Posts by Ian Davies

Please

"Of course, our man tried to return it, but Apple didn't want to know."

The thief (yeah, I said it) did in no way "try to return it". What he engaged in was merely the flimsiest of attempts to cover his arse. Given that the thief knew the name of the owner, had access to their Facebook page and knew that the owner would most likely return to the places he had been in order to try and locate the item, there were many more effective and honest things that could have been done to "try and return it".

Instead, the thief sold something which they knew was not theirs, and the bottom-feeders at Jizzmodo bought something which they knew had been obtained dishonestly (would you pay $5000 for something you suspected might be a cheap fake? Get the fuck out of here, they knew exactly what they were buying).

This is not, under any circumstances "freedom of the press". This is borderline industrial espionage, and I look forward to that smug tossrag Jason Chen having his back door kicked in by Bubba and his mates at one of California's finest hotels for the light-fingered and stupid. Just as a nice payback for their appalling treatment of someone else's career as collateral damage in their grubby pursuit of page views.

Knee-jerks

Let me tell all the moo-ing Apple haters what this is about:

This is about Apple's view of what the user experience should be on the iPhone (you know, that product that *they* make...) and their view of what needs to be done to preserve that. This is about the newly announced multitasking, and making sure that their implementation isn't the resource-hogging, battery-draining clusterfuck that it is on most other mobile platforms. In order to support multitasking without completely hammering battery life, iPhone OS 4 strips back background apps to just a handful of carefully managed threads, just the bare minimum to provide the necessary functionality (background audio playback, file transfer etc.). It cannot do this if it doesn't know exactly how the code is laid out. It knows how code is laid out in an application bundle produced by Xcode. It doesn't know how code is laid out in an application bundle produced by, oooh, say... Flash CS5...?

It's worth pointing out that this form of multitasking is very similar to Android's, but Google doesn't place as many restrictions on which languages developers code their apps in. That makes some developers happy, but it also results in a situation where Task Killer apps even have a reason to exist on Android. Apple doesn't want their users to ever need to think about such things, and in order to deliver that, developers have to work to a tighter set of specifications.

Now, your average forum troll wouldn't necessarily know this, but Brimlow *should*, and to my mind his whole attitude is colossally disingenuous.

This isn't about Flash, specifically. Adobe is flattering themselves if they think it is. This is about Apple fighting against Android. Comparatively speaking, I don't think Steve Jobs could give a flying fuck about Adobe.

I'm glad...

...they can be so fecking glib about inflicting that diseased anal wart on us for so long, and making my life as a web designer about 64,000x harder than it needed to be.

@Rolf Howarth and Daniel Jarick.

Nailed it.

Hasn't taken long...

...for the stupid to crawl out of the woodwork.

As long as it is within the law (and this is exactly what this case set out to prove) then Apple is entitled to write whatever conditions into their EULA that they like. It's not as if they are permitting certain companies to do this, and were somehow being anticompetitive just towards Psystar. Apple doesn't allow *anyone* to do this, as is their legal and moral right. Apple doesn't *have* to let you do anything with their software. Wishing it were different doesn't make it so.

Note that the comment about PearPC is irrelevant. Just because Apple hasn't sued them yet, doesn't mean they condone what they are doing.

This isn't about the Hackintosh community. Those who chose to install Mac OS X on non-Apple hardware will be in the same situation that they were before this ruling. Yes, they are breaking the EULA, but the sum total of Apple's response to these people will be to deny them support.

This is about slapping down a company who thought it was OK to take Apple's property and try and cut Apple out of the hardware revenue to which they were due.

Mac OS X is not sold as a stand-alone product like Windows. It is sold as an update-able component of an Apple hardware system.

You are entitled to not like this, but Apple is also entitled to slap you down for breaking the terms of the license to which you agreed when you opened the box.

As the judge said, if you don't like Apple's terms, don't use Apple's products. There are other options.

Are they serious?

"use Windows Mobile 6.5 to onramp iPhone converts to Windows Mobile 7.0"

How in the name of <$DEITY> would an iPhone user be tempted to convert? WM 6.5 isn't even going to be as good as iPhone OS 1.0. WM 7 isn't out for at least another year but will only be as good as iPhone OS 3.0 is now, if MS is lucky. By then, of course, we'll have iPhone OS 4.0 and it won't matter anyway.

Uncle Fester's guffawing at the iPhone when it was announced just keeps getting funnier and funnier the more MS thrashes about without a fecking clue of what to do.

@market share

You, and everyone else bleating about anti-competitive behaviour, might want to take a look at the history books and understand what it really means.

MS got slapped by the DOJ (although that 'slap' amounted to little in practical changes to their behaviour) because they were actively trying to prevent other companies from having the same access to the OS (Windows) as their software division (Office, etc.) and trying to stop certain competing 3rd party products from being a success full stop.

For Apple to deserve the "anti-competitive" tag, they would have to be doing something like trying to stop Pre from making their own media player/library manager. Clearly they are not doing any such thing. The iTunes software isn't an OS component. There's nothing to say Apple has to support any device in iTunes other than the one it was designed for. Likewise there's nothing to stop Palm making their own software to do the same job. They could even read the iTunes library information if they wanted to. But they couldn't be arsed, and instead are acting like whiney little bitches because Apple, surprise-sur-friggin'-prise, won't let them follow their parasitic little business model.

I hope Palm get's their arse kicked.

@Adam Williamson

No. You're wrong.

"artificially created dominance of the software music player domain"

Artificial? So, what you're saying is that there *wasn't* a wide choice of MP3 players and jukebox software to choose from before iTunes came along (which at the time, Apple was laughed at for being late to the party, BTW)? You can bitch about choice all you like. The fact is that people have lots of choices. You just don't like the choice that most of them are making.

"The whole point is that Palm initially shipped the Pre set up such that it worked fine with iTunes without _having_ to fake any USB IDs."

No, it just worked because Apple wasn't making rigid checks for non-Apple devices during the handshaking process.

"Then Apple shipped an iTunes update which specifically identifies the Pre - using its correct USB ID - and refuses to work with it"

That's because Pre are the only dumbasses to go down the shady route of spoofing a USB vendor ID instead of doing it the right way and using the provided XML file like other manufacturers do.

"despite the fact it would work fine if Apple didn't specifically prevent it from working."

Work fine, says who? Pre?

Pre Marketing Droid : "Oh don't worry. Just a few undocumented APIs we've reverse engineered (*cough* stolen by our ex-Apple engineers) really well. Works a treat. No chance of us borking your library by writing data back that iTunes doesn't understand. Uh-uh. No chance of that at all... What's that? How do I know? ... uh... ooh! Look over there! Shiny thing!"

Let's just straighten out a little history that you seem keen to have 'revised'.

iTunes came first. It was just a music jukebox app. It did (and still does) just play music from whatever source you have, other than online stores which are protected and locked down at the behest of the record companies.

When the iPod was launched, iTunes (Apple software) gained the ability to sync the music library to the iPod (Apple hardware).

Please explain exactly why Apple has any obligation to support 3rd party hardware in a software system that has been successful with consumers *PRECISELY* because it's a simple, single-vendor environment that doesn't force people to deal with incompatibilities?

You know, incompatibilities caused by stupid crap that companies like Microsoft (PlaysForSure / Zune) and Pre (unauthorised use of undocumented APIs) pull because they're too lame to build products that enough people want to buy?

Just tried it

"Your browser or operating system is not supported"

Strange... I've never had that message on YouTube.

And they're the overwhelming market leader.

hmm...

But there's no link between the two facts, and you'd be a fool and a Microsoft exec to see one.