"Pirated" as in pirated iWork etc? I would do the same thing since they are being trojaned very actively. Apple's mistake was asking for serial on such apps and it proves my point. There wasn't any trojaned iLife release since there is no excuse for "crack.exe" trojans. They were really stupid to do such thing if you ask me.
Now, if you compare Apple pro software to a mainstream desktop OS (which is also trendy) as Windows 7, you will understand my point. The numbers are amazingly higher. I am sure I would be able to find some trojan win7 activator right now.
MS will also have to deal with millions of trojaned/zombie Windows machines which really hurts anything they did with the security on Windows 7.
There will be tens of trojans claiming to "fix the issue" and as people don't believe "virus" warnings in such little apps (ask Symantec idiots why), they will be infected very badly.
So, a zombie army of Windows 7 computers, thousands of stories running, millions of flames/trolls generated making billions of dollars spent to security R&D a waste... To find some guy in China using pirated Windows and disable his copy.
Wonder why Apple never bothers with OS X serials? It is not "you already bought a mac". It is something more clever.
No, OS X decides it, based on its scheme of "launch services" of that particular major OS X version. Yes, even OS X version matters since that behaviour has been changed in Snow Leopard, in a bad manner for some.
Having something installed recently, something particular in its info.plist, where it was installed, a lot of things happen.
Bad thing is, bad "trouble shooting" guides and even applications tell/does "clear caches" and the entire database of launch services resides in (~)/Library/Caches . So, in one shot, all prefs (including per file) may be gone and it really matters in graphics/DTP houses.
So, they are using experienced Mac users tactic. You know, if something gets updated, don't jump to updates. Go to some site like macupdate/versiontracker and hunt for "omg it broke my computer" comments. IRC can also be used, see if guy comes back after "I got it updated, let me reboot brb".
Perhaps they are doing the exact same thing, waiting for credible disaster stories. If nothing happens, auto update server will have it.
I know at least one company which will implement it. They are a movie/video studio with a huge queue and they run Da Vinci colour correction system which runs on Linux.
Of course, machine is totally disconnected from real world (to the degree of sealed USB ports) but they could use the performance and stability enhancements of the newer kernels.
I just paid $3 for monthly last.fm service, a freaking jukebox. Some companies pay $1 M/year to IBM for Z/OS which uptime is one of the advantages... I don't understand how $4 really surprises people.
It (offering services) is in fact the GNU's answer to "How will developers make money?" question. You can even make money from your own special kernel compilations as long as you share your knowledge.
You should talk about the history of ARM, what a sadly failed British Amiga like Desktop's CPU before they made wise choice of becoming a pure R&D house.
People talking about processors and thinks they are educated enough to the point of comparing enterprise Unix processors should start with Wikipedia information.
Imagine talking to someone early 1990s and show that Psion weird handheld and tell that weird OS will be powering 40% of smart devices in the future.
People doesn't even know that there is 1990s Apple, right at the beginning of ARM Holdings.
Apple doesn't need to do skunk works, all they need (and possibly do) is make sure they don't use any X86 specific stuff to the point of not being able to release it for any other CPU arch. Who would be that stupid? Well, Adobe. Adobe couldn't release their half ass Premiere for PPC along with another half ass audio editor making Premiere a further joke until Apple switched to X86.
As Apple maintains OS X for ARM Arch right now (via iPhone/iPad OSX), they aren't really doing the mistake of relying to X86 architecture. Who does such mistake right now? Well, Google Chrome to begin with.
As a PPC owner (G5 Quad, Mac Mini G4), let me tell you the sad thing. Once your users got the taste of running Virtual or real Windows and have Windows option, you can't really go back to anything. Perhaps AMD for certain cheap stuff later but still X86.
Even such an amazing enterprise CPU's resellers will have tough questions like "What if we want to run some enterprise Windows?"
And as a last thing, Apple never used the real, big POWER chips. The G5 (PPC970/SP/MP) is actually a POWER4 Lite. Now you can imagine what kind of power these enterprise monsters are.
I really wonder if browser vendors can really code multimedia cores especially targeted for real life situations, advertising to begin with... Also one way or another, DRM will be required by some content providers, does W3C has a plan for implementing a multi platform DRM?
What about GPU decoding? All GPUs post directx 9 later has H264/MP4 SP and even VC1 decoding on chip. It is _not_ a hack, it is unused, idling part of GPU because of stupid childish fights between GPU vendors and OS developers. Adobe has stated Linux and OS X doesn't have stable API but Windows has. I don't really want to believe them on that case but if it is true, I can't picture browser vendors doing a totally unrelated coding. Video isn't really trivial 320x240 plain mpeg 1 files anymore, users expect flawless 1080p (yes, p!) and overall low CPU usage.
BTW; I am not saying Adobe is the best ever mmedia developer ever, in fact, they really suck and they are stupid/cheap not to license actual working decoders from folks like 3ivx, core codec.
UNIX is celebrating 40th year, it is older if you think its roots (MULTICS). It is running on most trendy mobile devices ever, N900 and iPhone and industry has already decided one way or another, it is the only feasible set of standards and philosophy for next 10-20 years. Perhaps, if the real ubiquitous computing rises, its upgrade, Plan 9 will take over the mission.
NeXT is older too, if you put the smalltalk language to its true beginning. Look deeper, you will still see IBM and Apple behind it.
"OS X has all the backwards compatibility cruft with C, Mach, and NeXTStep--and the backwards compatibility with C is a real problem."
Did you guys totally lose it finally? OS X _IS_ Mach/Objective C/NeXTSTep/BSD Lite for God's sake. Oh yes, every UNIX adheres to 40 year old coding paradigm and standards too.
And no, you haven't been following OS X releases. If Apple warns you that something is depreciated, take it very serious since next major version can easily say "fsck off" to your application. It happened to many. Apple and their users are a moving target.
Some people with hopes for working at MS in future use that instead of native frameworks since they think, MS is picking up developers that way. The framework itself is coded by a MS reject himself.
I don't think it is easier since we got a perfect example in hand, companies/people didn't release a single thing for J2ME (on billion devices) or Symbian released their application on iPhone/iPod. XCode with Objective C is said to be the best/easiest thing mobile developer World ever seen, it is coming from all camps, even Symbian camp.
If the developer can't code in Objective C, using native frameworks, there should be a logo or something to make people understand it is based on Mono/MS.NET. I wouldn't trust to such developer or their coding competence. What next? Use MS Visual C?
I don't even mention stupidity of using an Apple/OS X/UNIX device and use clone of the clone framework to code for it, it is a bit political. I would really want to know if an application is based on.NET, there should be a way to figure it out without hacking anything.
Brian, don't you know why Flash isn't included? Which tablet user would go buy stuff from iTMS or make Apple "partner" money with Youtube app if a complete browser (with flash) exists? Also check http://g.ho.st/ , with Flash and advanced HTML, it is even possible to run a virtual machine. What would happen to "app store" locks that time?
I know Gnash, sadly it is not "there" yet, if Adobe had little brain, they would support it and even adopt it. Of course, they are Adobe and they don't have the slightest clue about a full Flash 10 open source player means especially in eyes of industry.
I am ready to bet that Apple, to show off their CPU, doesn't put a $2 h264 decoder chip inside the device. They were also cheap to pay Adobe for Flash on that device.
With fans (!) who can come up with standards arguments like that, why would they bother?
IMHO, 2 companies who aren't really small are mad about Apple choices now. Intel (Atom) and Adobe (Flash). They will sure make Apple pay for that. Adobe already does, see no 64bit support in pro apps on OS X but they exist on Windows.
So, original Adobe CS4 user who paid more than $1000 and gave his credit card number, home address and telephone should be protected from "evil Adobe" from checking updates or trying to figure which parts of software is used anonymously?
Well, Intego and couple of other companies offer a application firewall but, obviously if you use original/activation system software, it will fail to work if it can't access to net. Solution is GIMP but, it would be a bit unrealistic.
Some fan guy modded you flamebait but, I guess you mean installing boot camp or a virtual machine (hypervisor) and running it just like OS X, without antivirus/firewall and giving it access to OS X file structure.
IMHO Apple made a huge mistake by allowing (SL Bootcamp) Windows to see (read only though) OS X drives. That is not a favour, it is a huge security risk especially for Mac only people not knowing the extent of Windows threats/trojans/data leakage.
Fix? "My Computer", "Manage", "Disk Management", remove drive letter of the OS X drives. At least 99.9999 malware which isn't very modern will fail to find the personal files to steal.
To the "my virtual machine resets itself each boot" guys: If some real mean thing hits you, have fun explaining why your IP/computer was involved in some child porn distribution network "until it rebooted". Run some antivirus, it is NOT Mac once it runs Windows.
Funny is, people started to act like this. If Motorola can't make an iPhone to race with RIM, they must have no patents and they should be evilly suing RIM as result. It is same deal on Nokia stories.
Once upon a time (5-10 years back), Motorola was releasing unmatchable technological breakthroughs, perhaps in that good management period, they actually invented things and patented them? Same goes for Nokia.
Flash is already on my Symbian phone and various other platforms. Will HTML5 advocates spare time to non cool (!) platforms to code a codec/driver along with testing thousands of different setups to show their Theora video which is clearly missing 2-3 generations in video codec development compared to H264?
Google, a multi billion giant can roll out a good "quicktime interface" for youtube, can even add extra features to it but it doesn't really mean HTML5 with codecs which nobody can agree will crush Flash.
BTW; if you are concerned about Flash CPU usage, use 10.1 beta which has GPU decoding under Windows. I have seen it using almost nothing while playing 1080P video over youtube.
I keep testing Theora and sorry to say, I don't think it will take off unless Google does some amazing thing and make the VP7+ codecs open, free as in freedom. Now that would really change entire media universe. Hopefully they purchased that codec company for that reason.
If there is no MSI packaging, no central administration capability, commercial demand won't exist since they will simply use MS IE with Administration Kit&Policy.
Even Skype, a really consumer oriented voice solution has a MSI package for business users. Guess the reason for that?
I guess this is one of my most replied posts, it seems people really have hard time understanding why some "large, stupid" companies stay with IE solution. It is chicken and egg, basic as that.
That is what my large system administrator friends are doing for years and some of them are really sick and tired of doing it over and over. Some administrators won't really care to package "your" application or download from 3rd party (must be insane). Even 5 user home networks using OS X/Remote Desktop are starting to get bugged about no OS X PKG.
One more thing: MSI has advantages like package verification, signing and _repair_. It is what RPM is to a Redhat OS or DEB to Debian. Ignoring it is really childish and no, it isn't really "anti MS" thing they are doing. Anti MS thing would be rejecting to release their browser to Windows. If they can do it, it is all fine with me.
Adobe says their tool wasn't abused on this case. What makes you think I don't say same thing to Adobe? In fact, just 3 days ago, I suggested Adobe to fire entire Mac department. A "browser" is the platform to access to web, plugins can always be abandoned but browser is more like the "kernel". I don't want to panic anyone but even if they use Firefox, disable access to IE, as long as IE shared dlls used for HTML rendering in various tools (e.g. "what's new today"), they are still vulnerable.
While I won't touch Safari for my ordinary browsing, whenever Apple releases a Safari security update, I backup my stuff and rush to update for that exact same reason. System's default/core browser is a very big deal, way more big deal than anything else.
Firefox/Mozilla guys live in some imaginary World where you maintain/install/update thousands of desktops/laptops just like a home user, clicking "firefox.exe" installer.
IE on the other hand, has amazing administrator capabilities and when coupled with that enterprise "ms update services", it is unbeatable.
Firefox resists to ship a Microsoft Installer (MSI) and Apple Installer (PKG) for some mysterious reason let alone doing the stuff above. Near all those ".exe" shareware etc. stuff you see are in fact MSI packages packed into.exe file for convenience and prevent web server issues.
It got more unexplaniable since there is a complete open source MSI packager which is hosted at sourceforge ( http://wix.sourceforge.net/ ) and interesting thing is, InstallShield corp like guys would even donate their solutions to them with free automated setups. It is not some no name software, it is Firefox.
Can you try imagining your daily work depends on some intranet tool which only works in pre IE 8 and besides numerous claims by MS, IE 8 simply can't make that tool work?
What would happen?
In fact, even if a tool has upgrade and released by vendor, you can't roll IE 8 to all the machines without testing it yourself in numerous scenarios. It is not like launching Windows Update and click all security updates blindly. Even on OS X, as 10.6 shipped, companies/DTP/Video guys have finally moved to 10.5.8. When 10.7 ships, they may move to 10.6. People can't trust to Apple for updates let alone blindly updating/patching their windows which is way more complex.
I am surprised it took so long. I was expecting some guys from NSA, CIA and several visiting MS IE department and tell them "Guys, enough is enough, you are threatening our national security."
Think about it, is there anything more dangerous than IE with its flawed model currently? I mean look, you don't need to hire some black hats to code custom code, you just look for zero day flaws. Other browsers sure have zero day flaws but thanks to their model, it is fixed (unless Apple doesn't care). The browser's model is broken clearly. In fact, it threatens whole globe economy and security. Nothing that serious happened yet but it will sure happen one day. Another side effect is, every day, people are more bound to web/internet for their actual work. So as time passes, things go way more serious.
Coreplayer PowerPC, for OS X, does play 720P H264 video on a G4 1.42 Ghz fine. Adding more to shock, its benchmark function actually shows 70-80 fps levels. Why? Altivec is used along with very clever OpenGL and possibly ASM.
Of course, some idiot will popup and say "powerpc is dead"... Well, in case of Intel Core 2 duo, the CPU load is sub 3-5% levels giving free cycles for all the amazing filters one can run. It is not just PowerPC/Altivec wasted, SSE is always wasted too. I really wonder what kind of computing we would do if these guys coding X86 only and relying on automatic optimization actually knew/used SSE instructions.
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"Pirated" as in pirated iWork etc? I would do the same thing since they are being trojaned very actively. Apple's mistake was asking for serial on such apps and it proves my point. There wasn't any trojaned iLife release since there is no excuse for "crack.exe" trojans. They were really stupid to do such thing if you ask me.
Now, if you compare Apple pro software to a mainstream desktop OS (which is also trendy) as Windows 7, you will understand my point. The numbers are amazingly higher. I am sure I would be able to find some trojan win7 activator right now.
MS will also have to deal with millions of trojaned/zombie Windows machines which really hurts anything they did with the security on Windows 7.
There will be tens of trojans claiming to "fix the issue" and as people don't believe "virus" warnings in such little apps (ask Symantec idiots why), they will be infected very badly.
So, a zombie army of Windows 7 computers, thousands of stories running, millions of flames/trolls generated making billions of dollars spent to security R&D a waste... To find some guy in China using pirated Windows and disable his copy.
Wonder why Apple never bothers with OS X serials? It is not "you already bought a mac". It is something more clever.
No, OS X decides it, based on its scheme of "launch services" of that particular major OS X version. Yes, even OS X version matters since that behaviour has been changed in Snow Leopard, in a bad manner for some.
Having something installed recently, something particular in its info.plist, where it was installed, a lot of things happen.
Bad thing is, bad "trouble shooting" guides and even applications tell/does "clear caches" and the entire database of launch services resides in (~)/Library/Caches . So, in one shot, all prefs (including per file) may be gone and it really matters in graphics/DTP houses.
So, they are using experienced Mac users tactic. You know, if something gets updated, don't jump to updates. Go to some site like macupdate/versiontracker and hunt for "omg it broke my computer" comments. IRC can also be used, see if guy comes back after "I got it updated, let me reboot brb".
Perhaps they are doing the exact same thing, waiting for credible disaster stories. If nothing happens, auto update server will have it.
I know at least one company which will implement it. They are a movie/video studio with a huge queue and they run Da Vinci colour correction system which runs on Linux.
Of course, machine is totally disconnected from real world (to the degree of sealed USB ports) but they could use the performance and stability enhancements of the newer kernels.
I just paid $3 for monthly last.fm service, a freaking jukebox. Some companies pay $1 M/year to IBM for Z/OS which uptime is one of the advantages... I don't understand how $4 really surprises people.
It (offering services) is in fact the GNU's answer to "How will developers make money?" question. You can even make money from your own special kernel compilations as long as you share your knowledge.
You should talk about the history of ARM, what a sadly failed British Amiga like Desktop's CPU before they made wise choice of becoming a pure R&D house.
People talking about processors and thinks they are educated enough to the point of comparing enterprise Unix processors should start with Wikipedia information.
Imagine talking to someone early 1990s and show that Psion weird handheld and tell that weird OS will be powering 40% of smart devices in the future.
People doesn't even know that there is 1990s Apple, right at the beginning of ARM Holdings.
Apple doesn't need to do skunk works, all they need (and possibly do) is make sure they don't use any X86 specific stuff to the point of not being able to release it for any other CPU arch. Who would be that stupid? Well, Adobe. Adobe couldn't release their half ass Premiere for PPC along with another half ass audio editor making Premiere a further joke until Apple switched to X86.
As Apple maintains OS X for ARM Arch right now (via iPhone/iPad OSX), they aren't really doing the mistake of relying to X86 architecture. Who does such mistake right now? Well, Google Chrome to begin with.
As a PPC owner (G5 Quad, Mac Mini G4), let me tell you the sad thing. Once your users got the taste of running Virtual or real Windows and have Windows option, you can't really go back to anything. Perhaps AMD for certain cheap stuff later but still X86.
Even such an amazing enterprise CPU's resellers will have tough questions like "What if we want to run some enterprise Windows?"
And as a last thing, Apple never used the real, big POWER chips. The G5 (PPC970/SP/MP) is actually a POWER4 Lite. Now you can imagine what kind of power these enterprise monsters are.
I really wonder if browser vendors can really code multimedia cores especially targeted for real life situations, advertising to begin with... Also one way or another, DRM will be required by some content providers, does W3C has a plan for implementing a multi platform DRM?
What about GPU decoding? All GPUs post directx 9 later has H264/MP4 SP and even VC1 decoding on chip. It is _not_ a hack, it is unused, idling part of GPU because of stupid childish fights between GPU vendors and OS developers. Adobe has stated Linux and OS X doesn't have stable API but Windows has. I don't really want to believe them on that case but if it is true, I can't picture browser vendors doing a totally unrelated coding. Video isn't really trivial 320x240 plain mpeg 1 files anymore, users expect flawless 1080p (yes, p!) and overall low CPU usage.
BTW; I am not saying Adobe is the best ever mmedia developer ever, in fact, they really suck and they are stupid/cheap not to license actual working decoders from folks like 3ivx, core codec.
UNIX is celebrating 40th year, it is older if you think its roots (MULTICS). It is running on most trendy mobile devices ever, N900 and iPhone and industry has already decided one way or another, it is the only feasible set of standards and philosophy for next 10-20 years. Perhaps, if the real ubiquitous computing rises, its upgrade, Plan 9 will take over the mission.
NeXT is older too, if you put the smalltalk language to its true beginning. Look deeper, you will still see IBM and Apple behind it.
Have fun with your .exe files.
"OS X has all the backwards compatibility cruft with C, Mach, and NeXTStep--and the backwards compatibility with C is a real problem."
Did you guys totally lose it finally? OS X _IS_ Mach/Objective C/NeXTSTep/BSD Lite for God's sake. Oh yes, every UNIX adheres to 40 year old coding paradigm and standards too.
And no, you haven't been following OS X releases. If Apple warns you that something is depreciated, take it very serious since next major version can easily say "fsck off" to your application. It happened to many. Apple and their users are a moving target.
Some people with hopes for working at MS in future use that instead of native frameworks since they think, MS is picking up developers that way. The framework itself is coded by a MS reject himself.
I don't think it is easier since we got a perfect example in hand, companies/people didn't release a single thing for J2ME (on billion devices) or Symbian released their application on iPhone/iPod. XCode with Objective C is said to be the best/easiest thing mobile developer World ever seen, it is coming from all camps, even Symbian camp.
If the developer can't code in Objective C, using native frameworks, there should be a logo or something to make people understand it is based on Mono/MS .NET. I wouldn't trust to such developer or their coding competence. What next? Use MS Visual C?
I don't even mention stupidity of using an Apple/OS X/UNIX device and use clone of the clone framework to code for it, it is a bit political. I would really want to know if an application is based on .NET, there should be a way to figure it out without hacking anything.
Brian, don't you know why Flash isn't included? Which tablet user would go buy stuff from iTMS or make Apple "partner" money with Youtube app if a complete browser (with flash) exists? Also check http://g.ho.st/ , with Flash and advanced HTML, it is even possible to run a virtual machine. What would happen to "app store" locks that time?
I know Gnash, sadly it is not "there" yet, if Adobe had little brain, they would support it and even adopt it. Of course, they are Adobe and they don't have the slightest clue about a full Flash 10 open source player means especially in eyes of industry.
I am ready to bet that Apple, to show off their CPU, doesn't put a $2 h264 decoder chip inside the device. They were also cheap to pay Adobe for Flash on that device.
With fans (!) who can come up with standards arguments like that, why would they bother?
IMHO, 2 companies who aren't really small are mad about Apple choices now. Intel (Atom) and Adobe (Flash). They will sure make Apple pay for that. Adobe already does, see no 64bit support in pro apps on OS X but they exist on Windows.
So, original Adobe CS4 user who paid more than $1000 and gave his credit card number, home address and telephone should be protected from "evil Adobe" from checking updates or trying to figure which parts of software is used anonymously?
Well, Intego and couple of other companies offer a application firewall but, obviously if you use original/activation system software, it will fail to work if it can't access to net. Solution is GIMP but, it would be a bit unrealistic.
Some fan guy modded you flamebait but, I guess you mean installing boot camp or a virtual machine (hypervisor) and running it just like OS X, without antivirus/firewall and giving it access to OS X file structure.
IMHO Apple made a huge mistake by allowing (SL Bootcamp) Windows to see (read only though) OS X drives. That is not a favour, it is a huge security risk especially for Mac only people not knowing the extent of Windows threats/trojans/data leakage.
Fix? "My Computer", "Manage", "Disk Management", remove drive letter of the OS X drives. At least 99.9999 malware which isn't very modern will fail to find the personal files to steal.
To the "my virtual machine resets itself each boot" guys: If some real mean thing hits you, have fun explaining why your IP/computer was involved in some child porn distribution network "until it rebooted". Run some antivirus, it is NOT Mac once it runs Windows.
Funny is, people started to act like this. If Motorola can't make an iPhone to race with RIM, they must have no patents and they should be evilly suing RIM as result. It is same deal on Nokia stories.
Once upon a time (5-10 years back), Motorola was releasing unmatchable technological breakthroughs, perhaps in that good management period, they actually invented things and patented them? Same goes for Nokia.
Flash is already on my Symbian phone and various other platforms. Will HTML5 advocates spare time to non cool (!) platforms to code a codec/driver along with testing thousands of different setups to show their Theora video which is clearly missing 2-3 generations in video codec development compared to H264?
Google, a multi billion giant can roll out a good "quicktime interface" for youtube, can even add extra features to it but it doesn't really mean HTML5 with codecs which nobody can agree will crush Flash.
BTW; if you are concerned about Flash CPU usage, use 10.1 beta which has GPU decoding under Windows. I have seen it using almost nothing while playing 1080P video over youtube.
I keep testing Theora and sorry to say, I don't think it will take off unless Google does some amazing thing and make the VP7+ codecs open, free as in freedom. Now that would really change entire media universe. Hopefully they purchased that codec company for that reason.
If there is no MSI packaging, no central administration capability, commercial demand won't exist since they will simply use MS IE with Administration Kit&Policy.
Even Skype, a really consumer oriented voice solution has a MSI package for business users. Guess the reason for that?
I guess this is one of my most replied posts, it seems people really have hard time understanding why some "large, stupid" companies stay with IE solution. It is chicken and egg, basic as that.
That is what my large system administrator friends are doing for years and some of them are really sick and tired of doing it over and over. Some administrators won't really care to package "your" application or download from 3rd party (must be insane). Even 5 user home networks using OS X/Remote Desktop are starting to get bugged about no OS X PKG.
One more thing: MSI has advantages like package verification, signing and _repair_. It is what RPM is to a Redhat OS or DEB to Debian. Ignoring it is really childish and no, it isn't really "anti MS" thing they are doing. Anti MS thing would be rejecting to release their browser to Windows. If they can do it, it is all fine with me.
Adobe says their tool wasn't abused on this case. What makes you think I don't say same thing to Adobe? In fact, just 3 days ago, I suggested Adobe to fire entire Mac department. A "browser" is the platform to access to web, plugins can always be abandoned but browser is more like the "kernel". I don't want to panic anyone but even if they use Firefox, disable access to IE, as long as IE shared dlls used for HTML rendering in various tools (e.g. "what's new today"), they are still vulnerable.
While I won't touch Safari for my ordinary browsing, whenever Apple releases a Safari security update, I backup my stuff and rush to update for that exact same reason. System's default/core browser is a very big deal, way more big deal than anything else.
Firefox/Mozilla guys live in some imaginary World where you maintain/install/update thousands of desktops/laptops just like a home user, clicking "firefox.exe" installer.
IE on the other hand, has amazing administrator capabilities and when coupled with that enterprise "ms update services", it is unbeatable.
Firefox resists to ship a Microsoft Installer (MSI) and Apple Installer (PKG) for some mysterious reason let alone doing the stuff above. Near all those ".exe" shareware etc. stuff you see are in fact MSI packages packed into .exe file for convenience and prevent web server issues.
It got more unexplaniable since there is a complete open source MSI packager which is hosted at sourceforge ( http://wix.sourceforge.net/ ) and interesting thing is, InstallShield corp like guys would even donate their solutions to them with free automated setups. It is not some no name software, it is Firefox.
Can you try imagining your daily work depends on some intranet tool which only works in pre IE 8 and besides numerous claims by MS, IE 8 simply can't make that tool work?
What would happen?
In fact, even if a tool has upgrade and released by vendor, you can't roll IE 8 to all the machines without testing it yourself in numerous scenarios. It is not like launching Windows Update and click all security updates blindly. Even on OS X, as 10.6 shipped, companies/DTP/Video guys have finally moved to 10.5.8. When 10.7 ships, they may move to 10.6. People can't trust to Apple for updates let alone blindly updating/patching their windows which is way more complex.
I am surprised it took so long. I was expecting some guys from NSA, CIA and several visiting MS IE department and tell them "Guys, enough is enough, you are threatening our national security."
Think about it, is there anything more dangerous than IE with its flawed model currently? I mean look, you don't need to hire some black hats to code custom code, you just look for zero day flaws. Other browsers sure have zero day flaws but thanks to their model, it is fixed (unless Apple doesn't care). The browser's model is broken clearly. In fact, it threatens whole globe economy and security. Nothing that serious happened yet but it will sure happen one day. Another side effect is, every day, people are more bound to web/internet for their actual work. So as time passes, things go way more serious.
Coreplayer PowerPC, for OS X, does play 720P H264 video on a G4 1.42 Ghz fine. Adding more to shock, its benchmark function actually shows 70-80 fps levels. Why? Altivec is used along with very clever OpenGL and possibly ASM.
Of course, some idiot will popup and say "powerpc is dead"... Well, in case of Intel Core 2 duo, the CPU load is sub 3-5% levels giving free cycles for all the amazing filters one can run. It is not just PowerPC/Altivec wasted, SSE is always wasted too. I really wonder what kind of computing we would do if these guys coding X86 only and relying on automatic optimization actually knew/used SSE instructions.