It's definitely worth calling him out on the mansion, but the zinc mine thing had a retraction on it. Check out the following usa today article (near the top).
Also, he's donating the money, and your comment is written as flaimbait. You do not deserve a positive "insightful" rating.
While I might not choose to wear something like that, mainly because I'd chose not to have something like that hanging from a shirt because it'd be uncomfortable, it frankly makes me more inclined to consider wearing something like that in public in protest. This is absurd and ridiculous. A prior commenter said something to the effect that even those who know something about electronics might find such a device questionable.. I beg to differ. The damn thing is breadboard/proto-board with a few LEDs on it. The only thing that's a part of that with much mass is the breadboard, and that, by itself is a manufactured, self-contained product.
We're silently slipping into more and more paranoid waters, and allowing fascist tendencies to rise. What this amounts to is a legitimization of conform or you must be a criminal. The signs put in public places these days are almost comical. Especially the, "all it takes is one person to stop terrorism, you. report anything suspicious to the nearest authority." You know, if something really were suspicious, I don't think people really need encouragement. All this propaganda does is encourage people to be more paranoid and freak out at the slightest variation from "normal." It's sickening, and it will destroy us in the US if we keep sliding further down this road. Really... consider your chances of dying in a terrorist attack, its basically near the bottom compared with many other ways of dying you would have thought unlikely, see here: http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2006/09/71743
The best thing you can do to fight terrorism is to live your life as you would otherwise, and fight for the civil liberties we're having taken away. An astronomically larger number of people are adversely affected by the fear attached to "terror" than are actually subject to attacks.
Since the Ubuntu price is now back at the $50 less mark, it makes me wonder whether this was just a glitch where one machine was updated first and then the other came later in the day, or whether they're actually listening. On some levels, it does actually look like they're listening (Installing Ubuntu, and the ideastorm site indicates junkware-less machines are coming, among other things), and frankly it's a welcome change. How many other gigantic computer manufacturers display this sort of behavior. When was the last time you say HP jump and fix something because of a Slashdot article just getting posted?
Honestly, this whole post of his seems to me to be incredibly stupid. All he's saying here is that Apple tried to force them to clarify that the were using a 3rd party card, and they were. Where does all this "smear" crap come from. The more released about this whole thing, the more it becomes clear that the original "researchers" where being somewhat unclear in their disclosures, and that Apple simply wanted them to clear it up. I SERIOUSLY doubt that Apple called up TUAW and said something to the effect of "We've got a situation here, we need to discredit these guys.." It just doesn't make any sense. All that's clear here is that the "researchers" made an error in not disclosing all the facts of their hack. They used a Mac to make it appear that Mac OS X was just as vulnerable as any other operating system, and didn't come up with an exploit for actual Apple hardware and drivers. Hell, they still haven't even identified the maker of the card. The WHOLE presentation, boils down to being about as effective as making their own hardware device and drivers and finding and writing in a flaw to exploit. We still have no clue if this was a pre-discovered flaw in that card's driver. Additionally, the recent presentation displaying a crash of the same MacBook running 10.4.6 only demonstrates that they may have done the same thing with Apple's older drivers. They figured out the flaw Apple patched and then worked out an exploit for it.
Stop posting anything about these guys, they don't deserve the publicity, and all this crap about smearing and breaking Apple's hardware is both moot and full of willful misinterpretation. These guys are attention seekers and no more.
I have to agree with this. I've had them for about 4 months now and no troubles except sometimes not having stellar service in the sticks. I've got the cheapest WAP service they offer and have my settings tweaked to use another one of their proxy servers that allows me to get email & web on my laptop as well as do google maps on the phone (totally pays for the internet service by itself).
Yet more reasons to buy a cheap external hard-disk and at LEAST back up to that:-)
Or, you can be like me and back up to an external hard disk at home, and a filesystem on a RAID array with a hot spare, and another backup system for that array in a different location!
Backup solutions are way cheaper than paying some person to extract data from a dead drive... even for the bare minimum external USB/FireWire drive that you backup to daily, would save probably like 90% of all accidental damage losses of data, or losses due to random drive failure. Go out and set up your backup solution NOW, not tomorrow:-)
I think the point is that most of the people who are running OS X on PC hardware did NOT pay for a copy of OS X. It specifically says "pirate" in the poem there. Now the question of paying for it then running it on your PC hardware IS another story. Personally I see no problem with this, but I wouldn't bother, legal or no. Stability and having things "just work" is nice. Criminalizing this activity seems silly, but Apple's also not the kind of company to say "Here's a supported configuration, you can install on other configurations but we won't support it." They like to sell an experience rather than individual units of utility. It may be stupid, but it is certainly well withing their rights to take this kind of action.
This is really not a case of anything being cracked. The source code was available, all this guy did was remove the requirements for particular hardware. Consequently, as we've all known before the gui doesn't work without the checks that were implemented, and you still need something illegal to get it going as an actual OS X install... all you have here is Darwin running out of the same tree as OS X. I'm sure Apple knew this would happen as soon as they released the kernel source.
Actually, I think Microsoft is scared of everyone. It seems like they feel the need to compete with everyone after they've brought an interesting product to market and they decide they can make some money there. Now one might say that they've decided they can do a better job in that market spot, but they never really do a better job. The X-Box 360 may or may not be an exception to this, but I really wish, for the sake of everyone that uses their products and everyone else that needs to deal with them they they'll stop trying to run everyone else into the ground and just make a core set of products the best they can be. There's no innovation, they kill everything they make through design by committee.
Agree with the additions of the sibling comment here, but if you want to argue on the level of shareholders: IBM wouldn't be interested in this if they didn't think they could gain more than they would have to spend.
Also, if you've ever worked within ANY large organization, there's always waste and resources that could be put to better use. No company will ever achieve a theoretical high in productivity, at least not for long periods, it's just part of human nature. That said, improvements in management, working environments, and motivation levels for staff alone could certainly pick up the slack to add a bunch of certification programs, unless IBM is seriously different than any of the large organizations I've seen the inside of.
Just thought I'd chime in here as well. Most of the commentary I've heard about Flip 3D has been negative, and I thought I'd give it a try myself. Honestly it's little better than standard alt-tab behavior with the added dis-benefit of not being able to see the contents of all the windows at once. It's a rip-off of Exposé, and not a great one at that.
What's with the inane editorializing in the OP? 3 times as much testing? So what, I'm sure IBM has the resources to burn and might hire more people if they need them...
iTunes has had gapless for a while. Looks like the iPods get the benefit, though I'm not sure what they're doing there... Maybe they're joining the files on the ipod and using file markers to separate things in the interface. Time will tell:-)
So he says this at the end of the Linux.com article:
"Let's just say its pretty obvious I'm not happy about being silent. So much so that i'm releasing non-apple bugs to convince people that we do in fact know what we're talking about."
The problem here is not that he can't show people anything that will make them shut up. Saying that he's unwilling to talk about it partly because he's worried about apple legal, and partly because the mac bloggers wont understand is garbage. Making the second sort of statement basically up the alley of anyone who is trying to sell snake oil. The "I won't explain it because you're not smart enough", just makes you seem like that much more like a liar. Hand waving, especially in a public forum will get you nowhere unless people are interested in the illusion. The underlying issue here is not really he's wounded the pride of Mac users, or that Apple is supposedly threatening him (the former is the reason for some of the stir in the community, the latter nobody will believe until there's some evidence), it is that there is precisely zero evidence demonstrating that they've done what they've said they did. Until there is documented evidence of that, nobody is going to believe this guy, and it is going to hurt his reputation and the reputations of all those around him. You cannot win a PR battle without something demonstrable. I honestly can't see why Apple would go after him if he had made the original video with a stock macbook and using Apple's drivers, that's really all people want at this point. Maybe even have a 3rd party involved, with a newly opened fresh out-of-the-box macbook, so that there's documentation that there's nothing shady going on behind the scenes. Also, he really can't complain that much here about people being whiny and wanting more information since he announced this exploit in a public manner. Show us the goods, or shut up. Apple can't sue for defamation if the claim is legitimate. So, there are two possible conclusions to draw here: either this guy is a liar or completely spineless. I'm entirely sure he cares about what everyone is saying, the fact that this is all he can offer up leads me to think that he's a liar.
Er.. At least there's not as much of a roll over and play dead approach to Apple's implementation. I mean, Apple's said nothing about BR or HD-DVD, but this 64-bit limitation sounds stupid. iTunes music at least allows playing on multiple machines and has a flat rate price (there was some bending on both sides of the fence there). That said, I get most of my music from eMusic since it's all free and open, and it works fine with iTunes/iPod. DRM sucks, but this is just more of exactly what one has come to expect from Microsoft. Again, Apple's said nothing about BR or HD-DVD, but I seem to recall that Microsoft was integrating technology into Vista to only allow content to be played on specific monitors that were "secure." I wonder when everyone will realize that this is stupid, it's hurting business, and customers hate it. I would bet most people don't get bitten by problems with DRM, but if those who do are vocal enough, I think more people would be offended by the restrictions placed on things they are paying for.
OK, so the parent was written as a flame, but honestly all the complaints that people are leveling at these models are nothing new. It's possible that the failure rates are a bit higher than previous models, but complaints about heat, cracked hinges, peeling paint, cube cracks, iPod issues (mine even used to crash!), logic board problems (iBook), frayed power cords, etc...
Honestly, I'm guessing that these complaints are the minority, since otherwise Apple would be going under paying for repairs. I'd say most of the problems are with heavy users (if you take your laptop everywhere with you, GET AN EXTENDED WARRANTY, no matter the brand) and with the occasional lemon.
Doubtful. One of the interesting things these days is that DRM is a platform limiter. Back in the day, versions of the decoding software for various formats (open or not) wouldn't appear on the Mac or Linux, or they were very much in their infancy. Today however, decoders exist on all sides of the fences for nearly everything. I presume even WMV-9 is playable under linux using some Wine magic. The problem is that DRM NOW imposes another fence between all these platforms in that it's not the codec being available that matters, it's some crappy single application that generally looks terrible and you wouldn't want managing all your music becomes necessary to play your music. Invariably this player is single platform, and if it ends up being ported it's generally even worse on the secondary platform.
I may believe iTunes to be somewhat of an exception to this (I think it works well under WINE too), but I'm sure there are plenty of others out there that think it sucks and just want Winamp or something. DRM isn't about respecting the customer (I hate the word consumer) or the artist, it's about respecting executives that need to justify their existence and who are generally fundamentally unaware of the reality of technology. All they care about is lining their pockets.
SuperDuper! (yeah, stupid exclamation mark) is also a very very excellent tool, it'll do smart synchronization of the images (thanks to OS X's sparse images), scheduling, sandboxing and a bunch of other great stuff.
Disclaimer: I just bought it, and enjoy justifying my purchase, but it is awesome!
The world has done very well without scientists mucking up our food sources. How many thousands of years have people lived off what the earth grows?
Really you couldn't be more wrong. They may not have called themselves scientists, but farmers have been selecting crop products basesd on traits for millenia. Do you know what we call corn now looked like before domestication? It's thought to have been derived from teosinte. We've been engineering foods for thousdands and thousands of years. You find one kernel on the plant, grow a few, look for the ones with 2 kernels, and so on. Hell, breadfruit which is found throughout polynesia and micronesia used to reproduce sexually. The current plants are now pretty much all derived from parts of a few original plants and they now rarely, if ever, produce any seeds. To imply that genetic engineering is new is pure and utter garbage. We're simply doing it in a more directed manner now with better tools. Will there be unseen health effects? Sure! In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if there are recalls on crops down the line. Is what we're doing now any less natural, I don't think so.
Personally, I think this statement is BS. EVERY one of Apple's products has its minor share of issues. Yes, they also tend to correct issues through the generations, but often even some of the later gen machines have issues as well. While the first gen may have more issues than later ones, the level of complaints for Apple's current line of portables seems, to me, to be no more than the level of complaining I've heard about any other generation of an Apple product. Really, I think that the bottom line here is the following:
1. Apple products aren't completely perfect (neither are any other manufacturers) 2. Being Apple's first revision of intel machines, there are a larger number of people considering these notebooks (especially with Boot Camp), there are a greater number of people paying attention to potential issues 3. Apple users complain way more about everything from cosmetic to serious flaws in machines. Really, are all PC portables flaw-free? I think not. 4. Apple would NOT continue doing things the way they are if they weren't successful in selling their machines and making money off of them. Frankly, I think this is the best argument. The fact that Apple sells as many machines as they do, and they haven't overhauled things I think is indication enough.
No product is perfect. Apple's in many ways exceed the competition (though I'm biased here and love OS X), but I think people hold them to a much higher bar than other manufacturers, and when it's not 100% flawless people complain endlessly. If you don't like it, complain to Apple, if they had to swap every portable they sold, they wouldn't be profiting from their Mac hardware sales.
Disclosure: I have a MacBook 2 GHz and I love it. The power supply whines, but I really don't care. It's the best damn portable I've owned and it has quite effectively replaced the Dual 2.0 G5 that came before it while consuming way less power and weighing about 1/10th the desktop. The fact that Mac users complain about every little issue, I think, is a sign of the quality of their products. Users expect the best and won't settle for less. Do people expect the same from Dell?
Slashdot Mirror
It's definitely worth calling him out on the mansion, but the zinc mine thing had a retraction on it. Check out the following usa today article (near the top).
Also, he's donating the money, and your comment is written as flaimbait. You do not deserve a positive "insightful" rating.
I'd just like the add to all of this that, democracy isn't handed to you on a silver platter. Democracy is both a process and a constant struggle.
To make this slightly tacky, I'll come back to the previous post with a quote Yoda here:
"Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering."
Think about that before simply dismissing it as a stupid movie quote.
While I might not choose to wear something like that, mainly because I'd chose not to have something like that hanging from a shirt because it'd be uncomfortable, it frankly makes me more inclined to consider wearing something like that in public in protest. This is absurd and ridiculous. A prior commenter said something to the effect that even those who know something about electronics might find such a device questionable.. I beg to differ. The damn thing is breadboard/proto-board with a few LEDs on it. The only thing that's a part of that with much mass is the breadboard, and that, by itself is a manufactured, self-contained product.
We're silently slipping into more and more paranoid waters, and allowing fascist tendencies to rise. What this amounts to is a legitimization of conform or you must be a criminal. The signs put in public places these days are almost comical. Especially the, "all it takes is one person to stop terrorism, you. report anything suspicious to the nearest authority." You know, if something really were suspicious, I don't think people really need encouragement. All this propaganda does is encourage people to be more paranoid and freak out at the slightest variation from "normal." It's sickening, and it will destroy us in the US if we keep sliding further down this road. Really... consider your chances of dying in a terrorist attack, its basically near the bottom compared with many other ways of dying you would have thought unlikely, see here: http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2006/09/71743
The best thing you can do to fight terrorism is to live your life as you would otherwise, and fight for the civil liberties we're having taken away. An astronomically larger number of people are adversely affected by the fear attached to "terror" than are actually subject to attacks.
Since the Ubuntu price is now back at the $50 less mark, it makes me wonder whether this was just a glitch where one machine was updated first and then the other came later in the day, or whether they're actually listening. On some levels, it does actually look like they're listening (Installing Ubuntu, and the ideastorm site indicates junkware-less machines are coming, among other things), and frankly it's a welcome change. How many other gigantic computer manufacturers display this sort of behavior. When was the last time you say HP jump and fix something because of a Slashdot article just getting posted?
Honestly, this whole post of his seems to me to be incredibly stupid. All he's saying here is that Apple tried to force them to clarify that the were using a 3rd party card, and they were. Where does all this "smear" crap come from. The more released about this whole thing, the more it becomes clear that the original "researchers" where being somewhat unclear in their disclosures, and that Apple simply wanted them to clear it up. I SERIOUSLY doubt that Apple called up TUAW and said something to the effect of "We've got a situation here, we need to discredit these guys.." It just doesn't make any sense. All that's clear here is that the "researchers" made an error in not disclosing all the facts of their hack. They used a Mac to make it appear that Mac OS X was just as vulnerable as any other operating system, and didn't come up with an exploit for actual Apple hardware and drivers. Hell, they still haven't even identified the maker of the card. The WHOLE presentation, boils down to being about as effective as making their own hardware device and drivers and finding and writing in a flaw to exploit. We still have no clue if this was a pre-discovered flaw in that card's driver. Additionally, the recent presentation displaying a crash of the same MacBook running 10.4.6 only demonstrates that they may have done the same thing with Apple's older drivers. They figured out the flaw Apple patched and then worked out an exploit for it.
Stop posting anything about these guys, they don't deserve the publicity, and all this crap about smearing and breaking Apple's hardware is both moot and full of willful misinterpretation. These guys are attention seekers and no more.
I have to agree with this. I've had them for about 4 months now and no troubles except sometimes not having stellar service in the sticks. I've got the cheapest WAP service they offer and have my settings tweaked to use another one of their proxy servers that allows me to get email & web on my laptop as well as do google maps on the phone (totally pays for the internet service by itself).
Yet more reasons to buy a cheap external hard-disk and at LEAST back up to that :-)
:-)
Or, you can be like me and back up to an external hard disk at home, and a filesystem on a RAID array with a hot spare, and another backup system for that array in a different location!
Backup solutions are way cheaper than paying some person to extract data from a dead drive... even for the bare minimum external USB/FireWire drive that you backup to daily, would save probably like 90% of all accidental damage losses of data, or losses due to random drive failure. Go out and set up your backup solution NOW, not tomorrow
Is it time limited or missing functionality? Where do I find the full version? Can I find it ac CompUSA?
I think the point is that most of the people who are running OS X on PC hardware did NOT pay for a copy of OS X. It specifically says "pirate" in the poem there. Now the question of paying for it then running it on your PC hardware IS another story. Personally I see no problem with this, but I wouldn't bother, legal or no. Stability and having things "just work" is nice. Criminalizing this activity seems silly, but Apple's also not the kind of company to say "Here's a supported configuration, you can install on other configurations but we won't support it." They like to sell an experience rather than individual units of utility. It may be stupid, but it is certainly well withing their rights to take this kind of action.
This is really not a case of anything being cracked. The source code was available, all this guy did was remove the requirements for particular hardware. Consequently, as we've all known before the gui doesn't work without the checks that were implemented, and you still need something illegal to get it going as an actual OS X install... all you have here is Darwin running out of the same tree as OS X. I'm sure Apple knew this would happen as soon as they released the kernel source.
Actually, I think Microsoft is scared of everyone. It seems like they feel the need to compete with everyone after they've brought an interesting product to market and they decide they can make some money there. Now one might say that they've decided they can do a better job in that market spot, but they never really do a better job. The X-Box 360 may or may not be an exception to this, but I really wish, for the sake of everyone that uses their products and everyone else that needs to deal with them they they'll stop trying to run everyone else into the ground and just make a core set of products the best they can be. There's no innovation, they kill everything they make through design by committee.
Agree with the additions of the sibling comment here, but if you want to argue on the level of shareholders: IBM wouldn't be interested in this if they didn't think they could gain more than they would have to spend.
Also, if you've ever worked within ANY large organization, there's always waste and resources that could be put to better use. No company will ever achieve a theoretical high in productivity, at least not for long periods, it's just part of human nature. That said, improvements in management, working environments, and motivation levels for staff alone could certainly pick up the slack to add a bunch of certification programs, unless IBM is seriously different than any of the large organizations I've seen the inside of.
Just thought I'd chime in here as well. Most of the commentary I've heard about Flip 3D has been negative, and I thought I'd give it a try myself. Honestly it's little better than standard alt-tab behavior with the added dis-benefit of not being able to see the contents of all the windows at once. It's a rip-off of Exposé, and not a great one at that.
What's with the inane editorializing in the OP? 3 times as much testing? So what, I'm sure IBM has the resources to burn and might hire more people if they need them...
Hadn't heard that they'd made decerebrating into such a quick procedure!
iTunes has had gapless for a while. Looks like the iPods get the benefit, though I'm not sure what they're doing there... Maybe they're joining the files on the ipod and using file markers to separate things in the interface. Time will tell :-)
So he says this at the end of the Linux.com article:
"Let's just say its pretty obvious I'm not happy about being silent. So much so that i'm releasing non-apple bugs to convince people that we do in fact know what we're talking about."
The problem here is not that he can't show people anything that will make them shut up. Saying that he's unwilling to talk about it partly because he's worried about apple legal, and partly because the mac bloggers wont understand is garbage. Making the second sort of statement basically up the alley of anyone who is trying to sell snake oil. The "I won't explain it because you're not smart enough", just makes you seem like that much more like a liar. Hand waving, especially in a public forum will get you nowhere unless people are interested in the illusion. The underlying issue here is not really he's wounded the pride of Mac users, or that Apple is supposedly threatening him (the former is the reason for some of the stir in the community, the latter nobody will believe until there's some evidence), it is that there is precisely zero evidence demonstrating that they've done what they've said they did. Until there is documented evidence of that, nobody is going to believe this guy, and it is going to hurt his reputation and the reputations of all those around him. You cannot win a PR battle without something demonstrable. I honestly can't see why Apple would go after him if he had made the original video with a stock macbook and using Apple's drivers, that's really all people want at this point. Maybe even have a 3rd party involved, with a newly opened fresh out-of-the-box macbook, so that there's documentation that there's nothing shady going on behind the scenes. Also, he really can't complain that much here about people being whiny and wanting more information since he announced this exploit in a public manner. Show us the goods, or shut up. Apple can't sue for defamation if the claim is legitimate. So, there are two possible conclusions to draw here: either this guy is a liar or completely spineless. I'm entirely sure he cares about what everyone is saying, the fact that this is all he can offer up leads me to think that he's a liar.
Er.. At least there's not as much of a roll over and play dead approach to Apple's implementation. I mean, Apple's said nothing about BR or HD-DVD, but this 64-bit limitation sounds stupid. iTunes music at least allows playing on multiple machines and has a flat rate price (there was some bending on both sides of the fence there). That said, I get most of my music from eMusic since it's all free and open, and it works fine with iTunes/iPod. DRM sucks, but this is just more of exactly what one has come to expect from Microsoft. Again, Apple's said nothing about BR or HD-DVD, but I seem to recall that Microsoft was integrating technology into Vista to only allow content to be played on specific monitors that were "secure." I wonder when everyone will realize that this is stupid, it's hurting business, and customers hate it. I would bet most people don't get bitten by problems with DRM, but if those who do are vocal enough, I think more people would be offended by the restrictions placed on things they are paying for.
OK, so the parent was written as a flame, but honestly all the complaints that people are leveling at these models are nothing new. It's possible that the failure rates are a bit higher than previous models, but complaints about heat, cracked hinges, peeling paint, cube cracks, iPod issues (mine even used to crash!), logic board problems (iBook), frayed power cords, etc...
Honestly, I'm guessing that these complaints are the minority, since otherwise Apple would be going under paying for repairs. I'd say most of the problems are with heavy users (if you take your laptop everywhere with you, GET AN EXTENDED WARRANTY, no matter the brand) and with the occasional lemon.
They've actually answered your question in the FAQ: here. Basically it boils down to patents and licensing fees.
Doubtful. One of the interesting things these days is that DRM is a platform limiter. Back in the day, versions of the decoding software for various formats (open or not) wouldn't appear on the Mac or Linux, or they were very much in their infancy. Today however, decoders exist on all sides of the fences for nearly everything. I presume even WMV-9 is playable under linux using some Wine magic. The problem is that DRM NOW imposes another fence between all these platforms in that it's not the codec being available that matters, it's some crappy single application that generally looks terrible and you wouldn't want managing all your music becomes necessary to play your music. Invariably this player is single platform, and if it ends up being ported it's generally even worse on the secondary platform.
I may believe iTunes to be somewhat of an exception to this (I think it works well under WINE too), but I'm sure there are plenty of others out there that think it sucks and just want Winamp or something. DRM isn't about respecting the customer (I hate the word consumer) or the artist, it's about respecting executives that need to justify their existence and who are generally fundamentally unaware of the reality of technology. All they care about is lining their pockets.
SuperDuper! (yeah, stupid exclamation mark) is also a very very excellent tool, it'll do smart synchronization of the images (thanks to OS X's sparse images), scheduling, sandboxing and a bunch of other great stuff.
Disclaimer: I just bought it, and enjoy justifying my purchase, but it is awesome!
Actually, if they used spreadsheets every day to handle the queue it'd explain a lot of those other typical errors.
:-D
Meh, who needs excel when you can do your finances in MATLAB
(As a serious aside, I don't do it myself, though I would if I weren't lazy.. but I know PIs that actually DO use matlab to handle their finances)
The world has done very well without scientists mucking up our food sources. How many thousands of years have people lived off what the earth grows?
Really you couldn't be more wrong. They may not have called themselves scientists, but farmers have been selecting crop products basesd on traits for millenia. Do you know what we call corn now looked like before domestication? It's thought to have been derived from teosinte. We've been engineering foods for thousdands and thousands of years. You find one kernel on the plant, grow a few, look for the ones with 2 kernels, and so on. Hell, breadfruit which is found throughout polynesia and micronesia used to reproduce sexually. The current plants are now pretty much all derived from parts of a few original plants and they now rarely, if ever, produce any seeds. To imply that genetic engineering is new is pure and utter garbage. We're simply doing it in a more directed manner now with better tools. Will there be unseen health effects? Sure! In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if there are recalls on crops down the line. Is what we're doing now any less natural, I don't think so.
Personally, I think this statement is BS. EVERY one of Apple's products has its minor share of issues. Yes, they also tend to correct issues through the generations, but often even some of the later gen machines have issues as well. While the first gen may have more issues than later ones, the level of complaints for Apple's current line of portables seems, to me, to be no more than the level of complaining I've heard about any other generation of an Apple product. Really, I think that the bottom line here is the following:
1. Apple products aren't completely perfect (neither are any other manufacturers)
2. Being Apple's first revision of intel machines, there are a larger number of people considering these notebooks (especially with Boot Camp), there are a greater number of people paying attention to potential issues
3. Apple users complain way more about everything from cosmetic to serious flaws in machines. Really, are all PC portables flaw-free? I think not.
4. Apple would NOT continue doing things the way they are if they weren't successful in selling their machines and making money off of them. Frankly, I think this is the best argument. The fact that Apple sells as many machines as they do, and they haven't overhauled things I think is indication enough.
No product is perfect. Apple's in many ways exceed the competition (though I'm biased here and love OS X), but I think people hold them to a much higher bar than other manufacturers, and when it's not 100% flawless people complain endlessly. If you don't like it, complain to Apple, if they had to swap every portable they sold, they wouldn't be profiting from their Mac hardware sales.
Disclosure: I have a MacBook 2 GHz and I love it. The power supply whines, but I really don't care. It's the best damn portable I've owned and it has quite effectively replaced the Dual 2.0 G5 that came before it while consuming way less power and weighing about 1/10th the desktop. The fact that Mac users complain about every little issue, I think, is a sign of the quality of their products. Users expect the best and won't settle for less. Do people expect the same from Dell?