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Comment Re:I don't like that defense (Score 1) 481

"Google is going above and beyond by offering to remove any objected photos, at their expense, and without the need to raise legal action."

Bullshit. They create the need for the expense by doing this in the first place. That's like saying, I go above in beyond and agree to pay for the dent I caused in your car.

Comment Re:Air Sold Out (Score 1) 360

It's hard to believe that many people would buy a laptop without an optical drive. One of the primary uses for my laptop is letting the kids play games and watch DVD's in the back seat during long drives. (I see no point in spending hundreds on a separate device that's just for playing movies in the car.) When I use it, it's usually for work, but I've watched a few movies on it myself, and I wouldn't consider buying a laptop that didn't have that feature
See the pattern? You != Many people.
Why people always think their lifestyle is the only one and a company with billions in the bank is always wrong is beyond me.

From: Ars Technica

It might not be the iPhone, but the MacBook Air is selling much stronger than many of us would have guessed. After a full month of being on the market, the MacBook Air is still a difficult commodity to obtain in some markets
(...)
according to the Apple Store sales rank widget, the MacBook Air has been the top selling Mac since before the middle of February, outselling the MacBook, the iMac, and the MacBook Pro--this, despite week-long shipping delays.
Security

How Apple Orchestrated Attack On Researchers 389

An anonymous reader sends us to George Ou's blog on ZDNet for a tale of how Apple's PR director reportedly orchestrated a smear campaign against security researchers David Maynor and Jon Ellch last summer. Ou has been sitting on this story ever since and is only now at liberty to tell it. He posits that the Month of Apple Bugs was a direct result of Apple's bad behavior in the Maynor-Ellch affair. From the blog: "Apple continued to claim that there were no vulnerabilities in Mac OS X but came a month later and patched their Wireless Drivers (presumably for vulnerabilities that didn't actually exist). Apple patched these 'non-existent vulnerabilities' but then refused to give any credit to David Maynor and Jon Ellch. Since Apple was going to take research, not give proper attribution, and smear security researchers, the security research community responded to Apple's behavior with the MoAB (Month of Apple Bugs) and released a flood of zero-day exploits without giving Apple any notification. The end result is that Apple was forced to patch 62 vulnerabilities in just the first three months of 2007 including last week's megapatch of 45 vulnerabilities."
Microsoft

Apple, the New Microsoft? 703

VE3OGG writes "Apple, the ultimate source of cool. The marketers of slick. The next 'evil empire'? While it might sound goofy at first, Rolling Stone magazine is running an article that summarizes some very interesting points that detail how Apple could become the next technology bad guy. Among the reasons given: Apple's call to be rid of DRM (while continuing to use it in iTunes); Apple's perceived arrogance when they warned consumers not to upgrade to Vista, while not rushing to fix the problem themselves; and Apple's seemingly unstoppable market dominance in the form of the iPod. The iPhone featured heavily as well, a product that is months from release but steals the press from more competitive products. What do you think, could Apple eventually take the place of Microsoft?"
Linux

How Do You Advocate Linux in 5 Minutes? 618

xtracto writes "I just returned from buying certain Linux magazine. While looking at the 'Computing' stand in the library, and right after I grabbed a copy of the Linux magazine, a guy asked me if I used Linux. After that, the man told me he had tried to use Linux, but he had found it difficult. I told him the first things that came to my mind: that it depended on the distribution (he tried Kubuntu). I recommended him to look for a Linux User Group near his hometown (he told me he didn't live near a city). What would you tell these kinds of people? Not so long ago, and to my surprise, a relative who is completely computer illiterate started talking about Linux, but the general thought is that 'it is harder than Windows'. How do you advocate Linux to people who are more comfortable using Windows?"

Bill Gates Brags About Vista, Reacts to Apple's Latest Ads 891

fr8_liner writes "In an unusually candid interview with Newsweek Bill Gates lays it all on the line, bragging about the benefits of Vista, ragging on Apple for their 'I'm a Mac' ads, and claiming primacy in a number of features shared by Vista and OSX. Specifically, it is Mr. Gates' opinion that the Apple adverts are misleading if not untruthful. He makes the claim that '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.' The interview also touches on the future of Microsoft and Operating systems, and some of the company's plans for internet-based computing."
Apple

Why the iPhone Keynote Was A Mistake 507

jcatcw writes "Mike Elgan at Computerworld lists six reasons why it was a mistake to make the iPhone keynote at Macworld. He argues that extremely high expectations can only lead to disappointment for consumers and investors. The focus on the phone during the keynote also took away from the Apple TV announcement, put iPod sales at risk, gave competitors a head start, and (perhaps worst of all) ruined the company's talks with Cisco over the iPhone name. From the article: 'The iPhone, despite its many media-oriented virtues and its sweet design, will do far less than most existing smart phones. The problem Apple now faces because of Jobs' premature detail-oriented announcement is that of dashed expectations. When customers expect more and don't get it, they become dissatisfied.'"
Encryption

Beware the Apple iPhone iHandcuffs 406

Nrbelex writes "Randall Stross makes a fresh and surprisingly accurate review of one of the biggest "features" in the upcoming iPhone and the iPod in general, 'fairplay'. Stross writes, 'If "crippleware" seems an unduly harsh description, it balances the euphemistic names that the industry uses for copy protection. Apple officially calls its own standard "FairPlay," but fair it is not.... You are always going to have to buy Apple stuff. Forever and ever.' Can mainstream media coverage help the battle over DRM or will this warning, like those of the pas, continue to go unnoticed?"
Media (Apple)

Apple is DRM's Biggest Backer 400

parvenu74 writes "Arstechnica is running an article pointing out that while some pockets of the entertainment industry are experimenting with DRM-free distribution, Apple Inc, which announced that they have now sold over 2,000,000,000 songs on iTunes, is now the strongest pro-DRM force in digial media. From the article: 'DRM is dying. It's a statement being echoed with increasing frequency around the Web over the last few weeks, and is perhaps best articulated in this Billboard article. But there's a powerful force standing in the way of this DRM-free panacea, and it might not be the one you expect: Apple, Inc.'"
OS X

Backup Solutions for Mac OS X? 125

SpartanVII asks: "I purchased a Mac roughly two years ago and have made the switch with a fair amount of ease. However, one thing that has troubled me is how best to backup my important data to an external hard drive. Right now, I have rigged up an Automator workflow that runs every night, but I have also seen software options like SuperDuper and Knox. Since the Automator workflow lacks much of the flexibility and features available with these apps, I am ready to try something else. What app have you come across that provides the best backup solution?"

Why Microsoft Is Beating Apple At Its Own Game 418

ttom writes "OSWeekly.com looks at Microsoft's promotional strategy and concludes that Microsoft is beating Apple at its own game." From the article: "Apple is to blame for this, at least to some extent. They just had to go and release Boot Camp, didn't they? By the way, please don't take my sarcastic tone as an expression of my dissatisfaction for the product. I think it's great, and I really never expected to see something like Boot Camp come out of the Apple Camp. I know that users have bombarded them with requests for officially allowing Windows usage on a Mac, and the fact that they yielded to these requests is interesting because they've emphasized the OS X and Windows experiences as being completely separate for quite some time."

Dangerous Apple Power Adapters? 240

An anonymous reader writes "Even with all these exploding Dell notebooks and other notebook safety problems, Apple has seemed relatively immune. Every once in a while, some odd thing came along, but it seemed like relatively calm waters. Not anymore — Apple's notebook power adapters appear to be the source of some serious safety concerns. Every iBook and PowerBook user should read this and keep a close eye on their adapter — the adapters suffer from very poor design including wires that seem prone to short out and burn and zero short circuit protection."

Apple's Growing Pains 375

Tyler Too writes "Is Apple having an unusually large number of quality control problems since its switch to Intel? Ars Technica runs down the litany of problems MacBook and MacBook Pro users have experienced since their launch. From the article: 'Is Apple's quality control slipping through the cracks with this Intel transition? Given the volume of available evidence that has appeared in such a short timeframe, it's simply impossible to say that Apple isn't having problems.'"

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