Erm - surely that would be the responsibility of an intelligence agency, with an international focus? Say something like the NSA and the Carnivore system, that's been around for decades?
I thought it actually looked like the defacto standard was cheap (effectively disposable) pay-as-you-go mobile telephones, hence moves in several countries to stop selling them without proof of address.
I wouldn't worry though, SandStorm cannot do what it says on the tin, unless there's a back door in all O/S and servers - which we know there isn't. Just have to hope those terrorists are running XP
From the point of view of programming, I like the fact that they've thrown XCode and WebObjects in with the machine, plus support for Java, Ruby and Python as well as their favoured Objective-C. That makes it the first home machine I've had since the early 80s to come with a full programming environment (i.e. not just a noddy basic that didn't give access to 80% of the O/S). It's pretty easy to build a GUI interface to a Unix shell script if you have scripts you often run. You are allegedly getting the same tools their own developers use.
I think that's a good demonstration of their increasing programmer friendliness (about time, and something you can probably thank Microsoft for - MS have always put a lot of time and money into trying to get programmers onto the dark side).
It's also much like comparing Ford with BMW and going 'well this Ford's got the same engine size and same dimensions so why is the BMW more expensive'. (And before you ask, we have a Ford car, because it does the job - to go 14 miles a day to and from work. If I drove on a motorway all day, I'd invest in something better. This may be the main reason many consumers go for the cheapest computer they can get).
The focus on cost and cost alone is the main thing that keeps Dell in corporates and many schools (schools should know better as they could actually USE the bundled Mac software more effectively, but then they also get steep site-licence discounts on Office, et al). For corporates even reliability isn't a massive issue - I don't know many places where people are allowed to use their C drives any more - desktops are effectively fat clients for running heavy software.
After stepping out of the Windows speed-race, I've been perfectly happy with a Mac Mini. Again, I've been told I could get a Windows PC for half the price, even a small factor one, but - duh - that wasn't the reason why I got one. I do think it's telling that price, rather than compatibility, is now becoming the main factor cited. (Actually, that's a return to the mid-80s - price was what put most people off Apple then, creating room for Atari and Commodore Amiga. No one wanted a PC at home). The main criticism that I still think is valid, are people who just don't like being locked into one hardware vendor - and it is true that PC owners have the option of going from cheap and nasty to as powerful as you want to pay. It's also true that most problems with Windows stability stem from drivers and it seems to be possible to build a stable configuration - my Evesham PC was rock-solid for years until I started adding and upgrading cards. On the other hand, we had a cheap laptop that has been nothing but trouble.
And I would concur with the posting above about the Mini's potential as an office desktop - on it's noise factor alone it could be a revolution. Someone on our helpdesk asked me, on seeing my home setup and how much they cost 'why don't we use these at work'. As our helpdesk spent 80% of the day in Unix terminal sessions and the rest in mail, it would be quite feasible.
There may be some truth in those allegations, but it's worth looking back at what the lot of most workers was like before Unions, and it seems to me that they have achieved many things that have improved quality of life for most - improving the life of the mediocre strikes me as one of the signs of civilization - maybe us geniuses need holding back once in a while. (I've worked as a temp in a job where I quickly realised I could replace my job and 3 others with about 2 days of programming, but so what).
Other models of management/union interaction are possible - the quality of the German auto industry is undeniable, yet it has also been heavily unionized while avoiding the plague of industrial action that happened in the UK industry - the main reason cited for this is the more consensus based that confrontational decision making - US/UK management tend to be immediately confrontational towards unions, and vice versa, reflecting their origins in direct class conflict.
Lastly - there is no reason why you can't build a high-quality car using 'average' or 'mediocre' staff - it's down to design, production line and QA - all things that come more management decisions than anything to do with unions. The other thing about the German car industry is they recognized early on that in the long run they would never be able to compete with Far East competition on price, so had to focus on quality. The UK industry on the other hand went into cycles of cost cutting, but selling the same type of vehicles.
Maybe slightly more than the existing group buying PPC Apple machines and installing PPC based Linux.
IMO - Apple machines will never make great Windows machines - you need only compare the minimum specs for Tiger and Vista, or see how usable an iBook or Mac Mini is today with their low-power CPU and graphics cards (or how you can recycle an outdated Windows PC into a usable Linux machine), to understand why. The whole ethos is different - Jobs obsession with cooling fans for one. Apple owners will benefit from being in the slipstream of the Windows hardware arms race, but performance has never really been in Apple's DNA. (Sure, they try occasionally, but it's like Microsoft and security - you know they're reacting to criticism).
I really don't see Apple doing anything like the 'desktop replacement' laptops you get in the Windows world (there's one sat next to me now, and it's the loudest thing in the room and I can feel the heat from here).
Basically, Apple might be able to deliver an Intel based iBook that will run Tiger very well but runs Vista like a dog / goes flat in 30 minutes.
I get the same response from our web designers. I've even pointed them at standards validation tools (the argument they come up with is that while it MIGHT be compliant they don't have time to test on all browsers). Luckily, the web developers use a mix of IE and Firefox and implement standard code where possible (occasionally customers ask for Active-X specific features).
That said, personally I'd just like MS taken down a peg rather than ousted. A world running 95% Linux distributions or MacOS would be just as bad as an MS one.
I think it will be a long time before small businesses start moving - they were the last people to embrace computers in business anyway. It will be the large corporations and public sector that will drive any change. The saving of replacing 4-5 copies of Windows certainly won't outweigh the cost of retraining - small businesses also often don't pay annual support and group licenses buy just buy consumer machines. A 1000 desktop situation is another matter.
O/S advocates always think businessmen will be impressed with 'free' - that they're always trying to cut costs - but despite stereotypes, most businessmen do understand the idea of investing in tools to increase productivity, which is another way to cut costs. (This is something we suffer from at work - sales want us to redesign our GUI to look somewhat flashier / easier to use, our existing customers want us to keep it the same).
Might be just me but spotlight seems somewhat snappier, or at least working in a more logical way (I have 'Applications' set as the top category to use Spotlight as a launcher - yes, I know, but every alternative also eats up some resource too) - previously it was taking maybe 4-5 seconds to return a result for 'Activity Monitor' as Top Hit. Now it seems satisfyingly instant. Although less so if I just type 'i' - still taking a while to list all the i- apps.
I don't understand the issue with Dashboard - So long as you don't call it, none of the widgets start running / using resource. Once it's running - well, it's like having any other active program running. I'm quite happy to leave it sat there and not use it.
Spotlight - I'm less sure what the issue is with spotlight. mdimport uses up a lot of CPU (and disk activity) when it goes off, but that is periodic and theoretically only occurs when system is idle - otherwise I don't really see Spotlight chewing much resource at all (20Mb of real memory for all related processes. 12Mb for the main spotlight and the rest for the background jobs). If I don't call it and there is no indexing going on, the CPU usage is 0.
So I'm not sure if people are experiencing a genuine problem with Spotlight - I guess on small systems, an extra 20 Mb of memory could be significant (equally less processes / threads, even if idle). Or is there just, as with Dashboard, an instinct that 'disabling things will make my system better'?
For instance - the 'Disable Dashboard' link implies the widgets always use memory and CPU - well actually is does say 'open widgets' but it doesn't make clear that widgets are only open once you have used Dashboard at least once.
Anyone have a scientific reason why disabling both will improve performance? (The only good one I've heard with Spotlight is for users who use a lot of swapped external drives, as it will keep trying to index them each time they change computer).
The thing that's really annoying me is that at some point, something has happened that is now keeping my HD active all the time (looks like OpenBase, which is related to StickyBrain, which ironically enough I'm not running - so demo software has left me with a background process - which just goes to show that you should always pay attention to what gets installed).
I'm not suggesting it's 'just' anything - it's a hell of a lot more of a current threat than Avian flue, but STDs are a lot more problematic as you run up against religious and other moral interests - they're pushing abstinence over condoms because it's a sexual health problem. I too remember the delight with which 'the gay plague' was received in certain circles as proof of God singling out the homosexuals and drug addicts for their lifestyles - the same forces that campaigned against safe sex literature. Christian charity is only for the deserving and innocent apparently.
There are African nations with reasonable infrastructure - Libya's still not bad, and South Africa too. Notably these are also ones that have managed to largely avoid civil war, famine and pandemic HIV, and for all their problems have some form of universal education. It's just that it's a continent, not a country, and the countries with the worst AIDS problems are still run by governments who didn't take any responsibility for their own citizens (couldn't be bothered) - if they still have governments at all. Which is the one that was still denying AIDS existed 3 years ago?
I'd love to see some of these guys held culpable for what they've done to their countries, but then while the President of the USA and the Pope both only want to be seen backing abstinence, they've got some pretty high flying examples to point to.
While I'd like to say 'one', and would feel that way if it was my family, it's one of those impossible questions of making a judgement of least harm.
I can save one life now, but in doing so, I set a precedent that makes it less likely for private firms to fund medical research, possibly costing thousands of lives later. On the other hand, I'm trying to balance a fact I know now with a possibility.
Ideally, global medical research should be publically funded. Drug companies should concentrate on manufacturing - and innovations in manufacturing should be what distinguishes them. The only problem is that people aren't willing to pay for it - they resent paying tax that might go to anyone else.
As for AIDS - firstly, it's mostly a sexual health problem (hence lots of people promoting moral solutions like abstinence) - secondly, African countries generally don't have the infrastructure of India or Brazil to produce or distribute medicines on a large scale, even if they wanted to ignore patents. They couldn't be bothered distributing condoms and sexual health advice before it became epidemic.
But digital distributors ARE the new middlemen.
There is nothing (much) to stop musicians setting up sites allowing their songs to be downloaded as MP3s in return for payment. So why, instead, do they want to be on a digital music store - whether a locked in one like iTunes or a non-DRM one like bleep.com?
It's been possible to (fairly easily) record and distribute your own music since the distribution lock-in was broken in the 70s, and it's got easier with every year. While in the 70s you still had to persuade shops to stock your records, stockless stores like Amazon have also leveled the field further - everyone's virtually equal, even micro-labels.
To me there's been no excuse for musicians to complain the music industry is stacked against them for a long time. And many don't - many do make a healthy living. I know one guy whose been playing instrumental guitar stuff for 25 years now and he's got global sales of about 50,000. Because his costs are low - built a home studio years ago - that's enough to make a healthy living. It also turns it into a day job, which is what a lot of people go into 'the music scene' to avoid.
I think a lot of these people are actually in the pop and fame business rather than music - and these days it's promotion, not distribution, that's the issue there. That's possibly because as the major labels have lost control of distribution they've focused on the one thing they will always be able to do better - throwing vast sums of cash into promotion. The cost of 'breaking' an artist has rocketed since the 70s - but it's obviously working, or we'd actually have the occasional No.1 that didn't have a video.
In a recent Guardian interview Gil protested that he's wanted to make his music freely available but his labels stopped him - 'what does it come to when an author doesn't even own his own songs'. Obviously a thought that didn't pass through his head when he sold them back in the 70s! I wonder if he thought people were giving him money because they liked him?
Bingo. It's not an 'ipod for video' as most of the media have reported. It's just become so trivial to add video playback to the device that leaving it out would seem odd. The iPod photo was more of a 'mistake' (although only in a marketing sense - it should just have been, like the current device, an iPod update rather than a new product category. The people I know who've got the more recent iPods that also do photos do use the photo facility - which seems far more sensible - it's not a feature you'd pay for but tempting to use if you've got it).
When I think about it I now own four devices capable of mobile video (Laptop, Phone, PDA and PSP) and aside from the novelty factor of doing it once, don't use any of them for video.
I'd definitely use the PSP for video over the new iPod due to screen size and ratio. But would I use the PSP as a music player in the same way as my now battered old iPod? A few scratches on a music player aren't a big deal. Fine, it doesn't look boxfresh, but once you get over trying to keep it looking mint, it still works. Oh, and it fits in your pocket. There's no way of squaring that circle - even if you had an infinite life battery, and could minaturise every other component so the whole thing was as thin as the Nano. It's either viewable OR it's pocket-size. The fantasy of the TV playing watch has been around since the 60s. Once it is finally possible we'll realise no one wants it.
As a video player - it's a dud. As an iPod update - it's not bad. I imagine the next one will do Java games. It's just getting like the mobile phone business - you can't fundamentally change the product, just add new features.
The Archos rules the video player market - but it's niche. I've no doubt mobile video will find an audience - but probably on phones amongst the people who will pay for ringtones and Java games.
Seeing as we're now minutes away this is pointless speculation, but it is very interesting that the presentation is being simulcast at the BBC TV Centre. The BBC are already in trial of TV-over-IP-on-demand. They've also backed podcasting their radio content on iTMS.
Now this is what I see as useful : iTMS on my Mac. The rumoured video enabled Airport Express round the back of the TV and hi-fi. Download program to Mac - stream to TV. I see that being far more of a business model that film on the go (niche - look at PSP UMD sales compared to games).
Of course where I would go for video on the go is the podcasting model - I wouldn't buy a new iPod to get video but if I did have video I think I would take advantage of an option to have the morning news downloaded and ready on my iPod before the daily commute. Ditto episodes of an ongoing series. 15-30 minute video content where there's no real need to get detailed visuals. . . or I could listen to the news on the radio.
It was just way ahead of it's time. Bit like building a machine with a 6GHz 128 bit CPU and quadruple 512 Mb graphics cards and a 42" monitor . . . in the computer market there's always a trade-off between what you could do and what makes commercial sense. The Lisa didn't. The Mac, while substantially cut down from Lisa, made commercial sense. I remember using Sun workstations in the very late 80s - multitasking PostScript based windowing, 19" or possibly larger hi-res monitors, really cool stuff. Absolute fortune. NEXT was the Lisa to OS/X. In motoring terms I guess they are concept cars. Jobs is just peculiar in trying to sell them.
Businesses don't automatically go for the cheapest machines BUT if you consider your computer investment is going to go down in value rapidly, far better to lose 500 on a 1000 machine, than 5000 on a 10000 machine. Plus there is always the 'any good innovation will become standard' argument- and to be fair, most of those innovations have eventually turned up on the PC. The majority of businesses are happy not to be at the edge of innovation.
There's that too - and it may be back on the cards (as Apple may or may not be infringing the original settlement). It's probably a large driver in promoting iTunes as a separate brand - the court case will probably rest on whether people consider they buy their music from Apple or iTunes.
The more I think about the original case though, the more I can see why it had to go the way it did.
We generally applaud when a plucky small company manages to hold their.com address against some multi-national giant - at least when they really are a small company - apple.co.uk for instance. So I don't really like the bigger/most well-known firm wins argument. If I ran a small label I would like to know my business was protected from Warners stealing my identity.
Equally, saying that you can't defend a common word for a company name would open a whole can of worms - Dell could rename themselves Apple or sell 'Apples' under that ruling. Though there was a time when it seemed compulsory to name micro-computers after fruit.
A thought I had is that firms should lose the right to names if they're not active in their market - stopping the equivalent of brand cyber-squatting and patent trolling (trademark trolling?). Because that's really what I feel Apple Corps are doing - it's not as if they've released a new record since the 70s, nor really exist as a record business in the real sense - the claim for damages increasingly becomes about potential loss of income for things they've made no effort to do.
But then I disagreed with myself because I have no problem with keeping legacy labels like Vertigo and Harvest alive purely through re-issues, which is exactly the same situation. Would I approve of a company setting itself up as Vertigo downloads and using a similar (but not identical) logo? No.
So all in all, while I think Apple Corps are being petty, generally in the wrong, and just trolling for damages they don't deserve, I find it hard to think of any other way this could have been settled in court that wouldn't set a detrimental precedent.
Personally I'd actually like to see some government intervention against both WMA and FairPlay - if we're going to have to accept DRM and not be allowed to reverse engineer it, then companies should not be allowed to monopolise it to lock-in their technology. Let it be patentable and let them get license revenue, but they should not be able to say 'We don't want to allow playback on system Y'. OK, maybe a clause to allow a 2-3 year head start to make innovation worthwhile - but much as I like my Apple products, I don't want FairPlay to become the Windows of audio. I certainly don't want to buy all my music from iTMS (and I don't, as many artists I like sell DRM free MP3s. And vinyl).
However, I really don't think Apple or Google want to become record companies - nor do most artists.
Apple are interested in music distribution and retail, operating a very low risk model (there's a nominal cost to keeping songs on servers but it's peanuts compared to even Amazon's costs, let alone a physical CD store). They also benefit as a third party in the recording and package design stages, given Apple's higher market share in those fields, but it's not an end-to-end solution - there's no 'publish tune on iTMS button in Garageband'.
The stuff in-between is the risky bit - advancing money to artists to record (which will still happen), and spending money on publicity in the hope of raising sales. It's classic business stuff, which is why everyone hates the suits.
There's actually a very amusing sleevenote on a Weird War or Make-Up LP which makes a pseudo-Marxist analysis of the recording industry and the decline of the band from the big band to beat combo to Moby. Tongue very much in cheek, but also having a point - that musicians have managed to cut the physical cost of making music, to the extent that large bands are not economically viable. In the same timeframe, the cost of breaking an artist has actually increased.
One reason is that publicity has become so expensive - as control of distribution and recording has been lost, the majors have focused on controlling broadcasting and advertising, with budgets the independents can't/won't match. Yes, the Internet offers ways for artists to bypass that, and yes, it's having a positive affect on exposure for minor artists BUT it's not a broadcast medium . . . and we shouldn't underestimate that a lot of people don't want to go looking for music - which is why the big 4 have been so successful.
Yeah, but when we wake up and turn on the news, it will be the main headline - 'Apple Mac rocked by virus'. What better warning!
But let's also remember - it's not for want of trying. The 'prize' has been there for a few years now. It's undoubtedly true that the pool of skilled developers is smaller, but the kudos would be enormous - and it's probably a more viable target than the Bluetooth mobile phone viruses we've seen. Oh, and lest we forget, there aren't any wild BSD viruses either - despite availability of the source.
To me it's more on the 'terrorist threat' level of problem - constantly there in the background as a possibility, big news when it happens, but really not a day-to-day issue. By comparison, Windows is more like the day to day security you deal with as a car owner - keep all valuables out of sight, etc. I say that as someone running a mixed network of Windows boxes and a Mac.
On the other hand . . .
Internet Security Systems Protection Advisory
February 8, 2005
Symantec AntiVirus Library Heap Overflow
Summary:
ISS has shipped protection for a flaw X-Force has discovered in Symantec
AntiVirus Library. The Symantec AntiVirus Library is widely relied upon
to provide antivirus capabilities to desktop, server, and gateway systems.
Also, several large vendors and ISP's implement Symantec's AntiVirus
Library in their products. By crafting a UPX file, an attacker is able
to trigger a heap overflow within the process importing the Symantec
AntiVirus Library.
Other than the fact the Mac prompts when a program tries to install or modify anything into the system directories - i.e. there is a world of difference between installing a standalone application, that only runs when you ask it to, and one that installs auto-running services.
It's feasible, but you need a whole extra added layer of dumbness. I'm sure some people will do it in return for p2p / pr0n but it really isn't as easy, and the warnings are alarming enough to average Joe.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/10/06/linux_vs_w indows_viruses/
I was laughing ay Symantec's ad in one of the Apple magazines only this weekend, as it does indeed use scare tactics. Given the lack (i.e. zero) of OS/X viruses, who actually knows if it will do it's job if the time comes?
I think there is a perfectly legitimate market for AV tools on Mac (and Linux) - simply being a good citizen and not passing on infected mails (even if they could not infect your machine) helps everyone. It would be far better to focus on that angle (a solution to a problem that exists) than the FUD.
In the meantime, Mac users could do themselves a favour. They (we, as I'm typing this on a Mac) are often perceived as blind Apple fans. Instead we should be playing down the Apple part, and citing the Unix foundations of OS/X as the part that makes it secure - allying ourselves with our similarly virus free BSD, commercial Unix and Linux brethren. (And yes, I am aware exploits exist on Linux but still no wild viruses).
Unfortunately, people's eyes glaze over when you start trying to explain why a user executable can't install a boot process, thus they continue to believe that all systems are as bad as Windows, it's just that no one uses the other stuff. I usually go for the simpler point of saying 'it's what ebay, Amazon, Google and all the banks use'.
Then again, I have a hard enough time trying to persuade relatives and in-laws to even practice safe IT with their Windows machines. Every time I visit I find myself having to remove spyware and worse - usual culprit, the P2P programs the kids are installing. Second culprit - some of the sites I'm guessing the older male relatives are visiting. I've installed AVG and found it turned back off (probably because it blocked a file someone wanted to download). I've installed AdAware and shown how to run it and found, 6 months later, I was the last person to run it.
My wife periodically blocks her laptop's internet access by hitting 'No' when the firewall detects an executable has changed following a Windows update - I've watched her in action and she simply hits the default without reading the text. (In fact, she did the same the other day to the Apple auto-update on my Mac - denied the download). Despite being more IT savvy that 95% of the population, I think she does have a very typical attitude towards computer security - it shouldn't be her problem.
Another poster did make the excellent point that far from being less security aware and acting on faith in Apple's virus free status, an increasing number of Mac users are actually security aware Unix geeks, rather than the flaky graphic designers of stereotype. Hell, some of us even know there are far worse threats to security than virus protection.
Can't wait. Only hope that once they have an equivalent client to Outlook, we start getting similar support for Hula. In the reverse of the normal 'servers then desktop' march of OS, I can see this one going the other way - first need to replace Outlook then can use an alternative server.
It's also worth saying that if we can prove the alternatives work, then artists may go for them. It becomes a virtuous circle - show there is more gain in being reasonable.
Selling their music on non-DRM MP3 has not harmed the careers of Franz Ferdinand or the White Stripes, to name but two.
I wasn't aware most commercial companies shipped virus-infected software. I thought ONE shipped virus-prone software.
There are some good points that OSS developers can take from this article though.
It's clear that developers working on an OSS project need to check their terms of employment and clarify that it does not expose them to being sued or sacked by their own employer, or exposing the OSS project they are working on to legal threats. I would think most employers using OSS could be persuaded.
Design : We have the source for a couple of 'dead' O/S projects but we don't have the design, which makes changing anything beyond the odd bugfix impossible. (In both cases the project lead left the project to go and work for a commercial firm in the same field - another issue in that OSS does not, as yet, compensate developers enough to keep them on projects).
He's also correct that with governments and companies looking at OSS first, there is a threat to the software industry as a whole.
The guys I know most excited about Linux on the server are finance directors who just see it as a way to cut their costs. Government departments are obliged to go for the 'best value' contract, and that's led to some dreadful mistakes (suppliers deliberately underbidding to lock in).
We had a customer where one of the senior managers installed jBoss (to run our web app) and then phoned us to ask for help getting it working (clue : we are not a jBoss support company).
The same company is also moving away from paying us ongoing support - they want to switch to T&M - well, that's the disadvantage of delivering software that works.
And finally, he does have a good point about the quality of innovation. When I was younger, I liked nothing better than to try and write Space Invaders or Frogger on my home computer - for the satisfaction of doing it. Strangely, 20 years later, I haven't developed a killer games concept of my own.
Where I think he's wrong on what level of threat it presents - a genuinely innovative niche company will always have to keep itself 2 steps ahead of projects that can only catch up with existing features - i.e. the Apple and Microsoft story. Oracle will stay ahead of mySQL for a few years yet.
Proprietary companies will survive so long as they keep investing in R&D and with the expectation that whatever they deliver WILL be ripped off.
The general preference in modern software development methodologies is for smaller releases, containing less change, in shorter, more manageable time-scales.
There's a lot of sense in it, but an important element is also having a strong tie between the developers and customers - you need the commitment of your customers to test the new features as deliver them. It's aimed more at 'bespoke' / b2b projects rather than 'software sold in shops'.
O/O is the latter - it's aiming at the sort of market that expects a 'version' (1.0, 2.0, 3.0) to be a set of functionality and sub-releases to just contain bug-fixes, not new features.
Maybe people can get used to the idea of rolling releases, but they might need to get into the idea of reading release notes or even learning more than what 5% of the features of their existing Office suite are.
Office 2003 can automatically report bugs when it crashes? Definitely far better handling of shared documents. To be honest, I think that's where most of the improvement in Office has come in the last few revisions - in the 'workgroup' side. There may be improvements in Word and Excel but I'm not a heavy enough user of either tool to appreciate them.
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Erm - surely that would be the responsibility of an intelligence agency, with an international focus?
Say something like the NSA and the Carnivore system, that's been around for decades?
I thought it actually looked like the defacto standard was cheap (effectively disposable) pay-as-you-go mobile telephones, hence moves in several countries to stop selling them without proof of address.
I wouldn't worry though, SandStorm cannot do what it says on the tin, unless there's a back door in all O/S and servers - which we know there isn't.
Just have to hope those terrorists are running XP
From the point of view of programming, I like the fact that they've thrown XCode and WebObjects in with the machine, plus support for Java, Ruby and Python as well as their favoured Objective-C. That makes it the first home machine I've had since the early 80s to come with a full programming environment (i.e. not just a noddy basic that didn't give access to 80% of the O/S). It's pretty easy to build a GUI interface to a Unix shell script if you have scripts you often run.
You are allegedly getting the same tools their own developers use.
I think that's a good demonstration of their increasing programmer friendliness (about time, and something you can probably thank Microsoft for - MS have always put a lot of time and money into trying to get programmers onto the dark side).
It's also much like comparing Ford with BMW and going 'well this Ford's got the same engine size and same dimensions so why is the BMW more expensive'.
(And before you ask, we have a Ford car, because it does the job - to go 14 miles a day to and from work. If I drove on a motorway all day, I'd invest in something better. This may be the main reason many consumers go for the cheapest computer they can get).
The focus on cost and cost alone is the main thing that keeps Dell in corporates and many schools (schools should know better as they could actually USE the bundled Mac software more effectively, but then they also get steep site-licence discounts on Office, et al). For corporates even reliability isn't a massive issue - I don't know many places where people are allowed to use their C drives any more - desktops are effectively fat clients for running heavy software.
After stepping out of the Windows speed-race, I've been perfectly happy with a Mac Mini. Again, I've been told I could get a Windows PC for half the price, even a small factor one, but - duh - that wasn't the reason why I got one. I do think it's telling that price, rather than compatibility, is now becoming the main factor cited.
(Actually, that's a return to the mid-80s - price was what put most people off Apple then, creating room for Atari and Commodore Amiga. No one wanted a PC at home).
The main criticism that I still think is valid, are people who just don't like being locked into one hardware vendor - and it is true that PC owners have the option of going from cheap and nasty to as powerful as you want to pay. It's also true that most problems with Windows stability stem from drivers and it seems to be possible to build a stable configuration - my Evesham PC was rock-solid for years until I started adding and upgrading cards. On the other hand, we had a cheap laptop that has been nothing but trouble.
And I would concur with the posting above about the Mini's potential as an office desktop - on it's noise factor alone it could be a revolution. Someone on our helpdesk asked me, on seeing my home setup and how much they cost 'why don't we use these at work'. As our helpdesk spent 80% of the day in Unix terminal sessions and the rest in mail, it would be quite feasible.
There may be some truth in those allegations, but it's worth looking back at what the lot of most workers was like before Unions, and it seems to me that they have achieved many things that have improved quality of life for most - improving the life of the mediocre strikes me as one of the signs of civilization - maybe us geniuses need holding back once in a while. (I've worked as a temp in a job where I quickly realised I could replace my job and 3 others with about 2 days of programming, but so what).
Other models of management/union interaction are possible - the quality of the German auto industry is undeniable, yet it has also been heavily unionized while avoiding the plague of industrial action that happened in the UK industry - the main reason cited for this is the more consensus based that confrontational decision making - US/UK management tend to be immediately confrontational towards unions, and vice versa, reflecting their origins in direct class conflict.
Lastly - there is no reason why you can't build a high-quality car using 'average' or 'mediocre' staff - it's down to design, production line and QA - all things that come more management decisions than anything to do with unions. The other thing about the German car industry is they recognized early on that in the long run they would never be able to compete with Far East competition on price, so had to focus on quality. The UK industry on the other hand went into cycles of cost cutting, but selling the same type of vehicles.
Maybe slightly more than the existing group buying PPC Apple machines and installing PPC based Linux.
IMO - Apple machines will never make great Windows machines - you need only compare the minimum specs for Tiger and Vista, or see how usable an iBook or Mac Mini is today with their low-power CPU and graphics cards (or how you can recycle an outdated Windows PC into a usable Linux machine), to understand why. The whole ethos is different - Jobs obsession with cooling fans for one. Apple owners will benefit from being in the slipstream of the Windows hardware arms race, but performance has never really been in Apple's DNA. (Sure, they try occasionally, but it's like Microsoft and security - you know they're reacting to criticism).
I really don't see Apple doing anything like the 'desktop replacement' laptops you get in the Windows world (there's one sat next to me now, and it's the loudest thing in the room and I can feel the heat from here).
Basically, Apple might be able to deliver an Intel based iBook that will run Tiger very well but runs Vista like a dog / goes flat in 30 minutes.
I get the same response from our web designers. I've even pointed them at standards validation tools (the argument they come up with is that while it MIGHT be compliant they don't have time to test on all browsers). Luckily, the web developers use a mix of IE and Firefox and implement standard code where possible (occasionally customers ask for Active-X specific features).
That said, personally I'd just like MS taken down a peg rather than ousted. A world running 95% Linux distributions or MacOS would be just as bad as an MS one.
I think it will be a long time before small businesses start moving - they were the last people to embrace computers in business anyway. It will be the large corporations and public sector that will drive any change. The saving of replacing 4-5 copies of Windows certainly won't outweigh the cost of retraining - small businesses also often don't pay annual support and group licenses buy just buy consumer machines. A 1000 desktop situation is another matter.
O/S advocates always think businessmen will be impressed with 'free' - that they're always trying to cut costs - but despite stereotypes, most businessmen do understand the idea of investing in tools to increase productivity, which is another way to cut costs.
(This is something we suffer from at work - sales want us to redesign our GUI to look somewhat flashier / easier to use, our existing customers want us to keep it the same).
Might be just me but spotlight seems somewhat snappier, or at least working in a more logical way (I have 'Applications' set as the top category to use Spotlight as a launcher - yes, I know, but every alternative also eats up some resource too) - previously it was taking maybe 4-5 seconds to return a result for 'Activity Monitor' as Top Hit. Now it seems satisfyingly instant. Although less so if I just type 'i' - still taking a while to list all the i- apps.
I don't understand the issue with Dashboard - So long as you don't call it, none of the widgets start running / using resource. Once it's running - well, it's like having any other active program running. I'm quite happy to leave it sat there and not use it.
Spotlight - I'm less sure what the issue is with spotlight. mdimport uses up a lot of CPU (and disk activity) when it goes off, but that is periodic and theoretically only occurs when system is idle - otherwise I don't really see Spotlight chewing much resource at all (20Mb of real memory for all related processes. 12Mb for the main spotlight and the rest for the background jobs). If I don't call it and there is no indexing going on, the CPU usage is 0.
So I'm not sure if people are experiencing a genuine problem with Spotlight - I guess on small systems, an extra 20 Mb of memory could be significant (equally less processes / threads, even if idle). Or is there just, as with Dashboard, an instinct that 'disabling things will make my system better'?
For instance - the 'Disable Dashboard' link implies the widgets always use memory and CPU - well actually is does say 'open widgets' but it doesn't make clear that widgets are only open once you have used Dashboard at least once.
Anyone have a scientific reason why disabling both will improve performance? (The only good one I've heard with Spotlight is for users who use a lot of swapped external drives, as it will keep trying to index them each time they change computer).
The thing that's really annoying me is that at some point, something has happened that is now keeping my HD active all the time (looks like OpenBase, which is related to StickyBrain, which ironically enough I'm not running - so demo software has left me with a background process - which just goes to show that you should always pay attention to what gets installed).
I'm not suggesting it's 'just' anything - it's a hell of a lot more of a current threat than Avian flue, but STDs are a lot more problematic as you run up against religious and other moral interests - they're pushing abstinence over condoms because it's a sexual health problem. I too remember the delight with which 'the gay plague' was received in certain circles as proof of God singling out the homosexuals and drug addicts for their lifestyles - the same forces that campaigned against safe sex literature. Christian charity is only for the deserving and innocent apparently.
There are African nations with reasonable infrastructure - Libya's still not bad, and South Africa too. Notably these are also ones that have managed to largely avoid civil war, famine and pandemic HIV, and for all their problems have some form of universal education.
It's just that it's a continent, not a country, and the countries with the worst AIDS problems are still run by governments who didn't take any responsibility for their own citizens (couldn't be bothered) - if they still have governments at all. Which is the one that was still denying AIDS existed 3 years ago?
I'd love to see some of these guys held culpable for what they've done to their countries, but then while the President of the USA and the Pope both only want to be seen backing abstinence, they've got some pretty high flying examples to point to.
While I'd like to say 'one', and would feel that way if it was my family, it's one of those impossible questions of making a judgement of least harm.
I can save one life now, but in doing so, I set a precedent that makes it less likely for private firms to fund medical research, possibly costing thousands of lives later. On the other hand, I'm trying to balance a fact I know now with a possibility.
Ideally, global medical research should be publically funded. Drug companies should concentrate on manufacturing - and innovations in manufacturing should be what distinguishes them. The only problem is that people aren't willing to pay for it - they resent paying tax that might go to anyone else.
As for AIDS - firstly, it's mostly a sexual health problem (hence lots of people promoting moral solutions like abstinence) - secondly, African countries generally don't have the infrastructure of India or Brazil to produce or distribute medicines on a large scale, even if they wanted to ignore patents. They couldn't be bothered distributing condoms and sexual health advice before it became epidemic.
Damn. Must remember to change from HTML formatted or use the Preview!
But digital distributors ARE the new middlemen. There is nothing (much) to stop musicians setting up sites allowing their songs to be downloaded as MP3s in return for payment. So why, instead, do they want to be on a digital music store - whether a locked in one like iTunes or a non-DRM one like bleep.com? It's been possible to (fairly easily) record and distribute your own music since the distribution lock-in was broken in the 70s, and it's got easier with every year. While in the 70s you still had to persuade shops to stock your records, stockless stores like Amazon have also leveled the field further - everyone's virtually equal, even micro-labels. To me there's been no excuse for musicians to complain the music industry is stacked against them for a long time. And many don't - many do make a healthy living. I know one guy whose been playing instrumental guitar stuff for 25 years now and he's got global sales of about 50,000. Because his costs are low - built a home studio years ago - that's enough to make a healthy living. It also turns it into a day job, which is what a lot of people go into 'the music scene' to avoid. I think a lot of these people are actually in the pop and fame business rather than music - and these days it's promotion, not distribution, that's the issue there. That's possibly because as the major labels have lost control of distribution they've focused on the one thing they will always be able to do better - throwing vast sums of cash into promotion. The cost of 'breaking' an artist has rocketed since the 70s - but it's obviously working, or we'd actually have the occasional No.1 that didn't have a video.
In a recent Guardian interview Gil protested that he's wanted to make his music freely available but his labels stopped him - 'what does it come to when an author doesn't even own his own songs'. Obviously a thought that didn't pass through his head when he sold them back in the 70s! I wonder if he thought people were giving him money because they liked him?
Bingo. It's not an 'ipod for video' as most of the media have reported. It's just become so trivial to add video playback to the device that leaving it out would seem odd. The iPod photo was more of a 'mistake' (although only in a marketing sense - it should just have been, like the current device, an iPod update rather than a new product category. The people I know who've got the more recent iPods that also do photos do use the photo facility - which seems far more sensible - it's not a feature you'd pay for but tempting to use if you've got it). When I think about it I now own four devices capable of mobile video (Laptop, Phone, PDA and PSP) and aside from the novelty factor of doing it once, don't use any of them for video. I'd definitely use the PSP for video over the new iPod due to screen size and ratio. But would I use the PSP as a music player in the same way as my now battered old iPod? A few scratches on a music player aren't a big deal. Fine, it doesn't look boxfresh, but once you get over trying to keep it looking mint, it still works. Oh, and it fits in your pocket. There's no way of squaring that circle - even if you had an infinite life battery, and could minaturise every other component so the whole thing was as thin as the Nano. It's either viewable OR it's pocket-size. The fantasy of the TV playing watch has been around since the 60s. Once it is finally possible we'll realise no one wants it. As a video player - it's a dud. As an iPod update - it's not bad. I imagine the next one will do Java games. It's just getting like the mobile phone business - you can't fundamentally change the product, just add new features. The Archos rules the video player market - but it's niche. I've no doubt mobile video will find an audience - but probably on phones amongst the people who will pay for ringtones and Java games.
Seeing as we're now minutes away this is pointless speculation, but it is very interesting that the presentation is being simulcast at the BBC TV Centre. The BBC are already in trial of TV-over-IP-on-demand. They've also backed podcasting their radio content on iTMS.
Now this is what I see as useful : iTMS on my Mac. The rumoured video enabled Airport Express round the back of the TV and hi-fi. Download program to Mac - stream to TV. I see that being far more of a business model that film on the go (niche - look at PSP UMD sales compared to games).
Of course where I would go for video on the go is the podcasting model - I wouldn't buy a new iPod to get video but if I did have video I think I would take advantage of an option to have the morning news downloaded and ready on my iPod before the daily commute. Ditto episodes of an ongoing series. 15-30 minute video content where there's no real need to get detailed visuals. . . or I could listen to the news on the radio.
It was just way ahead of it's time. Bit like building a machine with a 6GHz 128 bit CPU and quadruple 512 Mb graphics cards and a 42" monitor . . . in the computer market there's always a trade-off between what you could do and what makes commercial sense. The Lisa didn't. The Mac, while substantially cut down from Lisa, made commercial sense.
I remember using Sun workstations in the very late 80s - multitasking PostScript based windowing, 19" or possibly larger hi-res monitors, really cool stuff. Absolute fortune. NEXT was the Lisa to OS/X. In motoring terms I guess they are concept cars. Jobs is just peculiar in trying to sell them.
Businesses don't automatically go for the cheapest machines BUT if you consider your computer investment is going to go down in value rapidly, far better to lose 500 on a 1000 machine, than 5000 on a 10000 machine. Plus there is always the 'any good innovation will become standard' argument- and to be fair, most of those innovations have eventually turned up on the PC. The majority of businesses are happy not to be at the edge of innovation.
There's that too - and it may be back on the cards (as Apple may or may not be infringing the original settlement). It's probably a large driver in promoting iTunes as a separate brand - the court case will probably rest on whether people consider they buy their music from Apple or iTunes.
.com address against some multi-national giant - at least when they really are a small company - apple.co.uk for instance. So I don't really like the bigger/most well-known firm wins argument. If I ran a small label I would like to know my business was protected from Warners stealing my identity.
The more I think about the original case though, the more I can see why it had to go the way it did.
We generally applaud when a plucky small company manages to hold their
Equally, saying that you can't defend a common word for a company name would open a whole can of worms - Dell could rename themselves Apple or sell 'Apples' under that ruling. Though there was a time when it seemed compulsory to name micro-computers after fruit.
A thought I had is that firms should lose the right to names if they're not active in their market - stopping the equivalent of brand cyber-squatting and patent trolling (trademark trolling?). Because that's really what I feel Apple Corps are doing - it's not as if they've released a new record since the 70s, nor really exist as a record business in the real sense - the claim for damages increasingly becomes about potential loss of income for things they've made no effort to do.
But then I disagreed with myself because I have no problem with keeping legacy labels like Vertigo and Harvest alive purely through re-issues, which is exactly the same situation. Would I approve of a company setting itself up as Vertigo downloads and using a similar (but not identical) logo? No.
So all in all, while I think Apple Corps are being petty, generally in the wrong, and just trolling for damages they don't deserve, I find it hard to think of any other way this could have been settled in court that wouldn't set a detrimental precedent.
Personally I'd actually like to see some government intervention against both WMA and FairPlay - if we're going to have to accept DRM and not be allowed to reverse engineer it, then companies should not be allowed to monopolise it to lock-in their technology. Let it be patentable and let them get license revenue, but they should not be able to say 'We don't want to allow playback on system Y'. OK, maybe a clause to allow a 2-3 year head start to make innovation worthwhile - but much as I like my Apple products, I don't want FairPlay to become the Windows of audio. I certainly don't want to buy all my music from iTMS (and I don't, as many artists I like sell DRM free MP3s. And vinyl).
However, I really don't think Apple or Google want to become record companies - nor do most artists.
Apple are interested in music distribution and retail, operating a very low risk model (there's a nominal cost to keeping songs on servers but it's peanuts compared to even Amazon's costs, let alone a physical CD store).
They also benefit as a third party in the recording and package design stages, given Apple's higher market share in those fields, but it's not an end-to-end solution - there's no 'publish tune on iTMS button in Garageband'.
The stuff in-between is the risky bit - advancing money to artists to record (which will still happen), and spending money on publicity in the hope of raising sales. It's classic business stuff, which is why everyone hates the suits.
There's actually a very amusing sleevenote on a Weird War or Make-Up LP which makes a pseudo-Marxist analysis of the recording industry and the decline of the band from the big band to beat combo to Moby. Tongue very much in cheek, but also having a point - that musicians have managed to cut the physical cost of making music, to the extent that large bands are not economically viable. In the same timeframe, the cost of breaking an artist has actually increased.
One reason is that publicity has become so expensive - as control of distribution and recording has been lost, the majors have focused on controlling broadcasting and advertising, with budgets the independents can't/won't match. Yes, the Internet offers ways for artists to bypass that, and yes, it's having a positive affect on exposure for minor artists BUT it's not a broadcast medium . . . and we shouldn't underestimate that a lot of people don't want to go looking for music - which is why the big 4 have been so successful.
Yeah, but when we wake up and turn on the news, it will be the main headline - 'Apple Mac rocked by virus'. What better warning! But let's also remember - it's not for want of trying. The 'prize' has been there for a few years now. It's undoubtedly true that the pool of skilled developers is smaller, but the kudos would be enormous - and it's probably a more viable target than the Bluetooth mobile phone viruses we've seen. Oh, and lest we forget, there aren't any wild BSD viruses either - despite availability of the source. To me it's more on the 'terrorist threat' level of problem - constantly there in the background as a possibility, big news when it happens, but really not a day-to-day issue. By comparison, Windows is more like the day to day security you deal with as a car owner - keep all valuables out of sight, etc. I say that as someone running a mixed network of Windows boxes and a Mac. On the other hand . . . Internet Security Systems Protection Advisory February 8, 2005 Symantec AntiVirus Library Heap Overflow Summary: ISS has shipped protection for a flaw X-Force has discovered in Symantec AntiVirus Library. The Symantec AntiVirus Library is widely relied upon to provide antivirus capabilities to desktop, server, and gateway systems. Also, several large vendors and ISP's implement Symantec's AntiVirus Library in their products. By crafting a UPX file, an attacker is able to trigger a heap overflow within the process importing the Symantec AntiVirus Library.
Other than the fact the Mac prompts when a program tries to install or modify anything into the system directories - i.e. there is a world of difference between installing a standalone application, that only runs when you ask it to, and one that installs auto-running services. It's feasible, but you need a whole extra added layer of dumbness. I'm sure some people will do it in return for p2p / pr0n but it really isn't as easy, and the warnings are alarming enough to average Joe. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/10/06/linux_vs_w indows_viruses/
I was laughing ay Symantec's ad in one of the Apple magazines only this weekend, as it does indeed use scare tactics. Given the lack (i.e. zero) of OS/X viruses, who actually knows if it will do it's job if the time comes? I think there is a perfectly legitimate market for AV tools on Mac (and Linux) - simply being a good citizen and not passing on infected mails (even if they could not infect your machine) helps everyone. It would be far better to focus on that angle (a solution to a problem that exists) than the FUD. In the meantime, Mac users could do themselves a favour. They (we, as I'm typing this on a Mac) are often perceived as blind Apple fans. Instead we should be playing down the Apple part, and citing the Unix foundations of OS/X as the part that makes it secure - allying ourselves with our similarly virus free BSD, commercial Unix and Linux brethren. (And yes, I am aware exploits exist on Linux but still no wild viruses). Unfortunately, people's eyes glaze over when you start trying to explain why a user executable can't install a boot process, thus they continue to believe that all systems are as bad as Windows, it's just that no one uses the other stuff. I usually go for the simpler point of saying 'it's what ebay, Amazon, Google and all the banks use'. Then again, I have a hard enough time trying to persuade relatives and in-laws to even practice safe IT with their Windows machines. Every time I visit I find myself having to remove spyware and worse - usual culprit, the P2P programs the kids are installing. Second culprit - some of the sites I'm guessing the older male relatives are visiting. I've installed AVG and found it turned back off (probably because it blocked a file someone wanted to download). I've installed AdAware and shown how to run it and found, 6 months later, I was the last person to run it. My wife periodically blocks her laptop's internet access by hitting 'No' when the firewall detects an executable has changed following a Windows update - I've watched her in action and she simply hits the default without reading the text. (In fact, she did the same the other day to the Apple auto-update on my Mac - denied the download). Despite being more IT savvy that 95% of the population, I think she does have a very typical attitude towards computer security - it shouldn't be her problem. Another poster did make the excellent point that far from being less security aware and acting on faith in Apple's virus free status, an increasing number of Mac users are actually security aware Unix geeks, rather than the flaky graphic designers of stereotype. Hell, some of us even know there are far worse threats to security than virus protection.
Can't wait. Only hope that once they have an equivalent client to Outlook, we start getting similar support for Hula. In the reverse of the normal 'servers then desktop' march of OS, I can see this one going the other way - first need to replace Outlook then can use an alternative server.
It's also worth saying that if we can prove the alternatives work, then artists may go for them. It becomes a virtuous circle - show there is more gain in being reasonable. Selling their music on non-DRM MP3 has not harmed the careers of Franz Ferdinand or the White Stripes, to name but two.
I wasn't aware most commercial companies shipped virus-infected software. I thought ONE shipped virus-prone software. There are some good points that OSS developers can take from this article though. It's clear that developers working on an OSS project need to check their terms of employment and clarify that it does not expose them to being sued or sacked by their own employer, or exposing the OSS project they are working on to legal threats. I would think most employers using OSS could be persuaded. Design : We have the source for a couple of 'dead' O/S projects but we don't have the design, which makes changing anything beyond the odd bugfix impossible. (In both cases the project lead left the project to go and work for a commercial firm in the same field - another issue in that OSS does not, as yet, compensate developers enough to keep them on projects). He's also correct that with governments and companies looking at OSS first, there is a threat to the software industry as a whole. The guys I know most excited about Linux on the server are finance directors who just see it as a way to cut their costs. Government departments are obliged to go for the 'best value' contract, and that's led to some dreadful mistakes (suppliers deliberately underbidding to lock in). We had a customer where one of the senior managers installed jBoss (to run our web app) and then phoned us to ask for help getting it working (clue : we are not a jBoss support company). The same company is also moving away from paying us ongoing support - they want to switch to T&M - well, that's the disadvantage of delivering software that works. And finally, he does have a good point about the quality of innovation. When I was younger, I liked nothing better than to try and write Space Invaders or Frogger on my home computer - for the satisfaction of doing it. Strangely, 20 years later, I haven't developed a killer games concept of my own. Where I think he's wrong on what level of threat it presents - a genuinely innovative niche company will always have to keep itself 2 steps ahead of projects that can only catch up with existing features - i.e. the Apple and Microsoft story. Oracle will stay ahead of mySQL for a few years yet. Proprietary companies will survive so long as they keep investing in R&D and with the expectation that whatever they deliver WILL be ripped off.
And how big was the first trackball?
The general preference in modern software development methodologies is for smaller releases, containing less change, in shorter, more manageable time-scales. There's a lot of sense in it, but an important element is also having a strong tie between the developers and customers - you need the commitment of your customers to test the new features as deliver them. It's aimed more at 'bespoke' / b2b projects rather than 'software sold in shops'. O/O is the latter - it's aiming at the sort of market that expects a 'version' (1.0, 2.0, 3.0) to be a set of functionality and sub-releases to just contain bug-fixes, not new features. Maybe people can get used to the idea of rolling releases, but they might need to get into the idea of reading release notes or even learning more than what 5% of the features of their existing Office suite are. Office 2003 can automatically report bugs when it crashes? Definitely far better handling of shared documents. To be honest, I think that's where most of the improvement in Office has come in the last few revisions - in the 'workgroup' side. There may be improvements in Word and Excel but I'm not a heavy enough user of either tool to appreciate them.