It is true that Mac OS X demanded more RAM than OS 9. However, a big part of that was that during the transition, most users were running the Blue Box, which ran the entire Mac OS 9 in a VM in the background. One might expect running OS 9 + OS X to consume more RAM.
Mac OS X ran very well on existing hardware. I had a 2001 Titanium PowerBook, which either shipped with a beta of OS X or just OS 9. It ran Mac OS X 10.2 great when it was released in 2002, and newer versions of OS X kept getting faster on the same hardware.
Also, the story about needing more VRAM really only applied later when Quartz Extreme came out. Mac users have always expected to run 5-10 year old machines using the latest Mac OS.
Compare any release of Windows, which has only worked well on new PCs. Few people upgrade PCs that are more than a year or two old because it frequently just makes no sense. XP was a dog on the top of the line laptop I bought with Win 2k installed, and Vista wants to run on a brand new PC with top of the line specs. There are not any meaningful retail sales of Vista, its only shipping on new PCs.
All of this is because Apple makes its money on hardware and also makes some money selling retail Mac OS X to its existing base, while Microsoft makes 80% of its money on OEM sales. Even though Microsoft makes far more money on $300 retail boxes vs $30 OEM licenses, it can't slow the pace of new PC sales by encouraging users to upgrade their existing PCs, and there isn't much interest in doing so anyway.
Microsoft will drop XP sales and support and push PC makers to ship out Vista, and will immediately begin talking about "SEVEN," just as it switched the conversation from XP to "Longhorn/Vista" before XP was even catching on.
The problem catching up to Microsoft is that consumer hardware is getting cheaper, and OEMs want cheaper software, not grander and more expensive versions of Windows. That's why they're finally looking at Linux. While Apple's hardware finances Mac OS X, the OEM support that finances Windows will face increasing pressure.
That situation explains why Dvorak is now thinking Microsoft should copy Apple and build its own PC. The problem is that Microsoft knows nothing about building hardware. It is losing billions every year as Apple earns increasing billions every year as the chart in the link shows. Apple earns a 1/3 of Microsoft's total revenues and a 1/4 of its profits, despite only having 3% of the world's PC market share. What happens as Apple continues to outpace PC growth in general?
Apple's Hardware and Dvorak's Microsoft Branded PC
I can assure you that SF does indeed have crappy power. Despite being a city, and having been granted essentially free power from Hetch Hetchy Dam in Yosemite by an act of Congress, SF for some reason set up PG&E to deliver power, and until recently, maintain creaky old polluting power plants within the city limits.
PG&E also has a fire in one of its ancient substations regularly. A couple years ago, the power went off for more than 24 hours (!) over a large section of the City, including where I lived.
The power is not reliable. However, a data center should be aware of the problem and deal with it, since that's their only job. Its like finding out that the bank lost your money or that your doctor forgot to inform you that the test results were positive.
I start out with a small idea that drives me nuts until I start writing about it. It then invariably turns into a very long report. This happens daily.
I have a flexible schedule because I work with various clients. Unfortunately, nobody pays me to write anything on my site. I get donations from readers and I have written for other sites and magazines before.
Sometimes I'm afraid I write too much to hold the attention of a modern audience. I try to make short, readable paragraphs and insert artwork to trick readers into reading more than they would otherwise.
One embarrassing footnote to the "million Zunes sold" meme is that few of those sales have been to individuals. The majority of Zunes are still sitting on store shelves. We know this because Microsoft managed to shovel an excess inventory of at least 4 million Xbox 360s on retailers. That fact that Microsoft hasn't been able to fake similar levels of sales for the Zune indicates that sales of the Zune are REALLY low.
Meanwhile, Apple shipped several times as many iPhones in its first weekend, selling it only in its own retail stores and AT&T shops. That says something about Apple and Microsoft's ability to retail.
Apple has also been selling iPods at a profit; Microsoft's Zune + Xbox division has lost BILLIONS every year. Think about that for a moment.
Viruses will infect a new Windows PC plugged into the Internet before its patches can be downloaded.
You are right that users control their own security, but this is also the case on the Mac, and Mac users aren't plagued with constant malware problems. I have never scanned a PC and not found lots of malware. I work with a lot of different clients in different settings, from large enterprise groups that hire me to work on specific issues, to small business and home users. I have run large and medium sized IT environments, from several hundred users to several thousand.
It is a bit absurd to first say that user security is the tough problem and Microsoft can't protect its users from themselves, and then concede that Microsoft owns the Enterprise of managed desktops with locked down security. That's where big money is being lost due to real viruses and worms.
Apple has a very large business among home users and in education, both of which tend to have less draconian security in place, and a more permissive and less technically savvy userbase. But Mac users aren't poking their own eyes out downloading malware; it's the Windows users that are.
You can't hide behind market share numbers forever. There is quite obviously a big problem architecturally for Windows when even tightly managed IT pros can't keep their systems up to date and safe, while Mac users experience zero problems and the only known exploits for the Mac are theoretical lab concepts that require crossed fingers and aligned planets.
This is about a potential exploit of Bonjour that Apple has apparently already patched.
There is no information on how it is started or spread. Usually when worms appear, they've already plowed through several million dollars worth of damage. Since a Mac worm would have to rely on a lot of planets aligning (ie, enough Macs running in the same subnet, configured similarly, and the worm being spawned by a user) it would be hard to imagine what kind of problems such a theoretical exploit would cause.
It is easier to understand the intent and propagation of a media worm, which infects all the IDG and CNET publications and spawns out FUD about how Macs have theoretical exploits that are generating more stories than the actual exploits available for Windows.
Given that the creator of the "worm framework" explicitly says in the article that he is getting paid to develop it to show "Apple Computers are just as susceptible to Malware as Windows based ones."
What is malware? Slashdot cites Inqtana and Leap as known Mac OS X malware, but InqTana was a proof on concept worm designed to spread between Macs with Bluetooth file sharing enabled. It only ever existed in a lab and its propagation method has since been patched. InqTana
Leap is a trojan for iChat that is unable to replicate. It is as dangerous as sending someone a chat request and telling them to pour water on their computer.
This new Bonjour exploit is as yet an unproven claim. We know there are over 10,000 live malware products for Windows. So it's not really true that Macs are just as susceptible (ie "likely or liable to be influenced or harmed by a particular thing") or there would be real problems for Mac users.
That doesn't mean there will never be Mac exploits or security problems and that users needn't bother to be concerned about security issues, but it does highlight the absurdity of a media willing to repeat the unproven claims of a nobody.
Of course, if you're worried about Bonjour worms, you shouldn't run unknown software, and you shouldn't join unknown wireless networks with your Mac. It's hard to imagine that this will cause any damage outside of the bloggers who repeat it without any criticism as proof that "Macs can have malware!"
Journalism was regarded as the "Fourth Estate," independent from the (first) clergy, (second) politics, (third) merchant bourgeoisie.
In that classification, its reports were held up as a way to inform people, not to tell them what they wanted to hear (entertainment) or to tell them what others wanted them to hear (preaching, propaganda, and advertising).
By selling off journalism to the highest bidder, our society has systematically lost the most important aspect of a free society: an informed populace. This is particularly the case in the US, where most TV has turned to bottom scraping, lurid entertainment, and "news" has become a religio-political farce serving the needs of those whom we really need to be informed about. Fox is guarding the henhouse, as they say.
It is now at the point where the only way to truly inform is to entertain, so we have people like Michael Moore making comical movies to inform people that the US health system is in dire crisis, and South Park and the Daily Show provide much of the rest of the US' critical commentary.
This is unfortunate. A state run media would not solve this problem, because it appears we already have that with Fox News. We need an independent system of journalism, and unfortunately, we're not going to get that as long as we are happy being passively entertained.
What do CNET and Business 2.0 offer beyond smart alec FUD columnists and advertiser-friendly reviews?
It was sad to see most of the serious newspapers dry up, leaving nothing but wire fed papers that write to a 4th grade reading level.
It was sad to see local radio stations dry up, leaving nothing but Clear Channel fed recordings from Texas.
However, I have few tears for crappy magazines and their equally vapid online "portals" that never offered much in the first place.
The real issue is that we've sold off the Fourth Estate to advertisers, and we have very little real journalism left. We're all fed our news from the same ~5 mega corps who own everything. We are not informed because we gave up our media to capitalism, which works well as a way to price widgets, but is not really very good at providing truth. It only knows how to provide marketing spin.
Bloggers could provide some respite, but the Internet provides little in terms of a reputation system. Anyone can shout down unpopular truths, and any group can astroturf their marketing messages. Few people who follow Digg or Reddit links verify the credibility of sources they visit.
We've traded our serious tradition of journalism for a cheap bit of daily entertainment from who knows where and a media buffet prepared by a market driven media.
The fact that the least fit portions of our capitalist replacement for journalism are struggling to survive should be expected. The fact that our media is being run like a free market is the real story.
I am happy to admit I was foolishly wrong about handling the delivery and presentation of the article. It quite obviously did not achieve the message I intended to deliver.
The article does not prove that iPods run Mac OS X, as its headline might suggest. The context of the article is a series of articles about the architecture of the iPhone.
The article is about OS X in the iPhone, which is only suggested in the title. It is depicted in the graphic, and in its conclusion. Even if you feel the most important aspect of the article is that it makes reference to a joke, and even if you are fully convinced that I have no understanding of the joke, or did not at some point, there's no escaping the fact that that was a tangent of the article and that the payload of the article is that "OS X is an impressive delivery."
OS X delivers in one fell swoop an embedded architecture with huge potential. I do believe that Apple's seven years of history in delivering the ARM-based iPod contributed to the iPhone and its stability. It does not feel like a version 1.0 offering. Compare WinCE 1.0, or Palm OS 1.0, and Apple's first version of its embedded OS is very impressive, despite the significant differences from the Mac OS X desktop product.
If it's easier for you to ignore the message and attack me for having written it in a clumsy way, there's nothing I can do that might solve that apart from updating the article to strike out the clumsy and confusing parts to avoid others your own agony.
I do make errors. I am more interested in sharing ideas than in dealing with personality attacks. I don't really have the time or inclination to squabble with the five people from Digg and the trolls like Ian Betteridge who delight at posting personal attacks in their blogs. Somebody smart once told me, "there's three types of people: those that talk about things, those that talk about people, and those that talk about ideas." I talk about ideas.
The article was not a joke, it was a presentation of OS X used in the iPhone.
It referenced the MacTech joke about SNOJOB, but that wasn't a central part of the story. It was presented among other jokes that hinted around the truth: that Pixo did not deliver Apple's iPod for it, that Apple has seven years of experience in delivering the ARM based iPod, and that Apple has delivered core portions of the iPod, as Pixo is not a kernel, but rather a UI framework.
Why Slashdot decided to present the 2004 article as the key message of the article, and why readers made a huge stink about tagging the article as a joke and then feigned their indignation about being joked, are all much more ridiculous than anything in the article itself.
If you'd prefer a simpler version of the article without any subtlety and written at a Digg level, there is this version:
there are no adsense ads on roughly drafted, just an itunes song of the week download, a iTunes U ad (so you can "buy" a free download), and amazon listings.
Despite all the flowery language, its still a matter of Microsoft using the Zune to advertise its music store. You squirt an ad (trial song) to your friends, and then they go and buy it.
The only thing "new" is that, having failed to garner any interest in squirting, Microsoft is now planning to pay squirters a commission on sales. All the talk about "converting piracy" is bullshit. It's a program to tie a bone around the Zune music store so somebody will want to play with it.
How is this different than existing affiliate programs? I squirted some iTunes affiliate ads on my website, and when readers decide to click on them and buy something from iTunes, I get a small commission. How is this patentable? Because Microsoft described it it effusive language that presents advertising its store as a pirate magic trick? Is there something novel about sending files over a wireless network? I'm happy with Microsoft patenting the whole "squirt and die" model, as I don't want anyone else adopting it, but come on, what's novel about affiliate advertising?
Universal vs Apple in the iTunes Store Contracts When reports surfaced that Universal Music Group, the world's largest music label, refused to resign its existing deal with Apple's iTunes Store, there were private schadenfreude celebrations held in many closets.
Chang's analysis was absurd. There will be no iPhone Nano for years if ever.
Kevin Chang, iSuppli and The iPhone Nano Myth Reuters broadly reported JP Morgan's Kevin Chang forecasting the imminent arrival of a smaller cheaper, version of the iPhone dubbed the 'iPhone Nano.' The problem: not only is there is nothing backing up the iPhone Nano prediction, but it makes no sense at all. Even JP Morgan has distanced itself from the initial report.
There are at least two companies that have been reported in reputable papers to have signed a deal over the iPhone, T-Mobile in Germany and O2 in the UK.
That sounds odd, considering that it would seem most reasonable to have one distributor for all of Europe. However, Apple runs 17 iTunes stores in Europe, and neither T-Mobile nor O2 cover the three territories Apple is reported to be targeting with its first volley of iPhones: Germany, France and the UK.
There are some other complications as well, but having multiple operators isn't as non-nonsensical as it might seem.
International iPhone: Europe, Japan and 3G UMTS Apple introduced the iPhone exclusively in the US. Here's a look at what's involved in getting the iPhone to work in other markets now, and challenges Apple will face in the mobile market internationally.
Unraveling Anti-Apple Panic: iPhone Activation Privacy Scare CNET's Michael Tiemann desperately wants your attention before you activate your iPhone. It's apparently a matter of Internet Safety, if his blog tags are not just random words to bait the attention of Google. Don't dismiss Tiemann just because he blogs for the notoriously anti-Apple CNET. He's also president of the Open Source Initiative and vice president of open source affairs at Red Hat.
Unraveling Anti-Apple Panic: the iPhone Launch Success Apple captured international attention at the launch of the iPhone, despite only being available to consumers in the US. In January, Steve Jobs set the goal of selling 10 million iPhones by the end of 2008. Various analysts warned the the unit's higher up-front price and requirement to use AT&T service would raise significant barriers.
well again, knowing what market you are in, what geography, etc. might be helpful.
You could be in Outter Bumfuck Nebraska, or in Manhattan but inside of an elevator, or at home in Common Suburbia but next to a microwave oven or halfway inside a lead lined safe room or, well, you probably get the idea.
Apple yanked all of the Flash from its corporate website and redid it all in standard Ajax using scriptilicious and other plane jane tools, demonstrating that anyone can. It's even more interactive and functional (check out Apple.com search) and no proprietary plugin for Flash required.
Adobe isn't happy about it, but do we really need to convert the web from open HTML into closed FLA? Apple even convinced Google to start putting all of its FLA On2 videos on YouTube into standard H.264. That makes is much easier to deliver standards-based hardware acceleration for mobile devices that optimizes YouTube type sites.
With this kind of progress, the web is headed back into open territory after a long captivity in proprietary hell. That's good for Linux users, DIY site builders, and levels the playing field in hardware.
The web shouldn't be hostage to anyone's plugin just to render pages, particularly a plugin tied to a proprietary and industrially uncommon video codec that doesn't appear to have any hardware acceleration features. Anyone can license H.264 or get cheap dedicated processors.
Internet Explorer on the desktop PC doesn't make any attempt to support CSS3, and doesn't even try hard to do 2005-era CSS. The Pocket version is even further away from being remotely useful for the modern web.
Well radio networks are subject to signal variations. I believe I have an AT&T dead hole in the middle of my house in the middle of San Francisco. I found similar dead holes in Verizon's network all over the City. I think Sprint is probably the best network in my area.
People in other cities will very likely find an entirely different set of circumstances where they live. Vermont doesn't have AT&T service at all.
With millions of new iPhone customers, AT&T will no doubt be investing in its network so as not to lose them. The first step was maxing out EDGE to greatly improve what the iPhone can do on its network. Now that people will actually be using the network, it would make sense to jump to the wild conclusion that it will continue to evolve.
EDGE has a theoretical max around 230 kbit/s, but AT&T's network was limited to real world throughput of 70-120 kbit/s. They recently rolled out an upgrade that had been in the works for a while, but which appeared to be tied to the iPhone. Testing has found recent jumps to around 200.
Therefore, all the complaints about the glacial speed of EDGE have been based upon the old version. It's never going to be ridiculously fast, but with the new boost, its much faster than the early reviewers noticed.
I have a Sprint Treo now, and I'm happy to trade off network speed for a real browser that can eventually show me what I want, rather than quickly getting me to an unusable page.
Would it be cooler to have a faster network? Of course, but with the options available, I think Apple made good choices. People who don't agree have the freedom to get an N95 or TyTN or several other 3G phones available from other carriers.
Apple's Secret iPhone Application Business Model At WWDC, Apple revealed that outside developers could build custom iPhone web applications. But what about real iPhone apps, the kind that use the full power of the Cocoa frameworks and run on the bare metal of the iPhone itself, and not in a secured sandbox environment of the standards-based web?
If they hadn't engineered an impression that bloggers were talking up Microsoft jingles, then there wouldn't be a story. Sorry to break that to you so succinctly.
What makes you wince about my writing is primarily that I take apart stuff you want to believe. Nobody ever points out anything I say that is actually deceptive. I can make minor errors in word use or spelling, but I don't write false information designed to convey something that isn't true. I also make no effort to hide my opinions, so nobody reading is fooled by some false illusion of virginal objectivity.
I have only ever been castigated for saying things that I quoted from Microsoft executives. It's pretty clear when someone unleashes a torrent of ridicule that includes the phrase "Fanboy" that they themselves are just simple people who can't think.
Offer some real criticism. Calling me names just makes it obvious that you have nothing to stand on.
As for citing TechCrunch--the blogger who we're talking about as a Microsoft sellout--complaining that Apple "sued" bloggers, well if you read the link, you'd find that Apple asked them to take down iPhone graphics the were pasting on Windows devices to make them look less shitty. That's something Apple has to do to preserve its IP, and you can disagree with it, but a take down does not equal "Apple suing bloggers." Apple only sued a number of websites to obtain information from them about industrial espionage within their own company. Presenting that as suing bloggers, as if to get money out of them, is just disingenuous.
I know some of the people who were sued, and I work with them. I also know Apple inside. Your attempts to portray either as some Good and Evil play are laughable. You can continue to publish RDM-hate pieces on Digg, and whine about Apple suits against bloggers that didn't happen, but it doesn't make you any less of a fraud.
When you turn the media and its journalists into pawns of commerce, the Fourth Estate becomes a joke. We need an honest media to inform us so we as individuals can make correct decisions.
Capitalism is an economic system for making the best use of capitol through competitive and open markets unfettered by government control and direction. Capitalism isn't a form of government. We don't select candidates by voting with our dollars. We don't pass laws based on how much money can be raised to pass a law.
The massive level of corruption money brings to the table have led some to believe that capitalism means that money should equal political power and freedom from obeying the law. Haha, no.
That is actually a problem in society, not a desirable outcome. We are a society of people, not cogs in a set of corporate gears. The world has already experimented with fascism, and the results were, as history books will inform, not something we should be ready to try again.
The fact that we--in the USA--have a fascist-friendly media, the beginnings of a fascist-friendly state religion in place, and an aspiring fascist executive in place, all working to goad us into an expanded war, should provide anyone who has ever read about the 1930s with some serious issues to think about. Remember that back then, a mixture of war and entertainment were similarly used to blind people from reality.
In that context Microsoft's evil pales in comparison, but that doesn't make it not part of the problem. It was big business that got behind the fascists back then and funded them, and because they controlled the media, they could shape public opinion. That's why we can't say "oh well, things are as they are," and enjoy it, because doing so makes us part of the problem.
It's the same reason radio broadcast stations and restaurants can play music at low cost, but are expected to pay a lot to display or broadcast movies. It's why department stores play new music in the background, but new movies are played in theaters that require a ticket to get in. Most music is already commercially available on DRM-free CDs, while no movies are commercially available on non-DRM media discs.
Apple doesn't enforce media DRM, it lives in a preexisting world. It just pushes for open standards and relaxed DRM in order to sell volume. Microsoft worked to build an impossible to defeat world policed by Palladium and managed under the thumb of Windows Media DRM.
I know you're an anti-apple troll, I just pity your allegiance to an evil empire and your malodorous attempts to twist reality.
So in the context of the article, are you getting paid to disgorge FUD as part of some astroturf campaign, or are you just a freelance apple hater?
Astroturf doesn't have to be secret to remain astroturf.
What part of "deliberately seeking to engineer the impression of spontaneous public reactions to a product," centrally coordinated through Federated Media, do you not connect with this campaign?
It almost sounds like the Wiki page was written specifically with this campaign in mind.
Astroturf is planting fake conversations designed to mimic a real grassroots movement. Microsoft has a history of Astroturfing, both in its ad campaigns, its criminal defense campaigns, its political lobbying campaigns, and its technology FUD campaigns against other products. Do you think ZDNet's bloggers spontaneously all decided to rag on the iPhone when they wrote 50 negative articles within a week about a product from Apple that has little to do with their jobs or blogs? Is it a freak coincidence that just a few months ago they were singing the praises of the Zune, a product that found zero real interest in the market at week two?
Slashdot Mirror
It is true that Mac OS X demanded more RAM than OS 9. However, a big part of that was that during the transition, most users were running the Blue Box, which ran the entire Mac OS 9 in a VM in the background. One might expect running OS 9 + OS X to consume more RAM.
Mac OS X ran very well on existing hardware. I had a 2001 Titanium PowerBook, which either shipped with a beta of OS X or just OS 9. It ran Mac OS X 10.2 great when it was released in 2002, and newer versions of OS X kept getting faster on the same hardware.
Also, the story about needing more VRAM really only applied later when Quartz Extreme came out. Mac users have always expected to run 5-10 year old machines using the latest Mac OS.
Compare any release of Windows, which has only worked well on new PCs. Few people upgrade PCs that are more than a year or two old because it frequently just makes no sense. XP was a dog on the top of the line laptop I bought with Win 2k installed, and Vista wants to run on a brand new PC with top of the line specs. There are not any meaningful retail sales of Vista, its only shipping on new PCs.
All of this is because Apple makes its money on hardware and also makes some money selling retail Mac OS X to its existing base, while Microsoft makes 80% of its money on OEM sales. Even though Microsoft makes far more money on $300 retail boxes vs $30 OEM licenses, it can't slow the pace of new PC sales by encouraging users to upgrade their existing PCs, and there isn't much interest in doing so anyway.
Microsoft will drop XP sales and support and push PC makers to ship out Vista, and will immediately begin talking about "SEVEN," just as it switched the conversation from XP to "Longhorn/Vista" before XP was even catching on.
The problem catching up to Microsoft is that consumer hardware is getting cheaper, and OEMs want cheaper software, not grander and more expensive versions of Windows. That's why they're finally looking at Linux. While Apple's hardware finances Mac OS X, the OEM support that finances Windows will face increasing pressure.
That situation explains why Dvorak is now thinking Microsoft should copy Apple and build its own PC. The problem is that Microsoft knows nothing about building hardware. It is losing billions every year as Apple earns increasing billions every year as the chart in the link shows. Apple earns a 1/3 of Microsoft's total revenues and a 1/4 of its profits, despite only having 3% of the world's PC market share. What happens as Apple continues to outpace PC growth in general?
Apple's Hardware and Dvorak's Microsoft Branded PC
I can assure you that SF does indeed have crappy power. Despite being a city, and having been granted essentially free power from Hetch Hetchy Dam in Yosemite by an act of Congress, SF for some reason set up PG&E to deliver power, and until recently, maintain creaky old polluting power plants within the city limits.
PG&E also has a fire in one of its ancient substations regularly. A couple years ago, the power went off for more than 24 hours (!) over a large section of the City, including where I lived.
The power is not reliable. However, a data center should be aware of the problem and deal with it, since that's their only job. Its like finding out that the bank lost your money or that your doctor forgot to inform you that the test results were positive.
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Ten Fake Apple Scandals: 2 - The iPhone's Anti-Competitive AT&T Contract
Ten Fake Apple Scandals: 1 - Phony Rage About iPhone Price and Profits
That article was wrong. You can look at the files yourself. It's Mach, BSD, and the Cocoa frameworks:
iPhone OS X Architecture: Cocoa Frameworks and Mobile Mac Apps
iPhone OS X Architecture: the BSD Unix Userland
iPhone OS X Architecture: Disk, Shell, and Password Security
iPhone OS X Architecture: the Mach Kernel and RAM
I start out with a small idea that drives me nuts until I start writing about it. It then invariably turns into a very long report. This happens daily.
I have a flexible schedule because I work with various clients. Unfortunately, nobody pays me to write anything on my site. I get donations from readers and I have written for other sites and magazines before.
Sometimes I'm afraid I write too much to hold the attention of a modern audience. I try to make short, readable paragraphs and insert artwork to trick readers into reading more than they would otherwise.
One embarrassing footnote to the "million Zunes sold" meme is that few of those sales have been to individuals. The majority of Zunes are still sitting on store shelves. We know this because Microsoft managed to shovel an excess inventory of at least 4 million Xbox 360s on retailers. That fact that Microsoft hasn't been able to fake similar levels of sales for the Zune indicates that sales of the Zune are REALLY low.
More Articles on Zune.
Meanwhile, Apple shipped several times as many iPhones in its first weekend, selling it only in its own retail stores and AT&T shops. That says something about Apple and Microsoft's ability to retail.
Apple has also been selling iPods at a profit; Microsoft's Zune + Xbox division has lost BILLIONS every year. Think about that for a moment.
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Ten Fake Apple Scandals: 1 - Phony Rage About iPhone Price and Profits
Reality: The iPhone costs less than any smartphone, and will have a higher resale value after two years than any phone. Here's why.
Viruses will infect a new Windows PC plugged into the Internet before its patches can be downloaded.
You are right that users control their own security, but this is also the case on the Mac, and Mac users aren't plagued with constant malware problems. I have never scanned a PC and not found lots of malware. I work with a lot of different clients in different settings, from large enterprise groups that hire me to work on specific issues, to small business and home users. I have run large and medium sized IT environments, from several hundred users to several thousand.
It is a bit absurd to first say that user security is the tough problem and Microsoft can't protect its users from themselves, and then concede that Microsoft owns the Enterprise of managed desktops with locked down security. That's where big money is being lost due to real viruses and worms.
Apple has a very large business among home users and in education, both of which tend to have less draconian security in place, and a more permissive and less technically savvy userbase. But Mac users aren't poking their own eyes out downloading malware; it's the Windows users that are.
You can't hide behind market share numbers forever. There is quite obviously a big problem architecturally for Windows when even tightly managed IT pros can't keep their systems up to date and safe, while Mac users experience zero problems and the only known exploits for the Mac are theoretical lab concepts that require crossed fingers and aligned planets.
RoughlyDrafted Magazine
This is about a potential exploit of Bonjour that Apple has apparently already patched.
There is no information on how it is started or spread. Usually when worms appear, they've already plowed through several million dollars worth of damage. Since a Mac worm would have to rely on a lot of planets aligning (ie, enough Macs running in the same subnet, configured similarly, and the worm being spawned by a user) it would be hard to imagine what kind of problems such a theoretical exploit would cause.
It is easier to understand the intent and propagation of a media worm, which infects all the IDG and CNET publications and spawns out FUD about how Macs have theoretical exploits that are generating more stories than the actual exploits available for Windows.
Given that the creator of the "worm framework" explicitly says in the article that he is getting paid to develop it to show "Apple Computers are just as susceptible to Malware as Windows based ones."
What is malware? Slashdot cites Inqtana and Leap as known Mac OS X malware, but InqTana was a proof on concept worm designed to spread between Macs with Bluetooth file sharing enabled. It only ever existed in a lab and its propagation method has since been patched. InqTana
Leap is a trojan for iChat that is unable to replicate. It is as dangerous as sending someone a chat request and telling them to pour water on their computer.
This new Bonjour exploit is as yet an unproven claim. We know there are over 10,000 live malware products for Windows. So it's not really true that Macs are just as susceptible (ie "likely or liable to be influenced or harmed by a particular thing") or there would be real problems for Mac users.
That doesn't mean there will never be Mac exploits or security problems and that users needn't bother to be concerned about security issues, but it does highlight the absurdity of a media willing to repeat the unproven claims of a nobody.
Of course, if you're worried about Bonjour worms, you shouldn't run unknown software, and you shouldn't join unknown wireless networks with your Mac. It's hard to imagine that this will cause any damage outside of the bloggers who repeat it without any criticism as proof that "Macs can have malware!"
Journalism was regarded as the "Fourth Estate," independent from the (first) clergy, (second) politics, (third) merchant bourgeoisie.
In that classification, its reports were held up as a way to inform people, not to tell them what they wanted to hear (entertainment) or to tell them what others wanted them to hear (preaching, propaganda, and advertising).
By selling off journalism to the highest bidder, our society has systematically lost the most important aspect of a free society: an informed populace. This is particularly the case in the US, where most TV has turned to bottom scraping, lurid entertainment, and "news" has become a religio-political farce serving the needs of those whom we really need to be informed about. Fox is guarding the henhouse, as they say.
It is now at the point where the only way to truly inform is to entertain, so we have people like Michael Moore making comical movies to inform people that the US health system is in dire crisis, and South Park and the Daily Show provide much of the rest of the US' critical commentary.
This is unfortunate. A state run media would not solve this problem, because it appears we already have that with Fox News. We need an independent system of journalism, and unfortunately, we're not going to get that as long as we are happy being passively entertained.
RoughlyDrafted Magazine
What do CNET and Business 2.0 offer beyond smart alec FUD columnists and advertiser-friendly reviews?
It was sad to see most of the serious newspapers dry up, leaving nothing but wire fed papers that write to a 4th grade reading level.
It was sad to see local radio stations dry up, leaving nothing but Clear Channel fed recordings from Texas.
However, I have few tears for crappy magazines and their equally vapid online "portals" that never offered much in the first place.
The real issue is that we've sold off the Fourth Estate to advertisers, and we have very little real journalism left. We're all fed our news from the same ~5 mega corps who own everything. We are not informed because we gave up our media to capitalism, which works well as a way to price widgets, but is not really very good at providing truth. It only knows how to provide marketing spin.
Bloggers could provide some respite, but the Internet provides little in terms of a reputation system. Anyone can shout down unpopular truths, and any group can astroturf their marketing messages. Few people who follow Digg or Reddit links verify the credibility of sources they visit.
We've traded our serious tradition of journalism for a cheap bit of daily entertainment from who knows where and a media buffet prepared by a market driven media.
The fact that the least fit portions of our capitalist replacement for journalism are struggling to survive should be expected. The fact that our media is being run like a free market is the real story.
RoughlyDrafted Magazine
I am happy to admit I was foolishly wrong about handling the delivery and presentation of the article. It quite obviously did not achieve the message I intended to deliver.
The article does not prove that iPods run Mac OS X, as its headline might suggest. The context of the article is a series of articles about the architecture of the iPhone.
The article is about OS X in the iPhone, which is only suggested in the title. It is depicted in the graphic, and in its conclusion. Even if you feel the most important aspect of the article is that it makes reference to a joke, and even if you are fully convinced that I have no understanding of the joke, or did not at some point, there's no escaping the fact that that was a tangent of the article and that the payload of the article is that "OS X is an impressive delivery."
OS X delivers in one fell swoop an embedded architecture with huge potential. I do believe that Apple's seven years of history in delivering the ARM-based iPod contributed to the iPhone and its stability. It does not feel like a version 1.0 offering. Compare WinCE 1.0, or Palm OS 1.0, and Apple's first version of its embedded OS is very impressive, despite the significant differences from the Mac OS X desktop product.
If it's easier for you to ignore the message and attack me for having written it in a clumsy way, there's nothing I can do that might solve that apart from updating the article to strike out the clumsy and confusing parts to avoid others your own agony.
I do make errors. I am more interested in sharing ideas than in dealing with personality attacks. I don't really have the time or inclination to squabble with the five people from Digg and the trolls like Ian Betteridge who delight at posting personal attacks in their blogs. Somebody smart once told me, "there's three types of people: those that talk about things, those that talk about people, and those that talk about ideas." I talk about ideas.
The article was not a joke, it was a presentation of OS X used in the iPhone.
It referenced the MacTech joke about SNOJOB, but that wasn't a central part of the story. It was presented among other jokes that hinted around the truth: that Pixo did not deliver Apple's iPod for it, that Apple has seven years of experience in delivering the ARM based iPod, and that Apple has delivered core portions of the iPod, as Pixo is not a kernel, but rather a UI framework.
Why Slashdot decided to present the 2004 article as the key message of the article, and why readers made a huge stink about tagging the article as a joke and then feigned their indignation about being joked, are all much more ridiculous than anything in the article itself.
If you'd prefer a simpler version of the article without any subtlety and written at a Digg level, there is this version:
The OS X iPod is the iPhone! Pixo, ARM, and the Mac OS
there are no adsense ads on roughly drafted, just an itunes song of the week download, a iTunes U ad (so you can "buy" a free download), and amazon listings.
try again!
Despite all the flowery language, its still a matter of Microsoft using the Zune to advertise its music store. You squirt an ad (trial song) to your friends, and then they go and buy it.
The only thing "new" is that, having failed to garner any interest in squirting, Microsoft is now planning to pay squirters a commission on sales. All the talk about "converting piracy" is bullshit. It's a program to tie a bone around the Zune music store so somebody will want to play with it.
How is this different than existing affiliate programs? I squirted some iTunes affiliate ads on my website, and when readers decide to click on them and buy something from iTunes, I get a small commission. How is this patentable? Because Microsoft described it it effusive language that presents advertising its store as a pirate magic trick? Is there something novel about sending files over a wireless network? I'm happy with Microsoft patenting the whole "squirt and die" model, as I don't want anyone else adopting it, but come on, what's novel about affiliate advertising?
Universal vs Apple in the iTunes Store Contracts
When reports surfaced that Universal Music Group, the world's largest music label, refused to resign its existing deal with Apple's iTunes Store, there were private schadenfreude celebrations held in many closets.
Chang's analysis was absurd. There will be no iPhone Nano for years if ever.
Kevin Chang, iSuppli and The iPhone Nano Myth
Reuters broadly reported JP Morgan's Kevin Chang forecasting the imminent arrival of a smaller cheaper, version of the iPhone dubbed the 'iPhone Nano.' The problem: not only is there is nothing backing up the iPhone Nano prediction, but it makes no sense at all. Even JP Morgan has distanced itself from the initial report.
There are at least two companies that have been reported in reputable papers to have signed a deal over the iPhone, T-Mobile in Germany and O2 in the UK.
That sounds odd, considering that it would seem most reasonable to have one distributor for all of Europe. However, Apple runs 17 iTunes stores in Europe, and neither T-Mobile nor O2 cover the three territories Apple is reported to be targeting with its first volley of iPhones: Germany, France and the UK.
There are some other complications as well, but having multiple operators isn't as non-nonsensical as it might seem.
International iPhone: Europe, Japan and 3G UMTS
Apple introduced the iPhone exclusively in the US. Here's a look at what's involved in getting the iPhone to work in other markets now, and challenges Apple will face in the mobile market internationally.
Unraveling Anti-Apple Panic: iPhone Activation Privacy Scare
CNET's Michael Tiemann desperately wants your attention before you activate your iPhone. It's apparently a matter of Internet Safety, if his blog tags are not just random words to bait the attention of Google. Don't dismiss Tiemann just because he blogs for the notoriously anti-Apple CNET. He's also president of the Open Source Initiative and vice president of open source affairs at Red Hat.
Unraveling Anti-Apple Panic: the iPhone Launch Success
Apple captured international attention at the launch of the iPhone, despite only being available to consumers in the US. In January, Steve Jobs set the goal of selling 10 million iPhones by the end of 2008. Various analysts warned the the unit's higher up-front price and requirement to use AT&T service would raise significant barriers.
well again, knowing what market you are in, what geography, etc. might be helpful.
You could be in Outter Bumfuck Nebraska, or in Manhattan but inside of an elevator, or at home in Common Suburbia but next to a microwave oven or halfway inside a lead lined safe room or, well, you probably get the idea.
Not having Flash is a feature.
Apple yanked all of the Flash from its corporate website and redid it all in standard Ajax using scriptilicious and other plane jane tools, demonstrating that anyone can. It's even more interactive and functional (check out Apple.com search) and no proprietary plugin for Flash required.
Adobe isn't happy about it, but do we really need to convert the web from open HTML into closed FLA? Apple even convinced Google to start putting all of its FLA On2 videos on YouTube into standard H.264. That makes is much easier to deliver standards-based hardware acceleration for mobile devices that optimizes YouTube type sites.
With this kind of progress, the web is headed back into open territory after a long captivity in proprietary hell. That's good for Linux users, DIY site builders, and levels the playing field in hardware.
The web shouldn't be hostage to anyone's plugin just to render pages, particularly a plugin tied to a proprietary and industrially uncommon video codec that doesn't appear to have any hardware acceleration features. Anyone can license H.264 or get cheap dedicated processors.
Internet Explorer on the desktop PC doesn't make any attempt to support CSS3, and doesn't even try hard to do 2005-era CSS. The Pocket version is even further away from being remotely useful for the modern web.
Well radio networks are subject to signal variations. I believe I have an AT&T dead hole in the middle of my house in the middle of San Francisco. I found similar dead holes in Verizon's network all over the City. I think Sprint is probably the best network in my area.
People in other cities will very likely find an entirely different set of circumstances where they live. Vermont doesn't have AT&T service at all.
With millions of new iPhone customers, AT&T will no doubt be investing in its network so as not to lose them. The first step was maxing out EDGE to greatly improve what the iPhone can do on its network. Now that people will actually be using the network, it would make sense to jump to the wild conclusion that it will continue to evolve.
EDGE has a theoretical max around 230 kbit/s, but AT&T's network was limited to real world throughput of 70-120 kbit/s. They recently rolled out an upgrade that had been in the works for a while, but which appeared to be tied to the iPhone. Testing has found recent jumps to around 200.
Therefore, all the complaints about the glacial speed of EDGE have been based upon the old version. It's never going to be ridiculously fast, but with the new boost, its much faster than the early reviewers noticed.
I have a Sprint Treo now, and I'm happy to trade off network speed for a real browser that can eventually show me what I want, rather than quickly getting me to an unusable page.
Would it be cooler to have a faster network? Of course, but with the options available, I think Apple made good choices. People who don't agree have the freedom to get an N95 or TyTN or several other 3G phones available from other carriers.
Apple's Secret iPhone Application Business Model
At WWDC, Apple revealed that outside developers could build custom iPhone web applications. But what about real iPhone apps, the kind that use the full power of the Cocoa frameworks and run on the bare metal of the iPhone itself, and not in a secured sandbox environment of the standards-based web?
No you are absolutely wrong.
A vulnerability is a vulnerability regardless of whether other systems have similarly flawed mechanisms.
If Mac OS X had a vulnerability in its Apple File Service, it wouldn't be dismissed simply because Windows doesn't natively support the AFP service.
If they hadn't engineered an impression that bloggers were talking up Microsoft jingles, then there wouldn't be a story. Sorry to break that to you so succinctly.
What makes you wince about my writing is primarily that I take apart stuff you want to believe. Nobody ever points out anything I say that is actually deceptive. I can make minor errors in word use or spelling, but I don't write false information designed to convey something that isn't true. I also make no effort to hide my opinions, so nobody reading is fooled by some false illusion of virginal objectivity.
I have only ever been castigated for saying things that I quoted from Microsoft executives. It's pretty clear when someone unleashes a torrent of ridicule that includes the phrase "Fanboy" that they themselves are just simple people who can't think.
Offer some real criticism. Calling me names just makes it obvious that you have nothing to stand on.
As for citing TechCrunch--the blogger who we're talking about as a Microsoft sellout--complaining that Apple "sued" bloggers, well if you read the link, you'd find that Apple asked them to take down iPhone graphics the were pasting on Windows devices to make them look less shitty. That's something Apple has to do to preserve its IP, and you can disagree with it, but a take down does not equal "Apple suing bloggers." Apple only sued a number of websites to obtain information from them about industrial espionage within their own company. Presenting that as suing bloggers, as if to get money out of them, is just disingenuous.
I know some of the people who were sued, and I work with them. I also know Apple inside. Your attempts to portray either as some Good and Evil play are laughable. You can continue to publish RDM-hate pieces on Digg, and whine about Apple suits against bloggers that didn't happen, but it doesn't make you any less of a fraud.
No actually that is fascism.
When you turn the media and its journalists into pawns of commerce, the Fourth Estate becomes a joke. We need an honest media to inform us so we as individuals can make correct decisions.
Capitalism is an economic system for making the best use of capitol through competitive and open markets unfettered by government control and direction. Capitalism isn't a form of government. We don't select candidates by voting with our dollars. We don't pass laws based on how much money can be raised to pass a law.
The massive level of corruption money brings to the table have led some to believe that capitalism means that money should equal political power and freedom from obeying the law. Haha, no.
That is actually a problem in society, not a desirable outcome. We are a society of people, not cogs in a set of corporate gears. The world has already experimented with fascism, and the results were, as history books will inform, not something we should be ready to try again.
The fact that we--in the USA--have a fascist-friendly media, the beginnings of a fascist-friendly state religion in place, and an aspiring fascist executive in place, all working to goad us into an expanded war, should provide anyone who has ever read about the 1930s with some serious issues to think about. Remember that back then, a mixture of war and entertainment were similarly used to blind people from reality.
In that context Microsoft's evil pales in comparison, but that doesn't make it not part of the problem. It was big business that got behind the fascists back then and funded them, and because they controlled the media, they could shape public opinion. That's why we can't say "oh well, things are as they are," and enjoy it, because doing so makes us part of the problem.
well since your sig asked:
It's the same reason radio broadcast stations and restaurants can play music at low cost, but are expected to pay a lot to display or broadcast movies.
It's why department stores play new music in the background, but new movies are played in theaters that require a ticket to get in.
Most music is already commercially available on DRM-free CDs, while no movies are commercially available on non-DRM media discs.
Apple doesn't enforce media DRM, it lives in a preexisting world. It just pushes for open standards and relaxed DRM in order to sell volume.
Microsoft worked to build an impossible to defeat world policed by Palladium and managed under the thumb of Windows Media DRM.
I know you're an anti-apple troll, I just pity your allegiance to an evil empire and your malodorous attempts to twist reality.
So in the context of the article, are you getting paid to disgorge FUD as part of some astroturf campaign, or are you just a freelance apple hater?
Astroturf doesn't have to be secret to remain astroturf.
What part of "deliberately seeking to engineer the impression of spontaneous public reactions to a product," centrally coordinated through Federated Media, do you not connect with this campaign?
It almost sounds like the Wiki page was written specifically with this campaign in mind.
Astroturf is planting fake conversations designed to mimic a real grassroots movement. Microsoft has a history of Astroturfing, both in its ad campaigns, its criminal defense campaigns, its political lobbying campaigns, and its technology FUD campaigns against other products. Do you think ZDNet's bloggers spontaneously all decided to rag on the iPhone when they wrote 50 negative articles within a week about a product from Apple that has little to do with their jobs or blogs? Is it a freak coincidence that just a few months ago they were singing the praises of the Zune, a product that found zero real interest in the market at week two?
iPod vs Zune: Microsoft's Slippery Astroturf
Well now you do. They rely on word of mouth to get their agenda talked around.