Some file systems should not be write-cached. I find it very strange that I can't simply remove a flash memory card from my Mac's card reader without first unmounting the flash volume. I can understand that external harddisks and such must be unmounted first, but a flash memory card?
The predecessor of iTunes didn't have this problem funny enough. I hate it as well. I sorta solved it by coding differently. When encoding a CD you can link song tracks ("Join CD tracks" menu item). The CD needs to be sorted "playing order" to be able to use it. When you do that the linked tracks will end up as one track in iTunes and therefore play continuously.
Its half a solution, because you can't play the individual songs anymore. Some of my albums are one track now (e.g. the "Since I Left You" CD by "The Avalanches").
The solution would be simple but somehow Apple doesn't see it (I complained and explained to the usual "suggestion" pages on apple.com so many times that I'm probably on their blacklist): Play a gap or a "fade" when songs are played in random order. play gap-less when the next song is the next song on the same CD. How difficult would this be to implement?
I listen to classical music a lot, try to encode something like Bach's Passions in iTunes, it's hell. I can't select individual aria's anymore because I'm forced to link them together.
> Uh, no. They are going to put intel chips inside their machines. > They will still use openfirmware, and not a pc bios, and still allow > the os to only run on their proprietary machines. x86 != PC
Part of this is actually plain WRONG. According to Apple's documentation (which you can download as a PDF from the developer site) the Intel based Macs DO NOT USE OPEN FIRMWARE.
Makes me wonder if and how things like Target Disk Mode will be supported.
The problem is that you're not entirely correct in this. The Mac is indeed quite secure out of the box but can become less and less secure after various pieces of software are installed. If some public domain startup thing is installed with o+w permissions in/Library/StartupItems for instance it would be trivial to install root-privileged stuff from a non-administrator account (just one example). The Mac is still quite safe because there's simply less bad software around but if every annoyed PC user would go Mac that would probably change, and the Malware/Spyware/Virus problem would simply move with them.
Don't fool yourselves. The Mac is not safe because users do stupid things. People will provide their admin password to any diagog that pops up and klick OK on anything...
Please correct the title (Less Than). The error stands out like a, like a, like one of those people complaining about spelling errors all the time. Sorry. Couldn't help it. Please forgive me.
When I see the layout of other people's computers I always get the feeling I'm the onlym person that has a nicely ordered structure on my hard disk. I know where everything is, I hardly ever use find. On other people's Macs I see Document folders with >300 random files, often named "untitled document x" in "untitled folder y" and I always wonder how they cope. What's worse is the user's desktop with >50 icons! Especially Windows users seem to like cluttered desktops. Ask me for a document on my Mac and I'll get it for you in three seconds. I started my structure a long time ago when I got my first >10MB hard disk (yes, MB, not GB). Maybe I'm just a little bit of an authistic freak, but I'm sure I won't use Spotlight Find very often. Oh and working according to a nice structure is easy, but that might be MHO.
Please, this is a serious question. Exactly what would happen if spyware or a virus would infect a machine running WINE? Does it have a WINDOWS directory and registry et all? Being able to run Internet Explorer to finally be able to access my bank account without error messages (or needing Virtual PC) sounds nice, but would I also need to install anti-virus software?
Okay, the default Mac OS X user isn't root (it's admin) but how difficult can it be to write a Mac troyan that becomes root... Well IMHO not difficult at all.
A Mac user that uses the keychain or installs applications is constantly asked for their password. This password is used by a security mechanism to start something with root privileges. Well, the troyan would simply have to use this exact same method to become root. Nine out of ten people will simply type their admin password when asked for. Simply because you're being asked for it ALL THE TIME.
It amazes me that noone has as-of-yet written a Mac OS X troyan. And I think it's only a matter of time.
To make it worse, in Mac OS X 10.3 the Finder even asks for the admin password (when you want to do something for which you don't have the privileges) and following that the Finder has root privileges for a couple of MINUTES! I've not checked this but I wouldn't be surprised if a troyan could simply wait for the Finder to become root and then use this to tell the Finder to do dirty stuff (using AppleScript)...
I think this prompting for admin passwords is a huge security risk. I have no idea how to do it otherwise though (you don't want to have to relogin as root to install software, do you?). Anything could use a similar dialog to get your admin password easily.
It's pretty safe to assume your company's network, into which RJ45 socket you plug your network cable, is quite secure.
One of the fine points of this exploit however is that some users may never know they are on an untrusted network. Why? Because they have a wireless network card installed and enabled.
So when you boot your Mac with DHCP enabled could compromise your system when a "bad person" has setup a "bad wireless network" in the neighbourhood. No physical contact to your computer required.
The only fact that makes this exploit less likely is that computers with wireless network cards are usually PowerBooks and tht PowerBooks are hardly never rebooted. From peronal experience I can say that the only times I rebooted by iBook was after system upgrade which are usually performed while connected to my company's network (not wireless).
Second, if you *ever* have to edit the registry, you're doing something very wrong. That's like saying that you should dismantle your entire car because one of your headlights is out.
That is simply so wrong. There are so many applications that require the user to edit their registry. Not by design of course but because of software bugs.
Some simple cases to illustrate my point.
Exact Globe 2000 (administration software) suddenly won't properly print anymore. Call helpdesk. Remove some keys and voila printing works again.
Windows XP won't remember Outlook Express' password. Look problem up on microsoft.com. Advice: remove some keys and voila problem solved.
I could go on, I won't.
Editing the registry has become such a common solution to all kindsof problems. Not necessarily because the USER does something wrong (unless using Windows in the first place is considered WRONG:-) ).
Please ship your dust-collecting calculator to me, I will happily clean it up and put it on my web site. As you can see (user info) I collect calculators. Darn I forgot I'm on a 12kB/s upstream connection and now I'm gonna get/.ed... My mistake.
Neither is the idea of using a compiler to write software for a computer. iTunes ios a complete rip-off! They even used icons on buttons which has been done before. And MP3 isn't an Apple invention either. Totally unoriginal, this iTunes. The mouse wasn't even invented by Apple!
The one concern I have is what will happen when this turns out to be a fake after all. A practical joke played by someone in Apple's web-developement department. Or even some outsider managing to get this picture in. Many people will be very disappointed. I'd hate that to happen but it might just be the truth.
If not, I will have to plunder my savings account real soon.
I was merely intimating that many PC - and Mac - people yell about speed they don't need, but merely want.
Exactly. My mac is mostly doing nothing. Even though it's a slow 800 MHz G4 iMac. iTunes is currently playing some music and I'm reading slashdot, scrolling down every half minute or so. Most of the slow processor's speed is wasted on me.
It's only when I want to crack RC5 codes and render big 3D ray-traces in the background whilst playing Quake that I have a problem. Thank God I can use a PC for that.
Actually what was wrong is not so much a question of what was wrong, but a question of mixed up expectations. Mac users, when copying files/folders to a server expect the files/folders to inherit the permissions of the parent folder. Unix people expect toe files/folder to keep the permissions they had on the source volume. Unfortunately for Mac users the first version of the server software only iplemented the Unix way, not the Mac way. This was fixed recently and now the permission model is a per-server-volume choice. Oh and Unix people please note that a "folder" is of course a "directory"...
All my CD's are in the attic in a box, well actually they were. I'm re-encoding my collection nown using 224kb/s AAC and I used 192kb/s VBR MP3 previously. I myself couldn't really tell the differences between these encodings and even between the original CD and 128kb/s AAC. But I've listened to loud music a lot:-) Anyway I performed a number of blind comparison tests in different order with my wive listening. EVERY time (10 out of 10) she chose 224 AAC over 192 VBR MP3. Another funny thing is that se also quite often chose the MP3 and the AAC as sounding better than the original AIFF. Maybe it's a distortion thing but somehow the original AIFF sounded less "nice" than the compressed audio.
I can recognise now (after knowing what to listen for) between 192 VBR MP3 and 224 AAC. Especially with over-produced CD's (Simple Minds) or choir music (any requiem). And AAC somehow sounds "nicer", less "sharp" or "metallic". It's all very strange but I am re-encoding all my CD's. Again.
Well, I guess that in order to speed things up again we'll simply have to tear down a couple of big mountains. Like when you sit on a rotating chair with arms wide out, and speed up when you make yourself smaller again.
Everybody seems to forget how expensive the transition to OS X can be. Some of our design customers have many workstations, ranging from old 9600's (8100's even!) to modern G4's. NOBODY is thinking of getting rid of all the old stuff and putting modern OS X running G4's in their places. Heck, some of these machines are still running 8.1 or even 7.6.1! The only thing I see happening is that some new machines run OS X "to test the new system". And even that is quite an investment. ATM doesn't exist anymore so a Suitcase has to be bought. Other programs need to be updated (Photoshop, Illustrator, Office or MacLink, VPC). Sometimes the company's servers have to be upgraded as well (under OS X the FileMaker and Retrospect clients only do TCP/IP, Retrospect 5 doesn't do any AppleTalk anymore forcing an upgrade on other older machines). And the customer has to be taught how to cope with the new OS. Everything is different! Count out the hours, the upgrades, the production time lost. This (OS X) is a huge investment. Some customers are wondering if it's all worth it at all. We've been telling them it's not worth switching to PC's for the same reasons, and now they have to move to OS X which is almost just as much work.
So it's a good thing Apple's trying to force us. But it may be quite a pill to swallow for some. And I think "Classic" Mac OS machines will be around for some time to come.
BTW: Personally I LOVE OS X. I'm never going back.
Slashdot Mirror
Some file systems should not be write-cached. I find it very strange that I can't simply remove a flash memory card from my Mac's card reader without first unmounting the flash volume. I can understand that external harddisks and such must be unmounted first, but a flash memory card?
Apple could learn from Windows in this regard.
The predecessor of iTunes didn't have this problem funny enough. I hate it as well. I sorta solved it by coding differently. When encoding a CD you can link song tracks ("Join CD tracks" menu item). The CD needs to be sorted "playing order" to be able to use it. When you do that the linked tracks will end up as one track in iTunes and therefore play continuously.
Its half a solution, because you can't play the individual songs anymore. Some of my albums are one track now (e.g. the "Since I Left You" CD by "The Avalanches").
The solution would be simple but somehow Apple doesn't see it (I complained and explained to the usual "suggestion" pages on apple.com so many times that I'm probably on their blacklist): Play a gap or a "fade" when songs are played in random order. play gap-less when the next song is the next song on the same CD. How difficult would this be to implement?
I listen to classical music a lot, try to encode something like Bach's Passions in iTunes, it's hell. I can't select individual aria's anymore because I'm forced to link them together.
Off-topic I know...
>When Apple starts affecting my freedom to use my computer the way I want, or otherwise fucking up the user experience, I'll ditch them.
.. where?
And go
Sort of.
There was a Mac version of MINIX, I've still got some floppies of it lying about somewhere, I think.
It will probably not run on a 128 but it did run on my old 512.
Google search
> Uh, no. They are going to put intel chips inside their machines.
> They will still use openfirmware, and not a pc bios, and still allow
> the os to only run on their proprietary machines. x86 != PC
Part of this is actually plain WRONG. According to Apple's documentation (which you can download as a PDF from the developer site) the Intel based Macs DO NOT USE OPEN FIRMWARE.
Makes me wonder if and how things like Target Disk Mode will be supported.
The problem is that you're not entirely correct in this. The Mac is indeed quite secure out of the box but can become less and less secure after various pieces of software are installed. If some public domain startup thing is installed with o+w permissions in /Library/StartupItems for instance it would be trivial to install root-privileged stuff from a non-administrator account (just one example). The Mac is still quite safe because there's simply less bad software around but if every annoyed PC user would go Mac that would probably change, and the Malware/Spyware/Virus problem would simply move with them.
Don't fool yourselves. The Mac is not safe because users do stupid things. People will provide their admin password to any diagog that pops up and klick OK on anything...
Please correct the title (Less Than). The error stands out like a, like a, like one of those people complaining about spelling errors all the time. Sorry. Couldn't help it. Please forgive me.
When I see the layout of other people's computers I always get the feeling I'm the onlym person that has a nicely ordered structure on my hard disk. I know where everything is, I hardly ever use find. On other people's Macs I see Document folders with >300 random files, often named "untitled document x" in "untitled folder y" and I always wonder how they cope. What's worse is the user's desktop with >50 icons! Especially Windows users seem to like cluttered desktops. Ask me for a document on my Mac and I'll get it for you in three seconds. I started my structure a long time ago when I got my first >10MB hard disk (yes, MB, not GB). Maybe I'm just a little bit of an authistic freak, but I'm sure I won't use Spotlight Find very often. Oh and working according to a nice structure is easy, but that might be MHO.
If this is a reference to Apple's Mac OS 9 days, I agree completely with this quote. The memory management of Mac OS 9 was a nightmare...
;-)
Glad those days are way past. Funny though how even so I found Mac OS 9 superior in those days
Must be the software, stupid.
Thanks for having me laugh out so loud that I woke up my kid. Thanks a lot. She was just asleep! :-)
Please, this is a serious question. Exactly what would happen if spyware or a virus would infect a machine running WINE? Does it have a WINDOWS directory and registry et all? Being able to run Internet Explorer to finally be able to access my bank account without error messages (or needing Virtual PC) sounds nice, but would I also need to install anti-virus software?
Okay, the default Mac OS X user isn't root (it's admin) but how difficult can it be to write a Mac troyan that becomes root... Well IMHO not difficult at all.
A Mac user that uses the keychain or installs applications is constantly asked for their password. This password is used by a security mechanism to start something with root privileges. Well, the troyan would simply have to use this exact same method to become root. Nine out of ten people will simply type their admin password when asked for. Simply because you're being asked for it ALL THE TIME.
It amazes me that noone has as-of-yet written a Mac OS X troyan. And I think it's only a matter of time.
To make it worse, in Mac OS X 10.3 the Finder even asks for the admin password (when you want to do something for which you don't have the privileges) and following that the Finder has root privileges for a couple of MINUTES! I've not checked this but I wouldn't be surprised if a troyan could simply wait for the Finder to become root and then use this to tell the Finder to do dirty stuff (using AppleScript)...
I think this prompting for admin passwords is a huge security risk. I have no idea how to do it otherwise though (you don't want to have to relogin as root to install software, do you?). Anything could use a similar dialog to get your admin password easily.
Ernst Mulder
It's pretty safe to assume your company's network, into which RJ45 socket you plug your network cable, is quite secure.
One of the fine points of this exploit however is that some users may never know they are on an untrusted network. Why? Because they have a wireless network card installed and enabled.
So when you boot your Mac with DHCP enabled could compromise your system when a "bad person" has setup a "bad wireless network" in the neighbourhood. No physical contact to your computer required.
The only fact that makes this exploit less likely is that computers with wireless network cards are usually PowerBooks and tht PowerBooks are hardly never rebooted. From peronal experience I can say that the only times I rebooted by iBook was after system upgrade which are usually performed while connected to my company's network (not wireless).
Ernst Mulder
Second, if you *ever* have to edit the registry, you're doing something very wrong. That's like saying that you should dismantle your entire car because one of your headlights is out.
:-) ).
That is simply so wrong. There are so many applications that require the user to edit their registry. Not by design of course but because of software bugs.
Some simple cases to illustrate my point.
Exact Globe 2000 (administration software) suddenly won't properly print anymore. Call helpdesk. Remove some keys and voila printing works again.
Windows XP won't remember Outlook Express' password. Look problem up on microsoft.com. Advice: remove some keys and voila problem solved.
I could go on, I won't.
Editing the registry has become such a common solution to all kindsof problems. Not necessarily because the USER does something wrong (unless using Windows in the first place is considered WRONG
Ernst Mulder
Kids, kids are expensive, and they want their own computer too!
Please ship your dust-collecting calculator to me, I will happily clean it up and put it on my web site. As you can see (user info) I collect calculators. Darn I forgot I'm on a 12kB/s upstream connection and now I'm gonna get /.ed... My mistake.
:-)
Or was it a joke?
Neither is the idea of using a compiler to write software for a computer. iTunes ios a complete rip-off! They even used icons on buttons which has been done before. And MP3 isn't an Apple invention either. Totally unoriginal, this iTunes. The mouse wasn't even invented by Apple!
Taste the brushed-metal irony in this message?:-)
I thought you needed a 9600 to copy 17MB files? Now I'm confused. By the way, does the G5 finally do multitasking? :-)
The one concern I have is what will happen when this turns out to be a fake after all. A practical joke played by someone in Apple's web-developement department. Or even some outsider managing to get this picture in. Many people will be very disappointed. I'd hate that to happen but it might just be the truth.
If not, I will have to plunder my savings account real soon.
Exactly. My mac is mostly doing nothing. Even though it's a slow 800 MHz G4 iMac. iTunes is currently playing some music and I'm reading slashdot, scrolling down every half minute or so. Most of the slow processor's speed is wasted on me.
It's only when I want to crack RC5 codes and render big 3D ray-traces in the background whilst playing Quake that I have a problem. Thank God I can use a PC for that.
Actually what was wrong is not so much a question of what was wrong, but a question of mixed up expectations. Mac users, when copying files/folders to a server expect the files/folders to inherit the permissions of the parent folder. Unix people expect toe files/folder to keep the permissions they had on the source volume. Unfortunately for Mac users the first version of the server software only iplemented the Unix way, not the Mac way. This was fixed recently and now the permission model is a per-server-volume choice.
Oh and Unix people please note that a "folder" is of course a "directory"...
All my CD's are in the attic in a box, well actually they were. I'm re-encoding my collection nown using 224kb/s AAC and I used 192kb/s VBR MP3 previously. I myself couldn't really tell the differences between these encodings and even between the original CD and 128kb/s AAC. But I've listened to loud music a lot :-)
Anyway I performed a number of blind comparison tests in different order with my wive listening. EVERY time (10 out of 10) she chose 224 AAC over 192 VBR MP3. Another funny thing is that se also quite often chose the MP3 and the AAC as sounding better than the original AIFF. Maybe it's a distortion thing but somehow the original AIFF sounded less "nice" than the compressed audio.
I can recognise now (after knowing what to listen for) between 192 VBR MP3 and 224 AAC. Especially with over-produced CD's (Simple Minds) or choir music (any requiem). And AAC somehow sounds "nicer", less "sharp" or "metallic". It's all very strange but I am re-encoding all my CD's. Again.
Well, I guess that in order to speed things up again we'll simply have to tear down a couple of big mountains. Like when you sit on a rotating chair with arms wide out, and speed up when you make yourself smaller again.
Just one word: Use Fink!
Oh darn, that's two words. And it doesn't replace anything on your system (like GNU-Darwin).
Everybody seems to forget how expensive the transition to OS X can be. Some of our design customers have many workstations, ranging from old 9600's (8100's even!) to modern G4's. NOBODY is thinking of getting rid of all the old stuff and putting modern OS X running G4's in their places. Heck, some of these machines are still running 8.1 or even 7.6.1! The only thing I see happening is that some new machines run OS X "to test the new system". And even that is quite an investment. ATM doesn't exist anymore so a Suitcase has to be bought. Other programs need to be updated (Photoshop, Illustrator, Office or MacLink, VPC). Sometimes the company's servers have to be upgraded as well (under OS X the FileMaker and Retrospect clients only do TCP/IP, Retrospect 5 doesn't do any AppleTalk anymore forcing an upgrade on other older machines). And the customer has to be taught how to cope with the new OS. Everything is different! Count out the hours, the upgrades, the production time lost. This (OS X) is a huge investment. Some customers are wondering if it's all worth it at all. We've been telling them it's not worth switching to PC's for the same reasons, and now they have to move to OS X which is almost just as much work.
So it's a good thing Apple's trying to force us. But it may be quite a pill to swallow for some. And I think "Classic" Mac OS machines will be around for some time to come.
BTW: Personally I LOVE OS X. I'm never going back.