Bruce. Stop it with the intellectual dishonesty already. Google "parsing iTunes XML" and you will find a treasure trove of code to parse the iTunes XML library. But even without bothering to licence someone else's code, Palm could easily write their own parser. It is dead easy in either Objective C or.NET/Mono. Apple provides full access to the library including playlists through the iTunes Library.xml file. Syncing contacts and pictures are not something that Apple is under any obligation to provide to third parties. It was not originally a feature of iTunes and was only added to support iPods and the iPhone. There are plenty of syncing libraries offered by parties other than Apple to do that on windows and OS X.
"It is your information so why don't you write a sync agent yourself?"
It's your idea so why don't you teach me? Bear in mind I've only dabbled in Assembler and don't have much programming experience otherwise. Thanks!
It's not my idea. RIM has implemented a sync agent for Blackberry phones using the XML. There are plenty of examples of code on the net in Java, C#, PHP, C++ for parsing the iTunes Library.xml file. Perhaps you have heard of a wonderful invention called "Google" just type in your question and you will get the answer. For example, search on "parsing iTunes XML" and you will find a lot of code examples. I'm not going to write it for you. I have a full time job.
Apple provides a windows API for writing iTunes plugins and a similar API for OS X. They also provide the iTunes library in XML format which any third party developer can use to sync media from the library to their device. RIM makes use of this XML document to facilitate media syncing in their windows and mac Blackberry desktop applications and Palm could have done the same with the Palm pre.
It would be a trivial matter to write a syncing agent using the Library XML and I could probably write one in a few days.
A few days, in your spare time, off the books? Or would you rather just hack your Vendor/Device ID in five seconds to get it working? Which is cheaper?
Both Cocoa and.NET provide simple methods for parsing XML documents. If you wanted to go with a cross platform solution, you could either go with java or develop in.NET and port over to the mono framework and statically link for each target OS.
Forgetting that hacking the vendor ID is a violation of the contract terms signed by Palm, releasing a new version of firmware each time Apple defeats Palm's hack costs a great deal more in terms of developer costs, QA and deployment.
What makes Palm's actions so puzzling is that this cat and mouse game is costing them a lot more money than simply creating a sync engine of their own. They would have a much shorter QA cycle and it would not require testing of their entire firmware over again if they just built the tool.
"explain to me why Palm should be allowed to piggy back on Apple's work for syncing windows pictures and contacts"
Because they are MY picture and they are MY contacts ; they are neither Apple's nor Palm's. What right does Apple have to say who should have access to MY information? I should not need to maintain a separate database of these simply because I wish to have different vendors for different pieces of software and hardware.
Absolute hogwash. It is your information so why don't you write a sync agent yourself? Do you expect open source developers to cater to your every need? If not, why do you expect Apple to spend money on developing features for free to support competitors? Shouldn't Palm be responsible for creating something like the Blackberry desktop client that RIM created?
The XML file for the music library is available for consumption by any developer and syncing contacts and picture from a windows or mac desktop are extra features Apple provides on those platforms as a convenience. They are not core features of iTunes. If you want those features for your Palm Pre, either write it yourself or pressure Palm to do it. Why do you insist that iTunes should sync external information for your third party device? Before iTunes offered syncing of contacts and photos, other products existing for PDAs of the day.
Palm is doing what is necessary to provide compatibility. If Apple and USB Interoperability Forum have worked to make the system deliberately incompatible, Palm has the legal right to circumvent that, and to sue Apple and USB-IF if they continue the cat-and-mouse game.
Probably this will eventually get to court, and Apple will be forced to extend itunes interoperability to other manufacturers.
I have not seen a more clueless post in recent memory. I would have thought that someone of your stature would have a better understanding of what is involved here. Palm is breaking the USB standard. There will probably be a lawsuit but Palm may end up facing fines and/or lose the ability to USB logos on their devices. They are in violation of the USB IF rules. They are not only using Apple's Vendor ID but also an Apple specific device ID. Device IDs are not necessarily unique under the USB spec so if a device need drivers to support specific features of the device, the OS will use a combination of the Device ID and Vendor ID to load the correct driver. If devices begin spoofing IDs like this, the entire schema for identification of USB devices will be broken.
Get back to us when you decide to leave the airy fairly land of Open Source/Academia and join the real world which is comprised of corporations with budget constraints and shrinking revenue streams. Some of us have to actually work hard for a living.
Apple provides a windows API for writing iTunes plugins and a similar API for OS X. They also provide the iTunes library in XML format which any third party developer can use to sync media from the library to their device. RIM makes use of this XML document to facilitate media syncing in their windows and mac Blackberry desktop applications and Palm could have done the same with the Palm pre.
It would be a trivial matter to write a syncing agent using the Library XML and I could probably write one in a few days.
Not only is palm using iTunes to sync media from the library but they are also syncing contacts and photos by piggy backing on the syncing services Apple built into windows/os x for syncing the iPhone and iPod touch. That goes beyond trying to just access media from iTunes.
If you really are the famous Bruce Perens, explain to me why Palm should be allowed to piggy back on Apple's work for syncing windows pictures and contacts. Would you support non-GPL software piggy backing on GPL'd software in the same way on linux or would you have a double standard on that issue? Are you telling us that you would attach a GPL violator but defend someone who is violating their license agreement with the USB IF?
I sincerely hope that you are not actually Bruce Perens and that someone has hacked your account because if that is not the case, you have become an embarrassment to the OSS movement much like RMS has become.
Perhaps these sorts of actions will finally bring about the downfall of the abominations that are "smartphones", and we'll see a return to the sensible and logical separation of CellPhone and PDA. And that way you'll be able to get a PDA back at it's reasonable price point, rather than the 3x-4x pricing that has become the result of the rush to smartphones.
Look at the price of a cellphone with someone like TracFone. There's the logical price a cellphone should be, the calling rates being the only thing we should be seeing the carriers competing on.
What would be a reasonable price point? Can you get a PDA with a touch interface for 99 bucks? Would the PDA be able to get email over the air? If so, isn't that just a smartphone sans voice calls? I had numerous cell "phones" like you describe. No thank you. I hated their UIs. It was a pain trying to enter in contacts or to text.
By "very liberal" you must mean "not foaming-at-the-mouth right-wing reactionary douchebag."
No, he means "foaming at the mouth" pseudo-left wing reactionary douche bag. If you Americans are going to use the term left or right wing, please use it properly. Democrats are right of center. They are only slightly more to the center than Republicans but there is no popular "left" in the US.
I hate to rain on the tinfoil hat brigade parade but this is for "provisioning" iPhones to corporate or government users. This allows the admin setting up iPhones to place restrictions on what applications and network services can run. It has nothing to do with carriers or Apple taking away features from your personal iPhones.
Dude, do you need some money? It sounds like you are running out of disk space or something. All of this emotion over something so silly. Are you really that anal?
I thought Android was supposed to be Free Software / Open Source Software?
The original copyright holder is not bound by the GPL as long as they are either the only contributor, have all copyrights assigned before a change is accepted or has agreement from all holders of copyright. The GPL only applies to other people who are not the original authors. But this is not about open source code but rather coded source google apps distributed with android.
You miss the point and the nature of the spec. The USB spec already has a way to ensure that the device you are talking to is a compatible device (hardware wise) - it's called the Device Id, and in general THAT is what should be checked to ensure the device is able to interoperate with your software.
This allows multiple hardware vendors to create hardware that interoperate.
Apple, on the other hand, decided that the vendor ID would be what they looked at to determine hardware compatability. It seems they did that because the spec does not allow other vendors to spoof vendor ID's, while the spec specifically encourages interoperation through the device ID field.
They are attempting to cut competition off at the knees by mangling the spirit of the spec (and possibly the letter) by using the one bit under their 'control' to make sure that other devices cannot act as an Ipod clone (even when they can very easily do so). In my book that's just wrong.
Hope this helps.
I think you are missing the point. Apple is now using the vendor specific ID to lock out Palm because the Pre is not an iPod even though they were using not only the vendor ID but the device ID for an iPod. Nobody else but Apple makes iPods. Does the Pre support iPod games? No. Does it support the genius playlist features? No. Is it an iPod or work alike? No.
They not only lied about the vendor ID of the device but the type of device as well.
If you're running your business on OS X Server, I'd be quite concerned if it was internet-facing or doing anything critical on a local network with smart people attached. OS X may be a great desktop operating system (apart from security concerns), but it's really got a scary security track record at this point.
I would be far more concerned about the potential exploits in your own internet facing code than some obscure exploit in the server OS than possibly is only exploitable on the LAN with exploit vectors (services) turned on unless your IT guys have completely opened up the firewall and port forwarded stuff unrelated to your internet facing services.
There is no reason why any business user cannot get their work done on a mac desktop or laptop these days and modern iMacs have a larger screen with higher resolution than most typical PC desktops. Snow Leopard now includes Exchange 2007 support for email, contacts and appointments. Any legacy apps that you cannot find an equivalent on OS X right now could be run through citrix desktop client for OS X.
Okey dokey, I'll tell my boss that when we try to install our accounting software on our shiny news Macs and find we can't get technical support.
I highlighted the answer for you. Google citrix and educate yourself. The applications that only exist on windows would be installed on a citrix (read windows) server.
I sometimes check my work email from home on my mac through citrix. No Parallels/Fusion or dual booting required.
Get rid of nut jobs like Dawkins and focus on real hard science. When you have people trying to pick a fight with religion rather than focusing on reproducible science, people lose interest.
I prefer to think of myself as someone with a life
An expensive one too if you can't be bothered to ever calculate the costs of anything.;)
No, I don't think you understand. What Chrisje is trying to say is that one's personal time is worth a lot more if you have a high paying job. So that savings that you get in exchange for lost functionality is a false bargain for many. How much is it worth to have access to your cellphone when travelling in Europe for instance?
With an iPhone, you can even roam while in Japan. Can you do that with a Pre? Nope.
There is no reason why any business user cannot get their work done on a mac desktop or laptop these days and modern iMacs have a larger screen with higher resolution than most typical PC desktops. Snow Leopard now includes Exchange 2007 support for email, contacts and appointments. Any legacy apps that you cannot find an equivalent on OS X right now could be run through citrix desktop client for OS X. Not only will they avoid the headaches of having to keep up to date on their virus definitions but they also will not have to worry about their laptop working with projector for their presentation. Execs get the added bonus of being able to create presentations with more polish with Keynote than you can accomplish out of the box with Powerpoint.
Installing win7 from a usb stick on a medium computer took me 20mins or so maybe a little less. What is the point of bringing this up. Its like.
'Well the ferrari enzo is pretty shitty. It's 0~60 really drops when it has bare tires and is driving up a 70 degree slope in the rain.' (Car analogy just for you guys.)
If it will likely never happen that way, who gives a flying fuck?
Since when do they distribute Windows 7 Retail on a USB stick? This article is not FUD, it is the recorded time from installing from a DVD-ROM drive.
Google is your friend use it. You can easily take any M4A audio file around 31 seconds or shorter in duration, as long as it is not ALAC lossless, and rename the extension to M4R to be recognized as a ringtone in iTunes. There are plenty of tutorials on the net on how to do it.
They need to come clean and admit that they cannot deliver "unlimited" data access to customers and instead offer capped internet in tiers up to 6GB per month transfer. Their core network backbone is not the problem. The problem is that people use the iPhone a lot more for data on average and the cell network architecture was not designed to handle so much traffic from so many users. If you want to use data beyond getting notifications, email or quickly checking for local restaurants on the google maps app, take advantage of the free AT&T WiFi where it is available out of consideration for other cell users. That WiFi access is also not going through their cell towers but rather through fiber.
I have yet to use more than 300 MB of transfer on my 6GB per month Fido account in Canada. This unlimited business is what is causing people to be stupid with their 3G data dragging everyone else down on the cell towers with them.
The updates to.NET are the equivalent. There are lots of.NET updates you have to patch up in windows update.
and before you complain ".NET is not the same as a patch upgrade"... that's exactly my point, the two release schedules are not equivalent.
*Sigh*.NET is not the same. It is more analogous to Java except that MSFT chose to implement the majority of the framework only on windows platforms. While.NET is only targeting the windows platform, the same.NET framework is released on all supported versions of windows be it XP, Vista, Windows 7, Windows 2000 server, Windows 2003 server or Window 2008 server. I'm not just a slashdot reader, I'm also a.NET/Java software developer for enterprise applications. You are comparing apples to oranges. My question was, when was the last time MSFT released an update the the win32 API or released a framework for C/C++ or whatever language you choose that made a developer's life easier for free? I cannot even remember a paid upgrade. Outside of the release of new DirectX versions which are mainly used for games, what have they updated? It would be nice if MSFT decided to update a new version of the Common controls and dialogues dll library and if MSFT started to actually each their own dog food in versions of Office instead of using all custom controls for their dialogues and buttons.
I mean, it appears to me as though Apple found a couple of cases where it wasn't the battery and they're trying to promote the idea that their product is safe before admitting that there is a defect.
Don't get me wrong, I'm sure the batteries went through alot of QA before they were shipped, and they were much safer then previous batteries used.
Why are you assuming that this has anything to do with the battery being defective? How do we know that this was not caused by either the backlight exploding directly from pressure or from the backlight exploding and causing damage to the lithium battery which then exploded?
That's not really true. The two release schedules are not really equivalent, its like comparing apples to oranges (pun intended).
the move from 10.5.1 -> 10.5.2 is more like a security patch update in Windows XP (like when you see 15 or so high priority patches in windows update).
Could you explain your reasoning behind that? 10.x releases usually include new public APIs for developers to use. When was the last time a service pack introduced a new API for developer on windows?
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Bruce. Stop it with the intellectual dishonesty already. Google "parsing iTunes XML" and you will find a treasure trove of code to parse the iTunes XML library. But even without bothering to licence someone else's code, Palm could easily write their own parser. It is dead easy in either Objective C or .NET/Mono. Apple provides full access to the library including playlists through the iTunes Library.xml file. Syncing contacts and pictures are not something that Apple is under any obligation to provide to third parties. It was not originally a feature of iTunes and was only added to support iPods and the iPhone. There are plenty of syncing libraries offered by parties other than Apple to do that on windows and OS X.
"It is your information so why don't you write a sync agent yourself?"
It's your idea so why don't you teach me? Bear in mind I've only dabbled in Assembler and don't have much programming experience otherwise. Thanks!
It's not my idea. RIM has implemented a sync agent for Blackberry phones using the XML. There are plenty of examples of code on the net in Java, C#, PHP, C++ for parsing the iTunes Library.xml file. Perhaps you have heard of a wonderful invention called "Google" just type in your question and you will get the answer. For example, search on "parsing iTunes XML" and you will find a lot of code examples. I'm not going to write it for you. I have a full time job.
blockquote>
Apple provides a windows API for writing iTunes plugins and a similar API for OS X. They also provide the iTunes library in XML format which any third party developer can use to sync media from the library to their device. RIM makes use of this XML document to facilitate media syncing in their windows and mac Blackberry desktop applications and Palm could have done the same with the Palm pre.
It would be a trivial matter to write a syncing agent using the Library XML and I could probably write one in a few days.
A few days, in your spare time, off the books? Or would you rather just hack your Vendor/Device ID in five seconds to get it working? Which is cheaper?
Both Cocoa and .NET provide simple methods for parsing XML documents. If you wanted to go with a cross platform solution, you could either go with java or develop in .NET and port over to the mono framework and statically link for each target OS.
Forgetting that hacking the vendor ID is a violation of the contract terms signed by Palm, releasing a new version of firmware each time Apple defeats Palm's hack costs a great deal more in terms of developer costs, QA and deployment.
What makes Palm's actions so puzzling is that this cat and mouse game is costing them a lot more money than simply creating a sync engine of their own. They would have a much shorter QA cycle and it would not require testing of their entire firmware over again if they just built the tool.
"explain to me why Palm should be allowed to piggy back on Apple's work for syncing windows pictures and contacts"
Because they are MY picture and they are MY contacts ; they are neither Apple's nor Palm's. What right does Apple have to say who should have access to MY information? I should not need to maintain a separate database of these simply because I wish to have different vendors for different pieces of software and hardware.
Absolute hogwash. It is your information so why don't you write a sync agent yourself? Do you expect open source developers to cater to your every need? If not, why do you expect Apple to spend money on developing features for free to support competitors? Shouldn't Palm be responsible for creating something like the Blackberry desktop client that RIM created?
The XML file for the music library is available for consumption by any developer and syncing contacts and picture from a windows or mac desktop are extra features Apple provides on those platforms as a convenience. They are not core features of iTunes. If you want those features for your Palm Pre, either write it yourself or pressure Palm to do it. Why do you insist that iTunes should sync external information for your third party device? Before iTunes offered syncing of contacts and photos, other products existing for PDAs of the day.
Palm is doing what is necessary to provide compatibility. If Apple and USB Interoperability Forum have worked to make the system deliberately incompatible, Palm has the legal right to circumvent that, and to sue Apple and USB-IF if they continue the cat-and-mouse game.
Probably this will eventually get to court, and Apple will be forced to extend itunes interoperability to other manufacturers.
I have not seen a more clueless post in recent memory. I would have thought that someone of your stature would have a better understanding of what is involved here. Palm is breaking the USB standard. There will probably be a lawsuit but Palm may end up facing fines and/or lose the ability to USB logos on their devices. They are in violation of the USB IF rules. They are not only using Apple's Vendor ID but also an Apple specific device ID. Device IDs are not necessarily unique under the USB spec so if a device need drivers to support specific features of the device, the OS will use a combination of the Device ID and Vendor ID to load the correct driver. If devices begin spoofing IDs like this, the entire schema for identification of USB devices will be broken.
Get back to us when you decide to leave the airy fairly land of Open Source/Academia and join the real world which is comprised of corporations with budget constraints and shrinking revenue streams. Some of us have to actually work hard for a living.
Apple provides a windows API for writing iTunes plugins and a similar API for OS X. They also provide the iTunes library in XML format which any third party developer can use to sync media from the library to their device. RIM makes use of this XML document to facilitate media syncing in their windows and mac Blackberry desktop applications and Palm could have done the same with the Palm pre.
It would be a trivial matter to write a syncing agent using the Library XML and I could probably write one in a few days.
Not only is palm using iTunes to sync media from the library but they are also syncing contacts and photos by piggy backing on the syncing services Apple built into windows/os x for syncing the iPhone and iPod touch. That goes beyond trying to just access media from iTunes.
If you really are the famous Bruce Perens, explain to me why Palm should be allowed to piggy back on Apple's work for syncing windows pictures and contacts. Would you support non-GPL software piggy backing on GPL'd software in the same way on linux or would you have a double standard on that issue? Are you telling us that you would attach a GPL violator but defend someone who is violating their license agreement with the USB IF?
I sincerely hope that you are not actually Bruce Perens and that someone has hacked your account because if that is not the case, you have become an embarrassment to the OSS movement much like RMS has become.
Perhaps these sorts of actions will finally bring about the downfall of the abominations that are "smartphones", and we'll see a return to the sensible and logical separation of CellPhone and PDA. And that way you'll be able to get a PDA back at it's reasonable price point, rather than the 3x-4x pricing that has become the result of the rush to smartphones.
Look at the price of a cellphone with someone like TracFone. There's the logical price a cellphone should be, the calling rates being the only thing we should be seeing the carriers competing on.
What would be a reasonable price point? Can you get a PDA with a touch interface for 99 bucks? Would the PDA be able to get email over the air? If so, isn't that just a smartphone sans voice calls? I had numerous cell "phones" like you describe. No thank you. I hated their UIs. It was a pain trying to enter in contacts or to text.
By "very liberal" you must mean "not foaming-at-the-mouth right-wing reactionary douchebag."
No, he means "foaming at the mouth" pseudo-left wing reactionary douche bag. If you Americans are going to use the term left or right wing, please use it properly. Democrats are right of center. They are only slightly more to the center than Republicans but there is no popular "left" in the US.
I hate to rain on the tinfoil hat brigade parade but this is for "provisioning" iPhones to corporate or government users. This allows the admin setting up iPhones to place restrictions on what applications and network services can run. It has nothing to do with carriers or Apple taking away features from your personal iPhones.
Dude, do you need some money? It sounds like you are running out of disk space or something. All of this emotion over something so silly. Are you really that anal?
While it is the software doing the delay, it is the architecture of the bus and behavior of the hardware that makes this necessary.
Uh, not that is a software problem. I assume that you are using Windows? USB devices are pretty damn hot pluggable in OS X.
I thought Android was supposed to be Free Software / Open Source Software?
The original copyright holder is not bound by the GPL as long as they are either the only contributor, have all copyrights assigned before a change is accepted or has agreement from all holders of copyright. The GPL only applies to other people who are not the original authors. But this is not about open source code but rather coded source google apps distributed with android.
You miss the point and the nature of the spec. The USB spec already has a way to ensure that the device you are talking to is a compatible device (hardware wise) - it's called the Device Id, and in general THAT is what should be checked to ensure the device is able to interoperate with your software.
This allows multiple hardware vendors to create hardware that interoperate.
Apple, on the other hand, decided that the vendor ID would be what they looked at to determine hardware compatability. It seems they did that because the spec does not allow other vendors to spoof vendor ID's, while the spec specifically encourages interoperation through the device ID field.
They are attempting to cut competition off at the knees by mangling the spirit of the spec (and possibly the letter) by using the one bit under their 'control' to make sure that other devices cannot act as an Ipod clone (even when they can very easily do so). In my book that's just wrong.
Hope this helps.
I think you are missing the point. Apple is now using the vendor specific ID to lock out Palm because the Pre is not an iPod even though they were using not only the vendor ID but the device ID for an iPod. Nobody else but Apple makes iPods. Does the Pre support iPod games? No. Does it support the genius playlist features? No. Is it an iPod or work alike? No.
They not only lied about the vendor ID of the device but the type of device as well.
If you're running your business on OS X Server, I'd be quite concerned if it was internet-facing or doing anything critical on a local network with smart people attached. OS X may be a great desktop operating system (apart from security concerns), but it's really got a scary security track record at this point.
I would be far more concerned about the potential exploits in your own internet facing code than some obscure exploit in the server OS than possibly is only exploitable on the LAN with exploit vectors (services) turned on unless your IT guys have completely opened up the firewall and port forwarded stuff unrelated to your internet facing services.
Okey dokey, I'll tell my boss that when we try to install our accounting software on our shiny news Macs and find we can't get technical support.
I highlighted the answer for you. Google citrix and educate yourself. The applications that only exist on windows would be installed on a citrix (read windows) server.
I sometimes check my work email from home on my mac through citrix. No Parallels/Fusion or dual booting required.
Get rid of nut jobs like Dawkins and focus on real hard science. When you have people trying to pick a fight with religion rather than focusing on reproducible science, people lose interest.
AT&T disabled tethering for AT&T customers. Tethering is working fine on 3GS on Fido before and after the 3.1 update.
An expensive one too if you can't be bothered to ever calculate the costs of anything. ;)
No, I don't think you understand. What Chrisje is trying to say is that one's personal time is worth a lot more if you have a high paying job. So that savings that you get in exchange for lost functionality is a false bargain for many. How much is it worth to have access to your cellphone when travelling in Europe for instance?
With an iPhone, you can even roam while in Japan. Can you do that with a Pre? Nope.
There is no reason why any business user cannot get their work done on a mac desktop or laptop these days and modern iMacs have a larger screen with higher resolution than most typical PC desktops. Snow Leopard now includes Exchange 2007 support for email, contacts and appointments. Any legacy apps that you cannot find an equivalent on OS X right now could be run through citrix desktop client for OS X. Not only will they avoid the headaches of having to keep up to date on their virus definitions but they also will not have to worry about their laptop working with projector for their presentation. Execs get the added bonus of being able to create presentations with more polish with Keynote than you can accomplish out of the box with Powerpoint.
Installing win7 from a usb stick on a medium computer took me 20mins or so maybe a little less. What is the point of bringing this up. Its like. 'Well the ferrari enzo is pretty shitty. It's 0~60 really drops when it has bare tires and is driving up a 70 degree slope in the rain.' (Car analogy just for you guys.) If it will likely never happen that way, who gives a flying fuck?
Since when do they distribute Windows 7 Retail on a USB stick? This article is not FUD, it is the recorded time from installing from a DVD-ROM drive.
Google is your friend use it. You can easily take any M4A audio file around 31 seconds or shorter in duration, as long as it is not ALAC lossless, and rename the extension to M4R to be recognized as a ringtone in iTunes. There are plenty of tutorials on the net on how to do it.
I have yet to use more than 300 MB of transfer on my 6GB per month Fido account in Canada. This unlimited business is what is causing people to be stupid with their 3G data dragging everyone else down on the cell towers with them.
Sometimes it is the customer's fault.
Not when "it" involves a consumer product exploding, and "the customer" is a whole lot of customers.
How many reports? Under 5? In how many countries?
The updates to .NET are the equivalent. There are lots of .NET updates you have to patch up in windows update.
and before you complain ".NET is not the same as a patch upgrade" ... that's exactly my point, the two release schedules are not equivalent.
*Sigh* .NET is not the same. It is more analogous to Java except that MSFT chose to implement the majority of the framework only on windows platforms. While .NET is only targeting the windows platform, the same .NET framework is released on all supported versions of windows be it XP, Vista, Windows 7, Windows 2000 server, Windows 2003 server or Window 2008 server. I'm not just a slashdot reader, I'm also a .NET/Java software developer for enterprise applications. You are comparing apples to oranges. My question was, when was the last time MSFT released an update the the win32 API or released a framework for C/C++ or whatever language you choose that made a developer's life easier for free? I cannot even remember a paid upgrade. Outside of the release of new DirectX versions which are mainly used for games, what have they updated? It would be nice if MSFT decided to update a new version of the Common controls and dialogues dll library and if MSFT started to actually each their own dog food in versions of Office instead of using all custom controls for their dialogues and buttons.
Now THAT -IS- interesting.
I mean, it appears to me as though Apple found a couple of cases where it wasn't the battery and they're trying to promote the idea that their product is safe before admitting that there is a defect.
Don't get me wrong, I'm sure the batteries went through alot of QA before they were shipped, and they were much safer then previous batteries used.
Why are you assuming that this has anything to do with the battery being defective? How do we know that this was not caused by either the backlight exploding directly from pressure or from the backlight exploding and causing damage to the lithium battery which then exploded?
That's not really true. The two release schedules are not really equivalent, its like comparing apples to oranges (pun intended). the move from 10.5.1 -> 10.5.2 is more like a security patch update in Windows XP (like when you see 15 or so high priority patches in windows update).
Could you explain your reasoning behind that? 10.x releases usually include new public APIs for developers to use. When was the last time a service pack introduced a new API for developer on windows?