The sortware they are bundling is an updater / tracking installer right?

I'm guessing they saw the success of the OS bundled app store, and the rumors of the Windows 8 app store and realized the writing is on the wall for the "go to ad laden 3rd party website" download model they have.

Legally I think they completely messed up by adding these installer wrappers, but you can bet it will happen again and from download sites other than cnet. Time to nip this practice in the bud; it will grow like kudzu.

In the context of FUD, Uncertainty and Doubt to be the same thing, but aimed at different time periods. You are uncertain about the future, and you are Doubtful about what you've already invested in the past.

Example (completely made up): "Coming soon, Microsoft's new server software will cheaply make all your Linux server farms obsolete."

* You fear the consequences of making a wrong decision -- "Wake up! You have something to lose here!"

* You become uncertain about the assumptions you have made. -- "The future outlook is more cloudy than you thought! Don't keep doing what you've always done."

* You start doubting whether your previous decisions were correct -- "Was your past invenstment of time / money wisely spent? Prepare to cut your losses!"

I'm not sure the FSF's GPLv2 and GPLv3 stance qualifies as FUD; unlike computer equipment or software buying decisions, the world of legal precedents can change what you did in the past even if you didn't change anything. It's quasi-timeless in a way normal people don't intuitively understand. But if we were talking about buying a new copy of Windows for old hardware, then yes, it was said in a FUD like way.

Consider my triply-mixed metaphor, my use of buzzwords are the least of my posting's problems. But thanks for pointing it out. :-)

Don't get me wrong. I have a Mac and use Lion (just as I have a Honeycomb tablet, Linux box, and Windows server; part of staying current in Tech is not being blind to trends and competition).

Lion could get iOS users to DEMAND Macs for the desktop either by improving the software (adapting iOS to the desktop) or by improving the hardware (getting touch input on the Mac itself). Neither of those seem likely to arrive in 6 months, but both are more likely after 1 or 2 years of refreshes.

Under the hood, Lion's API changes and deprecations are big evidence Apple wants iOS and OS X to become one. What isn't certain is whether the User Interface will ever be unified between mobile and desktop as Microsoft is doing. All that's certain is that Apple isn't happy with the current state of things.

Right now, I really love the three finger swiping with Mission Control, and the scroll bars don't bother me. But Lion still has a big mental burden for me that wasn't there in Snow Leopard (and isn't there in Ubuntu or Windows). That will either go away with practice on the my part, changes with the OS, or ergonomic changes to the hardware.

What would be bad would be if compromises come to iOS devices to accommodate unification with the desktop. An unlikely example would be some kind of folder based file system like Mac OS Finder on iOS. That's unlikely, but there are plenty of other compromises that would make iOS fundamentally worse. Features add complexity and there will need to be many features added for a unified platform.

I can't see where Apple is really headed, but this has potential to be a massive win for Apple's platforms or a disasterous choice. We'll see what happens in one or two years.

Android rules phones. Apple rules tablets. And Microsoft rules desktops. Quibble about the exact numbers or satisfaction of users, but that's the basic reality today.

All three are making plays to get more dominant in someone else's kingdom. But the two desktop contenders: Apple and Microsoft may be trying to go for a unified platform too early. Do users really want to select cell G7 in Excel on their phone under Windows 8? And certainly Apple users haven't been completely happy with trends coming the other way with the iOS-ification of Lion. This may be a huge mistake to aim for unity between desktop and mobile so early. A unified platform that's compromised stinks on all platforms.

There are advantages for a unified OS to the OS vendor and programmers, but for the user it still isn't clear. That conservative stance will actually help Android in the short term; the attempts to advance are hurting rather than helping MS and Apple right now. On the other hand, if Microsoft or Apple finds that advantage / leverage it could be very bad news for Android that's "only" a mobile platform. Android will be be quickly leveraged to the back of the pack. Short term: this is a liability to aim for unity so early, but it does make me a little nervous when considering the longer term these OS battles are fought that Android is relying on no such advantage being found.

Still nothing will be "decided" with the release of the IPhone 5, windows 8, or the next Ice Cream Tablet. This is a three horse race for three kingdoms over the long haul and all I can say is that this next year will be a very interesting seventh lap rather than the finish line for anyone.

Any indications Google will just take the IP and kill the hardware business?

By making hardware, they risk driving other hardware makers to Windows Mobile or (if eventually opened) HP WebOS.

Right now, Motorolla Mobile has no significant reputation among the non-geek public. And Motorolla Mobile isn't amazingly profitable. So why wouldn't they just take the IP and shut down the questionably-profitable hardware liability? For the Android ecosystem this may even be a good thing.

You will know in the first 15 minutes.

The movie starts with a chase in Africa; that's a good taste for what most of the action feels like: fast and fleeing. The apes are chased and captured; it's energetic and sympathetic, but not unexpected (considering it's a movie about apes)

But one of the more intense moments occurs shortly after that with the lab chimp "Bright Eyes" seemingly going crazy and you don't know what's going on. Has the medicine made her crazy? Has she been mistreated? Should we feel sympathy for this out of control ape? It's not explained until (START SPOILER) Bright Eyes is killed, and you realize she was protecting her new baby.

I consider the gore minimal, but here's all of the gore I recall:
* Apes are shot, but you see very little blood (their fur hides it). Two are major plot points where you feel the significance of the shots, despite insignifiicant gore.
* A scene where an ape defends someone by biting the assailant on the ear and causes a small bit of blood.
* A scene where someone who is very sick is discovered dead on the bed with a bit of blood around him.
* Three sneezes where blood comes out (3 different times).
* A bad man is killed, but the body is not fully shown on screen (you see some very pinkish / reddish skin but no blood or direct view of the body).

Lots of chases. Lots of running. But most everything is expected from the situation. So if the 7 year old gets through the "Bright Eyes" scene, it's less likely they'll be shocked later on.

Overall I think a seven year old may be bored. Caesar has conversations in sign language. He teaches apes to share (with cookies). He longs for home in his cell. He has trouble being accepted by the other apes. There are long stretches which might have bored me as a young kid. But as an adult, I really liked the movie.

The high end iHelmet will plug into a proprietary nasal Thunderbolt port.

Need a lower end version? The iPod Zip will have open interfaces, but you don't want to know where it plugs in.

It only takes one claim on one patent to become a significant and expensive problem.

Oracle may have had some of it's ability to negotiate for an out of court settlement shot down, but I don't see why this is a win for Google. Fewer claims remain but still the same number of patents in dispute.

Beyond "it's not a loss", can a nice slashdotter enlighten me what this really means?

Well, I thought I understood it.

Norman & Nielsen say gestures lack intuition because they lack consistency, discoverability, visibility, and feedback. They say they suck for other reasons too (scalability, et al). Compared to the successes of the traditional menu interface, OS vendors should: disallow inconsistent gestures. Develop gestures that can be reliable and not prone to error. Only release gestures in the wild before perfecting them in the lab. Add a button to universally pop up applicable menus in all situations. And like the old GUI standards, impose gesture standards from OS vendor down to developer and not the other way around.

I think they've nailed it that the discoverability is poor, but I don't find inconsistency a problem (except as a duplicate of the discoverability argument). I prefer that the app developers are taking the lead in making new gestures to fit their interfaces, once discovered (and yes, that is a problem) they "stick" much better in my fingers than the menu interface. The ability to experiment and fit the gesture to the interface is a good thing. Some gestures stink, and those developments & products will disappear. Remember the gesture (shown at WWDC) to rotate a photo on the iPad originally? It practically took two hands to do. That's something that was worked on in the lab and imposed from on high, and it stunk. The current gesture Apple adopted was (I think) copied from third party software. Since there isn't a fully vetted and evolved interface like GUI menus to impose on developers, falling back on menus or imposing consistency at this point is counter-productive.

Though I may not have expressed it well, I agree discovery is a problem, yet I find there are major wins for gestures in my usage despite the inconsistent, unreliable, poorly visible, and questionable feedback attributed to gestures. Telling OS vendors and developers to follow menu interface traditions and virtues may not be the best thing in the evolving gestural "wild west rules" right now.

I'm not anywhere near the caliber of UI expertise as Norman or Nielsen. But there's a big advantage to pioneering a new physical interface: you don't need the language part of your brain. My 1 year old twin nephews can interact with their iPads with only the most basic of demonstrations of how a new app works. They can't read or write but they can follow demos of fingers creating action pretty well.

Is bringing along the old interface of mice & menus helping or hurting? I particularly like the new "swipe up" gesture to scroll down of a touchscreen rather than the traditional "elevator window" model of scroll bars where clicking up scrolls up.

They are absolutely to be commended for chastising developers that there is no easy way to discover actions if they are not intuitive; I'd rather they come up with ways to address this than just fall back on menus though. For example, Apple included an interactive tutorial for using the custom gestures built-in to Pages, Numbers and Keynote because they aren't discoverable at all. Some I've forgotten because I don't use them (and I'd have to re-watch the tutorials again to re-program my brain). But the ones I have picked up on are absolutely ingrained and effortless now. Unfortunately, built-in tutorials are the exception rather than the rule, and even when they are included they more trouble to refer to than a drop down menu. But there are ways to improve without eliminating gestures.

I wouldn't want to use the gesture interface when I'm programming during the day, but when I'm swiping through my early morning junk mail, RSS feeds, and to-do items, my brain feels far more engaged on my iPad than my desktop. It's almost like the touch gestures are autonomic and leave my (limited) higher brain functions alone to read though the fog (at least until my caffeine kicks in.)

I agree that people need to improve gesture interfaces which are in their infancy, but I don't think it's justified to throw the baby out with the bath water just because of long traditions.

This is a text book example on how the GPL is not a "trap" for big companies. The terms changed. A company disagreed with the changes. And they opted out of future usage.

Is it the right thing to do with lawyers? Yes. No fighting or disguised usage; they quit SAMBA "cold turkey" and all lawyers are happy.

Is it right thing to do with SAMBA developers? Yep. They didn't fork the codebase and create a competitive SAMBA GPLv2 effort.

Is it the right thing with Apple developers? Probably. Some older features are missing, so relying on pre-Active directory features will be troubling. For those who really need SAMBA itself (rather than just the features), Apple's GPLv2 forks are public and the GPLv3 work could be taken up by interested companies, researchers, or hobbyists.

Is this the right thing with users? That's what we don't know. Will the new system be secure enough? Will it be integrated well enough? Will end users be oblivious to its replacement? If yes, that's the final word on whether this was the right move at this time for this company. If no, then that shows SAMBA is non-trivial code, that can't be easily replaced.

IMHO, that's exactly how disagreements with GPL licensed code should be resolved.

While completely justified, the developer sounds like a very angry bird.

It takes time and effort to slingshot those pigs out of the store.

I really, really wanted a Windows tablet five years ago, but the prices were way too high. Whatever your feelings about Apple, their ability to crank tablet prices down to a reasonable range has been a big boon for everyone wanting to buy the form factor. They may lead right now, but when suppliers catch up and can get parts to all manufacturers (in a year or two), we'll all be better off that this is no longer considered a luxurious exclusive of the high end like the Windows slates used to be.

But how do they do it? Jobs may be the PR showman, but Tim Cook is the Compaq-alumnus who is the real price magician.

Remember back in 2005 when Apple made a huge exclusive deal for 5 years of Flash RAM with Samsung? That was more than a year before they even introduced the iPhone, but Tim Cook locked up supplier deals people thought were insane at the time. Apple only makes Macs and iPods, what the heck are they going to use all that flash RAM for?

Apple now has a lot of cash on hand to get the best prices and to make exclusive deals like that, which they said they just did for three more critical parts in their last earnings report (and people are speculating over what those three parts are).

But finally, when suppliers aren't able to deliver on time, in quantity, and at a good price, they haven't been shy about pitting suppliers against each other.

Even with the cheapest supplies, might Apple be selling the iPad at a loss? At least for the 1st generation iPad, it's unlikely. Though Apple doesn't break out many numbers they show that iPad revenue over Christmas was almost equal to Mac revenue. Considering the larger sales of the iPad, more sold at a loss would be more loss, and that doesn't seem to have happened with their record profits over Christmas. Second, Phil Schiller last year said after the introduction but before it went on sale that Apple still had some pricing flexibility (meaning they could cut deals with big companies or bring the price down to the public, if no one bought it). Those two things together really suggest that this isn't a loss leader for Apple like the XBox was for Microsoft back in 2005. This may all change with iPad 2, but it doesn't really look like they added any expensive features to the (minor?) upgrade this time around.

With as many of the iPad parts coming from Samsung (including the A4 & A5 system-on-a-chip) you'd expect Samsung would be in the best position to make a real competitor. Apple's price advantage (though painful to competitors, right now) is short term. It's good that the market is getting competitive with low power, touch input, tablet supplies. And it will be even better for users when tablets in 2012 will be significantly better and maybe even cheaper from a variety of sources.

Just be patient, Samsung and the iPad competitors will be back soon with better products.

Two days earlier and it would have been June 6, or 6/6. Rolling out IPv6 on 6/6 would have been biblically ordained to take over the heavens and the earth. Now it's just... another day, another test.