How is this insecure? The behavior is "as designed".
If it isn't the behavior you thought it should be, well, perhaps you shouldn't install unsigned applications from sketchy websites that want to both access your mic and your phone log.
That's what Apple does, after all; dictate the resale price by being the sole distributor of their product and enforcing a minimal price for which their products can be sold.
Yes, Apple does dictate a minimum price for apps.
Free.
Do you know who sets that price?
The app developer.
You know what "cut" Apple takes from the FREE apps?
They control the horizontal, and they control the vertical (literally). At the rate these large companies continue to screw over customers and developers alike, I just don't see how they will last as more robust open-source ventures proliferate. It won't be too long before the combination of open-source hardware devices (like Arduino), combined with an open-sourced mobile OS, and Open-source ventures and outlets render these proprietary monopolists dead.
While I think this is an ill-conceived (and doomed to fail) marketing concept, you do realize how ridiculously shrill and completely out-of-touch-with-reality these "Any day now" arguments regarding how soon "Open-source" will "Win" "because it is FREEEE" (as in beer or freedom) sound?
First, if you are talking about an "app" store for mobile devices running Android, there are precious few that run truly "Open-source" OSes.
Second, since 98.997% (at the least!) of the BUYING public seems to not particularly care if something is F/OSS or not, and, much more importantly, cares to NOT compile, link, package, and load software of ANY sort on ANY computing device (evidenced by the fact that, even in the Android camp, the very few devices that actually subscribe to that philosophy (by not taking steps to restrict the replacement of OS and/or other software), do not sell any better than, and in fact likely much worse than, those Android devices that lock the device down hard (some even much, much harder than the favorite F/OSS whipping-boy, the iPhone) with DRM-laden bootloaders, etc.
Seriously, I enjoy having people write software for me for free as much as the next guy; but this "People Will Soon See" attitude regarding F/OSS is getting sillier by the day.
I am honestly not trying to troll here. But you know I'm right, or, almost 20 years into Linux, we'd ALL be running F/OSS software for everything, and Adobe, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, Avid, Autodesk, et al. would ALL be either dead or dying.
What is a Verizon MiWi? Searching the Verizon site turns up nothing, Wikipedia states that MiWi is a WPAN tech.
Yep. A typo. MiWi is actually a trademark of Microchip (PIC microcontrollers), and pertains to their IEEE 802.15.4 wireless data products, and, other than sharing the 2.4 GHz frequency band, has nothing to do with MiFi.
I think that a lot of the problems that Microsoft (and Apple) have has to do with management rather than incompetent employees. Everyone I've talked to who works at both MS and Apple know what they are doing, but rather management wants them to do it a different way. Just look at the Apple III, it wasn't a huge commercial failure because Apple's engineers didn't know that they needed a way to dissipate heat from the computer, but it was a huge commercial failure because Steve Jobs forbid them from using the most reliable way to dissipate heat in hopes of making a "silent" computer. Its things like that, those upper-level or mid-level management decisions that force logic-driven people to act illogically.
Um, when the Apple/// was designed, there were about 2 or 3 people working on it, including Woz. Jobs' power was much less diety-like in those days. He was still a prick; but he was not quite in full megalomaniac mode yet.
It wasn't only the heat (in fact, that wasn't all that much of a problem, really); mostly, it was doing the boards with more layers than could really be done at that time. And THAT was because SO much hardware was used, making SURE that in "Apple ][ Compatibility Mode", NONE of the Apple///-specific features were available, hence making the Apple/// TRULY Apple ][ compatible.
That seems rather irrelevant, or probably even bad news for Apple. Businesses who work on lower margins make more competitive products and become ubiquitous. If all Apple can do to stay afloat lock-in and market segmentation the future looks bleak for them indeed.
Indeed. with a market capitalization 2nd largest of ANY industry on the planet, the future for Apple looks bleak.
Just how distant is this 'future' you speak of? Given Apple's humongous cash reserves of over $25 BILLION, have you even thought just a little bit about how ridiculous you sound?
The pricing certainly didn't help add market share either. People complain about the Apple Tax today, its nothing compared to what it was in the late 80s/early 90s.
On this point, only a fool would argue. I agree that Apple systems were very high priced; but they really were engineered to the hilt. Now, the designs are a little more mainstream. But, OTOH, stuff is getting just too complex, and the timing relationships too critical, to do the sort of mix-and-match roll-your-own-from-the-chips-up mobo designs and get stuff to market in any reasonable time, and for any reasonable cost.
But, even if the chipsets are more typical of other "reference designs" these days, Apple still puts a helluvalotta industrial design into their products (no antenna jokes!), and OS X ain't too shabby, neither!
As for "sealed", yes, Macs were kind of "sealed" (to anyone who couldn't come up with a torx screwdriver). But, in addition to the mouse, keyboard, and (IIRC) headphone ports, they had the (unheard of) inclusion of a high-speed (around 20 MegaBYTES per second transfer to up to 7 external devices) SCSI port and two high-speed (capable of up to 1 Mb/sec SYNCHRONOUS data xfer!) RS-422 ports (which allowed them to easily do relatively high-speed (250kbps)
differential (push-pull) twisted-pair communications for AppleTalk, as well as RS-232 "emulation").
All these things were added with the Mac Plus, which was produced after Jobs left. Jobs didn't want the original Mac to be expandable AT ALL. His own team had to go behind his back to put in 512k memory expansion capability.
you are correct that the SCSI port was added with the Mac Plus (I had to go back and check). However, I KNOW it had a DB-9 serial port, a floppy port (which was what I was remembering as the SCSI port), a DB-9 modem port, plus the mouse, keyboard and an audio out. I can't verify it right now, but I think the DB9 serial ports might have been RS-232, not 422, because AppleTalk isn't supported on the 128k or 512k, either.
As for the memory, from what I heard, when he learned of the memory-upgrade "option" left on the 128k Mac PCB, Jobs allowed the extra resistor that made it possible, to remain in the BOM for the 128k Mac. Plus, there was some thought that they would release the 128k Mac as a 256k, but the RAM prices were too high. So, it wasn't exactly a black-bag thing; just one of those "Let's just put this one little extra (fill-in-the-blank) in, and then it will make it way easier to do [x]." things that engineers often do, especially early in the hardware design phase.
Ironic that Apple has become the Big Brother they depicted in the original 1984 Macintosh ad. Then again Steve Jobs was always a control freak. Sealed all-in-one Macs with little upgrade options was his thing. When he left, the Mac II with slots showed up.
No.
Actually, his "thing" was to bring Alan Kay's vision of the DynaBook to life. But the tech to do it just wasn't there in 1983 (when the Mac was first designed). So, the "book" format gradually became a "toaster" format. But, those of us who were alive in 1984 will remember that the "toaster" Macs had a built-in HANDLE (as did the original CRT iMac, years later), and Apple even sold a kind of "gig bag" for those Macs, making it a VERY "portable" (for those days) system.
As for "sealed", yes, Macs were kind of "sealed" (to anyone who couldn't come up with a torx screwdriver). But, in addition to the mouse, keyboard, and (IIRC) headphone ports, they had the (unheard of) inclusion of a high-speed (around 20 MegaBYTES per second transfer to up to 7 external devices) SCSI port and two high-speed (capable of up to 1 Mb/sec SYNCHRONOUS data xfer!) RS-422 ports (which allowed them to easily do relatively high-speed (250kbps) differential (push-pull) twisted-pair communications for AppleTalk, as well as RS-232 "emulation").
And if you will note, other than some fairly high end video, coprocessing, audio, and data-acquisition cards, there never were that many "pedestrian" NuBus cards, EVER, for any of the platforms supporting that Texas Instruments'-created bus. So, it wasn't like the Mac II (and all the other NuBus Macs that followed) opened the pent-up floodgates of people wanting to develop expansion cards for NuBus Macs (like the Mac II), so was Jobs really that far off the marketing target? After all, it is ultimately the job of an effective Marketing department to instruct Engineering in what features, performance, and target costs are to be for a particular product. If Jobs had been wrong, the Mac II's inclusion of slots should have started momentum building in a NuBus peripheral card market; but it really never did.
The problem (for Android) is that its marketshare is far too fragmented to make a dent in iOS market penetration.
From what I can tell (and I own neither an iOS device nor an Android device), unlike the situation with Windows desktops, all those handsets don't run compatible-enough hardware/Android-versions/Vendor-Tweaks to make it practical for the "platform" to leverage the sheer combined numbers of all those handsets.
Nope. Unless Apple REALLY screws the pooch, they are as unstoppable with iOS as Windows was, well, still is, really, on the corporate desktop.
Well, the Apple II+ compatable - the Ace1000 (Which I had) was $1200, or thereabouts, and they were cheaper than the Apple.
As for the Atari, are you sure that wasn't the 400 that was $299? I seem to remember the 400 being theoretically attainable on my 12 year old budget, but the 800 - with (OMG!) real keys - was somewhere around double the price.
*The Ace was such an expensive purchase, at the time, that my parents made a copy of the check my grandfather sent. I learned to hand code in assembler and machine code on the 6502 with it.
Around 1979-80, when I was working for a local computer store in Indianapolis, IIRC, retail for an Apple ][+ was about $1200 for a 48K RAM configuration. Disk ][ controller with 140 kB capacity Apple-Branded Shugart 400 5.25" floppy drive, was an additional $495. Can't recall off the top of my head what the second drive cost.
I never had an Atari anything; but IIRC, the Atari 800 was $495 or thereabouts. The 1200XL was in the $1k world.
I seem to remember paying $59 or $69 for my C-64 at a Target department-store in the 1983-84 timeframe. What a wonderful little machine it was! I already knew 6502 assembly and BASIC(s) from my Apple 1 and Apple ][ days, so I had quite a bit of fun with the GPU and sound hardware in the C-64!
For the record, I too think it is an abomination to sell this new thing as a "C-64", unless it truly supports all the peripherals and I/O. I'd LOVE to play Jumpman again (anyone know of an OS X version?); but not on THIS thing!
Thus, Pumpkin Maker needs my location. So it comes up and says, "Would you like to allow Pumpkin Maker to access your location?" Makes sense--it needs to know my location so that it can display the appropriate background. Of course, it doesn't mention that while it's showing your appropriate background, it's sharing your location with it's advertisers.
And, so you know of a security model that will absolutely defeat social engineering?...Or any OS that can control where information goes once the USER has decided to let it escape?
iOS 4 has the following features to help the user decide their personal "paranoia" level regarding Location Services:
1. A Preference screen that shows which apps YOU have enabled for Location Services, with an indicator for each that have actually used Location Services in the past 24 hours. Of course, YOU are also free to change your mind regarding Location Services for ANY app at ANY time from this screen.
2. A SYSTEM Alert (cannot be bypassed by an app) that asks for PERMISSION from the USER before it can use Location Services, the first time the app attempts to do so (NOT ON INSTALLATION, unlike Android. Location Services default to DISABLED automagically when an app installs, so you will ALWAYS get this Alert when an app first accesses the Location Services API). This is a one-time Alert, and the decision here also sets the initial value of the enable/disable flag for that app in the Location Services Preference screen, (see above).
3. I believe there is also a Global enable/disable for Location Services, which can also be used as a quick battery-life extender.
So, please suggest some other security method that wouldn't bring back the cold chills of remembering the user-annoyance-level (which was so high that it actually defeated the purpose of "hightened security") of Vista UAC.
[crickets]
In all fairness, Android is also helpless against social engineering. However, I honestly think that iOS has struck a good balance between annoying and secure. Just like with Android, the rest is (necessarily) up to the user.
But considering more Android devices are selling every day than iPhones
I saw what you did there. Compare "Android DEVICES" to "iOS DEVICES", and I'm sure that your statement will be false.
, it shouldn't be long before Android catches up, and probably passes Apple.
Maybe phone vs. phone. But then there's the iPod Touch and iPad (so far) to consider. And it really doesn't impress me that ten cellphone manufacturers can "outsell" ONE.
But iOS still has far more "brand recognition" than Android will EVER have, and the number of PHONES sold isn't the issue: It is how many of those phone-owners actually purchase APPS. And the fractionalized nature of the Android "model" (which is actually no model at all) all-but-assures that Android will always be a distant second to Apple as far as App development (and more importantly, APP SALE$$$) is concerned.
Especially considering there are 3 official app markets for Android, and you can install apps from anywhere and are not limited to just the official markets.
Which the average consumer cares ZERO about. How many times does this have to be pointed out? In fact, most consumers LIKE the "Curated Collection" and "One-Stop-Shopping" FEATURES that the Apple AppStore gives them.
If this were NOT the case, Apple would have never even considered bringing up a Mac AppStore. Time will tell if the business model will translate to a desktop platform, and, considering that OS X devs. will not HAVE to sell their Mac apps that way, whether consumers will embrace or ignore a non-"exclusive" distribution channel. But my money sez that it will be at least a moderate success.
One of the things that most consumers absolutely HATE is having to SEARCH a bunch of places for stuff. So, when you tout the fractionalized Android distribution model as a "feature", you have absolutely ignored how the general public felt about a similar "feature" of Windows: Having to SCOUR the tubes for "Drivers". The Android "distribution" model (which, is actually no "model" at all) is that same failed idea. Same as it ever was.
Face it. Apple really did something quite rare in business: Created a completely new and successful business model. And, pretty much nailed it.
Re:Re-buyers already have it on CD, so why bother?
on
The Beatles On iTunes
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· Score: 0, Interesting
You know.
If they would put out the box sets, more specifically, the MONO remastered box set they did a year or two ago...and put on iTunes in a lossless format, for a reasonable price.
I'd buy them.
Do you even have a clue how good 256kbps AAC sounds?
If you feel like throwing away more than half your storage for audio files (see what I did there?) that not one person in 10,000 could reliably distinguish from the original in blind ABX tests, then by all means go for it.
Meanwhile, the rest of us will already be enjoying the content BEFORE we become too old to hear the difference, waiting for "the perfect version" to be released.
Life is a series of compromises. 256k AAC is a pretty small sonic compromise in the overall scheme of things.
But perhaps for you, what we are REALLY talking about is the compromise your personal mindset would have to go through...
Just for my own education, how would a processor specific piece of malware 'get in' if it isn't delivered via software that can run on the host's OS? And how would it spread out of the computer it's infecting? Is it going to come with it's own ethernet drivers? It's own TCP/IP stack? If it's not relying on the OS to do its dirty work than what does it do besides figuring out your CPU type?
Exactly what I was thinking.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't ALL malware exploit vulnerabilities in an application or an OS? So, as you say, unless the malware carries its own network and likely filesystem drivers (and then WHICH filesystem, WHICH NIC?), WTF can it really DO?
I can't believe they're suggesting that a Mini is a replacement for a server. They'd be better off suggesting a MBP as a replacement. Is their ad campaign going to be "One tenth the performance at one third the price"?
At least the Mac Pro offers the same performance level as the Xserver.
dom
A Mac Mini can do many things just fine. I know a place that uses a Mac Mini to manage four Epson 10800 printers and a Lightjet. It runs three different RIP servers. It clones itself to an external drive daily and backs itself up with TM to the same drive. If it were to go belly up (and it probably will, eventually) they replace it with another, boot it off the external drive and restore the last 24 hours, or most of it, from the TM incrementals. While it runs they can clone it back to the internal drive. It has no display but is entirely managed using screen sharing. If the Mac Mini supported target disk mode they could get rid of the external drive entirely and just keep the spare as a bootable backup in TD mode.
I have the answer to the Target Disk issue.
The answer likes in the fact that they are using "Screen Sharing" (Apple Remote Desktop) to manage the Mac 'mini. When you boot (or restart) a Mac that is being managed through Screen Sharing (and thus doesn't have a physical keyboard hooked up), there is no "keyboard" present at the time that Target Disk Mode has to be invoked (just after the startup chime). You can press "T" all you want on your "controller" machine; but the Screen Sharing connection isn't (re)established until WAY later in the boot process, so the 'mini never "hears" your request for Target Disk Mode.
The easiest thing would be just to hookup a cheapie USB keyboard to the 'mini, and press the "T" on that after (re)starting the 'mini. I would imagine that doing so would keep Screen Sharing from ever starting up, so don't be surprised if the "Flying Firewire Symbol" never appears, and the Screen Sharing "client" just sits there saying "Reconnecting" forever. Rest assured, the 'mini IS in Target Disk Mode. And since the only way OUT of TDM is to force-power-off the 'mini, that would still be the way you'd have to get the 'mini back to "normal" again.
So now that that's settled, they can get rid of that external drive and send it to me!
News at 11 and all that. I don't understand why, though, they went with the wording that "having flash installed" causes battery drain instead of running flash objects. Merely having flash installed doesn't cause any noticeable battery drain over not having flash installed.
Maybe it's because the MBA is the first Mac (since Flash has existed) that has shipped without Flash factory-INSTALLED.
You are correct that just having it installed is not AFAIK, detrimental, per se (except for the waste of mass-storage space, and whatever resources it wastes to remain somewhat memory-resident), but MBAs are already free of the Flash-tyranny (unless the end-user chooses to install Flash), and so it is a correct title. Especially since most people that install Flash will be the ones that also think you HAVE to have Flash to use teh intarwebs, so they also won't be the ones that will usually install something like Click2Flash (which works like a charm!)...
I, for one, are diggin' the Flash-free web, and am not missing it one bit (pun intended). I am SO glad that Adobe finally had an exploit that was serious enough to make me finally install Click2Flash, and thus helping me to personally discover that NOT having Flash have free reign over your CPU cycles is a VERY GOOD THING!
I feel like I just installed an extra 2GB of RAM in my machine, performance-wise. The difference is quite astounding, actually.
As a developer myself, it is hard for me to imagine how anything as mature as FlashPlayer is, can be like the poster-child for CPU-intensive design. It simply boggles the mind how horrible that code must be. There's just simply no excuse for it. And Adobe's protestations that they "haven't had access to GPU-acceleration" is absolutely false. Adobe has had "access" to both Grand Central Dispatch, AND OpenCL for YEARS now. And only recently are they having very limited "hardware" acceleration on a very limited number of the highest-end Macs. I understand (sorta) why they can't make my old G5 dualie run Flash faster; but anything with a C2D or better should be wicked-fast. Of course, that doesn't mean it would also be power-frugal...
I think I am slowly coming to be in the "Kill. Flash. Now." camp.
I have a dual G5 PowerMac, and ever since I installed Click2Flash a few days ago (in response to the latest Flash/Reader exploit), I noticed that, unlike before, my PowerMac's fans stay pretty much at the minimum speed, and have not once spun up to "hair-dryer" speed while surfing.
Before I became Flash-free, the PM's fans would occasionally just crank up incredibly, even while just sitting on some web pages (including/.). It happened so often that I thought that the fan controller was getting wonky, but now I know.
Yes, I know the G5 isn't the most power-efficient CPU (understatement!); but there is a big difference between with Flash and without.
And I owe it all to Adobe. If they hadn't had such a serious exploit, I would never have installed Click2Flash, and thus would likely never put 2 and 2 together. Thanks for the help in keeping my computer QUIET!
Speaking as an Apple user since the Apple-1, and a hardware/software developer since 1978 who has developed literally dozens of Apple ][-based industrial control and data-aquisition systems (some very close to what you have done, curiously) back in the day, I understand what you are saying.
However, I stress that the Macintosh has had "slots" since the Macintosh II debuted around 1987 (only 3 years after the original 128k "toaster" Mac). Since then, there has never been a time when custom hardware and software couldn't be developed for the Mac. It just wasn't as much "fun", because it was "harder" to learn all the Mac Toolbox APIs (no more friendly calls to COUT, PLOTXY, or BASECALC), and (at that time) it was kinda a pain (and expensive!) to become a registered Mac developer.
But now XCode is free, and Mac development is free (depending on your need for support), and USB, Ethernet and Firewire have supplanted the need (for the most part) for in-slot hardware (although that is possible on Mac Pros, of course).
SO they get a DID, a Mac address, an IP. They follow you around. Maybe they decide to go into various Java cache and sniff around if they can. Java cache locations aren't tough to figure out. There's more than one way to skin a cat, or a bad Java app.
Wrong platform!
iOS devices don't run Java ANYTHING. You're thinking of Android.
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How is this insecure? The behavior is "as designed".
If it isn't the behavior you thought it should be, well, perhaps you shouldn't install unsigned applications from sketchy websites that want to both access your mic and your phone log.
But wait!
Isn't that the freedom from the "Walled Garden"?
Can we run linux on it?!
Since you can already run Android on the iPhone (supposedly), I would imagine someone will make it happen.
But why?
That's what Apple does, after all; dictate the resale price by being the sole distributor of their product and enforcing a minimal price for which their products can be sold.
Yes, Apple does dictate a minimum price for apps.
Free.
Do you know who sets that price?
The app developer.
You know what "cut" Apple takes from the FREE apps?
Thirty Percent.
Do you know what Thirty Percent of Zero is?
Zero.
Are you honestly proposing a better deal?
They control the horizontal, and they control the vertical (literally). At the rate these large companies continue to screw over customers and developers alike, I just don't see how they will last as more robust open-source ventures proliferate. It won't be too long before the combination of open-source hardware devices (like Arduino), combined with an open-sourced mobile OS, and Open-source ventures and outlets render these proprietary monopolists dead.
While I think this is an ill-conceived (and doomed to fail) marketing concept, you do realize how ridiculously shrill and completely out-of-touch-with-reality these "Any day now" arguments regarding how soon "Open-source" will "Win" "because it is FREEEE" (as in beer or freedom) sound?
First, if you are talking about an "app" store for mobile devices running Android, there are precious few that run truly "Open-source" OSes.
Second, since 98.997% (at the least!) of the BUYING public seems to not particularly care if something is F/OSS or not, and, much more importantly, cares to NOT compile, link, package, and load software of ANY sort on ANY computing device (evidenced by the fact that, even in the Android camp, the very few devices that actually subscribe to that philosophy (by not taking steps to restrict the replacement of OS and/or other software), do not sell any better than, and in fact likely much worse than, those Android devices that lock the device down hard (some even much, much harder than the favorite F/OSS whipping-boy, the iPhone) with DRM-laden bootloaders, etc.
Seriously, I enjoy having people write software for me for free as much as the next guy; but this "People Will Soon See" attitude regarding F/OSS is getting sillier by the day.
I am honestly not trying to troll here. But you know I'm right, or, almost 20 years into Linux, we'd ALL be running F/OSS software for everything, and Adobe, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, Avid, Autodesk, et al. would ALL be either dead or dying.
But they're obviously not.
What is a Verizon MiWi? Searching the Verizon site turns up nothing, Wikipedia states that MiWi is a WPAN tech.
Yep. A typo. MiWi is actually a trademark of Microchip (PIC microcontrollers), and pertains to their IEEE 802.15.4 wireless data products, and, other than sharing the 2.4 GHz frequency band, has nothing to do with MiFi.
This is total bullshit. You put the fucking thing in a Faraday cage that has a tiny little antenna in it that you can control the power too.
You don't test devices like this by just walking around with them.
You do that, too. But there is no substitute for walking around with them (too).
I think that a lot of the problems that Microsoft (and Apple) have has to do with management rather than incompetent employees. Everyone I've talked to who works at both MS and Apple know what they are doing, but rather management wants them to do it a different way. Just look at the Apple III, it wasn't a huge commercial failure because Apple's engineers didn't know that they needed a way to dissipate heat from the computer, but it was a huge commercial failure because Steve Jobs forbid them from using the most reliable way to dissipate heat in hopes of making a "silent" computer. Its things like that, those upper-level or mid-level management decisions that force logic-driven people to act illogically.
Um, when the Apple /// was designed, there were about 2 or 3 people working on it, including Woz. Jobs' power was much less diety-like in those days. He was still a prick; but he was not quite in full megalomaniac mode yet.
///-specific features were available, hence making the Apple /// TRULY Apple ][ compatible.
It wasn't only the heat (in fact, that wasn't all that much of a problem, really); mostly, it was doing the boards with more layers than could really be done at that time. And THAT was because SO much hardware was used, making SURE that in "Apple ][ Compatibility Mode", NONE of the Apple
It's part of moral boosting,
So, are you saying that Microsofties have low morals?
I know they can't write software; but that doesn't mean they are not chaste, God-fearing, Amurakins!
BTW, Sarcasm Mode fully engaged...
That seems rather irrelevant, or probably even bad news for Apple. Businesses who work on lower margins make more competitive products and become ubiquitous. If all Apple can do to stay afloat lock-in and market segmentation the future looks bleak for them indeed.
Indeed. with a market capitalization 2nd largest of ANY industry on the planet, the future for Apple looks bleak.
Just how distant is this 'future' you speak of? Given Apple's humongous cash reserves of over $25 BILLION, have you even thought just a little bit about how ridiculous you sound?
The pricing certainly didn't help add market share either. People complain about the Apple Tax today, its nothing compared to what it was in the late 80s/early 90s.
On this point, only a fool would argue. I agree that Apple systems were very high priced; but they really were engineered to the hilt. Now, the designs are a little more mainstream. But, OTOH, stuff is getting just too complex, and the timing relationships too critical, to do the sort of mix-and-match roll-your-own-from-the-chips-up mobo designs and get stuff to market in any reasonable time, and for any reasonable cost.
But, even if the chipsets are more typical of other "reference designs" these days, Apple still puts a helluvalotta industrial design into their products (no antenna jokes!), and OS X ain't too shabby, neither!
All these things were added with the Mac Plus, which was produced after Jobs left. Jobs didn't want the original Mac to be expandable AT ALL. His own team had to go behind his back to put in 512k memory expansion capability.
you are correct that the SCSI port was added with the Mac Plus (I had to go back and check). However, I KNOW it had a DB-9 serial port, a floppy port (which was what I was remembering as the SCSI port), a DB-9 modem port, plus the mouse, keyboard and an audio out. I can't verify it right now, but I think the DB9 serial ports might have been RS-232, not 422, because AppleTalk isn't supported on the 128k or 512k, either.
As for the memory, from what I heard, when he learned of the memory-upgrade "option" left on the 128k Mac PCB, Jobs allowed the extra resistor that made it possible, to remain in the BOM for the 128k Mac. Plus, there was some thought that they would release the 128k Mac as a 256k, but the RAM prices were too high. So, it wasn't exactly a black-bag thing; just one of those "Let's just put this one little extra (fill-in-the-blank) in, and then it will make it way easier to do [x]." things that engineers often do, especially early in the hardware design phase.
Looks like it worked well for them
How did that PC vrs[sic] MAC go, whats[sic] there[sic] share 10%? i dont[sic] know, its[sic] so small...
I dunno. How did that "Year of the Linux Desktop" go? What's their share? Has it finally topped 1%?
I know, I know! Don't feed the troll...
Ironic that Apple has become the Big Brother they depicted in the original 1984 Macintosh ad. Then again Steve Jobs was always a control freak. Sealed all-in-one Macs with little upgrade options was his thing. When he left, the Mac II with slots showed up.
No.
Actually, his "thing" was to bring Alan Kay's vision of the DynaBook to life. But the tech to do it just wasn't there in 1983 (when the Mac was first designed). So, the "book" format gradually became a "toaster" format. But, those of us who were alive in 1984 will remember that the "toaster" Macs had a built-in HANDLE (as did the original CRT iMac, years later), and Apple even sold a kind of "gig bag" for those Macs, making it a VERY "portable" (for those days) system.
As for "sealed", yes, Macs were kind of "sealed" (to anyone who couldn't come up with a torx screwdriver). But, in addition to the mouse, keyboard, and (IIRC) headphone ports, they had the (unheard of) inclusion of a high-speed (around 20 MegaBYTES per second transfer to up to 7 external devices) SCSI port and two high-speed (capable of up to 1 Mb/sec SYNCHRONOUS data xfer!) RS-422 ports (which allowed them to easily do relatively high-speed (250kbps) differential (push-pull) twisted-pair communications for AppleTalk, as well as RS-232 "emulation").
And if you will note, other than some fairly high end video, coprocessing, audio, and data-acquisition cards, there never were that many "pedestrian" NuBus cards, EVER, for any of the platforms supporting that Texas Instruments'-created bus. So, it wasn't like the Mac II (and all the other NuBus Macs that followed) opened the pent-up floodgates of people wanting to develop expansion cards for NuBus Macs (like the Mac II), so was Jobs really that far off the marketing target? After all, it is ultimately the job of an effective Marketing department to instruct Engineering in what features, performance, and target costs are to be for a particular product. If Jobs had been wrong, the Mac II's inclusion of slots should have started momentum building in a NuBus peripheral card market; but it really never did.
You're just plain wrong. Android phones have been by far outselling the iPhone, and they just recently surpassed the total iPhone sales numbers. http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2011/01/05/androids-users-eclipse-iphones-for-first-time-comscore-says/
The problem (for Android) is that its marketshare is far too fragmented to make a dent in iOS market penetration.
From what I can tell (and I own neither an iOS device nor an Android device), unlike the situation with Windows desktops, all those handsets don't run compatible-enough hardware/Android-versions/Vendor-Tweaks to make it practical for the "platform" to leverage the sheer combined numbers of all those handsets.
Nope. Unless Apple REALLY screws the pooch, they are as unstoppable with iOS as Windows was, well, still is, really, on the corporate desktop.
Well, the Apple II+ compatable - the Ace1000 (Which I had) was $1200, or thereabouts, and they were cheaper than the Apple.
As for the Atari, are you sure that wasn't the 400 that was $299? I seem to remember the 400 being theoretically attainable on my 12 year old budget, but the 800 - with (OMG!) real keys - was somewhere around double the price.
*The Ace was such an expensive purchase, at the time, that my parents made a copy of the check my grandfather sent. I learned to hand code in assembler and machine code on the 6502 with it.
Around 1979-80, when I was working for a local computer store in Indianapolis, IIRC, retail for an Apple ][+ was about $1200 for a 48K RAM configuration. Disk ][ controller with 140 kB capacity Apple-Branded Shugart 400 5.25" floppy drive, was an additional $495. Can't recall off the top of my head what the second drive cost.
I never had an Atari anything; but IIRC, the Atari 800 was $495 or thereabouts. The 1200XL was in the $1k world.
I seem to remember paying $59 or $69 for my C-64 at a Target department-store in the 1983-84 timeframe. What a wonderful little machine it was! I already knew 6502 assembly and BASIC(s) from my Apple 1 and Apple ][ days, so I had quite a bit of fun with the GPU and sound hardware in the C-64!
For the record, I too think it is an abomination to sell this new thing as a "C-64", unless it truly supports all the peripherals and I/O. I'd LOVE to play Jumpman again (anyone know of an OS X version?); but not on THIS thing!
Thus, Pumpkin Maker needs my location. So it comes up and says, "Would you like to allow Pumpkin Maker to access your location?" Makes sense--it needs to know my location so that it can display the appropriate background. Of course, it doesn't mention that while it's showing your appropriate background, it's sharing your location with it's advertisers.
And, so you know of a security model that will absolutely defeat social engineering? ...Or any OS that can control where information goes once the USER has decided to let it escape?
iOS 4 has the following features to help the user decide their personal "paranoia" level regarding Location Services:
1. A Preference screen that shows which apps YOU have enabled for Location Services, with an indicator for each that have actually used Location Services in the past 24 hours. Of course, YOU are also free to change your mind regarding Location Services for ANY app at ANY time from this screen.
2. A SYSTEM Alert (cannot be bypassed by an app) that asks for PERMISSION from the USER before it can use Location Services, the first time the app attempts to do so (NOT ON INSTALLATION, unlike Android. Location Services default to DISABLED automagically when an app installs, so you will ALWAYS get this Alert when an app first accesses the Location Services API). This is a one-time Alert, and the decision here also sets the initial value of the enable/disable flag for that app in the Location Services Preference screen, (see above).
3. I believe there is also a Global enable/disable for Location Services, which can also be used as a quick battery-life extender.
So, please suggest some other security method that wouldn't bring back the cold chills of remembering the user-annoyance-level (which was so high that it actually defeated the purpose of "hightened security") of Vista UAC.
[crickets]
In all fairness, Android is also helpless against social engineering. However, I honestly think that iOS has struck a good balance between annoying and secure. Just like with Android, the rest is (necessarily) up to the user.
But considering more Android devices are selling every day than iPhones
I saw what you did there. Compare "Android DEVICES" to "iOS DEVICES", and I'm sure that your statement will be false.
, it shouldn't be long before Android catches up, and probably passes Apple.
Maybe phone vs. phone. But then there's the iPod Touch and iPad (so far) to consider. And it really doesn't impress me that ten cellphone manufacturers can "outsell" ONE.
But iOS still has far more "brand recognition" than Android will EVER have, and the number of PHONES sold isn't the issue: It is how many of those phone-owners actually purchase APPS. And the fractionalized nature of the Android "model" (which is actually no model at all) all-but-assures that Android will always be a distant second to Apple as far as App development (and more importantly, APP SALE$$$) is concerned.
Especially considering there are 3 official app markets for Android, and you can install apps from anywhere and are not limited to just the official markets.
Which the average consumer cares ZERO about. How many times does this have to be pointed out? In fact, most consumers LIKE the "Curated Collection" and "One-Stop-Shopping" FEATURES that the Apple AppStore gives them.
If this were NOT the case, Apple would have never even considered bringing up a Mac AppStore. Time will tell if the business model will translate to a desktop platform, and, considering that OS X devs. will not HAVE to sell their Mac apps that way, whether consumers will embrace or ignore a non-"exclusive" distribution channel. But my money sez that it will be at least a moderate success.
One of the things that most consumers absolutely HATE is having to SEARCH a bunch of places for stuff. So, when you tout the fractionalized Android distribution model as a "feature", you have absolutely ignored how the general public felt about a similar "feature" of Windows: Having to SCOUR the tubes for "Drivers". The Android "distribution" model (which, is actually no "model" at all) is that same failed idea. Same as it ever was.
Face it. Apple really did something quite rare in business: Created a completely new and successful business model. And, pretty much nailed it.
You know.
If they would put out the box sets, more specifically, the MONO remastered box set they did a year or two ago...and put on iTunes in a lossless format, for a reasonable price.
I'd buy them.
Do you even have a clue how good 256kbps AAC sounds?
If you feel like throwing away more than half your storage for audio files (see what I did there?) that not one person in 10,000 could reliably distinguish from the original in blind ABX tests, then by all means go for it.
Meanwhile, the rest of us will already be enjoying the content BEFORE we become too old to hear the difference, waiting for "the perfect version" to be released.
Life is a series of compromises. 256k AAC is a pretty small sonic compromise in the overall scheme of things.
But perhaps for you, what we are REALLY talking about is the compromise your personal mindset would have to go through...
Just for my own education, how would a processor specific piece of malware 'get in' if it isn't delivered via software that can run on the host's OS? And how would it spread out of the computer it's infecting? Is it going to come with it's own ethernet drivers? It's own TCP/IP stack? If it's not relying on the OS to do its dirty work than what does it do besides figuring out your CPU type?
Exactly what I was thinking.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't ALL malware exploit vulnerabilities in an application or an OS? So, as you say, unless the malware carries its own network and likely filesystem drivers (and then WHICH filesystem, WHICH NIC?), WTF can it really DO?
I can't believe they're suggesting that a Mini is a replacement for a server. They'd be better off suggesting a MBP as a replacement. Is their ad campaign going to be "One tenth the performance at one third the price"?
At least the Mac Pro offers the same performance level as the Xserver.
dom
A Mac Mini can do many things just fine. I know a place that uses a Mac Mini to manage four Epson 10800 printers and a Lightjet. It runs three different RIP servers. It clones itself to an external drive daily and backs itself up with TM to the same drive. If it were to go belly up (and it probably will, eventually) they replace it with another, boot it off the external drive and restore the last 24 hours, or most of it, from the TM incrementals. While it runs they can clone it back to the internal drive. It has no display but is entirely managed using screen sharing. If the Mac Mini supported target disk mode they could get rid of the external drive entirely and just keep the spare as a bootable backup in TD mode.
I have the answer to the Target Disk issue.
The answer likes in the fact that they are using "Screen Sharing" (Apple Remote Desktop) to manage the Mac 'mini. When you boot (or restart) a Mac that is being managed through Screen Sharing (and thus doesn't have a physical keyboard hooked up), there is no "keyboard" present at the time that Target Disk Mode has to be invoked (just after the startup chime). You can press "T" all you want on your "controller" machine; but the Screen Sharing connection isn't (re)established until WAY later in the boot process, so the 'mini never "hears" your request for Target Disk Mode.
The easiest thing would be just to hookup a cheapie USB keyboard to the 'mini, and press the "T" on that after (re)starting the 'mini. I would imagine that doing so would keep Screen Sharing from ever starting up, so don't be surprised if the "Flying Firewire Symbol" never appears, and the Screen Sharing "client" just sits there saying "Reconnecting" forever. Rest assured, the 'mini IS in Target Disk Mode. And since the only way OUT of TDM is to force-power-off the 'mini, that would still be the way you'd have to get the 'mini back to "normal" again.
So now that that's settled, they can get rid of that external drive and send it to me!
News at 11 and all that. I don't understand why, though, they went with the wording that "having flash installed" causes battery drain instead of running flash objects. Merely having flash installed doesn't cause any noticeable battery drain over not having flash installed.
Maybe it's because the MBA is the first Mac (since Flash has existed) that has shipped without Flash factory-INSTALLED.
You are correct that just having it installed is not AFAIK, detrimental, per se (except for the waste of mass-storage space, and whatever resources it wastes to remain somewhat memory-resident), but MBAs are already free of the Flash-tyranny (unless the end-user chooses to install Flash), and so it is a correct title. Especially since most people that install Flash will be the ones that also think you HAVE to have Flash to use teh intarwebs, so they also won't be the ones that will usually install something like Click2Flash (which works like a charm!)...
I, for one, are diggin' the Flash-free web, and am not missing it one bit (pun intended). I am SO glad that Adobe finally had an exploit that was serious enough to make me finally install Click2Flash, and thus helping me to personally discover that NOT having Flash have free reign over your CPU cycles is a VERY GOOD THING!
I feel like I just installed an extra 2GB of RAM in my machine, performance-wise. The difference is quite astounding, actually.
As a developer myself, it is hard for me to imagine how anything as mature as FlashPlayer is, can be like the poster-child for CPU-intensive design. It simply boggles the mind how horrible that code must be. There's just simply no excuse for it. And Adobe's protestations that they "haven't had access to GPU-acceleration" is absolutely false. Adobe has had "access" to both Grand Central Dispatch, AND OpenCL for YEARS now. And only recently are they having very limited "hardware" acceleration on a very limited number of the highest-end Macs. I understand (sorta) why they can't make my old G5 dualie run Flash faster; but anything with a C2D or better should be wicked-fast. Of course, that doesn't mean it would also be power-frugal...
I think I am slowly coming to be in the "Kill. Flash. Now." camp.
And a final message to Adobe: Rewrite Or Die.
I have a dual G5 PowerMac, and ever since I installed Click2Flash a few days ago (in response to the latest Flash/Reader exploit), I noticed that, unlike before, my PowerMac's fans stay pretty much at the minimum speed, and have not once spun up to "hair-dryer" speed while surfing.
/.). It happened so often that I thought that the fan controller was getting wonky, but now I know.
Before I became Flash-free, the PM's fans would occasionally just crank up incredibly, even while just sitting on some web pages (including
Yes, I know the G5 isn't the most power-efficient CPU (understatement!); but there is a big difference between with Flash and without.
And I owe it all to Adobe. If they hadn't had such a serious exploit, I would never have installed Click2Flash, and thus would likely never put 2 and 2 together. Thanks for the help in keeping my computer QUIET!
Speaking as an Apple user since the Apple-1, and a hardware/software developer since 1978 who has developed literally dozens of Apple ][-based industrial control and data-aquisition systems (some very close to what you have done, curiously) back in the day, I understand what you are saying.
However, I stress that the Macintosh has had "slots" since the Macintosh II debuted around 1987 (only 3 years after the original 128k "toaster" Mac). Since then, there has never been a time when custom hardware and software couldn't be developed for the Mac. It just wasn't as much "fun", because it was "harder" to learn all the Mac Toolbox APIs (no more friendly calls to COUT, PLOTXY, or BASECALC), and (at that time) it was kinda a pain (and expensive!) to become a registered Mac developer.
But now XCode is free, and Mac development is free (depending on your need for support), and USB, Ethernet and Firewire have supplanted the need (for the most part) for in-slot hardware (although that is possible on Mac Pros, of course).
So, what is your excuse at this point?
the person with the most personal and networked power would win.
So, in other words, just like the US (and probably most other places, too).
SO they get a DID, a Mac address, an IP. They follow you around. Maybe they decide to go into various Java cache and sniff around if they can. Java cache locations aren't tough to figure out. There's more than one way to skin a cat, or a bad Java app.
Wrong platform!
iOS devices don't run Java ANYTHING. You're thinking of Android.