Imagine if your government made lots of money from advertising. Time-shifting devices would be tax-avoidance devices, and they'd be outlawed faster than you could say "budget gap."
Knowing that the purchased DRM-free tracks include the username and email address is something that requires looking. The same investigation would reveal that this information is available in the 'Get Info' panel in iTunes (as file metadata) and always has been. The story seems to be just a scare campaign, but if it was a real problem, what would we do?
Well, Apple's privacy policy (http://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/) seems fairly reasonable. If they contravene it, they might be in trouble. It looks like there's a mechanism to request all info about us that's being collected. That's something.
You've got a point about informing the user. The closest in the EULA (which of course we all read and never click through) is 4. Consent to Use of Data. You agree that Apple and its subsidiaries may collect and use technical and related information, including but not limited to technical information about your computer, system and application software, and peripherals, that is gathered periodically to facilitate the provision of software updates, product support and other services to you (if any) related to the Apple Software and to verify compliance with the terms of this License.Apple may use this information, as long as it is in a form that does not personally identify you, to improve our products or to provide services or technologies to you.
It's not so close though, as the information's not being used anywhere, but is instead presented back to us.
I'm trying, but I can't see where the privacy aspect comes in. Apple are placing my username and email address in things that I've purchased, that only I have access to. These details aren't available to anyone else except myself and Apple, the only parties in this transaction. If they were broadcast or listed against the tracks I've purchased, there would be an issue, but they're not.
What is the chance that any given *NON* *IPOD* mp3 player supports AAC? Pretty much the same as always, there's no reason to support non iPOD AAC. Because the only store with AAC is iTunes and it supported only iTunes DRM! You are playing games sir. If you have an iPod then why would you care about the DRM?
A moment's review of Wikipedia shows the list: * iPod * Microsoft Zune * SanDisk Sansa e200R * Sony PlayStation Portable (PSP) * Sony Walkman * Palm OS PDAs * Nokia Nseries and other Nokia multimedia phones * BlackBerry plus references to the PS3, other phones and other devices.
What is the chance that something other than an iPod will play AAC? Pretty good, and getting better all the time. You need to face it - mp3 is obsolete, and the move away from it brings better quality, smaller files (you should like that part) and doesn't require royalties paid out per track. If you're locked into an aging mp3 player, perhaps you need to consider upgrading to something that supports more modern formats.
In iTunes, select any purchased song and the from the File menu, select the item Get Info (command-I on Macs, probably control-I on PCs).
Your username and email address are in the info panel, plain as day. They've always been in there. I can't consider displaying this information clearly and unambiguously in a simple to locate place is tantamount to "as good as secret."
If you had to dig for this info, then your point would be more valid, but it's right there. The only more obvious way to store it would be to put it in the name of the track, which is probably a bit over the top.
A person should definitely be able to maintain their privacy. How is storing this information in the file, as well as at Apple's end, in violation of anyone's privacy? The user presumably knows who they are, and Apple needs to validate their details on purchase (to simplify the transaction, otherwise we'd have to enter credit card details every single time). I can't see where the privacy issue comes in.
Hey, everyone has a bad day, and it's no fun to post something and have lots of people jump down your throat. I've lost count of the stupid things I've posted in the past.
2GB in the MBP is more about what a good high-end laptop should ship with than what OS X requires.
You can run OS X pretty well with 512MB, but like all good operating systems, more memory means less disk paging, leading to better performance. It's reasonable to expect that Apple's top laptops would run many apps at once without breaking a sweat, and that's exactly what they do.
Are Apple's commercials 'retarded' for saying you need to upgrade for Vista? Depends on what experience you want with Vista. It's reasonable to argue that the advertised experience includes all the bells and whistles, which really needs a decent GPU, a reasonable CPU and a fair whack of memory. You may not have to upgrade for Vista, but upgrading will generally give you more or the whole Vista experience than not upgrading. Apple's commercials stand in my opinion.
I'm quite happy to "shit on you" and probably posted before your retraction. Possibly if you were less abusive, people might be nicer to you. But you're not, so I'm not disposed to be.
Look for the Rolling Stone interview with Steve Jobs, back when iTunes was originally launched. You'll find a quote from him about how DRM won't work and how they don't want to stay with DRM forever.
Now, I know that comment wasn't ironic, but it's hard to decide just how to rate it. Maybe '+1 has never talked to an engineer' or '+5 doesn't remember the past 30 years of computing.'
But you're right. Since Woz left there's been no real innovation in computing. The Apple II was 'peak computing.'
Oh! I get it! You're being really sarcastic!
Steve Wozniak is special, and has a key place in the history of computing. He's one of a kind, which is sad - an industry full of maverick geniuses would have been amazing. Still, the past 30 years of computing have been pretty incredible even with the stagnation into a near-monoculture.
Or you could live in a "free" nation where technology resides at your fingertips...the only downside is you have to sell your moral soul to do so.
Why do you feel this is true? Do you believe technology is innately immoral or only an immoral society can have technology? Can people not make moral decisions when buying technology? Are non-technology based societies moral? History wouldn't agree, but is this your point?
Every time a spam message gets through my filters, I suffer a brief twinge of irritation. I've been receiving spam in varying amounts since the mid-90s, and I wonder what the cumulative effect of all those little irritants would be.
I also wonder what the cumulative effect of the millions of people he spammed having those little irritations over the years would be. Spread over millions of people and several years it may not seem so bad, but the cumulative effect is that a wave of minor negativity washes over the planet when people like this guy send out spam. Sure it's not the great symbol odegra in a road system, but it's another thing that brings the general happiness of the planet down a jot.
Maybe the punishment should factor in the number of people he spammed, as a multiplier. Not one to one, but some multiplier.
It's probably a terrible idea, but then I'd extend anti-spam legislation to all advertising forms if I could. Billboards jostling for that last square centimetre of space seem just as bad as emails written by the mental giants who think that mis-spelling erectile drugs will make me more likely to buy them.
In an age when Intel and IBM are making statements about future 80-core processors or massive parallelism, and when multicore processors (or at least dual-CPU systems) are becoming commonplace, how can a statement from Microsoft to the effect that they're going to take advantage of multiple cores be anything other than a "me too!" piece of fluff?
Nothing specific is said, just the vague "we're going to be doing good stuff to make use of the things we have when we're done" sort of message.
What's next? "Memory is important, so we're going to make really good use of it?" or "Hard drives are getting bigger all the time, so we're going to do something with that extra space. Not sure yet, but it'll be really good and probably involve the overuse of the word 'rich' by senior execs."
I'm looking forward to *delivery* and ignoring vague promises.
There is no free market. Not in the US, not in the UK and not in the EU.
Politicians won't let their constituents suffer massive job losses, which is why Australia can't sell beef to the US (well, the FTA a few years ago allowed it in 18 years, unless vetoed by the US in the meantime), why Canada can't flood the US with cheap timber and why the UK won't allow cheap CD imports to hurt their local companies.
In a truly free market, the US agricultural sector would disappear overnight. Cheaper wins only when people are playing the same game. When the balance is tilted, we get massively subsidised internal markets propping up local companies and their politicians, all costing the taxpayers billions and billions.
I'd hoped that the Zune would be a stronger competitor to the iPod, offering things Apple didn't and raising the bar on portable players generally.
As a fan of Apple, I'm keen to see better players in this space to drive everyone up. It's good to see Microsoft claiming the million players sold, but the Zune as it stands today is a turkey. The innovative wireless sharing has been hobbled by unnecessarily draconian DRM, leaving a weak offering. Maybe Zune 2 will be better, but it's a failure to release a poor first showing, as now we've all got this first impression to overcome.
I'd like to see Microsoft release a really solid Zune. Promises are worth exactly nothing; only products matter.
People are sheep? Nice way to get people onside. 'You're all a bunch of idiots! Now listen to me...'
The issue here is not that people are stupid or inherently sheep-like, but that climate change is a complex issue that has become politically charged. No discussion can be had without careful study and considering a wide range of information and ramifications, but that doesn't fit the media model for presenting information. Adding political spin means that the public are being presented many mixed messages on this.
People are confused by climate change. It's complex and scary. People aren't sheep or weak-minded; the messages aren't being made clearly enough. The New Scientist article attempts to cut through some of the false information about climate change. This should be a good thing in anyone's eyes, as it raises the level of debate. Climate change may be a global problem or a storm in a teacup, but no-one is served by using false information to reach a scientific goal.
Calling people "weak minded" and saying that they "cannot grasp the idea of the climate" is a failure of your own. I have found that anyone can grasp any concept well enough to make an informed decision, provided you actually take the time to talk to them. I'm an optimist, a believer in human nature and the ability of people to overcome anything. You seem to believe people are weak-minded sheep. I infinitely prefer my position.
What secrecy? I know Apple traditionally haven't been too forthcoming, but that's because they need a competitive advantage. Why should any company tell the world what they're working on?
Lately though, Apple have started giving out tidbits, such as the iPhone well before release. And what happened? A lot of people immediately tried to copy the iPhone.
If Apple think they're skating to where the puck will be (as opposed to where it is now), then why would they want a welcoming commitee waiting for them?
I think it's time for Apple to return to super-secrecy.
Lastly, the rumour sites are a combination of invented material submitted to them, opinions of where Apple will go and a tiny kernel of actual information. Often there's no way to tell one from the other, making the entire Apple-rumour industry a worthless waste of time. These people hype products that will never appear, and then people get disappointed when they don't see the things Apple never promised.
Minor nitpick - the phrase or when Apple stole from Xerox should be more correctly written as or when Apple licenced UI IP from Xerox.
Although it makes a good, dramatic story, the one about Apple stealing the GUI from Xerox was never true. Xerox sued for more money when they realised what they'd given away, but there was a licence in place and Xerox profited from the Apple shares it was given.
I've always thought that the story was put about by Microsoft apologists, keen to muddy the water on the Microsoft-Apple UI lawsuit. Now it's taken on a life of its own, and people just assume it's true.
What about all the other platform games before SMB? I'm thinking of Manic Miner, Chuckie Egg, etc. They ran on the 8-bit computers of the eary '80s, and predated SMB by a few years at least.
SMB is a good game, but not revolutionary even for its day.
He may be a marketing genius, but he's also brought Apple from insignificance to centre-stage prominence, and the share prices reflect that.
I argue that all executives above a certain level should be on $1/year salary, with other money coming in based purely on performance. If the alternative (the current state) is huge bonuses on top of already huge salaries when the company is tanking and workers are getting shafted, then it'd be an improvement. It should also make executives focus on longer term success for a company.
Having said all that, the amount he was given by the board is excessively high.
Visually, all of the Star Wars movies are great. The writing in episodes 4, 5 and 6 was pretty good too. While the visuals have only gone from strength to strength and the overal plot of the rise of Palpatine is impressive, the writing has plummeted in quality.
Anyone who expects Natalie Portman to deliver the line "Hold me like you did on Naboo" without the entire audience laughing at the absurdity of it, or gives Ewan Macgregor the immortal line "He killed the younglings!" has to face facts: writing is not their forte. Lucas should let better authors write and stick to directing.
I've seen them all in the cinemas, played some games, enjoy the backstory and own the DVDs, but I try to skip the dialogue as much as possible in the new films. It's Lucas' Achilles Heel.
The SE/30 was an all-in-one unit. What do you mean by "sitting vertically" ? They always sat vertically. Any other orientation would make it hard to read the tiny little screen.
Over my entire history with Apple ('91-now) I've only had one bad problem - this G4 iBook. It had a few motherboards in the first year (that's what warranties are for) and has been fine since then (making my AppleCare less than useful). It was probably one of those solder issues. Is it representative of Apple? Not when I consider the G4 Sawtooth tower that never failed in four years, the reliable 5500 before it, the IIvx and the LC. No hardware issues, even on the second-hand machines.
Over the entire history of Apple, the quality issues have come up, but not frequently as the parent poster infers. The poster neglected to list the models with no big QA reports, which is the other hundred or so Macs, Apples and Newtons.
It's newsworthy when Apple assemble something without a design problem? Can Apple get the iPhone right? What, couldn't resist some cheap comments to finish on? Did an email to Steve Jobs not get answered or something? Sounds like sour grapes to me.
Once upon a time, it was us Mac users making comments like the emphasised part from the article summary (my emphasis):
"Really, there was only one instance where Vista was able to pick up a few more frames than XP -- World of Warcraft at greater than 90fps, where the human eye can't even see the difference. "
Slashdot Mirror
Imagine if your government made lots of money from advertising. Time-shifting devices would be tax-avoidance devices, and they'd be outlawed faster than you could say "budget gap."
Madness, pure madness.
Knowing that the purchased DRM-free tracks include the username and email address is something that requires looking. The same investigation would reveal that this information is available in the 'Get Info' panel in iTunes (as file metadata) and always has been. The story seems to be just a scare campaign, but if it was a real problem, what would we do?
Well, Apple's privacy policy (http://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/) seems fairly reasonable. If they contravene it, they might be in trouble. It looks like there's a mechanism to request all info about us that's being collected. That's something.
You've got a point about informing the user. The closest in the EULA (which of course we all read and never click through) is
4. Consent to Use of Data.
You agree that Apple and its subsidiaries may collect and use technical and related information, including but not limited to technical information about your computer, system and application software, and peripherals, that is gathered periodically to facilitate the provision of software updates, product support and other services to you (if any) related to the Apple Software and to verify compliance with the terms of this License.Apple may use this information, as long as it is in a form that does not personally identify you, to improve our products or to provide services or technologies to you.
It's not so close though, as the information's not being used anywhere, but is instead presented back to us.
I'm trying, but I can't see where the privacy aspect comes in. Apple are placing my username and email address in things that I've purchased, that only I have access to. These details aren't available to anyone else except myself and Apple, the only parties in this transaction. If they were broadcast or listed against the tracks I've purchased, there would be an issue, but they're not.
What is the chance that any given *NON* *IPOD* mp3 player supports AAC? Pretty much the same as always, there's no reason to support non iPOD AAC. Because the only store with AAC is iTunes and it supported only iTunes DRM! You are playing games sir. If you have an iPod then why would you care about the DRM?
g
A moment's review of Wikipedia shows the list:
* iPod
* Microsoft Zune
* SanDisk Sansa e200R
* Sony PlayStation Portable (PSP)
* Sony Walkman
* Palm OS PDAs
* Nokia Nseries and other Nokia multimedia phones
* BlackBerry
plus references to the PS3, other phones and other devices.
What is the chance that something other than an iPod will play AAC? Pretty good, and getting better all the time. You need to face it - mp3 is obsolete, and the move away from it brings better quality, smaller files (you should like that part) and doesn't require royalties paid out per track. If you're locked into an aging mp3 player, perhaps you need to consider upgrading to something that supports more modern formats.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Audio_Codin
In iTunes, select any purchased song and the from the File menu, select the item Get Info (command-I on Macs, probably control-I on PCs).
Your username and email address are in the info panel, plain as day. They've always been in there. I can't consider displaying this information clearly and unambiguously in a simple to locate place is tantamount to "as good as secret."
If you had to dig for this info, then your point would be more valid, but it's right there. The only more obvious way to store it would be to put it in the name of the track, which is probably a bit over the top.
A person should definitely be able to maintain their privacy. How is storing this information in the file, as well as at Apple's end, in violation of anyone's privacy? The user presumably knows who they are, and Apple needs to validate their details on purchase (to simplify the transaction, otherwise we'd have to enter credit card details every single time). I can't see where the privacy issue comes in.
Hey, everyone has a bad day, and it's no fun to post something and have lots of people jump down your throat. I've lost count of the stupid things I've posted in the past.
Have fun,
Gary
2GB in the MBP is more about what a good high-end laptop should ship with than what OS X requires.
You can run OS X pretty well with 512MB, but like all good operating systems, more memory means less disk paging, leading to better performance. It's reasonable to expect that Apple's top laptops would run many apps at once without breaking a sweat, and that's exactly what they do.
Are Apple's commercials 'retarded' for saying you need to upgrade for Vista? Depends on what experience you want with Vista. It's reasonable to argue that the advertised experience includes all the bells and whistles, which really needs a decent GPU, a reasonable CPU and a fair whack of memory. You may not have to upgrade for Vista, but upgrading will generally give you more or the whole Vista experience than not upgrading. Apple's commercials stand in my opinion.
I'm quite happy to "shit on you" and probably posted before your retraction. Possibly if you were less abusive, people might be nicer to you. But you're not, so I'm not disposed to be.
No, you're quite wrong.
Look for the Rolling Stone interview with Steve Jobs, back when iTunes was originally launched. You'll find a quote from him about how DRM won't work and how they don't want to stay with DRM forever.
Now, I know that comment wasn't ironic, but it's hard to decide just how to rate it. Maybe '+1 has never talked to an engineer' or '+5 doesn't remember the past 30 years of computing.'
But you're right. Since Woz left there's been no real innovation in computing. The Apple II was 'peak computing.'
Oh! I get it! You're being really sarcastic!
Steve Wozniak is special, and has a key place in the history of computing. He's one of a kind, which is sad - an industry full of maverick geniuses would have been amazing. Still, the past 30 years of computing have been pretty incredible even with the stagnation into a near-monoculture.
*That* was modded informative?
It's just conjecture, guesswork and FUD.
Or is there some link to the iPhone SDK contract that burris can provide to prove the point? If not, then this is just a few paragraphs of FUD.
Or you could live in a "free" nation where technology resides at your fingertips...the only downside is you have to sell your moral soul to do so.
Why do you feel this is true? Do you believe technology is innately immoral or only an immoral society can have technology? Can people not make moral decisions when buying technology? Are non-technology based societies moral? History wouldn't agree, but is this your point?
I'm actually curious here.
Bear with me for a bit...
Every time a spam message gets through my filters, I suffer a brief twinge of irritation. I've been receiving spam in varying amounts since the mid-90s, and I wonder what the cumulative effect of all those little irritants would be.
I also wonder what the cumulative effect of the millions of people he spammed having those little irritations over the years would be. Spread over millions of people and several years it may not seem so bad, but the cumulative effect is that a wave of minor negativity washes over the planet when people like this guy send out spam. Sure it's not the great symbol odegra in a road system, but it's another thing that brings the general happiness of the planet down a jot.
Maybe the punishment should factor in the number of people he spammed, as a multiplier. Not one to one, but some multiplier.
It's probably a terrible idea, but then I'd extend anti-spam legislation to all advertising forms if I could. Billboards jostling for that last square centimetre of space seem just as bad as emails written by the mental giants who think that mis-spelling erectile drugs will make me more likely to buy them.
In an age when Intel and IBM are making statements about future 80-core processors or massive parallelism, and when multicore processors (or at least dual-CPU systems) are becoming commonplace, how can a statement from Microsoft to the effect that they're going to take advantage of multiple cores be anything other than a "me too!" piece of fluff?
Nothing specific is said, just the vague "we're going to be doing good stuff to make use of the things we have when we're done" sort of message.
What's next? "Memory is important, so we're going to make really good use of it?" or "Hard drives are getting bigger all the time, so we're going to do something with that extra space. Not sure yet, but it'll be really good and probably involve the overuse of the word 'rich' by senior execs."
I'm looking forward to *delivery* and ignoring vague promises.
Amit Singh has something to say on this...
http://www.osxbook.com/book/bonus/chapter10/tpm/
There are no guarantees, but it's not looking like Apple is keen to enforce the TPM on Mac users.
There is no free market. Not in the US, not in the UK and not in the EU.
Politicians won't let their constituents suffer massive job losses, which is why Australia can't sell beef to the US (well, the FTA a few years ago allowed it in 18 years, unless vetoed by the US in the meantime), why Canada can't flood the US with cheap timber and why the UK won't allow cheap CD imports to hurt their local companies.
In a truly free market, the US agricultural sector would disappear overnight. Cheaper wins only when people are playing the same game. When the balance is tilted, we get massively subsidised internal markets propping up local companies and their politicians, all costing the taxpayers billions and billions.
I'd hoped that the Zune would be a stronger competitor to the iPod, offering things Apple didn't and raising the bar on portable players generally.
As a fan of Apple, I'm keen to see better players in this space to drive everyone up. It's good to see Microsoft claiming the million players sold, but the Zune as it stands today is a turkey. The innovative wireless sharing has been hobbled by unnecessarily draconian DRM, leaving a weak offering. Maybe Zune 2 will be better, but it's a failure to release a poor first showing, as now we've all got this first impression to overcome.
I'd like to see Microsoft release a really solid Zune. Promises are worth exactly nothing; only products matter.
People are sheep? Nice way to get people onside. 'You're all a bunch of idiots! Now listen to me...'
The issue here is not that people are stupid or inherently sheep-like, but that climate change is a complex issue that has become politically charged. No discussion can be had without careful study and considering a wide range of information and ramifications, but that doesn't fit the media model for presenting information. Adding political spin means that the public are being presented many mixed messages on this.
People are confused by climate change. It's complex and scary. People aren't sheep or weak-minded; the messages aren't being made clearly enough. The New Scientist article attempts to cut through some of the false information about climate change. This should be a good thing in anyone's eyes, as it raises the level of debate. Climate change may be a global problem or a storm in a teacup, but no-one is served by using false information to reach a scientific goal.
Calling people "weak minded" and saying that they "cannot grasp the idea of the climate" is a failure of your own. I have found that anyone can grasp any concept well enough to make an informed decision, provided you actually take the time to talk to them. I'm an optimist, a believer in human nature and the ability of people to overcome anything. You seem to believe people are weak-minded sheep. I infinitely prefer my position.
What secrecy? I know Apple traditionally haven't been too forthcoming, but that's because they need a competitive advantage. Why should any company tell the world what they're working on?
Lately though, Apple have started giving out tidbits, such as the iPhone well before release. And what happened? A lot of people immediately tried to copy the iPhone.
If Apple think they're skating to where the puck will be (as opposed to where it is now), then why would they want a welcoming commitee waiting for them?
I think it's time for Apple to return to super-secrecy.
Lastly, the rumour sites are a combination of invented material submitted to them, opinions of where Apple will go and a tiny kernel of actual information. Often there's no way to tell one from the other, making the entire Apple-rumour industry a worthless waste of time. These people hype products that will never appear, and then people get disappointed when they don't see the things Apple never promised.
Minor nitpick - the phrase or when Apple stole from Xerox should be more correctly written as or when Apple licenced UI IP from Xerox.
Although it makes a good, dramatic story, the one about Apple stealing the GUI from Xerox was never true. Xerox sued for more money when they realised what they'd given away, but there was a licence in place and Xerox profited from the Apple shares it was given.
I've always thought that the story was put about by Microsoft apologists, keen to muddy the water on the Microsoft-Apple UI lawsuit. Now it's taken on a life of its own, and people just assume it's true.
If Microsoft won't list the breaches, then there may be none. If they list them, then the issue can be resolved without recourse to the courts.
A breach not listed is a breach non-existant.
What about all the other platform games before SMB? I'm thinking of Manic Miner, Chuckie Egg, etc. They ran on the 8-bit computers of the eary '80s, and predated SMB by a few years at least.
SMB is a good game, but not revolutionary even for its day.
He may be a marketing genius, but he's also brought Apple from insignificance to centre-stage prominence, and the share prices reflect that.
I argue that all executives above a certain level should be on $1/year salary, with other money coming in based purely on performance. If the alternative (the current state) is huge bonuses on top of already huge salaries when the company is tanking and workers are getting shafted, then it'd be an improvement. It should also make executives focus on longer term success for a company.
Having said all that, the amount he was given by the board is excessively high.
Visually, all of the Star Wars movies are great. The writing in episodes 4, 5 and 6 was pretty good too. While the visuals have only gone from strength to strength and the overal plot of the rise of Palpatine is impressive, the writing has plummeted in quality.
Anyone who expects Natalie Portman to deliver the line "Hold me like you did on Naboo" without the entire audience laughing at the absurdity of it, or gives Ewan Macgregor the immortal line "He killed the younglings!" has to face facts: writing is not their forte. Lucas should let better authors write and stick to directing.
I've seen them all in the cinemas, played some games, enjoy the backstory and own the DVDs, but I try to skip the dialogue as much as possible in the new films. It's Lucas' Achilles Heel.
The SE/30 was an all-in-one unit. What do you mean by "sitting vertically" ? They always sat vertically. Any other orientation would make it hard to read the tiny little screen.
Over my entire history with Apple ('91-now) I've only had one bad problem - this G4 iBook. It had a few motherboards in the first year (that's what warranties are for) and has been fine since then (making my AppleCare less than useful). It was probably one of those solder issues. Is it representative of Apple? Not when I consider the G4 Sawtooth tower that never failed in four years, the reliable 5500 before it, the IIvx and the LC. No hardware issues, even on the second-hand machines.
Over the entire history of Apple, the quality issues have come up, but not frequently as the parent poster infers. The poster neglected to list the models with no big QA reports, which is the other hundred or so Macs, Apples and Newtons.
It's newsworthy when Apple assemble something without a design problem? Can Apple get the iPhone right? What, couldn't resist some cheap comments to finish on? Did an email to Steve Jobs not get answered or something? Sounds like sour grapes to me.
Once upon a time, it was us Mac users making comments like the emphasised part from the article summary (my emphasis):
"Really, there was only one instance where Vista was able to pick up a few more frames than XP -- World of Warcraft at greater than 90fps, where the human eye can't even see the difference. "
Ah, the good old days, when it was all so simple.