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Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger to Arrive in April
Silly Burrito writes "Think Secret is reporting that Tiger will be out in April with an event on April 1st and it should be out in stores by April 15th. If this is true, I can finally get both the Mini and a new Powerbook, as I've been waiting for Tiger to be released before I do so. Let's just hope that this isn't a bad April Fools Joke!"
Personally, I am amazed ThinkSecret is still publishing these rumours despite the lawsuit hanging over them. Nick Ciarelli certainly has balls ;)
Get a free iPod Nano 4GB!
This is from someone typing on an Apple PowerBook btw - I do like Apple's products, but not always the company's actions.
Get a free iPod Nano 4GB!
Or maybe some of us are able to be somewhat rational? Personally, if Microsoft had been in Apple's shoes, I'd have felt the same way about the ThinkSecret case, and I'm anything but a Microsoft appologist (IE: I firmly believe the DoJ should have broken up the company).
The Apple vs Does case is more about reaffirming trade secret law that's already on the books and has already been affirmed by the courts many, many times. So no, I don't really see it as a 'victory against journalism.' No one is facing penalties for what they've printed at this point - and this isn't exactly a whistle blower case that deserves special privelege. But feel free to check my comment history on the subject - I've been consistent in my viewpoint and after reading the judge's opinion yesterday, I seem to have had it about pegged.
On topic, Tiger's looking to be a rather interesting release. Apple's putting metadata to good use with Spotlight, and I'm interested to see how Dashboard's ended up looking. The real story, I think, may end up being the behind the scenes part of the OS - CoreImage. It truly opens the door for a first-party Apple Photoshop killer, if Adobe refuses to adopt the interface. Remember iMovie and FCP are only really around because Adobe declined to make a good consumer oriented video editing system, so Apple did it themselves. Could we be seeing this happen again?
I was going to say "you must be new here" until I noticed your uid. :)
I sometimes think the same thing, but then I realize that the people who comment on stuff in general are those with strong opinions either way.
So when I see people bitching about a gpl violation, and in the next article see people advocating downloading music from p2p sites, I guess I just assume that they are different people. I guess I don't try to assume that every reader shares the values of "the collective".
I do find it interesting that there are so many Apple apologists though. It might be because the "Apple People" follow the apple articles the most and post most aggressively in their defense, while "The PC People" don't really follow the Apple articles as much and allows the discussion to become skewed.
I don't know. It is interesting though.
Just as a point of reference, I'm an Apple fanboy, and I think the idea of Apple using lawyers as a blunt object with which to beat college kids running rumor sites is bullshit.
Slashdot bills itself as "News For Nerds. Stuff That Matters." Clearly the latest release of OS X matters to the nerds.
The delicious irony a *free* software advocate telling others what they *should* do is making me hungry....
IBM is still having serious problems with heat dissipation, so unless they produce a throttled-back chip, the G5 is unlikely to make its way into portables anytime soon. The consensus among Apple watchers is that dual-core G4's from Freescale (formerly Motorola's processor division) are likelier candidates for portable Macs.
Specify in which Think Secret article Nick talked about "what his cat did today". You're right - it's about rumors. You're wrong - it's not a weblog just because it's published serially.
I refer you to the excellent "If The New York Times Jumped Off a Bridge" for good parallells between journalism and Think Secret's material.
Sure journalists should have a right to keep their sources secret but don't companies also have a right to have trade secrets? So, why should journalists be permitted to have their secrets after they engaged in activities that negated a company's rights to secrets? Think about it.
This entire situation is shitty on all accounts. On one hand, the employees need to be fired. Secondly, journalists should not be bribing an organizations employees for secret information. Lastly, Apple shouldn't care so much. No one takes ThinkSecret all that seriously. How many times have their rumors been absolutely ridiculous besides being incorrect? Remember how many times they've published rumors about a new PDA, G5 Powerbook, iTablet, or an iPhone?
[insert lame joke here]
You can install from DVD on an older mac, prividing you have another mac available with a DVD drive and a firewire cable.
First, boot the mac with the DVD drive with 't' held down. This boots it in 'target' mode.
Next, plug in the firewire cable between to two machines, and boot the second machin with option held down. Choose the OS image from the first mac, boot, place the DVD in the drive of the first mac, and run the installer (on the second mac); this allows you to install the OS image to the drive in the second mac .
I don't know if you need to boot from the image on the target mode machine; I had to repair a machine recently which required this step - don't know if it's always neccesary.
I wouldn't want a G5 in a laptop. You can permanently damage yourself running that hot a processor in your lap.
Seriously, though, I hope Apple goes with the Freescale dual-core G4 for mobile use before the G5.
Is Mac OS X Tiger going to have J2SE 5 "Tiger" as well? I don't see much mention about Java except a little in the XCode area. They don't mention a version at all. Maybe I just missed it.
A programmer is a machine for converting coffee into code.
The free speech rights of journalists are not trampled upon. There is NO constitutional right for journalists to keep the names of their sources secret. Some states have laws that protect this right, but there is neither a federal constitutional right nor a common law privilege. The state laws are not absolute privileges either -- in the California case, the judge ruled that California's shield law does not cover the type of reporting done by the fan sites.
From the ruling: "Unlike the whistleblower who discloses a health, safety or welfare hazard affecting all, or the government employee who reveals mismanagement or worse by our public officials, (the enthusiast sites) are doing nothing more than feeding the public's insatiable desire for information."
This seems to be lost in all the hysteria over Apple's suit. Apple is NOT suing ThinkSecret for damages. They are suing ThinkSecret only to get the names of the people who did reveal trade secrets. Those people broke their NDAs and Apple wants to go after them for breach of contract. There is, of course, no "free speech" right to break a contract in which you agreed not to reveal those secrets. Apple's target is those people, and that's what the law suit is about.
Now, since ThinkSecret is refusing to reveal the names of those sources, and since there's no privilege to keep those names secret, it is in contempt of court. This is a fundamental aspect of our justice system, that the litigants are entitled to "everyman's evidence." You definitely want this. Think about it. If you were in an accident and none of the witnesses want to testify, where does that leave you? You can subpoena them to testify in court and reveal what they know, and if they refuse, they can be held in contempt of court. This is exactly analogous.
Don't let the label "journalist" fool you. We are all journalists -- we post on a blog and we report what we see and what we think. If you are going to give "journalists" a right to keep quiet about evidence, then everyone would have this right, and our system would not function. The First Amendment emphatically does not allow you to keep silent in court unless you have an applicable privilege.
Trade secrets are things that are meant to remain secret indefinitely, so as to enjoy a form of protection that is longer-lived than patents. To call product specifications which are released a few weeks or months before they're posted on Apple.com makes a mockery of trade secret protection law.
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I didn't say 'trade secret protection laws.' I said 'contract' - as in NDA.
If it's okay to violate an NDA, as long as you do it by telling a reporter what you know, then just what exactly is an NDA for, in your opinion?
It's going to damage Mac sales between now and probably the announement (at which point I'd expect a free upgrade offer to kick in.)
What you're missing is that this ruling is the headland of the slippery slope. If there is an exception to the shield law in case of "crimes committed by the source", then all that the government or any company or any private individual need do is find any possible crime, no matter how minor (and trade secret violation is rather minour), to force a source to be revealed. Proof of crime is not necessary according to this judge, nor is a preponderence of the evidence, merely a suspicion that a crime may have been committed is enough.
You're missing that there is the presumption that a crime was committed. Since the informant is unknown, we don't know if the submitter of the information was one who, let's say, overheard a conversation between two Apple employees? While the employees should have been more discreet, the third-party commits no crime when he reveals what he overheard. However, in turning over that name, ThinkSecret destroys their own future source's faith and thus by extension the faith of any person communicating with reporters.
What you're missing is that this ruling is an interpretive ruling from an activist judge. The California shield law does not make an exception for journalist shield privelege if a crime was committed in the turning over of information. If the legislature had wanted that exception, then the law should have been written that way. The judge should not substitute his will for the will of the people.
not only have I seen one, I've placed one next to the 12" iBook. Every single dimension is the same - actually, compare for yourself rather than just troll-modding me:
iBook 12-inch
Powerbook 12-inch
Pay especial note to the arrangement of ports on the side of the PB12" - identical to the iBook, completely different to the other Powerbooks. Or the identical sizes, screen specs, weights. Or the fact that the skin of the 12-incher is a metal skin on top of an iBook frame (yes I did get that bit wrong due to a mental aberration) instead of being the construction of the PB 15/17
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
Things like whistle-blowing (which, although might really piss off the company, is NOT illegal to do).
Whistleblowing is illegal if the company has a properly crafted NDA. This court ruling makes it harder to protect whistleblowers.
If ThinkSecret had instead run a "leaked" story that MacMini's were produced by indentured 6-year-olds and were made of Soilent Green, they would NOT have been ordered to give up their sources. NDA's do not cover releasing information about violations of the law or dangers to the public. They DO cover releasing information that is a trade secret or other proprietary information that you have signed a contract to NOT give out.
What if a trade secret is that the company engages in activity that is illegal?
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Companies don't need to prove their information is a trade secret.
Here's a stretch of an analogy. I work for a defense contractor. We were bidding on a project that had a very aggressive schedule. The entire schedule was a trade secret, even the general terms of how long it was. Why? If a competitor found out, they would know our assessment of how long we think it takes us to build such a product. This gives them knowledge and advantage in the marketplace.
Point #1: Should our company have to PROVE that this information is economically valuable?
Point #2: Any competitor can know the state of Tiger at the time of the leak, and knowing the release date, they now know how long it takes Apple to polish up a product for release. The competitors can assess their "polishing" skills against Apple's, and that does give them information Apple would rather they not have.
I said "hit and miss", which implies the occasional hit. And that's part of the problem. The times Think Secret do get some legitimate insider information (like the full specs of the Mac Mini) adds an undeserved weight to the rest of the time when he's just pissing in the wind (or reporting someone else's wind-pissing).
So you end up with situations like the iPod Mini, which got a lot of bad press on its release thanks to the Think Secret-fueled assumption that it was going to cost $100. Everyone had been primed to expect a $100 iPod, despite the fact tht $100 was a totally unrealistic price for the unit. Of course the Mini went on to be wildly successful anyway, but this sort of thing could really have hurt a product that had less brand momentum than the iPod.
Charles Miller
The more I learn about the Internet, the more amazed I am that it works at all.
Am I the only one who has a hard time understanding how California law has jurisdiction over a publication that is published in Massachusetts? What if ThinkSecret was published in France - would the CA UTSA still have force?
Tell that to all the journals that have several hundred dollar subscriptions and the researchers who don't publish their crystal structures because they want to analyze first. There's so much scientific information out there longing to be free... let's hope that open source rubs off on science.
That's pretty irresponsible, don't you think? You, as a professional journalist, are an opinion-maker. You're essentially dismissing Apple's case in the court of public opinion based on grounds that would never stand up in an actual court.
He's using very specific code names in his hardware prediction on the front page.
Apple has been known to use several code names for the same piece of hardware, giving different names to different labs, testers, etc.
One advantage of such a strategy is that if anything leaks, you can narrow down the source.
I can imagine the same can be done with dates.
This kid HAS figured out that if he loses the original case, they'll be back with both barrels on every subsequent leak, right?
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
As noted in the MacRumors Forums, the 1st coincides with the release of these two tiger books
The missing Manual: tiger ed.
O'Reilly's learning Unix for Tiger
based on this, I'd be bullish on it being announced on the 1st.
They should of because nobody at my work believed it. Took about one week before people realised it was serious.
It's turtles all the way down.