Apple fanboy facts

[Mike]

Apple now recommend using multiple Anti-Virus packages so that potential viruses can not bypass a single system. This is a change of stance and probably based on the growing market share and success of OS X. I suppose that a couple of percentage points more and people will start seeing the generally unprotected OS X as an untapped resource.

Personally I have an anti-virus protection following the problems with the forum. I did not want to be spreading a problem to others. Buying two seems a bit excessive but there you go.

[Mike]

Mac Heist giving tree has launched. Free Mac Software for Christmas Day!

[Mike]

Cnet have an article where a farmer has Apple logo's stuck to apples so that they get a tan line with your favourite logo. Even for me this is a bit of a step too far. . . .

[mr_e]

He may have opened up new advertising possibilities though... if your brand logo was on a load of fruit, it'd be difficult to avoid it.

[Mike]

Last Apple Keynote at MacWorld 2009. Updated iLife 09, MacBook Pro 17" and DRM iTunes. Quality updates. Will have to see if I can purchase the new iLife09 at the end of January.

[mr_e]

The DRM-free announcement was the highlight for me. You still won't catch me paying 79p a track (likely more for iTunes Plus, minus the DRM)... still a bit too much.

[Mike]

Apple have released Safari 4 Beta into the wild for Windows and MAC. This is the most highly advanced browser in the world and also the most standards compliant.

It manages to score 100/100 on the Acid 3 rendering test.

It has brought new features like the 'Top Sites' and coverflow for history items and takes the tabs to the top of the screen. Not a bad first impression but I will bring you a more detailed review after I have used it for a couple of days. The Top Sites took a while to load the first time but I suspect that was more to do with the response time from the website rather than the programme.

[Mike]

Here are Apple's massive list of 150 new features. Impressive. I wonder how quickly it now loads up the galleries section of my website?! It is about 4 times faster at handling Javascript when compared with Firefox 3.0 and Safari 3.0. The Beta of Firefox 3.1 manages to be only half as slow as the new Safari. The PC version now comes with Windows font rendering to make the browser appear to match the Windows theme, this stops it look quite so out of place! lol.

[Mike]

The javascript rendering engine does make a very distinct difference with the loading of my website. It was pretty impressive I can tell you. The browser generally is a little slow to start up but lets give it some benefit of the doubt as it is actually a beta release not the full release version.

Top Sites is good. I like that fact that you can deliberately put your own top sites in there.

Coverflow on the bookmarks is also good. I like the little thumbnails that you get of each website. You can pretty much instantly tell if the site is still live which is good!

[Mike]

CNet is reporting that Apple may release new iMacs and new Mac Mini's this month. The quickest date was scheduled for today / tomorrow but I think that is unlikely. It is more probably that it will occur after the rumoured Apple event on 24 March 2009.

[stimpsonslostson]

Bill Gates bans ipods from his house.

In other news, my MUM has just bought an iphone (16gig). She has no clue how to use it, only owns 7gig of music and doesn't use the net much... who says advertising doesn't work?? I think its something to do with seeing me use my iphone to email, browse the net etc. I'm now hoping i can get them to buy a mac mini to use it with- dad has a 160gig classic and mum the iphone, they only ever use itunes, a web browser (safari amusingly enough- since I installed it on their PC), email and occaisionally MSOffice (which I have for mac anyway). So I think they'd barely notice if the horrible slow pc (which is virus infested ) was swapped for a shiny little box of wonder.

[Mike]

Not only that but I have been proved very wrong and a new iMac, Mac Mini and Mac Pro have been released today. Is a good time to buy a new mac! My parents were half thinking of buying one but managed to talk themselves out of it pretty quickly! I would be amazed if they went for it! There is the second attempt to prove me wrong in a single day!

[Mike]

Two stories for you today. One here and another in the iPhone thread.

New iPod Shuffle has been released. It is quite small and neat and has no buttons at all. It makes you play with a single click of the earphone buttons, skip with two clicks and return to previous track on three clicks. It also has a talk over feature which tells you what song is playing and who the artist is. Saves on the old OLED screen to give you the information.

[Mike]

BBC Click article about cyber crime being lambasted for its Windows centricity and not telling a full picture.

This is a description of what the BBC did for their report. It bought a network of 22,000 computers, used them to spam BBC email addresses and initiated a DoS attack before leaving a message on the infected computers telling them how to fix their problem. Interesting...ps no Mac's or Linux machines were infected.

[stimpsonslostson]

Well, I'm about to experience the joys (or otherwise) of the Apple Care system.
Our iMac has developed a white line down the screen, its only a couple of pixels wide and runs top to bottom. According to various apple websites its indicative of an impending screen failure and could be REALLY expensive to fix (£3-400- for which price I'd be really tempted to get a mac mini instead of fixing it). However, I bought applecare when I got the mac, so we should be covered! It seems to entitle us to
1) take it into a store for fixing or
2) they'll dispatch a courier to get it, it'll be fixed and returned or
3) a technician will come to our home and fix it on site....

I'm going to read some small print and will keep you posted as to how it progresses.

p