One could be forgiven for overlooking the Mac coming off a month of iPhone 3G madness, but the iPhone will have played a tiny role in determining the strength of Apple’s quarter, which came to a close in June.

Add this to the list of useless MacOS feature vs. Windows feature comparisons. Don’t miss the last paragraph (the “wrap up”) to really understand what I’m talking about.

Opening up the world clock generally shouldn’t take this long. I mean, it’s a freakin’ clock!

That line pretty much describes the rest of the train wrecking, plus I love how he pokes at the screen with a big blue pen all along.

With requests of features exclusive to the Macbook Pro (shared with the Air) to be included with the entry level Macbook as well, these people will soon be asking for a standalone GPU with their Macbooks as well. I’m all for uniformity in the lineup, but let’s get real people.

The very last iPhone 3G at the Stonestown store in south San Francisco was just sold to a guy in a Microsoft shirt!

Perfect!

Good luck with that …

Amen!

What, like trains in India don’t get delayed enough?

People have to stop behaving like Twitter “owes” them their service.

I haven’t seen the new design yet, but it does look a little unfamiliar. It however does offer more integration points for search, which is always a good thing.

… is Windows the new cheapskate strategy? Do people only buy it if they’re looking for something cheap and “good enough”?

Barring a few people, I have never met anyone who has picked Windows over another operating system “by choice”. I would love to see some numbers for copies sold via. retail against OEM copies under use. That should give a very good idea of how many people “pick” staying with their Windows system. This is taking into consideration that a blatant majority of users don’t know how to switch, scared of “breaking” something, so they choose to stick with the “good enough” system that works.

The solution is simple. If you truly believe in open standards, open source and the good that it has created, then don’t accept it.

Cubrilovic sounds more jealous than upset, about the fact that Apple is using what the open source community has given out, and created a revenue model based on it.

Update: On retrospect, any statement made against a propreitary model based company by an open source developer sounds hypocritical and misguided. It’s like trying to speak to the Apple “fanboys” that the world loves to hate, or an evolutionist talking to a creationist. Neither will truly understand the other’s point.

Start the “Do no evil” chant now.

Om Malik takes a closer look at the hottest (yes, it’s debatable) deal in the news this week. At least, one that went through without setbacks.

The Apple lawsuit against Psystar in more detail.

Apple filed suit against Florida-based computer maker Psystar on July 3rd, alleging copyright infringement, inducement of copyright infringement, trademark infringement and other legal claims. It seeks any profits earned by Psystar from sales of its Open Computer, triple damages for willful acts, a permanent injunction against the sale of the product and a recall of units already sold.

I’m surprised it took them so long. They were probably trying to get the iPhone launch out of their way to focus completely on this now. I don’t see any way Psystar can actually defend itself, but I’m no lawyer.

On January 7, 2008 gOS released the beta version of Space - their latest iteration of gOS. It’s different for sure. It’s like OS X with an added bit of fun. gOS Space is truly a social network fans’ dream come true.

So there are more than one “OS X like” system out there?

This is why there are “written” examinations (which include regular monthly tests as well) and not verbals. But schools today are more about rote repitition rather than actual understanding of concepts. That’s the way our teachers have been conditioned, and that’s how things will continue unless the people in the big chairs realise that there is something wrong.

If this is all it took to dethrone Twitter from whatever place it holds in our lives, we would have passed on the service a very long time ago.

Hell hath no fury like an Apple fan waiting in line scorned.

“We have more applications and more phones in the hands of people and that’s what matters at the end of the day,” he said.

Microsoft really needs a better punch line than that. They sound more and more like a wounded cat every day.

On one end they’re going to start marketing Vista, and on the other they’re offering free downgrade support. I guess I’ve been too long out of Microsoft land to actually make sense of it.

There has been nobody out there saying how good is Windows Vista. But there are plenty of voices, including Apple’s “Get a Mac” ads, shouting about how bad is the operating system. It’s disgusting that Microsoft showed so little Vista marketing concern for so long. Any ad would be better than none.

I like his suggestions at the end, maybe Microsoft should hire him.

[Free Software Foundation] just seem a little too rabid, their methods too extreme (insulting the Gates foundation’s work is equivalent to tossing paint at people wearing fur coats, except not hilarious) and their overall goals too ambitious and unrealistic.

I don’t link to rumours too often, but these seem legit. On the other hand, making Pros more curvy doesn’t make aesthetic sense because they’re, well, Pros. They’re supposed to have well defined edges and an overall smart feel to them. I hope something changes between now and the refresh.

I wouldn’t hold my breath.

If you call this a step backwards (apart from the fact that us tech geeks are finally getting the same treatment regular people do), what is exactly a step “forward”?

Bunch of links to tutorials about extending the excellent Firefox extension.

MG Siegler for VentureBeat:

I’m still of the mindset that the only thing Twitter has to fear is Twitter itself. That is to say that no other service is going to kill it, not even a more open clone like Identi.ca. Only Twitter can kill itself, by not fixing its problems.

It certainly looks that way at the moment.

Funny write-up by Wil Shipley about a debug escapade. (via Gruber)

This will easily go down in history as one of GMails absolutely worthless features. Some nitpickers might find this valuable, one can never write off obsessions. But for you and me, severely doubt it.

There’s a seemingly related (related to Singularity) project under development at Microsoft which has been hush-hush. That project, codenamed ‘Midori,’ is a new Microsoft operating-system platform that supposedly supersedes Windows. Midori is in incubation, which means it is a little closer to market than most Microsoft Research projects, but not yet close enough to be available in any kind of early preview form.

Do we think Microsoft is gutsy enough to release a completely independent codebase operating system? Given their track record, will people switch to their system, or Apple, or even Linux? We’ll talk in 10 years or so.

Steve Gillmor looks at the various Twitter-based services that use an XMPP data stream. I’ve always wondered how Summize gets their Twitter data. Frankly I’d like to see Summize bought out by Twitter sometime in the future and become an integral part of the service, rather than a third-party implementation.

UPDATE: A deal seems to be in the works, and the overall sentiment seems to be fluctuating between “so-so” and “bad”.

A jQuery plugin to replicate Growl on Mac OS X, within the browser.

Om Malik on FriendFeed’s default recommendation list:

… by putting some of my good friends on the default list, the company is basically ensuring positive attention to its service. Be damned the fact that it really takes the Friend of FriendFeed. I mean just because you are following Loic Le Meur, he doesn’t automatically become your friend?

Amusing reply to Jeff Atwood’s Investing in a Quality Programming Chair.

So much for FriendFeed getting one up on Twitter.

At first, they simply turned autocomplete off for passwords. A quick greasemonkey script fixed that. Then, they escalated and added calls to the form and page to turn off autocomplete as well. Again, minor issue, and a quick fix to the script was all I needed. That’s when they suddenly went hardball.

Amusing write up of how webmasters go out of their way to make sure user accounts remain secure, by making it harder to login.

And so it begins again.

My favourite section is the “Signs you shouldn’t be a progammer”. Describes a lot of my computer science batch at college.

There are many things Elizabeth Woyke gets wrong in this latest “iPhone 3G pandemonium” post trying to say the developers are still shy of writing apps for iPhone 3G, with the focus being on developers who are working on location based apps (using iPhone 3G’s assisted GPS).

The first is that the applications will be installed via Appstore, and not iTunes store. They are two separate things. Appstore will be built into every phone, and will be separate. Hence, the scenario of users syncing multiple iPhones to one iTunes account to install an app multiple times but just paying once doesn’t arise. I’m very sure Apple has considered this and using some sort of unique identification for iPhones, they can block this kinda of behaviour.

Navigation isn’t the only application of GPS. Twitterrific for iPhone is a perfect example. Applications can keep a thread of connection open to receive data and constantly update themselves, which Woyke has gotten blatantly wrong.

All in all, the article is just a step short of jacktastic and miles ahead of sensationalism without cause.

Cult of Mac on why Apple shouldn’t change the design of their lineup now:

It’s a design philosophy that has powered BMW and Mercedes for a good long while. To that end, other than adding bling to satisfy a generation of new money rappers, Rolex has never fundamentally changed the design of the Datejust, Daytona, or Day/Date (aka President) watches.

Any other company, and I would have brushed off the design aesthetic as gobblywoop that doesn’t matter if it means an increase in sales. Apple has always paid a lot of attention to the design of their computers (the “beautiful box”). I don’t expect a major design change, but if the Air is a glimpse of the future, I suspect changes to the keyboard and a thinner form factor for the Pro.

The problem with this would be the problem in all monopolies. There are companies like Apple who’re manufacturing their own chips for use in potential leader capacity handsets that might offset Intel’s plans in that area, but leader in 75% of their markets is a big scary thing.

Even if you could guide your organization off of Microsoft products, you’d still have to deal with customers, vendors and employees who still use Microsoft stuff. You’d find yourself much like the [British] colonies - independent, but having to trade with the British Empire.

While that’s true to some capacity, it is only the freedom of choice that makes it that way. I may not like Microsoft products, but someone else might. Daily interaction with them cannot be stopped just because we work with different platforms (although if it was upto Microsoft, it would end up that way).

What matters is using the best tool for the job. Sometimes that tool comes from Microsoft, and saying no because of prejudice is a little too jacktastic to be taken seriously.

Convenient replacement for dashboard stickies. It’s already becoming my good friend.

Mary Jo Foley brings attention to the fact that Silverlight content is (and has been, before the opening of Flash to Google, Yahoo!) searchable. Strangely, Microsoft has been quiet on this, even though they are the first to jump at blowing their own trumpet at the first hint of aggression.

Ionut Alex Chitu on how Google handles feature addition and removal:

For Google, features aren’t a “one-way street” and you never know when a functionality you start to rely on is removed for unknown reasons. That’s why I think Google should label experimental features more prominently and it should do a better job at communicating the reasons why a service is dropped.

While I’m sure services like GMail (which is still in Beta) will not be removed, it is a little frightening at how much of our information Google holds, and is completely at the mercy of their corporate whim.

8,002,530 downloads in 24 hours. Congratulations to them.

Gordon played down the effort to compete with Google Docs and other free office suites, such as IBM Symphony. He said Equipt is aimed at people who are interested in purchasing a PC security suite – such as Windows Live OneCare – and might forgo buying Office as well in favor of using an older copy they might already have, or that they might pirate.

So not only customers pay extra for security which should be a part of the system in the first place, Microsoft is now piggy-backing on those customers buying their security solution and adding Office as well.

I wouldn’t encourage anyone to choose this as a cheaper way of getting Office. The price offset will get negated in two and a half years, and Microsoft doesn’t release Office updates so quickly.

Question and answers with Jonathan Heiliger, vice president of technical operations at Facebook.

Top reasons for buying the iPhone include lower price (67%), 3G Internet connection (63%), GPS (47%), Microsoft (MSFT) Exchange email support (35%), and third-party apps (20%).

The question to be asked is, would this demand have existed if the first generation iPhone was priced as the second generation?

I’ve been vocal about this for a while. Linked to test cases and demonstrations.

Security, AirPort, Safari, iCal, Spaces and Exposé updates.

This should be a relief for SEO conscious designers. A deeper FAQ is here.

Beautiful pictures of Gibson guitars being custom made through various stages of development. I love the stack of Flying-V bodies lying in the second picture.

“Newspapers don’t have to pay these fines for sales through their classified columns, so why should an online version be any different?”

Absolutely ridiculous sentencing on the part of the French.