So why not use a different app store then?

Exactly, there are plenty of ways to get software on a Mac.

Mac App Store is one, and it's required if you want to use iCloud (for security reasons - detailed below).

But there's also Valve's Steam (a good way for games), and you can always roll your own web store - it doesn't take much to accept Paypal or if you are a business, to get Amazon Payments or Google Wallet.

A lot of developers that started with iOS migrated to the MAS when they port their IOS apps to OS X - you find a lot iOS games "enhanced" for the Mac. Cross-platform games usually are on Steam, and there are few on both. Steam is nice, though it limits you to one user at a time, while MAS lets you have 5 copies on 5 different PCs at once. Useful if you want a quick multiplayer without having to have 5 copies (especially in a family setting).

Regarding MAS and iCloud, well, you have to hark back to the bad old days of Microsoft office viruses - they'd infect Microsoft office's default template files and then subsequently infect every document since then. Well, you can imagine one using a variety of exploits that infect an entire computer. Use something like iCloud and now the attack's persistent - you reformat the computer, reinstall the app, and boom, you're infected again (thanks cloud!). So Apple made sandboxing a requirement for the MAS, and use that with iCloud mean well, if that happens, damage is limited to within the sandbox. So you're isolating the rest of the computer from the infection target (since the sandbox keeps the infection to a small area) in case a persistent piece of malware tries to remain in that way.

Without sandboxing, a cloud storage account could prove very interesting. I'm actually surprised we're not seeing viruses try to persist using Windows Explorer vulnerabilities and say, DropBox. (Remember the ones involving specially constructed image files? Imaging putting one of those in DropBox, and now when you browse to it, your PC gets infected. And the virus makes sure to keep a compromised image there so even if you wipe and reinstall, you install dropbox and boom, infected again.)

SINCE Australis? Nothing major. In a recent version they changed the right click context menu to include icons for reload/back/forward, which irritated me - change for the sake of change. (Also the keyboard shortcut for Private Browsing no longer works - might be a plugin? Not sure.)

Things like that seem little but when you've been using Firefox for years - which I have, every day, for work - little changes like that mean the platform loses a lot of stability, which is one of the things that is most important when you're trying to get things done.

For me, it's that autocomplete stopped using the history and started using partial, so if you routinely went to a deep link, it would be suggested and may even be the first suggestion, but it won't autocomplete the entire URL. Just the domain, or one more level, etc.

Really annoying when you routinely have deep URLs and where the upper directories return errors.

Still haven't found a way to undo that change and just have it pull the autocomplete suggestion off the history.

I think I thappened somewhere between 23 and 24. (e.g., if you used to type "www.a" and it would suggest "www.abig.com/long/example/of/a/long/url" as a completion. Now if you type "www.a" it just gives you "www.abig.com/" and the drop down would give you that full link, so you have to type a downarrow too).

There have been many other little UI ding-a-lings that really screw up muscle memory.

The "Bring tab to front" option is also an annoyance - sometimes you want to open a new tab to a site and not use an existing one...Oh yeah, did I mention that usually gets first on the dropdown, so now you have to do two down arrows?

Funny enough, Chrome doesn't seem to break so many UI things every version - things still react the same way they always have.

I would like to see a locking hydraulics/pneumatics system in place, though. Since there is no power, using leverage is only going to get you so far until you tire. You will still tire wearing this, despite the design to make it easy(ish) to move around while wearing it and making it easier to move heavier loads.

Well, the goal is for jobs where you're not moving much (because it's worse to move the thing), but where you're carrying a heavy tool constantly. Perhaps you're using a heavy saw to cut into metal, and it can't be fixed because well, you're cutting through a bulkhead. But you can certainly offset the vast majority of the weight so instead of having to support and carry the saw while using it, the machine does it and the user is only having to expend effort on moving it.

Do it properly and a lot of vibration can be taken up by the system as well (which fatigues people much faster). It can result in an operation that takes 5-6 people many hours to do (because they can only hold the tool up for 15 minutes before they tire) to take less time (perhaps it takes 1-2 hours now) and less people.

And yeah, a locking system would be nice to hold it while switching personnel and all that.

When a customer calls up and says, "Hey, how come this new version of Windows doesn't work with any of my old Windows software?" you can't just tell them "Because our programmers thought it was better to get a fresh start."

"Hey, how come this new version of Mac OS doesn't work with any of my old Mac OS 9 software?", said Mac users in response to Classic support being dropped with the release of Mac OS X 10.5.

"Hey, how come this new version of OS X doesn't work with any of my old PowerPC software?", said Mac users in response to Rosetta being dropped with the release of OS X 10.7.

Both of those are from just the last 7 years, and I wouldn't be surprised if we could rattle off more, both for OS X and iOS. The fact is, you can tell your customers that a fresh start was necessary, but only if it's part of your business. "Windows everywhere" isn't just a marketing phrase: it's their ideology. And if you can't keep it compatible, you can't have it everywhere. That's why Microsoft can't ditch the old as easily (and why Windows 8 was so exciting, even though it ended up being a dud, more or less). Some companies are built around ditching the old when there's something better, and their customers are much more willing to tolerate these sorts of changes since they generally knew what they were getting in for. Some companies are built around compatibility and stability, and their customers are much less willing to accept changes that break things.

No, what happened is Apple and Microsoft went two separate ways.

First off, developers are crap and will take any shortcut they can to get what they want. With that in mind, let's take the scenario of having to rev an OS.

There's two ways to do it - be like Apple and say any program must use the APIs as documented or things will break. So when Apple makes a new OS (this has happened since Classic MacOS), programs that relied on hidden APIs and other stuff? Well no surprise, they broke!

This has carried on through OS X as well - many applications did low-level hooking into the OS (input managers, anyone?) and each new OS revision, things broke because Apple's policy is that unless it's officially documented as part of the API set, you can't rely on it.

Of course, there are times Apple revises an API... or fixes bugs in them.

It's why iOS generally doesn't suffer so much - Apple's approval process generally catches a lot of attempts at using hidden APIs, but it still misses a few.

And hidden APIs are aplenty. Back in the iOS3 days when Voice Control came out, it supported at least 2 completely incompatible APIs, and from what I can tell, it was revised constantly, which is why apps never could use it because it would break often.

Microsoft's stance has been one of compatibility - that no matter what devs did, they could work around it. Well, it results in a lot of hacks in Windows - you still have "Program Manager" (root window), some DLLs have had ordinal entrypoints fixed because people were calling by ordinal instead of name, certain resource DLLs are now hardcoded because developers just couldn't be bothered to get at them the right way.

And you have hard links all over the hard drive because people hardcoded "C:\Documents and Settings" instead of using the proper API call. If you want to see what happens when Microsoft actually tries a fresh start, see Windows Vista. Where UAC introduced unprivileged by default operation (breaking so many apps that assumed users were admins and bombarding them with dozens of elevation dialogs).

Pay attention, naive little brother: A machine with Windows on it costs the same as a machine without windows on it for the same model and specs . . . assuming you can even get a Windows-free version. This is because Microsoft have dictated that it be so. The difference, then, is that in one case you are paying for, and getting, Windows; in the other case you are paying for, but not getting, Windows. That, naive little brother, is the Windows tax.

No, Microsoft has not dictated it so. In fact, they were smacked down for it for forcing OEMs to pay for Windows licenses on machines that didn't ship with Windows. What has happened is that the Windows machine is subsidized.

You know all the crapware that gets preinstalled - from anti-virus to Chrome and many other things? Guess what - those companies paid the OEM to preload the software. It not only offsets the cost of the Windows license, but it often pays part of the profits of the OEM so they can reduce the price of the computer, as well. (Which has an added side effect of letting MORE people buy the machine, so more marketing).

Every piece of preinstalled garbage (other than utilities needed for the machine) is there because someone paid to put it on there.

Linux PCs don't ship with garbage pre-installed, so they suffer because the entire cost of the machine and requisite profits must be borne by the consumer.

I occasionally miss on good/interesting projects simply because they don't manage to reach me through social media or any other means. Kickstarter at this point has a pretty severe discoverability problem, and I feel anything that helps cut through that issue would be a positive development.

No, it is not kickstarter's problem about discoverability. It's the projects problem about marketing. If a project isn't cool enough to be broadcasted everywhere, then there are serious concerns about it. I mean, if it's not cool enough that backers start posting about it everywhere and anywhere (social media, blogs, news sites, etc), then either you hang out with the wrong crowd, or the project may not be as cool as originally envisioned.

Kickstarter is not about "build it and they will come" (in fact, unless you're already established, that will NOT happen). Projects need marketing, and project owners need to find a way to champion their project. If you can't get someone excited about your work, why the hell should I get excited?

I don't feel sorry for those who thought this was seriously secure, and two, who the hell sends naked pictures of themselves and actually thinks other people won't see them? 1999 called and it wants it's noobs back.

What, DRM doesn't work? *gasp*

(Yes, it's a form of DRM).

Of course, I wonder if iOS8 fixed the "bug" in iOS7 that prevented SnapChat from making a note that a screenshot was captured....

Except that in this analogy, low-quality food is free. Restaurants tried to compete by being more "efficient", in other words, lowering quality to make the same money with less customers. But of course all that accomplishes is driving away the remaining diners, since they no longer get a benefit for forking over the cash.

It's no one's fault, really, it's just that newspapers are obsolete.

Low quality food is practically free. It's cheaper to eat at McD's a lot of the time, and it's actually a potentially serious problem because the poor tend to eat there as it's much cheaper. Trying to get your fruits and veggies just costs a heck of a lot more money than the food at a fast-food place.

Eating healthy is a rich man's game - eating low quality unhealthy meals is super easy and super cheap.

And newspapers have been dying since radio and TV. The thing is, there is no more efficient format for covering the news in brief. Pull media like the internet are just awful - it leads to cloistered reading and cloistered thinking because users just don't want to "read the boring stuff". Whereas on a newspaper, you get the world picture.

$DIETY knows how many /. users are completely clueless about what is happening in the world. Ebola doesn't interest you? Or ISIS/ISIL? Or Ukraine? Or Hong Kong? You skip those articles. But on a newspaper, you see the headlines and photos and that puts out way more information than skimming the headlines. Always run reading the comments on a slightly-on-a-tangent ./ article, to be honest.

Its a cool idea. There are things that are problematic about it though, like the fact that the browser itself hasn't been properly anonymized. The Tor browser package tries to disable plugins and third party software that might inadvertently reveal your identity or cause other information leakage. There is no such guarantee in this instance, which is a bit of a false sense of security. Tor isn't a panacea for all anonymity issues, and you wouldn't want to route most of your traffic over it.

And therein lies the problem Well, one of several.

First, the users have to actually want to be anonymous. There's no magic "make me anonymous" magic pixie dust that can be applied - I mean, what's the point of using Tor if you're going to log into your Google, Facebook, Amazon, Twitter, or whatever else account? You've not only gave your anonymity up a long time ago, you've just defeated all the anonymity you're going to get because all those ad networks now will be able to re-link your Tor usage to you.

Additionally, Tor is not magic. Using it doesn't make you invisible. Especially if you're going on about "black helicopters" and such because the likes of the NSA have revealed to be running the largest number of high-speed exit nodes, and those who control exit nodes on Tor control it all. Either keep your traffic within the Tor network on Tor-specific sites, or realize that where ever your traffic exits, the exit node may be screwing with you.

Sure you may get certificate errors and such, but I'm sure most users will click through them anyways.

Hell, it almost seems all the spies want users using Tor because by making it magic box, they'll do the same old stupid shit over it and not only be really easy to track and monitor, but the users will think all is well, at that.

It sure is. It should be 2K or 2160p, whatever. Real 4K (4320p) is their 8K(16xHD!), and I believe there's a couple of those out, so "4K" will be obsolete very soon. Why did we let them switch over to horizontal resolution?

Actually, 2K in cinema production refers to 2048x1080 video. The "K" figure refers to horizontal resolution and always has, while if you want lines, you give it with a progressive or interlaced identifier (e.g. 1080p, 720p, 1080i, 2160p).

4K, consumer wise is 3840x2160, or 4 times 1080p to make everything simple. Cinema 4K does exist, and it's 4096x2160.

8K is 8192x4320, and very very few people shoot in 8K.

There are HDMI interconnection specs for it too - HDMI 1.4b supports consumer 4K (3840x2160) at 25 and 30fps, and Cinema 4K (4096x2160) at 24fps.

HDMI 2.0 ups that for 4K at 60fps.

Of course, truth be told, the K standards aren't standardized in cinema either. 2K could refer to 1920, 2000, or 2048 width by 1080 height. 4K being 3840, 4000, or 4096 width by 2160 height.

And in the end, the film will be reformatted for the consumer anyways which they usually do by chopping the sides off, so filmmakers have to avoid putting anything there anyways.

Oh, and the camera you get often goes higher as well - most filmmakers actually shoot "5K" and crop it down because that's what their cameras actually capture.

Wrong question. It should be "How many times have you replaced your laptop/phone/cordless drill battery?". Most people aren't going to worry about individual cells - the battery pack dies, so you replace the whole thing. The cells were presumably all manufactured at about the same time and subjected to the same stresses - if one cell has failed the others probably aren't that far behind.

If, however, you're gullible enough to buy a cordless electrical device with a non-user-replaceable battery, when you know perfectly well that the battery will almost certainly be the first thing to fail, well then that's *your* problem. Clearly you're either an idiot or are willing to pay a huge premium for the privilege of carrying around an Apple logo.

For laptops, cellphones, etc., the general answer to that is actually zero.

Very few people actually buy replacement batteries. Nevermind the hassles of actually trying to keep multiple batteries charged (remember the old Motorola DynaTACs and such whose charger had a spot for another battery? Nowadays you have to swap batteries to charge each one, a big pain), buying replacement batteries is a pain. I'm sure Apple has the figures since they sold replacement batteries for their MacBooks long after they stopped making them, and they probably are dusty on the shelves being made years ago that no one's ever bought.

Sure, if you're a business, maybe you bought a ton of laptops and 2x a ton of batteries because of the expectation that they're going to be well used. But for the home user, the likelihood is nada. First, years down the road, buying a battery is going to be hard because it's gonna cost $100 at least, and then there's finding the replacement because almost always they're hard to find. Unless it's a common laptop (like say, Apple back in the day).

For cellphones, the ol' battery backpack is more convenient (you can charge both your cellphone and backpack together! Not one at a time, swap, and charge...). Unless it's one of the big models, it's going to be hard to find a replacement years down the road.

Oh yeah, I say this from experience. I have plenty of laptops. One of which I can still buy a battery pack for (Dell) years later, but I likely won't because the benefits aren't going to be there versus the costs of doing so. Before my iPhone (first gen), I had SonyEricsson that came with 2 extra batteries, and neither of which I managed to keep charged consistently (remember the old swap thing?).

For something like coreless drills and such, those are usually part of a system and since tool technology doesn't usually change too much, you can usually keep finding replacements years down the road. Plus, they come with charging docks as the manufacturers know you're going to be changing the battery 4-5 times a day.

But that's for contractors, who would buy into a whole system of cordless tools, and then buy 20 batteries, 20 chargers and proceed to use them all over a couple of days.

Your home cordless drill that gets used maybe once every six months? A built in battery works just as well - or stick with corded because the battery's never charged anyways.

And this is borne from real world experience - consumers hate dealing with batteries so unless they're common ones like AAs or somesuch, they will just use whatever battery it comes with.

Hell, the PS4's controller batteries are built in and last an annoying short amount of time. No one seems to find that much of a fault over say, the Xbone's battery which can bet a rechargable (Li-Ion) that lasts twice as long, AND swapped with regular AAs if need be.

...if you're going into a CS program. This holds in general with AP tests, don't take the ones in your intended major, because you're unlikely to get useful credit for them. This varies from school to school of course, but it's generally true.

True, but even if it's not for credit, it can make your introduction-to-postsecondary life easier by covering the material you need ahead of time. (Didn't we have a whole discussion about school not letting you get ahead? Well AP is an opportunity for high school students to get a head start on their post-secondary classes).

The hardest lesson to learn as a freshman is that you aren't going to get the grades you got in high school. Just because you graduated valedictorian means squat. At the university I went to, they said most people experience a 20 point drop in grades. So if you were an A student, be prepared to accept Cs.

And while working your butt off at that. Because on top of managing your studies, you have to manage your housing, your budget, food, etc. And being able to have classes where you already know the material ahead of time makes your life easier by lightening your load so you can handle the rest of the experience.

You're going to get slammed. If you can take AP courses, take them so the brick wall is not only lower (so you can go over), but softer because you're going to need to manage your time, and if your CS101 class is easy because of AP CS, it means an easier time if you have hard classes, or have an appointment with a dictator of a RA or other authority who insists on seeing you at their leisure, etc. And come finals, while the school may have rules like only 2 finals within 24 hours (i.e., morning, afternoon, evening), it doesn't mean you can't be unlucky enough to have 6 finals in 3 days. And wouldn't it be nice if you could simply avoid studying and still pass?

You may not get the credit, but you'll appreciate your ability to slide through it.

There isn't anything special about Ebola containment that one needs vast amount of experience to master. Any competent healthcare professional would've learned it long ago. It's just a matter of being scared enough to do it religiously.

Here's a question - why does PPE require training to use?

The answer? Anyone can put on PPE - suit, gloves, mask, goggles, etc. The challenge is that removing PPE requires special skills to ensure you didn't just render it ineffective.

This applies to whether you have it on because of ebola, or because you're working in an infectious or biohazard environment (e.g., cleanup). You can put it on, and while it's effective while you're in the contaminated environment, doffing it is a major trouble area.

FIrst, what do you remove? If you remove your gloves, then your hands can't touch any outside surface of your PPE (makes taking the rest of it off interesting because you'll just contaminate your hands, and now you're contaminated. Geez, you might as well not put on gloves!

If you remove your goggles, fine. But now you have to be extremely careful when you take off your mask that none of it hits your eyes.

It doesn't matter if you have someone else helping you, because now the other person needs to take off their PPE as well, turtles all the way down.

That's the hard part - it takes just a second of "oops" and you're contaminated.

It applies to anyone working in biohazard or haz-mat situations - your fancy suit and gear protects you while it's on, but taking it off requires plenty of handling and skill on everyone's part or you could've just nullified the entire reason for having the gear in the first place if you get yourself contaminated.

How many were technically-naive purchasers merely buying the cheapest laptops available, thinking they were typical Windows laptops, and not realizing that ChromeOS is actually so crippled?

How many were technically-savvy purchasers merely buying them so they could replace ChromeOS with a real Linux distro or some other OS?

In the first case, you're going to get returns. And I'm fairly certain Amazon rankings ding you for excessive returns.

For the second case, they make poor Linux machines, and only the Pixel can run Windows (poorly). Many have little storage, and reboots are annoying because you have to boot it, acknowledge the developer mode within 30 seconds (or it wants you to insert a restore USB), then handle oddities in the ChromeOS hardware.

I did it with a Pixel. In the end, I reverted it back to ChromeOS because it was the only OS that made it run the best. Windows didn't have a keyboard or mouse or touchscreen, Linux didn't have the touchpad (but it had the touchscreen) and X in 1x mode just looks tiny.

ChromeOS does have advantages as it's a nice walled garden that's secure. Which means it's an ideal machine if you want to do online banking with (if you get one that has Ethernet) because it's always updated, and the system protects itself against malware.

Musk is a promotor just like Jobs.

Well, they're both innovators and promoters and visionaries.

They both innovated - Jobs by bringing GUIs to the masses and many other things by realizing what the masses want. (It's easy to bring something for a niche, but much more difficult to bring it to the masses). Musk brought innovative person-to-person payment system - send anyone money over the internet (he's a co-founder of Paypal, after all). Because until then, sending money meant you were basically a business, or were patient and did the whole money-order thing.

And they both had visions on how things should work. Jobs was about computing and making lives better through transparent computers (computers that you didn't see, but did things for you in the background). Musk is seeing how to improve our lives and future. You may not be able to afford a Tesla now, but you know, electric cars are actually very practical machines and you're now able within reason to even drive with an electric car to your destination.

Oh yeah, and both are salespeople because if you can't sell it, there's no point to even trying. Few things sell themselves, and most that assume they would, fail because of the hidden sales message.A few bad news articles and if you're not front and center managing the message, will easily spiral out of control. It's why Jobs made Microsoft invest $150M (message: If Microsoft invests in Apple, things aren't as bad as they seem). Or why Musk gets front and center when Tesla gets news, be it fires or negative reviews or whatever. Because if you're not dealing with the message, it's not going away.