Slashdot Mirror

March 2003: http://www.thinksecret.com/news/tsnotes.html

December 2004: http://www.thinksecret.com/news/0412expo3.html

Mee too :-D

In the past year, ThinkSecret has published several "articles" outlining a lawsuit filed by certain retailers against Apple:
http://www.thinksecret.com/news/retailaccounting.h tml

They went so far as to actively solicit people to send in confidential information -- read the articles and then check the rules covering what they're looking for.

Seems someone(s) at ThinkSecret has a bit of an axe to grind with Apple over alleged harm done by Apple to independent retailers. Since that lawsuit is going nowhere.... perhaps disseminating Apple's trade secrets is Nick dePlumber's way of getting his/her/its pound of flesh.....

Interestingly/amusingly/somethingly, ThinkSecret has posted more "rumours" since the lawsuit was announced:

$149 1GB iPod is coming

This may no longer be true if Apple releases the rumored $499 headless iMac at Macworld in January....

According to this note, the ATI and NVIDIA updates in 10.3.7 are good news for laptop owners because they reduce power consumption, thus improving battery life.

not to squelch the joking around about streets yet to be named, but I have a legit QUESTION:

I presumed that Apple's DRM worked by encoding a song with a particular user's ID, then transmitting it down. It would take that user's ID to unlock the song and thus, the DRM would work.

So how the heck will this work for the iPod? I am assuming you can take the music OFF the iPod and add it to iTunes but then you would just have this AAC file without DRM or with DRM you can't decrypt.

So this leads me to believe you will NOT be able to remove the songs from the iPod - they become like demo versions of video games on a CD you get with your modem. You can play the songs on the iPod all you want, but you gotta BUY them if you want to play them on iTunes.

Clever Apple, very clever.

If this is so, then I would suspect from now until forever, iPods will come preloaded with some songs, or perhaps photos, because it is such a great way to promote.

ThinkSecret got it right again, right down to the week of release.

Think secret was right again, even down to predicting the date of the announcement.

As soon as the "killer" 4-5GB players come out for ~$250, expect Apple to trump them all with (1) color screens and iPhoto sync (in the works), (2) Bluetooth headphone interface (courtesy of HP), and (3) bigger HDD capacity.

AM/FM tuning and voice note recording seem trivial and probably are on the timeline too... while Ogg support probably is not.

87 searches at http://manyforms.blogspot.com

• Mac Rumors - Good rumors website
• Mac Slash - Slashdot like mac news site
• Mac News Bytes - Good quick links to mac related articles
• Version Tracker - Software update website. Kind of like download.com for mac.
• Mac Update - Similar to versiontracker.com
• Mac OS X Hints - Good tips site for beginners and experienced people alike.
• Think Secret - Another good rumors site. Very accurate, most of the time.
• Emulation.net - Links to game emulation for mac

• Adium - Multi-protocol IM client
• Byte Controller - Good itunes hotkey/menu pager applet
• Camino - Nice mac based gecko browser.
• Colloquy - Webkit based IRC client. not too newbish.
• Cyberduck - SFTP/FTP client for os x
• Desktop Manager - Multi desktop app for os x
• Apple X11 Server - Apple's integrated X11 server. you'd want this for the next two items
• Fink - UNIX software for your mac
• Gimp.app - decent free photo editor
• Handbrake - DVD to mpeg4 ripper
• iTerm - Multi tabbed terminal
• Logorrhea - iChat log viewer/searcher/indexer
• Meteorologist - Weather applet for the menu bar
• Menu Meters - Menu applet for cpu usage, net usage, and more.
• Mplayer OS X - This app will play just about any media format in existance
• Poisoned - GiFT (Kazaa) and mldonkey based P2P mac client.
• Quicksilver - Very cool file/application/url/itunes/etc/etc/etc indexing program. It's like spotlight, only here TODAY and free!
• VLC - Another good video playing app. Nice to have a backup sometimes if mplayer doesn't play a file (which is very very rare).

The new G5 based iMacs are reportedly designed so that the CPU is attached to the monitor - which looks remarkably like a tablet. We'll know in 2 weeks.

Speaking of the new G5 iMac, ThinkSecret has a report that confirms this, along with supposed specs for new 17" and 20" iMacs.

The new G5 based iMacs are reportedly designed so that the CPU is attached to the monitor - which looks remarkably like a tablet. We'll know in 2 weeks.

Speaking of the new G5 iMac, ThinkSecret has a report that confirms this, along with supposed specs for new 17" and 20" iMacs.

Something nifty like that seems a bit more apple than the first impression of the new imac given by the latest Think Secret article.

A quick & dirty apple-ification of the Vaio W series they compare it to in vague terms comes up looking like this little piece. Certainly looks like it could be made by apple, but with the history of the iMac really being something unique, I suspect it'll be Just That Bit More.

but it seems like patents for a tablet style PC could easily be applied to the next generation iMac. It's likely that it's an all in one design with the components behind the lcd.

See here: http://www.thinksecret.com/ and here http://www.appleinsider.com/.

This is not a new thing in the IT world. Here is an example of Mac doing exactly the same thing. Although the practice is reprehensible it is common place.

Your wish may about to granted.

These 2 announcements (new ipod) have persuaded me to keep my $$ in my pocket until the new iMacs ship.

I for one am happy, but doesn't this go against Apple's usual way of doing business?

So July brought Apple 100,000,000 itunes song sales and September will bring new G5 iMacs, but according to this article, August will bring the first newly designed iPod, which will be similar to the Mini (scroll wheel with built in buttons?) but with the feature set of the non-mini iPods and capacities up to 60 GB.

As for September G5 iMacs, there was some blurb about them being able to hang on the wall. Apple's new 20", 23", and 30" displays can (see "Mounting Kit"). Wonder if this is a mixed up rumor or for real.

It would appear, as Apple's PowerMac line is all Dual G5, that some capacity has increased and it would follow that the iMac line will all be single processor.

Tiger looked really neat, especially the search/metadata functions, but the most amazing display at WWDC was this:

Two 30" 2560x1900 widescreen displays being driven by a new custom Nvidia 6800 Ultra

It looked practical too, there was a demo with Final Cut Pro running with several tools up on the right, and the HD video up on the left. Seemed like a pretty useful setup.

I checked, and a "nicely equipped" dual monitor dual g5 came up to just under $12,000 on the apple store. Seems like a lot to most of us, but that's chump change for a high-quality HD video editing kit.

Also, I got about 50fps on Unreal Tournament 2004 running at 2560x1900 with all settings at maximum. :)

Courtesy of Think Secret:

Jobs said that Apple has one half-million .Mac subscribers. The synchronization engine is built into Tiger with a new .Mac preference pane; mail account settings can be synchronized and third-party apps can sync data.

The real reason they dropped ADC was that they realized there was a limit to how much power you could push through the video card, and the 23" display was right about at that limit. If you check Apple's tech specs, you'll see that the 30" display has a 150W power supply - it simply needs a separate cord and brick. And once you're resigned to having two cables, it makes little sense to nitpick about having three. I like how they've at least bundled them at the monitor end, though.

right-on rumor

Well, a new XCode is rumored to be part of Tiger. At think secret they have a rumor that XCode 1.5 has been seeded. You can download version 1.2, I haven't yet(because I am happy with it's C support, and I use Eclipse for Java) from Apple for free, I'm not really sure of what the extra features are.
I haven't messed around with the distributed build and fix and continue features of XCode(which seem to be the most interesting), but after I get my G5(currently only have an iBook :( ) I think I will try playing with those.
But yeah, for the time being you are probably better off running Eclipse versus XCode for Java. While XCode "works" under Java(and does automatically set the look and feel to be Aqua), there aren't that many features.

They'll probably have monitors, too. Rumors sites like Think Secret have published reports about the soon-to-be-released monitors. So you might not want an old Cinema display to go with that new PM.

Think Secret is reporting that new displays are due soon. The new displays apparently will be DVI only -- no more ADC. (The 30" display requires 150W, which ADC couldn't handle.)

What puzzles me is the GPUs currently in these new G5s -- they seem to be dual-head ADC+DVI. That's not terribly useful once ADC goes the way of the dodo. If you're in the market for the new displays, it might be worth holding off on the G5 a few weeks, in order to get a DVI+DVI video card.

There may come new Displays (20, 23 and 30 inch with the known aluminum brushed metal look) to the WWDC, as reportet here.
Think Secret writes they may even come with DVI port.

...but since the blue and white G3 the overall build quality has been pretty high...

Build quality my eye... http://www.thinksecret.com/news/g5noise.html .

The only reason I don't own a Mac is because I know where every single thing inside my PC came from and when trouble occurs I can pin-point what to fix pretty quickly.

PS: I tried PearPC on an Athlon XP 1800+ with 1GB of RAM and OS X didn't so much run as crawl. It might be usable... if you take a bottle of Quaaludes first.

However,there is some news here

***I Have Been Modded Down For Having An Unpopular Opinion***

Reading this thread at +4, I notice that EVERY SINGLE POST is one that disputes the "Apple is dying" story. It's obvious that believing in Apple's immortality and omnipotence is quite popular around here.

However, there's a difference between hope and reality. I, too, HOPE that Apple will stick around. But they may well become another BeOS crushed under the Microsoft boot. Why wouldn't they? Bigger and better companies have gone under faster than Apple's slow descent from their former glorious stature....

To arrogantly claim Apple is invincible, as so many here have done, is to invite certain disaster. Take the Apple name off their balance sheet, and they're just another company with 1.7% of the market who makes a good MP3 player that will certainly be copied by everyone until their advantage is gone and their marketshare is diluted by the masses of clones. I honestly don't know a single person with an iPod. I know 4 or 5 people who have other MP3 players. For many, the iPod is too expensive. For others, they don't need so much space. For others, the iPod is too big. For others, they don't like the fact that it has a hard drive instead of RAM because they're scared of dropping it and smoking it instantly. I see them on tv all the time, but never have in person yet. And trust me, I'm watching. I know maybe 5 people who use Macs. That's it, and I must know thousands of people. Think hard. Count your family and friends. Who's using Windows and who's got a Mac? Maybe in California everybody has a Mac that matches their handbag, but we normal people all use Windows. That's the way it is. But you wouldn't know that from the crowd here at Slashdot, who are so excited about their MP3s they've forgotten about GNU/Linux and that whole "freedom" thing. Who cares about freedom and all that crap? It's time to focus on what REALLY matters, and that's a cool playlist and allowing "the man" to rule us. It's okay, he's a nice ruler. Apple changed the Slashdot culture from revolutionaries to mass-market consumers. Big time.

Look at the recent Apple Accounting Scandal. This is the same sort of thing that caused Wall Street to kill Bre-X, Enron, WorldCom, Martha Stewart, Nortel, etc. If you think Apple's immune to the wrath of Wall Street, you're nuts. Without their shares being up, they don't have money to operate. They'll bleed to death, which they are doing anyway (but slowly). Apple burns through billions a year already, if profits stop coming in, they've got two years to get profitable before they're broke.

Look at ALL their lawsuits. Apple behave like the Republicans but without the immunity from prosecution. Apple has blatantly disobeyed the court order not to sell music. You guys love Apple, I know, but it's screwed to love a company so much that you'd sell out your ethics and ignore what's right and wrong for them.

Their profits are way down this year, what, 90% from what they were last year? Doesn't that make you think they're kind of a fad company based on hype? Dell and HP and IBM are slow and steady. Apple is a pump and dump. They pump up a new product with big splashy 2 hour long Stevenote Advertisements, then everyone buys their stuff, then it dies out because they refuse to update their lines more than once or twice a year. If I want to buy a PowerBook right now, I'm paying FULL PRICE for a computer they released last Aughust! AND at 1Ghz, it wasn't exactly bleeding edge back then! And if they rush the hopefully lifesaving G5PowerBooks out, they get a reputation for building crap (which they are slowly getting, as you would know if you thought about all the problems their products have been having recently). The biggest Web page artsy company in my town just switched to all-Windows for compatibility reasons, as well as cost (despite what the Mac freaks say), and the ability to order PCs with exactly what they want (NO FireWire, NO USB, NO glowy keybo

Apple has been mis-leading its shareholders.

See ThinkSecret

shareholders

"Without Mac OS X around to spoil me, I was

forced to get my Linux machines current again, so I could still be productive and use modern software. I was able to upgrade a couple machines to Linux 2.6 and Gnome 2.4, and with the addition of anti-aliased fonts to the Linux desktop I didn't miss my PowerBook quite so much. But now that it's back, I wonder what the hell I was thinking."

I love this guy's company spirit. Slashdot is owned by VA Software, a prominent Linux company. I'd get fired for this kind of open betrayal.

What's worse is the implications this has for Linux in general. I'm a regular guy reading this. If this Cowboy Neal guy, a major geek ten times as skilled with Linux as I am, refuses to use the software or hardware his boss makes, why should I buy it?

Cowboy Neal likely gets an employee discount, and he STILL refuses to use it!

I feel like sending a letter to VA explaining that the reason I refuse to buy from them is because *their own employees* support the competition over their products. Think about it. Linux must be unbelievably crappy if even the guys who work for a Linux company refuse to use it -- I mean, imagine if Steve Jobs got caught using Windows or Bill Gates admitted to being a Linux kernel hacker. Mature adults in the public eye don't pull this kind of backstabbing crap. I don't even care about VA Software, and I'm disgusted. If you accept a job with a Linux company, you have a responsibility to your employer not to use the competition's product -- but if that's too hard for you, at least cheat on your boss in secret rather than openly promoting the competition's product over your own!

The morally-stunted editors of Slashdot obviously don't care if they're biting the hand that feeds them; they want their Bluetooth to be auto-configured, dammit! Laziness and a refusal to learn seem to be the marks of a great editor, as well as the willingness to openly praise and worship the competition's product. I bet neither Gates nor Jobs would stand for such callous, disgusting betrayal. In fact, I KNOW they wouldn't. That's why they're successful, and Linux will soon die. Proprietary software has nothing to worry about. Developers are the air supply that Apple, Microsoft,

What I have never understood about certain segments of the open source community is why Apple gets such a big pass. The average slashdrone will rant endlessly (and probably rightly so) about the evils of SCO and Microsoft. When in fact Apple is more closed source and proprietary than both of them combined and talk about how cool Apple is and if only the world were a better place we would all use Mac's. Any model that fails to give you control of the hardware and software that you pay for is a bad one. Apple locks down both, a claim that is not applicable to either Microsoft or SCO. The open source community should get out of bed with Apple before we get another SCO situation on our hands. To those who say Apple would never do something like SCO look here.

$4.08 per month
13.4 per day

I am hoping most of the $17,000,000 goes to a few good iMovie developers, myself. Damned finicky program that version 3!

--
Daniel C. Slagle
Keeper of the "Unofficial" iMovie FAQ

Apple is widely rumored to be releasing a "mini-ipod" that (a) is smaller and (b) costs less than the current ones, with prices of $99 to $149 being floated around for a 2GB model and $149 to $199 for a 4GB model.

Just wait and get one of those. You don't want to use a crappy service with WMA audio when in a week you can get the real thing.

Mini iPod On Apple's Plate

Mini iPods ... focus of upcoming Expo keynote

Mini iPod Buzz...

MWSF: More Mini iPod Confirmation and Detail?

Mini-iPod Rumors

No. Apple tends to have quite a following, so unlike many other companies it has many rumor sites. You don't really see a sonyrumors.com, or dellrumors.com?

Just off the top of my head i can name:
thinksecret.com
spymac.com
macrumors.com

and i'm sure there are a lot more. i seriously doubt this is apple using a pr stunt, as these sorts of leaks happen often within apple and apple isn't to happy about it usually.

Our sources tell us that it's not very reputable at all and in fact is often full of crap.

(We make no warranty as to the results that may be obtained from reading this post, or as to the accuracy, reliability or content of any information, service, or merchandise provided through it. We shall not be liable regardless of the cause or duration, for any errors, inaccuracies, omissions, or other defects in, or untimeliness or unathenticity of, the information contained within this post.

All content presented in this post, regardless of labeling, should not be the basis for any financial or investment decision, or a financial transaction of any kind. This post is provided for informational purposes only, and is not provided for ANY OTHER PURPOSE WHATSOEVER.)

Reference link provided for the irony-impaired.

Think Secret, an Apple rumors site has a story here about all the anti-Apple stuff coming out of CNET lately.

To quote:
Was the timing of all this bad news just coincidence, what with Microsoft announcing plans for its next OS and giving CNET an exclusive interview with Bill Gates, or was it something else? In this particular case, it looks suspicious even to other journalists.

You know, I would have thought this was simply another conspiracy theory on /. created to stir up controversy and debate. However, after reading this and this on Think Secret the other day I'm not so sure. This isn't the first not will it likely be the last transgression at this level pulled by Apple.

You know, I would have thought this was simply another conspiracy theory on /. created to stir up controversy and debate. However, after reading this and this on Think Secret the other day I'm not so sure. This isn't the first not will it likely be the last transgression at this level pulled by Apple.

Just got myself a 12' PowerBook, oh well :-) Today I'd be hard pressed to choose -- one big plus on the PB is the *digital* video out, which lets you attach a Studio display. The new iBooks are discounted $100 at my University's edu store, versus $200 on the PBs. Specs and Euro prices from Macbidouille:

- 12" / 800MHz
PowerPC G4 a 800 MHz
256 Ko de cache N2 (a 800 MHz)
Ecran TFT 12" (1024 x 768)
256 Mo DDR266 / 30 Go
Lecteur combo DVD/CD-RW
ATI Mobility Radeon 9200 (32 Mo VRAM)
1.199 euros

- 14" / 933MHz
PowerPC G4 a 933 MHz
256 Ko de cache N2 (a 933 MHz)
Ecran TFT 14" (1024 x 768)
256 Mo DDR266 / 40 Go
Lecteur combo DVD/CD-RW
ATI Mobility Radeon 9200 (32 Mo VRAM)
1449 euros

- 14" / 1GHz
PowerPC G4 a 1 GHz
256 Ko de cache N2 (a 1 GHz)
Ecran TFT 14" (1024 x 768)
256 Mo DDR266 / 60 Go
Lecteur combo DVD/CD-RW
ATI Mobility Radeon 9200 (32 Mo VRAM)
1699 euros

According to ThinkSecret, and confirmed by an image on the international Apple Stores, tomorrow we get recording accessories and memory card readers to store digital pictures and more. Wicked!

Yeah, it should be that simple, right? I'm in that "almost there" situation. I bring my 15" PowerBook to work and use it almost exclusively except for one thing - I need to keep my WinXP desktop around solely for the purpose of using Outlook to see my work's Exchange servers. Yeah, I could use Entourage to do that, but I don't like running it and Mail.app at the same time. Just like I don't like running Explorer and Safari at the same time.

Luckily, though, Panther's Mail.app has Exchange support, so all I need to do is hang tight for a few more days.

Is the "all-new" Finder now multithreaded? Is it written in Cocoa?

The new Finder is still Carbon, but it's worth noting that it's a Mach-O binary. Mach-O binaries are native to the Darwin core, and while all Cocoa applications are Mach-O, only some Carbon applications are. With regard to programming and structure, there's little new in Panther's Finder, and in terms of multithreading, it's no more multithreaded than Jaguar's.

Rumors have it that Apple's working on their own MS format compatible office suite. It'll consist of Keynote (Powerpoint type app), Document (word processor), a spreadsheet app and a database app. It's doubtful Apple would release something that was half-assed (OK, there was OS X 10.0). Keynote seems pretty good. Hopefully, Document and the rest will just as nice.

While the Apple market is signifigantly smaller that the Windows market, it is still large (25 million users is the usual number bandied about). There's plenty of profit to be made from this market, especially when you consider that your support costs for a software title will be less, due to less hardware variations to deal with. Coding for MacOS is more straight forward when you stick to Apple specs. Coding for OS X means that you could potentially be writing something that could also be release for Linux/Unix, if you do it right.

Just think how many calls a small software developer might get for a Windows app they've come up with, due to a Windows problem with some hardware variation. Even if the help person quickly blows them off with the "it's Windows, not our software", they've still spent some money on that call.

According to Think Secret pro users are not happy with the small upgrades the new versions of the Adobe apps have got.

Note that Think Secret is a rumor site but it has probably the best reputation of any rumor site.

What you're saying, and correct me if I'm wrong, is essentially this: not everyone needs PGP security, and those who do already know to encrypt their sensitive data; therefore, it's a waste of time and energy to encrypt all communications by default. As you say, "why bother?"

Here's a couple reasons. When you're in the habit of encrypting everything you do on the network, sensitive or not, you're making it much harder for attackers to tell what's worth decrypting. Drown your important stuff in random traffic, and it becomes much harder to pick out. And consider what happens when you pick up a sensitive project to work on. Unless you're already encrypting everything going in and out, an attacker will notice a spike in the amount of encrypted traffic, which could tip them to listen in more closely.

It's the same reason the U.S. government (among many others) broadcasts random numbers on shortwave radio frequencies, even when there's no actual communication taking place--a sudden increase in coded broadcasts would tip many hands around the world that something's afoot, which is undesirable, even if exactly what remains a mystery.

BTW, Panther's Mail.app is rumored to include transparent encryption. I can't wait.

yours

An Apple Bluetooth keyboard and mouse combo is coming..

I'm waiting on that, but my resolve is wearing down.. Logitech might have my money soon if Apple doesn't deliver!

As Zack pointed out, iWalk was not a Think Secret report; in fact, we debunked it. For WWDC, we reported that Apple would announce 64-bit Power Macs as well as a videoconferencing camera that we said would be called "iSight," -- I think we're in the clear there. iWorks? I maintain that it is still a future Apple release. As for 12-inch and 17-inch PowerBooks, while we raised the possibility of a release that week, we specifically said we couldn't confirm the delivery date: "It's unclear when Apple plans to announce the upgrades..."

Bottom line? Like any other news organization, Think Secret has occasional misses. But those misses don't appear to include any of the items mentioned here. I think our record speaks for itself.

Nick dePlume
Publisher and Editor in Chief
Think Secret

Frankly, I don't recall the last time they were wrong about anything they've posted.