To me, a web hack to worry about (on any platform/browser) is one that can just be triggered by viewing a compromised page (like happens to most unpatched Windows machines that get nailed by drive-bys). I'm not nearly as worried about ones that require user intervention - clicking on a link, button, or something of the sort.
So if the Mac was tagged by just loading a page that delivered the hack, that's bad. Quite bad. If he had to click and download something (and perhaps defeat the auto-quarantine they use), that's not so much a big deal, though still a hole that needs patching.
One of the things about vulnerabilities on all platforms is that a significant part of the magnitude depends on how difficult it is to exploit. Remote connections to a system that avoid/defeat a firewall are really dangerous. Attacks that require the user to do something stupid are inevitable, but far less dangerous.
Thus far most of the Mac vulnerabilities have been the second type. Luckily.
First of all, it assumes that the hot women who believe in astrology would date scientists. Ergo the entire premise is fatally flawed.
(the same would apply were the gender roles reversed)
Now, to answer a wee bit more seriously... I think it happens, but it's probably pretty rare - those tend to be personality types that are way too opposed to work together most of the time. A person with a "real" science-based worldview is going to have a lot of trouble dealing with someone who believes in nonsense like astrology. I think the astrology believer would be more open to dating a scientist than the other way around, long-term.
What I have seen over the years is that a lot of people who claim to not believe in astrology (and don't read horoscopes) will, however, go out and talk about a person's sign and say generalisms like "Joe's a Scorpio, so that's why he does that". Astrology is unadulterated crap. But there might be a sliver of reason to the idea that some personality trends may be formed at least partially by the season in which they were born. That wouldn't shock me at all.
Re:What about his fellow travelers?
on
Kimchi in Space
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· Score: 3, Insightful
It's not about _my_ being ethnocentric - it's about trying to have a lack of ethnocentric foods in space. Astronauts should be screened before sending them up to see what you can realistically send up. Cuisine for spaceflight should try and match up favorably with the tastes of all the people on board, or at least be inoffensive to all of them. Kimchi might be perfectly fine for a crew of all Koreans, but I'm sure there's plenty of foods in Korean cuisine that can give a crew member a taste of home without stinking up the joint. If the Korean crewmember hates tomatoes like you do, then foods with a strong tomato smell should be kept off the ISS, too. NO STEWED TOMATOES IN SPACE!
/Loves sushi
//Likes kimchi fine myself
///Finds most ethnic cuisines to be at least worth a try
What about his fellow travelers?
on
Kimchi in Space
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· Score: 4, Funny
Taking kimchi up in space - man, the smell of that stuff is brutal - and in space, you can't exactly crack the windows when he starts farting now, can you? Seriously, just because you _can_ take a smelly, nasty food up in space because people of your ethnicity eat it doesn't mean you _should_ take it up. There's the "bringing home with you so you don't get so lonely" deal but there's also the "having to live in a confined space with several other people that have nothing in common with you" deal. And bringing food that has a >0 chance of really bugging your fellow astronauts isn't the greatest idea. What's next, having an Icelandic astronaut bring some håkarl up, too?
This is like SP1 in Windows land. Basically, 10.5 is the GM, 10.5.1 is where they fix other things that emerged in the several weeks between GM and public availability (along with a couple of critical bugs that turn up in the first few days of wider public release), and then 10.5.2 is the first release based on public feedback and issues. That's also part of why this version enables you to turn off the menubar translucency (and makes the menus themselves more opaque) - users hated it so Apple tweaked things for them.
Windows is freakin' huge - hence the year to Vista SP1 - but Microsoft's releases also go much wider, have more hardware to test with, and have more public pre-release cycles as well. So it takes them a year to do a service pack, where Apple only takes about 3-4 months.
None of the things I'd want to do would ever get done as President. Now, on the other hand, if I were Dictator of the US, I'd:
- Withdraw the vast majority of our troops from Iraq within a few months. Rapid transition to a trained Iraqi army.
- Send more troops to Afghanistan. We really neglected that one, and the lack of muscle there is one of the reasons that Pakistan is spiraling the drain right now as well.
- Pull most of our troops back from around the globe. Even Korea.
- Implement basic health insurance as a universal program, government-run. Allow people to buy supplemental insurance as they like from private carriers.
- Remove the income caps on Social Security and Medicaid taxes to help pay for it all.
- Don't let the estate tax go away.
- Increase the top rate on income over $250k by a couple of percent.
- Increase the standard deductions, and eliminate most itemized deductions. Simplification is good.
- Make states unify their sales taxes to both help revenues and simplify collection. Keep the rate low. (a few would go up, some would go down)
- Increase the gas tax to both pay for infrastructure improvements and to encourage alternative energy source development. Use tax credits to also stimulate alternative energy.
- Impose term limits on the judiciary. Long terms, but guaranteed turnover (maybe 20 years or so, enough to keep them independent, but also make sure that they aren't standing in the way for many decades to come). Pack as many of my judges as I can into the system to help keep the country from changing things back too fast.
- Streamline copyright law. Shorten terms, and make copyright clearance easier. Expand the fair use exemptions.
- Fix the patent system, put more resources into examination, and shorten patent periods in most areas to 5-10 years.
- Eliminate all farm and product subsidies, but phase them out over a 4-year period. Try and develop free trade with anyone who is willing to do the same and also drop tariffs and implement both copyright regulations and patent laws like the ones I create.
- Get the government out of bedrooms, science, and doctor-patient decisions. End the drug war by legalizing most of them, regulating them, and taxing the heck out of 'em. Take the money saved and put it into basic policing and treatment.
Then, after 4-8 years as dictator, get the heck out and let elected officials screw it all up again.
After getting their butts handed to them on every other "alternative standard" they've tried to foist upon us (Beta, Memory Stick, MiniDisc, and ATRAC, to name a few), they finally got a win with Blu-Ray and now they've gotten frisky. I wish I understood why Sony keeps on trying to reinvent the wheel.
First of all, there's a problem with an awful lot of 80GB Seagate drives that are (mainly) used in Macbooks. Apple has been acknowledging it to a limited extent, and even though the laptop was out of warranty, the drive would likely been covered if enough of a stink was raised.
Secondly, if he paid for a replacement, he should have been allowed to keep the old drive. Once you're paying, you are buying the new part and the labor involved. Although, if his drive in fact has the same problem the Seagate 80s are coming up with, data snooping is not a problem... (the failed drives are, in fact, causing platter damage)
Third (and most important, perhaps), he should likely have been aware that on a Macbook the drive is a user-replaceable part. You remove the battery, unscrew the three screws that hold the memory/HD in place, and just pull the drive. Put the positioning screws on a new one, slide it in, and all is well with the world. I did a swap-out for a customer of mine two weeks ago who had a Seagate die, and the new 120 I put in cost about $100. The work took 5 minutes, most of which was spent looking for my screwdriver set!
Apple should get things clear though, and also step up and start a warranty extension for these drives. They've been pretty good about it with other hardware issues so far.
Actually, Newegg and Egghead had nothing to do with one another. Amazon bought what was left of Egghead back in (I think) 1999 or so when their online-only strategy failed. Newegg was a separate startup that was started down in California (Egghead was based in the Seattle area).
The newer generation chipsets have just started to hit the market in the last few months. It takes a while to engineer them into handsets - I think you'll start seeing them in volume devices during Q1 08. Apple never said iPhone was the one and only. It's the first handset in what will be a family of devices. It may even be that the iPhone that we know now stays on the market at a lower price point while the 3G iPhone comes out and sells for more money. Or maybe AT&T charges an extra $5 for the 3G data plan. It'll take a while to shake out.
Ultimately what all the companies involved have in common is that they want to earn boatloads of cash.
When he hits one, he really nails it, but when he misses it's by a lot. I posted some of this as a comment on his site, so I apologize for the duping, but:
Steve already stated that there would be a 3G iPhone, and he said to expect it late next year. Quoted at the London Apple Store opening back in September. That's not the only time Apple's discussed it.
EDGE is ubiquitous on the AT&T network. If you want data access, EDGE support is a no-brainer.
With the minor upgrades to EDGE that AT&T did over the spring and summer, the iPhone is improved, and so are the other EDGE devices (like the Treo 680, for instance) that they sell. It's a good investment by AT&T.
Right now, most of the 3G chipsets are still relatively bulky and draw fairly high-power - by 2008 that should change. But the current iPhone has really good battery life - adding 3G to that today would hurt. Apple's also stated this directly.
3G support isn't built out yet on much of the AT&T network. It's still only in the major metro areas. Kind of where EVDO was about 3 years ago. Not to mention that their 4G plans are in sync with Verizon's now.
Seriously, these aren't the toughest tea leaves to read. By the time AT&T builds out their network for 3G, Apple will be ready to use it. If Apple's contract gives them an opening to play in 700, they'll do that as well. But I count this as a Cringe miss - there's no conspiracy this time, just a lot of obvious and previously stated facts.
I put Leopard on my Santa Rosa MacBook Pro on day 1. Almost no real issues, zero crashes, and overall stability seems much better than it did under Tiger. Here's what I noticed as issues:
I had messed up my Keychain config many versions and computers ago, which was faithfully migrated from Mac to Mac. Leopard broke it (basically, my keychain was named for my user shortname, not "login"). I renamed the keychain, logged out and back in, and all was well.
VPN configs didn't migrate the authentication info properly because Internet Config is no longer the tool that manages the connection. Not a problem for most, but I have 23 different clients I use VPNs to connect to. Easily fixed.
I didn't use any InputManagers other than Saft/PithHelmet, so that was no biggie. And that combo works now.
When the Mac first wakes up and is scanning for a network connection, the mouse is kind of jerky. It lasts a few seconds.
All in all, I've seen remarkably few bugs for a.0 release from Apple. I've been very encouraged. Granted, there are some design issues in my opinion (I don't like the new Dock, Stacks are a clever but broken idea, etc.), but those aren't bugs so much as features I don't like too much. But I think Leopard is mainly Good Stuff.
I actually know a couple of them - small company, and they did legitimately bust their tails to come up with a hardware/software combination to make it easier to support multilingual use. They're pretty decent guys. I haven't seen or talked to either of the two people there I know since earlier this year, though, so I have nothing to add about the suit or any merits it might have (or not have).
Just with all the speculation swirling in this thread, I thought this would be useful. They are definitely not large enough to justify running their own web server in-house. I'm also not sure who makes the keyboard for them (I was told once, over a year ago, but I can't remember), but it's a pretty solid one as keyboards go. The software was pretty clever as well.
It's not justified. But it's not wrong, either. Look. As of right now there's no official, endorsed SDK or system for putting 3rd party apps on the iPhone. Which to me is a waste of a great platform, but it's Apple's prerogative to do that. Maybe they will stabilize the works a little further, and then include an SDK in the Leopard version of Xcode. Maybe they'll announce 3rd party support along with iPhone 2.0 at Macworld in January. Maybe they'll never do it, and keep the platform locked down forever.
That said, since there is no sanctioned 3rd party way to load apps on an iPhone, Apple is perfectly free to do whatever they want with new firmware. They can make it seamless, they can break the hack that allowed easy 3rd party access, they can break efforts to software unlock it. You, the iPhone owner have no right to whine about it. If Apple had opened up the iPhone as a platform for 3rd parties and then broke it, well - you have a case. But they didn't.
I used AppTap on mine. Loved it. Threw a few neat programs on it and was rather fond of them. And I updated to 1.1.1 on Thursday knowing well that my phone would not be bricked (I never unlocked mine - had no reason to), but I'd lose all my cool programs. For now, at least. I did it anyways, and if/when AppTap works with the 1.1.1 firmware I'll reload it.
Bottom line: Until further notice, iPhones are only being sold as a closed platform that works exclusively with AT&T. If you don't like those terms, don't buy one. If you don't mind, then it's a really neat phone that blows away my old Treo for functionality in virtually all areas. Official unlocking? Probably never coming (that's what exclusive carrier deals are all about). 3rd party application support? I'd guess that we'll get it in the not-too-distant future - but give Apple a while to figure out how to be a phone vendor. But I'd feel the same if this were Microsoft. Use the product outside of the boundaries that were clearly defined at purchase time and you may get something great, but you're on your own.
Now if Apple does something to block older firmware versions from using AT&T's network as an anti-hack measure? Then I'd be pissed off. It's my business whether or not I choose to update. Not Apple's.
The iPhone's price cut was surprising (way earlier than I expected), but that's the nature of the cellphone/personal electronics business. Always has been. A device comes out at a premium price, and then over the 6-12 months of the device's lifecycle the price drops drastically. By the time the new hotness replaces it not only has the price collapsed, but it's not even a lust object anymore. But we've been going through those cycles ever since the Walkman.
What's masked it a little here in the US has been the subsidies that cellphone carriers pay to get lock-ins. And they increase the subsidies as the life of the gadget progresses (at least on paper), to reduce the perceived cost more. Remember, once upon a time the Motorola RAZR was the hottest phone on the market. And it cost around $400-$500, even with a contract. And that was just a phone! Now, of course, they're free with contracts, and have been for quite a while.
Anyhow, I'd say the dependency of the domestic auto market on rebates is a much better bellwether for the state of the "Crazy Eddie Economy" (and I grew up in New York, so I remember those ads), along with the use of incentives in the housing market. Heck, supermarket coupons are part of it, too. When discounts are the norm without any real reason to do so (real costs are always dropping in the electronics business), prices have no real floor, and consumers have no incentive to pay the "real" price, because they know that it's going down. A lot.
I'd like to see the ability to handle password-protected PDF, Word, and Excel docs. Mainly because I used Passwords Plus on my old Treo, and I still want a decent replacement (even a password-protected page in Notes would be enough). And I would like to see a small LED under the glass somewhere towards the top of the device, so I can see at a glance if new mail or voicemail has arrived. I'm not concerned about the lack of tethering. EDGE sucks for that, anyways. The keyboard's pretty good, though I had to get used to it.
If real GPS functionality could be added without costing me battery life, that'd be a great addition. Same with 3G. The battery life on mine has been terrific, and I don't want any new features that'll cost me any of it. I had a CDMA Treo - I know about crappy cellphone battery life.
A few NeXT alumni that either are or were Apple executives:
Avie Tevanian - Past Senior VP of Software Engineering, primary architect of Mac OS X/NeXTstep Bertrand Serlet - Senior VP of Software Engineering, Avie's successor Sina Tamaddon - VP of Applications Jon Rubinstein - former VP of hardware development
Basically, when Steve took over within a short time virtually all the Apple folks who Steve didn't want around were sent packing and replaced by NeXT folks. They pretty much took over Apple from within.
Remember, though - part of what builds stock value is the perceived upside of the company business. Apple is strong because even though their market share is small, their growth is higher than most and they dominate the music player biz and have been expanding with success whenever they go (iPhone, anyone?). HP is driven by their printer business and their services besides PC, and Dell has volume and low costs. Gateway, though, has nothing unique. So analysts look at them and say "meh" - ergo a low valuation despite the sales numbers.
This takes two companies with minimal brand equity and merges them to provide better buying power and a lower cost of goods. The fact that Gateway was worth only $710 million despite being the third-largest vendor here in the US should say something right there. And it's not good.
Market Cap of some major US PC vendors: HP 125.68B Apple 115.8B Dell 61.63B Gateway 676.29M
See an interesting trend? Gateway would be pocket change to any of those bigger companies. Basically, they died in retail, were taken over from within by E-Machines (even though Gateway bought E-Machines, the execs from E-Machines wound up in charge - just like when NeXT was bought by Apple) and stabilized just enough to turn into the company into bait for Acer.
As long as carriers dictate what phones do or don't do, this is no big deal - it's just typical. I suspect the GPS functionality lockdown has nothing to do with iPhone, it's probably just that AT&T wants to sell their Telenav service and make money from it. The iPhone really doesn't compete in the same segment as Blackberries of any stripe, and they sell at a non-subsidized price - GPS or the lack thereof isn't going to make a hell of a lot of difference in the Blackberry/iPhone purchase decision.
It's not like this is rare. Heck, Verizon's locked down the OBEX capabilities on most of their Bluetooth phones so they can sell their wireless sync service. Even Apple had to bite the bullet here - since there's no subsidy on the phone and Apple pockets all the money, don't you think they'd love to sell unlocked iPhones that would work on every GSM carrier? Or sell CDMA models through Verizon or Sprint? Of course they would. But to get AT&T to sell 'em and modify the network (build out EDGE capacity and add the Visual Voicemail system) they had to agree to a multi-year exclusivity deal.
So basically, the 8820 being modified because of Apple? I call BS. And if you want your Blackberry and you want it on AT&T, find yourself an unlocked version and just DIY. It's GSM, you can do that. It'll be unsubsidized, but at least that way it'll be a fair fight with the iPhone.
Wait - even though iPhone is unsubsidized it's still locked. Never mind!
VPN connections work correctly now. Before, it wouldn't save my PPTP password and then when it connected it would bring up a password entry box with only numeric characters allowed. I didn't try VPN with a password not saved, but at least saved password behavior is correct.
The update took around 7-8 minutes altogether. Left a ".ipsw" file in my ~/Library/iTunes/iPhone Software Updates folder which presumably contains the image.
Sure, but that's the GUI and application layer you're talking about - not so much the core OS and functionality. The user experience is radically different from traditional mobile phones, but it's still Mac OS X under the hood. CE isn't Windows, though it resembles Windows and has part of Win32 ported to it. Symbian is a completely different beast (the old EPOC PDA OS, if I recall without taking the time for a Wikipedia search), while OS X is OS X.
Now let's see how long until the first iPhone patch comes out, and if any of the other glitches will be fixed at the same time or if it's strictly for security. Obviously Apple's already been working on iPhone patch #1 and is probably just about ready to push it out after a month.
One functionality change that _should_ come out of this, though - I would turn off the default behavior of scanning for open networks and asking to join them. It wastes battery power, and the pop-ups for new networks are intrusive. In its place I'd put the AirPort icon in the display full-time (instead of just replacing the EDGE "E" when you are on a WiFi network) and allow quick access from there. I think, altogether, iPhone will be a pretty secure device after the initial flushing out of bugs, but this is a little different from traditional devices. iPhone has a classic desktop OS stripped down into a cellphone, whereas mainstream other devices (Palm, Windows CE, and Symbian) were designed more as cellphone systems (or PDA systems) and scaled up.
(not replacing my iPhone with a Razr anytime soon!)
Not to be a complete Apple fanboi (and yes, I do have an iPhone), I don't see that much of a fuss. The rental should be a free loaner, though. That part kinda sucks. But $80 to replace the battery every couple of years doesn't really seem like a problem. First of all, the battery life on this is way better than it has been on either of the Treos I've had (and I had the 3200ma extended battery in my old 700p - even with that the iPhone does better) so I wouldn't see too much need to swap it out manually. One charge lasts a long time. Secondly, most phones with Li-Ion batteries have expensive replacements from the manufacturer as well.
What I'll expect to see down the road is 3rd party replacement services at some point (soon, I think) - they'll probably have mail-order services that send you a loaner and have you fedex your iPhone for the swap. This phone is only a week old. A lot of things are going to change before the first unit wears out its battery.
Then again, it wouldn't be Slashdot without a good panic!
Slashdot Mirror
To me, a web hack to worry about (on any platform/browser) is one that can just be triggered by viewing a compromised page (like happens to most unpatched Windows machines that get nailed by drive-bys). I'm not nearly as worried about ones that require user intervention - clicking on a link, button, or something of the sort.
So if the Mac was tagged by just loading a page that delivered the hack, that's bad. Quite bad. If he had to click and download something (and perhaps defeat the auto-quarantine they use), that's not so much a big deal, though still a hole that needs patching.
One of the things about vulnerabilities on all platforms is that a significant part of the magnitude depends on how difficult it is to exploit. Remote connections to a system that avoid/defeat a firewall are really dangerous. Attacks that require the user to do something stupid are inevitable, but far less dangerous.
Thus far most of the Mac vulnerabilities have been the second type. Luckily.
First of all, it assumes that the hot women who believe in astrology would date scientists. Ergo the entire premise is fatally flawed.
(the same would apply were the gender roles reversed)
Now, to answer a wee bit more seriously... I think it happens, but it's probably pretty rare - those tend to be personality types that are way too opposed to work together most of the time. A person with a "real" science-based worldview is going to have a lot of trouble dealing with someone who believes in nonsense like astrology. I think the astrology believer would be more open to dating a scientist than the other way around, long-term.
What I have seen over the years is that a lot of people who claim to not believe in astrology (and don't read horoscopes) will, however, go out and talk about a person's sign and say generalisms like "Joe's a Scorpio, so that's why he does that". Astrology is unadulterated crap. But there might be a sliver of reason to the idea that some personality trends may be formed at least partially by the season in which they were born. That wouldn't shock me at all.
/Loves sushi
//Likes kimchi fine myself
///Finds most ethnic cuisines to be at least worth a try
Taking kimchi up in space - man, the smell of that stuff is brutal - and in space, you can't exactly crack the windows when he starts farting now, can you? Seriously, just because you _can_ take a smelly, nasty food up in space because people of your ethnicity eat it doesn't mean you _should_ take it up. There's the "bringing home with you so you don't get so lonely" deal but there's also the "having to live in a confined space with several other people that have nothing in common with you" deal. And bringing food that has a >0 chance of really bugging your fellow astronauts isn't the greatest idea. What's next, having an Icelandic astronaut bring some håkarl up, too?
This is like SP1 in Windows land. Basically, 10.5 is the GM, 10.5.1 is where they fix other things that emerged in the several weeks between GM and public availability (along with a couple of critical bugs that turn up in the first few days of wider public release), and then 10.5.2 is the first release based on public feedback and issues. That's also part of why this version enables you to turn off the menubar translucency (and makes the menus themselves more opaque) - users hated it so Apple tweaked things for them.
Windows is freakin' huge - hence the year to Vista SP1 - but Microsoft's releases also go much wider, have more hardware to test with, and have more public pre-release cycles as well. So it takes them a year to do a service pack, where Apple only takes about 3-4 months.
None of the things I'd want to do would ever get done as President. Now, on the other hand, if I were Dictator of the US, I'd:
- Withdraw the vast majority of our troops from Iraq within a few months. Rapid transition to a trained Iraqi army.
- Send more troops to Afghanistan. We really neglected that one, and the lack of muscle there is one of the reasons that Pakistan is spiraling the drain right now as well.
- Pull most of our troops back from around the globe. Even Korea.
- Implement basic health insurance as a universal program, government-run. Allow people to buy supplemental insurance as they like from private carriers.
- Remove the income caps on Social Security and Medicaid taxes to help pay for it all.
- Don't let the estate tax go away.
- Increase the top rate on income over $250k by a couple of percent.
- Increase the standard deductions, and eliminate most itemized deductions. Simplification is good.
- Make states unify their sales taxes to both help revenues and simplify collection. Keep the rate low. (a few would go up, some would go down)
- Increase the gas tax to both pay for infrastructure improvements and to encourage alternative energy source development. Use tax credits to also stimulate alternative energy.
- Impose term limits on the judiciary. Long terms, but guaranteed turnover (maybe 20 years or so, enough to keep them independent, but also make sure that they aren't standing in the way for many decades to come). Pack as many of my judges as I can into the system to help keep the country from changing things back too fast.
- Streamline copyright law. Shorten terms, and make copyright clearance easier. Expand the fair use exemptions.
- Fix the patent system, put more resources into examination, and shorten patent periods in most areas to 5-10 years.
- Eliminate all farm and product subsidies, but phase them out over a 4-year period. Try and develop free trade with anyone who is willing to do the same and also drop tariffs and implement both copyright regulations and patent laws like the ones I create.
- Get the government out of bedrooms, science, and doctor-patient decisions. End the drug war by legalizing most of them, regulating them, and taxing the heck out of 'em. Take the money saved and put it into basic policing and treatment.
Then, after 4-8 years as dictator, get the heck out and let elected officials screw it all up again.
After getting their butts handed to them on every other "alternative standard" they've tried to foist upon us (Beta, Memory Stick, MiniDisc, and ATRAC, to name a few), they finally got a win with Blu-Ray and now they've gotten frisky. I wish I understood why Sony keeps on trying to reinvent the wheel.
First of all, there's a problem with an awful lot of 80GB Seagate drives that are (mainly) used in Macbooks. Apple has been acknowledging it to a limited extent, and even though the laptop was out of warranty, the drive would likely been covered if enough of a stink was raised.
Secondly, if he paid for a replacement, he should have been allowed to keep the old drive. Once you're paying, you are buying the new part and the labor involved. Although, if his drive in fact has the same problem the Seagate 80s are coming up with, data snooping is not a problem... (the failed drives are, in fact, causing platter damage)
Third (and most important, perhaps), he should likely have been aware that on a Macbook the drive is a user-replaceable part. You remove the battery, unscrew the three screws that hold the memory/HD in place, and just pull the drive. Put the positioning screws on a new one, slide it in, and all is well with the world. I did a swap-out for a customer of mine two weeks ago who had a Seagate die, and the new 120 I put in cost about $100. The work took 5 minutes, most of which was spent looking for my screwdriver set!
Apple should get things clear though, and also step up and start a warranty extension for these drives. They've been pretty good about it with other hardware issues so far.
Actually, Newegg and Egghead had nothing to do with one another. Amazon bought what was left of Egghead back in (I think) 1999 or so when their online-only strategy failed. Newegg was a separate startup that was started down in California (Egghead was based in the Seattle area).
The newer generation chipsets have just started to hit the market in the last few months. It takes a while to engineer them into handsets - I think you'll start seeing them in volume devices during Q1 08. Apple never said iPhone was the one and only. It's the first handset in what will be a family of devices. It may even be that the iPhone that we know now stays on the market at a lower price point while the 3G iPhone comes out and sells for more money. Or maybe AT&T charges an extra $5 for the 3G data plan. It'll take a while to shake out.
Ultimately what all the companies involved have in common is that they want to earn boatloads of cash.
When he hits one, he really nails it, but when he misses it's by a lot. I posted some of this as a comment on his site, so I apologize for the duping, but:
Steve already stated that there would be a 3G iPhone, and he said to expect it late next year. Quoted at the London Apple Store opening back in September. That's not the only time Apple's discussed it.
EDGE is ubiquitous on the AT&T network. If you want data access, EDGE support is a no-brainer.
With the minor upgrades to EDGE that AT&T did over the spring and summer, the iPhone is improved, and so are the other EDGE devices (like the Treo 680, for instance) that they sell. It's a good investment by AT&T.
Right now, most of the 3G chipsets are still relatively bulky and draw fairly high-power - by 2008 that should change. But the current iPhone has really good battery life - adding 3G to that today would hurt. Apple's also stated this directly.
3G support isn't built out yet on much of the AT&T network. It's still only in the major metro areas. Kind of where EVDO was about 3 years ago. Not to mention that their 4G plans are in sync with Verizon's now.
Seriously, these aren't the toughest tea leaves to read. By the time AT&T builds out their network for 3G, Apple will be ready to use it. If Apple's contract gives them an opening to play in 700, they'll do that as well. But I count this as a Cringe miss - there's no conspiracy this time, just a lot of obvious and previously stated facts.
I put Leopard on my Santa Rosa MacBook Pro on day 1. Almost no real issues, zero crashes, and overall stability seems much better than it did under Tiger. Here's what I noticed as issues:
.0 release from Apple. I've been very encouraged. Granted, there are some design issues in my opinion (I don't like the new Dock, Stacks are a clever but broken idea, etc.), but those aren't bugs so much as features I don't like too much. But I think Leopard is mainly Good Stuff.
I had messed up my Keychain config many versions and computers ago, which was faithfully migrated from Mac to Mac. Leopard broke it (basically, my keychain was named for my user shortname, not "login"). I renamed the keychain, logged out and back in, and all was well.
VPN configs didn't migrate the authentication info properly because Internet Config is no longer the tool that manages the connection. Not a problem for most, but I have 23 different clients I use VPNs to connect to. Easily fixed.
I didn't use any InputManagers other than Saft/PithHelmet, so that was no biggie. And that combo works now.
When the Mac first wakes up and is scanning for a network connection, the mouse is kind of jerky. It lasts a few seconds.
All in all, I've seen remarkably few bugs for a
I actually know a couple of them - small company, and they did legitimately bust their tails to come up with a hardware/software combination to make it easier to support multilingual use. They're pretty decent guys. I haven't seen or talked to either of the two people there I know since earlier this year, though, so I have nothing to add about the suit or any merits it might have (or not have).
Just with all the speculation swirling in this thread, I thought this would be useful. They are definitely not large enough to justify running their own web server in-house. I'm also not sure who makes the keyboard for them (I was told once, over a year ago, but I can't remember), but it's a pretty solid one as keyboards go. The software was pretty clever as well.
It's not justified. But it's not wrong, either. Look. As of right now there's no official, endorsed SDK or system for putting 3rd party apps on the iPhone. Which to me is a waste of a great platform, but it's Apple's prerogative to do that. Maybe they will stabilize the works a little further, and then include an SDK in the Leopard version of Xcode. Maybe they'll announce 3rd party support along with iPhone 2.0 at Macworld in January. Maybe they'll never do it, and keep the platform locked down forever.
That said, since there is no sanctioned 3rd party way to load apps on an iPhone, Apple is perfectly free to do whatever they want with new firmware. They can make it seamless, they can break the hack that allowed easy 3rd party access, they can break efforts to software unlock it. You, the iPhone owner have no right to whine about it. If Apple had opened up the iPhone as a platform for 3rd parties and then broke it, well - you have a case. But they didn't.
I used AppTap on mine. Loved it. Threw a few neat programs on it and was rather fond of them. And I updated to 1.1.1 on Thursday knowing well that my phone would not be bricked (I never unlocked mine - had no reason to), but I'd lose all my cool programs. For now, at least. I did it anyways, and if/when AppTap works with the 1.1.1 firmware I'll reload it.
Bottom line: Until further notice, iPhones are only being sold as a closed platform that works exclusively with AT&T. If you don't like those terms, don't buy one. If you don't mind, then it's a really neat phone that blows away my old Treo for functionality in virtually all areas. Official unlocking? Probably never coming (that's what exclusive carrier deals are all about). 3rd party application support? I'd guess that we'll get it in the not-too-distant future - but give Apple a while to figure out how to be a phone vendor. But I'd feel the same if this were Microsoft. Use the product outside of the boundaries that were clearly defined at purchase time and you may get something great, but you're on your own.
Now if Apple does something to block older firmware versions from using AT&T's network as an anti-hack measure? Then I'd be pissed off. It's my business whether or not I choose to update. Not Apple's.
The iPhone's price cut was surprising (way earlier than I expected), but that's the nature of the cellphone/personal electronics business. Always has been. A device comes out at a premium price, and then over the 6-12 months of the device's lifecycle the price drops drastically. By the time the new hotness replaces it not only has the price collapsed, but it's not even a lust object anymore. But we've been going through those cycles ever since the Walkman.
What's masked it a little here in the US has been the subsidies that cellphone carriers pay to get lock-ins. And they increase the subsidies as the life of the gadget progresses (at least on paper), to reduce the perceived cost more. Remember, once upon a time the Motorola RAZR was the hottest phone on the market. And it cost around $400-$500, even with a contract. And that was just a phone! Now, of course, they're free with contracts, and have been for quite a while.
Anyhow, I'd say the dependency of the domestic auto market on rebates is a much better bellwether for the state of the "Crazy Eddie Economy" (and I grew up in New York, so I remember those ads), along with the use of incentives in the housing market. Heck, supermarket coupons are part of it, too. When discounts are the norm without any real reason to do so (real costs are always dropping in the electronics business), prices have no real floor, and consumers have no incentive to pay the "real" price, because they know that it's going down. A lot.
I'd like to see the ability to handle password-protected PDF, Word, and Excel docs. Mainly because I used Passwords Plus on my old Treo, and I still want a decent replacement (even a password-protected page in Notes would be enough). And I would like to see a small LED under the glass somewhere towards the top of the device, so I can see at a glance if new mail or voicemail has arrived. I'm not concerned about the lack of tethering. EDGE sucks for that, anyways. The keyboard's pretty good, though I had to get used to it.
If real GPS functionality could be added without costing me battery life, that'd be a great addition. Same with 3G. The battery life on mine has been terrific, and I don't want any new features that'll cost me any of it. I had a CDMA Treo - I know about crappy cellphone battery life.
A few NeXT alumni that either are or were Apple executives:
Avie Tevanian - Past Senior VP of Software Engineering, primary architect of Mac OS X/NeXTstep
Bertrand Serlet - Senior VP of Software Engineering, Avie's successor
Sina Tamaddon - VP of Applications
Jon Rubinstein - former VP of hardware development
Basically, when Steve took over within a short time virtually all the Apple folks who Steve didn't want around were sent packing and replaced by NeXT folks. They pretty much took over Apple from within.
Remember, though - part of what builds stock value is the perceived upside of the company business. Apple is strong because even though their market share is small, their growth is higher than most and they dominate the music player biz and have been expanding with success whenever they go (iPhone, anyone?). HP is driven by their printer business and their services besides PC, and Dell has volume and low costs. Gateway, though, has nothing unique. So analysts look at them and say "meh" - ergo a low valuation despite the sales numbers.
The market is a funny place.
This takes two companies with minimal brand equity and merges them to provide better buying power and a lower cost of goods. The fact that Gateway was worth only $710 million despite being the third-largest vendor here in the US should say something right there. And it's not good.
Market Cap of some major US PC vendors:
HP 125.68B
Apple 115.8B
Dell 61.63B
Gateway 676.29M
See an interesting trend? Gateway would be pocket change to any of those bigger companies. Basically, they died in retail, were taken over from within by E-Machines (even though Gateway bought E-Machines, the execs from E-Machines wound up in charge - just like when NeXT was bought by Apple) and stabilized just enough to turn into the company into bait for Acer.
Goodbye, Gateway...
As long as carriers dictate what phones do or don't do, this is no big deal - it's just typical. I suspect the GPS functionality lockdown has nothing to do with iPhone, it's probably just that AT&T wants to sell their Telenav service and make money from it. The iPhone really doesn't compete in the same segment as Blackberries of any stripe, and they sell at a non-subsidized price - GPS or the lack thereof isn't going to make a hell of a lot of difference in the Blackberry/iPhone purchase decision.
It's not like this is rare. Heck, Verizon's locked down the OBEX capabilities on most of their Bluetooth phones so they can sell their wireless sync service. Even Apple had to bite the bullet here - since there's no subsidy on the phone and Apple pockets all the money, don't you think they'd love to sell unlocked iPhones that would work on every GSM carrier? Or sell CDMA models through Verizon or Sprint? Of course they would. But to get AT&T to sell 'em and modify the network (build out EDGE capacity and add the Visual Voicemail system) they had to agree to a multi-year exclusivity deal.
So basically, the 8820 being modified because of Apple? I call BS. And if you want your Blackberry and you want it on AT&T, find yourself an unlocked version and just DIY. It's GSM, you can do that. It'll be unsubsidized, but at least that way it'll be a fair fight with the iPhone.
Wait - even though iPhone is unsubsidized it's still locked. Never mind!
VPN connections work correctly now. Before, it wouldn't save my PPTP password and then when it connected it would bring up a password entry box with only numeric characters allowed. I didn't try VPN with a password not saved, but at least saved password behavior is correct.
The update took around 7-8 minutes altogether. Left a ".ipsw" file in my ~/Library/iTunes/iPhone Software Updates folder which presumably contains the image.
Sure, but that's the GUI and application layer you're talking about - not so much the core OS and functionality. The user experience is radically different from traditional mobile phones, but it's still Mac OS X under the hood. CE isn't Windows, though it resembles Windows and has part of Win32 ported to it. Symbian is a completely different beast (the old EPOC PDA OS, if I recall without taking the time for a Wikipedia search), while OS X is OS X.
Now let's see how long until the first iPhone patch comes out, and if any of the other glitches will be fixed at the same time or if it's strictly for security. Obviously Apple's already been working on iPhone patch #1 and is probably just about ready to push it out after a month.
One functionality change that _should_ come out of this, though - I would turn off the default behavior of scanning for open networks and asking to join them. It wastes battery power, and the pop-ups for new networks are intrusive. In its place I'd put the AirPort icon in the display full-time (instead of just replacing the EDGE "E" when you are on a WiFi network) and allow quick access from there. I think, altogether, iPhone will be a pretty secure device after the initial flushing out of bugs, but this is a little different from traditional devices. iPhone has a classic desktop OS stripped down into a cellphone, whereas mainstream other devices (Palm, Windows CE, and Symbian) were designed more as cellphone systems (or PDA systems) and scaled up.
(not replacing my iPhone with a Razr anytime soon!)
Not to be a complete Apple fanboi (and yes, I do have an iPhone), I don't see that much of a fuss. The rental should be a free loaner, though. That part kinda sucks. But $80 to replace the battery every couple of years doesn't really seem like a problem. First of all, the battery life on this is way better than it has been on either of the Treos I've had (and I had the 3200ma extended battery in my old 700p - even with that the iPhone does better) so I wouldn't see too much need to swap it out manually. One charge lasts a long time. Secondly, most phones with Li-Ion batteries have expensive replacements from the manufacturer as well.
What I'll expect to see down the road is 3rd party replacement services at some point (soon, I think) - they'll probably have mail-order services that send you a loaner and have you fedex your iPhone for the swap. This phone is only a week old. A lot of things are going to change before the first unit wears out its battery.
Then again, it wouldn't be Slashdot without a good panic!
Are the songs, in fact, DRM-free?
Yes.
Are they at a higher bitrate as advertised?
Yes.
Is there any physical restriction on what you can do with them?
No.
When you buy a DRM-free song, are you buying a "share them with teh intarweb" license?
No.
Is there a whole batch of metadata in the songs you buy from iTunes, protected or not?
Yep.
Nothing to see here, move along.