Vista full of "Craplets" | Apple takes advantage

I guess PCs come with a lot of preinstalled "crapware" these days. It's crapware because it's crippled tease software that must be purchased to unlock the full capabilities of the software. Here's another reason why PCs just plain suck...they basically suck your will to live in more ways than one.

MacNN | "Craplets" may affect Vista experience:

Microsoft is worried that unwanted software bundles could affect the success of Windows Vista, according to a senior Microsoft executive.

Apple has taken full advantage with a new ad:

http://www.apple.com/getamac/

Is Vista a bomb or a hit???

Depending on which media outlet you believe, Vista is either doing poorly or doing so well that it's hurting OS X sales:

MacNN | Vista awareness doing little for sales:

"Vista promised better performance, reliability, security, and a revolutionary user interface - but it appears consumers looking to upgrade are not ready to buy into the promise," said Harris VP Milton Ellis.

Macworld: News: Vista taking a nibble out of Apple in OS wars?:

Windows Vista more than doubled its market share in March from the prior month, while the share of computers running Mac OS X fell for the first time in nine months, according to statistics released Thursday by market research firm Net Applications. [original source: Computerworld]

I think that CW is primarily a PC-related outlet, so maybe they have an axe to grind against Apple. No matter what, MS is still following Apple's lead in every way. So for a company that's falling further behind MS, Apple sure is dictating how the market goes:

Microsoft changes tune on selling DRM-free songs - Yahoo! News:

Following digital music pioneer Apple's lead yet again, Microsoft said this week it will soon sell digital music online without DRM (digital rights management) protection.

MS always just responding to Apple

MacNN | MS aims at iPhone-like browsing:

Microsoft today issued a response to the iPhone's mobile version of Safari with Deepfish, the codename for a new technology designed for Windows Mobile 5 or 6 smartphones to provide a more desktop-like web browser experience.

Here we go again. MS thinks Apple's iPhone is a mistake, but yet we see this move???

And just the other day, MS was bragging about how much safer Vista is than OS X and other UNIX-flavored OSes. Now, we see this:

Microsoft Investigating Windows Zero-Day Bug - Yahoo! News:

Microsoft Corp. has confirmed a new Windows zero-day bug that is already being targeted by attackers.

And this:

Microsoft: Attacks on Windows flaw rise - Yahoo! News:

SEATTLE - Hackers stepped up attacks Friday on computers running some versions of Windows, a day after Microsoft disclosed a hole related to the mouse cursor. Microsoft Corp. sent out a security advisory Thursday warning customers that a vulnerability in ".ani" files — used to change the cursor into an hourglass while a program works, or into a dancing animal or other animation on specially designed Web sites — was allowing hackers to break into computers and install malicious software.

The folks at MS are either really stupid or really bad liars. Or both...

Redmond logic: Vista more secure than OS X!

Redmond logic: Vista more secure than OS X - Mac software - Macworld UK:

A Microsoft executive this week claimed Windows Vista's first 90 days was a huge security success when compared to the opening three months of Windows XP, the current Apple Mac OS X, and three flavours of Linux.

Right...and monkeys might fly out of my butt too.

So long dot Mac!

Well, I'm outta here! It was a $99 payment one year ago to Apple that established me as a .Mac member; it had lots of promise: it was going to sync everything perfectly--no more clutter. It was to be my online portal to the world, hosting websites, pictures, movies. etc. It didn't live up to the hype, however. I had a bunch of problems initially.

And for less than the same price, I just bought a web hosting plan that gives me 400 GB of storage, 8 domains, 3 domain names, 2500 GB of monthly transfer, mega-email accounts, etc., etc., which so far is very fast at web hosting compared to .Mac:

ixwebhosting!

That same $100 bought me a whopping, underwhelming, and pathetic 1 GB of annual storage with .Mac with a max transfer of 10 GB/month, and that includes your email account! Google's Gmail gives you 2 GB for free, and many other online outfits are just as generous!

With Apple, you're paying for the brand; it's a lot like buying a Rolls-Royce over a pick-up truck. And I'm the first to tout Apple's products, because I love almost everything they've dreamed up. However, .Mac is sick and needs to die; I can't believe it's still alive. They're going to need to overhaul it if they want it to hang around, but I suppose there are some users out there not willing to dig deeper to save money.

One redeeming .Mac feature (that wouldn't work for me initially) is the syncing of all your data between two or more Macs. There are ways around this if you're careful; Apple even gives some clues here on how you can do it.

And a $50 commercial app called SyncTogether does most of what .Mac syncing can do, except for keychains (you'll have to be careful and do these manually).

It's been real, and it's been fun...but it has sucked!

Microshaft = Xerxes (The REAL battle of 300!)

The rantings of Clinton Forbes:

Today a former Microsoft employee, a very disgruntled former employee, revealed to Wired Magazine why the company encountered such a large number of problems delivering their latest operating-system release - Apple Computer was to blame.

And later on, the disgruntled MS employee stated:

Gates employed an 'industry research' firm, a company specializing in corporate espionage, to steal the source code of Apple's work-in-progress, OS X version 10.2. He planned to beat Apple to market with Apple's own new features. It was a very strange plan considering that Microsoft already owned over 90% of the desktop market.

How ironic! MS stealing ideas (even code) from Apple?? No way! Not MS! But wait, there's more!

Macworld: News: Ballmer questions business strategy of Google:

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer criticized rival Google, saying it is devoted primarily to ad-supported search while Microsoft has reinvented itself many times over.

So here we have that dolt Ballmer publicly putting down other companies, like Apple and Google, that are kicking his company's butt at certain aspects within the tech industry. No surprise there. But, just as Ballmer does this (as one might expect), he's conspiring to destroy the competition through bribery. I guess MS hasn't learned that its Mafioso tactics aren't very sublte:

Microsoft promises rewards for search engine use - Yahoo! News:

In a move intended to wrest users from rival search engines such as market-dominating Google, Microsoft will give business customers service or training credits based on how much employees use Live Search.

Well, dumpy ol' Ballmer and Gates have a reason to worry. They will NOT wrestle control away from Google (nor Apple), because they're only capable of copying and stealing the technology invented by others. Here's an example of how they're losing the battle:

US university dumps Windows to go all Mac - Mac - Macworld UK:

Wilkes University announced on Wednesday that it has pulled the plug on PCs in favour of Macs, saying the move - which actually began last year - will save the Pennsylvania liberal arts college more than $150,000 while letting students and faculty continue to run Windows applications.

So, I think companies like Apple and Google are playing the part of the Spartans and King Leonidas to Microsoft's Xerxes of Persia. The 300 Spartans stood up to Xerxes at Thermopylae and eventually lost, after taking a lot of Persians with them. But in the long run, they kicked Xerxes' butt. His butt was too big for his own breeches! Sounds like Ballmer...I mean Microsoft...I mean Xerxes!

Finder crashing when using contextual menu

I was having this bizarre, intermittent Finder crash when control-clicking to bring up a contextual menu. It turns out that the StuffitCM was the problem.

MacFixItForums:

Stuffit contextual menu plugins are known to cause problems like this. Go to /Library/Contextual Menu Items and move any Stuffit plugins to the desktop. If the problem is solved, trash the plugin. If you don't have any Stuffit plugins, experiment with the ones that are there.

And later on that page, I found a fixed plugin:

ftp://ftp.smithmicro.com/stuffit/stuffitcm.plugin.zip

MS continues its anti-competitive practices

MacNN | Mac users pay more, MS blames security:

Microsoft has ensured that Mac owners will pay a premium for using its Vista operating system in a virtualized environment -- such as Parallels Desktop -- due to a portion of the Redmond-based company's license agreement forbidding such action.

Does this garbage really surprise anyone? So Macs can now run Windows, huh? Well, you should have known M$ would find a way to dig under the hood and make it tough. The goal? To harm the rival it always steals ideas from, of course. What "security" problems could Macs possibly pose to WIndows, and vice-versa?

Need more proof on M$ plans to take over the electronic world? Check this TechWeb article on Yahoo!:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/cmp/20070225/tc_cmp/197008516

In a direct challenge to Adobe, Microsoft Corp. said on Friday that three major news publishers -- Associated Newspapers Ltd., Forbes Inc. and Hearst Corp. -- are planning to develop their own digital reader applications using Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) display technology.

MS emails show jealousy over OS X Tiger

Apparently, Microsoft KNOWS how pathetically behind Apple they ALWAYS are in terms of innovation. Check this link to see what I mean:

Emails show MS experienced OS X Tiger envy

For my other views on Micro-sloth, check these previous posts:

Vista fashizzle

Steve Balmer

M$ laptop giveaway

Window's chief: "I'd buy a Mac..."

Vista ain't the fashizzle

Here we have an article where Bill Gates (a.k.a. Damien) attempts to actually convince his sheep that the OS X-look-alike, Vista, is safer than OS X:

"Nowadays, security guys break the Mac every single day. Every single day, they come out with a total exploit, your machine can be taken over totally. I dare anybody to do that once a month on the Windows machine," Gates claims.

The full load of BS from the MS founder can be read here at MSNBC. I'm sure his nose grew about 12 feet by the time he left the interview.

Then comes the truth, of course. The Mac is making inroads against Microsoft, gaining a few percentage points of market share. Bill Gates would normally never address Apple; now he has to, because Apple has become a threat. Computer users are more savvy these days, and they're aware of the open plagiarizing M$ has perpetrated against Apple; OS X has had these "new, innovative features" for years, but true to form, M$ slaps its label on the technology and acts like it just "innovated" all the new, wonderful technologies. Fortunately, M$ always leaves out one key component when photocopying...quality is an afterthought. Apparently, that's still the case. Read on.

And even more truth. A Mac user bought and installed Vista and seemingly regretted that decision:

The online sale went fine and I was issued a license key for my second machine. The problem was that the key didn't work. I re-entered and double-checked it at length with no luck. Time to go to support. In the email I received it had a web link to follow if you need help, so I clicked. It goes to a non-existant page at microsoft.com, and still does today.

Steve Ballmer is an idiot

Continuing in his usual path of lying, copycat, bumble-fumble stupidity, Microsoft douche bag Steve Balmer came out officially against an Apple product--the new iPhone. No, say it ain't so! This doofus wouldn't have a product if Apple hadn't been there for him to pirate in the early days of M$ Windows. As a matter of fact, M$ hates every Apple product that they openly plagiarize.

And for a company that sells Windbloze for as much as his does, he has a lot of room to talk about the iPhone in terms of price. The fact he leaves out in his interview is that the iPhone is MORE than just a phone, so it's going to sell great! I'm sure he isn't going to be happy about it, since Apple is out-innovating Microsoft any day of the week.

How easy is it to hack into someone's Mac?

As it turns out, it's entirely possible to hack into a VERY secured Mac, even if it has an open firmware password established. However, it would take an extremely savvy thief to know about this. Best thing to do is STILL use OFPW, and be certain to secure your Mac physically too!

Tech Press » How to Hack a Tiger Admin Account:

If the person has PHYSICAL access to the machine, then an open-firmware password will do little to prevent them from gaining access — you can disable the open-firmware password by adding/removing a significant amount of RAM, then immediately zapping the PRAM upon the next boot. That procedure removes the open-firmware password.

The machine needs to be locked down physically as well as have software security measures in place in order to thwart potential malicious users.

iPhone: iPod going bye-bye?

Once the storage comes up a bit on the new iPhone, why would anyone pay basically the same for an iPod when they can have all that’s in the iPhone and still retain iPod functionality? Apple was very smart to do this. Everyone is hooked on iPods, and folks will now see this as the next step towards being rid of separate PDAs, phones, mp3 players, etc.

I think you’re going to see other phone service providers (i.e., Alltel, Sprint, etc.) start tap dancing soon for a piece of this, or I think their business will be hurt if they don’t.

The first lawsuit has already been filed!

We'll see what happens with the new AppleTV product; I've been saying this would happen for years (i.e., the amalgamation of all "tele-" products in one unit). Soon, the TV, receiver, computer, phone, video, etc. will all be part of one unit, or at least networked and interoperable in the home. Visits to the video store (or even renting through Netflix) will be a thing of the past; video purchases and rentals will all be done "on-line" much the same way music is now bought. This is really already happening on a small scale.

Mail.app suddenly crashing on open

A bizarre, inexplicable problem hit me this morning. I suddenly had no Mail.app. Everything appeared fine, and I even managed to answer one email. The rest of my emails gave me some message about needing to be downloaded from the server (something I have never seen before). I did some digging and found this awesome trick to use when encountering similar Mail.app problems.

Basically, find:

~/Library/Mail/Envelope Index

Rename it to:

~/Library/Mail/Envelope Index.bak

Restart Mail and let it reload your messages. All was fine after that!

M$ Laptop Giveaway - Bribery or Feedback?

Microsoft Says No Favorable Coverage Expected In Laptop Giveaway:

Microsoft and Advanced Micro Devices sent expensive laptops as gifts to select bloggers who review technology as part of an effort to solicit "valuable feedback" from the influential writers in the blogosphere, not to encourage favorable coverage, Microsoft says.

If that's true then why not give the laptops to Vista beta testers? Simple. Because bloggers have more influence on public opinion. If Microsoft would just make a quality (original) OS, they wouldn't need to rely on bribery for positive press.

The dichotomy of iTune's success

Clearly, Apple has garnered many enemies over the last several years. At one time (around 1996 or 97), Apple was written off as a company soon to perish. However, Steve Jobs regained control of the company he founded and turned it around. Out were the old beige systems and in came the colorful iMacs--a great-selling hit. Then came the innovative OS X, grounded in the UNIX-based NeXT OS that Jobs once touted as the NeXT CEO. Daring, new systems and laptops appeared--some bombed and some took off. Then came the iPod, which together with iTunes (and its eventual sidekick, iTMS) revolutionized the way consumers bought music, regardless of the bitterness expressed by the old-guard, clueless record corporations.

Microsoft and others were left reeling; no longer could the competition continue to merely copy Apple, because the innovations were coming as fast as lightening-quick sucker punches. Vista is already being described as a bomb; and surprise, its graphics borrow heavily from the GUI of OS X, which has been around since 2000. Microsoft is truly an example of a giant that went to sleep after it made good business decisions; it has never made good technology decisions.

A few weeks ago, several news articles appeared that described "plummeting" sales on iTMS. The press has long had this obsession with harming Apple (link: Apple Death Knell Counter), for some reason:

Apple iTunes Sales Take a Nose Dive

Apple iTunes sales plummet 65%

Apple ITunes Sales Slid in First Half, Forrester Says

Apple responded immediately:

Apple Dismisses 'iTunes Slump' as Silly Claims

Now (as I can personally attest to the Christmas day sluggishness), we see this story:

Holiday demand overwhelms iTunes' ability to download

So which is it, media? The press has its enemies, and its tech enemy is Apple for some bizarre reason.

Windows chief: 'I would buy a Mac if I didn't work for Microsoft'

Windows development chief: 'I would buy a Mac if I didn't work for Microsoft':

Longtime Windows development chief James Allchin wrote in a January 2004 e-mail to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and company co-founder Bill Gates that the software vendor had "lost sight" of customers' needs and said he would buy a Mac if he wasn't working for Microsoft.

In the same article, Allchin tells MS employees to dump incriminating emails. This proves what Mac users have known about MS all along: it's a monopolistic giant that seeks to bury competition instead of compete on the basis of product strength. They can't compete on product strength, because their products suck. Even this senior MS chief here wants a MACINTOSH!!!

See what the Installer will install

Macworld has a great tip on how to see what a developer installs on your system if they use the Apple installer.

Quite simply, just hit Command-I at the main dialog to see a list, or use the File menu.

Good Blogger troubleshooting stuff...

Every now and then, something weird will happen to my blog. For instance, the other day I added a post to a blog and the sidebar immediately dropped to the bottom of the page. This sort of thing has transpired before, but the fixes I had previously identified were ineffective.

So I did some digging around through Blogger's Help function and found some great resources that helped me solve the problem.

The Google Group for Blogger Help is really great. This group led me to another great help site -> The Real Blogger Status.

Open Unix manual pages in OS X 10.4's Preview

Here's a neat article on opening up man pages using the Preview application.