Nearly 100 Fixes Planned for Apple's Second Leopard Update
"Way to go, Apple! This is why I like them. They're always on top of getting things fixed."

Let's rewrite the headlines for the sake of argument:

Nearly 100 Fixes Planned for Microsoft's Second Vista Update
"My gosh, Microsoft... This is why I use Leopard! Everything just works, just like the commercials say."

Also, let's try this on for size:

You know you're a software company fanboy when:
1. You compare sizes of the patch release archive files...

Warning... This is a major anti-Apple post. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Okay, I made a point of not paying attention to the recent Apple developments, because, frankly, those Mac conventions give me a stomach ache, but, of course, since Digg is so biased for Apple, I get to read things even in articles that aren't supposed to pertain to Apple... So after I'd heard some things, I decided to see if such things were true, and, lo! They were! Now, I want to point and laugh at them:

1. This new MacBook Air thing? No optical drive. Sure, you can buy an external one (for extra), but there's not one built in anymore. Am I the only one who sees this as "reason not to buy #1"? I use my optical drive every single day! (Games, movies, etc!) I don't know about you, but I don't have the expenses to buy 3 million terabytes of hard drive space to store images of everything I own. (I guess if you can afford an Apple device, you could afford 3 million terabytes of storage, hoho.) I have literally hundreds of CDs and DVDs of stuff that I've burned and purchased and use quite frequently. Even DVD movies! This MacBook isn't going to be able to play movies without plugging in an external drive? What... the... heck... Oh, I see. You can wirelessly access another drive from a computer with some special Apple software installed! (Yes, as if I want the brilliant programming engineering that brought me iTunes to be messing directly with my hardware? I don't even have wireless because, frankly, it's immensely slow and I constantly copy very large files from computer to computer and I've considering upgrading to gigabit Ethernet, just because I don't like waiting half an hour to copy stuff!) So whenever you want to watch a movie on your latest Apple gizmo, just be sure your wireless is in range, and just be sure that the movie is in your desktop's drive before you get all settled in for 2 hours.

2. On the subject of wireless, that's the only thing you can use with a MacBook Air to access a network! Why? Because they completely got rid of the built in Ethernet port! Uhm... Actually, I think this is "reason not to buy #1". Whenever I go to someone's house, I usually have the option of picking between wireless or wired connectivity, and I always, always, always pick wired. Why? Because wireless is slow, usually not properly configured, and we sit there yelling the password letters to each other several times because something went wrong and we have to do it all over again. I always take a spare Ethernet cable with me because I can just plug and chug, so to speak. Securely, I might add. (It also lacks a Firewire port...) You can, however, buy ANOTHER device that converts a USB port to Ethernet. Yes... Let's pay Apple more money to get something that everyone else still adds to their laptop.

3. Zero user-replaceable parts. That means you have to send it in to an Apple store to replace anything and everything that breaks. Monitor, keyboard, battery... hard drive... RAM... everything. Why? Because it's sealed up tight, exactly like an iPod and everything's fused together even if you got the thing open. Oh, but don't worry. You can have the battery replaced for a very low price of $129

Actually, you don't have to worry about any of these things, because the MacBook Air is environmentally friendly! Mercury free, circuit boards without nasty chemicals that can damage the poor Earth. Yes, Sir, this is the laptop for all you global warming advocates! (By the way, it's going to be 9 degrees this weekend. That's awfully cold, you know.)

And let's not forget that Apple claimed this was the thinnest notebook in the world! Even though, uhm... They lied, and it's not: Thinnest Notebook Crown Belongs to Sharp But, hey. Let's just completely overlook the fact that Steve Jobs lies, because this is Apple! And Apple made something cool again! Even though there are thinner laptops out there. Poor Apple. There goes another selling point.

Can you imagine what would happen if Microsoft made anything like this? Can you imagine the uproar that would occur if you had to send in your laptop to Microsoft simply to replace a battery? To have it's RAM upgraded? To add a larger hard drive? Can you imagine the uproar if Microsoft was forcing you to buy adapters for things that should be built in anyway?

And don't take my word for it, here are all the references. Everyone likes to tell me how awesome Wikipedia is, and everyone enjoys asking me where I got all my information, so here you go! A single link to appease both parties! Now that I have references AND Wikipedia, I must be right. There'll be someone who comes along and will feel it's their duty to tell me that if I don't like Apple, I don't have to buy from them, and that such a thing is the wonder of the modern market! That I can choose what I want to buy! Yes, well, let me save you the trouble and say: You're completely right, and I'm not going to buy one of these Airs. Ever.

iTunes crashed last night. Just froze, right out of the blue. Vista was perfectly functional underneath it, and I was able to use the desktop and the Start Menu like normal, but iTunes just sat there, frozen in time, eating 100% of my CPU when everything was idle. A process termination was in order. Just thought I'd throw that out...

Anyway, today, I start it back up? (Because it is the player I've organized my music for, sadly.) Up pops the good ol' 'A new version of iTunes (7.6) is available. Would you like to download it now?' I laugh at it and say 'heck, no! I'll take your little upgrade warning, but let you download it? You can't even do it properly!' So then I go 'you know, I want to read a changelog before I actually do any upgrading. With all the pointless iPhone crap and Leopard GUI updates you're rolling out, I probably don't want anything you have to offer.' I mean, I'm used to reading changelogs all the time... World of Warcraft pushes out a new patch? I read the entire thing because it's fun to do, and it's useful to know! Heck, even Windows Update tell you what it's patching and why, or at least gives you a link to a more in-depth discussion on it. What does Apple do? Absolutely nothing.

"Here's an update! Trust us, it's for your own good."

No changelog in the iTunes folder, no list of what's been changed on the website, nothing in About iTunes menu option or the file of the same name in the folder. Absolutely no reference to what they've done to their little piece of software that you rely on so much. Are they going to automatically detect whether or not you have an iPhone and disable the helper service accordingly? Are they going to give me some more control over how my playlists can be sorted? They're not going to tell me? Fool me twice, shame on me. There's some rudimentary changelog on Wikipedia, but it's nothing more than you can get off their site sometimes. "Improvement for the iPhone", sure... Yeah, I noticed that myself. I grew up playing Myst and Riven remember? I can notice the little Ringtones options that showed up during my last update. Precious little good it does me, though.

I think I'll pass... You know, I played with a latest generation Zune a few weeks ago and it was simply amazing. The interface was actually NOT annoying, with that inaccurate little spin-wheel that whizzes past whatever song entry you're trying to play, and the interface actually looks GOOD. (Have you seen the interfaces on the latest generation iPods? Ew, ew, ew, ew, ew... I certainly hope you can change the effect of having your screen split in half, showing song information on the left and album art on the right. That's just convoluted and distracting, I'm sorry.) Plus, and get this! The Zune/Windows Media Player/Windows Media Center combination works with my Xbox 360, with some of the coolest visualizations I've seen before. (Namely because all the visualizations on my computers are compromised by me always multitasking and robbing power from the rendering and slowing it down to being pointless...)

When my iPod dies... Hello, Microsoft Zune! I'm sick of Apple leading me around by the collar.

I found another Leopard gem. Sorry, but after getting so much flak from people because I bought Vista, I enjoy these articles very much. Especially when they show up on Slashdot. (Although the comments are more along the lines of, "Ah, Apple will fix it, no problem", but with Microsoft it's "Haha! M$ r luzers and ned to be purged from society for this clear violation of... I don't know, but they violated something!")

Basically, the problem is when you move a folder from one Leopard machine to any remote or removable drive, there's a high chance of data loss. If you unplug the target drive before it's finished moving, you'll lose both copies. How any OS can consider doing that is insane... Is it a Unix thing? Making it an immaculate choice on behalf of the free peoples of the Open Source community? Is it a Mac thing? Making it an immaculate choice on behalf of all cultured anti-Microsoft antagonists? Windows preserves the source data until after the target data has been successfully written. It always has! At least in the versions I've used, and I know it does this in XP and Vista, because it's happened before! Move a file... Network goes down. Movement doesn't complete, you get an error, and... What next, you ask? Well, you fix the problem and start again! Because the file you were moving is stiiiiiill there. This is quite clear in my mind, because I moved a massive file I'd downloaded over the network from one Windows machine to another, and the destination drive got full, and my heart sunk because I was sure it had erased the source file, but nope! It didn't, and before you say that such an error isn't a catastrophic error and that it must be handled, well, let me tell you, with a hard drive I use being inside the family computer, every now and then, someone will reboot while I'm moving a file... If that's not considered a catastrophic error of the destination, dropping off the face of the network without any warning, then I don't know what is.

Now... If you can, imagine how the world would react if Windows did this. I know I can.

I honestly don't go out of my way to dig this stuff up... Personally, I like Windows. It suits my needs. I'm a gamer and I wouldn't use another OS until one gets the stuff I want to use. As it stands right now, nothing else offers anything I need. (With the exception of Debian Linux, which I use as a router.) I use what I use, you use what you use, there are pros and cons to each thing, and the more people that understand that, the better! Someone else uses Mac, it suits theirs needs... Someone else uses Linux, it suits their needs...

That being said, when I come across something like this, I have to make a post! By Wired, an article entitled "Best of Leopard Is Yet to Come: Innovative Third-Party Apps". I'm not really aiming to be anti-Mac here, more of a... "Are people really trying to push Macs so hard that they resort to articles like this? Isn't there anything else you could be talking about?" (No? Like... No huge changes to make note of? Time Machine, maybe? Hmm... You mean... Mac finally has a version of Windows System Restore? That Microsoft feature that's been around since Windows ME?) This is like saying "Best of Vista Is Yet to Come: DirectX 10 Apps". Oh wait... People call that a superfluous argument and a marketing gimmick. (Okay, so I guess I am being a bit anti-Mac.)

But it's pretty much "hey! You know what's awesome? Leopard! But you know what's even more awesome? The programs that are going to come out on it, yay!" Well, WOW! What a revolutionary statement! Geez, I'm taken aback here. You mean people buy operating systems to use... programs made by people OTHER THAN THE PEOPLE WHO MADE THE OPERATING SYSTEM? Lunacy! Blasphemy! The very fabric of reality begins ripping to shreds by the mere fleeting thought of such a thing! Oops, wait, I lied...

I would sure as heck hope Leopard's going to get third-party applications. What use would an OS be if you could only run Apple products? Or Microsoft products? That would be the world in which Linux would flourish! This is like saying... "The best of living is yet to come! YOU GET TO EAT!" Seems to be just a silly, needlessly "GET A MAC" write up with no substance. I would personally expect third-party apps. That's no sale point... It's EXPECTED. You shouldn't have to go around and say "you should buy us because we let you write your own programs!"

Sorry, yes, I know how to spell the word leopard, but in a Slashdot article I read (I'll spare the guy any direct ridicule...), someone was so excited about his copy of Mac OS X "Leapoard" in the mail and how he was looking forward to install it when he got home. Geez, man... Learn to spell your idol operating system.

Anyway, in the wake of the news of the (delayed) release of Leopard and how simply amazing it is that it's surpassing 2 million sold copies (indeed, I'm sure that all 2 million Apple users would go out and buy it... Maybe even twice! How is this amazing? Tsk tsk), I thought I'd toss out this little gem:

"A Second Look at the Mac OS X Leopard Firewall"

Looks like Apple messed up! But according to Slashdot... hey, you can't expect Apple to get everything correct, right? Heheheh... Indeed. Can you imagine the reaction if Microsoft did that? Oh, wait! If you're old enough to remember the pre-SP2 releases of Windows XP? The firewall had trouble and Microsoft got charred over it. Now Apple's firewall doesn't block incoming traffic properly (like, the entire reason you would even want a firewall) and everyone's going "pfft, a minor mistake."

Honestly, it's like dealing with left-wing liberals. Not to be saying that all Macintosh users are like left-wing liberals... Two people that come to mind (who aren't crazy, I mean) are Capella and Iaian7. Pretty much the only two Mac users I know personally. (If we "fight", it's all in good fun.) But like they say, the most outspoken people are usually the most crazy... And I'm sure the majority of Mac users have a good head on their shoulder and aren't rabid and ignorant like the Slashdot and Digg environment is.

Since Ed enjoys my daily updates:
Day 3 of 50 complete. $210 of $3250, 6.46% raised. Finish: November 1st.

So while everyone's been concerned with the menace of a Windows Automatic Updater that automatically updates itself without telling you (which, as the real techs understand, only happens because people were too ignorant to actually turn OFF the automatic updater), Apple pulls a fast one and has successfully locked out current generation iPods from any music player besides their monopolizing iTunes. (Nikiski was right. iTunes wanted a reboot because it was installing new iPod drivers... Not necessarily with locking out in mind, but with new technology in mind.)

This largely affects Linux users, since iTunes is obviously not available for that platform. This also affects people (of who I am beginning to consider joining) who despise iTunes and want to use another application to synchronize their iPod.

It looks like folks are trying to reverse-engineer this new "feature", which is made possible by some sort of special encrypted lines in a file that's stored on the iPod that nobody has been able to decode yet.

And people tell me Apple is better than Microsoft. No. No... They're really not.