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Anyone can enter our leave the Android ecosystem at any time and you can take most of your content with you.

The same is true of Apple.

If you've been paying attention to Apple's trend with the iMac, you can see where this article could be a warning of things to come: Apple has been trying to drive the iMac down to basically a great big tablet on a stand for the past two decades. It's predominantly that thermal envelope which has stopped them from getting there, without significant compromise -- but that hasn't stopped other vendors from likewise attempting to release "desktops" with the same objective in mind. (The Surface Studio springs to mind, as one example... but there are others as well.)

In typical modern slashdot fashion, a person is marked up because he made a "cool" sounding claim. This claim of course is unsupported, and is likely made up. But hey, don't let truth get in the way of a good story, right?

This particular lie bothered me because I remembered reading something a long time ago that implied the opposite. I will admit it took me the better part of an hour to find this article. It is about how the U.S. Army had switched to Mac OS in 1999 for their web page, since they were sick of having it defaced. (this is pre OS X).

https://tidbits.com/article/55...

I am beginning to wonder if the difference between a lawyer and the typical shashdot poster is that a lawyer makes a fast based argument, sometimes.

1995 is also when Apple started selling Macs with DOS compatibility.

So, arguably, there was no reason after that either.

You're fine, says another researcher who was also presenting at this last Black Hat. Most relevant line:

Is there anything I need to do?

No, nearly everyone can ignore Thunderstrike 2 entirely. The research really is excellent, compelling work that the Wired piece unfortunately turned into a bit of a fright-fest.

Apple exploits tend to be reported in more breathless terms than ones of comparable severity on other platforms (whether that's because tossing "Apple" in a headline makes for a lot of pageviews or because Apple beat reporters tend to be more clueless about malware, I can't say), which can make it hard to tell just how serious they actually are. In this case, both 10.10.4 and the latest betas of 10.11 already have fixes in place that prevent this particular attack. Moreover, in order to be infected in the first place, it requires that you either download the malware and execute it as an administrator, or that you allow someone to connect an infected Thunderbolt dongle to your machine.

Actually part of the problem is they made Mail.app work better with Gmail, but all the hacks that used to be necessary really screw things up. Apple should've posted a FAQ about the changes rather than quietly make them.

One big change... you need to enable "All Mail" in IMAP now, since the latest Mail.app wants that as the Archive folder (which makes sense). But everyone has it disabled in IMAP since, up until now, it was problematic to do otherwise.

I found https://tidbits.com/article/14219 to be helpful.

Apple's PowerBook 1400 had a removable book cover style lid so you could put in pretty pictures etc. A company called Keep It Simple Systems made a solar panel that slipped right in. (TidBITS article here). Here's a quote from MacFormat magazine describing it (source):

The PowerCover is especially neat because it fits into the BookCover slot on PowerBook 1400s, so you can leave it on more or less permanently. This will extend the battery life by around 35% (the PowerCover is, after all, a bit smaller than the Mercury II). KISS claims you can expect its products to give you up to 20 years of free energy. An extreme example of these devices’ usefulness is that of Ralph Harvey, a research scientist who uses a solar charger on his PowerBook in the Antarctic where power’s clearly at a premium. [...]

If you're like me and send feedback to Apple when things go sideways, you can't on this. The Crash brings down the error reporting function "Problem Reporter". As soon as you click into the text field to describe the error it crashes too. Please note from my log:

2/2/13 8:43:18.001 PM Problem Reporter[517]: assertion on /SourceCache/DataDetectorsCore/DataDetectorsCore-269.1/Sources/PushDown/DDResultExtraction.c:1576 "CFStringHasPrefix(urlVal, CFSTR("file://"))" failed :wrong extraction: File:///
2/2/13 8:43:18.001 PM Problem Reporter[517]: wrong extraction: File:///
2/2/13 8:43:18.001 PM Problem Reporter[517]: An uncaught exception was raised
2/2/13 8:43:18.002 PM Problem Reporter[517]: condition "wrong extraction: File:///"
2/2/13 8:43:18.003 PM Problem Reporter[517]: (

I love the last line, is that open parenthesis supposed to be there all alone like that? This is a horrendous bug.

I noted that MSOffice seems to be immune. MS still uses Carbon instead of Coca as their framework. Is this a case of the old ways are still the best ways? Or is this an other case of Apple needs to improve their Quality Assurance.

Adam Engst of Tidbits has an article up on the Tidbits site on a Pages 4.3 bug that nearly prevented him from publishing his Take Control ebook on iTunes 11.

Don't always confuse the data consumed by the iPhone as any real indication of "doing more".

There are serious bugs in the IOS system, some of them long standing ones that cause huge cellular data usage that users can't explain and can't control. There are numerous HUGE threads on Apple support forums about high unexplained data useage. And SIRI is not the only data hog.

Also, none of these web data usage studies takes into account the number of old iphones used only on wifi as the users have moved on to to newer phones. I have two of these sitting around my house. They run news update apps 24/7. The kids use them for web surfing occasionally. But because they are behind a router, web sites can't tell if its one, two, or seven. So in that case, what the web site can gather from it's logs speaks more to the installed base and durability of ancient IOS devices than the amount of actual use.

From the tone of your post I see you think this is some sort of contest. I have no dog in this fight, I'm just talking about what I've heard.

The "high data use bugs" are a red herring - the browser use stats come from webserver logs and the supposed bugs can't account for the level of traffic seen (also, are the bugs browsing specific web pages with the browsing patterns of a person?!). The proportion of http requests from the bugs vs the actual web use of people actively using the device is going to be extremely small. If that's your argument about... what exactly? To make yourself feel better than Android has a lower percentage of web browser traffic? I'm not sure what you're trying to say here? Like I said, it's not a contest, it's stats.

Don't always confuse the data consumed by the iPhone as any real indication of "doing more".

There are serious bugs in the IOS system, some of them long standing ones that cause huge cellular data usage that users can't explain and can't control. There are numerous HUGE threads on Apple support forums about high unexplained data useage. And SIRI is not the only data hog.

Also, none of these web data usage studies takes into account the number of old iphones used only on wifi as the users have moved on to to newer phones. I have two of these sitting around my house. They run news update apps 24/7. The kids use them for web surfing occasionally. But because they are behind a router, web sites can't tell if its one, two, or seven. So in that case, what the web site can gather from it's logs speaks more to the installed base and durability of ancient IOS devices than the amount of actual use.

From the tone of your post I see you think this is some sort of contest. I have no dog in this fight, I'm just talking about what I've heard.

The "high data use bugs" are a red herring - the browser use stats come from webserver logs and the supposed bugs can't account for the level of traffic seen (also, are the bugs browsing specific web pages with the browsing patterns of a person?!). The proportion of http requests from the bugs vs the actual web use of people actively using the device is going to be extremely small. If that's your argument about... what exactly? To make yourself feel better than Android has a lower percentage of web browser traffic? I'm not sure what you're trying to say here? Like I said, it's not a contest, it's stats.

Don't always confuse the data consumed by the iPhone as any real indication of "doing more".

There are serious bugs in the IOS system, some of them long standing ones that cause huge cellular data usage that users can't explain and can't control. There are numerous HUGE threads on Apple support forums about high unexplained data useage. And SIRI is not the only data hog.

Also, none of these web data usage studies takes into account the number of old iphones used only on wifi as the users have moved on to to newer phones. I have two of these sitting around my house. They run news update apps 24/7. The kids use them for web surfing occasionally. But because they are behind a router, web sites can't tell if its one, two, or seven. So in that case, what the web site can gather from it's logs speaks more to the installed base and durability of ancient IOS devices than the amount of actual use.

Don't always confuse the data consumed by the iPhone as any real indication of "doing more".

There are serious bugs in the IOS system, some of them long standing ones that cause huge cellular data usage that users can't explain and can't control. There are numerous HUGE threads on Apple support forums about high unexplained data useage. And SIRI is not the only data hog.

Also, none of these web data usage studies takes into account the number of old iphones used only on wifi as the users have moved on to to newer phones. I have two of these sitting around my house. They run news update apps 24/7. The kids use them for web surfing occasionally. But because they are behind a router, web sites can't tell if its one, two, or seven. So in that case, what the web site can gather from it's logs speaks more to the installed base and durability of ancient IOS devices than the amount of actual use.

It's just the usual MS shill that re-posts this shit ad nauseam.

It's Googe hater bonch! He gets first post with his many accounts! /. legend tells he is ex-Apple developer Donald "Matthew" Deatherage who got caught pants down with a 14 year old boy... but nobody really knows for sure....

Samsung Moves To Reduce Android Dependence , Apple Closes Marketshare Gap With Android , Apple Beats Android In U.S. Marketshare , Apple Closes In On Android Marketshare , Why Android smartphones are larger than the iPhone , Google Admits Wrongdoing In Mocality Scanda , U.S. Carriers Don't Want Stock Android Phones , iOS Closes Gap With Android Marketshare In U.S. , Google Sponsors Blog Posts To Market Chrome , Java ME Surpasses Android As #2 Mobile Internet OS , Galaxy S And Galaxy Tab Won't Get Android 4.0 , No Such Thing As Android, Only Android-Compatible , Android Chief Andy Rubin Deletes Openness Tweet , Android Update Alliance Is Already Dead , App Developers Betting On iOS Over Android , Europe Accuses Google Of Monopoly Abuse , Samsung Smartphone Sales Report Flawed , Google Reaches $500 Million Settlement With Feds , FTC Probes Android And Google Search , Is Giving Android Away Anti-Competitive? , Google Chairman To Testify At Antitrust Hearing , Google Chairman To Testify At Antitrust Hearing , Google Was Warned On Rogue Drug Ads , Android Users Warned To Avoid Public WiFi , iOS Leads Android U.S Marketshare By 59% ,

Looks like it's time that their corporate culture goes through the same "trustworthy computing" initiative that Microsoft went through over the last few years.

They've been adding security to their system for a while now. You may not remember, but back in the day Microsoft security was extremely bad. Everyone running as Administrator was merely one symptom. OSX has had separate user accounts from day 1.

I have no idea why someone would gloss over / apologize for half-baked attempts at practical crypto, as Glenn Fleishman appears to have done here ("oh yeah, it's not really secure, did you reeeally need that?"). Does he have a horse in this race?

Very good question (mods; you should be reading at -1). Having looked about a bit it seems that he has been recommending this password software, for example he recommended 1password pro which has multiple problems; doesn't use the keychain; encourages use of a PIN for security and (to quote Elcomsoft):

Thus, very fast password recovery attack is possible, requiring one MD5 computation and one AES trial decryption per password.

When you write articles on a topic you likely get advertising revenue from that, so it's possible he's also being attacked on his income. As they say, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!" (N.B. I am not suggesting concious corruption or something).

In the end I guess I had better put it in an obXKCD which puts this better than I could.

Bingo. But there's an ugly side to trying to force migration -- you can't always control to what product businesses will migrate.

If these businesses didn't have something that required them running windows they would've already done so, no? For many businesses it comes down to a money thing. What else are they going to do? Linux on the desktop? You said yourself about switching "...from something that works to something else that we're not sure works" so that rules out Linux and Apple. Apple is not cheaper. So what options do you have?

Does Microsoft truly think that trying to FORCE the remaining employees off XP will somehow magically make them all move to Windows 7? Is it something in the Redmond water system that causes such questionable judgement?

Apple seems to do pretty well doing just that. You get about 2-3 years out of a platform before having to upgrade to run the newest stuff on average. From the article:

"it is true that Apple continues to support the previous version of Mac OS X (though not iOS) with security updates. So, during the reign of Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, Apple will release security updates for 10.6 Snow Leopard, though not for 10.5 Leopard or anything earlier."

10.5 was released in October 2007 and is now unsupported, unlike Windows XP which was released in 2001.

Apple also changed hardware platforms, what about all those people on PowerPC G3 and G4s and new software developed for Intel only? Remind me who has the more questionable judgement? What about browser standards? Less IE6 (and IE7, IE8...) the better for everyone.

What Microsoft really needs is something else to sell. Something that people actually want to buy. Instead of trying to force us away from something that works to something else that we're not sure works. In what universe is that considered a winning move?

Companies who make software are doing that for them, specifically games. Adobe CS5 has two applications which are 64bit only, Adobe Premiere and After Effects. Adobe Photoshop has 32bit and 64bit versions but CS5 users running on 64-bit native should realize noticeably greater gains in performance Besides the fact that XP is hacked to swiss cheese Windows Vista/Windows7 driver security models should be a reason alone. It's pretty nice to be able to install drivers without a reboot or not having say a graphics driver crash and bring your whole system down. You seem to forget that when XP came out it was considered a bloated pig compared to Win98 and Win2k due to most people not having enough RAM (2001 most machines had maybe 128megs, 256 was upper end.) Check out the comments:

I was quite happy with WinXP... fast user switching is way cool, however when working in Excel XP, the thing is dog slow... I have a 400k workbook, and it takes forever to save changes...

I'll put 2k back on, and test the speed increase..

btw, the machine is a 1.4 TBird, gig of CAS 2, 10k quantums on a 29160, GF3... Anything in Office should hardly break a sweat, funny thing too is that the ram usage peaked at like 180 megs... crazy, eh?

I liked the review, lots of pretty graphs ;)

we still run NT4 here at the office... only run office apps, on 550 K7's w/256 megs..

To address your points: 1. User education is important on any platform; so I will agree in theory. However, I hasten to point out that if those users had bought into the "Macs don't get viruses" mantra, they wouldn't have opened their wallets and exposed their credit cards to "eradicate" that which does not exist. It was the ones that DID believe the fake warnings that got infected; not the people who know better. Think about it.

2. Although I DO wish they'd change that damned default "Open Safe Files..." in Safari, actually, what Apple did with Safari as far as Sandboxing goes, was better than simple Sandboxing. At least for Snow Leopard. For Leopard users, there is a third party haxie, if you're willing to give up some functionality.

3. Apple hasn't just been sitting around "in Kansas", like most slashdotters seem to think. And as far as OS X itself goes, Apple is now going one better: It turned the soon-to-be-released 10.7 "Lion" over to security researchers and white-hat hackers to pound on for awhile, including the redoubtable Charlie Miller.

Business isn't about being fair, and this comparison is completely valid, Google is still catching up to Apple and Microsoft.

Really Apple's business history is that of two companies, Apple Computers from 1976 to 2006 which focused on personal computers, laptops and software and Apple Inc from 2007 which focuses on personal computers, portable computing operating systems and consumer electronics

Look back 13 years ago for Apple before the transition started.

For 1998-99 Apple made a $601 million profit on $6.1 billion in revenue for the 1999 fiscal year.

http://www.tidbits.com/article/5608
http://www.wikinvest.com/stock/Apple_(AAPL)/Data/Revenue/2000

Especially hilarious that it is a completely true comment. Mod me troll if you like, it just proves your inability to comprehend past the RDF from Steve...

http://db.tidbits.com/article/10829
http://www.engadget.com/2009/08/03/exploding-ipod-blows-up-in-apples-face/
http://support.apple.com/kb/ts2377

Every manufacturer has these types of issues, holding any manufacturer responsable for them will only mean you don't buy from anyone. What manufacturer didn't have video cards from NVidia in this time period? What manufacturer hasn't had a bad batch of batteries?

And the computer you get will be fast and secure

Yeah, because Apple were by far the last to patch the serious Kaminsky DNS vulnerability.

That means you will have students that can work with a small segment of the computers which will seriously hurt their chances.

I was going to write a response about how a given person should be able to use any other popular desktop OS after having learned another, but I realized it wasn't true. Every single Mac and Linux user I know can muddle their way through Windows when necessary. But I know a lot of Windows users and administrators who cannot use anything but Windows. (And refuse to try.)

And I'll bet those that use Mac and Linux grew up with a Windows box before moving onto Mac and Linux. If you have training from before, you'll remember it. And I've had a few friends that only had been using Mac for years and forgot/got lost with Windows 7.

but when your dealing with the future of teens don't gamble on them with your preferences. Teach them what they need or you'll be doing more harm then good. Or as so many love to scream 'Think of the children'.

I don't think you've been to a high school lately or college lately... Teen usage of Macs is much higher than in the general population. A survey of the Cornell residential network pegged Mac usage at around 21% in 2007. I find it hard to swallow that more than 20% of any Ivy league school's graduates are simply unfit for the modern workplace (to paraphrase your words) because they did their homework on OS X instead of Windows.

And how many of these teens own/run a business? How many of them also made sure to learn to use Windows? I also noticed that Cornell's own librarys only uses Windows and Windows programs. I also know that 100% of the non-press users that go to the WWDC use Macs. Businesses still use Windows. Doesn't matter which niche demographic you quote, when your dealing with the corporate business demographic you need to pay attention to the corporate business demographic regardless of your personal opinion. Also according to your own survey link the official numbers are 21% are using Macs, but 4% of those are using their Macs to run Windows. That leaves you with 17%, not the 20% your quoting. Not to mention quoting numbers from a single university doesn't matter much in the long run. Now if that survey had also included other universities then we might have something.

Pushing the Mac platform is a horrible idea and a form of playing russian roulette with their computer skills and future job possibilities.

Russian Roulette. You've got to be shitting me. Did Netcraft confirm this?

That means you will have students that can work with a small segment of the computers which will seriously hurt their chances.

I was going to write a response about how a given person should be able to use any other popular desktop OS after having learned another, but I realized it wasn't true. Every single Mac and Linux user I know can muddle their way through Windows when necessary. But I know a lot of Windows users and administrators who cannot use anything but Windows. (And refuse to try.)

but when your dealing with the future of teens don't gamble on them with your preferences. Teach them what they need or you'll be doing more harm then good. Or as so many love to scream 'Think of the children'.

I don't think you've been to a high school lately or college lately... Teen usage of Macs is much higher than in the general population. A survey of the Cornell residential network pegged Mac usage at around 21% in 2007. I find it hard to swallow that more than 20% of any Ivy league school's graduates are simply unfit for the modern workplace (to paraphrase your words) because they did their homework on OS X instead of Windows.

It is an issue for some users, myself included. The problem gets worse as you start to work with larger or multiple screens. It wouldn't be so bad if there was a setting you could adjust, but as it stands you have to rely on third party software. Would you like to know more?

Because youtube doesn't offer movies and television shows. Youtube tried but it never really caught on.

Well, not officially, no. And not if the copyright holders find out about it ;)

You think that hulu wouldn't love to make an iphone app?

Rumour has it that that's exactly what they're doing

.

Actually, Mac OS 9 is very secure. Even the US Army still uses it for secure web hosting.

Here's the article for switching on single-application mode in Mac OS X. This is the switch:

defaults write com.apple.dock single-app -bool true

I just wish that iPhone OS ran on their desktop systems. It's the best operating system I've used in a long time.

Maybe single-application mode is what you want in Mac OS X?

Microsoft was caught with their hands in the cookie jar.

Actually, it wasn't their hand in the cookie jar. They had licenced the code from Intel, who had contracted the same firm that Apple used to port Quicktime to Windows. There is 2 degrees of separation.

I think that it was more the look and feel lawsuit that they really wanted to go away. Microsoft had already purged the offending code from Video for Windows, and (according to Microsoft) they had been attempting to talk with Apple to find out what code was disputed to be able to remove it. I doubt the lawsuit would have gone against them.

http://db.tidbits.com/article/10509

Sorry, I didn't properly include the link.

My analysis about how the 802.11n stuff works related to an iPod touch, such as explaining what single-stream 802.11n means as a media server is here at TidBITS. The iFixIt tear down is here.

According to Apple the pixie dust is in all parts of the ADM, including the rubber grommets.

http://db.tidbits.com/article/10166

Smart Carrier -- Part of the explanation for why an ADM costs significantly more than a bare retail drive revolves around the ADM carrier itself. It's not just a physical sled, but also includes a controller board, temperature sensor, and a pair of LEDs that report on both drive activity and drive status. The ADM's temperature sensor integrates with the Xserve's cooling system to increase airflow to drives that are getting too hot.

Apple also told me that the rubber grommets that hold the drive to the ADM carrier are chosen specifically to match each drive's vibrational characteristics. Different drives use different types of rubber in an attempt to reduce vibration as much as possible. I gather this is a bit more important with the 15,000 RPM SAS drives, given their very high rotational speed.

And if you believe that, I've got a $200 cable to sell you.

In this image : http://db.tidbits.com/tbthumbs/tn10166_System-Profiler-SAS-report.jpg

the drive model is listed as : st380815as n

2 seconds of googling shows this page : http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.jsp?vgnextoid=809a4d4b57cb0110VgnVCM100000f5ee0a0aRCRD

Uh... that doesn't look like a server / enterprise class disk to me. It looks like a normal old Seagate disk that Apple want to charge lots for cause it has an Apple sticker on it.

...and have access to a pre-OS X MacOS, TurboGopher VR is a must-see. The screenshot at the bottom of this page (http://www.tidbits.com/iskm/iskm3html/pt4/ch24/ch24.html) doesn't do it justice.

Suffice to say, it is probably the only Gopher client that will ever have a key mapped to a "jump" action that is interpreted literally.

We're already partway there with standard user permissions: as long as you're not running as root/Administrator, malicious or buggy software can't mess with your system files without your permission.

Of course, this doesn't prevent, say, an installer that otherwise legitimately neeeds administrator priviliges from accidentally erasing your hard drive. And besides, users' most important files are usually the ones they create themselves-- files to which any apps they run will have complete access!

SELinux is one solution, but it's way too technical for the average user. More academically, there are capability-based systems like Coyotos (recently discussed as a possible replacement kernel for GNU Hurd-- stop snickering back there!).

Anyway, I agree with you that we need this, but doing it in a user-friendly way is a hard problem. And it needs to be very user-friendly, because people generally don't understand or value security very much and therefore have a low tolerance for security-related annoyances.

OS X is a Unicode operating system. So yes of course it can print UTF-8. http://db.tidbits.com/article/6780

Yes, let's all move in the same direction on the same projects, thereby destroying that which makes Linux so successful.

Linux works BECAUSE of the fracturing, not in spite of it. Yes, there are downsides to that where applications and such aren't terribly cohesive. But there are upsides, where you get the source to everything and no one can ever take it away from you. You don't get that benefit with your beloved OS X. It may look shinier, but OS X still has a ton of UI inconsistencies. Don't kid yourself... no OS has the consistency thing down, and I'd rather take the more stark inconsistency of Linux for the benefits it provides than pay through the nose for OS X + hardware, then all the little nickel and dime utilities you need for OS X.

The picture posted of the problem looks like the dithering's gone wrong and it's just showing lines rather then the usual checkerboard pattern

http://db.tidbits.com/article/9796?print_version=1

Odd that the print version on the same site works.

http://www.tidbits.com/about/in-use.html Emperor The machine emperor.tidbits.com, also known as www.tidbits.com and just tidbits.com, is our main server. It does basically everything for us now.

Dual 1.33 GHz Xserve G4 - [Our server, sic]Emperor runs on a normal dual 1.33 GHz Xserve G4 (2 GB of RAM). Emperor is still running Mac OS X Server 10.2.8, which came with it and handles the load just fine, so we haven't had any reason to upgrade.

Web Crossing - The server software that powers all of our Internet services is Web Crossing, from the company of the same name. Web Crossing can do just about anything, since it backs up its built-in Web, FTP, email, and NNTP service with plug-ins that add mailing lists (also accessible via the Web and NNTP), RSS support, weblogs, wikis, and much more. A lot of this is possible becuase at its heart, Web Crossing includes a high-performance object-oriented database and not one but two programming languages for creating dynamic sites. Web Crossing is the software that Apple uses to host their discussions.

As much as I love Apple, it bothers me that they do not release security patches for versions earlier than n-1 (where n is the current release).

You know that under the hood Mac OS X is Unix. It's not that hard to simply get the latest version of Bind and install it yourself. Here are some simple instructions on how to do it but it's basic stuff that any system administrator should know. (Personally, I'd install it in /usr/local instead of /usr and symlink to that rather than blowing away the version installed by Apple but then again that's something any computer admin worth his salt should also know.)

Apple doesn't patch versions of Mac OS X that are more than 1 version old because by far the majority of its users upgrade. If you look at the estimated numbers of people using Mac OS X 10.3 you can see that it's down in the low single percentage points, maybe even under 1% depending on who you ask. It just doesn't make sense for them to provide support when so very few people are affected.

Not only that but there have been some major changes in Mac OS X over the years which make it difficult to patch too far back. The differences between 10.5 and 10.4 are a lot smaller than the differences between 10.4 and 10.3. Those sort of changes are slowing down so I'd expect Apple to more easily be able to back-support more versions of its OS. By all accounts the next version, 10.6 or Snow Leopard, will just be a more refined 10.5 with very little structural changes. I'd expect that Apple will find it very easy to continue to provide patches to 10.4 for quite some time.

I agree that there is certainly the perception that microsoft is losing ground. Although, the climb for apple started before Vista came out. For me it started with OS 10.0 beta when I realized that you could have all the power of a unix command line and tunneling over the internet with only a grape or cherry flavored iMac. My thought then was that this was the future and that windows was just for people who needed an office software machine or games box. Now the marketing campaign and flashy graphics seems to have taken over for further increases, but I don't care, I still have my unix box that just works and doesn't cost as much as an sgi. Here's a link to estimated market share. You can see Apple has been climbing for some time.

Dear Mr. Free The Cowards:

It seems there has been a gross error on your part. You should have properly formatted your original reply [1] first and used an MLA approved citation method to indicate to the reader what point from which reference [2] you were arguing for or against. Now you can see the huge mess you caused by replying to a slashdotter [3] without following the proper guidelines. We are all very serious about engaging in proper debate and encourage you to practice these guidelines in a better site to hone your skills [4], you may return when ready.

Sincerely,

John Q. Anonymous

[1] - http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=612665&threshold=0&commentsort=0&mode=nested&cid=24174607
[2] - http://db.tidbits.com/article/9690
[3] - http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=612665&threshold=0&commentsort=0&mode=nested&cid=24174325
[4] - http://fark.com/

There's a terrible Slashdot confusion here in comments. Vinh was saying that they hand code templates (i.e., code HTML using their own token language interspersed). I wrote about the rise of credibility once again for handcoding, and the problems that templating causes for GUI tools in this article at TidBITS. The summary is that all database-driven systems use templates; GUI tools are bad at previewing CMS-based database-driven templates.

They actually have been giving away free software, or deeply discounted, to school systems. Of course this is in the US of A.

A class action lawsuit accusing overpricing results in MS proposal to give free software to schools. "In addition to all of these hard-dollar commitments, Microsoft has also agreed to provide free software to eligible schools. The value of this software can only be estimated as it depends on the volume requested by schools, but it may exceed $500 million valued at Microsoft's heavily
discounted academic prices." Yeah, because it costs them money to give away fre software?
http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/200111/msg00294.html

"Unfortunately, as much as the proposal would no doubt help schools, it creates a situation where Microsoft isn't so much paying a penalty for monopolistic abuses, but is instead being allowed to spend $1 billion to extend their reach into the hotly contested education market"
http://db.tidbits.com/article/6645

Here's south africa, where they claim the plan had been in the works before the SA government announced support for open-source:
http://www.itweb.co.za/sections/computing/2002/0202151028.asp?S=Computing&A=COM&O=FRGN

Oh, I guess that means you were right.

If it doesn't do what I want though I may end up getting Photoshop CS3, which you can't get running on Linux without jumping through hoops.

Before going CS3 I'd recommend giving Pixelmator a try. It isn't quite ready to replace Photoshop yet for my needs but it is a very good start and I look forward to the day it can.

As for CS3 itself I was rather disappointed with it coming from PS7 on Windows XP to CS3 on OS 10.4. The interface behaves differently from other Mac applications and the keyboard shortcuts are pretty awful and downright akward to use - not to mention there is hardly any keyboard shortcuts for many things I use frequently. Even worse is the CS3 apps aren't consistent interface or behavior wise between each other. Scroll wheel doesn't scroll the layers box in Illustrator but it does in Photoshop, cmd+` cycles windows in every app except Photoshop were it just does nothing, etc. Considering how much money it costs one would think Adobe could produce a better quality set of applications.

I wish Apple would either buy them [Adobe] or produce their own competing equivalents of Illustrator and Photoshop.

the OS X interface is awful

I guess it depends on your taste. Neither I nor many other Mac users have a problem with it.

There are a few issues that I see frequently brought up by Mac users. The following are the few I consider major and really bother me:

• Keyboard shortcuts do not exist for all menu items and navigating them quickly is not nearly as efficient as in Windows with a dedicated key for each one. The find as you type approach navigating them in OS X requires pressing one key or multiple keys together depending on your shortcuts setup to focus on the menu bar and then typing the first letter or more depending on the names of the menus starting the the same letter(s) or not, pressing return or down, and then repeating as needed. In Windows I just hold one dedicated menu key, alt, and press the underlined letter for each item in the menu which is much less keystrokes and considerably faster.
• The menu bar is fixed on the primary display which doesn't work very well when using applications on secondary displays.
• The dock has a few issues.
• The mouse acceleration curve feels very wrong.
• The lack of any appearance customization aside from graphite or aqua buttons/widgets. I find the UI very bright and all the white/off white begins to burn my eyes with LCDs even with the brightness down very low. Good thing for ctrl+opt+cmd+8 to invert the entire desktop for those long coding or reading sessions.

Despite this I still prefer OS X over both XP and Vista. I was rather disappointed that Leopard didn't so much as address even one of the issues and it seems resolution independence was dropped too. :|

Count me among the people who feel that this is a mistake - speaking as an author, and as a publisher who has worked with hundreds of authors over the years, single authorship and control simply won't work in this sort of a situation. Maintaining content is hugely difficult and time-consuming, and not something that most authors do well (if at all). The beauty of the Wikipedia approach is that anyone who wants can contribute as much or as little as they want, as frequently as they want. If one person loses interest, there's always room for another to take over. There's also an implication in Manber's post that knols will be of high quality because of this authorial ownership. That will be true of some, but the reality of the situation is that most people, even if they are expert in some topic, can't write out their way of the proverbial paper bag. Many won't even have the necessary skills to organize the source material - this stuff isn't nearly as easy as it sounds.

A few other questions: What happens when there are copyright infringement claims against knols that plagiarize content from elsewhere? Will knol authors start by just stealing Wikipedia articles, and will Google act to prevent that? Will Google's policies disallowing specific content for services like Google Groups apply to Google Knol? What happens when a knol author gets busy, becomes bored with a knol, or dies? Will Google be able to argue in international court that it has no oversight over illegal content created using its own service? There's nothing new here, but the bigger the company, the bigger the target.

More in my TidBITS article at: http://db.tidbits.com/article/9360

cheers... -Adam

Apple needs to keep customers happy in order to make money, so they changed it to conform to what customers wanted.

I once heard Neal Stevenson give a similar talk. http://db.tidbits.com/article/05951
He drew pie charts labled "threat model" where 99% of the chart was "hyenas."
Today, our threat models are a bit more complex.
http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/DV/NotesCFP2K.html#Steph

junpei wikipedia

Sounds like we're in the same demographic. But last week I was researching pay-as-you-go plans, and ran across a helpful article on TidBits. (I would post the exact link, but their server seems to be down at the moment.) I decided that for 5$/month, it was worth it. Select one of the basic $20 models from Virgin Mobile, and get $20 of free airtime, for a net startup cost of $0. Then select an "Auto Top-Up" plan that charges your credit card $15 every 90 days. Unused minutes do not expire.

Just a satisfied customer.