Posts by Joe Ragosta

Apple support-drone scripts leaked

Real world results

Read Anand's article on the subject. They determined that even with the 'flaw', reception on the iPHone 4 surpasses the iPhone 3GS or other phones. THAT is what really matters, not the number of bars.

That coincides with my experience. If I go out of my way to do something I wouldn't normally do, I can make the number of bars drop. If I use the phone normally, I get a LOT fewer dropped calls than I got with the iPhone 3 (actually, I haven't had a single dropped call with the iPhone 4 yet) and call quality is better.

Look at the geometry. If you want to hold the phone with the lower left corner cupped in your palm while making a phone call, you have to twist your arm so that your elbow is in the middle of your chest - not the most comfortable way to make a call. If I simply hold it normally for making a call, my fingers are no where near the black stripe.

Giving away bumpers is not a cost issue. It's simply a matter of Apple not wanting to do something stupid. Bumpers won't solve the problem and most people don't have a problem, anyway. So why should they tell 2 M customers that there's a problem and here's a free bumper to fix the problem when only a tiny fraction actually experience the problem in real life? That would be terrible PR.

It's a great phone. If you don't like it, feel free to return it for a refund.

Apple iOS4 upgrade adds multitasking, folders... and pain

Numbers

As always, The Register jumps on a few problems and acts like the sky is falling.

1. Every time you post one of these "Apple product is failing" stories, I ask the same thing - and you have never followed through: HOW MANY FAILED? There are tens of millions of iPhones out thetre. A few dozen or even hundred or thousand would be an insignificant number - especially since youc an reset and then proceed.

2. In this case, I'll also ask:" "how many of these updates failed because the owner had jailbroken the phone?" I'm willing to bet that many of them were jailbroken - which is the reason Apple doesn't support it - it can break things, particularly when you upgrade.

I know it's too much to ask, but PLEASE - how about some responsible journalism?

Apple Mac Mini 2010

Misleading

Sadly, you are missing quite a few points here with your 'slower but more expensive' nonsense.

There used to be two Minis - one at $599 and one at $799. Apple went with a single model which is exactly in the middle of those two prices. The newer model adds:

HDMI (for some people, this alone is worth the price)

SD (remember all the people complaining about the iPad because SD is 'so critical'?)

Much faster GPU

CPU marginally slower than old high end model and marginally faster than old base model)

Stronger case with better heat transfer

Significantly lower energy usage

Twice the RAM capacity

RAM replacement easier for end user

No more external power supply

Or, if you want to take away the one negative, you could go with the upgraded CPU. The system would then be $50 higher than the older high end model, but would have a faster CPU in addition to all of the above.

Now, I can see that you might not think that it's worth the money, but I frankly don't care. The system is less expensive than the old high end system and better in almost every way (except for CPU speed which will not affect most users given the significant increase in GPU performance). But this one-sided misleading trolling about 'slower but more expensive' is just plain wrong.

Inevitable Mac OS X 10.6.4 update problems surface

How many?

As always, this article is completely worthless without some indication of how many people are having the problem.

And don't try the "there are 50 posts in the thread" argument. If there are 50 posts, 1 is the person who posted the original problem. 27 are people saying "mine works fine". 15 are people saying "Macs suck". 5 are suggestions from people on how to fix it. And 2 are spammers trying to sell you Louis Vitton bags.

Also, it would also be useful to know how many of the people having problems have installed some haxie that does stuff by bypassing the OS and inserting their own code - which almost always leads to problems on upgrades.

Nothing to see here.

US trade body decides Apple has case to answer

Title is wrong

The title says that the ITC has decided that Apple has a case to answer. This is incorrect.

First, we only have a rumor that ITC is even looking into matters involving Apple, but even if they are, that doesn't mean that there's anything for Apple to answer. Apple doesn't have to do anything unless ITC actually opens a case against them.

Just another false hit-bait headline from the register.

Fanbois howl over 'hang a lot' Safari 5

Mac servers

@Jeremy:

You have forgotten the Mac Mini server. Under $1 K with RAID 1 and UNLIMITED CLIENT licensing.

While that's not too impressive compared to Linux, try to spec a WIndows server with unlimited client licensing and see where you end up.

Granted, the Mini isn't a high end server, but it makes a great home server or small workgroup server for small business.

How about some data?

I have a suggestion - whenever a site like this starts with their "product x is an epic fail because users are having immense problems", let's all just skip the article unless they provide some number and evidence that the problem is real.

There are tens of millions of Safari users. I don't doubt that a few of them will have problems. Some will be related to bad hacks that they've used and which don't work with Safari 5 yet. Some may be hardware problems that were always there and they just ignored them until they installed Safari 5 - so Safari got the blame. Some are probably just plain fabricated (notice how the Apple-haters always seem to have more problems than any 20 normal people?).

Oh, and please don't pretend that "there are 150 posts on the Apple forum thread" constitutes evidence. Typically, if there are 150 posts, 90 of them are people saying "I don't have any problem", 25 of them are the original poster saying "I don't care if you have a problem - I do", 25 of them are trolls saying "Macs suck", and the remaining 10 are suggestions on how to fix it.

Reghardware is one of the worst. They troll Apple forums and as soon as 2 different people have the same problem, they announce to the world that Apple products suck.

Apple lifts iPhone code ban (for chosen few)

Flash

@h 6

"Try writing a game in Flash and see if you can get it on a PS3 or Xbox or Wii. Let me know how that goes for you."

Or Windows Mobile or Symbian or WebOS or any Android system except the very tiny percentage running v. 2.2 on an 800 MHz or faster processor.

Sympathy

Obviously because he doesn't have a strong argument, so he's going for sympathy points.

Explanation

@Andus

Yes, I would agree that 'if' is redundant - based solely on your posts here.

You want to spend your time buying porn apps? Buy a different phone. Apple has chosen to not sell porn apps as part of their effort to defend their brand image - much as Walmart refuses to sell porn magazines. You don't like that? Don't shop at Walmart or buy an iPhone.

If you really must have your porn, you can still use a browser to get it even on an iPhone. Apple is simply not going to facilitate it for you.

As for the rest, I gave you an explanation. The fact that you didn't like it doesn't make it any less valid.

Uninformed

@nsid:

"but I cannot get on with apple products, god knows I have tried, but the mouse with no buttons is a non starter along with the GUI on Macs which is just odd."

So the fact that you're uninformed is Apple's problem?

As for the mouse, the standard Apple mice all have at least 2 buttons - they're just not physical. You click differently. But if you're really stuck on having a mouse with 10 buttons, you can use almost all of them on Macs. So your reasoning doesn't make sense.

As for an 'odd' GUI, that's a really bizarre statement since the GUI of every modern computer system has almost all of the same features as the Mac's GUI (I'm not going to get into who is copying whom at this point). The Mac's is less cluttered and more usable than the others, but there's not enough difference to pull one out and call it 'odd'.

Read....

@Andus:

"I just simply don't get the 'lockdown'."

Maybe you should read a little bit about the topic. Apple's 'lockdown' is to ensure quality of user experience. It has nothing to do with volume of sales or your desire to run interpreted Basic. It's all about delivering a quality experience. The fact that they're now allowing small amounts of interpreted code is evidence of that. If you can demonstrate that your app meets the quality standards in spite of having some interpreted code, you can get it listed.

As for the rest, you're once again misinformed. If you want to run non-approved apps on your iphone, you can do so. Jailbreak your phone if you wish and you can run all the garbage you want. Just don't whine when the crappy apps that fail Apple's review process don't work well.

Captain .....

OK. I forgive you - you obviously can't help it. But you really shouldn't talk about yourself that way - even if it's true.

If you really want to become educated, learn a little bit about antitrust laws. Apple, with 3% of the cell phone market and 20% of the smart phone market doesn't have a controlling market position. Microsoft, with 97% of the OS market, obviously did.

Apple bans competing ads from the iPhone

Hypocrisy

The one thing that everyone has missed - Apple is simply doing what Google has done for years. You know, the Google with a near-monopoly in online advertising vs Apple's non-existent position?

Can Apple sell advertising on google.com or gmail.com? Of course not. Google controls that 100%.

If Google thinks that Apple is being unfair, they can start by opening up THEIR apps and network to Apple. "Do no evil" my a$$.

What's good for the goose....

Operator gang gunning for iTunes

Logical conclusion

I wonder if they realize that iTunes is only a very tiny portion of the business conducted over the Internet. Ads constitute a much larger portion of Internet traffic than iTunes - so why aren't they whining about getting a portion of Ad revenue?

Or if they're worried about overloading their networks, why don't they get together to do something about all the spam and malware that are bringing the Internet to its knees?

Or maybe they should get a fraction of Amazon's revenue. Or NetFlix. Or perhaps they should tax YouTube videos - they use a LOT more bandwidth than iTunes.

Or maybe they simply think that it's only a matter of creating their own iTunes clone. But they're missing all the other stuff, so why not start by creating their own Google clone - or YouTube clone - or Amazon clone?

It really saddens me to see how bad people are at understanding the concept of adding value for customers by creating a great product. If they had said "we think we can offer a better user experience than iTunes and we're going to do so", that would be a reasonable (if misguided) approach. Simply saying "we want a portion of the revenue so we're going to take it" is not.

Adobe clutches chance to bury Steve Jobs 'hog' insult

Not correct

The statement that Adobe couldn't use hardware acceleration before is incorrect. Apple has always offered hardware acceleration via CoreVideo, but Adobe chose to use its lousy port from Windows and therefore wanted the ability to access the hardware directly (which is not allowed on Macs for security reasons).

Let's look at the reality.

1. Other companies doing much more hardware intensive things than Flash managed to get by with the public APIs. Why couldn't Adobe?

2. Even other Adobe apps do far more complex things with the public APIs, why not the Flash group?

3. Adobe always had access to hardware acceleration if they chose to use it. CoreVideo provides hardware acceleration, but Adobe wanted to write their own insecure, buggy software to bypass Apple's safeguards.

4. The hardware API that Adobe was whining about affects only h264 video. What is Adobe's excuse on everything else? My MacBook Pro goes to 120% CPU usage simply by opening a Flash page that doesn't even have animations on it. Why is that?

5. Adobe STILL doesn't have a full version of flash that will work on mobile devices. Even 10.1, (even if it does come out this summer as delayed), will only work on devices with 800 MHz A8 or above - which is an almost insignificant number of devices.

6. Even this 'new, improved' Flash with hardware acceleration still sucks CPU cycles like crazy. Look at Engadget's results. On the i5 system, it actually uses MORE CPU cycles than the old version. But even the i7 result tells you something. If it's taking 50-60% CPU on a Core i7 with multi-GB of RAM and fast video card, how do you expect it to work on a 400-600 MHz mobile device with 128-256 MB of RAM?

How anyone could blame Apple for Adobe's incompetence is beyond me.

Apple in shock public attack on Adobe

Games

"Can you create simple games with HTML 5, H.264, Javascript and the like that you can with Flash, that can be played anywhere, on any machine so I can while away a half hour while waiting for a plane or something?"

Yes.

Watch the Toy Story iAds demo that Jobs did earlier this month.

As I've said before, lots of people are claiming that there are things Flash can do that html 5 won't do - but every time I ask, no one can come up with an example. Just watch the demo and you'll see how flexible html 5 is.

Falsehoods

"You can build a little Flash app. and, provided you write it to do so it will work on say 80% of PCs and smartphones.

Only smartphone that won't be supporting it by the end of this year is iPhone - maybe you count iPad as a PC - but otherwise I don't see browsers with plans to drop Flash"

This is, of course, false.

Windows Mobile has already stated that they won't be supporting Flash. NO existing phone runs a full version of Flash today.

Adobe CLAIMS that 10.1 will be out later this year, but it requires 800 MHz Cortex A8 or better - so it will be limited to a very tiny percentage of today's phones (and you can be sure that as the phones improve, Adobe will bloat Flash even further).

EVEN IF Adobe meets its plans, only a very tiny, insignificant percentage of phones will run Flash by year end.

Why do you Adobe shills think people aren't smart enough to realize that?

Go on

"*Cough* n800, n810, n900... shall i go on?"

Sure. Go on - maybe you'll eventually find one that runs a full version of Flash - which is what we were discussion.

Flash Mobile (which those devices run) is far too limited to be of use - most Flash sites don't work, so it really doesn't help.

The first FULL version of Flash for mobile devices will be 10.1 - IF it ever comes out. And IF it is any good.

Monopoly?

Maybe you should start by learning what a monopoly is. There's no such thing as a monopoly on apps for a given platform.

It's also silly to argue that Apple has a monopoly on tablets. Other companies have been producing them for years. My daughter's school gives HP tablets (yuck) to all students. IIRC, the worldwide market for tablets was several million units last year - and Apple didn't sell any of them.

I'd suggest that you start by using that finger to flip the pages in some books and learn something before parading your ignorance.

Wrong?

Not at all. You're just apparently incapable of telling the difference between a real product and advertising.

Get back to us when there's an actual product rather than Adobe vaporware.

iTunes

"as most of the none work pc issues ive seen this year come from that shite POS that is called itunes."

Well, if you want to play anecdotal evidence games...

In any event, Adobe is free not to install iTunes on the computers they sell - as long as their rules are vendor-agnostic.

Free Beer

"I've never understood the phrase "free as in beer"."

It's not a complicated concept. The entire phrase is something like 'Free as in free speech, not free as in free beer" (or vice versa.

The point is that when you say 'free' you have to define which type of free you're talking about.

Are you talking about freedom to do something? The example given is that you have free speech in some situations (not all and not all countries). But the phrase applies when you have the freedom to speak freely.

Or are you talking about 'free' as in not having to pay for something? In that case, the example is that you may see a party with a sign that says 'free beer'. That doesn't mean beer is always free or that you never have to pay for it. It's just an example that's quicker than saying 'free as in you don't have to pay anything to get it'.

Nonsense

"Apple can crap on anybody's business model, regardless of the size of the company, with apparent impunity."

That is, of course, nonsense. Anyone is free to have any business model they wish. If Adobe wants to sell CS5 with any claimed features they want, that's up to them. They had better make sure that their claimed features work - which they failed to do before selling the Flash converter.

Apple's role is to play their OWN business model as well as they can - and they simply refuse to let Adobe ruin Apple's very successful business model.

EVERYWHERE?

"So, I can use Flash on everything else but the iPhone (and the overblown iPad)."

No. I wish you Adobe shills would stick to reality instead of your silly fantasies.

As of today, there is not a single mobile device which runs a full version of Flash. None. Zip. Nada.

Granted, there is Adobe vapor that might run on a tiny percentage of today's phones at some time in the future, but that's not the issue. So stop with the blatant lies.

Adobe gives up on the iPhone

Logic

Logic - try it some time.

'Flash does not work on ANY mobile device' does not contradict ' SOME DAY Adobe might have a version of Flash'. There's this little thing called 'time' that you seem to be unaware of. TODAY, no mobile phone runs a full version of Flash. SOME DAY, Adobe says that a tiny percentage of today's phones will be able to run Flash.

I love your crunchgear article. It says that Flash will SOME DAY come to Android and you seem to think that means that Android has Flash today. Once again, please have someone explain the concept of 'today' and 'some day' to you.

The rest is simply your misunderstanding of how Flash works. I specifically referred to a FULL version of flash - which does not exist on any phone today. Yes, there is a mobile version of Flash, but it is so limited as to be useless. If you have to rewrite the page to work in the limited subset of mobile Flash, you might as well rewrite it to not use Flash at all. Most Flash pages don't work on mobile Flash.

The fact that you're wrong?

Your 'fact' is wrong.

There is currently no full version of Flash on any mobile phone. Flash 10.1 is supposed to come to Android some time later this year, but it has already been delayed several times - and in its current form, it is reported to be slow and choppy.

So, your statement that 'Flash works on Android' is just more of the Adobe FUD that fills these forums.

Missing facts

You're missing a lot of facts in this article.

1. Apple didn't change the rules. They never allowed runtimes or intemediate layers. Adobe tried to do an end run and Apple wouldn't let them.

2. Flash doesn't work on ANY mobile device. Even 10.1 is likely to work only on a tiny percentage of the highest end phones. It's not Apple's fault that Adobe has been unable to write a version of Flash that works on mobile devices.

3. The Adobe converter doesn't make sense. Flash doesn't work on any mobile devices today, so why do they think that adding another layer makes it work any better?

The writing has been on the wall for 3 years since the iPhone came out. Adobe could have either fixed Flash or they could have had CS5 support html 5, but they declined.

Apple has excelled on creating a great user experience and Adobe has yet to convince anyone that they are a part of that.

Israel confiscates visiting iPads

Not available in Israel

Well since iPads aren't legally available in Israel yet, the customs officials need to find some way to get them.

Taiwanese chip co asks ITC to ban iPad imports

Facts

I really wish people would bother learning how the system works before babbling on boards like this.

Apple didn't patent multitouch and never claimed to. Apple patented specific items as covered in their patents. Read the patents. Read the claims. Nowhere did they claim to have patented multitouch.

As for this company, the validity of its patent will need to be determined, just as the validity of Apple's patents will need to be determined. If they win, it will have absolutely no impact on Apple's lawsuit against HTC. The two issues are entirely unrelated.

I have read the patent in question (no one should be commenting without reading it) and it's not at all clear that Apple infringes it, anyway. There are a number of differences between what Apple does and what the patent claims - some of them quite fundamental.

Furthermore, even if Apple were found to infringe, royalties would be paid - but the touchscreen manufacturer would almost certainly be the one paying them, not Apple. There's absolutely no way that Apple would be prevented from selling the iPad or iPhone on the basis of this patent.

Chip maker to take on iPad with $99 tablet

vapor

Why are you publishing vaporware stories? Just more anti-Apple FUD?

Let us know when they have a product that's been designed and released to manufacturing. Anyone want to bet that they never hit the targeted price or, if they do, it's severely crippled with a 2" b/w screen or something?

Asus will hit e-pad market this year

News?

Since when did "Apple has something great and we're going to do a half-assed job of copying it" become news?

Sounds like 20 years of history condensed into one sentence.

Apple yanks Wi-Fi detectors from iTunes

Other side of the story

For those of you bashing Apple on this, go right ahead. You clearly don't get it.

Apple's products all work well together and Apple has created a powerful ecosystem that appeals to millions of people. Their security problems are nearly zero. They do this by controlling the ecosystem with a series of well-defined rules.

When developers break the rules, all sorts of bad things can happen:

- Security holes

- System crashes

- Software incompatibilities

- System conflicts

And so on.

Apple is smart to stick with what is working - a well-defined, thoroughly-tested development system. If the developers want to go listen to crickets chirp at the Android store, no one is stopping them. But Apple loses if they go around changing their fundamental strategy because of a few developers who think they're above the rules.

Sony backs away from OLED TV future

Future

All the arguments about LED being more expensive and harder to produce (and shorter life) are begging the question: Is that due to a fundamental flaw with the technology or our implementation stage?

We've been making LCD screens for decades, but OLED for only a couple of years. On paper, it looks like it should eventually be cheaper and easier to make than LCD and superior in brightness and contrast and the problems aren't insurmountable (the luminosity fade has been greatly reduced already). I hope that Sony's pull-out doesn't mean that no one will continue to do the basic research to make this a superior technology.

3D TV problem

3D TV has a serious problem. For people without binocular vision (which is a reasonable number of people including myself), 3D images (any technology at all) are nearly unwatchable. Unless you can turn it off, it will hopelessly degrade the image for a significant portion of the population. That will be the first time this has happened.

When color TV was introduced, even if you were color blind, you could watch it. When HDTV was introduced, even if you have lousy vision, it is certainly no worse than the previous TVs. Flat screen TVs were again at least as good as the previous version (at least after the initial bugs were worked out). So, for every previous technology, there was no downside to buying a new TV.

For many people (the number is in the millions), 3D TV won't work for them. It's going to therefore be a harder sell.

Apple ambushed in Barcelona

Committee

Aside from the obvious problem of how you create software that works well on all the diverse UIs out there, there's the bigger issue: software designed by a committee? I don't think so.

Firefox 3.7 to feel need for speed with multicore boost

Speed

@paul banacks

"FF - Free. Standards compliant. Plenty fast enough."

Safari - Free, MORE standards compliant (100% on Acid 3 since Safari 4 was introduced), Faster than Firefox.

Yep, easy decision.

Speed tests

Why in the world would you do a speed comparison between browsers without testing the fastest browser out there - Safari? With Safari 4.0.4 on Mac OS X 10.6.2, I get 595 - on a 3 year old PowerBook (Core 2 Duo 2.33 GHz).

Stating that Firefox is the fastest browser is like claiming that your car is the fastest one out there because you tested it against a Chevy Malibu and Ford Focus.

Dell crowned Bad Santa computer maker by angry customers

You get what you pay for

Anyone with any computer knowledge at all knows that Dell support and deliveries can't be trusted. Over the past few years, the quality of their systems has taken a dramatic drop, as well.

If you buy a system solely on the basis of price, don't be surprised when the vendor cuts corners to get you a lower price.

If you want support and service, then you have to pay for it. Choose your system from a reputable vendor rather than the cheapest bargain basement junk you can find.

Hackintosher's new line: Linux and T-shirts

Not a chance

"Blue and White G3s and the G4s in a similar case can certainly be fitted with a PC motherboard.

Apple could have no arguement with that."

Maybe you should read Apple's complaint and the court decision. Apple would certainly have an argument with that.

At the very least, Psystar would specifically have to use their bootloader (or some bootloader other than the one in Mac OS X) in order to make it work. The court has specifically ruled that this is illegal.

Why do people who don't understand the law or concepts of copyright - and who can't even be bothered to read the court's decision on the matter - insist on posting inane nonsense?

Of course, this also assumes that Psystar could even do this. So far, Psystar has not demonstrated any technical ability at all and designing a new motherboard and power supply to fit into the Apple cases appears to be well beyond their capabilities, anyway.

Confused

"Here is where your misunderstanding arises. The term "copyright" is a very literal one. The creator's *copy*right over their work actually only gives them unlimited rights over the *copying* of their work."

You're 100% wrong. Please learn a little bit about a subject before you make yourself look like a fool.

A copyright gives the owner the right to copy, modify, distribute, sell, and so on to a work. Basically, it gives them almost unlimited rights.

Try this as a starting point:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright

Since you don't have any clue what copyrights cover, the rest of your argument is just plain wrong, as well.

Wrong again

"No, that is still not true. Copyright lets them dictate the terms by which someone else may COPY it, and NOTHING ELSE."

Once again, that is completely wrong. Please learn a little bit about copyrights.

Copyrights do, indeed, prevent unauthorized copying, but they also prevent unauthorized modification or distribution. In this case, the court ruled that changing the bootloader constituted unauthorized modification of the OS and was therefore a copyright violation.

Idiocy

@youngone

"Any sensible person neither knows nor cares about EULA's. As far as I'm concerned I own what I've bought."

Yes, if you actually buy OS X, you can do whatever you want with it. But Apple wouldn't sell it for any amount less than tens of billions of dollars. Do you have enough money to buy it?

Sensible people care about the law and about others' rights. The fact that you don't care about either indicates either a very young juvenile or a pathological personality. Which one are you?

"Realy people"?

@Hackintosher

"The distinction between software purchasing and licensing exists only in the minds of lawyers and software vendors. Real people don't license software, they go to the store (or online) and buy it. "

So by 'real people', you mean halfwits?

Most people understand at least in general terms that they don't own software. For example, if you own Windows 7 when you buy a retail box, you would be free to do anything you want with it - including distributing it free on the Internet, making 10 million copies and selling them for $5 each, or changing it from Windows to 'Tom's OS' and selling it. Most people realize that they can't do that - so they obviously recognize the distinction.

Apple, OTOH, can do any of those things to OS X because they own it. Because they own it, they have the right to do anything they want (within the law) while you have ZERO rights to use the software or do anything - until those rights are granted to you by the copyright owner (Apple). Apple wants to make money, so they agree to let you use the software with certain limitations for a fixed fee. You have a choice of not paying the fee (in which case you don't have any rights at all to use it) or paying the fee (in which case you have agreed to the terms). If you pay the fee but don't agree to the terms, you have acquired the software by fraud and do not have a valid license to use it.

The concepts are really very simple to anyone who approaches it with a concept that Apple created the software and can do whatever they want and that you have no rights until they're given to you. As long as you start with the attitude of entitlement that you're somehow entitled to take whatever you want regardless of what the owner wants, you're going to continue to be in violation of the law.

Exactly backward

"The sooner EULAs and click-wrap licensing are understood as a massive rights-grab and thoroughly struck out in the courts, the better."

You have it exactly backwards.

The creator of a copyrighted work has unlimited rights to do whatever they want (as long as they don't break the law) simply by creation of the work. You have NO rights to work that someone else created unless they give (or sell) them to you.

The EULA is the mechanism by which you are GIVEN rights-rights that you wouldn't have without the license agreement. It doesn't take anything away at all.

Now, it IS possible to buy all the rights to a software package. Apple has done so in the past, as have Microsoft and others. When you buy ALL rights, then you can do whatever you want, but that is not $29.95. I would guess that it would cost you at least $30 BILLION to buy Mac OS X from Apple (if they would even consider selling it at ANY price).

Hackintosher goes titsup

Amazing

@anonymous coward:

"Psystar is not doing anything illegal at that point.

what am i missing ..."

What you're missing is apparently either the ability to read or the ability to comprehend what you've read. The judge's decision is quite simple and clear (and even written in reasonably readable form, compared to many decisions). Groklaw has covered the entire thing.

Of COURSE it's illegal. Would you please stop with the silly arguments that have already been shot down?

Apple silences Psystar's rebel yell with injunction

What's wrong with it?

"As for Psystar, surely all they are doing is adding a OSX compatible EFI module/firmware to intel kit? what's illegal about that?"

Please read the judge's decision. Your question has been answered in detail - the fact that you haven't taken the time to educate yourself on the matter is your problem.

Apple to appeal after OPTi's $21.7m patent infringement win

Willful infringement

"What the hell has "wilful infringement" got to do with anything? This isn't manslaughter vs murder, you aren't less accountable for patent infringement because "you didn't mean to do it". The infringers intent should have no bearing whatsoever, this is about recouping damage."

Actually, it has a great deal to do with it.

If the infringement is accidental, then the infringer pays only the damages.

If the infringement is intentional (willful), the infringer has to pay the damages, but can also be forced to pay legal fees and penalties (up to 3 times the amount of the damages, IIRC).

Although in this case, I hope Apple wins on appeal. Even if the patent is valid, the people who made the chips (IBM, Motorola, Intel, etc) are the ones who are guilty, not Apple.

Even with this award, though, it's not likely to cost Apple anything. I'd be shocked if there's nothing in their supply contract that indemnifies them against patent awards like this, so the chip manufacturers will probably have to reimburse Apple.

Hackintosher Psystar to pay Apple $2.7m in settlement

Nonsense

"The MacFanatics can only see one issue in this: what Apple wants, Apple must get. What the wider effects of giving Apple what it wants may be, who cares?"

Think much?

Your tirade is just plain wrong. For some of us, it has absolutely nothing to do with Apple. In this case, the court affirmed that someone who develops intellectual property owns that intellectual property and is able to benefit from it by setting their own marketing strategy and execution plans. This was a HUGE win for innovators.

Now, for those of you who couldn't create anything new to save your soul, it may be a loss. It means that you'll have to actually pay for the products you use rather than just steal them, but that's just too bad.

Nonsense

"Psystar may have perhaps been unintentionally prophetic when it mentioned that "Apple has yet to litigate" against the Rebel EFI utility."

Nonsense. The court has already ruled on that. They indicated that selling something to circumvent Apple's encryption method constitutes contributory infringement. Psystar can't go that route (even if they come up with $3 M to pay off their debts).

You really ought to rely on the legal decision rather than the drivel coming from Psystar. It ought to be clear to anyone with more than a 3rd grade education that Psystar is making all sorts of stupid arguments that they can't possibly win -- and even flat out lying when it suits their purposes.