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Mac fanboys should get a life and some Windows 7 common sense

Publié: octobre 13, 2009, 10:53pm CEST par Joe Wilcox
By Joe Wilcox, Betanews

I have to laugh at the sudden, slew of Mac bloggers taking swings at Windows 7 and asserting that Macs will continue to sell well after Microsoft's newest OS ships. Feeling a little defensive are we, bros? Their reaction shows worry that the thing they profess against -- surging PC sales that swamp Macs -- may yet be reality.
Windows 7 is simply Microsoft's best operating system ever. Mac fanboys should worry and circle together in defensive posture. Collectively, they're making a last stand against the PC giant. Please, please, boisterous Mac defenders, stand in the front lines and receive the first blows. You deserve them.
Mac market share actually means little to Microsoft, although it sure matters lots to Mac bloggers thumping for Apple. The little dog barks, but the big dog -- with its enormous market share -- has the bite. Windows 7 is a new set of teeth. (I'll explain what competitors really matter to Microsoft after the subhead.)
The Apple fanboy crowd snipes against Windows 7 and stresses the over-importance of all things Mac. Some of the assertions about Macs or Windows 7 sales are laughable, they're so ridiculous. For example, today, Apple 2.0 blogger Philip Elmer-DeWitt asked: "Will Windows 7 boost Apple sales?" Philip writes that "over the past decade, Mac shipments have grown with nearly every new Microsoft release," based on research released by Broadpoint AmTech yesterday.
That's not what the data shows. The biggest increase in Mac sales follows the release of the much-maligned Windows Vista. The data supports what is widely known: Vista was a Windows failure. As for the other spikes, supposedly associated with Windows releases, Occam's Razor dictates that something Apple did and not Microsoft affected Mac sales. For example, the chart shows a huge spike in Mac sales for second quarter 2000, noting that Microsoft released Windows 2000 on February 17. But it ignores something else. A day earlier, Apple unveiled new Power Macs, finally reaching the long-delayed 500MHz processing power milestone and setting off a sales surge.
Another date: Oct. 25, 2001, and the launch of Windows XP. The chart shows level Mac sales for the quarter and a substantial decline for the one following. In July 2001, Apple introduced dual-processor Power Macs, and accordingly there was a two quarter spike in Mac shipments. Philip asks a silly question, and the chart is more reasonably explained by Apple actions, not Microsoft's.
Over at Apple Insider, Neil Hughes continues the Broadpoint AmTech misinformation, also referring to Philip's post. Several other blogs or news sites also reported on Broadpoint AmTech numbers, some of them yesterday.
Mac fanboys have also attacked verteran tech reviewer Walt Mossberg's fairly favorable review of Windows 7. Perhaps they feel betrayed, as Walt has favored Macs for years -- and for good reasons in the post-Vista era. But go back a decade and you'll find Walt to have been less charitable towards Apple.
Assessing the Real Competition
Microsoft's competitive problems aren't Macs but:
- Windows XP
- Software pirates
- Netbooks
Windows XP. Windows 7's biggest competitor will be Windows XP, which runs on about 80 percent of PCs, according to combined analyst reports. Microsoft's first challenge will be getting XP users to move up to Windows 7. Mac market share was 7.6 percent in the United States in second quarter, according to IDC. (Gartner and IDC should release Q3 preliminary numbers in the next couple of days.)
Mac share is inconsequential to Microsoft compared to Windows XP. My prediction: Windows 7 will slow Mac share gains, which already declined over the last three quarters, according to both Gartner and IDC.
Software pirates. Collectively, software pirates pose the greatest competitive threat to Microsoft, next to Windows XP. Not Macs. Certainly not PCs running Linux. According to Business Software Alliance, software piracy rates are highest in emerging markets, which also are where potential Windows PC adoption is greatest: 85 percent in Latin America, 66 percent in Central and Eastern Europe and 61 percent in Asia Pacific. By comparison, piracy rate in North Americs is 21 percent and 35 percent in the European Union. So in Latin America, more than 8 out of 10 copies of software in use are stolen.
Here's a loaded question: How many people among the Betanews community use software for which they didn't pay for, even though the developer charges something? Anyone care to respond in comments? Maybe this is easier: What do you feel you should have to pay for software?
More significantly, software piracy creates competitive opportunities for Macs, because of the damage done to the Windows brand. In a report released last week, BSA revealed a direct correlation between online software piracy at torrents and other file-trading sites and malware infections. Countries with high online piracy rates also have high malware infection rates. Related, 25 percent of a sampling of 98 sites distributing pirated software or digital content also contained malware. Where does the blame fall when PCs are infected with viruses? On Microsoft and Windows, which tarnishes the brand and helps foster popular folklore that Macs are more secure than Windows. Macs have problems, too, but they're not always as well publicized.
Netbooks. Microsoft also faces more competitive threat from netbooks, which are gobbling up Windows margins at an alarming rate. Microsoft makes substantially less on each Windows XP Home license shipping on netbooks than it does on either Windows Vista Home Basic or Premium.
During second calendar quarter, when Windows Client revenue fell 29 percent year over year and income declined 33 percent, netbooks made up 11 percent of PC sales, according to Microsoft. Microsoft Chief Financial Officer Chris Liddell acknowledged that the increase in lower-margin consumer Windows licenses -- fed in part by increasing netbook demand -- contributed to declines.
Last week, DisplaySearch updated second calendar quarter PC shipment data. DisplaySearch concluded that netbooks accounted for 22.2 percent of overall PC sales and 11.7 percent of revenues. Netbook sales jumped a staggering 264 percent year over year, while overall laptop sales (without counting netbooks) declined 14 percent.
Meanwhile, increased netbook sales exerted ever greater pull downward on average selling prices. Laptop ASPs fell to $688 in second quarter from $704 in first quarter and $849 in Q2 2008. Netbook prices fell to $361 from $371 and $506, respectively, during the same time period. Microsoft has lots more to worry about than Macs, particularly netbook cannibalization of the PC market and the negative impact on Windows margins.
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2009
Swedish ISP wins appeal in biggest test to date of EU anti-piracy law

Publié: octobre 13, 2009, 9:54pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

Last March, the European Commission voted to enact a continent-wide law compelling member countries to take bolder steps to enforce their own copyright infringement laws. One of the more controversial provisions of the Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive (IPRED) has been to allow rights holders to petition member states' governments to act on their behalf. That provision has emboldened some rights holders and associations to act as evidence gatherers; and in Sweden, their right to do so was put to the test.
A group representing five publishers of audiobooks in Sweden were judged to be entitled to the identity of a single file-sharer. In a June decision, a district court in Solna ordered ISP ePhone to turn over the name of the file-sharer. It refused, and was forced in September to pay a fine of 750,000 kronor (about $107,400), one-tenth of which was to go to the publishers.
While the publishers did not have the complete identity of the unauthorized file-sharer, they knew that he/she existed. Acting under what they had described as the authority granted them by IPRED, someone representing the association hacked into ePhone's records to obtain the single IP address to which the unauthorized downloads were associated, according to ePhone. The district court ruled that the association had "probable cause" to investigate ePhone's records in the manner it did, applying language that's usually reserved for federally sanctioned investigative bodies.
The 750,000 SEK fine was of some concern to ISPs throughout the country because of the precedent it might set: In keeping with a separate EC privacy directive, ISPs had been destroying their retained data on users and their online destinations after six months, if not sooner. The ruling of the Solna court appeared to threaten those same ISPs with sizable fines for...well, there's no other way of saying this...permanently destroying such data in such a way that it could not be un-destroyed.
But in a 2-2 decision yesterday whose split was decided by the presiding judge, the Svea Court of Appeal -- as reported by Sweden's English-language daily The Local -- overturned the Solna court's decision, saying no such probable cause existed. As it turned out, since the audiobooks in question were only accessible through a private login, the association had no basis for arguing that its products were widely available "to the public," the presiding judge ruled.
The Local quotes ePhone CEO Bo Wigstrand as saying after the trial's conclusion, "After all that's been written that we should have released the information, it actually feels really nice that the court has ended up agreeing with what we've said the whole time: that the evidence wasn't good enough." Meanwhile, a spokesperson for the association expressed shame for the appeals court's decision, saying it "really complicates" its ongoing investigations.
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2009
Typo blamed for country-wide Web site blackout in Sweden

Publié: octobre 13, 2009, 9:06pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

If the script that updates your DNS records for a zone leaves off the trailing period for each record, the DNS server can't properly attach the top-level domain name. That little tip is probably permanently etched onto the head of an administrator somewhere at Sweden's Internet Infrastructure Foundation. Late yesterday evening, that single omitted period caused Web sites with Sweden's .se TLD to be inaccessible for at least one hour, with some perhaps remaining inaccessible until the following evening before downstream routers refresh their caches.
A security bulletin issued by the Foundation this morning advises administrators noticing difficulties with accessing .se sites to use BIND 9.2.0's rndc flush command to clear memory of cached data prior to a reload. The firm issued a new zone file shortly after the incident, although it admitted it refrained from going through the usual security steps to clear the zone file since .se sites remained inaccessible. A new, fully cleared zone file has since been issued.
Some ISPs, a spokesperson for the .SE foundation told Sweden's English-language daily The Local, may take two days or longer to fix the issue on their sides of the Internet. Larger ISPs such as TeliaSonera and Bredbandsbolaget report having already instituted the fix.
Evidently the problem did not impact copyright violation powerhouse The Pirate Bay, whose .se domain name defaults to its principal Web site with a .org TLD.
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2009
Why is John Hodgman smiling? Data loss isn't the only Snow Leopard problem

Publié: octobre 13, 2009, 6:04pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

If Snow Leopard, the latest version of the Mac operating system released late last August, were seriously plagued with bugs, writes a volunteer contributor to Apple's discussion forum, the company would be besieged with complaints. But that may very well be the problem, as evidenced by this screenshot from a Snow Leopard user who attempted to formally report his problem to Apple through his operating system, and was met with this message: "An error has occurred. Please report the error to Apple Inc. by emailing the error detail to devbugs@apple.com."
As the user reported on Apple's forum, "I'd laugh if I wasn't in an apoplectic rage."
Apple has reportedly acknowledged the existence of a critical data loss error affecting numerous Snow Leopard users, although the company actually has yet to release a complete statement on the issue. As a result, The Unofficial Apple Weblog has resorted to taking a reader poll, asking readers when they believe Apple can fully resolve this issue for release 10.6.2 (developer builds for which are now being distributed). About a quarter of TUAW's readers are confident Apple can roll things up by the week of October 26.
As this situation continues to develop, there is now one big issue and at least three subsidiary issues that branch from it. The main problem concerns the apparent fact that Snow Leopard is deleting the wrong data when exiting a Guest account.
In Mac OS X, the Guest account was devised as a convenient way for a non-authorized user to be able to use the computer with limited privileges, in such a way that no permanent changes or extra files remain when the user logs off. But since Snow Leopard's release, a growing number of users are discovering that the system is deleting the wrong account: Their main user accounts are missing, along with most of the data stored under those accounts.
Why this problem was not discovered during testing (assuming testing even occurred) is baffling. In the absence of raw data from Apple to help users resolve or avoid the issue, once again, Mac users are left with independent sources and volunteer contributors to Apple's forums to help them out.
Based on what those folks have been able to compile, here is what we've been able to assemble thus far: The problem seems to be concentrated among users who have upgraded to version 10.6.1 from earlier versions. The theory there is that the format of the existing Guest account may not have been upgraded to conform to the new version of the operating system.
Mac users who upgraded to version 10.5 Leopard once before noticed something unusual in the same category, but not as destructive: After upgrading, their main accounts' home directories appeared to be missing. It turns out that they were only moved to a temporary location, and that the upgrade process for some neglected to relocate contents from the /home-preserved directory that Leopard created and the new /home directory. It took a little prestidigitation for users to resolve that problem, but in that case, data was not lost.
But the existence of the problem itself suggests that Apple is changing the structure of user accounts with new releases (which is a likely reason why Leopard would have been relocating user's files in the first place). Theoretically, code that was designed from the ground up to handle a new account structure may be disrupting the old one, in situations where the upgrade process to Snow Leopard failed to make the appropriate change -- as appears to be the case with the Guest account.
The three subsidiary issues arising in the wake of the Guest account problem are, in and of themselves, quite serious, though in terms of possible damage they pale by comparison. First, users who are genuinely trying to restore their data using Time Machine, Apple's built-in backup utility, are discovering it didn't back up their complete contents. According to one Web developer's report, Web pages associated with users' accounts do not appear to have been restored, and were probably not backed up to begin with.
A second issue that's probably unrelated technically is being given extra weight with regard to Snow Leopard's other problems: Users of the Mac's Airport wireless devices are reporting continually dropped connections only since having upgraded to Snow Leopard. Several volunteers have suggested any number of solutions including upgrading router firmware and changing the format of security keys to something stronger, but no solution seems permanent.
What may relate this issue to the bigger issue of account deletion, if anything, is this one common thread: Folks who believe their solution is fixed (their Airport stops dropping connections) only come to discover the problem un-fixes itself after their machine is powered down or hibernated. As one afflicted Mac user writes, "Something tells me that Airport just isn't meant to be cycled off and on numerous times a day to reestablish a connection."
Another potentially common thread has to do with external hard drives, many of which are connected using Airport. Many Snow Leopard upgraders are reporting they cannot launch their Finder application for these drives -- specifically, they're receiving a message that reads, "The application Finder.app can't be opened - 10810."
Some users report being able to reconnect to their external drives and launch Finder, but only after uninstalling whatever drive they're using for their continual Time Machine backup. And once again, in cases where users appear to have found solutions, their fixes mysteriously disappear after having powered down or hibernated their systems. "Now have the choice of no Finder or no backup," writes one user. "We need an answer from Apple."
As with other cases in the past, we're seeing some independent contributors to Apple's forums who respond to complaints by coming to Apple's rescue. For example, some contributors have now taken to responding to demands that Apple issue a solution to the Guest account debacle by citing Apple's EULA, specifically the section headed, "9. Limitation of Liability."
That's the section that states that by using the Mac in the first place, you agree that Apple cannot possibly harm you with serious intent. The section reads, in part, "In no event shall Apple's total liability to you for all damages (other than as may be required by applicable law in cases involving personal injury) exceed the amount of fifty dollars ($50.00). The foregoing limitations will apply even if the above stated remedy fails of its essential purpose."
One can imagine Justin Long seated behind a desk in front of a queue full of complaining users, and passing out fifties.
But throughout the Apple forums, perhaps for the first time, there appears to be a split in the ranks, where not everyone is rushing to the company's defense as if it's the one being damaged. One user bit by both the Guest account and Time Machine problem reported she had grown so comfortable with the idea of just having a Mac that she never really thought she'd have to learn about using it to the extent she has in the past few weeks.
And another user, in exasperation after being bitten by "Error 10810" for the last time, simply shouted, "This is Mac for God's sake!"
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2009