No, Windows 2000 had tiny shadows behind the menus and mouse cursor, but not shadows behind windows. Apple's 2000 OS X beta that introduced Aqua to the world had window shadows which changed sizes to differentiate between foreground and background applications, as well as menu and cursor shadows.
Vista also offers such incredible innovations as animated minimizing and maximizing, real-time video preview in the taskbar, and other dozens of features introduced six years ago by Apple.
I don't know where Dell gets such a crappy reputation...
The crappy reputation they have from me comes with the poor quality of the hardware they ship. Those cheap plastic boxes always have something go wrong with them eventually.
With regards to Vista, it's a valid question. Remember that Microsoft is introducing all sorts of brand new version 1.0 APIs. They had to cancel Vista Beta 2 in favor of CTPs due to their rushed schedule, and they missed their Feature Complete deadline of December and are now aiming for the end of the month. Vista will suffer from reduced testing unless it is delayed to early 2007 (something I believe is likely to happen later this year).
Contrary to popular belief, Vista isn't some big rewrite. It's the same Windows as before with some architectural changes and new API layers. But the old Win32 stuff is still in there.
Wait 'til you guys see the fun way Vista gets older apps to run that expect admin privileges--it emulates a virtual filesystem and all sorts of other crazy things. My impression of Vista is that instead of a clean redesign, it's more layers of updates and APIs on the creaky building. As for WinFX, none of the major apps are going to rewrite their big applications just to go to the slow.NET framework. Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Maya, etc. will be Win32 forever.
I believe there are plenty of reasons to be concerned about Vista. OS X had the advantage of totally starting over and just porting over the old toolbox APIs and calling it Carbon to get older apps to come along. Vista is a weird blend of old cruft and new less-tested code, complete with suspiciously high system requirements. But hey, at least they got shadows on their windows now--I've only been seeing that for five years from Apple.
Usually this software company only likes to sell software to people with computers running its operating system. So it's unusual they keep selling Office for Mac.
Actually, I believe it's because iWork is supposed to be a lightweight alternative to the expensive Office suite. Like how iDVD is a lightweight alternative to the expensive DVD Studio Pro. In other words, iWork is the iLife of office suites.
Dell sells their crappy Dell DJ players, you know.
Besides, we're comparing it to Dell because Dell said he'd break up the company. And now the company has topped his.
Also, I dispute that the stock has "nothing to do with computers." The stock jumped by like 5% when those Intel Macs were introduced, and analysts are buzzing. Digital media is now considered a very large part of the future of computing. When everyone is using specially designed Mac minis hooked up to their TVs with their iPods docked in the tops, Dell will look even more foolish.
In April 2001 (pre-iPod, days after OS X v10.0, in the wake of the bubble burst) would anyone have disagreed very strenuously with this conclusion?
Yes, they absolutely would have. The iMacs turned everything around in 1998, not the iPods in 2001. Apple also had the excellent Pismo Powerbooks and iBooks out which were selling well.
Dell built his company up from scratch to sell very cheaply made mass-produced quantity. It's why Dell machines have such poor reputations for breaking dow. They're the Wal-mart of computers. Apple would fizzle out if he was in charge.
You're right, it's more important to discuss some vulnerabilities in a music player instead of a massive operating system exploit that affected the entire line of Windows products going back a decade and a half, requiring only the display of a website or email to execute.
What happened to Slashdot? It was invaded by Microsoft apologists.
I don't think the media has that much of a crush on Apple. For a whole decade, they proclaimed them dead repeatedly. When OS X Tiger came out last April, nearly all the mainstream reviews kept referring to this weird "Windows Longhorn" thing as though it existed for comparison. They were actually comparing a shipping product to a future release that wasn't due out for another two years. It was really odd.
Last week, Bill Gates was Time Man of the Year, his CES coverage was in the news, and XBox 360 is all over the place, even MTV.
The media has done a few stories about Windows viruses lately thanks to WMF, but still refers to OS X as having "fewer viruses" instead of correctly pointing out that OS X has, since its inception, had ZERO spyware or viruses. Absolutely none.
Mostly, the difference with Apple's press coverage is that people actually pay attention to them, because their products kick ass. Nobody will remember Bill Gates' speech at CES '06. But the keynote where Apple actually released Macs that used INTEL x86 CHIPS?! Everyone will remember the MacBook Pro's introduction.
The fact it's the best laptop available right now? The fact it's the first Core Duo based portable in the world? The fact it's the first with a magnetically attached power cord? The fact it's only an inch thick? And it's got a webcam built in to the screen? And on and on and on. You just can't beat the value
If you honestly think it's not a great ironic story that Apple is now putting out Intel-based Macs, you haven't been involved with computers for very long.
X-Box 360 missed its sales goal. Meanwhile, iPods sold 4 million more than most industry predictions (14 million!), and iPods are now part of pop culture. Is there any surprise Apple gets the press coverage?
I don't consider seeing sweat on a basketball player an innovation for consoles. That's the kind of graphics-obsessed crap that's destroying gaming. Nintendo is doing something different, and just wait--they'll be getting tons of press coverage too when they release their system.
That's fair. However, another reason Apple gets so much press coverage is that their computers and software are so far ahead and often set many standards that the rest of the industry ends up following. For example, USB adoption was not widespread until the iMac daringly went USB-only in 1998, forcing manufacturers to really support the standard. iMacs today are a thin screen on a stand. In the future when hardware on the PC side slims up, that's probably how every desktop computer will be, and the current "box to the side of the monitor" set up will look to future computers users like old 1980s technology looks to us today.
It's all the little things. My iBook has a battery meter on the battery itself, so I can check the power before starting it up (or see how far along it's charging). Little things like that mysteriously end up in competitors' products.:) Same on the software side. It's no coincidence Microsoft is putting iCal and iPhoto clones in Vista, or changing their filesystem layout to resemble OS X's, or adding "gadgets," and on and on.
And now Apple is the first to market with desktop and laptop computers based on the Core Duo. In all honesty, the new iMac and MacBook Pro are probably the world's best computers right now. Can't wait for the other new announcements this year, since the rumor going around is that many new Mac products were cut from the MWSF keynote due to Core Duo supply issues...
Interestingly, Apple is very close to surpassing Dell in market value. Right now it's Apple: $72,301,066,720, Dell: $72,912,111,560. Apple keeps going up, while Dell has been down recently. Imagine the press coverage over Apple surpassing Dell in market value.
You've just about the same thing several times so far and it seems you are actively deploying some type of defense mechanism and purposely avoiding the real point of people questioning the practice.
I'm "deploying" any kind of "defense mechanism," I'm simply offering common rational sense to an overblown FUD article on Slashdot. When you use terms like "malware" (last article) and "spying" (this article), you need to back it up. Yet all iTunes is doing is sending a WebObjects search query to bring related purchases into the Mini-Store.
iTunes suggestions are based on files that you have on your computer available to iTMS. Not just songs you've bought from iTMS.
I never said otherwise!
If song files are on your computer and iTMS can see them, it sends that information back to Apple.
Yes, if you play a song, it sends a search query.
This is not the same as tracking purchases or tracking songs you've searched for yourself inside iTMS and has nothing to do with your IP getting logged in a web server that you visited.
I never said it was the same as tracking purchases. You've invented this.
The point of mention IPs on webservers was to point out to all these people screaming "spyware" that by their definition, a web browser is spyware too, as are websites like Google. You apparently completely missed the point.
You are replying to all of these different people and not including important pieces of the process. You are not comparing Apples to Apples.
What important piece of the process have I left out? You don't give any examples.
Now if Google searches were also tracking your local Windows file searches and tracking url's you entered in Word documents or your browsing history, it would be a problem.
Google does track local file searches if you use Google Desktop.
Imagine if Googles servers had your browsing history and suggested searches based on that as a service?
Google already does this!
I know Apples collection from iTunes are not that intrusive and I know it can be shut off and I know you don't have to use iTunes. The point is, information unrelated to the normal course of using iTMS and purchasing and browsing from iTMS was being transferred back to Apple and people were obviously unaware of that and questioned it.
How could you possibly be unaware of it?! The Mini-Store is RIGHT THERE updating with related purchases. Did you think iTunes was magically grabbing related purchases using psychic sense? No, obviously it was just automatically searching the Music Store. Don't like it? Hide the Mini-Store. This is so overblown, and you're making a big, whiney deal out of absolutely nothing.
Everyone knows their IP and user account information can be tracked when the visit a web site or use something like Gmail, this is common and expected and assumed. IMHO, the practice of the iTunes suggest function transmitting information on items that may or may not be from Apple is not just assumed.
So when the Mini-Store is staring you in the face, searching the Music Store and giving you related albums to what you're listening to, you don't think it's reasonable to assume iTunes required the use of the Internet to get those related purchases? Is iTunes just magic now?
I personally don't care about the whole thing really, I'd probably shut that function off though. I did the same in MS Media player.
Yeah, shut off the function, "privacy issue" solved. Because this is a non-issue.
Why should it have to ask for permission when all you have to do to revoke permission is disable the Mini-Store? I'm failing to see the big issue here.
Bullshit. In 11 years of website admin I have never heard of ANY web browser doing all of this. Ever.
11 years of website admin, and you didn't know a website just has to browse some simple HTTP variables to determine your browser and OS? You never heard of the User-Agent string? Hell, I can even determine your screen resolution, language, and more.
I dispute that you've been a website admin for more than one year.
So you're trying to say Apple makes products that are so stupid simple to use... that stupid and simple people are using them?
No, he's not trying to say that.
Whatever happened to the "Mac/iPod/iTunes users are the smartest/coolest/hippest" meme?
Having put words in his mouth and formed a conclusion he did not make, you're now trying to leverage this false conclusion to attack his point with something unrelated.
It would be against the Apple way for them to pop up an annoying Windows-like Yes/No dialog with a massive paragraph of text nobody will read. Why not just enable it by default and let the user disable it if they don't like it?
People are whining about the silliest of issues, I swear.
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No, Windows 2000 had tiny shadows behind the menus and mouse cursor, but not shadows behind windows. Apple's 2000 OS X beta that introduced Aqua to the world had window shadows which changed sizes to differentiate between foreground and background applications, as well as menu and cursor shadows.
Vista also offers such incredible innovations as animated minimizing and maximizing, real-time video preview in the taskbar, and other dozens of features introduced six years ago by Apple.
I don't know where Dell gets such a crappy reputation...
The crappy reputation they have from me comes with the poor quality of the hardware they ship. Those cheap plastic boxes always have something go wrong with them eventually.
With regards to Vista, it's a valid question. Remember that Microsoft is introducing all sorts of brand new version 1.0 APIs. They had to cancel Vista Beta 2 in favor of CTPs due to their rushed schedule, and they missed their Feature Complete deadline of December and are now aiming for the end of the month. Vista will suffer from reduced testing unless it is delayed to early 2007 (something I believe is likely to happen later this year).
.NET framework. Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Maya, etc. will be Win32 forever.
Contrary to popular belief, Vista isn't some big rewrite. It's the same Windows as before with some architectural changes and new API layers. But the old Win32 stuff is still in there.
Wait 'til you guys see the fun way Vista gets older apps to run that expect admin privileges--it emulates a virtual filesystem and all sorts of other crazy things. My impression of Vista is that instead of a clean redesign, it's more layers of updates and APIs on the creaky building. As for WinFX, none of the major apps are going to rewrite their big applications just to go to the slow
I believe there are plenty of reasons to be concerned about Vista. OS X had the advantage of totally starting over and just porting over the old toolbox APIs and calling it Carbon to get older apps to come along. Vista is a weird blend of old cruft and new less-tested code, complete with suspiciously high system requirements. But hey, at least they got shadows on their windows now--I've only been seeing that for five years from Apple.
Ah, of course.
Usually this software company only likes to sell software to people with computers running its operating system. So it's unusual they keep selling Office for Mac.
Actually, I believe it's because iWork is supposed to be a lightweight alternative to the expensive Office suite. Like how iDVD is a lightweight alternative to the expensive DVD Studio Pro. In other words, iWork is the iLife of office suites.
Dell sells their crappy Dell DJ players, you know.
Besides, we're comparing it to Dell because Dell said he'd break up the company. And now the company has topped his.
Also, I dispute that the stock has "nothing to do with computers." The stock jumped by like 5% when those Intel Macs were introduced, and analysts are buzzing. Digital media is now considered a very large part of the future of computing. When everyone is using specially designed Mac minis hooked up to their TVs with their iPods docked in the tops, Dell will look even more foolish.
In April 2001 (pre-iPod, days after OS X v10.0, in the wake of the bubble burst) would anyone have disagreed very strenuously with this conclusion?
Yes, they absolutely would have. The iMacs turned everything around in 1998, not the iPods in 2001. Apple also had the excellent Pismo Powerbooks and iBooks out which were selling well.
Dell built his company up from scratch to sell very cheaply made mass-produced quantity. It's why Dell machines have such poor reputations for breaking dow. They're the Wal-mart of computers. Apple would fizzle out if he was in charge.
Ever seen Jonathan Ive or Phil Schiller in an interview? Jobs has got Apple's upper management filled with lots of competent, interesting people.
If "the only reason people buy Dells is because they're cheap", then the only reason people buy Apples is because they're white.
How did you reach this conclusion? One doesn't logically follow the other.
The only reason people buy Dells is because they're cheap. The reason people buy Macs is because of their top-notch quality.
You're right, it's more important to discuss some vulnerabilities in a music player instead of a massive operating system exploit that affected the entire line of Windows products going back a decade and a half, requiring only the display of a website or email to execute.
What happened to Slashdot? It was invaded by Microsoft apologists.
Oh, yeah, waiting an hour for music to transfer via slow Bluetooth is just what every iPod owner wants! Screw fast USB 2.0.
With virtualization right on the chip, it's theoretically possible that you could use DirectX apps. OS X and Windows would share the same hardware.
I don't know how that would work with the X1600. Guess we'll find out this month when hackers get their hands on these new Macs.
I don't think the media has that much of a crush on Apple. For a whole decade, they proclaimed them dead repeatedly. When OS X Tiger came out last April, nearly all the mainstream reviews kept referring to this weird "Windows Longhorn" thing as though it existed for comparison. They were actually comparing a shipping product to a future release that wasn't due out for another two years. It was really odd.
Last week, Bill Gates was Time Man of the Year, his CES coverage was in the news, and XBox 360 is all over the place, even MTV.
The media has done a few stories about Windows viruses lately thanks to WMF, but still refers to OS X as having "fewer viruses" instead of correctly pointing out that OS X has, since its inception, had ZERO spyware or viruses. Absolutely none.
Mostly, the difference with Apple's press coverage is that people actually pay attention to them, because their products kick ass. Nobody will remember Bill Gates' speech at CES '06. But the keynote where Apple actually released Macs that used INTEL x86 CHIPS?! Everyone will remember the MacBook Pro's introduction.
Competes in what way? Most security vulnerabilities announced in a month?
Does the Dell come with iLife?
The fact it's the best laptop available right now? The fact it's the first Core Duo based portable in the world? The fact it's the first with a magnetically attached power cord? The fact it's only an inch thick? And it's got a webcam built in to the screen? And on and on and on. You just can't beat the value
If you honestly think it's not a great ironic story that Apple is now putting out Intel-based Macs, you haven't been involved with computers for very long.
X-Box 360 missed its sales goal. Meanwhile, iPods sold 4 million more than most industry predictions (14 million!), and iPods are now part of pop culture. Is there any surprise Apple gets the press coverage?
I don't consider seeing sweat on a basketball player an innovation for consoles. That's the kind of graphics-obsessed crap that's destroying gaming. Nintendo is doing something different, and just wait--they'll be getting tons of press coverage too when they release their system.
That's fair. However, another reason Apple gets so much press coverage is that their computers and software are so far ahead and often set many standards that the rest of the industry ends up following. For example, USB adoption was not widespread until the iMac daringly went USB-only in 1998, forcing manufacturers to really support the standard. iMacs today are a thin screen on a stand. In the future when hardware on the PC side slims up, that's probably how every desktop computer will be, and the current "box to the side of the monitor" set up will look to future computers users like old 1980s technology looks to us today.
:) Same on the software side. It's no coincidence Microsoft is putting iCal and iPhoto clones in Vista, or changing their filesystem layout to resemble OS X's, or adding "gadgets," and on and on.
It's all the little things. My iBook has a battery meter on the battery itself, so I can check the power before starting it up (or see how far along it's charging). Little things like that mysteriously end up in competitors' products.
And now Apple is the first to market with desktop and laptop computers based on the Core Duo. In all honesty, the new iMac and MacBook Pro are probably the world's best computers right now. Can't wait for the other new announcements this year, since the rumor going around is that many new Mac products were cut from the MWSF keynote due to Core Duo supply issues...
Interestingly, Apple is very close to surpassing Dell in market value. Right now it's Apple: $72,301,066,720, Dell: $72,912,111,560. Apple keeps going up, while Dell has been down recently. Imagine the press coverage over Apple surpassing Dell in market value.
You've just about the same thing several times so far and it seems you are actively deploying some type of defense mechanism and purposely avoiding the real point of people questioning the practice.
I'm "deploying" any kind of "defense mechanism," I'm simply offering common rational sense to an overblown FUD article on Slashdot. When you use terms like "malware" (last article) and "spying" (this article), you need to back it up. Yet all iTunes is doing is sending a WebObjects search query to bring related purchases into the Mini-Store.
iTunes suggestions are based on files that you have on your computer available to iTMS. Not just songs you've bought from iTMS.
I never said otherwise!
If song files are on your computer and iTMS can see them, it sends that information back to Apple.
Yes, if you play a song, it sends a search query.
This is not the same as tracking purchases or tracking songs you've searched for yourself inside iTMS and has nothing to do with your IP getting logged in a web server that you visited.
I never said it was the same as tracking purchases. You've invented this.
The point of mention IPs on webservers was to point out to all these people screaming "spyware" that by their definition, a web browser is spyware too, as are websites like Google. You apparently completely missed the point.
You are replying to all of these different people and not including important pieces of the process. You are not comparing Apples to Apples.
What important piece of the process have I left out? You don't give any examples.
Now if Google searches were also tracking your local Windows file searches and tracking url's you entered in Word documents or your browsing history, it would be a problem.
Google does track local file searches if you use Google Desktop.
Imagine if Googles servers had your browsing history and suggested searches based on that as a service?
Google already does this!
I know Apples collection from iTunes are not that intrusive and I know it can be shut off and I know you don't have to use iTunes. The point is, information unrelated to the normal course of using iTMS and purchasing and browsing from iTMS was being transferred back to Apple and people were obviously unaware of that and questioned it.
How could you possibly be unaware of it?! The Mini-Store is RIGHT THERE updating with related purchases. Did you think iTunes was magically grabbing related purchases using psychic sense? No, obviously it was just automatically searching the Music Store. Don't like it? Hide the Mini-Store. This is so overblown, and you're making a big, whiney deal out of absolutely nothing.
Everyone knows their IP and user account information can be tracked when the visit a web site or use something like Gmail, this is common and expected and assumed. IMHO, the practice of the iTunes suggest function transmitting information on items that may or may not be from Apple is not just assumed.
So when the Mini-Store is staring you in the face, searching the Music Store and giving you related albums to what you're listening to, you don't think it's reasonable to assume iTunes required the use of the Internet to get those related purchases? Is iTunes just magic now?
I personally don't care about the whole thing really, I'd probably shut that function off though. I did the same in MS Media player.
Yeah, shut off the function, "privacy issue" solved. Because this is a non-issue.
Why should it have to ask for permission when all you have to do to revoke permission is disable the Mini-Store? I'm failing to see the big issue here.
Bullshit. In 11 years of website admin I have never heard of ANY web browser doing all of this. Ever.
11 years of website admin, and you didn't know a website just has to browse some simple HTTP variables to determine your browser and OS? You never heard of the User-Agent string? Hell, I can even determine your screen resolution, language, and more.
I dispute that you've been a website admin for more than one year.
Unless I've given explicit permission, no-one other than me has a right to know about it.
Then you'd better not visit any website, do any Google search, or use the Internet at all.
This is a complete non-issue.
So you're trying to say Apple makes products that are so stupid simple to use... that stupid and simple people are using them?
No, he's not trying to say that.
Whatever happened to the "Mac/iPod/iTunes users are the smartest/coolest/hippest" meme?
Having put words in his mouth and formed a conclusion he did not make, you're now trying to leverage this false conclusion to attack his point with something unrelated.
It would be against the Apple way for them to pop up an annoying Windows-like Yes/No dialog with a massive paragraph of text nobody will read. Why not just enable it by default and let the user disable it if they don't like it?
People are whining about the silliest of issues, I swear.