Feb
16
Listen to today’s show here! 
MC20060216.mp3 [17.7mb 00:38:35 64kbps]
A podcast about all things Macintosh. For Mac geeks, by Mac geeks. Show 121. Apple upgrades MacBook Pros and starts shipping. Mac OS 10.4.5 released. iLife ’06 updates. Government grant application system excludes Macs. Hacker succeeds in getting Intel 10.4.4 to run on PC. First Mac OS X Virus? Over 700 Universal apps now available. Tivo on Mac follow-up. How to sync iWeb sites with Backup 3.1 Control iTunes with CoverBuddy and Clutter.
New music, Wasting My Time by Matthew Ebel
Promo from Couch Potato Illustrated
Someday it will be like we already lived.
Shownotes: HTML or OPML
Subscribe to the Podcast Feed or Get the MP3
I haven’t listened to this episode yet, but there is a significant note on the “First Virus”.
It is NOT a virus. It is a trojan. It is a program that requires root access to run. It does not run via an exploit. It requires the user to run it manually, and to enter their root password.
i’m sick of the whole trojan vs virus debate that ive now seen on all my regular sites i visit
have a look at this one guys
http://www.geekculture.com/joyoftech/joyarchives/789.html
lol :)
Not only is that grant system bad for Mac users, but also for Linux/UNIX users. It funny because if you Google this, you’ll see different headlines depending on if you get a link to a Mac-based site or a Linux-based site.
This grant thing is just another example of, for lack of a better word, half-assed development. There are numerous ways to do things like this that are totally system independent, but they take a little more work than the windows only setups. On many an occasion I run into a limitation because of the developers being too lazy to do it right, and just use what ever they have lying around and then force the users to adapt, whig is not good business sense. And unfortunately, Microsoft is the leader of this trend. Sorry Adam, but stuff like .Net just really annoys me.
It seems that Apple does not care about running WinXP on the Intel based Macs until you actually figure it out and then threaten you with a lawsuit in the name of DRM. DRM is starting to sound worse and worse everyday. Just today (2/17) I read on TG daily about TPM 1.2 (trusted computing) on Hard Drives so there will be a point where consumers will have no fair use of anything and be at the mercy of content “owners.”
I’m sorry, Adam, but I couldn’t disagree with you more about the Windows-only grant system. There is just no excuse that such a plain-text-based application has to be made exclusively for a closed OS. People who are smart enough to be deserving federal grants are quite often smart enough to use an OS that isn’t the one most often foisted on the herd. (I’d wager heavily that grant applicants use non-Windows OSes in a much greater proportion than the general population.)
As far as your ability to direct the future by mentioning it on your show, I have a simple request to exploit your exceptional power: please ask for an iWeb photo template that allows your site’s visitors to order prints. I’ve asked for this for years and nothing has happened (of course, I was asking for a HomePage template pre-iLife ’06). I would be very grateful if you could apply your remarkable gift to solving this ongoing problem for me. Thanks.
re: windows only, please. When in doubt, always follow the money. The administration and Microsoft share the same lobbying company – Ralph Reed’s Century Strategies. And you wonder why Microsoft is now treated with kid gloves? Be realistic; Apple is known as a “liberal†company and Microsoft is known as a “conservative†organization.
Hey, thanks for playing “Wasting My Time” on the show! I’ve been listening for quite some time now, and it was a nice surprise to hear a tune from the new CD at the end ofthe Mac Cast.
As for the grant system, there is absolutely no excuse in this day and age for any web-based application to be platform-specific. I’ve been designing websites for myself and for clients for seven years now, and the only reasons one would cut off access to an entire OS are laziness or intentional spite. Given that this is a government program, I can imagine we’ll see some kind of “platform discrimination” lawsuit if this actually launches with no Mac-friendly alternative.
Pax,
Matthew
Thanks a million for including our promo on your show! For the last year we have been listening to dozens of podcasts. Some come and go from our subscription list, but the one that has never been discarded is the Mac Cast! No other show gives us the depth of coverage on the latest Mac-related news and issues.
Thanks for a great podcast and for helping us promote Couch Potato Illustrated.
The “90% of personal computers are Windows” rationale for Windows-only development is a smoke screen gleefully promoted by Microsoft. Sure, the 90% number might be true if you count “all” personal computers–especially those used by people are forced to sit in front of day after day in boring corporate jobs. But if you were to ask, “Of the people who get to choose the platform they prefer, which do they choose?” I would guess Macs would own a much greater share of the market (home, education, science, creatives). Those who decide to develop Windows-only products need to ask their real customers and not blindly follow a statistic because–as we all know–87.45% of all statistics are made up anyway!
Thanks, Adam, for your podcast.
Thanks for covering the ongoing problem that is grants.gov. My company does a lot of work assisting non-profit organizations and government agences seek federal grant funding which means we have spent a lot of time figuring out grants.gov. The system has a lot of problems which go well beyond the fact that it is not accessible to Mac users. (It is, for example, prone to crashing or to extreme slowdowns during heavy usage periods.) It is possible to make the PureEdge viewer work under Virtual PC but it is torturous. There is absolutely no excuse for this. For those users who need only access the search features of grants.gov, my recommendation would be to check out the eCivis.com product, Grants Locator. Not a single penny of government funding has gone into the creation of this system but it easily outperforms grants.gov. It is not free but it will save users a lot of aggravation. wishes