No no no. It's FreshenD a new daemon that works in conjunction with LaunchD to add a fresh pine scent. It is used in conjunction with the new iSmell software/hardware introduced in the latest iMac.
I admit, booting the system to "what is your bidding my master", sounds appealing."
That was the startup sound on my home machine back in 1994. I wonder if they removed the music from the background of the clip. It was fun for about a week before I replaced it.
To be honest, that was my first reaction, too. However: The little plugin thingies are going to be one of the first places where lots of people cut their teeth on programming.
The original summary mentioned sites providing three types of third-party software to take advantage of tiger. Both automator scripts and dashboard widgets are great for quick and fast small tasks that can be easily distributed and used. They are great for really really quick or small operations and will be great for adding customized functionality for many people.
That said, I don't think either is very important compared to the third item, spotlight plug-ins. This is new and real filesystem level functionality being extended by third parties. If this happened in Windows, Linux, Solaris, or NachOS it would be on the front page of Slashdot, and rightly so. A single day after the OS was released, thanks to dozens software developers, a user of tiger can instantaneously search their entire system based upon the contents of all sorts of file types. Apple allowing this for fifty or so very common data types is great, but the fact that people have already provided plug-ins to let my searches extend to OpenOffice files, Omnigraffle diagrams, Realbasic projects, Corel Painter Files, VOIP logs, and many more proprietary file types really makes me think that this technology will be used and extended to the point that it will really, really change the way I use my computer on a fundamental level. This is, as far as I know, the first time this sort of thing was possible on any system although I have no doubt that it will be embraced by every consumer OS within a few years time.
If I remember Ars Technica's excellent article on Tiger, there is a trick to do this.
I think the trick was to clone the database as a directory of files with a special extension, duplicating the database, but thus allowing it to be searched.
For Thunderbird messages to be indexed, searchable and retrievable, each message should be saved as an individual file.
You might want to mention that Thunderbird's version of the mbox format does not do this, instead one file is created for each mailbox. Unless this changes, it will not be easy to implement Spotlight searching on individual mail messages in Thunderbird.
This is actually a potentially large failing in Spotlight. Being able to find the right file is a wonderful thing, but for really big files it would be much better to find a location within that file.
I mean, seriously. How much Mac software is the equivalent of "faceplates for your cell phone?"
Yeah I mean how many metadata plug-ins do we need to be able to search the text inside our prototyping, graphics, and organization applications. I mean this must be like the 50th time someone has provided a way for me to instantly search my system for tree diagrams in a proprietary format with particular text in them.
The privacy problem in Office Documents was mostly that the file contained data that should not have been there.
While that is a big part of the problem, there is also just the data that is "supposed to be there" but that the user is unaware of. This includes revision information, and the metadata like Author, Organization, etc. I've received documents that were clearly based upon the work of other people, based upon the "Author" field and I've received documents that are clearly adaptations of similar offers sent to competitors, based upon the revision information. Basically, I can see applications adding metadata that users are completely unaware of and privacy and security issues resulting.
I would be more interested to see if the meta-index respects the permissions (Unix or ACLs), i.e that an user can only see meta-information of files he can read.
That is an interesting point, especially when you are talking about Apple software that does not run as the user.
The coverage of the arbitrary metadata support in HFS+ was also very interesting and in depth. I was a little fuzzy on some of the limitations of the space, and the suggested naming conventions since he covered them so briefly, but this is just crying out for a BeOS style arbitrary metadata creation/editing application. I am very slightly concerned about security/privacy issues that could result. Word users already export enormous amounts of random data attached to their.doc files. I fear that a lack of awareness of these metadata features could lead to a similar problem. Apple has a great record for innovation, but so far I have not been impressed with their ability to consider and mitigate all the security concerns that may result from their new ideas. Hopefully, this is something that will be addressed before third-party developers start making use of this.
The one Safari feature I was looking forward too seems to be missing. Anyone know how to get Safari to scale images to the screen in the same way as IE or FF does?
The article talks about the scaling features (which are currently only in the debug menu) as well as the full screen display of any images.
The article and summary both mention the consolidation of many launching methods into an new 'launchd' daemon that is responsible for a wide-range of tasks including starting and stopping applications and other daemons on behalf of users and the system. After more than 100 comments, I have not seen even one mention of it. Is this because it is uninteresting, no one has RTFA, or because nobody really knows what it does yet? The Arstechnica reviewer advocates that the other UNIX type systems immediately steal this idea and code and incorporate it. Nobody here has an opinion on that?
Thanks for the info. Looks like I may not be upgrading for a while. Note, there is a thread on MacSlash that says the Cisco VPN client breaks with the install, but works if you re-install it. You may want to give that a try if you have a machine you are testing with. Unfortunately I have only this one production laptop that can get to the VPN server so I'll wait till someone else gives it a shot. Thanks again.
Evidentally there is enough of "under the hood" changes to the kernel network API's that CISCO's VPN client is incompatible. CISCO is working on it reportedly but it will not be out before the end of May. This is a MAJOR show stopper for Tiger deployment where I work.
Hmm, that is odd. Look at this blurb from the Tiger features pages, "Mac OS X Tiger includes a built-in VPN client that supports the Layer 2 Tunneling Protocol over Internet Protocol Security (L2TP/IPSec) and Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol (PPTP), and is compatible with most popular VPN servers, including those from Cisco and Microsoft."
Have you tried the built in VPN features in Tiger? I was hoping I could ditch the Cisco VPN client altogether.
Write some spyware, claim it'll make the internet faster or give you free porn or whatever, and people will install it.
I don't see how you interpret that in any way to be a flaw in Firefox. This problem can, however, be somewhat mitigated by a well designed OS in combination with a well designed browser. The two main methods are ACLs and sandboxes. I'd love to see an OS that has very specific pre-defined permissions for each application. Further applications should be assigned automatically or by the user with one of a number of preset template applications. For example, by default their could be a "game" template that denies access for the application to any internet connectivity and allows the program to write only to a specific saved games directory and to it's own preferences file (which cannot overwrite an existing file). There could also be network games, internet application, etc. templates. This would make it easy for a default user to assign correct permissions to each application and any application that does not conform to those permissions would need to be granted rights explicitly. This would encourage application developers to use only the permissions a user expects, serve to make the user think twice about trust when an application wants to do something unusual, and make malware authors find a local exploit in order to deliver payloads.
I use Adobe and Macromedia applications regularly on both systems. First, you need to make sure your particular applications are well supported on the mac, or it is a non-starter. Adobe has several projects where they have mostly abandoned the mac.
Asssuming you do not use any of these the main advantages are:
Better GUI - UI elements have better feedback and make a lot more sense. (buttons pulse and when the system is working stay lit so you the system registered the click. Windows UI elements don't provide feedback and leave you guessing. Also, dialogue boxes don't say "Cancel/OK" most have useful titles.
System Services - in any native app with 1-3 clicks I can lookup a word or acronym online, translate it to another language, spell check a selection or document, grammar check a selection or document, look it up in a thesuarus, make a graph of data, run a script on it, speak text aloud, etc. You can download these services or they can be offered by applications or the OS.
Freeware - There is a pile of real and useful freeware on OS X. No really, good, free software from linux as well as mac native applications are made and distributed for free. The free dev tools have prompted thousands of developers to write useful free applications that are in some cases better than anything (even commercial offerings) available on Windows.
I use a number of OS's each day, but i gravitate to OS X as my default because I can get more done with less frustration. I'm not sure how serious you are, or if you would prefer OS X. Some people get very used to doing things one particular way and the time and effort required to get used to doing things differently is just too much for them. Good luck!
Firefox doesn't have a spyware problem because it hasn't had enough market share to make it really worthwhile.
Nope. Firefox doesn't have a spyware problem because as soon as somebody figures out how to install spyware using Firefox a bunch of developers are pissed off by it. They drink a lot of coffee and come up with a fix to stop it, rebuild and the nightly builds are immune to the new threat in a few days.
Which other easily installed (i.e. no Cygwin) PDF viewer for the Microsoft Windows platform do you recommend that people install instead of Adobe Reader?
I don't recommend any for Windows. The only options I've ever used are Adobe Reader and Ghostview, and neither was very good. That does not mean, however, that their is anything wrong with the format. It just means Windows only has crappy applications available. MS could easily write a better one, or incorporate it into Windows. Instead they are inventing their own format. Do you really think that is because PDF is not up to the task or do think it is because they want to lock people in to their own closed format? I know what I think since they have only played this game a few hundred times now.
I think you are confusing Adobe PDF Reader with the PDF format. All of your complaints are problems with the reader (or lack thereof). I don't know of anything wrong with the PDF format and the licensing for it is open. If MS really wants to do something useful they should start including a fully featured PDF reader and writer with Windows. Most Linux Distributions and OS X come with them.
That is not the MS way though. It is to hard to corrupt the already established and instituted PDF format since so many printers and third party applications depend upon it. Instead they will introduce their own non-free format that competes, does not work as well, only runs on Windows, can't be incorporated into Linux, but comes bundled on every new Windows machine. As a result they will kill Adobe PDF in the business and consumer space thus proving once again that leveraging their monopoly to kill competition and further lock customers in will not be punished by the corrupt and easily bribed government of the U.S.
I can't speak for anyone else, but for myself I encourage others to use some open source products (like firefox) not because they are open source, but because they play well with others and conform to open standards. I could not care less whether the web browser someone else uses is open sourced or whether it is made by Microsoft. I do care when the vast majority of people use a web browser that does not properly support the published HTML specifications and uses proprietary extensions to markup (active X) because that encourages HTML authors to break with standards and create non-conforming code that does not work properly for me.
Additionally with IE and MS there is the issue of a monopoly. MS has bundled IE effectively leveraging it's desktop OS monopoly to control the world wide web (to some degree). This means a single company can (and does) impede the technological progress of the web. If each user chose their browser from amongst competing offerings they would probably choose one with support for the latest CSS simply because everyone likes to have the newest cool technology. As it is now, however, users just use the one bundled with their computer (IE) and no one can write pages that take advantage of new technology.
The short answer is, I don't encourage others to use applications because they are open source, but the applications I encourage others to use are often open source.
What bothers me is the big fat grey border around all the windows using the 'brushed metal' UI.
Having a border along 1, 2, or 4 edges of a window is ideal in different circumstances. I don't think think having 4 is a property of the brushed metal interface. Safari, for example has borders only on the top and bottom. I really like the brushed metal because the color and texture works well for me. The contents of most of my windows are primarily either black or white. Gray is a good, color that does not blend with either nor clash with any color.
but surely this one sounds like it will be far less onerous to work with.
And you're basing that belief upon what? Just because he hit me yesterday and the day before, and about seven times last week surely doesn't mean he's going to hit me today? This is just MS moving into another market and killing it with bundling and proprietary formats. Any resemblance to open formats will be fixed in a later version.
There is a very large profit margin on music sales online.
Apple's financial statements disagree with you. Apple is barely making a profit on the iTunes store, and certainly not enough to justify the enormous investment they put into it. They pay the rights holders, the development costs, the legal fees, and the bandwidth costs for every song. The various copyright organizations are making money since they don't actually have to do anything. The whole deal is a way to sell ipods and a counter to MS monopolizing music distribution with their own proprietary format and using that to exclude mac computers.
Apple could adopt the game console/printer model of making the big purchase (iPod) lucrative through profit-loss sales, and pulling in all the money from the replacement of the exaustable supplies--lets be honest... who wants to hear most modern music more than a couple times? I'd say it's disposable;-).
Razors or blades, the classic distribution question. Apple has chosen razors and sells music. Many other distributers have chosen blades and are selling music "services" with small monthly fees but all your music goes away if you stop paying. Perhaps you should try one of the latter if that is your preference.
People on this board are Apple customers or potential Apple customers. Insulting them is unbecoming.
???
In what way did he insult Apple customers? In truth, if computers worked correctly and easily there would be little reason to have a large IT staff.
It's like you want to stifle discussion or something.
He wants to stifle discussion by talking about Apple's direction and Tiger?
I just don't understand what issue you have here. If you don't like this person's opinions, fine, but he (or she) has the right to say whatever they like and if you don't like the content, well that's what the mod system is for.
Personally I agree that computers are too hard to use and require too much information from the user that they should be able to discover for themselves. I think the MS monopoly has held computers back for years and Apple is one of the best hopes for real innovation that makes computers easier and more powerful. I hope Apple developers agree with me. I also hope IT departments shrink and development departments grow. It's not that I don't like IT people, it's just that I want my equipment to work without lots of human intervention.
then the result of this lawsuit is that the the pigopolists have to change their licensing mode
Except no one is suing the record companies. They are suing an intermediate distributor with no authority to license music across national boundaries (this is illegal). I'm sorry but the law does not apply to services. For example, try to get an English pizza delivery service to deliver to Latvia. For that matter try to license any intellectual property from someone who owns the rights to something in one country, but not in the one you live.
That sounds to me like a win-for-me situation, which, as a consumer, is all I care about.
Higher prices, part of which is paid to a completely unrelated music oligopoly in another country that does not even sell that artist sounds to you like a win for the consumer?
This is not really anything too revolutionary. When an application dies in OS X the Crash Reporter application gives the user the option of mailing the crash report and debug info to Apple. Crash Reporter does not, as far as I am aware, include the contents of any files being edited. I usually paste in any file snippets that I think might be relevant (like wacky javascripts when Safari dies).
If MS makes including files the default, however, there will be serious legal and privacy concerns. Imagine medical workers, lawyers, government employees, military officers, and psychologists all being given an OK/Cancel type dialogue box every time Word crashes. How long do think it will be before MS has a large collection files in violation of a number of laws?
Slashdot Mirror
You missed a few less common reasons:
No no no. It's FreshenD a new daemon that works in conjunction with LaunchD to add a fresh pine scent. It is used in conjunction with the new iSmell software/hardware introduced in the latest iMac.
I admit, booting the system to "what is your bidding my master", sounds appealing."
That was the startup sound on my home machine back in 1994. I wonder if they removed the music from the background of the clip. It was fun for about a week before I replaced it.
To be honest, that was my first reaction, too. However: The little plugin thingies are going to be one of the first places where lots of people cut their teeth on programming.
The original summary mentioned sites providing three types of third-party software to take advantage of tiger. Both automator scripts and dashboard widgets are great for quick and fast small tasks that can be easily distributed and used. They are great for really really quick or small operations and will be great for adding customized functionality for many people.
That said, I don't think either is very important compared to the third item, spotlight plug-ins. This is new and real filesystem level functionality being extended by third parties. If this happened in Windows, Linux, Solaris, or NachOS it would be on the front page of Slashdot, and rightly so. A single day after the OS was released, thanks to dozens software developers, a user of tiger can instantaneously search their entire system based upon the contents of all sorts of file types. Apple allowing this for fifty or so very common data types is great, but the fact that people have already provided plug-ins to let my searches extend to OpenOffice files, Omnigraffle diagrams, Realbasic projects, Corel Painter Files, VOIP logs, and many more proprietary file types really makes me think that this technology will be used and extended to the point that it will really, really change the way I use my computer on a fundamental level. This is, as far as I know, the first time this sort of thing was possible on any system although I have no doubt that it will be embraced by every consumer OS within a few years time.
This is definitely "News for Nerds."
If I remember Ars Technica's excellent article on Tiger, there is a trick to do this.
I think the trick was to clone the database as a directory of files with a special extension, duplicating the database, but thus allowing it to be searched.
For Thunderbird messages to be indexed, searchable and retrievable, each message should be saved as an individual file.
You might want to mention that Thunderbird's version of the mbox format does not do this, instead one file is created for each mailbox. Unless this changes, it will not be easy to implement Spotlight searching on individual mail messages in Thunderbird.
This is actually a potentially large failing in Spotlight. Being able to find the right file is a wonderful thing, but for really big files it would be much better to find a location within that file.
I mean, seriously. How much Mac software is the equivalent of "faceplates for your cell phone?"
Yeah I mean how many metadata plug-ins do we need to be able to search the text inside our prototyping, graphics, and organization applications. I mean this must be like the 50th time someone has provided a way for me to instantly search my system for tree diagrams in a proprietary format with particular text in them.
Oh wait, no it isn't.
The privacy problem in Office Documents was mostly that the file contained data that should not have been there.
While that is a big part of the problem, there is also just the data that is "supposed to be there" but that the user is unaware of. This includes revision information, and the metadata like Author, Organization, etc. I've received documents that were clearly based upon the work of other people, based upon the "Author" field and I've received documents that are clearly adaptations of similar offers sent to competitors, based upon the revision information. Basically, I can see applications adding metadata that users are completely unaware of and privacy and security issues resulting.
I would be more interested to see if the meta-index respects the permissions (Unix or ACLs), i.e that an user can only see meta-information of files he can read.
That is an interesting point, especially when you are talking about Apple software that does not run as the user.
The coverage of the arbitrary metadata support in HFS+ was also very interesting and in depth. I was a little fuzzy on some of the limitations of the space, and the suggested naming conventions since he covered them so briefly, but this is just crying out for a BeOS style arbitrary metadata creation/editing application. I am very slightly concerned about security/privacy issues that could result. Word users already export enormous amounts of random data attached to their .doc files. I fear that a lack of awareness of these metadata features could lead to a similar problem. Apple has a great record for innovation, but so far I have not been impressed with their ability to consider and mitigate all the security concerns that may result from their new ideas. Hopefully, this is something that will be addressed before third-party developers start making use of this.
The one Safari feature I was looking forward too seems to be missing. Anyone know how to get Safari to scale images to the screen in the same way as IE or FF does?
The article talks about the scaling features (which are currently only in the debug menu) as well as the full screen display of any images.
The article and summary both mention the consolidation of many launching methods into an new 'launchd' daemon that is responsible for a wide-range of tasks including starting and stopping applications and other daemons on behalf of users and the system. After more than 100 comments, I have not seen even one mention of it. Is this because it is uninteresting, no one has RTFA, or because nobody really knows what it does yet? The Arstechnica reviewer advocates that the other UNIX type systems immediately steal this idea and code and incorporate it. Nobody here has an opinion on that?
Thanks for the info. Looks like I may not be upgrading for a while. Note, there is a thread on MacSlash that says the Cisco VPN client breaks with the install, but works if you re-install it. You may want to give that a try if you have a machine you are testing with. Unfortunately I have only this one production laptop that can get to the VPN server so I'll wait till someone else gives it a shot. Thanks again.
Evidentally there is enough of "under the hood" changes to the kernel network API's that CISCO's VPN client is incompatible. CISCO is working on it reportedly but it will not be out before the end of May. This is a MAJOR show stopper for Tiger deployment where I work.
Hmm, that is odd. Look at this blurb from the Tiger features pages, "Mac OS X Tiger includes a built-in VPN client that supports the Layer 2 Tunneling Protocol over Internet Protocol Security (L2TP/IPSec) and Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol (PPTP), and is compatible with most popular VPN servers, including those from Cisco and Microsoft."
Have you tried the built in VPN features in Tiger? I was hoping I could ditch the Cisco VPN client altogether.
Write some spyware, claim it'll make the internet faster or give you free porn or whatever, and people will install it.
I don't see how you interpret that in any way to be a flaw in Firefox. This problem can, however, be somewhat mitigated by a well designed OS in combination with a well designed browser. The two main methods are ACLs and sandboxes. I'd love to see an OS that has very specific pre-defined permissions for each application. Further applications should be assigned automatically or by the user with one of a number of preset template applications. For example, by default their could be a "game" template that denies access for the application to any internet connectivity and allows the program to write only to a specific saved games directory and to it's own preferences file (which cannot overwrite an existing file). There could also be network games, internet application, etc. templates. This would make it easy for a default user to assign correct permissions to each application and any application that does not conform to those permissions would need to be granted rights explicitly. This would encourage application developers to use only the permissions a user expects, serve to make the user think twice about trust when an application wants to do something unusual, and make malware authors find a local exploit in order to deliver payloads.
So what would I gain from switching?
I use Adobe and Macromedia applications regularly on both systems. First, you need to make sure your particular applications are well supported on the mac, or it is a non-starter. Adobe has several projects where they have mostly abandoned the mac.
Asssuming you do not use any of these the main advantages are:
Better GUI - UI elements have better feedback and make a lot more sense. (buttons pulse and when the system is working stay lit so you the system registered the click. Windows UI elements don't provide feedback and leave you guessing. Also, dialogue boxes don't say "Cancel/OK" most have useful titles.
System Services - in any native app with 1-3 clicks I can lookup a word or acronym online, translate it to another language, spell check a selection or document, grammar check a selection or document, look it up in a thesuarus, make a graph of data, run a script on it, speak text aloud, etc. You can download these services or they can be offered by applications or the OS.
Freeware - There is a pile of real and useful freeware on OS X. No really, good, free software from linux as well as mac native applications are made and distributed for free. The free dev tools have prompted thousands of developers to write useful free applications that are in some cases better than anything (even commercial offerings) available on Windows.
I use a number of OS's each day, but i gravitate to OS X as my default because I can get more done with less frustration. I'm not sure how serious you are, or if you would prefer OS X. Some people get very used to doing things one particular way and the time and effort required to get used to doing things differently is just too much for them. Good luck!
Firefox doesn't have a spyware problem because it hasn't had enough market share to make it really worthwhile.
Nope. Firefox doesn't have a spyware problem because as soon as somebody figures out how to install spyware using Firefox a bunch of developers are pissed off by it. They drink a lot of coffee and come up with a fix to stop it, rebuild and the nightly builds are immune to the new threat in a few days.
Which other easily installed (i.e. no Cygwin) PDF viewer for the Microsoft Windows platform do you recommend that people install instead of Adobe Reader?
I don't recommend any for Windows. The only options I've ever used are Adobe Reader and Ghostview, and neither was very good. That does not mean, however, that their is anything wrong with the format. It just means Windows only has crappy applications available. MS could easily write a better one, or incorporate it into Windows. Instead they are inventing their own format. Do you really think that is because PDF is not up to the task or do think it is because they want to lock people in to their own closed format? I know what I think since they have only played this game a few hundred times now.
I think you are confusing Adobe PDF Reader with the PDF format. All of your complaints are problems with the reader (or lack thereof). I don't know of anything wrong with the PDF format and the licensing for it is open. If MS really wants to do something useful they should start including a fully featured PDF reader and writer with Windows. Most Linux Distributions and OS X come with them.
That is not the MS way though. It is to hard to corrupt the already established and instituted PDF format since so many printers and third party applications depend upon it. Instead they will introduce their own non-free format that competes, does not work as well, only runs on Windows, can't be incorporated into Linux, but comes bundled on every new Windows machine. As a result they will kill Adobe PDF in the business and consumer space thus proving once again that leveraging their monopoly to kill competition and further lock customers in will not be punished by the corrupt and easily bribed government of the U.S.
What happens in the EU remains to be seen.
I can't speak for anyone else, but for myself I encourage others to use some open source products (like firefox) not because they are open source, but because they play well with others and conform to open standards. I could not care less whether the web browser someone else uses is open sourced or whether it is made by Microsoft. I do care when the vast majority of people use a web browser that does not properly support the published HTML specifications and uses proprietary extensions to markup (active X) because that encourages HTML authors to break with standards and create non-conforming code that does not work properly for me.
Additionally with IE and MS there is the issue of a monopoly. MS has bundled IE effectively leveraging it's desktop OS monopoly to control the world wide web (to some degree). This means a single company can (and does) impede the technological progress of the web. If each user chose their browser from amongst competing offerings they would probably choose one with support for the latest CSS simply because everyone likes to have the newest cool technology. As it is now, however, users just use the one bundled with their computer (IE) and no one can write pages that take advantage of new technology.
The short answer is, I don't encourage others to use applications because they are open source, but the applications I encourage others to use are often open source.
What bothers me is the big fat grey border around all the windows using the 'brushed metal' UI.
Having a border along 1, 2, or 4 edges of a window is ideal in different circumstances. I don't think think having 4 is a property of the brushed metal interface. Safari, for example has borders only on the top and bottom. I really like the brushed metal because the color and texture works well for me. The contents of most of my windows are primarily either black or white. Gray is a good, color that does not blend with either nor clash with any color.
but surely this one sounds like it will be far less onerous to work with.
And you're basing that belief upon what? Just because he hit me yesterday and the day before, and about seven times last week surely doesn't mean he's going to hit me today? This is just MS moving into another market and killing it with bundling and proprietary formats. Any resemblance to open formats will be fixed in a later version.
There is a very large profit margin on music sales online.
Apple's financial statements disagree with you. Apple is barely making a profit on the iTunes store, and certainly not enough to justify the enormous investment they put into it. They pay the rights holders, the development costs, the legal fees, and the bandwidth costs for every song. The various copyright organizations are making money since they don't actually have to do anything. The whole deal is a way to sell ipods and a counter to MS monopolizing music distribution with their own proprietary format and using that to exclude mac computers.
Apple could adopt the game console/printer model of making the big purchase (iPod) lucrative through profit-loss sales, and pulling in all the money from the replacement of the exaustable supplies--lets be honest... who wants to hear most modern music more than a couple times? I'd say it's disposable ;-).
Razors or blades, the classic distribution question. Apple has chosen razors and sells music. Many other distributers have chosen blades and are selling music "services" with small monthly fees but all your music goes away if you stop paying. Perhaps you should try one of the latter if that is your preference.
People on this board are Apple customers or potential Apple customers. Insulting them is unbecoming.
???
In what way did he insult Apple customers? In truth, if computers worked correctly and easily there would be little reason to have a large IT staff.
It's like you want to stifle discussion or something.
He wants to stifle discussion by talking about Apple's direction and Tiger?
I just don't understand what issue you have here. If you don't like this person's opinions, fine, but he (or she) has the right to say whatever they like and if you don't like the content, well that's what the mod system is for.
Personally I agree that computers are too hard to use and require too much information from the user that they should be able to discover for themselves. I think the MS monopoly has held computers back for years and Apple is one of the best hopes for real innovation that makes computers easier and more powerful. I hope Apple developers agree with me. I also hope IT departments shrink and development departments grow. It's not that I don't like IT people, it's just that I want my equipment to work without lots of human intervention.
then the result of this lawsuit is that the the pigopolists have to change their licensing mode
Except no one is suing the record companies. They are suing an intermediate distributor with no authority to license music across national boundaries (this is illegal). I'm sorry but the law does not apply to services. For example, try to get an English pizza delivery service to deliver to Latvia. For that matter try to license any intellectual property from someone who owns the rights to something in one country, but not in the one you live.
That sounds to me like a win-for-me situation, which, as a consumer, is all I care about.
Higher prices, part of which is paid to a completely unrelated music oligopoly in another country that does not even sell that artist sounds to you like a win for the consumer?
This is not really anything too revolutionary. When an application dies in OS X the Crash Reporter application gives the user the option of mailing the crash report and debug info to Apple. Crash Reporter does not, as far as I am aware, include the contents of any files being edited. I usually paste in any file snippets that I think might be relevant (like wacky javascripts when Safari dies).
If MS makes including files the default, however, there will be serious legal and privacy concerns. Imagine medical workers, lawyers, government employees, military officers, and psychologists all being given an OK/Cancel type dialogue box every time Word crashes. How long do think it will be before MS has a large collection files in violation of a number of laws?