This week’s rotten Apple rumor millnews, gadgets, customer adventures, television, movies — by TDavid @ 6:53 pm PST
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In case you weren’t paying attention to negative Apple rumors and news this week, there was plenty. AppleTV finally launched overpriced and under gunned — 40GB hard drive, what are they smoking? They doubled the hard disk space of the Xbox 360 which launched in November 2005. Head’s up people, we can walk into any Best Buy and pick up a 500GB hard drive for $250 or less, why can’t we get a device for $300 that includes at least half the storage space? I realize that it streams from your Mac or PC and you can have tons of storage there, but why only 40GB on the device itself?
For those falling for the Macs are more secure spiel (I never was in that camp), a Symantec report found Microsoft Windows more secure than the Mac. Finally, the “have a nice weekend” kicker: Leopard which was supposed to be released in April could be delayed until October because:
If Leopard supports only Windows XP, then the chances of the new OS attracting Windows users to buy an Apple computer decreases, stated industry observers.
Apple niche site MacSlash takes issue with the rumor:
Apple only ever said they would release Leopard in “Spring,” which technically ends June 21 - just in time for Apple to release Leopard at WWDC this year should they choose to.
Pick your spin cycle. After all, industry observers are often wrong. It’s possible the study that found Microsoft more secure was biased and flawed, although the report cites the following numbers:
More than 35 Windows vulnerabilities were found, each taking an average of 21 days to fix … OS X - the cool, chilled out entertainer of operating systems - had 43 vulnerabilities and a whopping 66-day turnaround on fixes.
Ouch.
As for AppleTV which could eventually be coined LemonTV arriving at a typically (Apple) overpriced $299. Earlier this week I spent a good 20 minutes chatting with the confused online Apple help. My test question seemed fairly straightforward, but clearly puzzled the person helping me. See if you can figure this out in less than 20 minutes.
I have the 1.25 Ghz PowerPC G4 eMac that is connected via ethernet. It does not have a WiFi card built-in. We have a LinkSYS wireless router. My question for support was would AppleTV work without needing me to deal with an Airport base station? Could I just connect through the same wireless network?
The answer is yes, but took 20 minutes to get there.
Not an impressive week for Apple but their stock (disclaimer: I’m a shareholder) wasn’t really impacted. I remain semi-anxious to buy an Intel Mac and replace my aging eMac. Yeah, I’ll be among the last on the Mac block to upgrade but I don’t have this burning desire to keep up with every new Apple product. My preference is to buy a Mac with Leopard preinstalled and if that’s October or beyond so be it.
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I never considered the hard drive space issue until you put it that way- and you’re right on the mark. I think it’s a good idea in theory, but the windows media center get-up seems more versatile to me. I don’t have a video generation ipod, and I don’t see myself buying videos from the itunes store- I certainly don’t see myself needing this over my RCA cable and existing stereo for tunes either.
I’ve been a PC guy for a long time, but recently got a Intel MacBook Pro- I have a foot in each world now. My job provided the mac, as well as an IBM T60. At home I sport a self-built system. I talked a little bit about that on my blog: http://www.mikull.com/my-new-17-macbook-pro-or/ - the biggest selling point to come back to Mac was the ability to stay in step with my windows world via Parallels. The more I use it though, the less I discover I switch to my virtual machine. WindowsXP is still a security blanket.
Comment by mikull — March 23, 2007 @ 8:26 pm PST
I don’t buy the the Symantec report. Based purely on IE vs Firefox alone for access failures, it’s an 8:2 scenario. That was exploiting PC failures. Then you account for Darwin being built on BSD architecture, and you find that the entry points into the kernel are a lot less likely than any Windows system since the design for Windows systems allow the applications to interact with the kernel.
On top of that, Symantec builds their whole business around the PC market. I’ve been tracking the break-in attempts to my current OS on my MBP versus my XP virtual machine, and it’s pretty obvious which one gets more attempts.
From the AppleTV standpoint? You’re right on the mark. I made that comment when they released it. 40G? I mean give me a break. That’s like saying… hey… you paid for a Ferrari, but we decided to give you the Yugo engine. But that’s okay! It still looks like a Ferrari. If the AppleTV could do my PVR needs, I’d get one. But so far, it really just doesn’t excite me.
Comment by darkmoon — March 24, 2007 @ 9:51 am PST
Hmm. Engadget has shown a way to hack it. But I’m not shelling out $300 to hack the device. heh
Comment by darkmoon — March 24, 2007 @ 9:30 pm PST