No, I'm not, which is the point. The BSD license gives the code away and lets you define freedom for yourself. GPL has a set of rules, so it is by definition less "free."
As opposed to Slashdot, which never tries to influence its readers, ever. By the way, the iPod is lame and has less space than a nomad, people who "steal" GPL code are "thieves," and it's not theft to pirate music and not pay artists because the RIAA are bad guys who dare to protect their own copyrights using the legal system (The horror! The outrage!).
Providing source code for free projects is hardly exclusively "his philosophy," and Apache doesn't even use the GPL.
Stallman isn't looking out for people when he dictates how they are supposed to refer to Linux or what they're allowed to do with code they write. Instead, he's defining a personal view of "freedom" and enforcing it on others, when my definition of freedom is more along the lines of the BSD license. I've always found him quite self-aggrandizing and a little weird.
Uh, most of the longest running servers online are running...BSD. Linux 2.6 has been a mish-mash of new code that should have been in a development line of kernels, and there have been prominent developers coming out and describing a spiraling trend of instability because of the new development model. It was even posted on Slashdot. Funny that you disregard that but selectively remember everyone else's FUD.
As for FreeBSD oopsing when you hotplug, never had it happen.
No offense, but you just illustrated what the original poster was mocking by padding your list of Windows steps to make it look worse, when in reality, your average install on Windows is:
Windows 1.) Insert CD. Setup automatically begins.
And the fact remains that a lot of Linux packages require more manual configuration than their Windows counterparts.
The BSD lets you do what you want, while the GPL license defines Stallman's personal definition of "free" and then imposes it on you, which isn't freedom at all. People want to impose their ideologies on other people and call it free.
But of course other browsers had tabs far earlier than any of these two.
No, they didn't. Opera had its MDI interface back in 1994 in a technical preview. When people talk about "tabbed browsing," what they're referring to is the idea of having one browser window containing multiple pages, which is essentially MDI. Mozilla also stole pop-up blocking and mouse gestures from Opera.
How about Opera? From the very article everyone keeps linking to:
"Independently, the founders of Opera built an MDI-based browser in the same year (via a technical preview not available publicly; a public release was made in 1996). The tabbed interface approach was then followed by the Internet Explorer shell NetCaptor in 1997."
Don't forget mouse gestures and pop-up blocking, other Opera features "adopted" by Mozilla.
"Independently, the founders of Opera built an MDI-based browser in the same year (via a technical preview not available publicly; a public release was made in 1996)."
Independently, the founders of Opera built an MDI-based browser in the same year (via a technical preview not available publicly; a public release was made in 1996).
Opera also innovated pop-up blocking and mouse gestures. Are you going to scream at us about that next, or just admit that Opera was the first with these features, and Mozilla simply "borrowed" them?
But for some reason, new Apple products have been met with consistent derision on Slashdot. The iPod is a good example, and the iPod mini was predicted by nearly everyone to be a failure. That is changing now that the proof of Apple's success is in the financial numbers.
Yes Vista has translucent window borders, no, OS X doesn't. It used to have transparent window borders (Not 3D accelerated like in Vista).
Wrong, OS X's translucent window borders were hardware accelerated through the Quartz Compositor using OpenGL. Apple no longer uses translucent window borders because the effect becomes very tiring. XGL has nothing at all to do with this, especially since Apple was doing this back in 2002 with the introduction of OS X 10.2 Jaguar.
Microsoft announced Avalon in 2002, which means they've been thinking about the idea for some time. Linux also has XGL. Hardware accelerated graphics are nothing new.
"Thinking about the idea for some time" doesn't count. Quartz was first unveiled years earlier in the OS X betas.
I think you're confusing resolution independance with something else. Quartz uses a sudo-vector graphics way of drawing windows, but it is not resolution independant. Vista uses the same way, since the blur is simly a pixel-shader effect.
Wrong, Quartz has always been resolution-independent, which is why an NSView can send the contents of its view to a printer, which has a higher resolution than the screen. In other words, the same drawing commands used to draw to the screen are used to draw to the printer. Quartz does not use a "pseudo-vector graphics way" of drawing windows, whatever that means. In OS X Tiger, a scaling factor was added for developers to test against, and Leopard will expose this value to the user for modification.
No arguing there, but Flip3D is nothing like expose, nothing at all like it.
It's obviously a response to it.
Security prompts are something Apple did not invent, and the fact that a password is not asked for has nothing to do with whether MS copied Apple, but if Apple had above a measly 5% share, they'd have to start thinking about all the moronic people who wouldn't know what to do.
5% isn't "measly" and neither is their 15% worldwide install base of 18 million OS X users or their presence in creative professional and academic markets. Regardless, your response barely addresses my point. UAC doesn't even ask for a password, and people will get into the habit very quickly of just clicking "Continue" whenever the annoying box pops up. OS X requires you to pay attention and enter your password, which is more logical and more secure.
Actually, it's quite different, the different colour, the lines showing the cone, and the different size of the magnet. How many different ways of showing sound via an icon can you think of?
No, it's not "quite different;" it's exactly the same but in inversed monochrome. It's the same sideways speaker icon with three soundwaves that increase and decrease depending on volume level. Before Vista, the speaker looked different and didn't behave that way, and it wasn't monochrome. OS X had this same icon and behavior for half a decade.
Most everything in Windows is some inverse of the original MacOS. Vista's taskbar completes this by become black in inverse to the white system menu of MacOS. The clock is still on the right side as are the system tray indicators (did you not notice that the task bar is essentially the Mac OS system menu moved to the bottom of the screen?). And now the system tray icons themselves are inverses of the MacOS versions.
No it isn't, it's completely different. The only similarity is that they are both round.
OS X has used a signature round, spinning busy indicator for half a decade, and you're actually arguing that there is no similarity when Microsoft suddenly adopts a round, spinning indicator after years of using the hourglass?
When OS X boots, it has its standard spinning radial progress indicator (animated segments arranged in a ring
You're right, but Micrsoft is following Apple's lock-in model because it's been more successful. But they're not killing off the more open model of PFS.
Of course they are! If they weren't, they'd be supporting PFS on the Zune. They're not because they don't want to compete with other devices and other music services. If the Zune and its store supported PFS, there would be no reason to use the Zune or the Zune store because it's an open, third-party format.
The company that created PFS and licensed it to partners is not using it for its own music player. You don't think that's a bit...telling? That's like Sony not using its own batteries for its laptops (and good thing they didn't!).
PlaysForSure still exists, and those that bought PFS music can still buy many PFS players. They won't buy Zunes, but how does that mean that they were "FUCKED by Microsoft"? They can buy still buy PFS players, just as they could before Zune. Only if PFS was being terminated, would they be "FUCKED".
They were fucked by Microsoft because Microsoft is now getting behind the Zune, and the Zune locks out PFS music even though it's Microsoft's own format. Sure, Microsoft will still support those who licensed it, but that's because they have to due to contracts that have been signed already. Windows Media Player will have Zune links and will have a Zune store. Microsoft will advertise the Zune over other players.
You really don't see the conflict of interest here, Microsoft advertising and selling a player that competes with its partners and doesn't use the format that their partners have licensed from them? How are consumers supposed to have any faith in PlaysForSure if its own creator doesn't use it for its new "iPod killer" hopeful?
Why do new Zune customers have to rebuy music they already own in the PlaysForSure format--why can't Microsoft support PlaysForSure music on its device? The answer is because Microsoft wants to kill off PlaysForSure. They've seen how successful the iTunes Store is for Apple, so Microsoft now wants to put out a device where it exclusively owns the hardware, software, and--more importantly--it sees all the profits from music downloads. If the Zune uses PlaysForSure, there's no reason for people to stop using competing devices since they all use the same music format. Microsoft wants people to use only the Zune at the expense of all those third-party partners it hyped in the last couple of years, and at the expense of anyone who bought into Microsoft's third-party platform and bought PFS music with the idea that it would always be supported by any Microsoft-supported device going forward.
Therefore, customers are fucked and Microsoft's partners are fucked.
the macbook has a higher resolution, an X1600, and digital audio i/o
I stopped reading the post when he noted that the comparison wasn't even, and he left out all the other things the MacBook Pro has, including iLife, OS X, a built-in iSight camera, MagSafe, shock motion detectors, a backlit keyboard, light sensitivity sensor, and more.
Actually, many of the Xerox employees went to work at Apple and helped create the Macintosh, and it's been written by one of the former employees that Apple's interface was in development before the visit to Xerox, and that Apple created the idea of pulldown menus, the overlapping windows, icons, the trash can, and so forth.
It's a look-and-feel that originated at Apple. When you use Windows, that essential paradigm is coming directly from the 1984 MacOS.
Isn't it interesting that the #1 software developer in the world gets away with being six years behind and playing catch-up by trying to adopt the competition's look-and-feel?
My lasting impression of Vista is that it looks like what XP's Luna looked like when I first saw it. Hideous, garish, and an obvious response to what Apple was doing. Vista essentially is Microsoft's plastic version of Aqua. Except that there are five different menu styles (no, seriously), multiple styles of dialog boxes (Install Font is still using the Windows 3.1 dialog), multiple styles of toolbars, multiple styles of windows, and more.
It's a huge fucking mess. A true disaster of an interface from who is supposed to be, as I said, the #1 software developer in the world. I'm really going to be interested in Vista's sales figures. Microsoft will likely do what they did with XP, which was to withhold sales figures and instead cite OEM license numbers, which are meaningless for determining actual sales. XP was, in fact, disappointing sales-wise, and I suspect Vista will be too because there is very little buzz for this thing. At least XP had the NT kernel as a selling point.
Translucent window borders, first seen in the Mac OS X Public Beta six years ago.
Hardware-accelerated desktop composition, which was out in 2002 in OS X Jaguar.
Vector-based, resolution-independent graphics interface, which was out in Quartz in 2000. XP had GDI+, but it was less powerful and nobody used it, particularly XP itself.
Flip3D is a lame, useless copy of Expose.
The security prompt for system changes, though UAC appears much more frequently and doesn't even ask for a password (how secure!).
Volume icon is direct rip-off of OS X volume icon, even down to the sound wave animation.
Busy cursor is rip-off of beach ball and radial progress bar.
Search field in upper-right is a standard Apple-ism.
The sidebar now hosts HTML "gadgets" ala Dashboard's widgets, even though Longhorn was originally supposed to include a much different sidebar based on.NET "tiles" utilizing XML services.
The gadgets that ship with Vista, with the exception of the CPU monitor and picture viewer, are direct rip-offs of the default widgets that ship with Mac OS X.
Windows Calendar's interface is strikingly similar to iCal's interface, including the colors and visual styles of events.
Windows Picture Gallery is a third-rate copy of iPhoto.
Windows Movie Maker is a third-rate copy of iMovie.
Windows DVD Maker is a third-rate copy of iDVD.
Windows Media Player now utilizes iTune's signature left-side source list.
The Vista filesystem layout is a DIRECT COPY of OS X's filesystem layout.
Internet Explorer's save dialog is a direct rip-off of the OS X save dialog. It starts out in a reduced state in which only recent save places are listed in a drop-down list, and a disclosure button on the side expands it to reveal the usual filebrowser, just like in OS X.
I could write more, but you get the picture. Just use OS X, which has been around for almost six years now. Then use Vista. The similarities are immediately obvious, and they will be written about in the side-by-side comparison reviews next year.
Don't believe these articles--Vista's interface sucks. Weirdly, it gives you a headache after a while and you begin to long for the simplicity of XP, and switching to the Windows Classic theme doesn't completely alleviate it.
By default, windows actually "fly in" to view. EVERY SINGLE WINDOW. You will be annoyed after 30 seconds.
Every window border has a gigantic window border with an ugly blurring effect, giving everything a weird camouflage look. Microsoft didn't know how else to deal with overlaying text on top of this, so they just put a white haze behind letters which look utterly bizarre and actually makes it difficult to read.
Vista still takes a ton of mouse clicks to accomplish tasks that take only one in competitors like Mac OS X. In the properties dialog of my wireless network connection, there are actually TWO properties buttons--one labeled "Wireless Properties" and one below that named "Properties." Nice!
Vista also stole several Apple-isms, like the monochrome motif of the system tray icons that has been a staple of Mac OS for quite a long time. The speaker is actually the very same sideways speaker with three sound waves coming out the right, increasing and decreasing with volume. What a strange thing to clone directly from OS X.
You'll also laugh at the ridiculous replacement for the busy cursor. Microsoft has attempted to copy Apple's radial progress bar in the past (using eight segments instead of the doubled amount Apple uses...bizarre), but they couldn't pull it off. So they came up with something else that attempts to rip off both the radial progress bar and the spinning beach ball, which is a goofy blue ring. Seriously, a blue ring with a little sparkle spinning around and around.
And you'd better get used to the color blue. If you thought Luna was hilariously bad (I still don't get how Windows fans defend that theme), wait until you come across the puke-worthy blue and seagreen EVERYWHERE in the Vista interface, complete with a 1980s-style animated ribbon swoosh in the corners of the windows. Does Microsoft even hire graphic designers anymore? This company has enough money to buy the best designers in the world, so why do their interfaces consistently suck so much?
The sidebar is just stupid, and you'll turn it off immediately because it actually slows startup time. Dashboard, on the other hand, doesn't load itself until you actually initiate Dashboard for the first time.
And UAC...ah, UAC. I'll just let you get to know UAC for yourself. You'll see.
On the contrary, Apple is several iterations ahead of where Microsoft finally is (by six years, to be precise), and they've been moving steadily away from the translucencies and highlights toward a very clean, minimalist appearance. When OS X Leopard comes out, it will look very professional when placed side-by-side with Vista, which looks like a toy. I'm looking forward to the comparison reviews in the major mainstream publications.
It's all about deflating the Apple stock price so people can buy before it picks up again after Macworld. Happened the same time last year (remember all the "iPod killer" articles?).
Slashdot Mirror
No, I'm not, which is the point. The BSD license gives the code away and lets you define freedom for yourself. GPL has a set of rules, so it is by definition less "free."
As opposed to Slashdot, which never tries to influence its readers, ever. By the way, the iPod is lame and has less space than a nomad, people who "steal" GPL code are "thieves," and it's not theft to pirate music and not pay artists because the RIAA are bad guys who dare to protect their own copyrights using the legal system (The horror! The outrage!).
Providing source code for free projects is hardly exclusively "his philosophy," and Apache doesn't even use the GPL.
Stallman isn't looking out for people when he dictates how they are supposed to refer to Linux or what they're allowed to do with code they write. Instead, he's defining a personal view of "freedom" and enforcing it on others, when my definition of freedom is more along the lines of the BSD license. I've always found him quite self-aggrandizing and a little weird.
Uh, most of the longest running servers online are running...BSD. Linux 2.6 has been a mish-mash of new code that should have been in a development line of kernels, and there have been prominent developers coming out and describing a spiraling trend of instability because of the new development model. It was even posted on Slashdot. Funny that you disregard that but selectively remember everyone else's FUD.
As for FreeBSD oopsing when you hotplug, never had it happen.
No offense, but you just illustrated what the original poster was mocking by padding your list of Windows steps to make it look worse, when in reality, your average install on Windows is:
Windows
1.) Insert CD. Setup automatically begins.
And the fact remains that a lot of Linux packages require more manual configuration than their Windows counterparts.
The standard, robotic Slashdot response--use the old "FUD" canard and dismiss all the points the article raises without addressing any of them.
The BSD lets you do what you want, while the GPL license defines Stallman's personal definition of "free" and then imposes it on you, which isn't freedom at all. People want to impose their ideologies on other people and call it free.
From your article:
"The first real tabbed browser with any significant presence on the web was Netcaptor, created by the very talented Adam Stiles way back in 1997."
Yet Opera was already using MDI for pages back in a 1994 technical preview and was official in 1996's Opera 2.0.
No, they didn't. Opera had its MDI interface back in 1994 in a technical preview. When people talk about "tabbed browsing," what they're referring to is the idea of having one browser window containing multiple pages, which is essentially MDI. Mozilla also stole pop-up blocking and mouse gestures from Opera.
How about Opera? From the very article everyone keeps linking to:
"Independently, the founders of Opera built an MDI-based browser in the same year (via a technical preview not available publicly; a public release was made in 1996). The tabbed interface approach was then followed by the Internet Explorer shell NetCaptor in 1997."
Don't forget mouse gestures and pop-up blocking, other Opera features "adopted" by Mozilla.
"Independently, the founders of Opera built an MDI-based browser in the same year (via a technical preview not available publicly; a public release was made in 1996)."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabbed_browsing
Next.
Opera also innovated pop-up blocking and mouse gestures. Are you going to scream at us about that next, or just admit that Opera was the first with these features, and Mozilla simply "borrowed" them?
Actually, Opera did, which is why Mozilla/Firefox "borrowed" them.
Same with mouse gestures. And pop-up blocking.
But for some reason, new Apple products have been met with consistent derision on Slashdot. The iPod is a good example, and the iPod mini was predicted by nearly everyone to be a failure. That is changing now that the proof of Apple's success is in the financial numbers.
Wrong, OS X's translucent window borders were hardware accelerated through the Quartz Compositor using OpenGL. Apple no longer uses translucent window borders because the effect becomes very tiring. XGL has nothing at all to do with this, especially since Apple was doing this back in 2002 with the introduction of OS X 10.2 Jaguar.
"Thinking about the idea for some time" doesn't count. Quartz was first unveiled years earlier in the OS X betas.
Wrong, Quartz has always been resolution-independent, which is why an NSView can send the contents of its view to a printer, which has a higher resolution than the screen. In other words, the same drawing commands used to draw to the screen are used to draw to the printer. Quartz does not use a "pseudo-vector graphics way" of drawing windows, whatever that means. In OS X Tiger, a scaling factor was added for developers to test against, and Leopard will expose this value to the user for modification.
It's obviously a response to it.
5% isn't "measly" and neither is their 15% worldwide install base of 18 million OS X users or their presence in creative professional and academic markets. Regardless, your response barely addresses my point. UAC doesn't even ask for a password, and people will get into the habit very quickly of just clicking "Continue" whenever the annoying box pops up. OS X requires you to pay attention and enter your password, which is more logical and more secure.
No, it's not "quite different;" it's exactly the same but in inversed monochrome. It's the same sideways speaker icon with three soundwaves that increase and decrease depending on volume level. Before Vista, the speaker looked different and didn't behave that way, and it wasn't monochrome. OS X had this same icon and behavior for half a decade.
Most everything in Windows is some inverse of the original MacOS. Vista's taskbar completes this by become black in inverse to the white system menu of MacOS. The clock is still on the right side as are the system tray indicators (did you not notice that the task bar is essentially the Mac OS system menu moved to the bottom of the screen?). And now the system tray icons themselves are inverses of the MacOS versions.
OS X has used a signature round, spinning busy indicator for half a decade, and you're actually arguing that there is no similarity when Microsoft suddenly adopts a round, spinning indicator after years of using the hourglass?
When OS X boots, it has its standard spinning radial progress indicator (animated segments arranged in a ring
Of course they are! If they weren't, they'd be supporting PFS on the Zune. They're not because they don't want to compete with other devices and other music services. If the Zune and its store supported PFS, there would be no reason to use the Zune or the Zune store because it's an open, third-party format.
The company that created PFS and licensed it to partners is not using it for its own music player. You don't think that's a bit...telling? That's like Sony not using its own batteries for its laptops (and good thing they didn't!).
They were fucked by Microsoft because Microsoft is now getting behind the Zune, and the Zune locks out PFS music even though it's Microsoft's own format. Sure, Microsoft will still support those who licensed it, but that's because they have to due to contracts that have been signed already. Windows Media Player will have Zune links and will have a Zune store. Microsoft will advertise the Zune over other players.
You really don't see the conflict of interest here, Microsoft advertising and selling a player that competes with its partners and doesn't use the format that their partners have licensed from them? How are consumers supposed to have any faith in PlaysForSure if its own creator doesn't use it for its new "iPod killer" hopeful?
Why do new Zune customers have to rebuy music they already own in the PlaysForSure format--why can't Microsoft support PlaysForSure music on its device? The answer is because Microsoft wants to kill off PlaysForSure. They've seen how successful the iTunes Store is for Apple, so Microsoft now wants to put out a device where it exclusively owns the hardware, software, and--more importantly--it sees all the profits from music downloads. If the Zune uses PlaysForSure, there's no reason for people to stop using competing devices since they all use the same music format. Microsoft wants people to use only the Zune at the expense of all those third-party partners it hyped in the last couple of years, and at the expense of anyone who bought into Microsoft's third-party platform and bought PFS music with the idea that it would always be supported by any Microsoft-supported device going forward.
Therefore, customers are fucked and Microsoft's partners are fucked.
Careful, or Ballmer will squirt you a picture of his kids using his Zune. Ewww.
Er, he = you.
the macbook has a higher resolution, an X1600, and digital audio i/o
I stopped reading the post when he noted that the comparison wasn't even, and he left out all the other things the MacBook Pro has, including iLife, OS X, a built-in iSight camera, MagSafe, shock motion detectors, a backlit keyboard, light sensitivity sensor, and more.
Actually, many of the Xerox employees went to work at Apple and helped create the Macintosh, and it's been written by one of the former employees that Apple's interface was in development before the visit to Xerox, and that Apple created the idea of pulldown menus, the overlapping windows, icons, the trash can, and so forth.
It's a look-and-feel that originated at Apple. When you use Windows, that essential paradigm is coming directly from the 1984 MacOS.
Isn't it interesting that the #1 software developer in the world gets away with being six years behind and playing catch-up by trying to adopt the competition's look-and-feel?
My lasting impression of Vista is that it looks like what XP's Luna looked like when I first saw it. Hideous, garish, and an obvious response to what Apple was doing. Vista essentially is Microsoft's plastic version of Aqua. Except that there are five different menu styles (no, seriously), multiple styles of dialog boxes (Install Font is still using the Windows 3.1 dialog), multiple styles of toolbars, multiple styles of windows, and more.
It's a huge fucking mess. A true disaster of an interface from who is supposed to be, as I said, the #1 software developer in the world. I'm really going to be interested in Vista's sales figures. Microsoft will likely do what they did with XP, which was to withhold sales figures and instead cite OEM license numbers, which are meaningless for determining actual sales. XP was, in fact, disappointing sales-wise, and I suspect Vista will be too because there is very little buzz for this thing. At least XP had the NT kernel as a selling point.
I could write more, but you get the picture. Just use OS X, which has been around for almost six years now. Then use Vista. The similarities are immediately obvious, and they will be written about in the side-by-side comparison reviews next year.
Don't believe these articles--Vista's interface sucks. Weirdly, it gives you a headache after a while and you begin to long for the simplicity of XP, and switching to the Windows Classic theme doesn't completely alleviate it.
By default, windows actually "fly in" to view. EVERY SINGLE WINDOW. You will be annoyed after 30 seconds.
Every window border has a gigantic window border with an ugly blurring effect, giving everything a weird camouflage look. Microsoft didn't know how else to deal with overlaying text on top of this, so they just put a white haze behind letters which look utterly bizarre and actually makes it difficult to read.
Vista still takes a ton of mouse clicks to accomplish tasks that take only one in competitors like Mac OS X. In the properties dialog of my wireless network connection, there are actually TWO properties buttons--one labeled "Wireless Properties" and one below that named "Properties." Nice!
Vista also stole several Apple-isms, like the monochrome motif of the system tray icons that has been a staple of Mac OS for quite a long time. The speaker is actually the very same sideways speaker with three sound waves coming out the right, increasing and decreasing with volume. What a strange thing to clone directly from OS X.
You'll also laugh at the ridiculous replacement for the busy cursor. Microsoft has attempted to copy Apple's radial progress bar in the past (using eight segments instead of the doubled amount Apple uses...bizarre), but they couldn't pull it off. So they came up with something else that attempts to rip off both the radial progress bar and the spinning beach ball, which is a goofy blue ring. Seriously, a blue ring with a little sparkle spinning around and around.
And you'd better get used to the color blue. If you thought Luna was hilariously bad (I still don't get how Windows fans defend that theme), wait until you come across the puke-worthy blue and seagreen EVERYWHERE in the Vista interface, complete with a 1980s-style animated ribbon swoosh in the corners of the windows. Does Microsoft even hire graphic designers anymore? This company has enough money to buy the best designers in the world, so why do their interfaces consistently suck so much?
The sidebar is just stupid, and you'll turn it off immediately because it actually slows startup time. Dashboard, on the other hand, doesn't load itself until you actually initiate Dashboard for the first time.
And UAC...ah, UAC. I'll just let you get to know UAC for yourself. You'll see.
On the contrary, Apple is several iterations ahead of where Microsoft finally is (by six years, to be precise), and they've been moving steadily away from the translucencies and highlights toward a very clean, minimalist appearance. When OS X Leopard comes out, it will look very professional when placed side-by-side with Vista, which looks like a toy. I'm looking forward to the comparison reviews in the major mainstream publications.
It's all about deflating the Apple stock price so people can buy before it picks up again after Macworld. Happened the same time last year (remember all the "iPod killer" articles?).