I thought kinda the same way you did. I didn't think the problem was really widespread. Now it's happening to me, too. My nice iBook wasn't AppleCare'd (College Grad gift, I would have AC'd it myself). I basically have the choice between an expensive repair option or no iBook at all. I'm still trying to decide which is best.
I mean, what assurance do I have that this won't happen again?
I'm all for being reasonable, and I'm not trying to get a class-action lawsuit going, but events like this hurt my trust of the brand. My dad has had a Dell laptop for a year, and it didn't fail. He's snickering at me about it, after all, Apple products are supposed to be superior, right?
Every time something like this happens, it hurts Apple's image, regardless of our status as a "vocal minority" or not.
Considering I know 5 people with iBooks and of them all, only the oldest (original offering, actually) iBook ran for more than 1.5 years, that's pretty bad. Mine was the most recent to go.
What are we supposed to do? Be happy about it? Defer our G5 purchases to get another iBook so that we have a laptop that shouldn't be experiencing such an obviously bad defect in the first place?
Actually, reading around, it seems like a limited version of this will indeed be available. Now, will it be as good as we'd like?
Maybe, maybe not.:) I'd like to see a really aggressive auto-vectorization scheme that goes for every possible chance to parallelize code. Since the PowerPC spec calls for so dang many registers, it seems like it'd be much easier (and provide more benefits) to store up several ops in registers and then chain them.
Integer ops are also subject to this.:)
Bad Comparison, those aren't service packs.
on
No WMA for HP iPod
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· Score: 1, Troll
So sayeth Eyah....TIMMY:
Think now of every service pack Apple releases under a new animal name. Every time, it costs $130. Can you imagine what people would say if M$ charged $100, even $50 for XP SP1? People would say they have no alternative but to buy the new M$. You would have a billion lawsuits against M$. With Apple, if you have a Mac, you install Mac OS, nothing else, so no choice there either.
Comparing an XP service pack to a major upgrade in Mac OS X is like comparing a reeking old kayak to a massive luxury liner.
Apple delievers a solid product and constantly upgrades and patches their versions. Nothing forces you to upgrade. Your OS will still get security patches even if you don't upgrade. It's not a mandatory path. It's just a very desirable one.
Meanwhile, XP's update path is mandatory. If you want the security, you need to keep up. It's not just security either, it's lots of bugfixes that XP should not have had in the first place. This very seldom happens with Mac OS X. It consistently happens with Windows.
I dunno. Sounds awful manual to me. When I'm in my IDE, I just wanna see IDE windows. Sounds like it would be a pain to have to scan through 30 unrelated windows looking for the one you want. I'll reserve judgement until I try it out, I guess.
No. Hoo-boy, You really need to read and see how Explose works. You can just skim around applicaiton windows. You can go right to the desktop, just do current application windows, or do all windows. This is great for lots of things. Best of all, once you're done using it to pick a window, it puts all your windows back where you left them!
While in, say, Application mode, you see all application windows. If you hit tab (or shift-tab), you can switch the current application being displayed, or hit your other Explose macros to move around.
Expose isn't just something that is kinda cool, it's something that's a complete revolution in the way window managers work. It's so utterly new and cool, it's kind of hard to just tell someone the value of it. You really need to try it.
For the record, this is exactly what KDE can do. You can design your UI in Qt designer, which will generate XML-based UI description files. A compiler called UIC to generate C++ code from these you can link into your app. Layout of menus and toolbars is entirely handled by XML files using a system called XML-GUI. You can also build a configuration dialog in QT Designer, and use KConfigXT to automatically tie it the configuration back-end without any intermediate code.
For the record, that software does a poor job, crashes a lot, and I've seen several configurations that looked one way in the app, and were slightly different when delployed. The interface is awkward, the widgets are hard to configure, and the binding is awkward.
Sorry, A for effort, F for execution.
I don't disagree that you have to futz and tweek KDE to get things to work (its certainly not as polished as OS X), but I disagree that its a waste of time. I only have to do the setup once. And it helps my productivity tremendously.... Of course, my work habits are probably quite different from yours. I'm not really a "GUI person" and my most-used KDE app is Konsole:) I don't like clicking and I don't like managing windows (run everything maximized) and KDE is really the only environment that lets me do that.
It is precisely because I am so much of a Konsole (at work) and Terminal.app (at home) guy that I don't want to waste time. I tweaked my shell up, because I thought it would be fun, years ago. I still have all those configs (I tweak completions now and again, like now zsh understands how to complete for cleartool at work), but if I was asked if I want to do it again, I'd say no. I have better things to do.
I'm all for building an infrastructure to make you more productive. I'm a fan of code generation, and just used it.. However, I'm not about making infrastructure for the sake of it.
A lot of the GUI aversion is because most people design crappy interfaces that a pain to use. The KDE prefs panel is a great example of this. Comparing this to the OS X System Preferences.app... well.. there really is no comparison!
In general, Linux requires a lot of tweaking. It was novel for a few years. Now I want to come home. I want to code, or web browse, or read my email, or whatever. I don't want to have to screw around with anything to do these tasks. I know all about how my system works. I just don't feel like wasting time administrating it when I could be developing new apps, learning valuable skills, or communicating with friends.
Last time I used OS X (10.2.8, haven't used Panther yet) it had nothing comparable to the auto-completion capabilities of KDE's text widgets. Its probably possible for the application to do this stuff, but KDE apps get this function automaically.
Well, the auto-completion stuff is new to panther, but the configuration has always been there. It's not UI'd up, so KDE has a one-up there. However, this is part of the disjunt ideology problem. There is a great deal of comfort in knowing that any mac you come up to is going to behave in mostly the same way as every other mac.
Have you used KDE 3.2's IntelliJ-inspired IDEAL MDI mode? I didn't like MDI at all (my primary OS for a long time was BeOS, which was agressively SDI). But IDEAL mode kicks ass.
Still sucks. Until you've used Expose in SDI, you really don't know what you're missing. It's trivial to have 30+ windows open and not feel cluttered at all. Especially if you bind expose to spare mouse keys.
MDI is kinda obnoxious, save in very controlled scenarios. Generalizing it outside of these scenarios is a recipe for disaster.
I'm not familiar with [Cocoa], what's in it?
Its a whole Objective-C development environment, complete with FoundationKit, which is a bunch of stuff for core data structures, system interfaces, and whatnot. Basic stuff. Then there is the AppKit, which builds off the FoundationKit to give you one of the coolest application development suites around.
It's possible to write a full-featured text editor with about 10 lines of code. 10 readable lines of code, I might add.
So why not use the Java, Python, or Javascript bindings? C++ is a fine language for implementing the framework, especially because Qt and KDE are examples of properly-done C++ code. However, there is no reason you have to use them for your apps.
I try not to write GUIs at all. I try to use visual feedback tools to develop them, then let the tool generate an intermediate form I can use. I grew fond of this approach using Apple's dev stuff.
It's kind of a pain to use KDE's tools for this. They aren't very good, it doesn't tie together very well. All in all, it feels like a very slipshod affair. Ultimately, the framework is a C++ system, and shows the rigidity and lack of cool dynamic features that make developer's life easier in other frameworks.
KDE is a fine piece of work, and it's competitive. I just don't think it's an incredibly hot piece of software. I use it in preference to GNOME, when I use Linux environments (and I do frequently), but I haven't found all this "power" particularly compelling.
I try not to fall into the trap mentioned in the article above. Endless cycles of tweaks, configurations, and generally boring drugework to get my windowing environment "just so" when it was 90% of what I wanted to begin with. I'd rather have good development tools and a nice base language. That's my standpoint as a developer.
As an average user, KDE's options are hidden, bewildering, and seldom used. This is Microsoft all over again. Windows can do a ton of things, but it's all buried in cluttered UI, unknown and arcane dialog boxes, and odd control panel property lists.
For people who want to futz, tweak, and generally waste time... well that's great. More power to ya. If you think spending 2 days tweaking your window manager instead of just adapting to it is really that beneficial, that's cool. I've kept mostly with the stock KDE, and I haven't been wont for anything really.
I just get a lot more bang for my buck with the stock OS X config. Expose, especially, really breaks the bank.:)
Apple made it possible for developers to extend OS X. I'm a developer too, and I don't find much that I miss when I code on my mac. Especially with the most excellent TextExtras package, which works even in every text widget. It's awesome to be able to quickly zip around code in a browser window's text widget!:)
The Many Paths of Apple exist past the castle and on the Plains of Shareware and the Highway of Freeware.:)
Firstly, we're comparing Aqua, the UI part of OS X to the UI part of KDE. Any other comparison would be unfair. Thusly, naming other features KDE has outside of the UI domain is kind of pointless.
"My window manager is better than your FTP Client!"
As for "better ripping CDs", I can't see how that could be. Burning and copying CDs is so trivial in OS X, it simply doesn't get much easier or intuitive.
OS X could use more stable network transparency, though. Apparently that's On The List along with the process of supporting the file system notification system than FreeBSD is giving them.
Mac OS X's environment already has almost all these things.
The configurability is a Mac vs. Linux philosophy thing. Don't tout it, you'll start a flamewar. Suffice to say, Apple has decided that for UI, One Consistent Way is better than a huge amount of configurability.
You need CocoaGestures to get system wide gestures. The hotkeys support is already there.
The system-wide password manager? Prithee, sir, what then would we call KeyChain?
System wide spellchecking is part and parcel of the very good Apple text widgets. You use their widgets, you get it for free. You can configure it specially, or you can let all the code in NSApp just do it for you (usually what you want).
Apple doesn't do things like auto-completion in a generic fashion (although you never see it mentioned, they do provide a completion service, and other people have cheerfully extended this functionality with supplemental abilities.) because they haven't decided on their One Consistent Way to do it. Until then, we have a plethora of software, free and commercial, that does most anything we want. The OS X software community is very happy correcting any perceived flaws or blank spots a dozen different ways.
UI is a very subjective matter, so Apple (that makes money off of their good, consistent user experience) takes the middle road in most everything. It's smarter for them that way, since it's so incredibly easy to extend their input mechanisms.
Apple has a unified hotkey system. In panther, all the system-wide hotkeys are rebindable. Applications override this, and they can (and do) offer to change the keybindings. There are also tools to change keybindings arbitrarily, and even on regexs of the menu items.:)
Apple's text widgets are configurable in the extreme. This can be accomplished both at the application level, or at a global level. Developers can override this functionality in the individual application case. You might notice that OS X text widgets respond to many C-(something) keys (C-a to go to the beginning of a line, etc...). This is because of a global config file which individual users and appliations can override to taste. It's quite possible to make the text widgets perform in almost any manner possible (although it's unlikely that you'll see Emacs or VIM behavior without an InputManager.
The component methodology is more pervasive in KDE because developers want it to be. Nothing restricts people in the OS X world from writing their widgets in that fashion (most do!). Few people take it to that level in OS X. Not because it's hard, but because there is seldom reason to. This is nice, I'll grant, but it's not really that much of a benefit.
KDE's MDI suffers from the general problems of MDI everywhere. I'd say Apple's minimalistic MDI stuff is a feature. Especially with Expose, MDI is seldom necessary. The notable examples are web-browsers. Even then, I find myself using tabs in Safari less and less. Why, when I get a better idea of what's going on with Expose?
KDevelop is probably more mature than XCode, which is quite new (albeit based off the venerable ProjectManager, it's a very different machine under the hood as some Apple developers have intimated to me.
NOTHING KDE has comes even close to the awesome power of the Developer suite that you get when you sign on with OSX. When it was designed, it was 20 years ahead of its time, and no one else has even begun to catch up.
As a developer, I balk at C++ frameworks. Sorry, C++ is rapidly becoming more of a nuisance than anything else.
This is, of course, subjective. Since I win my daily bread as a C++ and Ruby coder, I'll leave it as obvious which language I prefer to work in.
1) KDE, while less polished than Aqua, is much more powerful.
Howso? I'm working with KDE in my current job, and I've yet to find anything that KDE can do that Aqua can't seem to. I suppose this depends on your definition of "power" too. GTK+ is very "powerful" as I'd define it, but a triply nested button inside other buttons doesn't seem like power I really need.
In general, I think Apple's rapid development tools and APIs in the Cocoa environment (along with the language used) knock the socks off just about anything else I've worked with for overall usability (both from a user and developer's standpoint).
Especially in the area of rapid development, few environments can even begin to work as well, or produce such clean and maintainable results, as Apple's tools for this job.
Gaming should not be your final decision, for any general purpose computer. If you need to go make gaming decisions, make them for your consoles. They cost less money, so you're throwing less money away.
I dunno about other people, but I use my machine for work, for online interaction, and for music and media. Even when I was in the PC world, I never found most computer games terribly compelling.
Like, "Yay, I can play the same FPS concept hashed out again and again and again, this time with a sneak button!" "Look, now I have grenades and a car!"
First, I'd like to say how refreshing it is to converse with someone who can actually think their argument through. Even if I don't agree with you, I still am going to tip my hat.
[I am posting this Anonymously so I don't lose karma from the slashdot army of mactivists. Anyway, I am not the same AC who started this thread.]
However, 10 points lost for giving a damn about slashdot karma.:P Anyways...
All your article says is that it's hard to count linux users. Claiming it's uncertain does nothing for your argument, so I'll just move along. It's also important to note that not all linux users, even in the desktop realm, are going to be iTunes users. The linux world is very diverse, I think we can all agree.
Keep in mind that unlike OS X, Linux can be run on old machines, new machines and everything in between (including old Macs). In addition, every Mac and Windows machine out there is a potential Linux machine. With the easy availability of low-to-no cost Linux distributions, it is nearly impossible to actually estimate the real number of desktops out there. Every estimate I have ever seen has always had the caveat that the real number is going to be a lot higher.
Err, this kind of thinking is pretty standard, and it's also why Apple is doing quite well right now. Who gives a damn about the machines? I'll say it again, in bold: Who gives a damn what the machines can do? The answer is people like me, who are engineers.
Most machines are potential linux machines. However, most users are not potential Linux users! This is important. A machine may be capable, but if a user isn't, then who cares?
Apple sure doesn't. Apple has philosophy and style, but at the end of the day, they have a bank account that needs to be full enough to pay their engineers.
Umm, we don't need QT for playing MP3's, we need it to play those trailers and movies that so many people thoughtlessly throw up on the web in that closed format. Luckily as with most things we have circumvented vendor idiocy using other means, but Apple's refusal still grates.
Umm. Tell me, because I'm interested... How should Apple implement a consistent product on Linux. Remember, Apple's entire marketing strategy is based around the EXPERIENCE of use, and its consistency. These are important things.
Should apple use SDL? Straight OpenGL? Make their own library? What GUI toolkit? GTK+? Motif? Should it be a KDE App? A Gnome App? Neither?
Apple cannot make a consistant and reasonable player app in Linux. If they choose toolkits and run with it, they get nailed. If they make their own toolkits, they get nailed.
This is not even mentioning the huge amount of porting they'd need to do.
As for your complaints about movie trailers, I suggest you get over it. There is a small price to pay for freedom man. When I started using Linux, I couldn't even watch movies at all.
What Apple is doing with Quicktime is no better or worse than what MS and Real are doing. They're trying to make money with a quality video/audio encoder and decoder. The end quality of the product isn't important, it's the intention that dictates the reasoning here.
And how much money does Apple make with their free Windows Quicktime viewer again? You do recall that is what we are talking about here?
They make money by spreading the quicktime decoder and convincing people to use it. Then professionals (you know, commercial use of software to make products) will buy the encoder software to publish their work.
Do you remember how business works?
Ok, then, why isn't there a QT player for FreeBSD?
Umm. For the same reason there isn't a Linux one. I'm sorry, Apple has kicked back to the community in other areas. Areas that are arguably more important than a media player.
Linux DOES probably have more machines on its side. However, that's not necessarily relevant. Linux's overwhelming number of machines is not because they have a gadzillion desktop users. They run a lot of servers. When it comes to Linux desktop usage, I've yet to see a figure that puts it significantly ahead of Apple in desktop use.
Feel free to show me some reliable figures to prove me wrong on this.
People running servers don't need fancy MP3 playing software. The majority of deployed linux boxes are servers. So long as tenant 2 holds, the majority of linux boxes wouldn't run iTunes.
Apple supports iTunes with Windows for some good reasons. Firstly, it's the same reason that BeOS started supporting x86 machines. They like money, money is good, and therefore they try and get more of it. The huge spike in iTMS sales suggests this was a good move. Secondly, Quicktime was already out for Windows. Since iTunes relies on Quicktime, their sound code should be trivially portable.
The third is a bit more uncertain. Apple was originally capable of moving OpenSTEP code to Windows via Rhapsody. I'm willing to bet there was some weight there.
MS isn't actively trying to destroy Apple any more than it's trying to destroy everyone else. MS is too faceless to get personal with things, so don't take it personally. They're a mega-giant that steps on people every day, they can't help it. They're just intrinsically Big Business.
As for not contributing back to the open source movment. Umm.. hello? Apple has kicked back a lot of stuff to the open source community. Apple really doesn't owe Linux in particular anything. Apple owes most of itself to BSDs.
The fact is, you reconsidered and changed your mind based on unreasonable standards and data. If you don't want an Apple computer, that's your call. Many people would argue it's your loss though.
This comment suggests that Apple IS wrong in not releasing a Linux version of this software. If you're going to make such a large statement, you should back it up with reasoning.
Or at least link to someone else's reasoning. Sheesh.
True. I should have been more clear (I was having a rough day). What I should be referring to is the tendancy of the G4 to allow certain instructions (including NOPS and the syscall instruction) reserved bytes to be something other than 0.
From a chip designer's standpoint, it probably made the logic easier.
From a correctness standpoint, these flags may eventually have meaning. The correct implementation would be to claim the instruction was illegal.
Now, if SC couldn't be called when you upload shellcode, then a lot of remote exploits would be noticably more difficult. You can of course return back into libc or some other library function.
This is more difficult, requires more tuning, and can't always be done eaisly. In other words, it makes it less automatable, which reduces the number of script kids who can get their dirty, clueless paws on something.
Thus, I will ask again in a more clear fashion. Is the G5 accepting these tweaked instructions or is it rejecting them?
If it is rejecting them, buffer overflows on a mac will be that much harder. This doesn't mean they're utterly immune to them. It means that they're a much less attractive target.
I do not have a G5, nor do I know anyone with a G5. So I cannot test this, but I've heard some of my security-friends (like the super friends, only ugly, fat, and obnoxious instead of ugly, healthy and obnoxious) that the G5's don't allow the NOP's with non-0 flags.
This is probably the proper behavior. I'm convinced that Motorolla's acceptance of these facts was a bug, not a feature.
Could you test it and find out? I'm really curious.
I had heard some suggestions that G5s didn't allow NOPs to overwrite their null bytes with random data. It seemed that the motorolla behavior for this was a bug to begin with, since those flags are reserved for future meaning, and as such the instruction is different if they are set.
Does anyone know if these eggs fly on a G5? Here is a perfect chance to test!:)
I'm just curious, this is like the famous stopped watch at the train station problem.
How would a Mac OS X machine get a virus. Do you know? What vulnerbilities in the system would permit it to gain one? How you would go about constructing one?
Yes, it is possible. Yes, I know how. I'm curious if you are basing your statement off of anything other than an apologist mantra. I see a lot of that around here.
Sadly, voices of utter reason like yourself will never be modded up and discussed over. People don't want to hear the reasons you posted.
People want to hear, "This is better, and you suck!" This is a big forum, and it's fun to argue in forums.:)
Just thought I'd let you know that there are people who understand where you are coming from completely.
I personally switched from Linux to Mac OS X because tracking Xwindows was giving me such incredible headaches. It's in a much better state now, back there in Linux land. Debian (which I was using then) has gotten way way better about this.
I was unaware that you could overwrite specific files with nodes that would work as actual files. That's worse than just being able to replace directories.
But it's important to keep things in perspective. This makes it bad for YOU. The vast majority of mac users will never run into a scenario in which this attack is feasible.
Thus I can see Apple's low priority for it.
Further, what exactly is the "right" thing to do here? Simply change the default? What do other OSs do that's better?
But by changing my etc, overriding my database of users, do you not obliterate my login? Unless you knew my password, of course, in which case I am screwed.
You would need to do this to get sshd running on my machine, would you not? Without my account settings to log in, I can't log in, and immediatly detect the problem. Without overriding my/etc directory, you can't get ssh going.
As for the sleep mode and playing with cron jobs, that would be of a heroic level of difficulty to get that to go off without alerting a user who is actively using their machine.
In any event, I'm confused as to why this is being hyped up so much. It's really a rather odd condition, which a exploitability rating of "difficult and unautomatable" at best.
That means that they can mount their startup directories over top of yours, and theirs have things configured to start sshd.
Hmm. Indeed. However, my startup share is also my primary partition. I don't play with this much, but wouldn't this imply that I'd notice this, because I'm no longer using the same startup? Would my account even exist, and be using the same picutre and background (last is special case, most users do not do this).
Moreover, they could record my password I suppose, but wouldn't I know something is up and reboot? If I'm suspicious, I'll just change my passwords.
I'm curious here, wouldn't you know?
And in most cases, I never reboot my machine. I move it from network to network in sleep mode. Again, I have never played with this kind of scenario, but it is my thought I'd have to reboot for this to work.
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People do have a point when they say laptops should last longer than a year, you know.
I thought kinda the same way you did. I didn't think the problem was really widespread. Now it's happening to me, too. My nice iBook wasn't AppleCare'd (College Grad gift, I would have AC'd it myself). I basically have the choice between an expensive repair option or no iBook at all. I'm still trying to decide which is best.
I mean, what assurance do I have that this won't happen again?
I'm all for being reasonable, and I'm not trying to get a class-action lawsuit going, but events like this hurt my trust of the brand. My dad has had a Dell laptop for a year, and it didn't fail. He's snickering at me about it, after all, Apple products are supposed to be superior, right?
Every time something like this happens, it hurts Apple's image, regardless of our status as a "vocal minority" or not.
Considering I know 5 people with iBooks and of them all, only the oldest (original offering, actually) iBook ran for more than 1.5 years, that's pretty bad. Mine was the most recent to go.
What are we supposed to do? Be happy about it? Defer our G5 purchases to get another iBook so that we have a laptop that shouldn't be experiencing such an obviously bad defect in the first place?
Actually, reading around, it seems like a limited version of this will indeed be available. Now, will it be as good as we'd like?
:) I'd like to see a really aggressive auto-vectorization scheme that goes for every possible chance to parallelize code. Since the PowerPC spec calls for so dang many registers, it seems like it'd be much easier (and provide more benefits) to store up several ops in registers and then chain them.
:)
Maybe, maybe not.
Integer ops are also subject to this.
Comparing an XP service pack to a major upgrade in Mac OS X is like comparing a reeking old kayak to a massive luxury liner.
Apple delievers a solid product and constantly upgrades and patches their versions. Nothing forces you to upgrade. Your OS will still get security patches even if you don't upgrade. It's not a mandatory path. It's just a very desirable one.
Meanwhile, XP's update path is mandatory. If you want the security, you need to keep up. It's not just security either, it's lots of bugfixes that XP should not have had in the first place. This very seldom happens with Mac OS X. It consistently happens with Windows.
- Works.
- Works well.
- Is up to date.
Because it is none of those things. iTunes is fully functional, does everything the Mac version does, and is staying up-to-date.While in, say, Application mode, you see all application windows. If you hit tab (or shift-tab), you can switch the current application being displayed, or hit your other Explose macros to move around.
Expose isn't just something that is kinda cool, it's something that's a complete revolution in the way window managers work. It's so utterly new and cool, it's kind of hard to just tell someone the value of it. You really need to try it.
For the record, that software does a poor job, crashes a lot, and I've seen several configurations that looked one way in the app, and were slightly different when delployed. The interface is awkward, the widgets are hard to configure, and the binding is awkward.Sorry, A for effort, F for execution.
It is precisely because I am so much of a Konsole (at work) and Terminal.app (at home) guy that I don't want to waste time. I tweaked my shell up, because I thought it would be fun, years ago. I still have all those configs (I tweak completions now and again, like now zsh understands how to complete for cleartool at work), but if I was asked if I want to do it again, I'd say no. I have better things to do.I'm all for building an infrastructure to make you more productive. I'm a fan of code generation, and just used it.. However, I'm not about making infrastructure for the sake of it.
A lot of the GUI aversion is because most people design crappy interfaces that a pain to use. The KDE prefs panel is a great example of this. Comparing this to the OS X System Preferences.app... well.. there really is no comparison!
In general, Linux requires a lot of tweaking. It was novel for a few years. Now I want to come home. I want to code, or web browse, or read my email, or whatever. I don't want to have to screw around with anything to do these tasks. I know all about how my system works. I just don't feel like wasting time administrating it when I could be developing new apps, learning valuable skills, or communicating with friends.
My time, simply put, is more valuable than that.
MDI is kinda obnoxious, save in very controlled scenarios. Generalizing it outside of these scenarios is a recipe for disaster.
Its a whole Objective-C development environment, complete with FoundationKit, which is a bunch of stuff for core data structures, system interfaces, and whatnot. Basic stuff. Then there is the AppKit, which builds off the FoundationKit to give you one of the coolest application development suites around.It's possible to write a full-featured text editor with about 10 lines of code. 10 readable lines of code, I might add.
I try not to write GUIs at all. I try to use visual feedback tools to develop them, then let the tool generate an intermediate form I can use. I grew fond of this approach using Apple's dev stuff.It's kind of a pain to use KDE's tools for this. They aren't very good, it doesn't tie together very well. All in all, it feels like a very slipshod affair. Ultimately, the framework is a C++ system, and shows the rigidity and lack of cool dynamic features that make developer's life easier in other frameworks.
KDE is a fine piece of work, and it's competitive. I just don't think it's an incredibly hot piece of software. I use it in preference to GNOME, when I use Linux environments (and I do frequently), but I haven't found all this "power" particularly compelling.
I try not to fall into the trap mentioned in the article above. Endless cycles of tweaks, configurations, and generally boring drugework to get my windowing environment "just so" when it was 90% of what I wanted to begin with. I'd rather have good development tools and a nice base language. That's my standpoint as a developer.
As an average user, KDE's options are hidden, bewildering, and seldom used. This is Microsoft all over again. Windows can do a ton of things, but it's all buried in cluttered UI, unknown and arcane dialog boxes, and odd control panel property lists.
For people who want to futz, tweak, and generally waste time... well that's great. More power to ya. If you think spending 2 days tweaking your window manager instead of just adapting to it is really that beneficial, that's cool. I've kept mostly with the stock KDE, and I haven't been wont for anything really.
I just get a lot more bang for my buck with the stock OS X config. Expose, especially, really breaks the bank. :)
Apple made it possible for developers to extend OS X. I'm a developer too, and I don't find much that I miss when I code on my mac. Especially with the most excellent TextExtras package, which works even in every text widget. It's awesome to be able to quickly zip around code in a browser window's text widget! :)
:)
The Many Paths of Apple exist past the castle and on the Plains of Shareware and the Highway of Freeware.
Firstly, we're comparing Aqua, the UI part of OS X to the UI part of KDE. Any other comparison would be unfair. Thusly, naming other features KDE has outside of the UI domain is kind of pointless.
"My window manager is better than your FTP Client!"
As for "better ripping CDs", I can't see how that could be. Burning and copying CDs is so trivial in OS X, it simply doesn't get much easier or intuitive.
OS X could use more stable network transparency, though. Apparently that's On The List along with the process of supporting the file system notification system than FreeBSD is giving them.
The configurability is a Mac vs. Linux philosophy thing. Don't tout it, you'll start a flamewar. Suffice to say, Apple has decided that for UI, One Consistent Way is better than a huge amount of configurability.
You need CocoaGestures to get system wide gestures. The hotkeys support is already there.
The system-wide password manager? Prithee, sir, what then would we call KeyChain?
System wide spellchecking is part and parcel of the very good Apple text widgets. You use their widgets, you get it for free. You can configure it specially, or you can let all the code in NSApp just do it for you (usually what you want).
Apple doesn't do things like auto-completion in a generic fashion (although you never see it mentioned, they do provide a completion service, and other people have cheerfully extended this functionality with supplemental abilities.) because they haven't decided on their One Consistent Way to do it. Until then, we have a plethora of software, free and commercial, that does most anything we want. The OS X software community is very happy correcting any perceived flaws or blank spots a dozen different ways.
UI is a very subjective matter, so Apple (that makes money off of their good, consistent user experience) takes the middle road in most everything. It's smarter for them that way, since it's so incredibly easy to extend their input mechanisms.
This is, of course, subjective. Since I win my daily bread as a C++ and Ruby coder, I'll leave it as obvious which language I prefer to work in.
Howso? I'm working with KDE in my current job, and I've yet to find anything that KDE can do that Aqua can't seem to. I suppose this depends on your definition of "power" too. GTK+ is very "powerful" as I'd define it, but a triply nested button inside other buttons doesn't seem like power I really need.
In general, I think Apple's rapid development tools and APIs in the Cocoa environment (along with the language used) knock the socks off just about anything else I've worked with for overall usability (both from a user and developer's standpoint).
Especially in the area of rapid development, few environments can even begin to work as well, or produce such clean and maintainable results, as Apple's tools for this job.
Gaming should not be your final decision, for any general purpose computer. If you need to go make gaming decisions, make them for your consoles. They cost less money, so you're throwing less money away.
I dunno about other people, but I use my machine for work, for online interaction, and for music and media. Even when I was in the PC world, I never found most computer games terribly compelling.
Like, "Yay, I can play the same FPS concept hashed out again and again and again, this time with a sneak button!" "Look, now I have grenades and a car!"
However, 10 points lost for giving a damn about slashdot karma. :P Anyways...
All your article says is that it's hard to count linux users. Claiming it's uncertain does nothing for your argument, so I'll just move along. It's also important to note that not all linux users, even in the desktop realm, are going to be iTunes users. The linux world is very diverse, I think we can all agree.
Err, this kind of thinking is pretty standard, and it's also why Apple is doing quite well right now. Who gives a damn about the machines? I'll say it again, in bold: Who gives a damn what the machines can do? The answer is people like me, who are engineers.
Most machines are potential linux machines. However, most users are not potential Linux users! This is important. A machine may be capable, but if a user isn't, then who cares?
Apple sure doesn't. Apple has philosophy and style, but at the end of the day, they have a bank account that needs to be full enough to pay their engineers.
Umm. Tell me, because I'm interested... How should Apple implement a consistent product on Linux. Remember, Apple's entire marketing strategy is based around the EXPERIENCE of use, and its consistency. These are important things.
Should apple use SDL? Straight OpenGL? Make their own library? What GUI toolkit? GTK+? Motif? Should it be a KDE App? A Gnome App? Neither?
Apple cannot make a consistant and reasonable player app in Linux. If they choose toolkits and run with it, they get nailed. If they make their own toolkits, they get nailed.
This is not even mentioning the huge amount of porting they'd need to do.
As for your complaints about movie trailers, I suggest you get over it. There is a small price to pay for freedom man. When I started using Linux, I couldn't even watch movies at all.
What Apple is doing with Quicktime is no better or worse than what MS and Real are doing. They're trying to make money with a quality video/audio encoder and decoder. The end quality of the product isn't important, it's the intention that dictates the reasoning here.
They make money by spreading the quicktime decoder and convincing people to use it. Then professionals (you know, commercial use of software to make products) will buy the encoder software to publish their work.
Do you remember how business works?
Umm. For the same reason there isn't a Linux one. I'm sorry, Apple has kicked back to the community in other areas. Areas that are arguably more important than a media player.
Hmmm.
Linux DOES probably have more machines on its side. However, that's not necessarily relevant. Linux's overwhelming number of machines is not because they have a gadzillion desktop users. They run a lot of servers. When it comes to Linux desktop usage, I've yet to see a figure that puts it significantly ahead of Apple in desktop use.
Feel free to show me some reliable figures to prove me wrong on this.
People running servers don't need fancy MP3 playing software. The majority of deployed linux boxes are servers. So long as tenant 2 holds, the majority of linux boxes wouldn't run iTunes.
Apple supports iTunes with Windows for some good reasons. Firstly, it's the same reason that BeOS started supporting x86 machines. They like money, money is good, and therefore they try and get more of it. The huge spike in iTMS sales suggests this was a good move. Secondly, Quicktime was already out for Windows. Since iTunes relies on Quicktime, their sound code should be trivially portable.
The third is a bit more uncertain. Apple was originally capable of moving OpenSTEP code to Windows via Rhapsody. I'm willing to bet there was some weight there.
MS isn't actively trying to destroy Apple any more than it's trying to destroy everyone else. MS is too faceless to get personal with things, so don't take it personally. They're a mega-giant that steps on people every day, they can't help it. They're just intrinsically Big Business.
As for not contributing back to the open source movment. Umm.. hello? Apple has kicked back a lot of stuff to the open source community. Apple really doesn't owe Linux in particular anything. Apple owes most of itself to BSDs.
The fact is, you reconsidered and changed your mind based on unreasonable standards and data. If you don't want an Apple computer, that's your call. Many people would argue it's your loss though.
Err,
This comment suggests that Apple IS wrong in not releasing a Linux version of this software. If you're going to make such a large statement, you should back it up with reasoning.
Or at least link to someone else's reasoning. Sheesh.
I should at this point reference "Smashing the Mac for Fun & Profit".
From a chip designer's standpoint, it probably made the logic easier.
From a correctness standpoint, these flags may eventually have meaning. The correct implementation would be to claim the instruction was illegal.
Now, if SC couldn't be called when you upload shellcode, then a lot of remote exploits would be noticably more difficult. You can of course return back into libc or some other library function.
This is more difficult, requires more tuning, and can't always be done eaisly. In other words, it makes it less automatable, which reduces the number of script kids who can get their dirty, clueless paws on something.
Thus, I will ask again in a more clear fashion. Is the G5 accepting these tweaked instructions or is it rejecting them?
If it is rejecting them, buffer overflows on a mac will be that much harder. This doesn't mean they're utterly immune to them. It means that they're a much less attractive target.
Hey,
I do not have a G5, nor do I know anyone with a G5. So I cannot test this, but I've heard some of my security-friends (like the super friends, only ugly, fat, and obnoxious instead of ugly, healthy and obnoxious) that the G5's don't allow the NOP's with non-0 flags.
This is probably the proper behavior. I'm convinced that Motorolla's acceptance of these facts was a bug, not a feature.
Could you test it and find out? I'm really curious.
I had heard some suggestions that G5s didn't allow NOPs to overwrite their null bytes with random data. It seemed that the motorolla behavior for this was a bug to begin with, since those flags are reserved for future meaning, and as such the instruction is different if they are set.
:)
Does anyone know if these eggs fly on a G5? Here is a perfect chance to test!
Well, Mac machines ARE slightly harder since their instructions are aligned. You need to hit the alignment and the offset.
Is is different from the x86 variable-length world. There are 3 possible alignments.
In this scenario, it doesn't matter though, since it's a non-service.
Umm.
I'm just curious, this is like the famous stopped watch at the train station problem.
How would a Mac OS X machine get a virus. Do you know? What vulnerbilities in the system would permit it to gain one? How you would go about constructing one?
Yes, it is possible. Yes, I know how. I'm curious if you are basing your statement off of anything other than an apologist mantra. I see a lot of that around here.
"I'm not a zealot, BUT...."
Sadly, voices of utter reason like yourself will never be modded up and discussed over. People don't want to hear the reasons you posted.
:)
:)
People want to hear, "This is better, and you suck!" This is a big forum, and it's fun to argue in forums.
Just thought I'd let you know that there are people who understand where you are coming from completely.
I personally switched from Linux to Mac OS X because tracking Xwindows was giving me such incredible headaches. It's in a much better state now, back there in Linux land. Debian (which I was using then) has gotten way way better about this.
But still, why would I go back?
I was unaware that you could overwrite specific files with nodes that would work as actual files. That's worse than just being able to replace directories.
But it's important to keep things in perspective. This makes it bad for YOU. The vast majority of mac users will never run into a scenario in which this attack is feasible.
Thus I can see Apple's low priority for it.
Further, what exactly is the "right" thing to do here? Simply change the default? What do other OSs do that's better?
Well, okay.
/etc directory, you can't get ssh going.
But by changing my etc, overriding my database of users, do you not obliterate my login? Unless you knew my password, of course, in which case I am screwed.
You would need to do this to get sshd running on my machine, would you not? Without my account settings to log in, I can't log in, and immediatly detect the problem. Without overriding my
As for the sleep mode and playing with cron jobs, that would be of a heroic level of difficulty to get that to go off without alerting a user who is actively using their machine.
In any event, I'm confused as to why this is being hyped up so much. It's really a rather odd condition, which a exploitability rating of "difficult and unautomatable" at best.
Moreover, they could record my password I suppose, but wouldn't I know something is up and reboot? If I'm suspicious, I'll just change my passwords.
I'm curious here, wouldn't you know?
And in most cases, I never reboot my machine. I move it from network to network in sleep mode. Again, I have never played with this kind of scenario, but it is my thought I'd have to reboot for this to work.
Care to answer this stuff, Todd Knarr?