless for most day to day IT uses" as you claim, considering Apple uses Macs, and they are doing just fine.

A Mac Pro was never $2000 unless you have some sort of proof. The last update was 2010. The starting price of the 2009 Quad-Core MacPro was $2499. And again, these are workstations which are fairly comparable to others in their classes. These are not gaming machines or mid-towers.

If I get it the main win for me would probably be getting rid of that fucking two-pane version of Address Book. (I don't know what drugs the people who came up with the Lion version of Address Book were on, but if it left 5% of their brain cells still functioning, I'd be amazed....) I can probably tolerate all the social networking integration crap, especially if it makes using GOOD OLD FASHIONED EMAILING OF URLS easier (no, I have no interest in "sharing" stuff with 500 of my closest friends).

By being default-enabled

Which improves security. App-store provided apps are less likely to contain malware.

Less likely, probably. It's still not perfect, though, as per the Path problem; Apple had to decide to require apps to ask permission before snarfing stuff from the address book.

and no doubt coming with scary warnings about how you'll get hacked if you disable it.

Which is an unwarranted assumption.

Actually, no. (Not quite "you'll get hacked", but "makes your Mac less secure".)

Yep. It's time you Export yourself outside the walled garden. It'll be a strange feeling for a few months. But boy is it liberating.

I.e., by opening up System Preferences, going to the Security pane, and setting "Allow applications downloaded from:" to "Anywhere"? (Or were you talking about iOS, which unfortunately lacks that option?)

By being default-enabled,

Note that the default, according to both Daring Fireball and MacWorld, is "App Store or identified developers", not "App Store only", so it's not as much of a lockdown as iOS by default.

requiring admin privileges to change,

Perhaps they're changing it in Mountain Lion, but the first user account created on a machine is given admin privileges by default. It's up to that user to, if they create accounts for other users, whether to trust those users to run arbitrary apps.

and no doubt coming with scary warnings about how you'll get hacked if you disable it.

Yes, although the warning also tells you how to override the option on a per-app basis.

This, pretty much. The OS is set to, by default, spread FUD about apps not coming from the App Store.

Or, if John Gruber's claim is correct, the OS is set to, by default, spread FUD about apps coming neither from the App Store nor from identified developers :

In effect, it offers all the security benefits of the App Store, except for the process of approving apps by Apple. Users have three choices which type of apps can run on Mountain Lion:

• Only those from the App Store
• Only those from the App Store or which are signed by a developer ID
• Any app, whether signed or unsigned

The default for this setting is, I say, exactly right: the one in the middle, disallowing only unsigned apps.

Being the default, it's as good as there being no other option, because users don't know enough to tell the difference.

Hopefully the dialog that pops up when you try to launch an app not in the category specified by the setting will also point you to the setting for changing that behavior. (That article also says the default is "App Store or identified developer.)