Newton did come before Palm. The unfortunate "handwriting recognition" software of the Newton was very ably replaced by a product called Graffiti which did a great job of text input but required that the user be trained rather than the software. The company that created and sold Graffiti for the Newton decided it would pursue the PDA hardware market and created the company called Palm which found that a smaller iPhone sized form factor was much preferred by the market and was successful for years.
Brief answer: Yes, a mere figment. The Apple Newton is recognizably an ancestor to the current iPhone/iPod touch. The Psion products from the late 80's are more like pocket calculators with an attitude. Apple created the category of PDA's at least a decade too early and dropped it because of the product being commercially untenable at the time. Remarkably they managed to sneak back in under the pretense of creating media players and arrived just as the needed technology and infrastructure matured.
To be less brief in my dismissal of Psion compare the API's and development system that Apple provided for third party developers for the Newton versus what Psion had. The difference was much more than slight.
"Unless you just enable hard drive mode support on the ipod. If you do it shows up as a hard drive just fine. I know it is hard to check a box these days though."
Great news! Please tell me where this check box is located. I tried using the help function and it claims I will find it in the summary pane but I just can't see it. I am using an iPod touch so maybe this capability is not supported for this model? I have tried various apps but frankly they are more than just a little lame compared to what should be the case for a USB2 connected device.
Sure the artist who created the cover art of an issue of "The New Yorker" on an iPhone must be about 3 since he hasn't grown out of it. Type "new yorker cover iphone" into Google if you want to see a link to the jejune effort.
It seems likely to me that you are failing to make a distinction between a multi-touch interface (as used by the iPhone and iPod touch) and a simple mouse substitute "touch" interface. Most (all?) previous devices including the Apple Newton from the early 90's which boasted touch or stylus input were really using the same api's but with the stylus (or touch) playing the role of the mouse.
I can reasonably assure you that among the 50 million Apple multi touch devices sold there are legions of people using them with vastly more brain power than you possess (and more than a few for whom intellectual attainment has not been a high priority).
As I write this an odd echo can be heard of the pissing matches between DOS and Mac proponents. In those pre-Windows days one would hear DOS proponents proclaim that only the mentally feeble would deign to use the childish window, icon, menu, pointer (WIMP) interface of the Macintosh rather than the command line interface (CLI) that grownups use. Apple and its mentally challenged user interface were just a fad that was doomed to failure. When Win95 arrived there could be little doubt that the WIMP interface was the only one that mattered for the vast majority.
There is more to an iPod touch than amount of memory. I suspect that you are correct about the 8GB model being very close to the existing 2nd generation iPod touch. But the 32GB and 64GB models got the type of graphics upgrade that the iPhone 3GS received which made it more capable than the iPhone 3G. Specifically the 32GB and 64GB models have the graphics chip that supports OpenGL ES 2.0 while the others only support OpenGL ES 1.1. That sets them apart along with the iPhone 3GS as potentially more capable than all the other iPhone OS devices.
I also have a 15" MacBook Pro (great computer) with the silver rather than black keyboard. It revved about a month later but I don't think it has been changing every 2 months. Don't get me wrong, I would be in favor of new iPods with camera, GPS, compass and so forth but I think Santa will disappoint if he is expected to deliver even newer iPods.
"I do not need another phone but a PDA (and the iPod Touch is that as well) with GPS would have really have made my day today."
I see no mention of needing a phone in that statement. The unlocked price you state is equivalent to $904 USD. You quote it in Euros which is not insignificant. I don't know that one is able to purchase an unlocked iPhone in the US. If you did and were not paying for GSM cellphone service I don't know if GPS would work. The customary way to purchase an iPhone in the US is with a 2 year contract with AT&T. That easily adds $2,000 to the price.
The obvious solution is for Apple to include a GPS receiver in an iPod touch because there is no reasonable connection between GPS and telephone service except that GPS can be useful for a phone. GPSr (using GSM to "enhance" GPS) is mainly an attempt to change GPS from a one time cost to a recurring monthly bill. Changing one time costs to monthly bills is a core competency of phone companies but that does not imply we have to be their bitches.
I believe you are correct about how GPS works on the iPhone but there is no compelling reason to pay a thousand dollars per year for the pathetic enhancement offered when there is no subscription fee for using a GPS receiver. I hope Apple offers free GPS on the iPod touch before too many competitors like Zune beat them to the punch. Propping up the cellphone provider cartel is not beneficial to Apple's stockholders.
The iPhone is no replacement for an iPod touch because it costs thousands of dollars more. If you don't care to do business with AT&T or any other member of the cellphone carrier cartel then there is no reason to be burdened with a monthly fee to use your iPod.
You seem to be posting from a position of close to perfect ignorance of relevant facts. There are already many apps that will not work on G1 because it has no capability of microphone input which was introduced with G2. There will be apps for the iPhone 3GS using its video cam (in particular augmented reality) that might have worked with a G3 touch that obviously can't now. Also for playing games G2 allowed for listening to audio without headphones (ie built in speaker).
Finally there is the issue of much higher capability graphics (including OpenGL ES 2.0) that has been included with the two higher priced models. However, the 8GB model does not have improved graphics and will almost certainly be a much higher volume product than the two more expensive models. From the consumer viewpoint you can choose to get more memory and better graphics but from the market and developer viewpoint this update is disappointing because it does not advance the platform.
In summary there have been nontrivial upgrades and could have been so many more even if G1, G2 and G3 all look the same to you. The reason so many find the updates so disappointing is because they were (for the iPod touch). The iPod nano updates look nice but I'm not interested in that platform.
" my guess is October or November for the holidays"
Really? A one or two month window for these models of the iPod touch? I've seen others who also think this might be the case. I don't see how Apple could introduce the next version in much less than a year. I don't have much sympathy for consumers who get bent out of shape because a new improved version of a product is released. We should count on and embrace lower prices and better performance. But two months and your new device is badly outdated? Not likely.
Remember when the original iPhone prices dropped "too quickly" Apple had to retrench and offer compensation to existing owners? I can't see them doing something similar this time.
The sentence that muddled your message was : "TiVo did the same", try something like "TiVo did something analogous."
More to the point I suspect you're thinking TiVo patented the DVR but I don't think that is what is being argued in these patent infringement suits. TiVo may have several patents but I think the one that causes some DVR's to be infringing is the recommendation system.
By the way you don't have to imagine Microsoft in a situation analogous to this case. However, Microsoft played the role of the infringing party like the cable monopolies today. After licensing a compression technology from Stacker for several years MS decided to flagrantly violate the patents and was sued and lost. There are reasons why MS is often despised (even though they lose sometimes)
You are shockingly unfamiliar with any of the pertinent facts. Where did you get the absurd idea that TiVo has anything to do with burning optical media? Yes, the DVR (as invented by TiVo) is related to the earlier idea of recording video on tapes as embodied in the VCR. But TiVo used the opportunity to innovate.
Rather than the pathetic 'interface' of creating lists of times and channels to record like the VCR used you would tell it what programs, or actors, or themes interest you. The TiVo would reference its guide information and find the time and station and record to hard drive. At a later time you browse through the programs and watch. No pile of tapes or discs to sort through usually devoid of any identifying information. You couldn't accidentally record over a program because a tape was in the wrong position, etc.
In particular the TiVo would use its history of what interested you in the past to guess what program you might want to see and record if there was space available and no other recording was scheduled at the same time. You could add more information for it to consider by rating programs as you watched by clicking for thumbs up or down.
Many people, including the chairman of the FCC, saw the TiVo as not just better, but something that almost fundamentally changes your relationship to TV. Of course, in the end it is really just stuff from TV so what it could accomplish is limited by the TV programs that are available to everyone. It does, though, transfer even more control to the viewer. This sort of innovation should be rewarded and not exposed for pilfering by cable monopolies. They should at least have to wait for the eternal (28 year) period to expire.
If the term 'patent troll' is to have any worthwhile meaning there is no way it could be applied to TiVo. Patent trolls are not in the business of creating, designing and selling products and services. They either acquire patents by purchasing them or by applying and sitting on them. When someone else creates and sells something that can be construed to somehow be related to one of the patents, that company is threatened with extended expensive litigation.
TiVo, more than any other company, created the DVR. Replay TV was also a factor but they were sued out of existence by the entertainment cartel. It is also worth noting that TiVo did much more than just recreate the VCR with a hard drive rather than analog tape. Insofar as that product/service is patentable I see no reason to view them as trolls for defending those patents. I think the trolls in this case are the quasi monopoly cable companies that mysteriously 'own' their subscribers and use that guaranteed income stream to steal ideas from innovators with the implicit threat of endless litigation funded by the monopoly rents they are guaranteed.
Just want to throw in a modicum of historical context. Microsoft was able to stretch out the procedure long enough for the Bush administration to be in charge. It was the Bush justice department that chose to do almost nothing despite the clear finding that Microsoft used its monopoly power in OS for its illicit advantage in emerging internet markets. Just one more lamentable legacy of the idiot son being put in charge.
"The Manhattan Project and the Apollo Moon missions are two of the pinnacles of the 20th century scientific achievement"
Nonsense. These are two great achievements in technology. Neither was an attempt to generate new science though the application of money and talent at such scales can have beneficial effects for science. The basic science for both existed before either project was initiated. Since both pertained to crucial strategic objectives, it made sense for the government to pay.
In most cases, for example battery research, the benefit of achieving the goal is rather clear and private capital is available based on the perception of likelihood of success and resulting payoff. Unfortunately this sort of calculation would almost never work in favor of what is called basic science. These are problems that are pursued because of intrinsic interest rather than expectation of any return on investment. For instance the search for the Higgs boson or the creation of Bose-Einstein Condensate. In such cases the research might lead someday to subsequent research that leads to more immediate economic return, e.g. Quantum computers.
The system that arguably has worked well is to fund basic science by the government and applied research by private companies (e.g. Intel doing research for next generation silicon fabrication). Of course the world does not always split cleanly into basic versus applied but it is fairly clear that battery research is closer to the applied end of the spectrum.
...Microsoft will try to remind us we can't afford an Apple or else we would have bought it by now. The sky is falling down so don't buy anything you can't afford!....
Hmm, $230 for an 8GB iPod touch and $5 for Brushes. How can anyone afford such extravagance? (Of course there is the probable expense of all those years of art school).
The user's manual indicates the app works on the iPhone and the iPod touch. If you plan to buy an iPod touch you might want to wait until the WWDC to see if they announce an iPod touch with new features like 802.11n networking, camera or some other tempting new capability.
Would all of you cynics take the time to try to get a look at some of the results? Some of the pictures are stunning and especially so when you consider the work was done on a handheld device. Obviously the people creating the sample pictures are talented artists but given the constraints I can't believe what they managed. It is like watching a dog play a Bach fugue.
This item is news because it draws attention to a surprising and unexpected achievement.
I'm waiting for the coffee to brew so I'll take another run at this. First, the common assumption that OS X is not widely used is quaint for a platform that numbers in the tens of millions if not hundreds. At last count the number of iPhones and iPod touches alone was approaching 30 million. I haven't recently checked the numbers of desktop Macs but it is also nontrivial. An important point is that the sub-notebook market numbers are likely to eclipse the rest and OSX is well positioned to ride that trend to a dominant position.
The other quibble I have is with the idea of security as an absolute. For example, the fact that there are two or more techniques that have been recently developed to combat remote exploits and Apple has not been among the first to deploy them hence "OSX is inferior to Windows". This is related to the sniping one can see whenever Apple releases a patch to its OS that includes security fixes. The comments include observations like "I thought Apple was supposed to be perfect, how could a patch ever be required?"
Security is a never ending process, not a checkbox in a list of features. Actual threats, user behavior and experience, available tools and confidence in those tools all enter into the process. The only reasonable metric for evaluating the effectiveness of a platform's security is how well it fares in the real world of imperfect behavior of all those involved (e.g. percent who update to newest OS, apply patches, run systems to their advantage against exploits, etc). Over its thirty plus year history Apple has an imperfect but superior record in that regard and has done even better since the advent of OS X (which is closer to a clean break from the past than many realize since it was NextStep engulfing and swallowing Mac OS).
If current trends continue, it may not be long before we see the assumption that being too small to matter has any substance. Perhaps Microsoft and its minions will find another reason why an apparently more secure system is actually less secure.
I again find your response disingenuous. For the vast majority of computer users the only useful options are Microsoft or Apple. Because of all the security/safety disasters suffered by customers of Microsoft there has been a continuing campaign to imply that switching to Apple is pointless because for various esoteric reasons you will get the same result.
For many years that sort of claim has been false and there is no real chance it will change over any timeframe that matters. That is why it is of more than casual interest that the author of a well known remote attack (not the trojan that is the subject of the article) chooses OS X for his own system.
What a convoluted attempt to invoke "security through obscurity". Most people, who do not have some irrational axe to grind, mean a situation that can change disastrously in an instant when an obscure but simple fact is uncovered. Despite the wishes of Apple stockholders it is unlikely in the extreme that OS X will achieve a market position of over 90% in the blink of an eye.
In any case for casual web browsing I can use a login that does not have administrator privileges. Last time I bothered to check I had not even activated root access at all. Bottom line is that Windows users need to worry about viruses and OS X users have to listen to Windows users loudly proclaim that we are all in the same position. Ha!
Do you know what OS the creator of that attack uses himself? He runs OSX on a MacBook Pro. It puts a rather interesting spin on the conclusion you want to draw.
So how far back does your memory extend? Back in the mid to late 80's the Mac was derided as a toy and ridiculous compared to "real" computers. Fast forward to today and there are absolutely no computers in use that are not based on the concepts first shown commercially in the Mac. DOS and the other "advanced" systems have no presence. They have vanished despite how superior they allegedly were. (Yes, I know shell scripting is available through the Terminal application in OSX and I use it but that is because I am a developer).
When Alan Kay (the computer scientist most responsible for the development of object oriented programming) was asked his opinion of the Mac some decades ago his reply was that it was the first computer worth criticizing. That is similar to the iPhone in relation to the cell phone market. It's arguably the first cell phone worth criticizing.
Years from now there will likely be no devices used for communication that are remotely like any of the cell phones that are currently touted as so advanced. Instead there will be much more advanced technology that will have a recognizable link with the iPhone and the devices inspired by it.
One of the amusing jokes on "The Big Bang Theory" was when one of the characters asked if someone wanted to join the rest on a trip to the Apple Store to make fun of the people working at The Genius Bar.
Slashdot Mirror
Newton did come before Palm. The unfortunate "handwriting recognition" software of the Newton was very ably replaced by a product called Graffiti which did a great job of text input but required that the user be trained rather than the software. The company that created and sold Graffiti for the Newton decided it would pursue the PDA hardware market and created the company called Palm which found that a smaller iPhone sized form factor was much preferred by the market and was successful for years.
Brief answer: Yes, a mere figment. The Apple Newton is recognizably an ancestor to the current iPhone/iPod touch. The Psion products from the late 80's are more like pocket calculators with an attitude. Apple created the category of PDA's at least a decade too early and dropped it because of the product being commercially untenable at the time. Remarkably they managed to sneak back in under the pretense of creating media players and arrived just as the needed technology and infrastructure matured.
To be less brief in my dismissal of Psion compare the API's and development system that Apple provided for third party developers for the Newton versus what Psion had. The difference was much more than slight.
"Unless you just enable hard drive mode support on the ipod. If you do it shows up as a hard drive just fine. I know it is hard to check a box these days though."
Great news! Please tell me where this check box is located. I tried using the help function and it claims I will find it in the summary pane but I just can't see it. I am using an iPod touch so maybe this capability is not supported for this model? I have tried various apps but frankly they are more than just a little lame compared to what should be the case for a USB2 connected device.
Sure the artist who created the cover art of an issue of "The New Yorker" on an iPhone must be about 3 since he hasn't grown out of it. Type "new yorker cover iphone" into Google if you want to see a link to the jejune effort.
It seems likely to me that you are failing to make a distinction between a multi-touch interface (as used by the iPhone and iPod touch) and a simple mouse substitute "touch" interface. Most (all?) previous devices including the Apple Newton from the early 90's which boasted touch or stylus input were really using the same api's but with the stylus (or touch) playing the role of the mouse.
I can reasonably assure you that among the 50 million Apple multi touch devices sold there are legions of people using them with vastly more brain power than you possess (and more than a few for whom intellectual attainment has not been a high priority).
As I write this an odd echo can be heard of the pissing matches between DOS and Mac proponents. In those pre-Windows days one would hear DOS proponents proclaim that only the mentally feeble would deign to use the childish window, icon, menu, pointer (WIMP) interface of the Macintosh rather than the command line interface (CLI) that grownups use. Apple and its mentally challenged user interface were just a fad that was doomed to failure. When Win95 arrived there could be little doubt that the WIMP interface was the only one that mattered for the vast majority.
There is more to an iPod touch than amount of memory. I suspect that you are correct about the 8GB model being very close to the existing 2nd generation iPod touch. But the 32GB and 64GB models got the type of graphics upgrade that the iPhone 3GS received which made it more capable than the iPhone 3G. Specifically the 32GB and 64GB models have the graphics chip that supports OpenGL ES 2.0 while the others only support OpenGL ES 1.1. That sets them apart along with the iPhone 3GS as potentially more capable than all the other iPhone OS devices.
I also have a 15" MacBook Pro (great computer) with the silver rather than black keyboard. It revved about a month later but I don't think it has been changing every 2 months. Don't get me wrong, I would be in favor of new iPods with camera, GPS, compass and so forth but I think Santa will disappoint if he is expected to deliver even newer iPods.
The original post includes:
"I do not need another phone but a PDA (and the iPod Touch is that as well) with GPS would have really have made my day today."
I see no mention of needing a phone in that statement. The unlocked price you state is equivalent to $904 USD. You quote it in Euros which is not insignificant. I don't know that one is able to purchase an unlocked iPhone in the US. If you did and were not paying for GSM cellphone service I don't know if GPS would work. The customary way to purchase an iPhone in the US is with a 2 year contract with AT&T. That easily adds $2,000 to the price.
The obvious solution is for Apple to include a GPS receiver in an iPod touch because there is no reasonable connection between GPS and telephone service except that GPS can be useful for a phone. GPSr (using GSM to "enhance" GPS) is mainly an attempt to change GPS from a one time cost to a recurring monthly bill. Changing one time costs to monthly bills is a core competency of phone companies but that does not imply we have to be their bitches.
I believe you are correct about how GPS works on the iPhone but there is no compelling reason to pay a thousand dollars per year for the pathetic enhancement offered when there is no subscription fee for using a GPS receiver. I hope Apple offers free GPS on the iPod touch before too many competitors like Zune beat them to the punch. Propping up the cellphone provider cartel is not beneficial to Apple's stockholders.
The iPhone is no replacement for an iPod touch because it costs thousands of dollars more. If you don't care to do business with AT&T or any other member of the cellphone carrier cartel then there is no reason to be burdened with a monthly fee to use your iPod.
You seem to be posting from a position of close to perfect ignorance of relevant facts. There are already many apps that will not work on G1 because it has no capability of microphone input which was introduced with G2. There will be apps for the iPhone 3GS using its video cam (in particular augmented reality) that might have worked with a G3 touch that obviously can't now. Also for playing games G2 allowed for listening to audio without headphones (ie built in speaker).
Finally there is the issue of much higher capability graphics (including OpenGL ES 2.0) that has been included with the two higher priced models. However, the 8GB model does not have improved graphics and will almost certainly be a much higher volume product than the two more expensive models. From the consumer viewpoint you can choose to get more memory and better graphics but from the market and developer viewpoint this update is disappointing because it does not advance the platform.
In summary there have been nontrivial upgrades and could have been so many more even if G1, G2 and G3 all look the same to you. The reason so many find the updates so disappointing is because they were (for the iPod touch). The iPod nano updates look nice but I'm not interested in that platform.
" my guess is October or November for the holidays"
Really? A one or two month window for these models of the iPod touch? I've seen others who also think this might be the case. I don't see how Apple could introduce the next version in much less than a year. I don't have much sympathy for consumers who get bent out of shape because a new improved version of a product is released. We should count on and embrace lower prices and better performance. But two months and your new device is badly outdated? Not likely.
Remember when the original iPhone prices dropped "too quickly" Apple had to retrench and offer compensation to existing owners? I can't see them doing something similar this time.
The sentence that muddled your message was : "TiVo did the same", try something like "TiVo did something analogous."
More to the point I suspect you're thinking TiVo patented the DVR but I don't think that is what is being argued in these patent infringement suits. TiVo may have several patents but I think the one that causes some DVR's to be infringing is the recommendation system.
By the way you don't have to imagine Microsoft in a situation analogous to this case. However, Microsoft played the role of the infringing party like the cable monopolies today. After licensing a compression technology from Stacker for several years MS decided to flagrantly violate the patents and was sued and lost. There are reasons why MS is often despised (even though they lose sometimes)
You are shockingly unfamiliar with any of the pertinent facts. Where did you get the absurd idea that TiVo has anything to do with burning optical media? Yes, the DVR (as invented by TiVo) is related to the earlier idea of recording video on tapes as embodied in the VCR. But TiVo used the opportunity to innovate.
Rather than the pathetic 'interface' of creating lists of times and channels to record like the VCR used you would tell it what programs, or actors, or themes interest you. The TiVo would reference its guide information and find the time and station and record to hard drive. At a later time you browse through the programs and watch. No pile of tapes or discs to sort through usually devoid of any identifying information. You couldn't accidentally record over a program because a tape was in the wrong position, etc.
In particular the TiVo would use its history of what interested you in the past to guess what program you might want to see and record if there was space available and no other recording was scheduled at the same time. You could add more information for it to consider by rating programs as you watched by clicking for thumbs up or down.
Many people, including the chairman of the FCC, saw the TiVo as not just better, but something that almost fundamentally changes your relationship to TV. Of course, in the end it is really just stuff from TV so what it could accomplish is limited by the TV programs that are available to everyone. It does, though, transfer even more control to the viewer. This sort of innovation should be rewarded and not exposed for pilfering by cable monopolies. They should at least have to wait for the eternal (28 year) period to expire.
If the term 'patent troll' is to have any worthwhile meaning there is no way it could be applied to TiVo. Patent trolls are not in the business of creating, designing and selling products and services. They either acquire patents by purchasing them or by applying and sitting on them. When someone else creates and sells something that can be construed to somehow be related to one of the patents, that company is threatened with extended expensive litigation.
TiVo, more than any other company, created the DVR. Replay TV was also a factor but they were sued out of existence by the entertainment cartel. It is also worth noting that TiVo did much more than just recreate the VCR with a hard drive rather than analog tape. Insofar as that product/service is patentable I see no reason to view them as trolls for defending those patents. I think the trolls in this case are the quasi monopoly cable companies that mysteriously 'own' their subscribers and use that guaranteed income stream to steal ideas from innovators with the implicit threat of endless litigation funded by the monopoly rents they are guaranteed.
Just want to throw in a modicum of historical context. Microsoft was able to stretch out the procedure long enough for the Bush administration to be in charge. It was the Bush justice department that chose to do almost nothing despite the clear finding that Microsoft used its monopoly power in OS for its illicit advantage in emerging internet markets. Just one more lamentable legacy of the idiot son being put in charge.
"The Manhattan Project and the Apollo Moon missions are two of the pinnacles of the 20th century scientific achievement"
Nonsense. These are two great achievements in technology. Neither was an attempt to generate new science though the application of money and talent at such scales can have beneficial effects for science. The basic science for both existed before either project was initiated. Since both pertained to crucial strategic objectives, it made sense for the government to pay.
In most cases, for example battery research, the benefit of achieving the goal is rather clear and private capital is available based on the perception of likelihood of success and resulting payoff. Unfortunately this sort of calculation would almost never work in favor of what is called basic science. These are problems that are pursued because of intrinsic interest rather than expectation of any return on investment. For instance the search for the Higgs boson or the creation of Bose-Einstein Condensate. In such cases the research might lead someday to subsequent research that leads to more immediate economic return, e.g. Quantum computers.
The system that arguably has worked well is to fund basic science by the government and applied research by private companies (e.g. Intel doing research for next generation silicon fabrication). Of course the world does not always split cleanly into basic versus applied but it is fairly clear that battery research is closer to the applied end of the spectrum.
...Microsoft will try to remind us we can't afford an Apple or else we would have bought it by now. The sky is falling down so don't buy anything you can't afford!....
Hmm, $230 for an 8GB iPod touch and $5 for Brushes. How can anyone afford such extravagance? (Of course there is the probable expense of all those years of art school).
The user's manual indicates the app works on the iPhone and the iPod touch. If you plan to buy an iPod touch you might want to wait until the WWDC to see if they announce an iPod touch with new features like 802.11n networking, camera or some other tempting new capability.
Would all of you cynics take the time to try to get a look at some of the results? Some of the pictures are stunning and especially so when you consider the work was done on a handheld device. Obviously the people creating the sample pictures are talented artists but given the constraints I can't believe what they managed. It is like watching a dog play a Bach fugue.
This item is news because it draws attention to a surprising and unexpected achievement.
I'm waiting for the coffee to brew so I'll take another run at this. First, the common assumption that OS X is not widely used is quaint for a platform that numbers in the tens of millions if not hundreds. At last count the number of iPhones and iPod touches alone was approaching 30 million. I haven't recently checked the numbers of desktop Macs but it is also nontrivial. An important point is that the sub-notebook market numbers are likely to eclipse the rest and OSX is well positioned to ride that trend to a dominant position.
The other quibble I have is with the idea of security as an absolute. For example, the fact that there are two or more techniques that have been recently developed to combat remote exploits and Apple has not been among the first to deploy them hence "OSX is inferior to Windows". This is related to the sniping one can see whenever Apple releases a patch to its OS that includes security fixes. The comments include observations like "I thought Apple was supposed to be perfect, how could a patch ever be required?"
Security is a never ending process, not a checkbox in a list of features. Actual threats, user behavior and experience, available tools and confidence in those tools all enter into the process. The only reasonable metric for evaluating the effectiveness of a platform's security is how well it fares in the real world of imperfect behavior of all those involved (e.g. percent who update to newest OS, apply patches, run systems to their advantage against exploits, etc). Over its thirty plus year history Apple has an imperfect but superior record in that regard and has done even better since the advent of OS X (which is closer to a clean break from the past than many realize since it was NextStep engulfing and swallowing Mac OS).
If current trends continue, it may not be long before we see the assumption that being too small to matter has any substance. Perhaps Microsoft and its minions will find another reason why an apparently more secure system is actually less secure.
I again find your response disingenuous. For the vast majority of computer users the only useful options are Microsoft or Apple. Because of all the security/safety disasters suffered by customers of Microsoft there has been a continuing campaign to imply that switching to Apple is pointless because for various esoteric reasons you will get the same result.
For many years that sort of claim has been false and there is no real chance it will change over any timeframe that matters. That is why it is of more than casual interest that the author of a well known remote attack (not the trojan that is the subject of the article) chooses OS X for his own system.
What a convoluted attempt to invoke "security through obscurity". Most people, who do not have some irrational axe to grind, mean a situation that can change disastrously in an instant when an obscure but simple fact is uncovered. Despite the wishes of Apple stockholders it is unlikely in the extreme that OS X will achieve a market position of over 90% in the blink of an eye.
In any case for casual web browsing I can use a login that does not have administrator privileges. Last time I bothered to check I had not even activated root access at all. Bottom line is that Windows users need to worry about viruses and OS X users have to listen to Windows users loudly proclaim that we are all in the same position. Ha!
Do you know what OS the creator of that attack uses himself? He runs OSX on a MacBook Pro. It puts a rather interesting spin on the conclusion you want to draw.
So how far back does your memory extend? Back in the mid to late 80's the Mac was derided as a toy and ridiculous compared to "real" computers. Fast forward to today and there are absolutely no computers in use that are not based on the concepts first shown commercially in the Mac. DOS and the other "advanced" systems have no presence. They have vanished despite how superior they allegedly were. (Yes, I know shell scripting is available through the Terminal application in OSX and I use it but that is because I am a developer).
When Alan Kay (the computer scientist most responsible for the development of object oriented programming) was asked his opinion of the Mac some decades ago his reply was that it was the first computer worth criticizing. That is similar to the iPhone in relation to the cell phone market. It's arguably the first cell phone worth criticizing.
Years from now there will likely be no devices used for communication that are remotely like any of the cell phones that are currently touted as so advanced. Instead there will be much more advanced technology that will have a recognizable link with the iPhone and the devices inspired by it.
One of the amusing jokes on "The Big Bang Theory" was when one of the characters asked if someone wanted to join the rest on a trip to the Apple Store to make fun of the people working at The Genius Bar.