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You're incorrect about the app having a different name. Apple bought Siri in 2010. The app, called Siri, continued to be available in Apple's app store even after the company was purchased. It was removed from the store when the iPhone 4S was released.

Ah, another anti-fanboy. Your complaints are false and intellectually lazy - see the iPod, which was the first MP3 player to combine a micro-hard drive with a fast interface, just for starters.

http://www.tuaw.com/2006/08/23/apple-pays-100m-to-creative-in-patent-lawsuit-settlement/
You mean the fast interface they stole from Creative, the same company who made mp3 players for years before the ipod?

The ipod wasn't as revolutionary as you remember it. Geeks had mp3 players before the ipod, the difference is that Steve made non-geeks want one too. Mostly by calling a bunch of television cameras into the room talking endlessly about how amazing it was.

Everyone had an ipod, just like everyone had a George Foreman Grill. And for the same reason...

You don't think http://www.tuaw.com/2011/09/28/no-comment-proof-that-samsung-shamelessly-copies-apple/ shows Samsung taking that copying thing just a bit too far?

Mozilla's decision to drop MacOS X leopard, an operating system younger than Windows Vista and XP is infuriating. There are a lot Mac users out there who don't want to pay $29.99 just to run an up-to date browser. This is even worse than Microsoft dropping IE9 support for XP.

Firefox probably evaded a lot of criticism back when it was the only serious competitor to IE (when Opera was adware, Safari Mac only and Chrome is only from 2008), but now there are plenty of good browsers out there it is time for Firefox to pull itself together. They get $100 million a year in Google dollars yet they piss it away on stupid gimmicks like stealing your status bar which dates back from early web browsers (Even IE 9 has one) and other UI changes such as stealing the forward button.

The memory and speed issues are contentious but Microsoft does serious testing on IE to make sure its browser is good enough.

I am really mad at Firefox for messing up after being the good browser for several years. Firefox needs to be forked by competent developers to undo the brain damage that has happened in 2011. I want Firefox to be good again, don't make me flee to Chrome/IE permanently.

Come on dude, we're talking about server systems here, not desktop unix which isn't exactly a "consumer" product.

Not even if somewhere around 10% of desktops and laptops are running Un*x? Heck, some of them are even running trademarked UNIX.

This is despite the fact that Microsoft has publicly said that they prefer that vendors do not do this but that they cannot mandate this, as it is ultimately the vendors choice, not Microsofts.

Mmmm-hmmm. And shipping a pre-installed alternative browser was the vendor's choice. And selling non-Windows operating systems pre-installed was the vendor's choice. And making netbooks with decently non-crappy specs was the vendor's choice. Sorry, but I've seen what happens when the vendors are given free rein - as long as they're OK with losing their OEM Windows license discounts. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me 247 times, kiss my ass.

So far not a single hardware vendor has said they will disable the on/off switch, if you disregard the very suspicious claim by Red Hat employees that they "know" one vendor who has "privately and anonymously" declared that they will disallow Linux.

That sounds suspiciously like Ed Bott's previous claims:

anonymous AppleCare support representative spoke to ZDNet's Ed Bott over the weekend, telling the reporter that complaints about malware infections on the Mac increased significantly in the first half of May.

I haven't used Red Hat in over a decade, but quite frankly I trust their references to "private and anonymous" sources more than those of Bott, who seems to have made a career of "other OSes suck, too!"

add in the classic cracking/yellow plastic on prior models, the crappy 15-bit TN screens they've used in the past (fixed under performance guarantees, IIRC, after legal action), too much thermal paste causing massive overheating, nVidia gfx chips cracking and falling off, exploding batteries, cooling ports blocked by plastic film and numerous HW failures-by-design - well, it's no wonder he's looking for a heavy duty warranty.

Apple's biggest design flaw is that they use the same name ("Macbook") for all of their laptops, year after year. So a Google for "macbook battery" or "macbook screen" returns every rant anyone has ever posted about every Apple laptop ever sold.

All the other manufacturers keep changing names so you can't keep track. HP has added "Envy" and "ProBook" to the "Presario" and "Pavillion" and "EliteBook", plus they add random model numbers like "dv5000." Makes it a lot harder to keep track. Dell does the same thing: What the hell is a Vostro? Is it like an Inspiron or a Latitude? It's certainly not an XPS, right, because that's the line they built to compete with Alienware, except now they own Alienware, and use that name, too.

Changing names often helps to encourage the short memories of consumers. I don't know anyone that's had a problem with a Vostro or an Envy...because I've never known anyone whose owned anything other than an Inspiron or a Pavillion.

add in the classic cracking/yellow plastic on prior models, the crappy 15-bit TN screens they've used in the past (fixed under performance guarantees, IIRC, after legal action), too much thermal paste causing massive overheating, nVidia gfx chips cracking and falling off, exploding batteries, cooling ports blocked by plastic film and numerous HW failures-by-design - well, it's no wonder he's looking for a heavy duty warranty.

I'd recommend a Dell, if you can stand the hardware - their NBD warranties kick ass. You can practically (ab)use the hardware for anything except hammering fenceposts & they'll replace it for you. Plus there's the data recovery option, might be worth it if you're special enough to keep important data on a laptop.

Mobile devices are not a problem. Looked how locked down the iPad and iPhone are. That fits right in with the spirit of trusted computing.

You realize that according to figures that you can on the web jailbroken iPhones constitute from 10 to 30% of the market? And those are certainly "conservative" estimates, because judging from iOS piracy rate ([1] [2]) percentage of jailbroken iDevices should be much larger!

I've been reading Slashdot for a very long time, but never bothered creating a user account. It has been my favorite place to come for technology, science, and just plain geeky news. I have found comments on here to be reasonable, intelligent, and funny, especially compared to the drivel posted on a lot of other news sites. However, the reactions to Steve Jobs' death have really bothered me. I understand a large portion of the Slashdot community supports open source software. Heck, I've always run Linux on my servers and admit to teasing people in the past about running IIS on their Windows boxes instead of Apache. I love open source software and think it's an incredible model that speaks to the best of people. However, demanding that anything that is closed-source is evil and imprisoning is no worse than those people who say open source is theft or anarchy. But that's not even the point. The point is that we are talking about the death of a human being, and one who by any measure had a large impact on the world, particularly in the area of technology. His products are purchased and enjoyed by millions upon millions of people. If you hate his products and what they stand for, DON'T BUY THEM. I have taken this stand with Microsoft. I've never bought a Microsoft product, and have advised people to not buy them. But on the day that Bill Gates passes away, I will mourn with the rest of the world. Not because I liked his products, but because I recognize the impact he's had on the world (some good, some bad), and respect the fact that he accomplished a great deal in his life. Will Slashdot be filled with the same vitriol on the day Gates dies, I wonder? In the old days, Slashdot was very anti-Microsoft (just look at the icon of Bill Gates the cyborg). It has swung to be very anti-Apple mostly, I believe, because there are some people who will automatically hate anything that is "popular" because it makes them feel superior.

I realize that this post will likely not be read by many people, particularly since this news item is now over 6 hours old. However, it has helped me make my peace with Slashdot. I had been meaning to write something after the flurry of posts on the actual day of Steve Jobs' death, and reading the following article at TUAW pushed me over the edge (in a good way):

http://www.tuaw.com/2011/10/11/os-x-and-ios-are-not-jails/

Payment shall be made in the form of check, electronic transfers, or money order issued to the seller of the junk or used or secondhand property and made payable to the name and address of the seller. All payments made by check, electronic transfers, or money order shall be reported separately in the daily reports required by R.S. 37:1866.

BitCoin is an electronic transfer, hence as long as it is reported it is as legal as everything else.

To me it looks like speculators have finished dumping and now want more buyers to drive up the price.

Anyway, this isn't a legal tender issue. Legal tender only applies for debt, this is why Apple can get away with no cash policies.

IANAL

I hate to say it, but the fact that 90%+ of slashdot users don't know or care what a socks proxy is illustrates why any company with a "by geeks, for geeks" product development strategy will run itself into the ground in the long run. Google has a halfway decent application platform that's 95% compatible with active directory (another meaningless term for geeks - we're all using open source alternatives such as...um, well...there are none). In contrast, Apple, has - in its entire corporate history - never to my knowledge produced an API platform of significance. Goggle is now putting out over 2x devices in user hands than Apple. Yet iDevices have the lead in corporate deployments and that lead is only growing.

If you use a socks proxy with PAC/WAPD, every device on your wireless network is provisioned with the full package of correct setting with nothing more than the user's regular username/password combination, or optionally, a certificate placed on the device. There is presently no other technology for wireless provisioning as good or as widely supported as this. Multiple SSIDs don't scale, require users to make an unnecessary choice, and the extra VLANs they use requires you to use extra routing/network segregation, or every device on the network has to use additional CPU/memory just to process the larger spanning tree. Tunnels aren't widely supported; protocol-in-protocol tunneling creates all kinds of unexpected protocol interaction headaches, especially since for most people all traffic is already being tunneled over IP to begin with.

At present, just about any android deployment can be torpedoed in 30 seconds by asking the question "will it support a proxy?" Graphics acceleration support, one-touch copy/paste, and multi-layer audio (Can the user hear that over his crappy bluetooth mono headset anyway? No.) all took priority over basic features needed to connect android devices to a network. If Google can jump the shark over an issue like this, they can and will continue jumping until they finally manage to kill themselves.

From February, 2011:

A report from the Wall Street Journal suggests Apple is about to become Samsung's biggest customer in a deal estimated to be worth US$7.8 billion. As part of its purchase, Apple will be securing LCD displays, NAND flash memory and mobile chipsets from the Korean manufacturer. Each of these components will be used to build Apple's popular iPad and iPhone.

Original here.

Until it became obvious that Apple was seeking out other suppliers to replace them, Samsung tread lightly in their legal spat with Apple. When Apple (essentially) dumped them as a supplier, they started fighting back.

"Then maybe Apple shouldn't have filed a lawsuit arguing in significant part"

Ah, weasel words. Aren't they great?

Here's a breakdown of Apple's complaint: http://thisismynext.com/2011/04/19/apple-sues-samsung-analysis/

Note the first list:

Hardware and software trade dress claims

a rectangular product shape with all four corners uniformly rounded;
the front surface of the product dominated by a screen surface with black borders;
as to the iPhone and iPod touch products, substantial black borders above and below the screen having roughly equal width and narrower black borders on either side of the screen having roughly equal width;
as to the iPad product, substantial black borders on all sides being roughly equal in width;
a metallic surround framing the perimeter of the top surface;
a display of a grid of colorful square icons with uniformly rounded corners; and
a bottom row of square icons (the “Springboard”) set off from the other icons and that do not change as the other pages of the user interface are viewed.
Packaging trade dress claims

a rectangular box with minimal metallic silver lettering and a large front-viewpicture of the product prominently on the top surface of the box;
a two-piece box wherein the bottom piece is completely nested in the top piece; and
use of a tray that cradles products to make them immediately visible upon opening the box.

Yes, a rounded rectangle is in there as one item. Apple is not complaining that Samsung is making rounded rectangles (which several other companies who are not being sued are also doing). They're complaining that Samsung is making devices that so closely mimic Apple's that the two are difficult to tell apart (something even Samsung's lawyers have trouble doing, apparently), for all the reasons listed.

Here are some pictures: http://www.tuaw.com/2011/09/28/no-comment-proof-that-samsung-shamelessly-copies-apple/

The devices are very similar, the boxes are identical except for the names and pictures of the products, the chargers and sycing/charging cables are identical except for the colour... Samsung even ripped off some Apple icons for their marketing display.

As for FRAND, well, when you ram your patents into a standard you have to expect you're going to wind up with a little restriction on what you can do with those patents. If you don't want that then don't jam patented techniques into standards.

I completely forgot about their stores and didn't realise any opened. I tried looking on the net and there isn't much being said about them. The only thing I found were these.

http://articles.latimes.com/2010/nov/26/business/la-fi-microsoft-stores-20101126
http://www.tuaw.com/2010/11/26/lost-in-translation-microsoft-retail-stores-not-matching-apple/
http://www.informationweek.com/news/windows/microsoft_news/229401433


The gist of them seem to be that Microsoft is copying Apple so they have the same look but unlike the Apple store the MS stores aren't a good value because they don't carry as much stock and can't compete on price with other shops carrying Windows based computers.

That's always going to be a problem for them. They aren't a hardware company (for the most part) so unlike Apple they don't have a ncie small set of hardware that they can offer at the best price available. Apple computers may cost more than Wintel machines but when you go to an Apple store the price of the Mac is the best price you can get for a mac without a student discount.

You go into a Microsoft store and you see PCs that you can get elsewhere for cheaper. Where's the incentive to buy from Microsoft? Imo, their stores will die out quietly or they'll just sell them to someone who can offer a better deal and probably ask to keep the branding.

Try the commands on this list against the best and newest Android phone you can get your hands on and report how many worked:

http://www.tuaw.com/2011/10/05/iphone-4s-what-can-you-say-to-siri/

How many people back then actually thought the Mac (or the GUI) would change computing? Well, it certainly did, but for quite a while very many people (among them most of the computer geeks) thought it was an inferior, silly way to deal with computers.

I think in the long run maybe it won't be Siri as such that will be revolutionary, but natural language recognition of course will change things. Not by controlling a computer as such (this would be as saying that a GUI would revolutionize entering CLI commands by clicking keys on an on-screen keyboard) but by actually interacting with data and data processing resources and networks out there without consciously interacting with a computer at all. The computer will be realized fully only when you aren't aware at all that you're actually using a computer.

You don't need to praise Apple for what they're doing. I'm just happy that ANYONE has the balls to introduce such technology, even in its humble beginnings, to the masses.

If you're interested in what Siri can understand and act on: http://www.tuaw.com/2011/10/05/iphone-4s-what-can-you-say-to-siri/

BTW, Siri also kicks in if you just hold the iPhone to your ear without being in a call (via the proximity sensor), which makes using it not as awkward as many seem to think.

I'm no lawyer, but if I worked for Apple this would piss me off too: TUAW

Wish I had mod-points...

I've just finished an exchange on Facebook with an old friend who's an avid Mac user. He posted a link to an article responding to RMS's rather tasteless comments on the passing of Steve Jobs, and we got into a long exchange about the merits of open-source versus the "walled garden" world of Apple. One of my main points was that open standards and protocols have been a huge boon to the industry. I'll have to remind him how much of the Apple software he loves was built on the free/open foundation provided by Dennis Ritchie.

Asking how many patents I hold is an easy way to tell that somebody has no counter argument. Effectively a "NO U" response."

That might be true if that were my argument. My argument was that Jobs holds 300 patents and is therefore an innovator by definition. You chose to ignore that part and instead nibble at my snarky hook. Anyone who knows anything about Apple under Jobs is aware that he micromanaged everything and approved every detail of his products, down to the screws used on the iPhone. And Jobs is the one who put iPad on hold to make a touchscreen phone with iPad's technology. How many touchscreen smartphones were there before iPhone shipped?

And iOS is already being outsold by Android, so its 15 minutes of fame are over as well.

This is untrue. Android is not outselling iOS:

http://www.tuaw.com/2011/10/03/report-suggests-ios-hit-all-time-market-share-high/

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/10/10/ipad_now_97_of_tablet_traffic_eclipses_iphone_ios_remains_mobile_leader.html

And now that 3GS's are free with contract, look for Android to get killed on the low end that they specialize in. And it has yet to be proven Google makes any money on Android, so don't get too cocky. Google spent two years of profits on Moto! HP is the market leader in PC's and they are dying to the the hell out of PC's, so market share isn't everything, bub. And that doesn't even count what Google is going to have to pay for each handset when they lose the lawsuit to Oracle. You know, Larry Ellison, Jobs' best friend? He's going to tax every Android handset. So yeah, just like with Facebook, let's see how profitable it turns out to be before we canonize the Google execs.

As for shoddy products, however, maybe you weren't actually around 20 years ago when Apple was in its darkest years, but they did in fact make a lot of really shitty machines.

I was around then, in fact, I was a stockholder then, and you are right, even I didn't know all the redundant, lackluster models from one another. But Jobs wasn't at Apple then, so that's irrelevant. He came back in '96, when Apple was 90 days from bankruptcy, and immediately cut the product line by the dozens to like 4 items, then turned Apple into a wildly profitable (they make in a quarter what Google does in a year) company that has the largest market cap on earth; from 3 billion to 350 billion in 15 years, while launching several computing revolutions (iPod, iPhone, iPad) that Android has been following like a hungry little puppy dog.

Thunderbolt is interesting because of the potential maximum cable length. The current cupper cables are limited to 3 meters, but once optical cables are available, "10s of meters" will be possible.

Since you can run both display, keyboard and mouse over one cable natively, this means that you can put your computer with its noisy fans into the basement, use a single thunderbolt cable, and just have an extremely thin client at your workstation.

It is definitely new. I'd say Siri is the magical part of the 4S, not the camera, but the camera is no slouch.

Oh, please don't describe Apple features as "magical". Really, really don't.

I'm no Apple hater or anything like that (I mean, I wouldn't kick an iPhone out of bed or anything), but that's just letting the marketing executives win. Hearing it is like the slow realisation that the speaker is a pod person.

Not quite. It's the same sensor as in the EVO 4G, but the "camera" functionality includes lenses, filters, packaging, and software. The lens is a 5-element F/2.4 lens. The filters include an "adaptive IR filter", which supposedly reduces noise significantly. The software includes tight integration with the new CPU allowing very fast picture taking (a little over a second to first pic, 0.5s per pic after that).

It is definitely new. I'd say Siri is the magical part of the 4S, not the camera, but the camera is no slouch.

No, Jobs. A month is pushing it, but he was never one for showing his cards.

PS: and even in 2003 he didn't deny there would be a cell phone from Apple, he denied there were plans to make a tablet:

M [Walt Mossberg]: A lot of people think given the success you've had with portable devices, you should be making a tablet or a PDA.

J [Steve Jobs]: There are no plans to make a tablet. It turns out people want keyboards. When Apple first started out, "People couldn't type. We realized: Death would eventually take care of this." "We look at the tablet and we think it's going to fail." Tablets appeal to rich guys with plenty of other PCs and devices already. "And people accuse us of niche markets." I get a lot of pressure to do a PDA. What people really seem to want to do with these is get the data out . We believe cell phones are going to carry this information. We didn't think we'd do well in the cell phone business. What we've done instead is we've written what we think is some of the best software in the world to start syncing information between devices. We believe that mode is what cell phones need to get to. We chose to do the iPod instead of a PDA.

No, Jobs. A month is pushing it, but he was never one for showing his cards.

Oh sorry. So by "denying there was an iPhone a month before it came out" you actually meant "back in 2003". That must have had me confused, you were obviously 100% right in your claim, just your timing was a little off.

No, Jobs. A month is pushing it, but he was never one for showing his cards.

Users cannot install software on a device that they own without giving Apple a 30% cut

You just pointed out Jailbreaking exists. Obviously users CAN install software on the device without a 30% cut going to Apple, millions do every day.

Most notably, the App Store disallows any app with the current version of the GPL

What's stopping you for dual-licencing the source to build an App Store version?

GPL is a very grey area currently, it's not clear you cannot use that for App Store apps. Generally the apps taken down have been at the request of the app owners, not Apple...

Read this for a balanced discussion.

But outside of that, obviously Cydia is a very popular and viable distribution channel.

ACC seems to have come closer to the ipad
 

When he tired of official reports and memoranda and minutes, he would plug his foolscap-sized Newspad into the ship's information circuit and scan the latest reports from Earth. One by one he would conjure up the world's major electronic papers; he knew the codes of the more important ones by heart, and had no need to consult the list on the back of his pad. Switching to the display unit's short-term memory, he would hold the front page while he quickly searched the headlines and noted the items that interested him.

Each had its own two-digit reference; when he punched that, the postage-stamp-sized rectangle would expand until it neatly filled the screen and he could read it with comfort. When he had finished, he would flash back to the complete page and select a new subject for detailed examination.

Floyd sometimes wondered if the Newspad, and the fantastic technology behind it, was the last word in man's quest for perfect communications. Here he was, far out in space, speeding away from Earth at thousands of miles an hour, yet in a few milliseconds he could see the headlines of any newspaper he pleased. (That very word "newspaper," of course, was an anachronistic hangover into the age of electronics.) The text was updated automatically on every hour; even if one read only the English versions, one could spend an entire lifetime doing nothing but absorbing the ever-changing flow of information from the news satellites.

It was hard to imagine how the system could be improved or made more convenient. But sooner or later, Floyd guessed, it would pass away, to be replaced by something as unimaginable as the Newspad itself would have been to Caxton or Gutenberg.

From 2001: A Space Odyssey , by Arthur C. Clarke.

Published by Del Rey in 1968

That would be a huge improvement !

Please provide a link, as I don't see the news anywhere ...

It's a marginal improvement, which is why it's not touted around.
http://www.tuaw.com/2011/07/24/mac-101-os-x-lions-new-window-resizing-features/

Maybe they also managed to get [,],` and | characters printed on their keyboard ? Or at least have their shortcut mentioned in the system help.

Use the Keyboard Viewer. BTW: I guess you meant ' or ‘? ` is a diacritic (grave accent) and is usually not used on it's own.

The next revolution would be an application menu bar closer to the document itself : 9" screens of mac classic are over now, the mouse has quite a long way to go across the 22" screen to reach the file menu ...

Ever heard about the concept of keyboard shortcuts? If necessary you can define your own, you know ...

Hah - actually there have been some announcements about operations manuals for aircraft being converted from huge books to an app on the iPad. There are several articles about this from corporate jets to Alaska Airlines - http://www.tuaw.com/2011/05/28/ipads-on-the-flight-decks-of-alaska-airlines-aircraft/ is just one of the articles.

The Millenial ad network claims that Android ad impressions exceed iPhones:

http://www.tuaw.com/2011/08/12/millennial-android-beats-ios-in-ad-impressions-apple-top-manuf/

This SDK gives you easy access to multiple ad networks on Android (and iPhone too):

https://www.adwhirl.com/doc/android/AdWhirlAndroidSDKSetup.html

Does that answer your question?

I couldn't agree less. Why would they pay a premium to manufacturers who are clamoring for their business? One can go out and negotiate with fifteen different main stream Android manufacturers and a hundred Chinese knock off manufacturers, plus HP for TouchPad and RIM for the PlayBook, or in one fell swoop, have 5 times the amount of volume and just one contact, all in exchange for a discount. It's the same reason hotels are happy to discount rates for large conference bookings.

Here's a company that's willing to fund your expansion by up front cash payments for future services rendered, rather than make you acquire loans . They are willing to buy up all your components - as many as you can make. All they want, is guaranteed access to those components, and great pricing. Apparently Apple is Samsung's single biggest customer. If Apple can't get enough displays fast enough, and wants to give a few billion to Sharp and LG (same article) to help them build factories quicker... well yeah, I bet they do expect to get those panels, not HTC.

Which part of anti-trust law do you assert they've broken?

Yet surely there is a subsequent decrease in valuation of a company due to the patent portfolios of competitors. Such that Google would see very little devaluation due to "loss" of their relatively small patent portfolio but with a potential sizable gain in value because their competitors no longer have that sword dangling over them.

And while Apple might seem to be in the cat bird seat regarding patents, they are still embroiled in patent disputes, some of which aren't going their way. Those problems would disappear also increasing their worth.

Wouldn't it be a zero sum effect overall? Yes some would win, some would lose, but wouldn't the values not be altered THAT much?

Wait, isn't the "fussed with the plug a bit" era pretty much the present?

After all: http://www.tuaw.com/2011/05/12/owc-replacing-main-hard-drive-with-third-party-is-not-an-option/

Oh yeah Android is kicking iOS arse and now everybody is quiet about the numbers.

Um, not exactly correct. On either point.

So they are good because they had to release the code because they were bound by a license?

Make no mistake if they didn't have to - they wouldn't have.

http://www.tuaw.com/2011/05/09/apple-releases-ios-4-3-3-webkit-source-but-stretches-the-spirit/

Nah.

There's still value in solid media.

And you can you can have Lion on a physical disk if you want, by following these Instructions.

japan is 100 million (and you HAVE to have advanced gadgetry there - cellular phones that cannot display tv broadcasts dont sell - that includes apple's iphones http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/02/why-the-iphone/ ),

You quote a 2 year old article that was discredited back then? http://www.tuaw.com/2011/05/18/the-iphone-4-sales-ranking-in-japan/ "Even in cell phone crazed Japan, the iPhone 4 is the top-selling handset according to a report from market research firm GfK Japan. Data from the first quarter of 2011 shows the 16 GB and 32 GB models in first and second place, respectively."

Not that any of this has to do with the Mac's market share. Which also grows internationally.

But I wonder if they are modified in any way. I would have thought that electronics that go into space had to be radiation-hardened and be produced with components that are more reliable / have tighter specs than what are used in consumer devices. Cool idea, though.

Well, they have to be verified and potentially dangerous components removed and replaced with less dangerous ones. I think, for example, the batteries are swapped out with ones that may not spontaneously catch fire. There was an article a few years ago about what it took to bring an iPod to space - they took out the battery and replaced it with alkalines, for example.

http://www.tuaw.com/2008/03/15/ipods-rock-the-space-shuttle/

LIkewise, the iPhones aboard Atlantis are probalby similarly modified.

As for rad-hard, it's running an experiment. As long as the robots can't go do anything potentially life-threatening (like try to break through the wall), it doesn't matter. If radiation causes them to crash or collect incorrect data, that's something for the data analysis phase to handle.

In other words, expect radiation to mess things up and design your experiment appropriately.

Critical systems, though, require rad hardening.

So, no, you don't need to buy Apple HDDs or whatever nonsense you are spewing.

Please tell that to angry iMac Fans:

Yeah, because "angry iMac Fans" have never been wrong before.

BTW, the claim "you have to buy only Apple HDDs" is already wrong, and that is not what people actually complain about, so I'm not even going to waste more time with you troll.

http://forum.hardmac.com/index.php?s=c4ee13da3fefe1394852a4b8fa883faf&showtopic=10324&st=0&p=18910&#entry18910
http://www.tuaw.com/2011/05/13/hdd-fan-control-software-addresses-imac-hard-drive-replacement-i/
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1183176

Standard Microsoft reputation management response to malware discussions.

As opposed to the standard Apple response to a problem:
Ignore the problem
Blame the user
Then only if there is sufficient outrage that could possibly damage their image do they admit there is a problem

Technically, the video card can be upgraded the same way, but it's on an MXM card and you'd need a Mac-compatible video card, which would be quite hard to find and expensive as hell when you do unless you want to pioneer flashing a standard MXM card with a modified Mac ROM.

Actually, there is talk that Apple is moving away from custom video drivers; so perhaps going forward, at least, one will be able to put a bog-standard video card in the iMac. One can hope...

http://www.tuaw.com/2011/04/14/intel-announces-usb-3-0-in-ivy-bridge-and-will-support-thunder/

Wow. Try the sedatives.

Hey man, it's 85 degrees here today. Sorry if I'm a little testy (or have little testies)...

Have you honestly forgotten Apple's original 'Well, you can just develop webapps and like it.' position on 3rd party iDevice software so quickly?

Well, considering that ended in 2008, and lasted only about a year, yes, I have forgotten about it. Why can't you? Apple had a product that they were simply DYING to get out; but didn't have a "ready-for-prime-time" SDK, toolchain, simulator, documentation, licensing, etc. Do you really think they whipped all that up in the 9 months or so before they announced the iOS XCode SDK? There's a BIG difference between having some rickety terminal apps, and having stuff that Just Works with XCode. Plus, I'm pretty sure that Apple was testing the waters a bit, seeing if Javascript would be enough.

Speaking of "forgetting, we all forget: When the iPhone debuted, there simply wasn't anything like it. You can say "My (fill in the blank) did this or that for years before the iPhone came out"; but, the simple fact of the matter is, just like the iPad is doing now, the iPhone truly was a game-changer. Perhaps you might give Apple just a LITTLE slack on getting a detail or two wrong. And UNlike many, many, MANY other companies, Apple has a pretty damned stellar track record of listening, and changing, when appropriate. In fact, they are now beta-testing an entire website that is focused on PRECISELY that.

Compared to the matter of whether development tools are free-with-purchase-of-mac, or slightly expensive, or a few thousand bucks, the fact that they created an entire category of devices that you had to exploit bugs just to run 3rd party code is slightly more noticeable...

They eventually conceded, and now 3rd party code can be run, subject to their blessing and on their terms

Eventually was a scant 9 months after the introduction of the first generation of the device. So what?

but I find your contention that the price of dev tools, rather than the control of platforms, indicates an entity's attitude toward 3rd parties very strange. While it is true that Apple does not view dev tools as a profit center, they consistently treat 3rd party entities as barely tolerable adjuncts to the mac experience, who have to be carefully kept in line. Hence the iDevice lockdown and app store rules. Hence the migration of the app store to the desktop. Hence the safari plugin signing requirements.

Really, you MUST put another layer on that tinfoil hat! Some of the mind-control rays must be leaking in...

The "iDevice lockdown" is about as iron-clad as the old iTunes DRM (which doesn't exist anymore, BTW). In other words, pretty much completely ineffective. Do you see Apple sending C&D letters to Cydia, et al? People publish apps in the App Store because THAT'S WHERE THE CUSTOMERS ARE, not because Apple actually FORCES them to in any meaningful way (and certainly not as "meaningful" as some of the Android lock-down!)

And, are you REALLY arguing AGAINST browser-plugin-signing?!? OMFG!!! If there is a larger attack-surface than a malicious browser plugin, I really can't imagine it.

Apple isn't being evil; they're just jealously guarding their (well-deserved) reputation for an essentially malware-free platform.

And, as an Apple user since 1976, and a Mac user since, well, when they were called Lisas, I'm pretty damn glad they are doing that, thankyouverymuch! I have disinfected enough Windows PCs in my life to fully appreciate what the lack of malware means. And, like the fact that I like laws against burglary, fraud, extortion, etc (and the prosecutors and courts that enforce and interpret them), doesn't mean that I'm willing to sacrifice everything as a good little sheeple; it simply means that I understand what having NO laws would soon bring to my doorstep.

This is why you don't see Apple focusing on MacOS. They've given up trying to compete in open systems controlled by the end user.

Um, you might want to rethink your statement about Apple not focusing on MacOS.

And that's just OS X, and OS X-capable-product news from one site, for about the past week or so.

This is why you don't see Apple focusing on MacOS. They've given up trying to compete in open systems controlled by the end user.

Um, you might want to rethink your statement about Apple not focusing on MacOS.

And that's just OS X, and OS X-capable-product news from one site, for about the past week or so.

This is why you don't see Apple focusing on MacOS. They've given up trying to compete in open systems controlled by the end user.

Um, you might want to rethink your statement about Apple not focusing on MacOS.

And that's just OS X, and OS X-capable-product news from one site, for about the past week or so.

This is why you don't see Apple focusing on MacOS. They've given up trying to compete in open systems controlled by the end user.

Um, you might want to rethink your statement about Apple not focusing on MacOS.

And that's just OS X, and OS X-capable-product news from one site, for about the past week or so.

This is why you don't see Apple focusing on MacOS. They've given up trying to compete in open systems controlled by the end user.

Um, you might want to rethink your statement about Apple not focusing on MacOS.

And that's just OS X, and OS X-capable-product news from one site, for about the past week or so.

This is why you don't see Apple focusing on MacOS. They've given up trying to compete in open systems controlled by the end user.

Um, you might want to rethink your statement about Apple not focusing on MacOS.

And that's just OS X, and OS X-capable-product news from one site, for about the past week or so.