Apple Unveils Ultra-Thin Notebook - WSJ.com

"Investors seemed to be unimpressed by the new products: Apple shares dropped more than 6% Tuesday on the Nasdaq Stock Market."

Yawn.

Who Is Really Hurt by Apple Rumor Sites Closure? - New York Times Blog

Several publications where asking questions such as this in the last few days and my response to those I responded to were consistently that Apple was the victim of a self inflicted wound, and to extend the metaphor, considering the companies situation possibly a fatal one.

As a dedicated blogger, I take seriously my right to exaggerate an issue beyond all normal sensibilities.

But as if to prove my extreme point of view, yesterday Slashdot posted an article titled
'Apple Lawyering Up On "Fake Steve Jobs"' and whether they (Slashdot) were attempting to go along with a joke already well underway or were themselves fooled by the publicity stunt, the readers were certainly up in arms with only a few pointing out the more likely explanation for the FSJ postings.

Checking back today on those "dialogs" started by NYT and others what I find is mostly negative comments about Apple. People are very much inclined to accept the notions that Apple is the mini-me to Microsoft when it comes to screwing, or screwing with their users.

So whether it was a misguided legal department, the PR department being on vacation or a vindictive Steve Jobs, Apple has succeeded in neutralizing whatever "good guy" image it once had.

I'm not the only one who thinks Apple will exit the computer business as soon as it can do so without too much embarrassment, so maybe as a phone company, or music publisher they'll be forgiven for treating fan sites like a cheap date or that tacky one night stand with open source.

But a three legged stool with one leg removed cannot stand. So presuming Apple's ability to handle public relations re-awakens, what will they get into next? I mean it's not like music companies can just hop into the airline business is it?

Is it?

Apple: Zune outselling iPod on Amazon

When you've nailed the analysis, I can't think of any reason not to brag about it (quoting myself):

I imagine it has a lot to do with Apple not allowing retailers of their products to compete with one another on price.

If I'm going to buy an Apple product online I might as well buy it from Apple where it can often have it monogrammed and gift wrapped for free. If you could get them significantly cheaper at Amazon I'm sure they would be selling more of them.

Add to that the fact (I think) that you can ONLY buy a Zune from retailers, not directly from Microsoft:

http://www.zune.net/en-us/products/wheretobuy.htm

and I really don't think there is any validity to this comparison.

I do think though that Apple's lead in this area will die a slow death unless they do something new to differentiate themselves. At the volume the innards for these things are being cranked out by whatever godforsaken country they are coming from, there is just no way for any US "maker" to claim a leadership position.

They are positioning themselves as a general purpose upscale consumer electronic company (some might call this painting themselves into a corner).

Keep an eye out for the iBeam (a small white radar detector that once you're stopped will actually try and talk the officer out of giving you a ticket), the iContact, a knobless no-moving-parts stereo entertainment center that you control by staring at various parts of it and the iCUP for which no product details have been, uh, leaked.

Slashdot | Google Phone Rumors Solidifying

I've had a Sprint based Razr phone for almost a year and at the other end of the spectrum a Nokia 1100 via Tracfon for a couple, and I've played with an iPhone long enough to know that I can live without one.

I too like the Nokia flashlight feature (mentioned in the Slasdot discussion). I also like that it has a standby life of a month or more (in my experience) and can quickly be turned off and on, unlike the newer phones that must "boot" into a mode that can drive the display even to do something as simple as plug in to recharge.

I love the fact that I can check e-mail browse the web and so forth with the Razr, but the screen is too small to get much out of it (and the iPhone, to me isn't that much of an improvement, I have a Nokia N800 that serves about the same function as the iPhone in that regard).

My main use for a phone is, uh, talking on the phone, and unless I'm in a run down diner on the Interstate in the middle of nowhere, I'm not all that far from being able to check my mail and read the news on a real computer. Like most cell phone users I also own a laptop that does just fine in most Wifi locations.

All that to say, there may be a gPhone that competes with the iPhone, but iPhone users have shown that money isn't the issue with them. They'll stand in line to pay exorbitant prices for an untested product just for the status alone, and I'm sure many of them would do the same even if an equivalent service were available for free.

If the eventual gPhone has none of the features of the iPhone it will serve as a business-model-ending device for pay as you go services as Tracfone T-mobile, etc. Millions of people will buy them for emergency phones in the car, for their kids to take to school, for a spare when the battery on the iPhone dies, and so on. A dirt-cheap (production wise) phone will be almost as big a hit as an "iPhone killer".

Devil in these details: How will ads be presented? In the iPhone format, on the screen of course, possibly annoying the h*** out of you while you are trying to do something else. On an N1100 type device, maybe you would hear a 5 second ad at the start of a call you make, and your callers could be subjected to such a thing too. Tying up a real 10-digit phone number costs money. I don't know how much, but it isn't zero. A totally free phone will have an issue with rapidly using up these numbers for (as mentioned above) phones that get stored in a car and rarely used. Maybe such a device will have a two step process to call. (1) call an 800 number (provided by Google) followed by (2) an internal ID to get to the phone. This could tie in with the GrandCentral acquisition (which I'm already using and impressed with). Finally, an "iPhone Killer" phone that is free, has a large display and other state of the art features is going to be treated like any other free thing: carelessly. It will be subject to all sorts of physical abuse and people will be ordering replacements like they are dim-sum. What could have marginally been an ad-supported device could quickly become a sink-hole for any company who tries it.

So, as usual, I think many of they "analysts" have their heads up their a**es and are either dreaming, or engaging in typical stir up rumors to pump up the stock price tactics. Oh they wouldn't do that would they?

Regardless, when the gPhone does arrive, if it arrives, I hope it has a flashlight too!

Amazon MP3 Music Downloads

Amazon MP3 Frequently Asked Questions
Which computer operating systems are compatible with Amazon MP3?

You can buy songs from any computer with a web browser capable of downloading files from the Internet. The MP3 files you purchase will download directly to your computer and are compatible with any system that can read the MP3 music format. The Amazon MP3 Downloader is a tiny application that is required for purchasing and downloading an entire album and is currently available for Mac and Windows operating systems. If you use Linux, you can currently buy individual songs. A Linux version of the Amazon MP3 Downloader is under development, and when released will allow entire album purchases. For more information, please visit the Amazon MP3 Downloader Help page.

Good news everyone.

** UPDATE **

I downloaded two songs using Linux. Works great!

You need a special utility to download an entire album, but that utility is not available for Linux (yet). Promised RSN.

Someone somewhere asked hadn't Amazon figured out how to create zip files yet. Possibly they don't want to count on users being able to deal with them and are rolling whatever file packaging they are going to do into a "foolproof" interface they supply. If that's all that's going on, it shouldn't take long. One less proprietary OS dependency for me (I've bought music through iTunes, but use Linux software to serve and play them).

Get with the program Apple! Don't become just another Microsoft mini-me! (Lock-in)

Memo: Microsoft threatened to shut down Mac Office

No surprise here:

March 05, 2007 (Computerworld) -- Microsoft Corp. threatened to dump the Macintosh version of Office 10 years ago during talks with Apple Inc. because the move would "do a great deal of harm" to its rival, according to a memo made public in a recently-settled antitrust case.

The 1997 memo from Ben Waldman, at the time the head of Microsoft's Macintosh development group, to then-CEO Bill Gates, urged Mac Office 97's release. The suite, which in June 1997 had not yet reached beta, was eventually released as Office 98 in March 1998.

But Waldman understood that the next Mac Office was a stick that could be used against Apple. "The threat to cancel Mac Office 97 is certainly the strongest bargaining point we have, as doing so will do a great deal of harm to Apple immediately. I also think that Apple is taking this threat pretty seriously," Waldman said in his e-mail to Gates.

Do we want Mac in the enterprise when we have Linux?

"Larry Dignan recently posted a piece on Mac in the enterprise (The eternal question: Can Apple go enterprise?). I think a better question is actually why we would want Apple to bother with the enterprise when we have Linux? This assumes, of course, that you're in the market for a Windows alternative. However, Apple has done such an incredibly nice job moving into the world of consumer electronics that I say, 'Let them stay there!'"

Apple - Support - Discussions - MacBook Close and shut down .

Every now and then I take a look at the Apple discussion boards to see if there are any major problems affecting Apple users. I concluded long ago that the most common problem for these things, particularly laptops is overheating. For some reason, even though there are all sorts of failsafe mechanisms both hardware and software to deal with an overheating processor, nonetheless, what often seems to happen is the processor itself, after screaming for help in various ways, does all it can do in the realm of self preservation and just stops.

One can only assume after all the hand waving and shrugs from people who claim to work for Apple that much of this is totally beyond their control, it ain't your friendly Apple COMPUTER company any more you know.

But this visit to the Apple discussion forum took me to a post for someone who WANTS his computer to just suddenly stop. Apparently this guy has never used a computer of any kind before and expects to just turn the thing off like a TV set. Well, that WOULD be nice wouldn't it, but the notion of a purely "appliance" PC has never had enough traction for a successful implementation, even though some have tried.

More surprising, Apple employees missing in action on this discussion forum. Sometimes they seem to monitor the thing and sometimes they don't, although they seem to monitor quite carefully for disparaging remarks about Apple, while ignoring actual customer problems. But in this case, even other helpful Apple users seem to be ignoring this quite easy to answer question. Either that, of Apple users have become more computer illiterate than ever. Has the forum become so useless that the guru users have stopped visiting it?

I'm still quite sure that in spite of strong laptop sales, all the DOA and seriously messed up systems that Apple is shipping will cost them mind share sooner or later. I think laptops sales are strong for everyone making computers as more people switch to laptops from desktops, and with much higher margins on laptops this is good for everyone's bottom line. Yes, quite a few more people are buying Apple computers to run Windows, but this is will be a short lived phenomena if many of those people have bad experiences compared with earlier experiences with Dell and Compaq etc.

Anyway, I wrote and explanation for why computers don't shut down instantly. An Apple person should have been on staff to do something as simple as that... heck you could almost automate the process. Maybe one day soon there will be computers that can be just shut off, by under-the-covers elimination of the distinction between shut-down and sleep modes for example, but that's another story.

My-ESM Research - iPhone margins smaller than reported, claims analyst

"Apple hasn't invented anything really new here. Multi-touch already existed; Apple did not invent it. What they have done is what they are famous for -- they have improved something. The touch-gesture vocabulary, the excellent integration of touch into every aspect of the iPhone's operation, and the overall simplicity of operation is what is really new. And it is very, very good!"

Apple - Thoughts on Music

"In 2006, under 2 billion DRM-protected songs were sold worldwide by online stores, while over 20 billion songs were sold completely DRM-free and unprotected on CDs by the music companies themselves. The music companies sell the vast majority of their music DRM-free, and show no signs of changing this behavior, since the overwhelming majority of their revenues depend on selling CDs which must play in CD players that support no DRM system."

Apple Fixes First Flaw From 'Month Of Apple Bugs' - News by InformationWeek

"A day after LMH unveiled the QuickTime flaw, a Mac developer posted his own patch as part of a response to the bug-a-day project. Landon Fuller, who works on the DarwinPorts project, said he stepped in as 'part brain exercise, part public service.' So far, he and other researchers have published fixes for 20 of the 23 bugs listed on the Month of Apple Bugs site. Earlier this month, Apple declined to confirm any of the Month of Apple Bugs vulnerabilities and only issued a standard statement saying, 'Apple takes security very seriously and has a great track record of addressing potential vulnerabilities before they can affect users. We always welcome feedback on how to improve security on the Mac.'"

Closed, secretive, non-responsive, Apple-Microsoft II?

Apple: Computers Are Sooo Last Year - Forbes.com

"'Outside PCs, I think the company is, or has the potential to become, dominant. The PC market is growing slowly, and Intel-based Mac sales have hit a wall, unfortunately for investors,' Seyrafi says. 'Apple just has a much stronger position with consumer appliances than they do with computers.'"

Analysis: iPhone a 'wake-up call' for the industry

I'm glad they put that in quotes.

According to figures quoted by Steve Jobs during his keynote, 957 million mobile phones were sold in the U.S. last year. (That compares to 209 million PCs.) Just a 1 percent market share would mean selling around 10 million units, the Apple CEO figures—and that happens to be Apple’s goal for 2008.

But get this:

While it will be some time before the full effects of the iPhone will be felt, Apple has strong feelings on what its impact will be. “It will do for the phone market what the Mac did for personal computers,” Joswiak said.

Uh... and what exactly is that? This is one of the few times when I think the acronym "ROFL" might be appropriate.

I'm just about the only person I know who uses an Apple computer and I'm sick and tired of the fact that it is easier to use, more reliable (etc. etc. etc) getting absolutely no traction from my Windows using friends. If a Microsoft representative came to their homes to personally tread on their private parts they'd have no problem paying for the experience.

Apple "addicts" or "Mac Addicts", as they call themselves have true brand loyalty. But most Windows users are oblivious to what brand of anything they are using. It's "just a PC" and for most people it will be "just a cell phone", "just a music player", and so on.

One Slashdotter today referred to the US as the "third world of electronic gadgets". Do most Americans even know this?

What would be great for Apple at this point would be some new wave of American isolationism (not out of the question that this could happen, but I wouldn't place a large wager just yet): "Samsung, Nokia, LG, Sony and on and on, you guys all go experiment on the Asian and European market. Once you get something that works, bring it over here and we'll slap an Apple logo on it."

That must be the fantasyland (pun intended) that Apple is moving into. And once 2008 comes along and they've captured ONE PERCENT of the cell phone market... what next? Refrigerators? Window unit air conditioners? HEY! Office furniture! No wait, that's too limiting, HOME furniture! Your imagination is the limit.

Never mind the fact that there most certainly is going to be a tech retrenchment soon, and based on the "wonders" from CES, VERY soon, I think it's time for some mergers. Didn't someone let slip a joke about an Apple/Google merger? I think it needs to become non-joking material.

The most versatile company in America right now is (drum-roll, and in spite of my, um, non-fan status) Microsoft. Maybe this is Apple's attempt to diversify better too, but frankly, I don't think they are that well positioned. As dominators of only one market (online music) which has hardly gotten off the ground yet (really, when you look at the numbers it's peanuts) they are not in the same league with Microsoft. Microsoft is diversifying from controlling both the Home and Office software market to getting into portable devices (poorly at the moment) entertainment equipment (XBox is at least viable as a profit center), they compete in the online service and advertising business with Google, Yahoo, etc., and they claim to be moving into business consulting and a few other things (although I have my doubts still that they have the stomach for it). No American company is going to make hardware PERIOD. Intel and IBM have nice businesses designing chips, and AMD isn't going anywhere for a while, but in terms of end user products, we just slap the label on the box, uh, I mean we ask the nice people in Singapore to do that for us before they ship it to the customer.

So Apple, is a BRAND, and name recognition is a good thing. The Apple brand is a rising star as is Google, while a lot of older brands are sinking or stagnating. Marrying off one of these rising stars with a company that is otherwise in decent health could have some great synergistic effects.

Matchmakers matchmakers make me a match: Let the speculation begin. Who's it going to be? Apple-Yahoo, Google-Apple? Sony could use some diversification too at this point, and IBM... it's been a while since they tried to get into the consumer business, are they over embarrassment about the PC Jr? They could have course OWNED the PC business if they had taken it more seriously, was that failure so colossal that they can never think of the possibility again? A tech retrenchment might make strange bedfellows.

After all, the most fun part of the roller coaster ride is that big drop. Everyone hold your hands up and start screaming!

Update: I forgot to mention... some say that the BIG news today from Apple was their name change, from Apple Computer Inc. to just Apple Inc. I tend to agree. Maybe I should have just titled this post that way, but I got such a jolt from the two quotes in the Yahoo article that I couldn't stop myself from just linking it.

I even went over to one of the Apple forums to throw cold water on the iPhone thing and found them already shivering over the name change. Oh yea, more on names:

*here*

Back to you, Steve

Meanwhile, Steve is now in deeper than ever. He no longer is being portrayed as ignorant, he apparently had a direct hand in backdating, and - worst of all - the company apparently faked a board meeting to justify the process.

Hoh boy...

Meanwhile

Sponging off the same title, I wonder what if anything Apple will have in response to the new Windows home server:

*link*

Gates even addresses the Apple weakness here:

*link*

From the video... the good news is that the home server (I wonder what it will cost?) doesn't exactly seem to require Windows, on the other hand the set-up demo all seemed to use a Windows client application, there were other bits (like accessing it remotely) that could be done with a web interface (surely they wouldn't require IE would they?). The Q&A about Apple and Linux compatibility went so fast I thought maybe they sped up that part of the video, but the answer seemed to be in the affirmative.

Yes, it is just SMB, disappointing, but what else could they have done? Well, other than fully documenting it, eliminating any secret back-doors, nailing down some things about timestamp handling, you know... that sort of thing.

I still prefer the idea of some sort of generic box to do this sort of thing, but hey, if it will make life easier for all the Windows users I know who can't spell the word "backup" then I'm all for it.

World Domination 201

Don't know when this was actually written, but I just got the link from Slashdot. Good analysis all in all...

Good News:

Just as Windows 3.1 (and even Windows 95) ran for years with 16 bit device drivers dating back to DOS, native 64 bit drivers for Windows-64 will be few and far between for years to come.

MacOS X is intentionally restricted to a limited set of hardware even on 32-bit systems, because Apple can't support anything close to the full range of PC hardware either. Tackling generic PC hardware is a step they've explicitly avoided taking, precisely to avoid the hardware support issue.

On the other hand, the Linux community has spent fifteen years expanding our support for PC hardware, and our insistence on open source drivers means that the vast majority of the hardware we support is approximately as well supported on x86-64 as on x86-32. Our platform-specific problems are minor tuning issues, not sealed black boxes that stop working without explanation. Our hardware support isn't perfect, but it's manageable. For the other two platforms, this issue is their Achilles heel.

and listed under "Bad News" for some reason:

More recently, Intel decided to be a good guy, releasing an open source the driver for their newest graphics chipset before the hardware even shipped. Intel proved it was serious by hiring Keith Packard and Dirk Hohndel to shephard the new driver into X.org and Mesa

And under "What Linux needs to win", an item Steve Jobs seems clueless about:

Linux needs a Wine 1.0 release, installed and preconfigured on desktop distributions. The two most important features of Wine 1.0 have to be that (a) it runs legacy Windows-32 binaries correctly, and (b) it does not emulate Windows-64, its direct competitor!

If that second "feature" seems odd, heed the lesson of OS/2. That operating system bundled a Windows emulator that worked sufficiently well for independent software vendors to ignore native OS/2 support. Vendors wrote for Windows, trusting that the emulator would cover their OS/2 customers.[28] As a result, OS/2 was starved of even the Macintosh's also-ran level of native application support, and eventually withered on the vine. This is not the fate we want for Linux.

Under "Surviving the Killer App" the paper wades into my favorite prediction:

So the good news is actually the possibility that in a Webbed world the operating-system-specific killer app may be a thing of the past. It would be unwise to count on this, however, so it's worth asking what we can do if yet another killer app wades ashore with a case of nuclear halitosis and a yen to destroy Tokyo.

Under "Enabling Pre Installs":

We in the open-source community persist in screwing this up. Preinstalled systems come with defaults for everything, even user accounts. Knoppix can boot from CD straight to the desktop. But modern installers still play 20 questions because we can't imagine them not doing so.[31]

We also persist in designing in the most obnoxious thing an installer can do, which is to spend several minutes processing or copying files and then ask more questions afterwards. This forces the user to babysit the entire install, which is annoying.

AMEN to that!

But I've noticed Debian getting better, and I suspect the others are too. Meanwhile, the last few times I installed Windows (which was in the Windows 2000 era) it had actually gotten harder to install, often hanging on something as simple as mouse or modem detection. Since then I've helped novices over the phone who were also stuck on something that should have been simple to deal with but was not due to the sheer arrogance of Microsoft's attitude toward users.

The most aggravating thing for me about many Linux installers (but particularly Debian) is that there seems to be only about two video card in the universe that they can detect and produce a working "X" configuration file for without some manual tinkering. I get so pissed when I am asked several questions about screen resolution and fonts, only to have to go edit the file manually, and then, to find that even my answers to the questions haven't been incorporated into the file. Clearly, people have been turning in their homework unfinished, but how does this slop get into the final release? It would be much better, and certainly more honest to have a message pop up:

This Installer doesn't have a clue what to do about your video configuration. Here is the file you need to go edit:..... Best of luck!

It could even pop you into an edit session right then and there where at least I've now pretty much memorized the dozen or so characters I need to type to get it all working.

But then, as I mentioned I've had Windows botch my video settings from time to time too. Unfortunately for us Linux proponents, Windows gets it right most of the time if only by using some generic VESA settings and leaving you in some not-so-hot graphics mode that will at least work until you get the right driver installed, etc.

Why Linux can't do likewise I don't know.

Continuing...

The way to get Linux preinstalls starts with this: bypass the vendors Microsoft has under its thumb, and buy from the vendors that specialize in Linux. If only small vendors are willing to do this, they will become large vendors when they get enough sales volume. Establish that there is a market for preinstalled Linux systems, and that some companies can be successful selling them (not just as a Wal-mart style sideline but as their core business), and larger vendors will take notice.

Which is just what I've done. I have a Samsung printer (under $100) that works beautifully, ditto Canon scanner, Olympus and Pentax cameras, external USB devices of several kinds that all "just work"and I sneer and my Windows-using friends who still plug USB devices into their machines with their eyes closed (and with good reason).

The rest of the document is good... no silver bullet answers though. I'm cautiously optimistic, thinking that while things aren't rosy for Linux, they certainly aren't shoe-in victories for Microsoft or Apple either.

Comoditization remains our best friend. As we age, we are less likely to crave the latest car, the greatest stereo system, the widest screen TV. Even us "geeks" get to a point of just wanting something basic that works, and there are more and more such people out there every day. Furthermore, us unwashed masses are not Microsoft's target market, and certainly not Apple's. If Google doesn't take over the world, there is plenty of room for a basic desktop system that will. As long as it comes in around $300.

Terra Soft moves past Apple with first Cell-based supercomputing cluster

Staats also says that there's still a future for PowerPC-based workstations, even with Apple out of the market. "IBM offers the p5 185. While showcased as a server, it works well as a workstation. Genesi has announced a dual 970 workstation. With the lower wattage 970s from IBM and incredible, new CPUs coming from PA Semi in 2007, the potential for Power to play in multiple arenas is only growing."

Apple updates strengthen wireless security

You remember, the exploit that wasn't an exploit. Now fixed. Makes perfect sense to Macheads.

Apple Spin Machine Melts Down

PBS | I, Cringely . July 14, 2005 - More Shoes

It's funny to watch Apple fans, and just plain old Apple watchers try to spin the latest Apple "switch" as some brilliant strategy.

It's not as though Apple has always got it right. They have made their share of mistakes with or without Steve Jobs at the helm.

Oh, and while we are at it, why do they keep bringing up Job's stay at Next? Oh, Steve went off and did more brilliant things while Apple foundered on its own. I've never laid eyes on a Next computer or talked to anyone who ran the OS. It's a minor footnote in computing history. A trivia question.

So, what's all this shoe fetishism from Cringely?:

"IBM's G5 dual cores look easily comparable to Intel's Pentium Ds, both in terms of computing power and electrical power consumption. So what's really up?"

Job's goofed, bigtime. That's what's up. "i" goes on to say that well Apple will get a chance to use these processors anyway. But who will want to buy one from Apple? Benchmarks show that it is the ham-handed Apple version of Unix that slows down their systems the most, not the hardware. Which is why people were buying Apple servers and running Linux on it to get the best performance: (Link) but now I question whether anyone would even bother with high end Apple hardware at a point where future support is in doubt. Especially when there are alternatives (Link, Link)

"This third shoe is Apple's closeout sale on the iPod Photo, which is suddenly and inexplicably $150-off all over town. Get ready for the Video iPod, which will presumably be available from more than just Apple. HP is already on board and these clues suggest Intel is likely there, too."

How about as an alternate explanation the fact that nobody wants to pay a lot of money to view video on something that needs to include a magnifying glass? Will Apple have a monopoly on Intel hardware used for digital media? Only if you get your news from Bizarro Superman comics. Apple did well with iTunes. But my Windows friends who tried them were not all that impressed. We all postulated that people would switch from PCs to Apple computers when they got an iPod, but I haven't seen all that many examples of that actually happening. Anybody who can put up with Windows will also put up with a less stylish media player that works with Windows (and is cheaper).

And then the "i-ster" wanders off into retinal scan video displays for $4000. OK well, Apple can sow that market up and still go out of business. Hey *I* was an iTunes user too. I have one of the low end iPods (around here somewhere) and have downloaded maybe $100 of music. But I don't trust Apple (even less now) and have converted all of those tunes to MP3. In every case I wish I had taken the time (and saved the money) and just got the CD. I think others will come to that conclusion too after the fad is over. If I am going to PAY for downloading digital content then I want it unencumbered. When I run my "Software Update" on my Apple computer the thing that gets updated the most often are the media programs (iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie) and the only one of these I use is iTunes. What are the updates, bug fixes, or more restrictive use allowances? You guess. (hint: Bug fixes don't require to accept the usage agreement again). But I'd switch to a native XMMS in a minute, or when I switch back to Linux I'll be using that anyway.

The party is over for Apple. They made a few lucky moves that worked out for them and they had a fairly reliable ally in IBM. Now they are in shark territory with Intel, Dell, Microsoft and others willing to sacrifice good technology for bigger sales figures. Apple hasn't dominated in this arena and isn't likely to start now.

You should have stayed pure Apple, now you have sullied your reputation. Or should I have said Sculleyed? I wonder what he is up to (Link)? Maybe they should bring him back to "save Apple" again. It seems to need saving on a regular basis.

Apple to switch to Intel chips starting in '06-CNET - Yahoo! News

Apple to switch to Intel chips starting in '06-CNET - Yahoo! News

Funy how the bloggers are all reporting this same rumor over and over AND indicating that it seems ever more likely, but when you read the base article it all goes back to CNet. Boy are they going to have a big black eye if this is wrong... and Apple will have one if it's right.

Powerbook G5 Next Tuesday? : Gizmodo

Powerbook G5 Next Tuesday? : Gizmodo: "There is every reason in the world that this could be fake, but it won’t hurt to go ahead and put those Powerbooks on eBay."
Um, yeah sure. Battery life is expected to be on the order of 45 seconds. Apple recommends connecting the back of the Powerbook to a vacuum cleaner to get enough airflow to avoid the processor melting throught the bottom of the unit. Pricing starts at $9599.

Update: Little did I know!