There are a couple other reasons you're missing for why people might choose the iPod. For one, it's the only one that plays iTunes Music Store files. Regardless of anyone's personal feelings against the store, it's still the most popular and largest music store online, and people might want to use it and then get an iPod to listen to the songs.
Also, on the Mac, the iPod is still the best choice in many respects. Virtually every Mac user uses iTunes, and between that and prevalent Firewire ports, it's just a lot easier to use an iPod that's almost guaranteed to work rather than another solution which is designed largely from a Windows standpoint (there may be other ways of loading music, like direct disk access, but most non-iPod devices are still designed for Windows first).
So, there are a number of valid reasons why people may choose the iPod over the competition, regardless of whether they think it's "cool" or not. The average consumer doesn't want a litany of features that they may never use. Most of them are focused on simplicity, and especially if they own a Mac, the iPod usually comes out on top for them.
Entrapment can only apply to criminal cases. Copyright infringement is a civil matter, since you can't go to jail for it and only the party that is harmed can bring the case to court, not the government. As such, entrapment doesn't matter one bit in this instance.
You also have another problem with Wal-Mart. If they are able to kick out other stores in the area that happen to provide at least basic health insurance for their employees, and then those people who lose their jobs go into positions at Wal-Mart or the local gas station, it raises the end cost for all of us. Some of that does depend on people focusing on short-term financial gain instead of long-term issues by shopping at Wal-Mart. However, Wal-Mart's tactics in dealing with suppliers border on predatory and offer little room for real competition among retailers.
Wal-Mart and gas stations tend to offer virtually no health insurance (Wal-Mart being more guilty, as they have the means to pay for insurance, whereas many gas stations admittedly don't), while many grocery stores do. Therefore, when those grocery stores go out of business, we the taxpayers get to pay for things like Medicaid when the former employees get sick. You're basically straining the local and state budgets, all for the promise of a cheap pack of hot dogs. Face it, not everyone can be as lucky as most of us are, at least having the means to somewhat pick and choose our jobs. Life deals some people a heavy blow, and there's some serious ethical and financial questions that affect all of us when Wal-Mart or low-scale jobs are the only things left in some towns.
No, the zap2it support still exists in MythTV. The new listing service even says in their FAQ that their service will only be one of many options, including XMLTV and zap2it, for finding TV listings. Their goal is just to sell a more complete set of listings that "just works," contributes money back to MythTV, and has an eye toward continued development based on what subscribers request.
Right now they're just selling a couple, bundled when you buy certain albums. In all but one case, if you buy the album, they include a short video for free with it. I've seen reference to one where you can buy the video separately when you buy a single song, but that's only one song as far as I can tell. Right now I have a feeling that they're just testing the waters, making sure that everything works out OK both distribution- and consumer-wise.
That's because the business model differs between Apple and Microsoft. Microsoft can make quite a bit of money just licensing their technology, and they don't make their own portable media player, so it doesn't cost them any market share in that market to license their WMA technology. On the other hand, Apple makes their money on the media players themselves, since iTMS is designed to get people to buy iPods. If they start licensing out their technology, people are less likely to buy an iPod, thereby cutting off a large part of their revenue stream.
You'll also note that many of those flaws revolve around one of the following issues: A) bad data sent to the program causes it to crash (just crash, not expose any security risks) B) server-related issues in non-Apple-made programs such as Apache, and which will rarely be used by end users C) Require the user to either manually add a file to a certain location or authorize another program to add the file to that location. Only one or two actually have any serious end-user effect to them. I'm not one to say that Apple's perfect, but it's also not true to say that all 19 fixed flaws relate to security flaws that will likely affect end users.
I've seen comments on this before. What I've usually seen as the explanation is that the site is using a firewall/proxy running on BSD in front of a server using IIS on NT. Therefore, the server will report itself as being IIS, but when you try to determine what the OS is, based on the response, it will look like BSD since the data's actually being sent by the BSD box.
Still, I can see a persuasive argument being made that it is a restriction on the "life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness" inalienable right, which is by definition not a right that can be granted or taken away by the government according to the US Constitution.
Actually, that phrase is found in the Declaration of Independence, which has exactly no legal standing in our country's laws. It appears nowhere in the Constitution.
There's been iPod support in Linux for over two years now, using gtkpod. Not having my PC at college has prevented me from trying anything like this personally, but I've heard good things about the program before.
I agree that Mail could use some work. It's seemed to be improved in Tiger (at least what I could tell from using it for a short time tonight at the Apple Center here in Denmark). Still, I won't try to convince anyone that Mail is Apple's finest product. Far from it.
I'm not sure where your sluggish Safari problems come in. Personally, I've found that even on my iBook G3 with 384MB that it's still quite fast. I use Firefox mainly only because some work that I do is made much easier by certain extensions. Before I started this work, I used Safari pretty often and it didn't have many problems in terms of speed.
I think by overlooking the iLife apps you're overlooking tools that are big selling points for the Mac platform. I know iPhoto alone has made my computing experience much better. It's exactly for media purposes that many people are moving to Macs. For the most part, there are no comparable programs for Windows or Linux systems right now.
I think the grandparent poster was also right to question your practice of asking complicated questions loudly in Apple Stores. I may not like certain companies, but I also know that there are much better ways to express my displeasure with that company than going into their store and intentionally trying to embarrass them. You can't expect Apple Store employees to know everything about the platform. A quick Google search will find many answers to more advanced questions, such as the presence of an X11 server available from Apple that I use to run GIMP flawlessly in. You may be displeased with Apple, but there are much better routes than to go into their stores and create a false impression for computer novices who may not realize that X11 is a technology that they'll probably never use on any Mac they're thinking of buying.
And to clarify one thing before it comes up, I am not employed in any way, directly or indirectly, with Apple. Nor does my work depend at all on Apple (I'm a student and technical writer, I can do work on any OS I so choose). Just to clear that potential accusation up.
Have you ever bought a domain from GoDaddy? They try to upsell you on a lot of things like hosting, "search engine ranking increaser" programs, and privately-registered domains. A lot of them are marked "Yes" by default, so I'm sure some people buy things without realizing it. Their hosting business also seems to be quite lucrative, so I'm sure that contributes to their bottom line. They also have pretty cheap SSL certificates, as well as backordered domains at a premium price, so I could see them having a good amount of money made per year.
The single-CPU offering is still available, the same single-1.8Ghz Power Mac as always. It just wasn't updated during this revision, so most people aren't reporting on it. When I checked on the Apple Store site, it was still there alongside the new revision Power Macs.
Nope, the 2.5Ghz model from the last revision also included the same liquid-cooling system. Predictions of massive problems with the system came to nothing, as many people have been running the liquid-cooled 2.5Ghz systems for a while now with no reports that I've seen of leaking or massive heat-related failure.
I fail to see how this can possibly cause any significant drop in store foot traffic. Is there really anyone out there that would go into an Apple Store just to buy a Dummies book instead of going to Barnes and Noble and picking up that book or ordering it online? I know I wouldn't. I either go to an Apple Store to either look at the latest products firsthand or buy some product or accessory. Never have I known anyone to go to the Apple Store just for a book.
Technically, the first Trojan to appear for Mac OS X (and which should work on Tiger) was a file purporting to be a warezed Office 2004 Web Installer that actually was an Applescript script to delete the user's home directory automatically. Of course, in that case, if you were trying to download something you clearly knew was illegal, in a way you can only blame yourself.
I also don't think you'll see much impact from this new Trojan anywhere. For one thing, where are you going to get the Trojan from? The only method I can think of realistically is through email, but when was the last time an OS X user got sent any Mac program via email randomly? I can see a few users getting duped by it, but others will either never think of opening the file, or be alerted to a problem when the installer requires their administrator password. More importantly, the Trojan isn't a worm, so it doesn't spread itself, so any damage should be minimal at worst.
Apple makes it quite abundantly clear throughout the Apple Developer Connection program by various means that most software you get through the program is considered confidential and under an NDA. There's a big section on different pages that tells exactly what you're not allowed to do with each piece of software that you're given, and if someone claimed to say that they never saw it, I'd be quite unable to believe them. I know I've certainly seen it a bunch of times (I have an ADC membership).
Firefly is the best example (episodes shown out of order, at different times, and no advertising), and then Wonderfalls.
Actually, I'd say that the killing of Futurama was probably the best example of Fox ruining a good show. Putting it on right after NFL games was definitely a good way of killing off what was developing a very interesting and entertaining series of plots. Instead, Futurama ended much too early.
Copenhagen's is pretty cool as well. They have quite a new system, and it's nice and fairly efficient. I take it a couple times a month to go shopping or to meet friends, and sitting at the front is great, especially on the above-ground tracks.
Also, I suspect the clerk used one of those marking pens that shows a different color for fake money. That's known as defacing currency and is also a crime.
Not true. Yes, defacing currency is illegal, but only with the intent of rendering it unfit to remain in circulation. Making a small mark with a marking pen is not going to make the bill unable to stay in circulation, and the clerk certainly isn't intending to mark it for the purpose of getting a real bill out of circulation.
Well, it seems that Google's parser is sometimes a little strict on the format of the question. For instance, using "What is HTML?" finds a thorough answer to that question. Google also finds the capital of Indonesia correctly using the same question posed to Ask Jeeves.
It works a lot better if you do it in question format. Search for "What is the population of Germany?" and you get an answer somewhere around 82 million (I forget the exact answer).
But it isn't the government's place to dictate something like that. People are adequately informed ahead of time that iTunes Music Store files can only be played on iPods, and they take that risk of not being able to use it on other players by buying the songs.
It's just as absurd as saying that, because people bought Beta tapes and later switched to VHS by choice or because Beta players went off the market, that all VCR manufacturers should be forced to have the ability to play Beta tapes on their devices. After all, the consumer has a large number of tapes they paid for, which they can't use, unless they find a used Beta player or use a Beta->VHS system to convert the tapes to another lossy format, in which case they lose quality for the videos they legally purchased.
(Yes, I know there are a few minor flaws with this analogy. Still, I think it gets the point across well.)
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I think the point of the grandparent was to be humorous. Lighten up a bit, eh?
There are a couple other reasons you're missing for why people might choose the iPod. For one, it's the only one that plays iTunes Music Store files. Regardless of anyone's personal feelings against the store, it's still the most popular and largest music store online, and people might want to use it and then get an iPod to listen to the songs.
Also, on the Mac, the iPod is still the best choice in many respects. Virtually every Mac user uses iTunes, and between that and prevalent Firewire ports, it's just a lot easier to use an iPod that's almost guaranteed to work rather than another solution which is designed largely from a Windows standpoint (there may be other ways of loading music, like direct disk access, but most non-iPod devices are still designed for Windows first).
So, there are a number of valid reasons why people may choose the iPod over the competition, regardless of whether they think it's "cool" or not. The average consumer doesn't want a litany of features that they may never use. Most of them are focused on simplicity, and especially if they own a Mac, the iPod usually comes out on top for them.
Entrapment can only apply to criminal cases. Copyright infringement is a civil matter, since you can't go to jail for it and only the party that is harmed can bring the case to court, not the government. As such, entrapment doesn't matter one bit in this instance.
You also have another problem with Wal-Mart. If they are able to kick out other stores in the area that happen to provide at least basic health insurance for their employees, and then those people who lose their jobs go into positions at Wal-Mart or the local gas station, it raises the end cost for all of us. Some of that does depend on people focusing on short-term financial gain instead of long-term issues by shopping at Wal-Mart. However, Wal-Mart's tactics in dealing with suppliers border on predatory and offer little room for real competition among retailers.
Wal-Mart and gas stations tend to offer virtually no health insurance (Wal-Mart being more guilty, as they have the means to pay for insurance, whereas many gas stations admittedly don't), while many grocery stores do. Therefore, when those grocery stores go out of business, we the taxpayers get to pay for things like Medicaid when the former employees get sick. You're basically straining the local and state budgets, all for the promise of a cheap pack of hot dogs. Face it, not everyone can be as lucky as most of us are, at least having the means to somewhat pick and choose our jobs. Life deals some people a heavy blow, and there's some serious ethical and financial questions that affect all of us when Wal-Mart or low-scale jobs are the only things left in some towns.
No, the zap2it support still exists in MythTV. The new listing service even says in their FAQ that their service will only be one of many options, including XMLTV and zap2it, for finding TV listings. Their goal is just to sell a more complete set of listings that "just works," contributes money back to MythTV, and has an eye toward continued development based on what subscribers request.
The iPod Shuffle is a flash-based player.
Right now they're just selling a couple, bundled when you buy certain albums. In all but one case, if you buy the album, they include a short video for free with it. I've seen reference to one where you can buy the video separately when you buy a single song, but that's only one song as far as I can tell. Right now I have a feeling that they're just testing the waters, making sure that everything works out OK both distribution- and consumer-wise.
That's because the business model differs between Apple and Microsoft. Microsoft can make quite a bit of money just licensing their technology, and they don't make their own portable media player, so it doesn't cost them any market share in that market to license their WMA technology. On the other hand, Apple makes their money on the media players themselves, since iTMS is designed to get people to buy iPods. If they start licensing out their technology, people are less likely to buy an iPod, thereby cutting off a large part of their revenue stream.
You'll also note that many of those flaws revolve around one of the following issues: A) bad data sent to the program causes it to crash (just crash, not expose any security risks) B) server-related issues in non-Apple-made programs such as Apache, and which will rarely be used by end users C) Require the user to either manually add a file to a certain location or authorize another program to add the file to that location. Only one or two actually have any serious end-user effect to them. I'm not one to say that Apple's perfect, but it's also not true to say that all 19 fixed flaws relate to security flaws that will likely affect end users.
I've seen comments on this before. What I've usually seen as the explanation is that the site is using a firewall/proxy running on BSD in front of a server using IIS on NT. Therefore, the server will report itself as being IIS, but when you try to determine what the OS is, based on the response, it will look like BSD since the data's actually being sent by the BSD box.
Still, I can see a persuasive argument being made that it is a restriction on the "life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness" inalienable right, which is by definition not a right that can be granted or taken away by the government according to the US Constitution.
Actually, that phrase is found in the Declaration of Independence, which has exactly no legal standing in our country's laws. It appears nowhere in the Constitution.
There's been iPod support in Linux for over two years now, using gtkpod. Not having my PC at college has prevented me from trying anything like this personally, but I've heard good things about the program before.
I agree that Mail could use some work. It's seemed to be improved in Tiger (at least what I could tell from using it for a short time tonight at the Apple Center here in Denmark). Still, I won't try to convince anyone that Mail is Apple's finest product. Far from it.
I'm not sure where your sluggish Safari problems come in. Personally, I've found that even on my iBook G3 with 384MB that it's still quite fast. I use Firefox mainly only because some work that I do is made much easier by certain extensions. Before I started this work, I used Safari pretty often and it didn't have many problems in terms of speed.
I think by overlooking the iLife apps you're overlooking tools that are big selling points for the Mac platform. I know iPhoto alone has made my computing experience much better. It's exactly for media purposes that many people are moving to Macs. For the most part, there are no comparable programs for Windows or Linux systems right now.
I think the grandparent poster was also right to question your practice of asking complicated questions loudly in Apple Stores. I may not like certain companies, but I also know that there are much better ways to express my displeasure with that company than going into their store and intentionally trying to embarrass them. You can't expect Apple Store employees to know everything about the platform. A quick Google search will find many answers to more advanced questions, such as the presence of an X11 server available from Apple that I use to run GIMP flawlessly in. You may be displeased with Apple, but there are much better routes than to go into their stores and create a false impression for computer novices who may not realize that X11 is a technology that they'll probably never use on any Mac they're thinking of buying.
And to clarify one thing before it comes up, I am not employed in any way, directly or indirectly, with Apple. Nor does my work depend at all on Apple (I'm a student and technical writer, I can do work on any OS I so choose). Just to clear that potential accusation up.
Have you ever bought a domain from GoDaddy? They try to upsell you on a lot of things like hosting, "search engine ranking increaser" programs, and privately-registered domains. A lot of them are marked "Yes" by default, so I'm sure some people buy things without realizing it. Their hosting business also seems to be quite lucrative, so I'm sure that contributes to their bottom line. They also have pretty cheap SSL certificates, as well as backordered domains at a premium price, so I could see them having a good amount of money made per year.
The single-CPU offering is still available, the same single-1.8Ghz Power Mac as always. It just wasn't updated during this revision, so most people aren't reporting on it. When I checked on the Apple Store site, it was still there alongside the new revision Power Macs.
Nope, the 2.5Ghz model from the last revision also included the same liquid-cooling system. Predictions of massive problems with the system came to nothing, as many people have been running the liquid-cooled 2.5Ghz systems for a while now with no reports that I've seen of leaking or massive heat-related failure.
I fail to see how this can possibly cause any significant drop in store foot traffic. Is there really anyone out there that would go into an Apple Store just to buy a Dummies book instead of going to Barnes and Noble and picking up that book or ordering it online? I know I wouldn't. I either go to an Apple Store to either look at the latest products firsthand or buy some product or accessory. Never have I known anyone to go to the Apple Store just for a book.
Technically, the first Trojan to appear for Mac OS X (and which should work on Tiger) was a file purporting to be a warezed Office 2004 Web Installer that actually was an Applescript script to delete the user's home directory automatically. Of course, in that case, if you were trying to download something you clearly knew was illegal, in a way you can only blame yourself.
I also don't think you'll see much impact from this new Trojan anywhere. For one thing, where are you going to get the Trojan from? The only method I can think of realistically is through email, but when was the last time an OS X user got sent any Mac program via email randomly? I can see a few users getting duped by it, but others will either never think of opening the file, or be alerted to a problem when the installer requires their administrator password. More importantly, the Trojan isn't a worm, so it doesn't spread itself, so any damage should be minimal at worst.
Apple makes it quite abundantly clear throughout the Apple Developer Connection program by various means that most software you get through the program is considered confidential and under an NDA. There's a big section on different pages that tells exactly what you're not allowed to do with each piece of software that you're given, and if someone claimed to say that they never saw it, I'd be quite unable to believe them. I know I've certainly seen it a bunch of times (I have an ADC membership).
Firefly is the best example (episodes shown out of order, at different times, and no advertising), and then Wonderfalls.
Actually, I'd say that the killing of Futurama was probably the best example of Fox ruining a good show. Putting it on right after NFL games was definitely a good way of killing off what was developing a very interesting and entertaining series of plots. Instead, Futurama ended much too early.
Copenhagen's is pretty cool as well. They have quite a new system, and it's nice and fairly efficient. I take it a couple times a month to go shopping or to meet friends, and sitting at the front is great, especially on the above-ground tracks.
Also, I suspect the clerk used one of those marking pens that shows a different color for fake money. That's known as defacing currency and is also a crime.
Not true. Yes, defacing currency is illegal, but only with the intent of rendering it unfit to remain in circulation. Making a small mark with a marking pen is not going to make the bill unable to stay in circulation, and the clerk certainly isn't intending to mark it for the purpose of getting a real bill out of circulation.
Reference: The Bureau of Engraving and Printing's site
Well, it seems that Google's parser is sometimes a little strict on the format of the question. For instance, using "What is HTML?" finds a thorough answer to that question. Google also finds the capital of Indonesia correctly using the same question posed to Ask Jeeves.
It works a lot better if you do it in question format. Search for "What is the population of Germany?" and you get an answer somewhere around 82 million (I forget the exact answer).
Bit surprised nobody has mentioned Tor
:P
Nobody except the EFF, that is. Look in TFA under the heading "2. Using Anonymizing Technologies", 3rd paragraph
But it isn't the government's place to dictate something like that. People are adequately informed ahead of time that iTunes Music Store files can only be played on iPods, and they take that risk of not being able to use it on other players by buying the songs.
It's just as absurd as saying that, because people bought Beta tapes and later switched to VHS by choice or because Beta players went off the market, that all VCR manufacturers should be forced to have the ability to play Beta tapes on their devices. After all, the consumer has a large number of tapes they paid for, which they can't use, unless they find a used Beta player or use a Beta->VHS system to convert the tapes to another lossy format, in which case they lose quality for the videos they legally purchased.
(Yes, I know there are a few minor flaws with this analogy. Still, I think it gets the point across well.)