Applelinks.com Moore’s Tech Web Reader - Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Moore’s Tech Web Reader - Wednesday, November 28, 2007

By Charles W. Moore Wednesday, November 28, 2007.
Filed under: News � Tech-Industry �

1690

Leopard And New Mac Apps Are Bumming Me Out
Apple's Leopard is a lemon - Commentary
Apple "Puck" Mouse Named One Of The Worst Tech Products Of All Time
Vista Makes List Of 'Top 10 Terrible Tech Products'
Apple's Tiger 10.4.11 Upgrade Causing 'Catastrophic Failure', Users Report
The Power Of Steve Jobs
Hacker defaces temples to OS X
Universal Chief Rues Apple's 'Golden Handcuffs'
Apple 'Looking Into' Duff Chinese Hard Drive Claims
All Eyes On Apple
Open-Source Software Vendor Certifies ERP Suite For Apple's Leopard
Gdrive Rumours Resurface
Apple iMac Display Problems Reported
eWEEK: Apple Portables Steadily Outsell Desktops
eWEEK: Notebook Shipments Poised to Overtake Desktops
eWEEK: Google to Offer Storage in the Cloud: Report
eWEEK: FTC: 8 Million Were Victims of ID Theft in 2005
PC Mag: Out of Office
The Mac Night Owl: The Leopard Report: It Looks Pretty, But Can You Get Any Work Done

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Leopard And New Mac Apps Are Bumming Me Out

CNet's Dave Rosenberg says:

Let me preface this post with the fact that I have been a sworn Mac user since 1995. Let me add that a few weeks ago I tried to use Windows just for my trip to Japan, and I bailed out after one painful day. I even had our IT guy kill a perfectly good Thinkpad with Ubuntu I hated Vista so much.

When Leopard came out a few weeks ago (it was a Friday) I went to the Apple store in San Francisco to buy it immediately but got spiked until the 6 p.m. grand reveal. So, the next day I went downtown first thing and picked up both Leopard and the new iLife. Easy enough.

I expected a few bumps in the upgrade of the OS and the applications. Sure enough, that happened but it was nothing major.

It has only been after a few weeks of usage that I find myself experiencing both OS and application crashes reminiscent of the mid-'90s when you had to obsessively save your work since you knew your Mac was going to crash at some point.... I now have at least one Apple brand application crash every few hours...

To read more, click here.

Apple's Leopard is a lemon - Commentary

The Inquirer's Nick Farrell says:

MULESOURCE CEO, and self confessed Apple fanboy, Dave Rosenberg, has created a bit of a stir for daring to suggest that Apple's new operating system Leopard is shonkey

Speaking to Cnet, Rosenberg said that he had been a sworn Mac user since 1995 and could not use Windows to save his life.

He was one of the first to buy the fruit themed manufacturer's Leopard OS and the new iLife.

However, he said that Leopard takes computing back to a time when you had to save everything every ten minutes because you expected it to crash.

For the full report, visit:
http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2007/11/27/leopard-lemon

Apple "Puck" Mouse Named One Of The Worst Tech Products Of All Time

AppleGazette's Michael reports:

The Apple hockey puck shaped mouse shipped with iMacs in 1998. It was hard to hold, uncomfortable, and cheap feeling. It was a terrible mouse. The guys at cNet UK think it was SO terrible that it's one of the worst tech products ever invented.

To read more, click here.

[Editor's Note: I agree that as a mouse, the "puck" is pretty abominable, although my daughter has always liked them, however, I've found it better than any other mouse I've tried in an unconventional usage - as a foot mouse. I have fibromyalgia and chronic peripheral neuritis, so I'm obliged to spread the mousing and typing strain as thinly as possible, to which end I try to do as much mouse clicking as possible with my foot. The hockey puck mouse is quite comfortable for this, and I've found that they last between a year and 18 months, which speaks well of their robust construction. Indeed, I'm always in the hunt for spares. Of course, there are actual purpose-built foot mice available, but they are astronomically expensive, and the puck does the job nicely for me as long as I can keep supplied. CM]

Vista Makes List Of 'Top 10 Terrible Tech Products'

MacSimum News' Dennis Sellers reports:

Windows Vista has made the "Top 10 terrible tech products" list from Crave magazine. It placed number 10 on the list. Here's what Crave has to say about Vista:

"Any operating system that provokes a campaign for its predecessor's reintroduction deserves to be classed as terrible technology. Any operating system that quietly has a downgrade-to- previous-edition option introduced for PC makers deserves to be classed as terrible technology. Any operating system that takes six years of development but is instantly hated by hordes of PC professionals and enthusiasts deserves to be classed as terrible technology. Windows Vista conforms to all of the above. Its incompatibility with hardware, its obsessive requirement of human interaction to clear security dialogue box warnings and its abusive use of hated DRM, not to mention its general pointlessness as an upgrade, are just some examples of why this expensive operating system earns the final place in our terrible tech list."

For the full report click here.

Apple's Tiger 10.4.11 Upgrade Causing 'Catastrophic Failure', Users Report

InformationWeek's Paul McDougall reports:

Users of Apple's Tiger operating system - predecessor to the more recent Leopard OS - are reporting that the software grinds to an unrecoverable halt when upgraded to the latest version.

According to posts appearing in the discussion forum on Apple's support Web site, Macs upgraded to version 10.4.11 of Tiger are freezing up and refusing to reboot without a clean installation.

As a result, users say they're losing music and video files they've paid for and important data is being lost.

For the full report click here.

The Power Of Steve Jobs

Fortune's Brent Schlender says:

Management guru Jim Collins once called Steve Jobs the "Beethoven of business." He was marveling at the Apple founder's ability, time and again, to conjure digital objects of desire from esoteric blends of chips, disks, plastic, and software, and then promote them with his own alluring brand of performance art. But Jobs might also be called its Machiavelli, a man who can bend suppliers, partners, and even industries to his will.

His resurgent brainchild, Apple Inc (Charts, Fortune 500)., is 121st on the Fortune 500, well behind such competitors as Dell (Charts, Fortune 500) (No. 34) and Hewlett-Packard (Charts, Fortune 500) (No. 14). Nonetheless, Apple's fecundity - born of continual and artful innovation in every aspect of its business - has foisted profound changes not only upon infotech but upon many adjacent industries.

Think about it. During the first two decades of his remarkable 30-year career, Jobs twice altered the direction of the computer industry. In 1977 the Apple II kicked off the PC era, and the graphical user interface launched by Macintosh in 1984 has been aped by every other computer since.

To read more, click here.

Hacker defaces temples to OS X

The Register's Dan Goodin reports:

A self-described Apple user, presumably fed up with the smug superiority of "Mac," the hipster mascot featured in the ubiquitous "Get a Mac" commercials, is targeting OS X enthusiast sites with defacements that accuse them of excessive fanboyism.

Problem is, the stunts appear as forced and manufactured as the Apple campaign itself.

For the full report, visit:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/11/27/mac_site_defacer/

Universal Chief Rues Apple's 'Golden Handcuffs'

The Register's Andrew Orlowski reports:

Universal Music Group boss Doug Morris, profiled in the current issue of WiReD, isn't the first person to regret a business arrangement with Steve Jobs. As the head of the world's biggest record label, Morris' blessing was instrumental to the success of iTunes Music Store.

But his reasoning in 2007 sounds very strange.

Feature writer Seth Mnookin [not an anagram] suggested that Universal had created "an Apple Walkman that played only Apple cassettes". While Morris' minder says that with hindsight UMG should have mandated the format, Morris seems to have no hindsight at all.

"It never crossed anyone's mind!" that UMG was giving Jobs a powerful lock-in, we learn. Jobs had sold the iTunes proposition to UMG with the argument that it would only run on Macs. The Windows version of iTunes followed six months after the Mac-only launch.

"We were just grateful that someone was selling online. The problem is, he became a gatekeeper."

For the full report, visit:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/11/27/doug_morris_abusive_relationship/

Apple 'Looking Into' Duff Chinese Hard Drive Claims

The Register's Tony Smith reports:

Apple has admitted it is examining claims that a number of its MacBook laptops include poorly manufactured hard drives that expose users to data loss.

"We've received a few reports that some MacBook consumer notebooks may have hard drive issues," a company spokesman told Information Week, "and we're looking into it."

The comment comes a month after Register Hardware reported on UK data-recovery company Retrodata's warning to Mac laptop users that it had received far more failed 2.5in drives from Apple machines that it would have expected given typical hard drive failure rates.

For the full report, visit:
http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2007/11/27/apple_looks_at_macbook_hdds/

All Eyes On Apple

Business Yahoo!'s Adam L. Penenberg reports:

This promises to be a joyous holiday season for Steve Jobs and the incandescent Apple. Over the past year, the company's numbers have been stunning: Sales are up 24%, earnings up 75%, margins topping 30%, stock price up 146%. The popularity of the iPod and its snazzy young cousin, the iPhone, has lifted other Apple products, helping boost market share in personal computers in the United States from 2% a few years ago to 8% this past quarter, with Apple leapfrogging Gateway to take third place behind Dell and Hewlett-Packard. The latest upgrade to Apple's operating system--Leopard--is getting strong reviews, in contrast to the indifference that greeted Microsoft's (new Vista OS. Apple's market cap is now north of $160 billion; 18 months ago, the crew in Cupertino, California, was worth a mere $60 billion. This $100 billion increase alone equals the combined value of Motorola and Sprint-Nextel.

Yet this is also a dangerous moment for Apple. In a way the company has never seen, the barbarians are massing at the gates....

For the full commentary, click here.
http://biz.yahoo.com/fastco/071127/fc1195477252347.html?.v=1

Open-Source Software Vendor Certifies ERP Suite For Apple's Leopard

InformationWeek's Mary Hayes Weier reports:

In a corporate IT world dominated by Windows and Unix, companies that run their businesses on Mac OS systems are in the minority. But a start-up company called xTuple is rallying that minority with an ERP suite that it says works just as well on the Mac OS as any other operating system.

XTuple applications, which include accounting, inventory management, manufacturing, purchasing, and sales analysis, among others, were built with open-source components such as the PostgreSQL database, the Qt toolkit for C++, and the OpenRPT report writer. XTuple will announce this week that it's certified its OpenMFG suite and its simpler, free PostBooks accounting software on Mac OS X Leopard. "We've had a growing number of customers asking for this, who are existing Mac OS customers looking to upgrade," said Ned Lilly, xTuple's president and CEO, in an interview.

To read more, click here.
http://www.informationweek.com/industries/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=204203555

Gdrive Rumours Resurface

ITWire's Stephen Withers reports:

Longstanding rumours that Google will offer a generic online storage facility have been given fresh life by a report in the Wall Street Journal that the service could be launched in a few months time.

Given the company's existing Gmail and Picasa offerings for email and photo storage, plus the way Google Docs files are stored, it isn't a big stretch to imagine a generalised offering with a few gigabytes for free and more available for a fee.

For the full report, visit:
http://www.itwire.com/content/view/15536/53/

Apple iMac Display Problems Reported

tomshardware.com's Tony Celeste reports:

Over the last month, questionable upgrade pricing (Apple OSX Leopard: More Angry Customers), censorship (Mac OSX Cracked for PCs/More Update Woes(Is Apple Now Censoring Tom's Hardware?), and a bug-ridden operating system (Update: More Leopard Problems Plague Apple).While they represent problems for Apple, they are certainly surmountable for a mega corporation. But a new development may not be so easy to repair: Multiple sources indicate that at least some 20 and 24 inch iMacs sold since their debut August 7, 2007 may have shipped with defective displays.