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2. Accelerator keys that give a quick and simple way to stay off the mouse(non existant in a Mac, on par with linux in my opinion)
http://rixstep.com/2/20040510,00.shtml

4. Far cheaper(only compared against a mac, I build my own machines now and roll an old harddrive image over, so costs are level with linux)
http://www.systemshootouts.org/shootouts/desktop/2 006/0809_dt3200.html

7. More natural methods of interfacing(especially when I am filling out forms online. a great example is the tab key. in windows, I can tab to check boxes, text boxes, or drop down boxes and then manipulate those. I have been searching and have yet to figure out a quick way to do this on a mac, just one example)
http://www.getfirefox.net/

Both are very severe problems in my opinion. But niether trump the lacking functionality of a mac (for me) or the lacking software apps in linux for which OSS implementations don't exist.

Now, what is that list of software that is only available for windows?

Timeline: 1987: Steve Jobs invites Jean-Marie Hullot, author of SOS Interface [a LeLisp-based interface builder for Mac OS written in 1984 during his tenure at INRIA], to Redwood City to demonstrate his program. Jobs buys the rights to the program and takes on Hullot, who goes on to create [the NeXTstep] Interface Builder.

Timeline: 1987: Steve Jobs invites Jean-Marie Hullot, author of SOS Interface [a LeLisp-based interface builder for Mac OS written in 1984 during his tenure at INRIA], to Redwood City to demonstrate his program. Jobs buys the rights to the program and takes on Hullot, who goes on to create [the NeXTstep] Interface Builder.

Yes but they don't say who the author(s) is.

Anyway I was right about the French connection Jean-Marie Hullot and Bertrand Serlet are the authors. Bertrand worked at Inria in the offices next to mine when I was an engineer at the OSF. It is interesting that Simon Patience is director of Engineering at Apple and also worked in the same office block in downtown Grenoble city. I believe their are others too.

He's Dmitri Fotiou. His website was a riot. The lack of intelligence of these Greek authorities is amazing - they didn't even check the HTML. That's how bloody incompetent they are.

Fotiou still has to report to the police every month. Incredible. They still insist on holding a trial, despite the fact the situation is totally ridiculous.

See these links for more on the Foutiou story.
http://rixstep.com/1/0/20060505,00.shtml
http://rixstep.com/1/0/20060507,00.shtml

Visit Dmitri's blog here.
http://fotiou.net/blog2/blogger.html

And lest we forget: cellphones were officially illegal in Greece at the time of the 2004 Olympics and a representative of the Greek embassy in London at the time was quoted as saying:

"If you know they are illegal then don't bring them into our country."

Both the Fotiou and the spammer/programmer cases are still wide open; in the latter case (which was repeatedly reported to Slashdot at the time but was ignored) the forensic lab returned "no evidence" over ten months ago and still nothing happens - and a simple phone call before calling out the National Guard would have resulted in laughs all around; in the Fotiou case a simple inspection of the HTML would have shown it was all a joke as well. These people are simply too much.

But in Greece that which is a joke is not funny and that which should be taken seriously is a joke. It is the height of hypocrisy and effrontery that this conference be held in this country - a country moreover where over 100 top cabinet and other officials let themselves be spied on through their cellphones for over two years, and where the whistle blower, initially silenced, later committed suicide, and where the government have done everything in their power to hush things up ever since.

Greece is not only one of the most corrupt governments and societies in the world; it is also one of the most clumsy and confused.

He's Dmitri Fotiou. His website was a riot. The lack of intelligence of these Greek authorities is amazing - they didn't even check the HTML. That's how bloody incompetent they are.

Fotiou still has to report to the police every month. Incredible. They still insist on holding a trial, despite the fact the situation is totally ridiculous.

See these links for more on the Foutiou story.
http://rixstep.com/1/0/20060505,00.shtml
http://rixstep.com/1/0/20060507,00.shtml

Visit Dmitri's blog here.
http://fotiou.net/blog2/blogger.html

And lest we forget: cellphones were officially illegal in Greece at the time of the 2004 Olympics and a representative of the Greek embassy in London at the time was quoted as saying:

"If you know they are illegal then don't bring them into our country."

Both the Fotiou and the spammer/programmer cases are still wide open; in the latter case (which was repeatedly reported to Slashdot at the time but was ignored) the forensic lab returned "no evidence" over ten months ago and still nothing happens - and a simple phone call before calling out the National Guard would have resulted in laughs all around; in the Fotiou case a simple inspection of the HTML would have shown it was all a joke as well. These people are simply too much.

But in Greece that which is a joke is not funny and that which should be taken seriously is a joke. It is the height of hypocrisy and effrontery that this conference be held in this country - a country moreover where over 100 top cabinet and other officials let themselves be spied on through their cellphones for over two years, and where the whistle blower, initially silenced, later committed suicide, and where the government have done everything in their power to hush things up ever since.

Greece is not only one of the most corrupt governments and societies in the world; it is also one of the most clumsy and confused.

Nobody knows why Dell is in this article. Especially since some Macs apparantly also catches fire.

I switched back because of the horrid quality of Apple hardware the last few years.

And with the build quality of the MacBook family, I won't be surprised if there will be more who jump ship because they cannot find a suitable replacement for their PowerPC machines.

Right now is the worst possible time to move to a Mac. First of all the MacBooks and MacBook Pros are plagued with many issues as nicely documented here. More importantly, Microsoft and Adobe still have not ported their software over along with numerous smaller third party vendors. How do you suppose customers will feel when they realize they bought software titles that aren't even native for their machines quite yet? Unless you use Apple's own consumer-oriented products, you are screwed for the time being.

Then of course are the issues with OS X itself. Too many to mention, but nicely summed up over at Rixstep.

I was actually hoping that the move to Intel was going to mean lower hardware prices now that under the hood there is no discernible difference in parts from bargain basement PCs. Instead, Apple continues to charge a premium for their hardware and even ask for an extra $150 for a color (e.g. MacBlack). I have owned and used Macs since 1997, but once my PowerBook breathes its last I will be migrating to a cheap PC running Ubuntu.

I'm currently dual booting OS X and Ubuntu and now find myself booted into the latter a lot more often.

I really don't want anything developed by this guy. From his FAQ:

What's more, the Finder doesn't show you the Unix-specific data on files, such as their inodes.

If I want to see inodes, I go to the command line. That is exactly the kind of stuff I *don't* want to see in my file browser. I want to be able to get to my files, move them around, organize them, and not have to worry about anything else.

Index files are inaccurate and a poor substitute for speed. Write the programs right and the results are always 100% accurate with no disk space clutter and waste.

So you'd rather search through the contents of the hard drive each time than build an index file? That is faster? Thank God Apple doesn't subscribe to this guy's idea of "fast."

There are no hidden files in Xfile. The program is counting on you to be intelligent and to use discretion. Live up to its expectations.

I like my programs to have some intelligence. I like them to take care of the mundane things. If I have to think less about running them, then I can spend more time thinking about the stuff I need to get done.

Reading through this guy's site, he comes off as extremely cocky, like a djb without the talent. I'll stick to developers that want to make my life easier.

Two words: Path Finder [cocoatech.com].

One word: Xfile

http://rixstep.com/4/0/xfile/

Because it can still be recovered. With electron microscopes and a whole lot of time and effort, you can examine the state of the electrons on the hard drive and come very close to recovering all of the data that has been overwritten once. Overwriting multiple times reduces the possibility that this sort of recovery will work.

http://rixstep.com/2/20030314,00.html has a bit of information on the subject.

For something as great as OS X the exploit shouldn't have worked anyway. But it's a fact that as far as security goes, Apple are up the creek without a paddle, and as far as running Unix goes, Apple aren't running it.

Any process at all - as low as the default admin and sometimes even lower - can get any arbitrary code to run as root at any time on OS X. Yes, it is that bad.

Read this and test it yourself.

Apple's 'Unix' Runs Arbitrary Code on Boot
http://rixstep.com/1/20060306,00.shtml

Download the POC referenced in the article here.

ftp://rixstep.com/pub/BootRooter.tar.bz2

There is no Unix around that will allow such a thing. Congratulations, Apple. And congratulations to all OS X users. Smell the bread burning? Time to disengage your iPod earplugs and run for the exits.

For something as great as OS X the exploit shouldn't have worked anyway. But it's a fact that as far as security goes, Apple are up the creek without a paddle, and as far as running Unix goes, Apple aren't running it.

Any process at all - as low as the default admin and sometimes even lower - can get any arbitrary code to run as root at any time on OS X. Yes, it is that bad.

Read this and test it yourself.

Apple's 'Unix' Runs Arbitrary Code on Boot
http://rixstep.com/1/20060306,00.shtml

Download the POC referenced in the article here.

ftp://rixstep.com/pub/BootRooter.tar.bz2

There is no Unix around that will allow such a thing. Congratulations, Apple. And congratulations to all OS X users. Smell the bread burning? Time to disengage your iPod earplugs and run for the exits.

Posts including (but not limited to) any of the following are not appropriate:

* Discussions of Apple policies and procedures (including pricing and repair policies)
* etc.. etc etc..

There are literally hundreds of reported removed posts which are legitimate problems with people's hardware have been removed. Apple is KNOWN throughout the industry to rewrite their support/return policy history.(ask pretty much anybody who has been in the retail or support industry for a few years or more) I have and everyone I know who has delt with Apple in a capacity more than just a user know this is true. Apple technicians know this is true. Apple dealers know this is true. But why would they tell normal users this? This kind of stuff is known and solved problem. People in the know accept it and try to sheild their customers from it and people not in the know deny it (like you). It really surprises me to hear someone like you to be making the outrageous claims you have made here. And calling the parent a Quack is just plain trolling.

Re: * 14 days, blah, blah...

This one's not even true. I received my iBook G4, which I'm typing this to you on, via UPS Ground. Took two weeks. The day I got it, the RAM wasn't seated correctly. Took it to my local Apple Store. Fixed on the premises, no charge. While the genius was looking it over, he said, "Wow, this is a bummer. Do you know that the new model just came out?" No, I didn't. He notified the store manager, and I walked out with the new model. No Charge.

Not even true? Dude when is the last time you have delt with Apple? The way you claim to be treated has NEVER been a policy with apple. And the way you were treated is only happening on an exception-only basis. Both with Apple direct and with Apple dealers and service providers. If you were offered a new notebook you can consider yourself lucky. I have seen this situation happen with EVERY SINGLE major Apple release since the death of the colored imacs/ibooks and the ONLY people who recieve this type of treatment are those which work themselves up the chain to apple coporate and talk to supervisors and managers and demand new systems. I suppose the manager of the store you went to MIGHT have offered to return your laptop to Apple if he was already in the middle of a return with other products he was processing and knew he was going to get credit for it. But what you are saying about Apple are simply not true. Not even close. And don't even THINK about getting this sort of service out of a 3rd party dealer who has a 5%/quarter maximum return quota to stay under. 2 or 3 returned laptops on most independant dealers means no returns for the rest of the quarter.

I've gotten two sets of replacement feet for my iBook (you know, the one I'm typing this to you on), mostly because the one time that I lost a foot, I flipped out and wanted LOTS of spares. Went to an Apple

He was a rich, whiney little slime in 1976, and he hasn't changed a bit. It seems that being a whiney little slime is profitable.

Heh. Mod parent up :)

Yes, MacOS X is "known".... but it's also the coolest OS on the planet. Here is a list of new features.

BTW Here is a Tiger demo Steve Jobs did about a year ago (!). I am particularly impressed by the CoreImage realtime image/video filters now built into the OS rendering system (about 4/6 of the way through.)

The chart in the article has Obj-C listed.. believe it had it listed around 1983 which shocked me. First time I ever heard of it was 2 years ago when I started looking into OS X programming.

Brad Cox came up with Objective-C in 1983. Steve Jobs founded NeXT in 1985, and NeXTSTEP was written in ObjC. NeXTSTEP evolved into OpenStep and then into the Cocoa API at Apple and GNUStep API. The GNUStep folks are now trying to keep theirs up to date with Apple's changes. But the GNUStep project has been around for quite a few years. (i.e. before Jobs went back to Apple, I believe.)

He's a fine one to talk about property rights, since his software empire had its foundation in ignoring Harvard's property rights.

What do you want to be when you grow up? How about a whiny little twit. The world really rewards them.

the multiple formatting standards of the DoD

Seems you and others know a lot. Which is probably why they were able to recover so much. Read a bit, OK? A few years back, anyone could be excused for not using their noggins. But you're saying that the most security paranoid nation on the planet is going to publish their techniques - the ones they really use, and these are basically 'wipe with a random number, its complement, then all zeroes'?

Egads. And the Apple people here are worried their users are still too naive...

• For casual Mac users? No way is this going to be of any use to them. If they were so inclined, they'd already have some experience on another OS by now.

File Vault does not securely delete anything.

OK, if you define 'secure delete' the way Aladdin do, then yes, it's a secure delete. But you're a sucker if you trust in this slipshod mechanism.

If you need a really secure delete, then take the time to read these two documents and learn a bit about what is involved.

http://rixstep.com/2/sd,001.html
ftp://rixstep.com/pub/gutmann.pdf

File Vault does not securely delete anything.

OK, if you define 'secure delete' the way Aladdin do, then yes, it's a secure delete. But you're a sucker if you trust in this slipshod mechanism.

If you need a really secure delete, then take the time to read these two documents and learn a bit about what is involved.

http://rixstep.com/2/sd,001.html
ftp://rixstep.com/pub/gutmann.pdf

I think they might be able to do grand things with damaged drives, but using 'DoD' to wipe a drive does not impress me. And so what if they do it sector by sector - it doesn't matter as long as you wipe the entire disk.

This article and this PDF explain more.

I think they might be able to do grand things with damaged drives, but using 'DoD' to wipe a drive does not impress me. And so what if they do it sector by sector - it doesn't matter as long as you wipe the entire disk.

This article and this PDF explain more.