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http://www.macworld.com/article/157263/2011/01/playboy_ipad.html

To work around Apple's rules, Playboy will offer a Web-based subscription service in March that will give users access to every issue ever published. Readers will access issues through Mobile Safari on the device, rather than an app from the App Store. The company is using Bondi Digital Publishing, which has previously digitized the archives of Playboy and Rolling Stone for digital distribution.

The lack of a back button and the lack of the notification pull-down are the major things that would ever prevent me from getting an iPhone...

You could always just use a 3rd party web browser, some of them have back buttons and other features not found in Mobile Safari.

As for a notification pull-down menu, submit the idea to the folks at Apple. Believe it or not they do take suggestions and over the years they have made many modifications based on those suggestions. It certainly can't hurt.

The Mac App store seems to have less restrictions then the iOS store as the Mac is a different platform then the iOS. The App Store is meant to be a place to easily get a hold of many Mac Apps. The Mac is a full desktop, this isn't supposed to be some nefarious scheme to change that. Demos aren't allowed, Apple recommends devs continue to use their own site to distribute them. Apps that shit all over the file system aren't allowed. It must use XCode tools and installer (WoW won't be in the store) and what not. I believe in app purchases aren't allowed (i.e. Steam is probably not allowed). It doesn't seem as if Apple is interested in making this the only place to get Mac Apps, especially with the recommendation that devs still use their own sites to distribute trials, just an easy place to get many Mac tools and apps.

MacWorld article on the App Store

Apple can't quite seem to get that alarm working right. This isn't the first time. My Android based phone hasn't had any issues with the alarm, but since I work from home it's not as much of an issue.

No. The iPad+keyboard, and the MacBook aren't serving the same market, and aren't occupying the same price bracket. One does not replace the other.

See:
http://www.macworld.com/article/156153/2010/12/macofthefuturegruber.html

If you actually read or listened to the earnings call it would be hard to describe what Jobs did as "lashing out". Really the poster just repeated another news story that described it as "lashing" out. In reality, Jobs stated his opinion on Android and Google. He has some points in there and some of which people would disagree with, but he didn't raise his voice or throw a chair or anything like that.

Not a lot of Macs at the federal government.

Really?

There are Tooltips in the Mac. I am posting this from Safari on my Mac right now and just double checked, every button in the interface has a tooltip. If an app does not have them it's developer laziness (big time since it's very easy to include them while in the UI designer.) I even found an article telling users how to set a much longer delay on their tooltips if they feel sick of seeing trivial tooltips every time they hover a control.

You got me curious and I digged a bit on the Help Search feature and I found out it does not even need programming. It automatically looks through the menu to help you find actions, every application naturally supports it (as long as it actually uses the standard Mac Menu bar and does not just work in X-11 compatibility mode.) Blender 3D is an example of an application that does not support it due to it using it's own in-window menu bar scheme. So, Mac OS help helps you [as best as it can] even when the App developer refused to provide you with help! :P

Anyways found a video you can look at to see the Help Search in action. Forgive the author for his over-enthusiasm, but I do have to say I was almost that impressed when I first found that feature while digging into the control panel for Firewall settings.

As for iTunes, my current stance in "defending it" is as a syncing tool (despite my opinions of it not being intuitive.) I never recommend it to anyone to use if they have no iPods, I just "defend" when people claim it takes tolerance to stand iTunes to sync their iPods (if they think so then why get an iPod that shares the iTunes navigation structure?)

Why would ANYONE use Safari on Mac when you have FF? ABP and NoScript for the win!

Ummm, AdBlock is now available for Safari, and Click2Flash neatly dispenses with Flash.

But, the battery-sucking aspect of Flash is old news.

This kind of panic has happened before. I don't understand why so many people freak out any time Apple gets serious about distribution.

Apple's decision to open its own retail stores nearly a decade ago was attacked as a move that would destroy Apple's retail presence and piss off consumers. One clever analyst told MacWorld: "It's another case of Apple being Jobs driven and not consumer driven." Guys like him got it completely backwards. Customers didn't actually enjoy having to look all over the place to find Apple products. Apple customers benefited from the stores. Developers benefited. Apple benefited.

A few years later, Apple created the App Store. It was widely derided as being overly restrictive for developers. There were a lot of statements about how it would strangle the platform. We all know how that turned out.

As for Winer, I think he'd rather Apple stick with the Mac as the future of the company. That ain't gonna happen. Consumers have voted with their wallets. They want an easier experience all the way 'round, from finding apps to purchasing and using them, and Apple is providing that. The company has become a global powerhouse over the last few years by giving people what they want; developers can either get on board with that and find ways to profit, or they can develop on other platforms.

There's a fair amount of snarkiness in the tech community about all those fools in the business world, about all the dinosaurs who can't keep up with the times, but when it comes right down to it, we're often just as attached to the status quo, and just as slow to react.

From a technical perspective, I'm impressed by both platforms.

Be aware however that deployment of iOS applications to the general public may only be done with Apple's approval of your specific application. And unless you are targeting jailbroken phones, all revenue must pass through Apple. They may choose to reject an app for reasons stated in their developer agreement, or for unstated reasons: http://www.macworld.com/article/151680/2010/06/myframe_rejection.html

The Android market's terms are more lenient than Apple's, and the Android market does not have a formal approval process of any kind. Apps may however be removed for violations of the Android Market developer agreement.

But even then, Android phones allow the installation of apps from sources other than the Android market.

Naysayers of the iPad miss the point? Huh, here I thought that all the hype about desktop, laptops and netbooks being killed off by iPads was created by Apple fans.

A small sample:

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9175600/The_iPad_is_the_future_for_home_computing
http://gizmodo.com/5506692/ipad-is-the-future
http://www.macworld.com/article/146038/2010/01/ipad_future_shock.html
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/02/ipad-future/
http://techcrunch.com/2010/01/27/ipad/

Still got those OSX widgets stuck back on an invisible screen, where they're utterly useless to us... (luckily, there's Yahoo Widgets, which actually work like you'd want them to)

http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20050422172929402
Summarized:
Run this in Terminal:

defaults write com.apple.dashboard devmode YES

Log out, log in
Press F12, start dragging the widget you want on your ... visible? screen, then press F12 again. Release the widget.

iTunes has had the ability BUY DRM'd TV episodes since December 2005.

http://www.macworld.com/article/48261/2005/12/nbc.html

This is only news because it's a RENTAL, not because it's iTunes.

Like this one: http://www.macworld.com/appguide/article.html?article=142206

Seriously, why would you:
1) Even post such a non-controversial, irrelevant thought
2) Not even bother to see if the product you're proposing already exists

Keep in mind that RIM's smartphone market share, though greater, isn't insanely greater than Apple's market share -- last we saw it was 35% versus 27 %, with RIM falling and Apple rising in Q1 2010 (who knows where it is now), and even given that disparity Apple still takes a greater share of the profits and has higher customer satisfaction. The iPhone solution is simply more profitable to the producer and more beneficial to more buyers than Blackberrys.

Personally I own a iPhone 3G and have been happy with it. I was considering to upgrade to 4G a bit later.

Now, I'm waiting much later, until Apple actually fixes the issue. I haven't used a case for my iPhone and it's held together well for the 20 months. Likely will continue to do so for months to come, like any phone should without additional cases and overtly careful handling. No, I don't use the phone as a hammer, but I don't caress it to sleep either. And because I don't want a case for a phone (to make it bulkier), I'm not buying the 4G until it can be used without.

Second reason why I won't be buying a 4G any time soon is that I made the mistake of installing iOS4 to my 3G. BAD mistake. The iOS4 is unstable and veerryyy slllooooww on the 3G. I don't know about the 4G, if it is as unstable but I wouldn't risk it. Luckily I found out how to downgrade my 3G back to 3.1.3 with help of: http://www.macworld.com/article/152428/2010/06/roll_back_iphone_3g.html

I still lost the backup and it took hours to get the phone back up to speed again...

Actually, to date that revenue does not seem to be very significant at all. Apple hasn't been making very much on apps as far as anyone can tell and Steve Jobs went so far as to tell shareholders the model was to run the App store at slightly more than break even as a way to promote sales of iPhones. As for ad revenue, time will tell, but again I don't think Apple is planning on it being a big revenue stream compared to the piles of cash they make selling iPhones.

This statement seems to have no basis in reality. Apple made $300k (30% of $1 million) per day in the first month of the App Store's existence alone. I am pretty sure that is over the break even point. I am pretty sure that is also a significant amount of revenue, equal to the gross sales total for around 100,000 iPhones per day. As for advertisements, I feel relatively certain that iAds were not developed and released to simply break even and improve end user experience or out of some feeling of benevolence, but rather to do quite a bit better than break even.

How do you read "remove MS's lock-in" as "commoditize the operating system market"? That simply does not follow. Apple uses their OS as a differentiator, but they build it mostly on open standards for file and protocol interoperability. As a smaller player in the market, that makes them more money. The idea that breaking MS's lock-in in the OS market by supporting standardized Web technologies makes absolutely no sense to me. Please explain your reasoning.

Microsoft has no lock-in on iOS devices, for one thing. To remove Microsoft lock-in would be remove the tethering between applications and the Microsoft Windows operating system with HTML5 applications. These applications developed in HTML5 would be available on any platform with an HTML5 compliant browser. Regardless of whatever strategy you prefer to believe Apple is taking, Windows and also other operating systems would become a commodity (hint: this includes Apple's operating systems), i.e. any operating system with a HTML5 compliant browser would do. It's just my opinion, but I doubt very seriously that Apple, or any other profit maximizing firm would prefer that.

No, but the fact that they've been promoting it for many years, have developed tools to let users do just that, have committed to projects like PhoneGap, etc. does indicate it is highly likely. Do you have any evidence that they're changing direction

As I said, what I am doing is speculation. Just as you would speculate they will not change direction. All I have to suggest it is possible is how they transitioned from suggesting web apps as the way to develop for the iPhone originally, which was then supplanted by the iPhone SDK. That, and the fact that they could increase revenue by creating a simple environment for developing iOS applications. Whether that increase in revenue and the less tangible mindshare is worth the investment of time they would have to outlay for it is, again, speculation.

You make it sound as though their actions were insulated from one another. You could just as easily say Apple will ditch all the open source projects they contribute to, since those don't directly make them money. The thing is, having better dev tools and more apps and lowering costs for developers sell iPhones, and Apple is really, really in the business of selling iPhones right now. They're not about to try to gain a small amount of revenue from developers now, while risking long term sales of devices. That would be idiotic. That's the reason why their developer program was so cheap in the first place.

I really don't know where to begin with this. I am not saying their actions are insulated from one another, you are just inferring it. I am saying their motive is singular, to maximize profit, just like every other firm. The second bit seems to be som

Your highly selective reading and responding to my posts matches up quite nicely with your highly selective picking of sales numbers.

Okay, Dells numbers should be falling greatly, noticeable AND those numbers are going to Apple. Let's look at overall sales numbers?

Yes let's! I'll respond to this paragraph again at the bottom.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/19/technology/19compute.html

Apple also picked up market share in the United States, growing to 5 percent, from 4 percent, as its shipments increased 30 percent, according to Gartner. Apple grew faster than any other PC maker in the United States, Gartner said.

http://www.maclife.com/article/news/apples_market_share_pc_world_continues_surge

or http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/04/14/apple_sells_estimated_1_4m_macs_in_us_to_capture_8_market_share.html

Research firm Gartner said that Apple was the fifth-largest PC seller in the U.S. for the three-month quarter to start 2010. An estimated 1.398 million Macs were shipped in the States, and Apple only lagged behind HP, Dell, Acer and Toshiba.

Looking back 6 years...

http://www.macworld.com/article/43741/2005/03/marketshare.html

Apple's desktop market share in the United States for the fourth quarter of 2004 was 2.88 percent (and 2.06% q4 2003)

So in those 7 years Apple managed to almost quadruple their marketshare (2.06 to 8.0, 6% or 3.8x). Dell lost 9%. HP gained 3%. etc.

http://www.channelinsider.com/c/a/Dell/10-Things-Dell-Must-Do-to-Catch-Up-to-HP-221568/

Obviously primarily an opinion piece with many facts, but does this sound like anything I've been saying about Dell / Apple?

1. Keep It Simple
Dell tries to do too much. The company has spent the last few years attempting to be the company that satisfies any potential buyer. That's a mistake. HP has shown that simplicity will reign supreme in the computing market. That company has gone out of its way to provide customers with several options that will satisfy them in one way or another. Dell should follow suit. Its buying process is a mess that's overrun with customization options. Even its product offerings are all over the place. Enough is enough. Keep it simple, Dell. That's what customers want.

Okay, Dells numbers should be falling greatly, noticeable AND those numbers are going to Apple. Let's look at overall sales numbers?

Dell loses ~8%, Apple gains about 6%. Those are the numbers. You don't think that's significant? Really?

Dell has closed or is closing almost all of their facilities in the US, including a factory building ~5 years ago near where I live. Should this tell you anything?

given the success of the Apple store
Success, measured in what why? Compared to what?

Success meaning that they are profitable! Success meaning that they have helped quadruple Apple marketshare in the last 6-7 years. Success meaning that while others like Gateway tried--and failed--to open branded computer stores, Apple is opening more every month. Is this really that difficult to see?

Apple has been so popular over the past decade

Popular means going from 2% of the computer market to 8% in 6-7 years. It means everybody in the WORLD knowing what an iPod, and a lot of them having one! It means 1.7 million iphones sold in 3 days at prices higher than most Android phones (and none of the 2 for 1 deals). It means virtually every

they are computers with massively reduced user freedom

I think it's an appliance in the same way that my PS3 is an appliance. There is a computer under the covers and the device is quite general purpose, but in the end its an appliance because I don't have the freedom to tinker.

I think "computer with massively reduced user freedom" could be part of a decent definition of appliance.

I am getting sick of the game console comparisons. People are NOT replacing real computers with gaming consoles, but there's an increasing push(especially by Apple fanboys) that the iDevices are the future of computing.

Read about how a 'network security expert' replaced this laptop with an iPad --> http://apple.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1693064&cid=32641740

Read these articles about how the iPad is supposed to take over computing and make desktops and laptop obsolete:

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9175600/The_iPad_is_the_future_for_home_computing
http://gizmodo.com/5506692/ipad-is-the-future
http://www.macworld.com/article/146038/2010/01/ipad_future_shock.html
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/02/ipad-future/
http://techcrunch.com/2010/01/27/ipad/

Gaming consoles were never considered the future of computing, that's why they don't represent a threat to freedom. This is the reason that people are justifiably upset about Apple's restrictions.

Not quite the same:Wake on Demand lets Snow Leopard sleep with one eye open
http://www.macworld.com/article/142468/2009/08/wake_on_demand.html

You can do more than just wake up a system, you can maintain a proxy for all advertised services like file sharing and printing.

Macs are PCs too you know

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5z0Ia5jDt4

So Apple's advertising is stupid and inaccurate. Stop the presses.

Ironic, since Apple gave us what might be the first successful mass-market PC; but that was when Woz was designing Real Hardware for them.

A PC is a personal computer. If it's meant for one person to use at a time, it's a PC, regardless of the OS it's running or the processor it's built around. The Apple II was a PC. The unimaginatively named IBM PC was a PC. Laptops, notebooks, and netbooks are PCs. The various editions of the Mac were/are PCs.

Yes, Apple would like you to think that a Mac is something beyond a PC, that it slices and dices, lengthens and strengthens, and finds that slipper that's been at large under the chaise lounge for several weeks, but 'tain't so.

The versions of the swf that are open do not include all features. It's a "when we get to it" approach from Adobe. The end result is that they open up version 8 and then release version 9. We're now on version 10 and not all features are available. The end result is that the open plugins are never up to date and Adobe is the only place to go to, yet they get to keep the appearance of being open to dupe people like you.

The version 10 SWF spec is available right here. So let me get this straight: Adobe openly publishes all updates to the SWF spec, but none of the open source Flash-clone projects have actually picked up the updates yet... and that's Adobe's fault?

I'd also argue that you're living in Adobe's ideal world which is Windows. NONE of the flash plugins outside of windows support hardware acceleration, they're stuck on your core process support.

Until very recently, Mac OS didn't offer any public APIs appropriate for hardware-accelerating Flash's video decoding. The new APIs are the result of collaboration between Adobe and Apple engineers, and a new Flash beta is already available that uses them.

And for the elevnty-hojillionth freaking time, MORE IS NOT ALWAYS BETTER! Not EVERYONE needs to do EVERYTHING! Plenty of people CAN get by with a very limited device.

As for the rest of your rant, read this.

[Engineers and designers at Apple] take something small, simple, and painstakingly well considered. They ruthlessly cut features to derive the absolute minimum core product they can start with. They polish those features to a shiny intensity. At an anticipated media event, Apple reveals this core product... Then everyone goes back to Cupertino and rolls. As in, they start with a few tightly packed snowballs and then roll them in more snow to pick up mass until they've got a snowman. That's how Apple builds its platforms. It's a slow and steady process of continuous iterative improvement...

Look at the original iPod. Kinda pricey, Mac only, FireWire only--wow, look at crazy Apple, they're selling something that doesn't even work with all the computers they've sold in the last few years! But they added Windows support, and USB, and photos, and videos, and then they made them in different sizes, and according to Wikipedia they've sold over a QUARTER BILLION of them in less than ten years. So you'll have to excuse Mr. Jobs if he doesn't trip over himself to listen to your advice or anyone else's.

Geeks like Woz but the other Steve is plenty smart too. If you've got a little time, read this 1996 interview with Steve Jobs. Look at how much he got right: "The most exciting things happening today are objects and the Web. The Web is exciting for two reasons. One, it's ubiquitous. There will be Web dial tone everywhere. [emphasis added] And anything that's ubiquitous gets interesting. Two, I don't think Microsoft will figure out a way to own it."

The A4 chip powering Apple's iPad is Apple-engineereed. See this article.

Brings a whole new meaning to the term "tentpole feature", huh?

Actually MS lost that race before the counts even got to 25,000

http://www.macworld.com/article/139245/2009/03/iphone_beats_windows_mobile_boasts_of_25000_applications.html

Who cares really? Even macworld says the iPhad is crap.

They don't have to cut off their software entirely. They can just make their Mac versions half-assed ports of the Windows versions.

Oh, wait, they already did that

How is Photoshop Elements a half-assed port? It's exactly the same on both platforms.

I doubt Adobe are silly enough to cut off their software to Apple users.

They don't have to cut off their software entirely. They can just make their Mac versions half-assed ports of the Windows versions.

Oh, wait, they already did that... Well, they can release them months after the Windows versions.

Oh, wait, they already did that too... Well, they can make them even more half-assed, and maybe kill a few of the smaller apps on the Mac, like Premiere.

Oh, wait, they already did that for a while. Gosh, can't think why Apple isn't more enthusiastic about keeping Adobe happy...

I doubt Adobe are silly enough to cut off their software to Apple users.

They don't have to cut off their software entirely. They can just make their Mac versions half-assed ports of the Windows versions.

Oh, wait, they already did that... Well, they can release them months after the Windows versions.

Oh, wait, they already did that too... Well, they can make them even more half-assed, and maybe kill a few of the smaller apps on the Mac, like Premiere.

Oh, wait, they already did that for a while. Gosh, can't think why Apple isn't more enthusiastic about keeping Adobe happy...

I doubt Adobe are silly enough to cut off their software to Apple users.

They don't have to cut off their software entirely. They can just make their Mac versions half-assed ports of the Windows versions.

Oh, wait, they already did that... Well, they can release them months after the Windows versions.

Oh, wait, they already did that too... Well, they can make them even more half-assed, and maybe kill a few of the smaller apps on the Mac, like Premiere.

Oh, wait, they already did that for a while. Gosh, can't think why Apple isn't more enthusiastic about keeping Adobe happy...

You can, but it's not intuitive. There's a terminal command, or a free app called "Deep Sleep" that let you set it:
http://www.macworld.com/article/53471/2006/10/sleepmode.html

http://www.macworld.com/article/146331/2010/02/kevinsmith.html

Please remember this every time you say anything about what something _should_ cost: An item's price is what the buyer is willing to pay for it. The cost of production is only a lower bound on the price (at least if you wish to remain profitable). Amazon thinks that people who buy a $260 device are willing to fork over $9.99 per book to be able to make use of it. It's not that unreasonable, and e-book sales numbers show that it might be true. Whether it will continue to be so is yet to be seen.

Hey Symbolset :)

Sorry for the delay in getting back to you. Were all back form the Hollidays at work and Ive been a bit busy.

Got it - thats what I thought you meant by Telepresence. Yes, thats going to be a killer feature in phones and other highly portable devices. I actualy use it often for personal stuff via Windows Live Messanger quite a bit. On a scale of 1 to 10, its about a 6.5. Sometims its a bit glitchy and the audio-video sync slips a bit. The WLM team is working on this and they understand the major issues.

Microsoft Office Communicator R2 also supports telepresence. It works very well, about a 7 or 8 on a 10 point scale. It uses a different stack than WLM. This is used day to day inside MSFT. Almost everyone has a decent web cam on the main desktop and/or in the laptop. For example, we have a team in Beijing - we use this as our primary way to work with them.

Ya - the only reason I need to use iTunes is to backup my phone. I use Napster for most of my music purchass, also in MP3.

Yes, office for he MAC is still around. Its pretty much the only viable office suite for the MAC. Apple doesnt sell one any more. Its quite compatble. The MAC-BU (Macintosh Business Unit) removed VB from Office 2008 for the MAC. This all had to do with the Macintoshs move from PowerPC to the Intel Architecture. You can find all the gorey details here. Here is another related article. It seems like they are putting back in for the next revision.

Agreed on the Tablet front. Things are getting interesting. Apple may be able to do what we havent - spark the tablet market. Well see.

Ill stick with my prediction - if the new iSlate (or whatever it is they are calling it) is Intel based and is essentilay a MAC, then it will be sucesfull. If its ARM based, and thus really a big iPhone, then it will be a very cool, but niche product. this has nothing to do with ARM, and everyitng with what people can do with it.

Best Regards
-Foredecker

You don't need a script to get a keyboard shortcut to lock the screen.

http://www.macworld.com/article/49080/2006/01/lockscreen.html

It's the first result when you Google for "keyboard shortcut to lock screen mac".

You used Apple and DRM in the same post and didn't connect them together?

Apple has been dropping DRM. That 99 cent song with DRM can be bought without DRM, and with a better bitrate, for $1.29.

Falcon

Hitting Google is apparently easier than doing research. I went through the articles on your "osx+virus+in+the+wild" link, and what I found on the first pages was...

• 4 pages on Leap-A: A Trojan that requires one to give an admin password after opening what's supposed to be an image file. It propagates itself via iChat file transfers, but it still requires an idiot to give a password upon opening a file that shouldn't require one.
• 1 forum post by someone worried about an unidentified Mac virus in the news around the same time as Leap-A.
• 1 page on Inqtana-B: A false positive from an AV package.
• 1 blog post by someone bragging about how there aren't any self-propagating Mac viruses in the wild.
• 1 nigh-incomprehensible wiki article on AV software for Macs.
• 2 articles on Inqtana-A: (See below.)

None of these (except possibly Inqtana-A) would be a threat to semi-competent users, and the only article that isn't from 2006 is the garbled wiki page.

Now if you want some actual research on Mac OS X viruses, you can check a vendor's site:
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/search-results/?search=OSX&action=search&x=0&y=0

Interestingly, what the site won't tell you is that most (if not all) of these viruses are phantom menaces; you have to Google each one yourself for that kind of detail. Many are proof-of-concept never seen in the wild, and most exploit holes already patched in the OS. All are trojans that require serious PEBKAC to run, even the only two known "worms" for the plantform -- Inqtana and Tored.

Inqtana, a virus one that got some notoriety and media attention is an example of all three -- a proof of concept (with an expiration date) that attacked an old hole in the Bluetooth stack and which required victims to consent to accept the download from an infected machine. Tored was an email worm that required you to execute an attachment on a very stupid looking spam email payload. Both are basically glorified trojans -- nothing on par with Conficker.

Now, trojans aren't complete non-issues, but savvy computer users currently have very little to fear from running a Mac w/o AV software since there are currently no self-instantiating viruses for the platform in the wild. Don't download pirated software (and risk something like iWorkS which hides itself in installers for certain programs), and don't trust installers where none should be present.

The current CEO of Palm is the inventor of the ipod, not Steve Jobs. While at Apple Steve Jobs sent him out to find a hot product to make and he found the 1.8" hard drive at Toshiba that was considered a waste of resources and about to be killed. He made the ipod around it. iTunes came from a company Apple bought and they just renamed the software.

I'm confused. Are they lucky because they hired good people or because they made smart acquisitions ? They completely redid the GUI for iTunes by the way, Soundjam looked entirely different and they develop it in a a novel way by making it into an interface for their store.

iTunes took off because Microsoft couldn't get their DRM strategy right and iTunes worked out a good deal with the record companies. the Ipod was one brand from a company everyone knew.

True, but again that they were able to get right what MS couldn't just proves they were smart not lucky.

the iphone was a sales disaster until they cut the price and added the subsidies from AT&T. even then it was a slow niche seller until the 3G came out with the AppStore and Exchange support.

This one is just blatantly false. The iPhone hit all Apple's announced targets, 1 million sold in the first 80 days, 10 million sold by 2008 ("Apple hits 10 million iPhone target two months early".)

For instance it does not need as much hard disk space as Leopard does.

Nor should it, given all the PPC code was removed.

And why would there be PPC code on an Intel Mac? It should be easy to write the installer to test for the processor then only install the correct code. I know universal binaries, like what XCode produces, may not test but I can't see OX S being programmed in XCode. Even then though utilities like Spring Cleaning can remove unneeded code so I see no reason there should be PPC code in an Intel installation of OS X.

Falcon

You'd be surprised how many people don't want, don't need, or can't afford an iPhone. It's a nice device, but it doesn't cater to the entire market - not even close.

Apple knows this. Their original stated goal was 10% market penetration. According to some reports, they achieved that in first two quarters of this year (worldwide, not just U.S.). (They apparently hit their 2008 target two months early.)

They are still a success, businesswise, as long as they are hitting their targets. Apple is probably looking to do in cell phones what they do in computers: maintain a profitable edge in the mid-to-high-end markets -- even if staying a lot smaller than the other players -- and leave the low-end, lower-margin market to competitors.

Nokia's "open" strategy will pay off big time in the long run. At the moment, their major threat is the iPhone, which inherits all of apple's strengths (RDF, UI design) as well as it's weaknesses (software/hardware lockdown).

The next-gen Nokia phone on the other hand (successor to the N900) will get all the hardware features of the iPhone, but with the openness of a linux software stack. Want to make an app that downloads podcasts? Fine! Want to use your phone as a modem? No problem! In fact, no corporation enforcing their moral or business rules on how you use your phone, or alienation of talented developers!

Maemo and Qt being open source will ensure that the software features of the Maemo platform quickly eclipse those of the artificially limited iPhone platform. Maemo's based on Debian - so Nokia automatically gets just about every open-source software package in existence available on their platform.

I think this is the most serious threat that the turtleneck sweater brigade have yet seen.

...and with 10.6, shut-down speeds for an iMac go from 7 seconds to 4 seconds (and one second faster still for the MacBook Pro).

But as other people have pointed out: start up (and shut down) times are nice, but it's how fast you can use programs when the computer's awake that matters. Getting a computer working for you is like having a person work for you: sure, it's nice to know they can jump out of bed quickly first thing in the morning, but it's important that they don't spend most of the day sitting around doing nothing.

Apple have time and again rejected an App before it ever reaches an iPhone, just check out their Developer forum for gripes and confusion. However I don't know of any examples where an App has actually been nuked after acceptance and in fact Jobs' comment about the hitherto mythical kill switch seems to suggest a policy almost exactly the same as Microsoft, i.e. if an App is accepted that steals user data or can otherwise be considered malware then Apple/Microsoft need a mechanism to disable it.

I guess this can be abused and it is unclear what constitutes malware, but I also believe had both Corp's not incorporated this facility in their platform then there would be a heap of lawsuits waiting for them when some malware started mailing users contacts all over the web!

The "virus"mentioned in the screen shot isn't much of a virus. It's a trojan that only installs if you're stupid enough ...

I could put Ubuntu on a netbook and give it to my sister and she'd have no clue how to use it. But you can bet every last cent that if the source code to a virus was presented to her she would have it compiled (with all the right flags set to target her correct OSX version) and installed in a few minutes. It's borderline magic. Did you know they have LimeWire on Macs now? She managed to find that, install it and learn how to use it on her own but didn't have a clue as to how to move pictures from her old Windows machine to her MacBook. If only curing cancer compromised your computer, she'd have that done in a heart beat. I knew she would be better off with a mac but your statement of "anybody who uses a Mac knows" makes me cringe. Bottom line: do not underestimate stupidity.

Or your sister's pension for a free way to find movies, adult movies, music and other stuff illegally.

The "virus"mentioned in the screen shot isn't much of a virus. It's a trojan that only installs if you're stupid enough ...

I could put Ubuntu on a netbook and give it to my sister and she'd have no clue how to use it. But you can bet every last cent that if the source code to a virus was presented to her she would have it compiled (with all the right flags set to target her correct OSX version) and installed in a few minutes. It's borderline magic. Did you know they have LimeWire on Macs now? She managed to find that, install it and learn how to use it on her own but didn't have a clue as to how to move pictures from her old Windows machine to her MacBook. If only curing cancer compromised your computer, she'd have that done in a heart beat.

I knew she would be better off with a mac but your statement of "anybody who uses a Mac knows" makes me cringe. Bottom line: do not underestimate stupidity.

The "virus"mentioned in the screen shot isn't much of a virus. It's a trojan that only installs if you're stupid enough to download a program from a dodgy source (after browsing for porn) and install it after entering your admin password (which anybody who uses a mac knows means it's installing itself systemwide).

If you buy a MacBook after June 8, 2009 (i.e. any time now) that doesn't yet have Snow Leopard (10.6) pre-installed, the update will cost $9.99. Apple calls it "free" with a $9.99 shipping and handling fee. (See the Macworld story.)

He never said the VM wouldn't be on an Apple machine...

Funny, but I find it flabbergasting that Apple still does not allow non-server versions of OS X to run in a virtual machine, even on an Apple machine:

• "being able to run a virtual machine version of your desktop OS is a very useful capability. Unfortunately, for those of us who use non-server versions of OS X, we won't be able to do this (unless we're willing to pay for OS X Server, of course). Unlike the server license, there was no change in the OS X client license with the release of 10.5. As such, neither Parallels or VMware will allow the installation of OS X client on their upcoming products, respecting the terms in Apple's license agreement."