Even assuming that the worst-case interpretation of the original BSDL holds (and, remember, it only requires acknowledgment when you mention features of the product... you do NOT have to include every copyright notice in every document), it's the GPL that deliberately restricts what clauses other licenses can include, and in this case it's a fruitless attempt... trademark law can be used to impose the same requirements on a package.
For example, Linux is trademarked and requires attribution.
What you're describing won't happen to the degree your imagining, just because of the way the market works.
Could be you're right, or it could be that it'll happen to a degree beyond my wildest imaginings. I mean: before it happened I wouldn't have imagined that the market would accept mail software that's designed intentionally to run code sent by any yobbo on the net; I wouldn't have imagined that people would accept software and hardware that deliberately prevents them from reading files on their own computer; I wouldn't have imagined that the DMCA would be taken seriously enough to be signed into law. I've learned long since that there's no underestimating the ability of people to accept limitations in the hope of getting earlier access to some new entertainment, some prettier product, cooler style, trendier outfits.
People haven't accepted self-destructing DVDs, because that's too big a jump. But they've accepted things that are just as daft one step at a time.
One thing that's interesting about this is that the very strong DRM in SL (at least inside the game context... it's not particularly effective outside the game) gives people an expectation of being able to absolutely control the distribution of stuff they make, because SL lets them control the distribution of stuff they make to an extreme degree (and, yet, a lot of people still argue they don't have enough control). The idea that a 512x512 pixel image (which is what a dress in SL is, basically) should get this kind of protection is typical of the game. SL clothing designers will argue with a straight face that it's a violation of their artistic expression for you to be able to let out or cut off the sleeves on a shirt you bought!
The thing is, if the people who are pushing for ever-stronger DRM get their way, this is the kind of future we're heading for, over the long term. As soon as they come up with a mechanism that would make your shirt disintegrate if you tried to change the tailoring, you're going to have people arguing that it's their right to control how you wear your clothes. Disintegrating DVDs are just the tip of the iceberg... and the changes won't come in big obvious jumps, just a gradual erosion of our rights as IP laws and DRM become stronger and stronger.
When Apple went after them for the injunction, Luxpro was calling it the "Super Shuffle", not the "Super Tangent", and they were using iPod-style advertising when it was introduced at CeBIT right after Apple introduced the Shuffle. Here's their original advertising material: LUXPRO's Super Shuffle images and promotional materials.
The biggest effect the Intel switch has had is to put a stake in the heart of the horrid old OS 9 vampire. I'm more than half convinced that the reason Jobs timed the switch when he did was because he'd just - about six or so months earlier - been able to pull the last G4 Powermac that could boot into OS 9 off the Apple store without the usual storm of protests. With the Intel switch, the new Macs don't include Classic and won't even run the old OS 9 software.
Even if IBM had a 5 GHz quad-core Power PC that was plug-compatible with the G5 *right now*, Apple wouldn't ship it. The last thing he wants is to have some beggar pull that stake out of Classic's ribcage and have it come lurching back to life.
Both the G5 and Intel's Pentium 4 had similar problems improving performance during the past few years. Intel actually had to go back to a variant of their old P6 core to get out of their hole... and anyone who bet on "IA64" can tell you all ABOUT intel's overpromising.
It has taken a good product and made it better and fresher.
Two claims in one sentence, and they're both wrong!
Word is not a "good product":
* The document format is more primitive than HTML, with no structural nesting mechanism other than tables. It's harder to create a Word document that's layout independant than it is to write portable CSS... so nobody bothers.
* The saved files are composed of serialised COM data objects, so it's inherently incompatible even with itself and uses translation tools just to read its own old saved files after an upgrade.
* The macro design is inherently insecure. Who would have imagined you'd be able to embed a virus in a word processor document? 20 years ago that was bad science fiction.
* Speaking of embedding, at one point I was reduced to embedding an Excel spreadsheet in a Visio diagram so I could embed it in a Word document without having the cells in the spreadsheet merged with the surrounding table in the Word document. Which brings us back to the first problem.
And making it better by making it harder to use? I am unable to conceive of the confusion in the mind that would lead one to reach that conclusion.
The main difference between this and a Firefox Extension is the Firefox makes you wait a few seconds and then click on the "I want to do something really stupid" button. Adobe figures that most people don't care, and presses the "I want to do something really stupid" button FOR you.
My experience as a system administrator is that the only way to get people to quit pushing the "I want to do something really stupid" button, is to make it more inconvenient to jump through the hoops and push the button than to download the file and launch it from the desktop or shell.
Microsoft is not performing due diligence and is quite frankly not giving customers what they want.
Microsoft's attitude to security is criminal. They have refused to even consider fixing the underlying problems that are celebrated many times a year with new "cross zone" attacks... even maintaining the broken design responsible in the face of having the company broken up by the justice department.
That's a security hole that's getting its 10th birthday this year.
"Now comes the fun, if a bug is reported to Apple how long do they get to fix it? Who will determine when enough time has passed?"
Well, I believe the last serious security hole reported to them was fixed in 10 days, which is pretty good turn around for development and QA.
Apple: 10 days. Microsoft: 10 years.
That's fair.
Re:Install a fix not from Apple? Fat Chance
on
Month of Apple Fixes
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· Score: 1
No, it's NEVER a good idea to install non-official patches, unless you like trojans.
By the same logic it's NEVER a good idea to install third-party software.:)
Re:Install a fix not from Apple? Fat Chance
on
Month of Apple Fixes
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· Score: 1
But the source code is meaningless as a guarantee of nonmaliciousness (intentional or unintentional) unless you compile the code yourself.
Or you can get a copy from someone trustworthy who has done so, or you have someone trustworthy verify that the executable matches the source, or... the point is, the source code allows you to build a stronger chain of trust for the software. For any software, whether it's a fix or a game... after all, the same argument about installing a security fix from anyone but Apple applies to installing *any* software from anyone but Apple.
Do you have any third party proprietary software on your computer at all?
Re:Install a fix not from Apple? Fat Chance
on
Month of Apple Fixes
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· Score: 1
Are you suggesting that all Apple users become professional software developers?
They don't need to. They just need to know someone they trust who is competant to read the source. It doesn't even have to be someone they know... for example, if source this small was crocked there would be approximately two thousand posts in this discussion pointing it out. So, really, "all Apple users" just have to know someone who they trust who knows where to look.
Especially since Apple's fixes, in the past, have not always been as good as third party fixes. They still haven't fixed the "help" hole properly, for example...
Because it just creates a false sense of security.
on
Month of Apple Fixes
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· Score: 2, Insightful
I realize that the idea is just catching on in IE and has not been implemented anywhere else, but why doesn't Safari setuid() the rendering engine to guest (or some other nonprivileged user)?
First, let me make one point clear. This is not "just catching on in IE", it has been used for running potentially exloitable applications in UNIX for decades. It's a last resort when applied to interactive programs... it's usually used with applications that are running unattended and providing services to the outside world... and the limitations of this kind of technique are abundantly clear. UNIX environments typically take this kind of thing several stages further, using chrooted environments and jails to really isolate the untrusted code from the rest of the system.
Second, Security is like sex, if you're penetrated you're fucked. Just because an exploit in IE can only have an effect on resources owned by a restricted user should not be considered a big deal. Why?
(1) Once you can run local native code, you're in a MUCH better position to devise a secondary exploit against a local privilege escalation vulnerability.
(2) Resources accessible to Internet Explorer include (of necessity) any security tokens (passwords, etcetera) used for access to online services, as well as anything else that you use the same tokens for... like, say, your local account.
I've repeatedly argued that the fact that the local user runs with lower privileges on Mac OS X than on Windows is not nearly as important as Mac fanatics make out. Well, the converse is true... this new hack Microsoft has come up with to avoid facing the security flaws in the design of IE isn't nearly as importantas Microsoft apologists make out.
I'll take my argument from authority (which, frankly, I don't see, as I simply stated my opinion)
Your "10+ years of experience" is an argument from authority. Just like my "25+ years of experience" is.
trumps your proof by assertion.
You can't trump me, I played in suit. My argument from authority has 15 years seniority over your argument from authority.:)
I'm not chasing you down this rathole.
You just did:
What are you going to put in the expansion slot? A better video card?
That's the #1 most common upgrade on a PC, and it's particularly important when the built-in video is a bottom-of-the-line chipset like the GMA950 in the Mac mini and the low end iMac.
Most computer users don't care.
The ones who keep their computers more than a couple of years (as Mac users tend to) are almost certain to find themselves wanting to. As a system administrator the two main "off-the-job" questions about PCs I've had from PC users over the past decade have been about internet connections and video cards.
Is it suitable for your needs? Maybe not. But that doesn't make it bad.
I didn't say it was bad, I said it was a feature that Apple doesn't provide, like the built-in firewire and superdrive are features the typical PC doesn't provide. When you compare the price of a Mac and a PC, the only way to get them to match are to load the PC up with everything the Mac has, BUT ignore everything the resulting PC has that's extra-cost or unavailable on the Mac.
The bottom line is that when you look at the core capabilities of the Mac and the PC, there's a premium of around 40% for getting a Mac. The software makes this 'Mac Tax' worth it, but it takes deliberate blindness to pretend it's not there.
So you like big clunky keyboards.
The Mac Fanatic fallback... when you can't argue the facts, try and argue about style. Unfortunately for this play, there's a lot of fine PC keyboards that are neither "big and klunky" nor poorly designed.
My favorite keyboard is actually a beautiful compact PC keyboard that's so old it's got an AT connector. I use it on my Mac with an AT-PS2 adaptor and a PS2-USB adaptor. The key feel is unbeatable.
For my Macbook Pro I carry a Logitech bluetooth keyboard that's exactly the same width as the laptop, and fits on top when I open it up like it was made for it. I need to... the Macbook's keyboard is physically painful to use more than half an hour at a time.
I shouldn't have to explain to you how ridiculously easy it is to get a multi-button mouse on a Mac.
How do I get a multi-button trackpad on a laptop with only one button?
(don't even start on the two-finger tap nonsense... tried that, it doesn't work worth a damn)
Wow, your argument from authority completely demolishes my 25+ years of mediocre hardware from Apple... starting with the kludgy but easily expanded Apple ][+, and including members of just about every era from the original 128k Macintosh to a Macbook Pro... not to mention the many powerbooks and other Macs I've had the responsibility for supporting as a network administrator over the past 20 years.
In general, Apple computers have had comparable performance to PCs costing 50-70% of their price. Yes, they have a bunch of cheap (for Apple) ports like Firewire that cost more when you buy them as add-ons on PCs, but you have to go to the top of the Mac line these days to find things like expansion slots that are standard on even the shonkiest PCs - an (ahem) apples to apples comparison doesn't make Apples look good at all.
The Macintosh keyboards have been generally poor and the last really good one (the Extended II) was killed by Jobs... and after briefly using the standard keyboard on my iMac I've used nothing but PC USB keyboards since.
The single button mouse and the passive-aggressive tricks they're using to avoid shipping a two-button mouse and trackpad are embarassing and awkward. This is particularly problematic on laptops... which suffer also from flat keyboards with negligable travel and a poor response curve. They really need to look at Thinkpads and borrow some ideas from there.
I file this under the heading of "the cost of software that sucks less", but I don't pretend it isn't there.
Command + something is always some, well command. "Do X".
Except when it's extend-select (This is what Sun used the middle button on their 3-button mouse for, by the way) like in Finder. Or when it's a secondary context menu for applications that need to use control for something else. Or when it's a second alternative like "open, but in a new window" like in Finder. In fact Finder manages to use command-click in multiple ways, just in one application.
Alt + something is always an alternative, like "shutdown, but without asking me".
Which sounds great, except there's no standard for what this "alternative" is. And you can't learn it by trying it because it could be something you can't back out of... which by the way totally violates the core Macintosh design: the UI is supposed to be "discoverable". This is what the right button context menu should be used for, except that Apple still has this passive-aggressive "thing" about right buttons.
As a side benefit, this would finally put to rest the silly notion that a Mac's hardware is separable from its software
Only in the sense that Apple's hardware is mediocre and in many ways user-hostile and incapable of holding its own without the software propping it up.
Not to minimise the problems of writing large complex software systems, but complexity is the second problem... insecure design is the first.
I'm more concerned with the fact that Safari uses the same URI handler and helper database as Finder (LaunchServices) and that Apple is more interested in giving people a false sense of security with pop-up dialogs than changing the API slightly to make it inherently secure.
* Split LaunchServices up into "web oriented" applications that are indended for use with untrusted files, and "desktop" applications. This would have the additional advantage of allowing for "viewer" versions of applications that have reduced functionality and simpler design (going back to the original poster's point).
* Disable "Open safe files after downloading" by default, and if it remains an option then include a comment in the preferences pane that enabling it will reduce the security of your system.
* And don't EVER include software installers in the list of "safe" applications! I ca not comprehend the confusion in the mind that would lead Apple to install widgets and packages directly from the browser. Firefox makes the same mistake, by the way... it's like watching gangrene spread.
This is not as bad a design problem as Microsoft's use of the HTML control as a universal gateway for viruses and spyware, but it's bad enough that it should be given priority.
Oh, yes, that's something else I wish they'd copy from Microsoft's older systems (Microsoft started drifting away from their original good design in Windows 95): simple, uniform, and consistent key and mouse commands. There's just too many command option control shift double corner click combos in OS X.
But, thanks for the clue anyway, I'll try and remember that one...
Some good, some bad. One, well, terrible... starting with the worst:
The Mighty Mouse is at least 3 times as useful as those "wheel-mouse" abominations.
It would be, if it had two real buttons. I'd rather use a plain old 3 button mouse (like Xerox had in the '70s) than Apple's passive-aggressive "you don't really need two buttons, honest" Mighty Mouse. I use Microsoft's plain optical wheel mouse by preference... and I wish it came in Bluetooth.
I wish they had a maximize button as well as an "optimize" one, for the apps like iTunes that do something weird on "optimize"... but, yes, maximizing to the limit of the content is good.
The Finder had a hierarchical view even before NeXTstep. And I wish they had kept the NeXT file browser separate from Finder, and let us pick which one we wanted to use primarily... I hate the "finder-like" aspects of OSX's finder, and the people who prefer Finder tend to dislike the NeXT Browser features.
I'm mixed aboutthe Dock, some days I like it, some days I abominate it.
Sell a pad like a big mousepad and compatible replacement batteries for an existing laptop. Since most laptops have batteries on the bottom, you could have your laptop continually trickle-charged while it's sitting on the pad.
Slashdot Mirror
Darwin kernel AKA XNU - a Mach-based BSD single-server kernel.
Darwin = Darwin kernel plus a collection of applications, libraries, frameworks, and kernel extensions.
OS X = Darwin plus the Quartz graphical environment and more applications, libraries, frameworks, and kernel extensions.
It's all very modular. Stripping it down is not at all difficult.
Even assuming that the worst-case interpretation of the original BSDL holds (and, remember, it only requires acknowledgment when you mention features of the product... you do NOT have to include every copyright notice in every document), it's the GPL that deliberately restricts what clauses other licenses can include, and in this case it's a fruitless attempt... trademark law can be used to impose the same requirements on a package.
For example, Linux is trademarked and requires attribution.
The cool thing about a relatively free market is that if there's a better alternative out there, then someone's likely to start selling it.
And yet, people still use Windows.
What you're describing won't happen to the degree your imagining, just because of the way the market works.
Could be you're right, or it could be that it'll happen to a degree beyond my wildest imaginings. I mean: before it happened I wouldn't have imagined that the market would accept mail software that's designed intentionally to run code sent by any yobbo on the net; I wouldn't have imagined that people would accept software and hardware that deliberately prevents them from reading files on their own computer; I wouldn't have imagined that the DMCA would be taken seriously enough to be signed into law. I've learned long since that there's no underestimating the ability of people to accept limitations in the hope of getting earlier access to some new entertainment, some prettier product, cooler style, trendier outfits.
People haven't accepted self-destructing DVDs, because that's too big a jump. But they've accepted things that are just as daft one step at a time.
One thing that's interesting about this is that the very strong DRM in SL (at least inside the game context... it's not particularly effective outside the game) gives people an expectation of being able to absolutely control the distribution of stuff they make, because SL lets them control the distribution of stuff they make to an extreme degree (and, yet, a lot of people still argue they don't have enough control). The idea that a 512x512 pixel image (which is what a dress in SL is, basically) should get this kind of protection is typical of the game. SL clothing designers will argue with a straight face that it's a violation of their artistic expression for you to be able to let out or cut off the sleeves on a shirt you bought!
The thing is, if the people who are pushing for ever-stronger DRM get their way, this is the kind of future we're heading for, over the long term. As soon as they come up with a mechanism that would make your shirt disintegrate if you tried to change the tailoring, you're going to have people arguing that it's their right to control how you wear your clothes. Disintegrating DVDs are just the tip of the iceberg... and the changes won't come in big obvious jumps, just a gradual erosion of our rights as IP laws and DRM become stronger and stronger.
When Apple went after them for the injunction, Luxpro was calling it the "Super Shuffle", not the "Super Tangent", and they were using iPod-style advertising when it was introduced at CeBIT right after Apple introduced the Shuffle. Here's their original advertising material: LUXPRO's Super Shuffle images and promotional materials.
The biggest effect the Intel switch has had is to put a stake in the heart of the horrid old OS 9 vampire. I'm more than half convinced that the reason Jobs timed the switch when he did was because he'd just - about six or so months earlier - been able to pull the last G4 Powermac that could boot into OS 9 off the Apple store without the usual storm of protests. With the Intel switch, the new Macs don't include Classic and won't even run the old OS 9 software.
Even if IBM had a 5 GHz quad-core Power PC that was plug-compatible with the G5 *right now*, Apple wouldn't ship it. The last thing he wants is to have some beggar pull that stake out of Classic's ribcage and have it come lurching back to life.
Both the G5 and Intel's Pentium 4 had similar problems improving performance during the past few years. Intel actually had to go back to a variant of their old P6 core to get out of their hole... and anyone who bet on "IA64" can tell you all ABOUT intel's overpromising.
It has taken a good product and made it better and fresher.
Two claims in one sentence, and they're both wrong!
Word is not a "good product":
* The document format is more primitive than HTML, with no structural nesting mechanism other than tables. It's harder to create a Word document that's layout independant than it is to write portable CSS... so nobody bothers.
* The saved files are composed of serialised COM data objects, so it's inherently incompatible even with itself and uses translation tools just to read its own old saved files after an upgrade.
* The macro design is inherently insecure. Who would have imagined you'd be able to embed a virus in a word processor document? 20 years ago that was bad science fiction.
* Speaking of embedding, at one point I was reduced to embedding an Excel spreadsheet in a Visio diagram so I could embed it in a Word document without having the cells in the spreadsheet merged with the surrounding table in the Word document. Which brings us back to the first problem.
And making it better by making it harder to use? I am unable to conceive of the confusion in the mind that would lead one to reach that conclusion.
They already made that movie.
Or rather, the way you install them is.
The main difference between this and a Firefox Extension is the Firefox makes you wait a few seconds and then click on the "I want to do something really stupid" button. Adobe figures that most people don't care, and presses the "I want to do something really stupid" button FOR you.
My experience as a system administrator is that the only way to get people to quit pushing the "I want to do something really stupid" button, is to make it more inconvenient to jump through the hoops and push the button than to download the file and launch it from the desktop or shell.
Firefox is nearly there.
Microsoft is not performing due diligence and is quite frankly not giving customers what they want.
Microsoft's attitude to security is criminal. They have refused to even consider fixing the underlying problems that are celebrated many times a year with new "cross zone" attacks... even maintaining the broken design responsible in the face of having the company broken up by the justice department.
That's a security hole that's getting its 10th birthday this year.
"Now comes the fun, if a bug is reported to Apple how long do they get to fix it? Who will determine when enough time has passed?"
Well, I believe the last serious security hole reported to them was fixed in 10 days, which is pretty good turn around for development and QA.
Apple: 10 days.
Microsoft: 10 years.
That's fair.
No, it's NEVER a good idea to install non-official patches, unless you like trojans.
:)
By the same logic it's NEVER a good idea to install third-party software.
But the source code is meaningless as a guarantee of nonmaliciousness (intentional or unintentional) unless you compile the code yourself.
Or you can get a copy from someone trustworthy who has done so, or you have someone trustworthy verify that the executable matches the source, or... the point is, the source code allows you to build a stronger chain of trust for the software. For any software, whether it's a fix or a game... after all, the same argument about installing a security fix from anyone but Apple applies to installing *any* software from anyone but Apple.
Do you have any third party proprietary software on your computer at all?
Are you suggesting that all Apple users become professional software developers?
They don't need to. They just need to know someone they trust who is competant to read the source. It doesn't even have to be someone they know... for example, if source this small was crocked there would be approximately two thousand posts in this discussion pointing it out. So, really, "all Apple users" just have to know someone who they trust who knows where to look.
Especially since Apple's fixes, in the past, have not always been as good as third party fixes. They still haven't fixed the "help" hole properly, for example...
http://www.scarydevil.org/~peter/io/apple.html
I realize that the idea is just catching on in IE and has not been implemented anywhere else, but why doesn't Safari setuid() the rendering engine to guest (or some other nonprivileged user)?
First, let me make one point clear. This is not "just catching on in IE", it has been used for running potentially exloitable applications in UNIX for decades. It's a last resort when applied to interactive programs... it's usually used with applications that are running unattended and providing services to the outside world... and the limitations of this kind of technique are abundantly clear. UNIX environments typically take this kind of thing several stages further, using chrooted environments and jails to really isolate the untrusted code from the rest of the system.
Second, Security is like sex, if you're penetrated you're fucked. Just because an exploit in IE can only have an effect on resources owned by a restricted user should not be considered a big deal. Why?
(1) Once you can run local native code, you're in a MUCH better position to devise a secondary exploit against a local privilege escalation vulnerability.
(2) Resources accessible to Internet Explorer include (of necessity) any security tokens (passwords, etcetera) used for access to online services, as well as anything else that you use the same tokens for... like, say, your local account.
I've repeatedly argued that the fact that the local user runs with lower privileges on Mac OS X than on Windows is not nearly as important as Mac fanatics make out. Well, the converse is true... this new hack Microsoft has come up with to avoid facing the security flaws in the design of IE isn't nearly as importantas Microsoft apologists make out.
I'll take my argument from authority (which, frankly, I don't see, as I simply stated my opinion)
:)
Your "10+ years of experience" is an argument from authority. Just like my "25+ years of experience" is.
trumps your proof by assertion.
You can't trump me, I played in suit. My argument from authority has 15 years seniority over your argument from authority.
I'm not chasing you down this rathole.
You just did:
What are you going to put in the expansion slot? A better video card?
That's the #1 most common upgrade on a PC, and it's particularly important when the built-in video is a bottom-of-the-line chipset like the GMA950 in the Mac mini and the low end iMac.
Most computer users don't care.
The ones who keep their computers more than a couple of years (as Mac users tend to) are almost certain to find themselves wanting to. As a system administrator the two main "off-the-job" questions about PCs I've had from PC users over the past decade have been about internet connections and video cards.
Is it suitable for your needs? Maybe not. But that doesn't make it bad.
I didn't say it was bad, I said it was a feature that Apple doesn't provide, like the built-in firewire and superdrive are features the typical PC doesn't provide. When you compare the price of a Mac and a PC, the only way to get them to match are to load the PC up with everything the Mac has, BUT ignore everything the resulting PC has that's extra-cost or unavailable on the Mac.
The bottom line is that when you look at the core capabilities of the Mac and the PC, there's a premium of around 40% for getting a Mac. The software makes this 'Mac Tax' worth it, but it takes deliberate blindness to pretend it's not there.
So you like big clunky keyboards.
The Mac Fanatic fallback... when you can't argue the facts, try and argue about style. Unfortunately for this play, there's a lot of fine PC keyboards that are neither "big and klunky" nor poorly designed.
My favorite keyboard is actually a beautiful compact PC keyboard that's so old it's got an AT connector. I use it on my Mac with an AT-PS2 adaptor and a PS2-USB adaptor. The key feel is unbeatable.
For my Macbook Pro I carry a Logitech bluetooth keyboard that's exactly the same width as the laptop, and fits on top when I open it up like it was made for it. I need to... the Macbook's keyboard is physically painful to use more than half an hour at a time.
I shouldn't have to explain to you how ridiculously easy it is to get a multi-button mouse on a Mac.
How do I get a multi-button trackpad on a laptop with only one button?
(don't even start on the two-finger tap nonsense... tried that, it doesn't work worth a damn)
Wow, your argument from authority completely demolishes my 25+ years of mediocre hardware from Apple... starting with the kludgy but easily expanded Apple ][+, and including members of just about every era from the original 128k Macintosh to a Macbook Pro... not to mention the many powerbooks and other Macs I've had the responsibility for supporting as a network administrator over the past 20 years.
In general, Apple computers have had comparable performance to PCs costing 50-70% of their price. Yes, they have a bunch of cheap (for Apple) ports like Firewire that cost more when you buy them as add-ons on PCs, but you have to go to the top of the Mac line these days to find things like expansion slots that are standard on even the shonkiest PCs - an (ahem) apples to apples comparison doesn't make Apples look good at all.
The Macintosh keyboards have been generally poor and the last really good one (the Extended II) was killed by Jobs... and after briefly using the standard keyboard on my iMac I've used nothing but PC USB keyboards since.
The single button mouse and the passive-aggressive tricks they're using to avoid shipping a two-button mouse and trackpad are embarassing and awkward. This is particularly problematic on laptops... which suffer also from flat keyboards with negligable travel and a poor response curve. They really need to look at Thinkpads and borrow some ideas from there.
I file this under the heading of "the cost of software that sucks less", but I don't pretend it isn't there.
Command + something is always some, well command. "Do X".
Except when it's extend-select (This is what Sun used the middle button on their 3-button mouse for, by the way) like in Finder. Or when it's a secondary context menu for applications that need to use control for something else. Or when it's a second alternative like "open, but in a new window" like in Finder. In fact Finder manages to use command-click in multiple ways, just in one application.
Alt + something is always an alternative, like "shutdown, but without asking me".
Which sounds great, except there's no standard for what this "alternative" is. And you can't learn it by trying it because it could be something you can't back out of... which by the way totally violates the core Macintosh design: the UI is supposed to be "discoverable". This is what the right button context menu should be used for, except that Apple still has this passive-aggressive "thing" about right buttons.
As a side benefit, this would finally put to rest the silly notion that a Mac's hardware is separable from its software
Only in the sense that Apple's hardware is mediocre and in many ways user-hostile and incapable of holding its own without the software propping it up.
Not to minimise the problems of writing large complex software systems, but complexity is the second problem... insecure design is the first.
I'm more concerned with the fact that Safari uses the same URI handler and helper database as Finder (LaunchServices) and that Apple is more interested in giving people a false sense of security with pop-up dialogs than changing the API slightly to make it inherently secure.
* Split LaunchServices up into "web oriented" applications that are indended for use with untrusted files, and "desktop" applications. This would have the additional advantage of allowing for "viewer" versions of applications that have reduced functionality and simpler design (going back to the original poster's point).
* Disable "Open safe files after downloading" by default, and if it remains an option then include a comment in the preferences pane that enabling it will reduce the security of your system.
* And don't EVER include software installers in the list of "safe" applications! I ca not comprehend the confusion in the mind that would lead Apple to install widgets and packages directly from the browser. Firefox makes the same mistake, by the way... it's like watching gangrene spread.
This is not as bad a design problem as Microsoft's use of the HTML control as a universal gateway for viruses and spyware, but it's bad enough that it should be given priority.
Oh, yes, that's something else I wish they'd copy from Microsoft's older systems (Microsoft started drifting away from their original good design in Windows 95): simple, uniform, and consistent key and mouse commands. There's just too many command option control shift double corner click combos in OS X.
But, thanks for the clue anyway, I'll try and remember that one...
Some good, some bad. One, well, terrible... starting with the worst:
The Mighty Mouse is at least 3 times as useful as those "wheel-mouse" abominations.
It would be, if it had two real buttons. I'd rather use a plain old 3 button mouse (like Xerox had in the '70s) than Apple's passive-aggressive "you don't really need two buttons, honest" Mighty Mouse. I use Microsoft's plain optical wheel mouse by preference... and I wish it came in Bluetooth.
I wish they had a maximize button as well as an "optimize" one, for the apps like iTunes that do something weird on "optimize"... but, yes, maximizing to the limit of the content is good.
The Finder had a hierarchical view even before NeXTstep. And I wish they had kept the NeXT file browser separate from Finder, and let us pick which one we wanted to use primarily... I hate the "finder-like" aspects of OSX's finder, and the people who prefer Finder tend to dislike the NeXT Browser features.
I'm mixed aboutthe Dock, some days I like it, some days I abominate it.
Sell a pad like a big mousepad and compatible replacement batteries for an existing laptop. Since most laptops have batteries on the bottom, you could have your laptop continually trickle-charged while it's sitting on the pad.
You're trying to get RF burns, then?