I read your article on Windows 7 and have to say it was dripping with problems. I'd like to hear your response to some of the things I noticed.
Blame the DoJ for Bad Engineering? You neatly blamed the performance issues of Vista on the DoJ, saying that Microsoft "shifting more towards modular designs rather than the monolithic processes used in previous versions of Windows. This increased amount of componentization, while satisfying the DoJ and EU, also led to performance issues due to the increased number of libraries which comprise the operating system."
The DoJ didn't force any sort of modularization on Microsoft; it demanded the company not tie products representing new markets to its existing monopoly position in desktop OS software. The DoJ was supposed to be demanding a removal of the tying of IE from the core OS as an inseparable system component that users could not realistically replace with a competing product.
Oh Noes, Too Many Files! And this sounds good, but is just wrong: "On traditional hard drives, the more separate files which the operating system has to load, the more seeking across the hard drive is required, and therefore overall performance takes a hit."
A default install of Mac OS X has tens of thousands of files. It does not have the performance problems of Vista, but has instead gotten faster with every release. Linux distributions have similar numbers of files to load, but run on simple hardware that even XP struggles to run on. Vista's performance isn't strangled by the number of files the DoJ forced Microsoft to use, but rather the poor engineering of Windows combined with legacy cruft Microsoft did a poor job of managing.
The fact that Microsoft jumped through loopholes to cram IE and WMP libraries into the core OS in order to argue that there was no way it could not tie those products together is not a problem caused by the DoJ, but by Microsoft's insatiable monopoly expansion tactics. Microsoft shot it self in the foot.
Backward compatibility The comments on breaking backward compatibility are also a bit specious. Microsoft has always courted its existing customer base. Windows continues to maintain conventions from DOS, such as 70s era drive letters. That's there to be familiar to users stuck in the past. That's the user base Microsoft serves.
Apple courts an outside installed base of new users with products targeting the future. It drops old conventions as rapidly as possible. It even moved past traditional problems of Unix by inventing new mechanisms that are clean from the ground up, such as launchd. Even the Linux market is too conservative to adopt those types of aggressive, modernizing changes.
That's why Mac OS X could rapidly usher in new technologies, such as its groundbreaking display compositing engine with a fundamentally new graphics model from 2001. Microsoft couldn't copy that until Vista in 2007, and has ran into problems getting graphics vendors to support it properly, and getting it to perform decently, even on modern hardware. That can't be blamed on the DoJ.
Apple could migrate developers to Carbon from Mac OS 9 because Mac OS X offered both them and existing Mac customers major new features. What big feature gap will Windows 7 bridge for PC users? Vista didn't offer enough value to attract attention as a retail upgrade, and many users getting it installed on new computers are having it rolled back to the more familiar XP. What in Windows 7 will change that, less compatibility with existing apps?
Vista's DirectX was supposed to push gamers to the new platform, but has largely failed. Will Windows 7's limited backward compatibility serve gamers better? What about enterprise customers who are firmly suck in the past, and haven't embraced Vista at all? Are they going to jump on Windows 7 because it gets rid of backward support?
And how exactly will Windows 7 be a fresh break from the past if, as you say, Microsoft will be "offering new API frameworks as
No, it's entirely pedantic because nothing created with the SDK can be installed without a signature/approval from Apple. Dramatically distinguishing between the two is pointless, and just makes you an asstalker. At the same time, unsupported iPhone software can be developed outside of both the official SDK and Apple's approval by modifying your firmware.
Saying something "sucks" as your entire argument for dismissing something is the fashionable new way to be a retard. While most people who use the term are too simple and ignorant to know, it comes from the anti-disco crowd, who dismissed late 70s disco with the phrase "disco sucks," an allusion to gays (Disco fans suck dick). I'm sure you can invent an arguement that it has something to do with fluid dynamics. But no, it's the same as saying "disco is for n*ggers," which was the unstated second verse.
Not that I like disco so much, but only saying "it sucks" as your argument for anything just puts you in the class of Gizmodo, Engadget, and typical Digg users.
Well if the worst I've done is to upset you with "blatant lies" is in saying that WHS wasn't available at the time of the writing of an article you dug up months after I wrote it, then I have little to worry about.
Thanks for clueing me into the fact that there are fanatical Microsoft fans in the UK. That should be obvious, but it hadn't occurred to me. Why anyone would be a devoted fan and defender of such a shitty, undeserving, criminal company always has me puzzled. But then again, there are plenty of people who hate Apple for its serious crimes, such as outlining a unique development strategy for its own mobile platform, or as you point out, naming its WiFi base stations AirPorts. That's something like being sued by the US, EU, and most of the states for cheating customers with excessive prices, illegally preventing competition, and monopolizing markets to restrain trade and the state of the art. And being forced to pay out hundreds of millions of dollars in settlements to a series of companies it cheated as a partner. Microsoft is shithole, and why you'd want to shove your tongue up it leaves me speechless.
Everyone on slashdot knows you are an anti-Apple troll, as both your sig and username suggest.
Everyone also knows that I'm the author of RoughlyDrafted, as you yourself do despite your disingenuous hypocrisy. Here's something you might not know: pretty much every fan letter I get comes from somebody with a sig suggesting experience, background and an education beyond mine: PhDs, artists, military officers (seem to be well represented). Yet they note appreciation for the facts I put together and the opinions I present based on rational ideas. Sure, readers don't always agree with everything I have to say, and they are free to note their own opinions in my comments.
I get a few fan letters every day, along with some PayPal donations. I have about 15,000-20,000 unique visitors every day, not because of sensationalist headlines posted to Digg, but because about a third have subscribed to my RSS and read it regularly, a third come from direct links on sites that find it link worthy, and another third comes from Google due to my having lots of external links on my articles. I am not a corporate media site like Wired, Engadget, Gizmodo, or the CNET/ZDnet blogs, and I'm not a blurb aggregator. I write original content in a long form that visitors spend a significant amount of time reading.
The only people who really take any issue with any of the things I've written are anonymous cowards such as yourself and the vast diggtard hoard of mouth breathing, profanity laced, name calling group thinkers who assail me for various things, including exposing the misleading sales numbers of the Xbox 360 (unit sales were down roughly 30% year over year in 2007; nobody dare say it except for me) and outing the historical revisionism Windows Enthusiasts are working to write into Wikipedia articles.
It is impossible for me to be offended by your insults, because you have already positioned yourself among these morons with your emotionalist claptrap. There isn't much you could say that would penetrate the jail of intellectual contempt I have created around you to encase your raving bullshit.
As for your lone attempt to present a real argument, please let us know where the market for Mac viruses and exploits is, and who is going to make any money off that. Also, please fill us in on what you think it means to be a zombie, because a zombie process has nothing to do with being part of a Windows botnet.
On second thought, just keep quiet as we've heard enough ignorance from you already.
As you note, Mac OS X does not force you to use the CLI. This is because Apple "forced" developers to follow its Human Interface Guidelines.
I see the point you are making, and I agree with it in principle, but empowering CLI scripting, X11 apps and Unix power tools on a desktop machine is not equivalent to allowing developers to convert the iPhone into another junk mobile platform with the interface of WinCE, the stability of the Palm OS, the performance of Java ME, the viruses of Symbian, and the political feuding and incompatibilities of mobile Linux.
One reason the iPod worked is that Apple didn't clutter it with a public API for adding bells and whistles. The iPhone has done exceptionally well as a closed smartphone. Adding a limited SDK is better than turning it into a Linux Tinker Toy set that converts into a pile of junk after you install a few apps.
Despite all of Apple's restrictions, there will apparently continue to be a jailbreak community adding unsupported apps, so I don't understand what the controversy is here. It looks like we can all have our cake and eat it too.
Or are you suggesting that to have #3, everyone else needs to be officially exposed to complexity, security, performance and battery life issues that Apple should somehow take ownership of after third parties create the mess?
You are too old to be expressing yourself like you are 16.
By 46, you should know that time is valuable enough to avoid being a pedantic nut. You should also know the meaning of sarcasm and irony.
You should also be able to reasonably predict obvious risks. I haven't had anyone spill their drink on me in a plane yet (purposely or not), but I have spilled drinks on a laptop, and I have witnessed people spilling drinks on airplanes. In the last month, I managed to be sitting next to two different women who both managed to spill a drink all over themselves in various ways. Putting those tidbits of knowledge together, I recognize some threat related to exposed laptops, drinks, airplanes, turbulence, and hysterical and/or clumsy women. It has nothing to do with being genteel.
Oh dear, I believe I am fated to increasingly be stuck in pedantic conversations about ridiculous subjects on the Internet. Please don't take my remarks as a personal offense.
I do not comment on every issue related to Apple. I typically write about topics that either interest me, or are being falsely portrayed by idiots in the corporate media.
Taking that into perspective, it's no mystery why I quite consistently side with Apple: I'm choosing between Apple and Idiots. There are plenty of valid criticisms of Apple, and I do take some effort to mention these when they haven't already been drummed to death.
Calling me a shill just highlights that you don't know what a shill is. FYI: it pertains to somebody who directs attention to a product they know is worthless or a rip off, like carnival games, while pretending they have benefitted from them or are a happy customer. For that reason, I have no problem speaking of Windows Shills.
Describing the genius of a marketing strategy, or plotting tech trends that appear to favor Apple is not something than can be described as being a shill.
Your position on unrestricted mobile development is your own opinion (one you hold with all the other corporate media idiots, I might add). I've detailed rational reasons why I disagree, and think Apple is doing the right thing. I have not seen any rational ideas bubble up from the OMG APPLE HURTS US WITH RESTRICTIONS camp, just frothy emotional outbreaks and broad generalizations that dismiss the facts the Windows PC is a security nightmare, Java ME is a mess on phones, and that Symbian and RIM are both pursuing a similar restriction strategy as Apple.
You can spew emotional rhetoric about how everything Apple does is an expression of the farcical tyranny of Steve Jobs, and how Apple has a moral obligation to open EDGE to VoIP despite its contracts with AT&T, but it doesn't add up to anything more than the whining of an anti-fanboy.
Microsoft attained its position by being anticompetitive: announcing products it never shipped on time, exclusive agreements that blocked any rivals, products tied to its core monopolies, and buying up products and companies and shutting them down. Apple is attaining its success by delivering better products, putting a lot of work into them, a lot of forethought, and delivering consistent advancements.
If you want to dismiss me as a shill for being the lone voice in the wilderness defending one of the best companies to ever exist in tech, pound your keyboard to death doing so. If you want to insist that Apple has a moral obligation to start following your strategies now that it has leading products and significant market power, you are sure free to babble on about it just like the 90% of CNET/ZDNet that wasn't recently laid off. However, you don't really have any right to demonize me for writing truth and reporting accurately, and allowing critics such as yourself to freely post your own counterpoints in the comments of my articles.
I also disagree with your opinion that "Apple is better because the product is better, not because they have better control over your experience." I would say Apple's products are often better because it offers better control over your experience. That's why it "just works," and why DIY FOSS does not. There are great advantages to open ended freedom, but there are drawbacks too. Most people don't want a car that forces them to do daily maintenance on it for it to work.
A maintenance free battery and computer-controlled ignition are not "freedom barriers" but rather time savers that prevent drivers from having to pour water in their battery, balance its electrolytes, and fiddle with rotors, points and a tricky butterfly valve. It's the same thing with the sealed battery in the iPhone and the limitations on apps to prevent them from going apeshit and killing your phone.
You can continue to froth emotionally about how evil Apple is for not following the "wisdom" of the crowd, but I prefer to think Apple knows more about what its doing than the morons who are too quick to bewail it.
Your need to call me names betrays the weakness of your point.
The question wasn't "did you enjoy your seatback video," but "you'd rather watch something on a seat back screen [than use something portable like the iPhone]?"
"Have you ever been on an airplane?" was a dismissive slap of your sense of reality.
Perhaps when you grow up you'll experience somebody in the seat next to you spilling something. You might also want to watch something semi-privately.
You are arguing that you'd rather watch something on a seat back screen? Have you ever been on an airplane?
The "tiny" display on my iPhone can be held closer to your face. You can also double tap and pinch to make the tiniest text readable.
I can use my iPhone for as many hours as I like by plugging it into a standard USB battery pack via the dock connector. I can also plug it into my laptop and recharge it. I find that I prefer to watch movies on my tiny iPhone rather than pulling out my laptop and watching it with a huge thing on my lap, which other people can see and spill their drinks on.
Virgin Atlantic and Virgin America are both pretty slick, with nicely equipped planes and great service, but the VA in-flight system does not yet work as advertised.
I've tried out the Virgin America system. Half of the VA flights I went on lacked the hardware, but on the newer planes that have it, most of the features don't yet work.
There are billboards around SF touting its in cabin IM features (chat with other passengers), but they weren't working yet.
I tried ordering snacks, but that didn't work either.
Movies cost something ridiculous like $8 to watch.
Most of the system is just a placeholder. And please, a seatback display is maybe okay for watching TV video clips, but it is no replacement for a newspaper. This thing isn't going to save any trees by forcing users to squint at a tiny display two feet away.
I'd rather have in-flight WiFi and use my iPhone to do things that don't bill me per second (although the inflight WiFi likely would.)
The short version: remember the headlines gasping that the iPhone could have spy software installed that took pictures with its camera and mailed them to the Terrorists? That can't happen with SDK software. It can (hypothetically) happen with jailbroken phones. That's why Apple has engineered safeguards into its SDK. Because it's trying to be responsible, unlike the current state of Windows, Java, Flash and other filthy platforms.
The fact that you'd rather spew forth ignorance than recognize that obvious fact demonstrates that you're either a moron or highly disingenuous. You don't have to support Apple's outlook, but representing it as a pointless limitation that hurts users is simply irresponsible.
"The details emerging from the CanSecWest security contest fill out a story that is bigger than the simple "Mac Shot First" headlines convey. This was not a contest where three systems were placed in an equal foot race and the Mac simply lost due to being a slower runner.
"The CanSecWest contest featured a number of security researchers, each with different backgrounds, motivations, and levels of expertise working to exploit flaws in the three systems running Mac OS X, Windows Vista, and Ubuntu Linux. However, rather than being a level contest to expose the flaws in the three systems, it was really a contest highlighting the knowledge and abilities of the researchers, each of whom targeted the platform of their choice."
except that I'm not corporate media, and while I might yap on, I do have technical knowledge from experience in IT and development, and I mainly defend engineering decisions rather than present ideas that are only plausible to a trade rag audience.
I know you were just being a hater. It's easy to complain, hard to make a salient point.
If you're programming for fun then yes, do what's easy. If you want to target a platform with a sustainable market for software, then learning Cocoa/Obj-C offers additional reasons for being attracted to it. Money is kind of an important factor for many people in the decisions they make.
I'm not "jumping up and down screaming" that you should learn another language. I'm saying that you can stick with Java ME while the train passes you because you are irrelevant to iPhone development.
You sound just like the insistent holdouts who pouted that they'd never buy an iPod and liked their PlaysForSure subscription and Dell DJ. I have no problem with that, and don't care what you do. You can complain about "vendor lock in" related to Apple, while tying yourself to a Sun platform that will earn you less money. Just don't flatter yourself with the thought that "Mac/iPhone users" act as a solitary class and expect anything from you personally. It's a free market in the mobile world, and I hope it stays that way.
I don't think Apple is desperately trying to shovel all the existing Java ME crap into the iPhone.
While MS might have killed off Java on the desktop, J2ME's inability to work well across phones is not something Sun can blame on MS.
If you know anything about the Cocoa Touch dev system, a JVM simply makes no sense on the iPhone.
You'd learn Obj-C if you had salable ideas for apps on the iPhone, and/or wanted to target development for the Mac platform, which is doing fairly well. Saying you want to learn Scala helps frame the rest of your comments.
While the quick win makes for a perfect headline and reflects the Hollywood image of "hackers" that twiddle on a keyboard and almost instantly "access the mainframe" while a counter runs in the background, a more intelligent question is: why did the Mac get hacked first, and why was the attack so quick?
Its bad for Java developers, as they'll have to learn a new language and new frameworks. But they'll also have a real market for their apps, and their apps won't look like ass and fail to run on 80% of the phones that are supposed to support Java ME, MIPD etc.
Java ME is build, test on every phone, sign on every phone, sell nowhere.
1. Some dumbass ZDnet pundit yaps on about subjects he is unqualified to talk about technically, unaware of any of the reasons for the engineering decisions Apple makes, and suggests that the he, as an ignorant asshat, can offer the iPod maker sailent advice on how to deploy the iPhone software platform. 2. ZDnet posts it to Slashdot 3. Slashdot links to it. 4. Profit? *
* no CNet/ZDnet is going out of business. Slashdot is just wasting our time.
Your response was "here's your points, I don't think that's the case, therefore you are wrong."
I suggest you:
Google NPD retail laptop sales Google the number of malware threats targeting servers vs home users Google "research Mac affluent"
Linux has an irrelevant user base. Before suggesting that more people use Linux than Macs, and therefore Linux vulnerabilities are some harbinger of the Mac OS X platform, Google that as well.
I'm not intending to come across as an ass, but you're simply playing to assumptions that are not valid, and I can't be bothered to disprove up is down / sky is not blue stuff at the moment.
Based on the fact that you scoured an article with the titile "US Mac Market share rises above 8.1%" to find a statistic that shows Apple does not make as many PCs + servers as the top 5 world wide vendors, I'll say you're being disingenuous.
PC market share has always been related in worldwide numbers to flatter Microsoft. Note that the Xbox, Zune and other products that have very little penetration outside the US are never compared to worldwide figures. Why not? Why are pundits working so hard to flatter Microsoft?
Back to reality: Apple holds enough market share in the markets that it participates in to have a presence that logically should expose some security threats. In retail laptop sales, Apple now has double digit market share. Apple doesn't have to have a significant percentage of the PC Server market (which is part of those worldwide PC market share numbers that Gartner/Microsoft like to advertise) in order to face security problems on the desktop. Because Apple has so little representation in the server market, its business is almost exclusively education and home/SOHO users, markets where it has a quite significant share of the market, and one that is growing. Yet we don't see Apple suffering from 10-25% of the malware out there.
If anything, the markets Apple participates in are at greater risk of casual malware threat. Who writes spyware aimed at attacking servers supervised by professional IT staff? Macs are a prime target for spyware/identity thieves, as the Mac user demographic tend to have more money to steal. The fact that Apple's installed base lies directly on top of the most attractive target for malware authors, yet has zero viruses and no significant real world malware problem says more about vulnerabilities than any amount of statistical bullshit churned out by people trying to bait links and suggest that up is down.
Yes it would be so much better to replace HTML with something from the makers of the Win32 API.
Silverlight's attempts to kill Flash will work out about as well as MSN's original effort to replace AOL. By the time it can catch up, there won't be any contest left. The real solution is to improve the HTML spec to the point where we don't need proprietary add-ons. WHATWG and HTML 5 will go a long way in doing that.
Slashdot Mirror
i Dev,
I read your article on Windows 7 and have to say it was dripping with problems. I'd like to hear your response to some of the things I noticed.
Blame the DoJ for Bad Engineering?
You neatly blamed the performance issues of Vista on the DoJ, saying that Microsoft "shifting more towards modular designs rather than the monolithic processes used in previous versions of Windows. This increased amount of componentization, while satisfying the DoJ and EU, also led to performance issues due to the increased number of libraries which comprise the operating system."
The DoJ didn't force any sort of modularization on Microsoft; it demanded the company not tie products representing new markets to its existing monopoly position in desktop OS software. The DoJ was supposed to be demanding a removal of the tying of IE from the core OS as an inseparable system component that users could not realistically replace with a competing product.
Oh Noes, Too Many Files!
And this sounds good, but is just wrong: "On traditional hard drives, the more separate files which the operating system has to load, the more seeking across the hard drive is required, and therefore overall performance takes a hit."
A default install of Mac OS X has tens of thousands of files. It does not have the performance problems of Vista, but has instead gotten faster with every release. Linux distributions have similar numbers of files to load, but run on simple hardware that even XP struggles to run on. Vista's performance isn't strangled by the number of files the DoJ forced Microsoft to use, but rather the poor engineering of Windows combined with legacy cruft Microsoft did a poor job of managing.
The fact that Microsoft jumped through loopholes to cram IE and WMP libraries into the core OS in order to argue that there was no way it could not tie those products together is not a problem caused by the DoJ, but by Microsoft's insatiable monopoly expansion tactics. Microsoft shot it self in the foot.
Backward compatibility
The comments on breaking backward compatibility are also a bit specious. Microsoft has always courted its existing customer base. Windows continues to maintain conventions from DOS, such as 70s era drive letters. That's there to be familiar to users stuck in the past. That's the user base Microsoft serves.
Apple courts an outside installed base of new users with products targeting the future. It drops old conventions as rapidly as possible. It even moved past traditional problems of Unix by inventing new mechanisms that are clean from the ground up, such as launchd. Even the Linux market is too conservative to adopt those types of aggressive, modernizing changes.
That's why Mac OS X could rapidly usher in new technologies, such as its groundbreaking display compositing engine with a fundamentally new graphics model from 2001. Microsoft couldn't copy that until Vista in 2007, and has ran into problems getting graphics vendors to support it properly, and getting it to perform decently, even on modern hardware. That can't be blamed on the DoJ.
Apple could migrate developers to Carbon from Mac OS 9 because Mac OS X offered both them and existing Mac customers major new features. What big feature gap will Windows 7 bridge for PC users? Vista didn't offer enough value to attract attention as a retail upgrade, and many users getting it installed on new computers are having it rolled back to the more familiar XP. What in Windows 7 will change that, less compatibility with existing apps?
Vista's DirectX was supposed to push gamers to the new platform, but has largely failed. Will Windows 7's limited backward compatibility serve gamers better? What about enterprise customers who are firmly suck in the past, and haven't embraced Vista at all? Are they going to jump on Windows 7 because it gets rid of backward support?
And how exactly will Windows 7 be a fresh break from the past if, as you say, Microsoft will be "offering new API frameworks as
Right, because all of the people suffering from dementia today didn't drink coffee every day.
That's all they drank! That's all there was in the 40s!
Who pays for this kind of research, and why don't they have a subscription to any sort of reality?
Five Factors Shifting the Future of Malware and Platform Security
No, it's entirely pedantic because nothing created with the SDK can be installed without a signature/approval from Apple. Dramatically distinguishing between the two is pointless, and just makes you an asstalker. At the same time, unsupported iPhone software can be developed outside of both the official SDK and Apple's approval by modifying your firmware.
Saying something "sucks" as your entire argument for dismissing something is the fashionable new way to be a retard. While most people who use the term are too simple and ignorant to know, it comes from the anti-disco crowd, who dismissed late 70s disco with the phrase "disco sucks," an allusion to gays (Disco fans suck dick). I'm sure you can invent an arguement that it has something to do with fluid dynamics. But no, it's the same as saying "disco is for n*ggers," which was the unstated second verse.
Not that I like disco so much, but only saying "it sucks" as your argument for anything just puts you in the class of Gizmodo, Engadget, and typical Digg users.
Well if the worst I've done is to upset you with "blatant lies" is in saying that WHS wasn't available at the time of the writing of an article you dug up months after I wrote it, then I have little to worry about.
Thanks for clueing me into the fact that there are fanatical Microsoft fans in the UK. That should be obvious, but it hadn't occurred to me. Why anyone would be a devoted fan and defender of such a shitty, undeserving, criminal company always has me puzzled. But then again, there are plenty of people who hate Apple for its serious crimes, such as outlining a unique development strategy for its own mobile platform, or as you point out, naming its WiFi base stations AirPorts. That's something like being sued by the US, EU, and most of the states for cheating customers with excessive prices, illegally preventing competition, and monopolizing markets to restrain trade and the state of the art. And being forced to pay out hundreds of millions of dollars in settlements to a series of companies it cheated as a partner. Microsoft is shithole, and why you'd want to shove your tongue up it leaves me speechless.
I already outlined the zealotry on both sides in Zune vs. iPhone: Five Phases of Media Coverage.
Everyone on slashdot knows you are an anti-Apple troll, as both your sig and username suggest.
Everyone also knows that I'm the author of RoughlyDrafted, as you yourself do despite your disingenuous hypocrisy. Here's something you might not know: pretty much every fan letter I get comes from somebody with a sig suggesting experience, background and an education beyond mine: PhDs, artists, military officers (seem to be well represented). Yet they note appreciation for the facts I put together and the opinions I present based on rational ideas. Sure, readers don't always agree with everything I have to say, and they are free to note their own opinions in my comments.
I get a few fan letters every day, along with some PayPal donations. I have about 15,000-20,000 unique visitors every day, not because of sensationalist headlines posted to Digg, but because about a third have subscribed to my RSS and read it regularly, a third come from direct links on sites that find it link worthy, and another third comes from Google due to my having lots of external links on my articles. I am not a corporate media site like Wired, Engadget, Gizmodo, or the CNET/ZDnet blogs, and I'm not a blurb aggregator. I write original content in a long form that visitors spend a significant amount of time reading.
The only people who really take any issue with any of the things I've written are anonymous cowards such as yourself and the vast diggtard hoard of mouth breathing, profanity laced, name calling group thinkers who assail me for various things, including exposing the misleading sales numbers of the Xbox 360 (unit sales were down roughly 30% year over year in 2007; nobody dare say it except for me) and outing the historical revisionism Windows Enthusiasts are working to write into Wikipedia articles.
It is impossible for me to be offended by your insults, because you have already positioned yourself among these morons with your emotionalist claptrap. There isn't much you could say that would penetrate the jail of intellectual contempt I have created around you to encase your raving bullshit.
As for your lone attempt to present a real argument, please let us know where the market for Mac viruses and exploits is, and who is going to make any money off that. Also, please fill us in on what you think it means to be a zombie, because a zombie process has nothing to do with being part of a Windows botnet.
On second thought, just keep quiet as we've heard enough ignorance from you already.
CanSecWest and Swiss Federal Institute of Tech Deliver Attacks on the Reality of Mac Security
Distinguishing between the SDK and the signing/approval process is pedantic.
And who can argue against such a sophisticated argument based entirely on a homophobic pejorative?
As you note, Mac OS X does not force you to use the CLI. This is because Apple "forced" developers to follow its Human Interface Guidelines.
I see the point you are making, and I agree with it in principle, but empowering CLI scripting, X11 apps and Unix power tools on a desktop machine is not equivalent to allowing developers to convert the iPhone into another junk mobile platform with the interface of WinCE, the stability of the Palm OS, the performance of Java ME, the viruses of Symbian, and the political feuding and incompatibilities of mobile Linux.
One reason the iPod worked is that Apple didn't clutter it with a public API for adding bells and whistles. The iPhone has done exceptionally well as a closed smartphone. Adding a limited SDK is better than turning it into a Linux Tinker Toy set that converts into a pile of junk after you install a few apps.
Despite all of Apple's restrictions, there will apparently continue to be a jailbreak community adding unsupported apps, so I don't understand what the controversy is here. It looks like we can all have our cake and eat it too.
Or are you suggesting that to have #3, everyone else needs to be officially exposed to complexity, security, performance and battery life issues that Apple should somehow take ownership of after third parties create the mess?
Mac Shot First: 10 Reasons Why CanSecWest Targets Apple
You are too old to be expressing yourself like you are 16.
By 46, you should know that time is valuable enough to avoid being a pedantic nut. You should also know the meaning of sarcasm and irony.
You should also be able to reasonably predict obvious risks. I haven't had anyone spill their drink on me in a plane yet (purposely or not), but I have spilled drinks on a laptop, and I have witnessed people spilling drinks on airplanes. In the last month, I managed to be sitting next to two different women who both managed to spill a drink all over themselves in various ways. Putting those tidbits of knowledge together, I recognize some threat related to exposed laptops, drinks, airplanes, turbulence, and hysterical and/or clumsy women. It has nothing to do with being genteel.
Oh dear, I believe I am fated to increasingly be stuck in pedantic conversations about ridiculous subjects on the Internet. Please don't take my remarks as a personal offense.
Mac Shot First: 10 Reasons Why CanSecWest Targets Apple
I do not comment on every issue related to Apple. I typically write about topics that either interest me, or are being falsely portrayed by idiots in the corporate media.
Taking that into perspective, it's no mystery why I quite consistently side with Apple: I'm choosing between Apple and Idiots. There are plenty of valid criticisms of Apple, and I do take some effort to mention these when they haven't already been drummed to death.
Calling me a shill just highlights that you don't know what a shill is. FYI: it pertains to somebody who directs attention to a product they know is worthless or a rip off, like carnival games, while pretending they have benefitted from them or are a happy customer. For that reason, I have no problem speaking of Windows Shills.
Describing the genius of a marketing strategy, or plotting tech trends that appear to favor Apple is not something than can be described as being a shill.
Your position on unrestricted mobile development is your own opinion (one you hold with all the other corporate media idiots, I might add). I've detailed rational reasons why I disagree, and think Apple is doing the right thing. I have not seen any rational ideas bubble up from the OMG APPLE HURTS US WITH RESTRICTIONS camp, just frothy emotional outbreaks and broad generalizations that dismiss the facts the Windows PC is a security nightmare, Java ME is a mess on phones, and that Symbian and RIM are both pursuing a similar restriction strategy as Apple.
You can spew emotional rhetoric about how everything Apple does is an expression of the farcical tyranny of Steve Jobs, and how Apple has a moral obligation to open EDGE to VoIP despite its contracts with AT&T, but it doesn't add up to anything more than the whining of an anti-fanboy.
Microsoft attained its position by being anticompetitive: announcing products it never shipped on time, exclusive agreements that blocked any rivals, products tied to its core monopolies, and buying up products and companies and shutting them down. Apple is attaining its success by delivering better products, putting a lot of work into them, a lot of forethought, and delivering consistent advancements.
If you want to dismiss me as a shill for being the lone voice in the wilderness defending one of the best companies to ever exist in tech, pound your keyboard to death doing so. If you want to insist that Apple has a moral obligation to start following your strategies now that it has leading products and significant market power, you are sure free to babble on about it just like the 90% of CNET/ZDNet that wasn't recently laid off. However, you don't really have any right to demonize me for writing truth and reporting accurately, and allowing critics such as yourself to freely post your own counterpoints in the comments of my articles.
I also disagree with your opinion that "Apple is better because the product is better, not because they have better control over your experience." I would say Apple's products are often better because it offers better control over your experience. That's why it "just works," and why DIY FOSS does not. There are great advantages to open ended freedom, but there are drawbacks too. Most people don't want a car that forces them to do daily maintenance on it for it to work.
A maintenance free battery and computer-controlled ignition are not "freedom barriers" but rather time savers that prevent drivers from having to pour water in their battery, balance its electrolytes, and fiddle with rotors, points and a tricky butterfly valve. It's the same thing with the sealed battery in the iPhone and the limitations on apps to prevent them from going apeshit and killing your phone.
You can continue to froth emotionally about how evil Apple is for not following the "wisdom" of the crowd, but I prefer to think Apple knows more about what its doing than the morons who are too quick to bewail it.
And now, a link:
Mac Shot First: 10 Reasons Why CanSecWest Targets Apple
Your need to call me names betrays the weakness of your point.
The question wasn't "did you enjoy your seatback video," but "you'd rather watch something on a seat back screen [than use something portable like the iPhone]?"
"Have you ever been on an airplane?" was a dismissive slap of your sense of reality.
Perhaps when you grow up you'll experience somebody in the seat next to you spilling something. You might also want to watch something semi-privately.
You are arguing that you'd rather watch something on a seat back screen? Have you ever been on an airplane?
The "tiny" display on my iPhone can be held closer to your face. You can also double tap and pinch to make the tiniest text readable.
I can use my iPhone for as many hours as I like by plugging it into a standard USB battery pack via the dock connector. I can also plug it into my laptop and recharge it. I find that I prefer to watch movies on my tiny iPhone rather than pulling out my laptop and watching it with a huge thing on my lap, which other people can see and spill their drinks on.
Virgin Atlantic and Virgin America are both pretty slick, with nicely equipped planes and great service, but the VA in-flight system does not yet work as advertised.
I've tried out the Virgin America system. Half of the VA flights I went on lacked the hardware, but on the newer planes that have it, most of the features don't yet work.
There are billboards around SF touting its in cabin IM features (chat with other passengers), but they weren't working yet.
I tried ordering snacks, but that didn't work either.
Movies cost something ridiculous like $8 to watch.
Most of the system is just a placeholder. And please, a seatback display is maybe okay for watching TV video clips, but it is no replacement for a newspaper. This thing isn't going to save any trees by forcing users to squint at a tiny display two feet away.
I'd rather have in-flight WiFi and use my iPhone to do things that don't bill me per second (although the inflight WiFi likely would.)
10 Things to Remember About CanSecWest and Software Vulnerabilities
Since you asked for it:
Phone 2.0 SDK: The No Multitasking Myth
The short version: remember the headlines gasping that the iPhone could have spy software installed that took pictures with its camera and mailed them to the Terrorists? That can't happen with SDK software. It can (hypothetically) happen with jailbroken phones. That's why Apple has engineered safeguards into its SDK. Because it's trying to be responsible, unlike the current state of Windows, Java, Flash and other filthy platforms.
The fact that you'd rather spew forth ignorance than recognize that obvious fact demonstrates that you're either a moron or highly disingenuous. You don't have to support Apple's outlook, but representing it as a pointless limitation that hurts users is simply irresponsible.
"The details emerging from the CanSecWest security contest fill out a story that is bigger than the simple "Mac Shot First" headlines convey. This was not a contest where three systems were placed in an equal foot race and the Mac simply lost due to being a slower runner.
"The CanSecWest contest featured a number of security researchers, each with different backgrounds, motivations, and levels of expertise working to exploit flaws in the three systems running Mac OS X, Windows Vista, and Ubuntu Linux. However, rather than being a level contest to expose the flaws in the three systems, it was really a contest highlighting the knowledge and abilities of the researchers, each of whom targeted the platform of their choice."
10 Things to Remember About CanSecWest and Software Vulnerabilities
except that I'm not corporate media, and while I might yap on, I do have technical knowledge from experience in IT and development, and I mainly defend engineering decisions rather than present ideas that are only plausible to a trade rag audience.
I know you were just being a hater. It's easy to complain, hard to make a salient point.
iPhone 2.0 SDK: Video Games to Rival Nintendo DS, Sony PSP
If you're programming for fun then yes, do what's easy. If you want to target a platform with a sustainable market for software, then learning Cocoa/Obj-C offers additional reasons for being attracted to it. Money is kind of an important factor for many people in the decisions they make.
Is Number Two Amazon Rivaling iTunes in Music Sales? Haha No
I'm not "jumping up and down screaming" that you should learn another language. I'm saying that you can stick with Java ME while the train passes you because you are irrelevant to iPhone development.
You sound just like the insistent holdouts who pouted that they'd never buy an iPod and liked their PlaysForSure subscription and Dell DJ. I have no problem with that, and don't care what you do. You can complain about "vendor lock in" related to Apple, while tying yourself to a Sun platform that will earn you less money. Just don't flatter yourself with the thought that "Mac/iPhone users" act as a solitary class and expect anything from you personally. It's a free market in the mobile world, and I hope it stays that way.
CanSecWest and Swiss Federal Institute of Tech Deliver Attacks on the Reality of Mac Security
Yes, just like the iTunes Store costs iPod users $10,000 to fill their player. Oh wait, apps are optional. That means your comments are absurd.
The likelihood of a developer selling ssh is balanced by the likelihood of another developer offering a free implementation.
I don't think Apple is desperately trying to shovel all the existing Java ME crap into the iPhone.
While MS might have killed off Java on the desktop, J2ME's inability to work well across phones is not something Sun can blame on MS.
If you know anything about the Cocoa Touch dev system, a JVM simply makes no sense on the iPhone.
You'd learn Obj-C if you had salable ideas for apps on the iPhone, and/or wanted to target development for the Mac platform, which is doing fairly well. Saying you want to learn Scala helps frame the rest of your comments.
While the quick win makes for a perfect headline and reflects the Hollywood image of "hackers" that twiddle on a keyboard and almost instantly "access the mainframe" while a counter runs in the background, a more intelligent question is: why did the Mac get hacked first, and why was the attack so quick?
CanSecWest and Swiss Federal Institute of Tech Deliver Attacks on the Reality of Mac Security
Its bad for Java developers, as they'll have to learn a new language and new frameworks. But they'll also have a real market for their apps, and their apps won't look like ass and fail to run on 80% of the phones that are supposed to support Java ME, MIPD etc.
Java ME is build, test on every phone, sign on every phone, sell nowhere.
The iPhone SDK will be build, sign, sell
iPhone 2.0 SDK: Java on the iPhone?
iPhone 2.0 SDK: How Signing Certificates Work
1. Some dumbass ZDnet pundit yaps on about subjects he is unqualified to talk about technically, unaware of any of the reasons for the engineering decisions Apple makes, and suggests that the he, as an ignorant asshat, can offer the iPod maker sailent advice on how to deploy the iPhone software platform.
2. ZDnet posts it to Slashdot
3. Slashdot links to it.
4. Profit? *
* no CNet/ZDnet is going out of business. Slashdot is just wasting our time.
CanSecWest and Swiss Federal Institute of Tech Deliver Attacks on the Reality of Mac Security
Your response was "here's your points, I don't think that's the case, therefore you are wrong."
I suggest you:
Google NPD retail laptop sales
Google the number of malware threats targeting servers vs home users
Google "research Mac affluent"
Linux has an irrelevant user base. Before suggesting that more people use Linux than Macs, and therefore Linux vulnerabilities are some harbinger of the Mac OS X platform, Google that as well.
I'm not intending to come across as an ass, but you're simply playing to assumptions that are not valid, and I can't be bothered to disprove up is down / sky is not blue stuff at the moment.
Based on the fact that you scoured an article with the titile "US Mac Market share rises above 8.1%" to find a statistic that shows Apple does not make as many PCs + servers as the top 5 world wide vendors, I'll say you're being disingenuous.
PC market share has always been related in worldwide numbers to flatter Microsoft. Note that the Xbox, Zune and other products that have very little penetration outside the US are never compared to worldwide figures. Why not? Why are pundits working so hard to flatter Microsoft?
Back to reality: Apple holds enough market share in the markets that it participates in to have a presence that logically should expose some security threats. In retail laptop sales, Apple now has double digit market share. Apple doesn't have to have a significant percentage of the PC Server market (which is part of those worldwide PC market share numbers that Gartner/Microsoft like to advertise) in order to face security problems on the desktop. Because Apple has so little representation in the server market, its business is almost exclusively education and home/SOHO users, markets where it has a quite significant share of the market, and one that is growing. Yet we don't see Apple suffering from 10-25% of the malware out there.
If anything, the markets Apple participates in are at greater risk of casual malware threat. Who writes spyware aimed at attacking servers supervised by professional IT staff? Macs are a prime target for spyware/identity thieves, as the Mac user demographic tend to have more money to steal. The fact that Apple's installed base lies directly on top of the most attractive target for malware authors, yet has zero viruses and no significant real world malware problem says more about vulnerabilities than any amount of statistical bullshit churned out by people trying to bait links and suggest that up is down.
Is Number Two Amazon Rivaling iTunes in Music Sales? Haha, No
Yes it would be so much better to replace HTML with something from the makers of the Win32 API.
Silverlight's attempts to kill Flash will work out about as well as MSN's original effort to replace AOL. By the time it can catch up, there won't be any contest left. The real solution is to improve the HTML spec to the point where we don't need proprietary add-ons. WHATWG and HTML 5 will go a long way in doing that.
H.264 doesn't need a Flash playing wrapper.
iPhone 2.0 SDK: How Signing Certificates Work