Disqus - Latest Comments for Louis wheeler

Re: The Tao of Mac - 5 things that would be different if the Kindle were Apple's

Louis wheeler — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 15:47:27 -0000

Trees are a crop just like corn. They just take 25 years to mature. They are neither pure nor holy; they pollute like all living creatures. 60% of Tennessee's fog is from the hydrocarbons put in the air from the Pine forests. And since the Pine needles contain an organic acid which kills the underbrush, Pine forests cause acid lakes down stream.

That is why the trout in the 10 thousand lakes region of Michigan and Wisconsin started to die in the 1950s. It wasn't pollution from Detroit or Chicago, because they are downwind. Their acid rain falls on upper New York State. The only reason there were fish in those lakes, at all, was because both states were stripped of trees in the 1880s. The trees came back starting in the 1930s, so the lakes had to die.

Re: Is Apple’s inflexibility its Achilles heel?

Louis wheeler — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 00:21:27 -0000

This is just a disagreement over marketing. The Music and Media Giants and Apple have a different marketing plan from Apple. The Giants want to wring every dime out of its customers; that is why they have long favored a strong DRM and variable pricing. Apple's vision is to move to a unit pricing and no DRM.

The question that you miss asking here is ,"What do the Music and Media customers want?" The customers have long rejected the Music and Media Giants plans. We will find out soon who wins.

NBC's move to Amazon will succeed or not. We'll see how flexible the customers want to be.

Re: Apple: What happened to thinking different?

Louis wheeler — Sun, 30 Sep 2007 16:32:33 -0000

This is just a three day wonder, Matthew; no one is going to care if some hackers got hosed for acting stupid. It wasn't as though you weren't warned. So what if they turned their iphones into iPod Touches?

This won't affect iPhone sales, at all, over the Christmas quarter. I expect to see three to four million iPhones sold to common, ordinary people who would never dream of hacking their phones.

I'm just amused at the hysteria. And at the double standard. The hackers can violate Apple's rights with impunity, but Apple can't void their warranties, write over their apps or brick their phones. Not so.

Re: The Dangers Of Expecting Too Much From Apple

Louis wheeler — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 12:04:20 -0000

The problem here seems to be one of expectations; Robert Scoble expected a flawless upgrading experience and he didn't get it. He doesn't know why he had problem and assumed that the difficulty was with Apple. He then constructed a paranoid fantasy that Apple was out to get him. LOL.

A common cause of the "blue screen of death" in Leopard is a haxie-- A old version of Unsanity's Application Enhancer. Unsanity broke the rule that you are not supposed to mess with the System folder. When Apple makes major changes to its operating system, as it did in leopard by introducing 64 bit Cocoa Intel API's, then the internals that the haxie relied on changed and problems occurred.

Any major upgrade holds the possibility of creating problems although Leopard's are rather minor. The more a person is a power user, as Robert Scoble apparently thinks he is, then the more likely that he has added something which will produce odd results.

Change is often disruptive, but often change is for the good. It helps no one to place false expectations on people and companies. Even if Apple is entirely sincere it can make mistakes that will have to be corrected. It helps no one for Robert Scoble to blame Apple when he does not know the cause of his problem.

The Mac does "just work" when compared with Microsoft Windows. But, Apple has it's own way of thinking and problem solving learned on Windows systems rarely applies to the Mac. The Mac operating system is not perfect and only a fool would think it was.

Re: 3 Reasons Why Apple is Finally Selling Their iPhone In Walmart(maybe)

Louis wheeler — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 13:51:49 -0000

The iPhone is an iPod which acts like a telephone, so why wouldn't it be sold wherever iPods are sold? Walmart has been selling iPods for years, but it isn't selling Macintosh Computers there, yet. Why? Because the Apple Macintosh isn't a commodity computer. Apple still needs the Apple Stores to sell people on the Mac's benefits.

The point was that Apple needed to pretend the iPhone was a SMARTPhone to get a fair entry into the Telephone market since it was all locked up. Times have changed, Apple has won. The iPhone is recognized as a COMPUTERPhone. Apple no longer needs to make any artificial market constraints.

Re: Apple and its security issues it doesn’t like to acknowledge

Louis wheeler — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 23:07:36 -0000

This is more that a little strange. Rich Mogull's complaint is that Apple isn't secure because it doesn't act like Microsoft. Maybe Apple doesn't need a formal security system, because Apple designed Mac OSX right the first time, so they don't have to fiddle with it.

It is Microsoft Windows, after all, which has the 200 thousand virus and malware in the wild and Mac OSX has none and never has. Now, Snow leopard's security is getting even stronger and Rich discounts it.

Where is the proof of the pudding? Where in Mac OSX is the malware, worms, adware, spyware and virus which infest Wintel? I don't get any. Perhaps Apple is doing something right by not following the recommendations of people like Rich.

Lou Wheeler

Re: Invention vs. Innovation

Louis wheeler — Wed, 21 Feb 2007 00:36:05 -0000

Innovation and invent mean almost the same thing-- new. It's just that we use invent to apply to new devices while innovation can also mean new methods and customs. What Apple does is create devices and systems that are difficult to imagine coming from any other company.

It's easy to dismiss an innovation. All you have to say is that someone else thought of it first while ignoring the effort necessary to make an idea practical. The desktop on Xerox's Star looked nothing like or worked like the Macintosh. The Xerox "mouse" looked like a trackball. The Mac's desktop was much better and more practical than the Star's. And the Mac cost $2,500 while the Star was $15,000.

Besides, Xerox got its idea for the Star from Bart Engelhard's seminal work in the fifties and sixties. Apple only got a one day show and tell for its million dollars in stock. It got no hardware designs or software. Apple had to go and innovate its own way of doing things and Apple's way was often better. The point is that it is damned hard to get things right so that they are useful in ways that no one else dreamed of. The Macintosh did that. Apple continues to do that.

The iPhone will do that, too. Why? Because it's nothing like the other smart phones. It's a computer more powerful than most from five to ten years ago. It has a shortened version of Mac OSX 10.5 in it. There is little that the iPhones won't be able to do, eventually. Mostly, the iPhone will expose how rotten the current Smartphones are. And it will do it in a way that seems intuitive. People will ask, "This seems so easy. Why didn't phones work like this before?" A lot of hard work and thinking are necessary to make things appear easy.

Great design, good looks, near perfect execution, ease of use and fine craftsmanship are nothing new, but they are damned rare.

Bravo, Apple, you did it again.

If it were easy to do what Apple did, then why weren't the Smartphones designed like this, years ago?

Re: A Concrete Reason Macs Beat PCs: Intel VT

Louis wheeler — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 14:38:28 -0000

Thank you, Steven, for posting this. This was quite interesting.

Much of the article had to do with Wintel's shortcomings, but the revelation that Apple has included hardware VT in all of its product lines needs to be thought about.

This is a case where paying more gives great benefits. It explains why Bootcamp, VMware and Parallels can provide the Windows OS in its own virtual space and partition.

Moreover, we need to think about what will be the consequences of adding Snow Leopard's 64 bit operating system to Intel 's 64 bit virtual technology hardware -- VT-i. From what I've read, the real strength and flexibility doesn't appear until you are using a 64 bit computer.

Intel VT-i was really designed to work with Intel's V-Pro software to overcome the shortcoming of the Windows OS. It sand boxes each OS, Application and memory in its own virtual space. Both of the above are aimed at the Enterprise market; they give a central agency an ability to control what privileges and resources a user, an operating system, an application or a thread gets.

I suspect that Apple will be providing much of the capability of V-Pro inside Snow Leopard, but I do not think that this is its major intent.

Leaked pictures of Snow Leopard show that most processes are sand boxed. I saw one screen with a misbehaving plugin to Safari which was taking too many computer cycles. It was easy to delete that process and start it anew. Whereas in Leopard 10.5, you had no idea what was hanging up Safari.

We don't know what opportunities that Snow Leopard will offer us, but it seems likely that the Mac OS and the Windows OS will operate in their own virtual space. It will look to the user as though the windows for each OS co-exists next to each other when they are completely isolated. The implications for security are enormous if every OS, application and plug in is sand boxed.

Apple said recently that Snow Leopard would be getting much improved security, but it didn't quite say how. The Wintel pundits immediately jumped on this with their imputation of "Security by Obscurity." Partly this is true, but the reason is not because of Apple's small market share. Part of Security by Obscurity is to hide from hackers where essential operating files are in a 64 Terabyte address space. They cant steal or misuse what they can't find.

What the combination of Snow Leopard and Intel VT-i will give is "Security by Isolation." You will be able to set up a secure process with your bank or vendors which will be isolated from the rest of the computer in a virtual process and partition. Even if a vulnerability gives a hacker root access for the main part of your computer which is not secured, it will not even see the isolated sand boxed parts in their own virtual space.

Re: A Concrete Reason Macs Beat PCs: Intel VT

Louis wheeler — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 19:50:46 -0000

I suspect, Wes, that it has to do with the price and quality of the PC. Some PC models will be VT capable just like some are Areo capable. That is often because they are Pro machines, rather than consumer models.

The problem is that this capability may not be readily apparent. Microsoft / Intel might be getting another black eye when System Seven is released. Many people will be irritated because their recently purchased computer is not VT capable. Hence, it cannot run windows XP in virtual mode.

Re: You had me at bienvenido

Louis wheeler — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 11:09:47 -0000

It's time to let the iPhone price drop go, Chuck. Apple didn't intentionally try to embarrass you people who overpaid.

It was just a business decision; nothing personal. They saw that the IPhone was going to be a success, so they could spread the R&D fixed costs over a wider group. They probably negotiated with their suppliers, so their variable costs were down. They could see that if they dropped the price by a third then their sales rate would double, which it did. That means that the December buying season, which doesn't start until after Thanksgiving, will likely be between three and four million iPhones sold. How could they pass that up?

Hanging onto resentments is childish. Steve Jobs apologized and gave you a gift that he wasn't require to give. What else would you expect of him? Crawl on his knees? Not likely? Let it go.

Re: Windows Vista vs. Mac OSX, the two-hour definitive word

Louis wheeler — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:06:40 -0000

As a long time Macintosh user (22 years and counting), I wish Vista well. Why? Because it puts to rest another bit of Microsoft FUD. Ever since MS-Dos, Microsoft and its pet columnists would play the same game. They would spend years of effort advertising that whatever benefits the Macintosh had were worthless-- right up to the time that Microsoft put out its own version of the same thing.

This isn't to say that Apple hasn't screwed up at times: the whole Pink, Taligent era was embarrassing. But, Apple has a winner with Mac OSX. Meanwhile, Microsoft and its sycophants were discounting Mac OSX as eye-candy.

Areo Vista has eye-candy of its own now, so Microsoft can drop that bit of FUD. You will also notice that to use Areo Vista, you need a machine that is at least two to three times as powerful as to run Windows XP. This means that only upper end PC's sold in the last two years qualify. But, the junky PC's older than that have probably been thrown away. What this means is that, all this time, Apple computers needed to be twice as powerful to run Mac OSX. Eye-candy uses up computing cycles. We Mac users don't mind that; the Areo Vista users won't either. Eye-candy is nice.

I don't mean to disparage the PC's; many people are happy enough with them. I wish them well. All I'm saying is that, every time Microsoft catches up to Apple, some disinformation vanishes.

Now, if we could only get PC users to recognize that Apple doesn't make low end, throw away, junky PC's and starts comparing them to mid range computers from Dell or HP. If they did compare correctly, then the PC users would know that Apple Mac's are comparable in price or lower. And why shouldn't they cost the same? All these computers are built in the same Chinese factories that build Dells or HP's. They use most of the same components. So, the hardware question, among mid range computers, becomes irrelevant.

Those of you who build their own computers from parts, and bragging about their savings, are ignoring the time it takes you to research, build, get them working and maintain them. How much is your time worth? Most Macintosh users have pay grades above $20 an hour, so it's not worth it to us to build one. It would cost us above two thousand dollars in time to get even near the quality of a Mac. And the Mac's cost less than that.

Re: Apple’s Social Media Hell - Why it Needs to Repent

Louis wheeler — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 11:53:25 -0000

Any article which would cite a Microsoft shill like Robert Scoble is biased. Apple has a defensive stance, because Microsoft would take advantage of any weakness. Apple learned long ago that it does not pay to defend itself from Microsoft FUD. The honest people will appreciate Apple's products. Anyone who buys into Microsoft's propaganda is not a good market for Apple products. Apple would rather win through excellent products and services than through dishonest marketing. Even when that dishonesty is filtered through Microsoft bootlicker's like Scoble.

Re: What Apple Does Right (and Wrong)

Louis wheeler — Sun, 21 Oct 2007 22:50:46 -0000

The author apparently does not know Apple's history otherwise he would not make these errors.

1. Apple learned from Microsoft not to be transparent. The Microsoft engineers used to joke that Apple in Cupertino was R&D south. The way that programming works is that it takes twenty percent of your time to write eighty percent of the code for a product. And fifty percent to write and debug ninety percent. Then 100% to polish and refine it for sale. Microsoft would hear that Apple was working on an idea. It would produce a knock-off just to be first in half the time of Apple. It would be awful and buggy, so no one would use it. But, Microsoft got to spike Apple's guns.

2. Apple has always been a control freak; it wants to control the user experience. The thing about the iPhone was that the software was not finished enough to be a hand held computer the way the hackers wanted. The second point was that the iPhone is a Leopard OSX 10.5 devise and had to wait for the Leopard release. Also, Apple had its programmers refining Leopard . So, they had no time to fix the iPhone's problem until now.

Neither of these are likely to change.

Re: Who's Qualified?

Louis wheeler — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 18:04:45 -0000

It was a loaded question. It assumed that using the government to bailout individuals for health care, housing, gas and groceries is okay but using a bailout for financial institutions is not

What are the consequences of each, if there is no bailout? The individual scrimps, saves or does without. On the other hand, we are warned that the Financial institutions will go out of business, credit will dry up, so that many businesses will fold. That means that this individual could lose his job. What you have here is a Personal problem vs a potential depression. Which is worse?

The problem is that Sarah Palin is not in charge, John McCain is and he had not made up his mind yet what the proper solution is. Nor should he, because the Congress has not yet passed a bill. The devil of the bailout is in the details. Katie Couric was asking a premature question, but it was not phrased in a rhetorical sense.

The Local Bankers that I have talked to say that the government should let Bear-Sterns and the other financial companies fold. I'm not an economist, nor is Sarah Palin. I'm not sure what is the proper course when there are so many conflicting voices.

This was a biased question. If Sarah Palin defended the bailout then she looked like she was against Americans who were struggling. If she proposed another bailout of the poor, she would be going back on her conservative values. Either way, she was screwed.

Unfortunately, Sarah hasn't started laughing in the face of the Media when they ask a ridiculous or slanted questions. The Media is often bigoted, biased and ignorant, but that's okay as long this hurts the Republicans.

Re: What’s So Unique About Apple’s Hype?

Louis wheeler — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 15:08:25 -0000

What hype? Do you understand the difference between explain and hype? You can explain with enthusiasm when you are telling the truth. Hype implies exaggeration or deception. I didn't see any.

Did Apple attempt to deceive anyone? Who? Apple gave you a percentage of reclaimed disk space on installing Snow Leopard. That was pretty much to form on my install.

Apple changed the way in it counted Gigabytes to help computer newbies. They must have gotten tired of being asked why their 250GB disk only showed 232 GB. If this is a deception it is on the part of the disk manufacturers inflating their numbers, not Apple.

Is the Mac OS the world's most advanced Operating System? It is one of them. Why? Because it is UNIX03 certified. It shares this characteristic with mainframe computers from Sun and IBM.

Apple could have nailed this fact down further by saying that it is the only advance Desktop Operating System. How? By explaining that Linux is incomplete for the desktop. And that Windows is neither advanced, nor modern. Windows is not UNIX03 certified. Nor is it modern, modular or object oriented. Windows has never been certified safe for the Internet. It is a stand alone disk operating system that is a disaster to use on the Web.

http://www.rixstep.com/2/20090601,00.shtml

Is Snow Leopard more refined? I'd say yes. Why? Because refinement is just as much about what you don't add as what you do. Snow Leopard lets go of the compromises which Steve Jobs had to make in bringing the NeXTstep OS to the Mac in 1998. The Carbon API's will increasingly be rendered 32 bit legacy code, so they can be left behind in five years. Snow Leopard leaves behind the PowerPC hardware and code and optimizes for Intel.

Apple embraces 64 bit code this year. 90+% of the Mac applications will be in 64 bit code next year. That change will give us a speed boost. Then, we have some new technologies which need to be implemented: Grand Central Dispatch and OpenCL. It is not yet clear what benefit they will have. We will be learning about this over the next year.

If you want an example of hype, then look at System Seven. It is little better than a service pack for Vista. As Steve Ballmer put it, "It is Vista as it should have been released three years ago." Snow Leopard will blow System Seven away. But, most Wintel fans won't know or care about that.

Re: What’s So Unique About Apple’s Hype?

Louis wheeler — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 15:39:27 -0000

No, Powerinside, this article is based on false assumptions. Furthermore, it alleges misconduct without proving it. It used a YouTube video mocking Apple as part of its smear campaign.

Steve Jobs was using expansive language, but using colorful language and being enthusiastic is not the same as being false or duplicitous. The author was exposing his distain.

Re: What’s So Unique About Apple’s Hype?

Louis wheeler — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 16:43:35 -0000

I was very specific about the LINUX DESKTOP being incomplete. It is not ready for prime time. It cannot be easily used by ordinary people. It leaves out 90% of humanity. Linux is fine as a server software. But, it is not easy to use. The problem is that Linux is designed for geeks, by geeks. I guess that would be you.

I have hopes for Google Chrome, because Google needs to make it a complete desktop OS for the ordinary users.

Yes, Apple was certified as UNIX03 for Intel hardware, last year. Apple need not dominate anything to have this certification. All it need do is comply with international standards. Windows does not.

Yes, Microsoft has had a 64 bit version of WindowsXP for some time, but practically no one uses it or the later version in Vista. Its normal migration path is very difficult because you must abandon 32 bit apps to use it. Maybe in five years, Microsoft will get their act in gear.

Also, BSD UNIX has been in 64 bit since the 1980s on mainframes. Beat that.

Steve Jobs' NeXT Corp created NeXTstep in 1993 and he used the MACH kernel and BSD as its foundations. NeXTstep was adapted to the Macintosh in 1998 to become Mac OSX. Apple started its migration to 64 bit in Panther 10.3 in June 2003. Only recently has It been necessary and practical to convert the kernel to 64 bit. This will be completed in the next year.

Microsoft was very late to this game and hardly anyone has a reason to use its 64 bit versions. Hey, hardly anyone uses Vista. We'll have to see about how System Seven fares.

You can call Snow Leopard any name you like; it doesn't matter to me. I gave you a quote where Steve Ballmer practically called System Seven a service pack of Vista. Who is a better person t listen to -- him or you?

PS. When you grow up, you will learn that it is counter productive to call people names.

Re: What’s So Unique About Apple’s Hype?

Louis wheeler — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 09:21:46 -0000

The author is doing a series. He has to find conditions which are hyped. But, if he wants to be taken seriously, he needs to find occasions which we can agree are duplicitous or exaggerated. That is, he needs to make a good case. Perhaps, he must look at these things from a different angle or insert his own humor in events. He could have remarked how something looks hyped, but then explain how it really isn't on deeper examination. That would have been interesting.

There have been occasions in the past, in the PowerPC era, when Steve Jobs didn't deliver on the promises he was making. It was during the time when Apple was digging itself out of the deep hole it was in. Steve could probably see how the current unimpressive products he was touting would lead to more exciting ones. But first, Apple needed to survive, before it could prosper and innovate.

What did Steve promise now? Many of the things that Steve was talking about may have been amazing or stupendous to the developers in his audience. But to the lay person, they may seem hyped, because we have no understanding of their real significance. 64 bit programing, Grand Central Dispatch and OpenCl will allow the developers to do amazing things. So, Steve has to turn them on to the possibilities. He needs to act as a visionary.

I can see the faint outline of fundamental changes coming. Partly, these are from improving technology, but they are also from the new business plans which Apple is pioneering. The iPhone application store demand to to expanded. If it is extended to regular Mac applications then the way in which software is sold changes.

But Apple doesn't deliver vaporware, so it doesn't talk about products it can't deliver yet.

Re: Mac Users Willing To Try Windows 7

Louis wheeler — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 13:59:21 -0000

I've been using a Mac since the MacOS System 6 days. Even so, I've got nothing against Microsoft mostly because I avoid using any of its products. I've never become a MS victim, but some of friends have been. I never liked working in Windows at work, though. But, I never had high expectations of it.

Do have any gripes against MS? Yes, there wouldn't be any malware problem on the web if there are no computers running Windows. Huge amounts of spam are delivers by Windows Botnets. I never see any of that, because I use a Mac. But even so, I know that most of the slowness on the web can be laid at Microsoft's door.

Re: What Apple Does Right (and Wrong)

Louis wheeler — Sun, 21 Oct 2007 22:50:46 -0000