If an ad said "This car gets 400mpg", the average person would expect it to mean 400mpg averaged over a tank not an instantaneous value at some point in time.
What if the ad also said the car could do 240mph. Would you really demand that it get 400mpg at 240mph? Would you work out the distance to work divide by 240mph, and determine that your commute should take 5.7 minutes and be pissed off when it didn't work out that way?
I guess my question is if you said "This plan has 15mb/s" to the average person, would they expect that to be the peak instantaneous transfer rate, or would they expect it to be the average value over a period of time (that you could transfer approximately 4.8TB over the course of a month)? I would think the latter.
The "average person" would think "cool 15mb/s is twics as -fast- as the 7mbps I'm currently on". In particular, he will not think 15mbps means I can now transfer 4.6TB per month instead of a mere 2.2TB.
In other words, when an average person is given two bandwidth ratings to compare, he thinks of it in terms of -speed-. The higher bandwidth means my pages will load faster, my itunes will download quicker. Youtube won't stutter as much. The average person does not think of bandwidth in terms of total throughput.
In reality, of course, the two are inseparably related. But to the average person, the two concepts are orthogonal, and more importantly when he selects a higher bandwidth rating for his plan the average person is thinking "I want my email to load twice as fast, he's not thinking "I want to transfer twice as much data per month". They generally plan to "use the internet" the same amount as before, except now it will be faster, rather than plan to "use the internet twice as much".
Its really only the/. type who think in terms of total throughput.
Plus, if you look at datacenters and web hosts, they explicitly state...
Catering to a completely different market, with completely different expectations from the service, and generally much more sophisticated in terms of understanding the 'nature of bandwidth'. If someone offered me a 15mbps plan for server hosting... and didn't clarify... I'd -ask-.
Programming around other people's inability to implement a standard is a no-win situation.
A laptop that doesn't work well on a significant fraction of the existing wireless hotspots around is a no-win situation too.
Please provide a citation that shows that Apple's firmware has actually not implemented WiFi protocols correctly (not just that it won't work with router X).
I'll go one better. I'll provide citations that apple's own routers have had significant firmware bugs:
http://support.apple.com/kb/DL965 firmware 7.5.1 fixes:
* An issue with wireless performance in the 5GHz band
* An issue with creating a Guest Network in the 5GHz band
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3466 firmware 7.4.1
* Resolves an issue in which a client computer may be disconnected when waking from sleep
* Addresses an issue in which redirecting SMTP port services may disable IP-layer networking
It was really just silly to presume there wouldn't have been issues with networking on macs. And this is mac-to-mac networking, no 3rd parties at all.
Now the problem with 802.11n is unique...
So automatically fall back to 802.11g or b gracefully if it can't maintain a reliable connection in n for whatever reason.
And speaking of which, there are LEGIONS of devices out there that simply don't PROVIDE a way for a MAC user to update the firmware in their product. The updaters are nearly ALWAYS Windows-only.
Who cares whether I can update it with a mac or not? I can't update them period: because THEY AREN'T MINE.
People who only own macs and buy 3rd party routers that can't be updated from macs are a very small part of the problem. I'm sure they can find someone with a windows box if they spend 3 minutes trying to find a friend or friends kid with a PC. Absolute worst case they can drag their box into best buy and pay geeksquad to do it for them.
Note that people report that, in an environment with Apple (Airport Extreme) WiFi routers, that ALL devices (not just Apple's) work GREAT. So, maybe, just maybe, it IS the third-party routers with their buggy firmware afterall, eh?
There has been a sequence of firmware updates for their Airport extreme wifi routers to fix bugs... you know because not all devices (including Apples) were working great. So, maybe, just maybe, Apple makes buggy software/firmware too, eh?
Do you really expect Apple to test every router ever released at every firmware level? The volume of released routers multiplied by their firmware revisions makes that pretty much impossible.
No I don't expect them to test with every possible device. I recognize the hopelessness of it. I -do- expect them to be MUCH better at taking ownership of issues though, and making an effort to fix them. Its not like I'm an isolated case. And its utter b.s. for them to simply claim 'its their faulty implementation. we followed the spec perfectly'.
As another poster noted some areas of the spec are vague. Other areas of the spec have been implemented by Microsoft a certain way and the industry has followed along. Apple doesn't get to just pick up the spec and do there own thing, and make there own clarifications up where the spec is vague. That just breaks their devices ability to interoperate with the rest of the world, and doesn't serve anyone's interests.
I'm assuming those routers with flaws in implementating the standard fail to work with many other devices too (game consoles, phones, etc.) even if they manage to work with Windows.
That's the rub. The router I had to replace to satisfy my newest mac worked fine with Windows XP, Vista and 7 (even though Vista and 7 came out after the router firmware), it worked with my Nintendo Wii, Ubuntu, and my wife's blackberry too... but Snow Leopard on the Macbook pro lost connectivity every minute or so... and even the mac worked fine when booted to Win7 in bootcamp.
Re:Other solutions to the wifi problem
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even when all you have to do is update the router firmware so that it follows the standard again while still working with Windows.
"all you have to do is" ??
Let ME get this straight. All I have to do is update the router firm ware at the airport / hotel / starbucks / client site / friends house / etc...? Easy as pie right, I'm sure they'll all just let me update the firmware on their equipment to get my obviously 'perfect mac' working. Easy as pie. In fact, I'm surprised I still have issues... you'd think the last guy to visit any of these places with a mac would have already fixed it...
Did you read what I wrote before posting? Did you read what YOU wrote before posting?
Do you have specific info about what the problem is/was?
Unit was one of the first 17" MacBook Pro's. 2GB of RAM.
After upgrading from Leopard to Snow Leopard the internet was 'slow'. Pages would take several seconds to load. Some pages failed to load. Ping times were all over the map, packets were dropped. Various forum searches seemed to indicate we were not alone. This affected both wifi AND wired access, on multiple networks.
Wiped the unit installed snow leopard clean. Performed all updates. Internet was still absurdly slow. Performed various 'tips' such as rebooting, deleting various prefs, setting up a 2nd location, etc. No improvement. Some tips we didn't bother with... static ip, manual duplex settings etc... even if they worked would not be a solution, the laptop is used all over the place. It needs to just work when it gets there, I can't have the guy futzing around with custom settings for each network he connects to. He's just not 'that guy'.
Wiped the unit installed leopard clean. Performed all updates for leopard. Internet blistered along as it always had everywhere we tried it.
Did you upgrade to the latest software update?
Yes.
If none of that worked, did you write up a bug at bugreport.apple.com
No. It needed to work now. Not 'eventually'. If it was my laptop I'd have done so... but I'm not likely to see his unit again anytime soon, to further troubleshoot, or to try snow leopard again, etc.
Unless Mac wifi drivers are broken at the OS interface level(which seems highly unlikely, since Apple is otherwise reasonably competent at writing drivers for its own OS), it is something of a mystery what the issue would be.
Agreed. And to really drive the point home. The macbook pro booted to Windows 7 in bootcamp copes with the wireless network on that router just fine, so its not the Apple (Broadcom) hardware. Its ridiculous.
Re:Other solutions to the wifi problem
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I'm no fanboi, but I would hazard a guess that the issues you encountered were because the Mac followed the spec more precisely than the Windows boxes.
Look, I'm a/. reader. The router I had to replace to satisfy my new Macbook Pro worked fine for years. It was fine with my XP box, my fathers dell laptop with Vista, my toshiba laptop running ubuntu, and the unit I was running the Windows 7 beta on. It also ran fine with my Nintendo Wii and my wife's blackberry. (I have an iphone, but I don't use its wifi since I have far more data via 3G than I need, so I have wifi off.)
But no, your probably right, the reason the Mac choked up and constantly lost connection was that it "followed the spec more closely" than all these other units, several of which are not even based on windows.;)
I honestly believe you when you say your no fanboi, but when you have a set of disparate devices that all work together fine, and then you add a new device in and the new device doesn't work, frankly its absurd to presume as your default starting point that the new device "must follow the specs better".
This is the rationale Microsoft uses for maintaining cruft in IE's rendering engine.
And its a real legitimate issue for them. They can't just go break millions of websites for millions of people, particularly enterprise apps.
Why should apple put extra code into their firmware because someone else's firmware doesn't follow standards?
So that when I visit a site with someone elses firmware my laptop is more than an $1800 paperweight.
Let me turn the question around. What EXACTLY is the value to me, the customer, in Apple NOT putting extra code into their firmware to ensure it works even when the access point/router/gateway/whatever doesn't?
Re:Other solutions to the wifi problem
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You do realize, of course, that many peripheral manufacturers not only test against Windows ONLY; but also silently program around bugs in Microsoft's implementations of standards in general.
Quite aware.
Apple is absolutely correct to follow the published standard to the letter.
In most situations yes, I would agree. However in any situation where one (e.g. Apple) is deploying your minority of hardware into an established environment, the onus falls on them to ensure their hardware works in that environment.
Afterall, isn't that why it's called a STANDARD?
In an ideal world sure. In the world in which I live I can update the firmware in my Mac so that it copes with a flawed router at starbucks or my hotel or a clients office, I can't update the firmware at starbucks, the hotel, or a clients office.
My laptop is only valuable and useful if it works in these places. And so far, its been pretty hit and miss. So far, I've had to replace my home router to satisfy my newest mac; I had to downgrade a friends mac from snow leopard back to leopard so that it would work on an office network he did not control, and I've had to suffer through unbearable internet at a hotel on multiple occasions, while my wifes pc worked flawlessly.
Finally, all this assumes Apple actually followed the standard and its all these vendors with horrific buggy systems. Quite bluntly, Apple is not perfect, and it would be absurd to presume they got everything right, and its all these other vendors who keep getting it wrong. Some of the technical blame lies at apples feet.
And some of the blame that genuinely lies at the feet of other vendors COULD be resolved by Apple if it were so inclined. And it SHOULD take ownership of solving these issues when it can. Customers want laptops that 'just work'; that's what they keep promising.
And above all, in my experience, a lot of the problems could be resolved within a subset of the standard. Often a standard specifies behavior X, and a device doesn't implement this properly, and windows isn't affected because it never requests behavior X. If that's the case, Apple could make their software work too with all these devices, by simply avoiding feature X. Note that by doing this Apple would STILL be following the standard to the letter.
One could say that about -anything- pleasurable. Yet I hope you are sane enough to realize that banning everything pleasurable is not the way to go.
Fortunately nobody but you has proposed banning everything pleasurable. So far they are just banning (actually just RESTRICTING) a few things that are pleasurable to some people but cause severe problems for many of those people, and for society at large.
But hey, if you want to suggest they are on the verge of banning nose picking in the privacy of your own home, your only making yourself look silly.
Yeah, because again, we know that -never- happens with anything else.
So if something has more than one cause, then apparently you feel we should ignore addressing a major known cause unless we address ALL possible causes at the same time?
That's some pretty messed up logic.
Simple, they pay for their healthcare or take out a loan.
And if they have no money or equity against which to borrow? "Simple, they die in the streets as god intended." ??
I'm not sure I want to live in your "ideal society".
I have no idea what/where the actually problem was, but if Apple had suggested the exact same list of steps to me they would've been right on the money.
I have no idea what the problem actually was either, but lets assume its a defect of the router software. Even if that's the case the fault is still on the macbook, in my opinion. The windows PCs worked. The Mac could have been programmed so that it worked too.
Even if the actual defect was the router software, the Mac should have coped with it.
I don't have the luxury of upgrading the router firmware everywhere I go, and if the router firmware works fine with all the Windows PCs that attach to it, then the Mac is doing something DIFFERENT.
While that 'different' may, strictly speaking, be ok according to the standards, that doesn't really matter. What matters is that it just works when I arrive somewhere with wifi that I need to connect to.
In which case, it is time to have a public utility internet access, run by the local/state/federal government.
I'm the poster you responded to, and I agree. I don't know that internet needs to be a 'public utility' (ie run by the goverment) but it definitely SHOULD be a common carrier with government regulatory oversight at the very least.
I was simply pointing out that they are not, and that its absurd to suggest that they would be afraid of 'losing' that status, when they don't in fact have it, and are working hard to avoid getting it.
If they can filter content, based on whatever they want to do, they lose their common carrier status,
Lose what? They don't have common carrier status. They never were common carriers.
In fact they have lobbied and fought hard to AVOID getting common carrier status. Being a common carrier would expose them to regulatory oversight they DO NOT WANT. And would limit them from doing certain types of Deep packet inspection, traffic shaping, etc, etc, that they DO WANT.
and are now responsible for all content passed over their networks.
Except libel and slander because they are exempted from respoonsibility in the communications decency act. Except Copyright infringement because they are protected provided they follow DMCA takedown requests. And so on.
I am sure they will get out of it somehow.
Of course they will. By and large they already have.
I always feel like the key trouble with video of any military operation is that the general public has absolutely no basis from which to really understand what they're seeing -- the context of civilian day-to-day just doesn't create the sort of base of experience you need to watch this sort of video and draw decent conclusions from it.
So what?
1) This is what war looks like. 'The public' should bloody well be exposed to it. If they can't understand it, fine. If it makes them coil away in revulsion, even better. We'd be involved in fewer pointless wars if the public was faced with what it really looked like on a regular basis.
2) If the soldiers had a good reason to fire, a target had been identified, orders had been issued, etc. Then there is nothing to hide. They did the right thing, and the military can bloody well justify it. War is ugly. If this 'had to be done' then let them defend their actions.
3) If this was a mistake. Own up to it, investigate it, and find ways to reduce mistakes like this.
Hiding behind an excuse like the 'public wouldn't understand it' is the most puerile self serving bullshit I can imagine. If anything it argues that the public needs to be exposed to it MORE, not less.
No way is Apple going to be able to take on Google in search. Bing failed
Bing hasn't 'failed'. Not taking the top spot is not 'failure'.
and Microsoft has a lot more power than Apple.
Good point. I guess Apple should give up on portable music players too.;)
People will just end up using the google website instead.
Sure. A fraction of the user base. Some of the time. Odds are anything apple throws in as the built in search will be good enough most of the time for most users. Who knows... they may even partner up with Microsoft/Yahoo. Of course apple has serious NIH syndrome, so probably not.
If my lunch is in my company's fridge, they can access it. If it is in my personal bag, they cannot
That makes no sense. What if your lunch is in your personal bag, and your personal bag is in the company fridge?
If you access yahoo email via your personal laptop over your personal wi-fi connection (not over company network) then no they can't see it because you aren't using anything of theirs.
What if you are explicitly allowed to use the company laptop and network for personal use during breaks provided within an acceptable use policy framework?
And is this a two way street? If I take the company backups to an offsite location via my personal car, am I now entitled to go through all the contents and make copies for myself? After all, they are using something of mine to transmit the data.
"For 99% of that stuff, anyone in the street can work it out just by looking at me"
So? "Anyone on the street" isn't systematically creating a database of that information.
Some random person seeing me on the street and making some passing observations about me before forgetting I exist simply isn't the same thing as systematically creating a database about everyone.
And its idiotic to even compare them.
"but this is about freaking website addresses. who really cares what they do with those"
Insurance companies. Employers. People litigating against you. Political opponents. Exes. Some future government agency on a witch-hunt...
What you search for and where you go can say a lot about you. Especially when combined with everything else google collects.
"And, wasn't there quite a fuss recently about AT&T (in their role as ISP) allowing certain government agencies to set up a lot of mysterious equipment in the switching office, tapped into the internet data streams they were carrying?"
Yes, there was.
Most people think this sort of thing shouldn't be the norm...that's why there was a fuss.
"What happens? They get sued, and they also suffer a huge downturn in their business because the media would jump on it and there'd be an uproar. Their business depends on people's trust. What YOU are doing is called FUD."
Don't be naive. A healthy dose of uncertainty and doubt is appropriate.
Enron wouldn't cook the books... they'd get sued and suffer a huge downturn!! HP wouldn't spy on its employees. Bre-X wouldn't lie about their gold exploration results. Exxon wouldn't under report oil reserves. Southwest airlines wouldn't violate safety regulations. Xerox wouldn't falsify financial results. Microsoft wouldn't illegally abuse a monopoly position. SCO wouldn't sue IBM or Novell over patents and copyrights that it doesn't own over infringements that didn't happen. Chinese manufacturers wouldn't put banned substances like lead in childrens toys to save a buck... they'd get sued, they'd even lose contracts!!11
"Its against pretty much all privacy laws."
Yeah, good luck with that. You have to have an expectation of privacy in the first place. Agreeing to submit all your queries to google rather negates that. And as for what they say they'll do with it. That's not a contract. Its a description of current policy. They have no obligation to obtain your permission if they change it... hell... they don't even have to notify you.
"Lets get something straight - they dont have "all" anyone's information. They just know what sites you visit (using chrome) and what you searched for. There's a HUGE difference."
I am quite cogent of what information I make about me available to google. (wither its with their search suggestions, their google analytics tracking my movement across the web, geolocation of my ip, ad clicks/tracking cookies, automated inspection of any mail sent to gmail users, potential for modeling social networks based on which gmail accounts have me as a contact and/or have sent/received mail from me and how frequently. Google groups use. Google Docs use. Youtube use. Places you go using google maps. Easily your home address if you use maps for directions, etc, etc.
More than you seem to give them credit for. They get a lot of that regardless of what browser I use, with no agreement with them whatsoever. All that data is pretty worthless if it was broken up piecemeal between 20 companies... but taken all together, its pretty amazing what you can do by linking all that information together.
You can infer social networks, infer income, race, sex, age, interests, medical history, hobbies, career...
Yeah, I'm sure nobody will ever do that to someone, because that would be 'wrong'.
The basic principle is that a service provider is handling too much data to implement any sort of editorial review.
That however has *nothing* what so ever to do with what defines a "common carrier".
Read up on "common carrier". American ISPs and service providers etc have fought very VERY hard AGAINST being labeled a common carrier because it would then expose them to various regulatory oversight that 'common carriers' are subject too, which they absolutely DO NOT WANT.
Common carrier principles dictate that networks/service providers should neither discriminate due to content nor be liable for content. In particular as a "common carrier" they would be unable to engage in certain types of packet shaping, deep packet inspection, redirection, advertising injection, or engage in editorial review of content, etc, etc, etc.
These are all things that they actually WANT TO BE ABLE TO DO at their discretion, without oversight.
I *highly* doubt suddenly that google would do a backflip and seek 'common carrier' status.
More importantly they already have many of the protections of a "common carrier" from other laws. The communications decency act establishes immunity for liability of 3rd party content that is libelous or slanderous. The DMCA establishes immunity from liability for copyright infringement provided they comply with DMCA take down notices etc.
Interestingly, the case in question... transmitting illegal pornography is not something they have explicit immunity for at this time in the united states. -As far as I know-.
"If google wants to collect data I could care less because I have a fuzzy warm trust feeling when I use their software."
What happens when they burn your trust? Bit late to take all your information back. Oops.
That warm fuzzy trust feeling...its called good will. They are trading on that. Its an entry on their balance sheet. Its valuable to them. But they'll sell it tomorrow for the right price.
What if they're hacked (again)?
And who knows what direction the next CEO will go? What if their advertising revenues collapses? Or they pull an Enron? For all we know the ultimate fate of google will be to be bought out by Microsoft.. the very company you feel has to be "kept at bay". And suddenly Microsoft has all your information... that you so willingly handed over to Google. Oops.
Hint: Your ISP (or whoever's endpoint your VPN tunnel comes out on) sees all this stuff anyway.
They have a direct legitimate need to see it. That is precisely the service I am paying them to provide. And while I suppose my ISP *could* be using the information to build a profile on me, where i go, what email i send, who i send it to, etc, etc... I'm actually quite confident they aren't actually doing this. I know people who work for the ISP. I know a great deal about how they are setup. So... yes... they could... but they don't. I could be wrong but then a lot of people I know who should know are ignorant and / or lying. Occam's razor....
Google on the other hand... is doing this. That's their business model. That's what they do. That's all they do.
Hint 2: You aren't important enough for anyone to care.
Really? Trotting that one out?
Your wrong. Build a profile on the average person... and people will check it out. Someone *always* cares. Friends, class mates, fellow employees, girlfriends, ex-girlfriends, employers, insurance companies...
Remember the bit of scandal when it came to light that facebook employees could and did (and probably still do) read so-called 'private data'. Build a database of this stuff, and sooner or later it will be abused by someone.
Slashdot Mirror
If an ad said "This car gets 400mpg", the average person would expect it to mean 400mpg averaged over a tank not an instantaneous value at some point in time.
What if the ad also said the car could do 240mph. Would you really demand that it get 400mpg at 240mph? Would you work out the distance to work divide by 240mph, and determine that your commute should take 5.7 minutes and be pissed off when it didn't work out that way?
I guess my question is if you said "This plan has 15mb/s" to the average person, would they expect that to be the peak instantaneous transfer rate, or would they expect it to be the average value over a period of time (that you could transfer approximately 4.8TB over the course of a month)? I would think the latter.
The "average person" would think "cool 15mb/s is twics as -fast- as the 7mbps I'm currently on". In particular, he will not think 15mbps means I can now transfer 4.6TB per month instead of a mere 2.2TB.
In other words, when an average person is given two bandwidth ratings to compare, he thinks of it in terms of -speed-. The higher bandwidth means my pages will load faster, my itunes will download quicker. Youtube won't stutter as much. The average person does not think of bandwidth in terms of total throughput.
In reality, of course, the two are inseparably related. But to the average person, the two concepts are orthogonal, and more importantly when he selects a higher bandwidth rating for his plan the average person is thinking "I want my email to load twice as fast, he's not thinking "I want to transfer twice as much data per month". They generally plan to "use the internet" the same amount as before, except now it will be faster, rather than plan to "use the internet twice as much".
Its really only the /. type who think in terms of total throughput.
Plus, if you look at datacenters and web hosts, they explicitly state...
Catering to a completely different market, with completely different expectations from the service, and generally much more sophisticated in terms of understanding the 'nature of bandwidth'. If someone offered me a 15mbps plan for server hosting... and didn't clarify... I'd -ask-.
Programming around other people's inability to implement a standard is a no-win situation.
A laptop that doesn't work well on a significant fraction of the existing wireless hotspots around is a no-win situation too.
Please provide a citation that shows that Apple's firmware has actually not implemented WiFi protocols correctly (not just that it won't work with router X).
I'll go one better. I'll provide citations that apple's own routers have had significant firmware bugs:
http://support.apple.com/kb/DL965
firmware 7.5.1 fixes:
* An issue with wireless performance in the 5GHz band
* An issue with creating a Guest Network in the 5GHz band
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3466
firmware 7.4.1
* Resolves an issue in which a client computer may be disconnected when waking from sleep
* Addresses an issue in which redirecting SMTP port services may disable IP-layer networking
It was really just silly to presume there wouldn't have been issues with networking on macs. And this is mac-to-mac networking, no 3rd parties at all.
Now the problem with 802.11n is unique...
So automatically fall back to 802.11g or b gracefully if it can't maintain a reliable connection in n for whatever reason.
And speaking of which, there are LEGIONS of devices out there that simply don't PROVIDE a way for a MAC user to update the firmware in their product. The updaters are nearly ALWAYS Windows-only.
Who cares whether I can update it with a mac or not? I can't update them period: because THEY AREN'T MINE.
People who only own macs and buy 3rd party routers that can't be updated from macs are a very small part of the problem. I'm sure they can find someone with a windows box if they spend 3 minutes trying to find a friend or friends kid with a PC. Absolute worst case they can drag their box into best buy and pay geeksquad to do it for them.
Note that people report that, in an environment with Apple (Airport Extreme) WiFi routers, that ALL devices (not just Apple's) work GREAT. So, maybe, just maybe, it IS the third-party routers with their buggy firmware afterall, eh?
There has been a sequence of firmware updates for their Airport extreme wifi routers to fix bugs... you know because not all devices (including Apples) were working great. So, maybe, just maybe, Apple makes buggy software/firmware too, eh?
Do you really expect Apple to test every router ever released at every firmware level? The volume of released routers multiplied by their firmware revisions makes that pretty much impossible.
No I don't expect them to test with every possible device. I recognize the hopelessness of it. I -do- expect them to be MUCH better at taking ownership of issues though, and making an effort to fix them. Its not like I'm an isolated case. And its utter b.s. for them to simply claim 'its their faulty implementation. we followed the spec perfectly'.
As another poster noted some areas of the spec are vague. Other areas of the spec have been implemented by Microsoft a certain way and the industry has followed along. Apple doesn't get to just pick up the spec and do there own thing, and make there own clarifications up where the spec is vague. That just breaks their devices ability to interoperate with the rest of the world, and doesn't serve anyone's interests.
I'm assuming those routers with flaws in implementating the standard fail to work with many other devices too (game consoles, phones, etc.) even if they manage to work with Windows.
That's the rub. The router I had to replace to satisfy my newest mac worked fine with Windows XP, Vista and 7 (even though Vista and 7 came out after the router firmware), it worked with my Nintendo Wii, Ubuntu, and my wife's blackberry too... but Snow Leopard on the Macbook pro lost connectivity every minute or so... and even the mac worked fine when booted to Win7 in bootcamp.
even when all you have to do is update the router firmware so that it follows the standard again while still working with Windows.
"all you have to do is" ??
Let ME get this straight. All I have to do is update the router firm ware at the airport / hotel / starbucks / client site / friends house / etc...? Easy as pie right, I'm sure they'll all just let me update the firmware on their equipment to get my obviously 'perfect mac' working. Easy as pie. In fact, I'm surprised I still have issues... you'd think the last guy to visit any of these places with a mac would have already fixed it...
Did you read what I wrote before posting? Did you read what YOU wrote before posting?
Do you have specific info about what the problem is/was?
Unit was one of the first 17" MacBook Pro's. 2GB of RAM.
After upgrading from Leopard to Snow Leopard the internet was 'slow'. Pages would take several seconds to load. Some pages failed to load. Ping times were all over the map, packets were dropped. Various forum searches seemed to indicate we were not alone. This affected both wifi AND wired access, on multiple networks.
Wiped the unit installed snow leopard clean. Performed all updates. Internet was still absurdly slow. ... even if they worked would not be a solution, the laptop is used all over the place. It needs to just work when it gets there, I can't have the guy futzing around with custom settings for each network he connects to. He's just not 'that guy'.
Performed various 'tips' such as rebooting, deleting various prefs, setting up a 2nd location, etc. No improvement.
Some tips we didn't bother with... static ip, manual duplex settings etc
Wiped the unit installed leopard clean. Performed all updates for leopard. Internet blistered along as it always had everywhere we tried it.
Did you upgrade to the latest software update?
Yes.
If none of that worked, did you write up a bug at bugreport.apple.com
No. It needed to work now. Not 'eventually'. If it was my laptop I'd have done so... but I'm not likely to see his unit again anytime soon, to further troubleshoot, or to try snow leopard again, etc.
Unless Mac wifi drivers are broken at the OS interface level(which seems highly unlikely, since Apple is otherwise reasonably competent at writing drivers for its own OS), it is something of a mystery what the issue would be.
Agreed. And to really drive the point home. The macbook pro booted to Windows 7 in bootcamp copes with the wireless network on that router just fine, so its not the Apple (Broadcom) hardware. Its ridiculous.
I'm no fanboi, but I would hazard a guess that the issues you encountered were because the Mac followed the spec more precisely than the Windows boxes.
Look, I'm a /. reader. The router I had to replace to satisfy my new Macbook Pro worked fine for years. It was fine with my XP box, my fathers dell laptop with Vista, my toshiba laptop running ubuntu, and the unit I was running the Windows 7 beta on. It also ran fine with my Nintendo Wii and my wife's blackberry. (I have an iphone, but I don't use its wifi since I have far more data via 3G than I need, so I have wifi off.)
But no, your probably right, the reason the Mac choked up and constantly lost connection was that it "followed the spec more closely" than all these other units, several of which are not even based on windows. ;)
I honestly believe you when you say your no fanboi, but when you have a set of disparate devices that all work together fine, and then you add a new device in and the new device doesn't work, frankly its absurd to presume as your default starting point that the new device "must follow the specs better".
This is the rationale Microsoft uses for maintaining cruft in IE's rendering engine.
And its a real legitimate issue for them. They can't just go break millions of websites for millions of people, particularly enterprise apps.
Why should apple put extra code into their firmware because someone else's firmware doesn't follow standards?
So that when I visit a site with someone elses firmware my laptop is more than an $1800 paperweight.
Let me turn the question around. What EXACTLY is the value to me, the customer, in Apple NOT putting extra code into their firmware to ensure it works even when the access point/router/gateway/whatever doesn't?
You do realize, of course, that many peripheral manufacturers not only test against Windows ONLY; but also silently program around bugs in Microsoft's implementations of standards in general.
Quite aware.
Apple is absolutely correct to follow the published standard to the letter.
In most situations yes, I would agree. However in any situation where one (e.g. Apple) is deploying your minority of hardware into an established environment, the onus falls on them to ensure their hardware works in that environment.
Afterall, isn't that why it's called a STANDARD?
In an ideal world sure. In the world in which I live I can update the firmware in my Mac so that it copes with a flawed router at starbucks or my hotel or a clients office, I can't update the firmware at starbucks, the hotel, or a clients office.
My laptop is only valuable and useful if it works in these places. And so far, its been pretty hit and miss. So far, I've had to replace my home router to satisfy my newest mac; I had to downgrade a friends mac from snow leopard back to leopard so that it would work on an office network he did not control, and I've had to suffer through unbearable internet at a hotel on multiple occasions, while my wifes pc worked flawlessly.
Finally, all this assumes Apple actually followed the standard and its all these vendors with horrific buggy systems. Quite bluntly, Apple is not perfect, and it would be absurd to presume they got everything right, and its all these other vendors who keep getting it wrong. Some of the technical blame lies at apples feet.
And some of the blame that genuinely lies at the feet of other vendors COULD be resolved by Apple if it were so inclined. And it SHOULD take ownership of solving these issues when it can. Customers want laptops that 'just work'; that's what they keep promising.
And above all, in my experience, a lot of the problems could be resolved within a subset of the standard. Often a standard specifies behavior X, and a device doesn't implement this properly, and windows isn't affected because it never requests behavior X. If that's the case, Apple could make their software work too with all these devices, by simply avoiding feature X. Note that by doing this Apple would STILL be following the standard to the letter.
One could say that about -anything- pleasurable. Yet I hope you are sane enough to realize that banning everything pleasurable is not the way to go.
Fortunately nobody but you has proposed banning everything pleasurable. So far they are just banning (actually just RESTRICTING) a few things that are pleasurable to some people but cause severe problems for many of those people, and for society at large.
But hey, if you want to suggest they are on the verge of banning nose picking in the privacy of your own home, your only making yourself look silly.
Yeah, because again, we know that -never- happens with anything else.
So if something has more than one cause, then apparently you feel we should ignore addressing a major known cause unless we address ALL possible causes at the same time?
That's some pretty messed up logic.
Simple, they pay for their healthcare or take out a loan.
And if they have no money or equity against which to borrow? "Simple, they die in the streets as god intended." ??
I'm not sure I want to live in your "ideal society".
I have no idea what/where the actually problem was, but if Apple had suggested the exact same list of steps to me they would've been right on the money.
I have no idea what the problem actually was either, but lets assume its a defect of the router software. Even if that's the case the fault is still on the macbook, in my opinion. The windows PCs worked. The Mac could have been programmed so that it worked too.
Even if the actual defect was the router software, the Mac should have coped with it.
I don't have the luxury of upgrading the router firmware everywhere I go, and if the router firmware works fine with all the Windows PCs that attach to it, then the Mac is doing something DIFFERENT.
While that 'different' may, strictly speaking, be ok according to the standards, that doesn't really matter. What matters is that it just works when I arrive somewhere with wifi that I need to connect to.
In which case, it is time to have a public utility internet access, run by the local/state/federal government.
I'm the poster you responded to, and I agree. I don't know that internet needs to be a 'public utility' (ie run by the goverment) but it definitely SHOULD be a common carrier with government regulatory oversight at the very least.
I was simply pointing out that they are not, and that its absurd to suggest that they would be afraid of 'losing' that status, when they don't in fact have it, and are working hard to avoid getting it.
If they can filter content, based on whatever they want to do, they lose their common carrier status,
Lose what? They don't have common carrier status. They never were common carriers.
In fact they have lobbied and fought hard to AVOID getting common carrier status. Being a common carrier would expose them to regulatory oversight they DO NOT WANT. And would limit them from doing certain types of Deep packet inspection, traffic shaping, etc, etc, that they DO WANT.
and are now responsible for all content passed over their networks.
Except libel and slander because they are exempted from respoonsibility in the communications decency act. Except Copyright infringement because they are protected provided they follow DMCA takedown requests. And so on.
I am sure they will get out of it somehow.
Of course they will. By and large they already have.
I always feel like the key trouble with video of any military operation is that the general public has absolutely no basis from which to really understand what they're seeing -- the context of civilian day-to-day just doesn't create the sort of base of experience you need to watch this sort of video and draw decent conclusions from it.
So what?
1) This is what war looks like. 'The public' should bloody well be exposed to it. If they can't understand it, fine. If it makes them coil away in revulsion, even better. We'd be involved in fewer pointless wars if the public was faced with what it really looked like on a regular basis.
2) If the soldiers had a good reason to fire, a target had been identified, orders had been issued, etc. Then there is nothing to hide. They did the right thing, and the military can bloody well justify it. War is ugly. If this 'had to be done' then let them defend their actions.
3) If this was a mistake. Own up to it, investigate it, and find ways to reduce mistakes like this.
Hiding behind an excuse like the 'public wouldn't understand it' is the most puerile self serving bullshit I can imagine. If anything it argues that the public needs to be exposed to it MORE, not less.
No way is Apple going to be able to take on Google in search. Bing failed
Bing hasn't 'failed'. Not taking the top spot is not 'failure'.
and Microsoft has a lot more power than Apple.
Good point. I guess Apple should give up on portable music players too. ;)
People will just end up using the google website instead.
Sure. A fraction of the user base. Some of the time. Odds are anything apple throws in as the built in search will be good enough most of the time for most users. Who knows... they may even partner up with Microsoft/Yahoo. Of course apple has serious NIH syndrome, so probably not.
This was a generic 'what if' scenario. Moving off site backups has nothing to do with the original article.
If you are taking backups offsite, I'm quite sure you have signed non-disclosure agreements rendering your 'rights' less useful.
For your average small business, no you would be quite wrong.
If my lunch is in my company's fridge, they can access it. If it is in my personal bag, they cannot
That makes no sense. What if your lunch is in your personal bag, and your personal bag is in the company fridge?
If you access yahoo email via your personal laptop over your personal wi-fi connection (not over company network) then no they can't see it because you aren't using anything of theirs.
What if you are explicitly allowed to use the company laptop and network for personal use during breaks provided within an acceptable use policy framework?
And is this a two way street? If I take the company backups to an offsite location via my personal car, am I now entitled to go through all the contents and make copies for myself? After all, they are using something of mine to transmit the data.
"For 99% of that stuff, anyone in the street can work it out just by looking at me"
So? "Anyone on the street" isn't systematically creating a database of that information.
Some random person seeing me on the street and making some passing observations about me before forgetting I exist simply isn't the same thing as systematically creating a database about everyone.
And its idiotic to even compare them.
"but this is about freaking website addresses. who really cares what they do with those"
Insurance companies. Employers. People litigating against you. Political opponents. Exes. Some future government agency on a witch-hunt...
What you search for and where you go can say a lot about you. Especially when combined with everything else google collects.
"And, wasn't there quite a fuss recently about AT&T (in their role as ISP) allowing certain government agencies to set up a lot of mysterious equipment in the switching office, tapped into the internet data streams they were carrying?"
Yes, there was.
Most people think this sort of thing shouldn't be the norm...that's why there was a fuss.
You apparently have long since given up.
"What happens? They get sued, and they also suffer a huge downturn in their business because the media would jump on it and there'd be an uproar. Their business depends on people's trust. What YOU are doing is called FUD."
Don't be naive. A healthy dose of uncertainty and doubt is appropriate.
Enron wouldn't cook the books ... they'd get sued and suffer a huge downturn!! HP wouldn't spy on its employees. Bre-X wouldn't lie about their gold exploration results. Exxon wouldn't under report oil reserves. Southwest airlines wouldn't violate safety regulations. Xerox wouldn't falsify financial results. Microsoft wouldn't illegally abuse a monopoly position. SCO wouldn't sue IBM or Novell over patents and copyrights that it doesn't own over infringements that didn't happen. Chinese manufacturers wouldn't put banned substances like lead in childrens toys to save a buck... they'd get sued, they'd even lose contracts!!11
"Its against pretty much all privacy laws."
Yeah, good luck with that. You have to have an expectation of privacy in the first place. Agreeing to submit all your queries to google rather negates that. And as for what they say they'll do with it. That's not a contract. Its a description of current policy. They have no obligation to obtain your permission if they change it... hell... they don't even have to notify you.
"Lets get something straight - they dont have "all" anyone's information. They just know what sites you visit (using chrome) and what you searched for. There's a HUGE difference."
I am quite cogent of what information I make about me available to google. (wither its with their search suggestions, their google analytics tracking my movement across the web, geolocation of my ip, ad clicks/tracking cookies, automated inspection of any mail sent to gmail users, potential for modeling social networks based on which gmail accounts have me as a contact and/or have sent/received mail from me and how frequently. Google groups use. Google Docs use. Youtube use. Places you go using google maps. Easily your home address if you use maps for directions, etc, etc.
More than you seem to give them credit for. They get a lot of that regardless of what browser I use, with no agreement with them whatsoever. All that data is pretty worthless if it was broken up piecemeal between 20 companies... but taken all together, its pretty amazing what you can do by linking all that information together.
You can infer social networks, infer income, race, sex, age, interests, medical history, hobbies, career...
Yeah, I'm sure nobody will ever do that to someone, because that would be 'wrong'.
The basic principle is that a service provider is handling too much data to implement any sort of editorial review.
That however has *nothing* what so ever to do with what defines a "common carrier".
Read up on "common carrier". American ISPs and service providers etc have fought very VERY hard AGAINST being labeled a common carrier because it would then expose them to various regulatory oversight that 'common carriers' are subject too, which they absolutely DO NOT WANT.
Common carrier principles dictate that networks/service providers should neither discriminate due to content nor be liable for content. In particular as a "common carrier" they would be unable to engage in certain types of packet shaping, deep packet inspection, redirection, advertising injection, or engage in editorial review of content, etc, etc, etc.
These are all things that they actually WANT TO BE ABLE TO DO at their discretion, without oversight.
I *highly* doubt suddenly that google would do a backflip and seek 'common carrier' status.
More importantly they already have many of the protections of a "common carrier" from other laws. The communications decency act establishes immunity for liability of 3rd party content that is libelous or slanderous. The DMCA establishes immunity from liability for copyright infringement provided they comply with DMCA take down notices etc.
Interestingly, the case in question... transmitting illegal pornography is not something they have explicit immunity for at this time in the united states. -As far as I know-.
"If google wants to collect data I could care less because I have a fuzzy warm trust feeling when I use their software."
What happens when they burn your trust? Bit late to take all your information back. Oops.
That warm fuzzy trust feeling...its called good will. They are trading on that. Its an entry on their balance sheet. Its valuable to them. But they'll sell it tomorrow for the right price.
What if they're hacked (again)?
And who knows what direction the next CEO will go? What if their advertising revenues collapses? Or they pull an Enron? For all we know the ultimate fate of google will be to be bought out by Microsoft.. the very company you feel has to be "kept at bay". And suddenly Microsoft has all your information... that you so willingly handed over to Google. Oops.
Hint: Your ISP (or whoever's endpoint your VPN tunnel comes out on) sees all this stuff anyway.
They have a direct legitimate need to see it. That is precisely the service I am paying them to provide. And while I suppose my ISP *could* be using the information to build a profile on me, where i go, what email i send, who i send it to, etc, etc... I'm actually quite confident they aren't actually doing this. I know people who work for the ISP. I know a great deal about how they are setup. So... yes... they could... but they don't. I could be wrong but then a lot of people I know who should know are ignorant and / or lying. Occam's razor....
Google on the other hand... is doing this. That's their business model. That's what they do. That's all they do.
Hint 2: You aren't important enough for anyone to care.
Really? Trotting that one out?
Your wrong. Build a profile on the average person... and people will check it out. Someone *always* cares. Friends, class mates, fellow employees, girlfriends, ex-girlfriends, employers, insurance companies...
Remember the bit of scandal when it came to light that facebook employees could and did (and probably still do) read so-called 'private data'. Build a database of this stuff, and sooner or later it will be abused by someone.
Even google's liability may be limited as they can claim common carrier.
Their ability to claim they are a common carrier is almost categorically absurd.