The Cult of Apple - It IS a religion (not a computer company)

Apple causes ‘religious’ reaction in brains of fans, say neuroscientists


Excerpt:

In a recently screened BBC documentary, UK
neuroscientists suggested that the brains of Apple devotees are
stimulated by Apple imagery in the same way that the brains of religious
people are stimulated by religious imagery.

People have
often talked about “the cult of Apple”, and if a recent BBC TV
documentary is to be believed, there could be something in it.

The program, Secrets of the Superbrands,
looks at why technology megabrands such as Apple, Facebook and Twitter
have become so popular and such a big part of many people’s lives.

In
the first episode, presenter Alex Riley decided to take a look at
Apple. He wanted to discover what it is about the company that makes
people so emotional. Footage of the opening of the Cupertino company’s
Covent Garden store in central London last year showed hordes of Apple
devotees lining up outside overnight, while the staff whipped up
customers (and themselves) into something of an evangelical frenzy. This
religious-like fervour got Riley thinking – he decided to take a closer
look at the inside of the head of an Apple fanatic to see what on earth
was going on in there.

Click the top link to read the rest.

Steve Jobs: genius at making money, jerk for ripping people off

Olive: Jobs is both a genius and a jerk - thestar.com
Read the article.

Apple is "stunned" - no suprise here

Apple ‘stunned’ by iPhone error - The Globe and Mail

AT&T iPad security breach could affect all American iPad users

Apple's Worst Security Breach: 114,000 iPad Owners Exposed
A security breach has exposed iPad owners including dozens of CEOs,
military officials, and top politicians. They—and every other buyer of
the cellular-enabled tablet—could be vulnerable to spam marketing and
malicious hacking.

Toy company Apple to put ads in their operating system

http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/apple_files_patent_os_embedded_advertising

I wonder how my users they will lose when they start running ads on their computers and ipods and iphones toys.

Apple market share revisited

Apple market share gets restated - The Inquirer
...

Recently this figure was quoted to be as high as ten per cent, meaning that one in ten machines in the world allegedly was a Mac. Linux had one per cent and the Vole had 88 per cent, with OS/2, various BSDs, BeOS and assorted hobbyist lashups presumably making up the other one per cent.

Common sense would have suggested that these figures were impossible, but the estimates have been used to claim that Apple was fast becoming a market leader.

It would have to be a significant market leader too. Macs are mostly a feature of the North American market, its penetration in Europe is nowhere near as big as in the US. Since Macs are not sold in any of the high volume regions such as China, Russia and the rest of the Far East, about a quarter to a half of sales in the US would have to be Macs, which cannot be the case.

No one seems to have worked this out, and I still get emails from fanboys who recite the ten per cent figure as an article of faith and who seem to think that Apple's black shirted buffoons will be goose-stepping their way over Redmond any day now.

Net Applications too must have been wondering, because it started to look at the way it did its sums. Overnight Apple's market share estimate has been slashed by more than 50 percent to well under 5 per cent of the operating system market. Windows has shot up from the high 80s to over 93 per cent of the market. And the Linux market share is now closer to two percent.

When looked at in terms of world supply, Apple's Iphone is a nonstarter too. If you look at the tame Apple press you would think that Apple has control of the smartphone market. No, it doesn't. It has about two per cent of the smartphone market worldwide. The winner by a long chalk is Nokia.

So where does this idea that Apple is important come from? It is partly the tech press in the US that feeds the world a steady diet of positive Apple Mac news... mostly typed on Macs.

There are journalists out there who have never used a PC in their lives and yet their opinion on the latest Mac gadget is taken as gospel by the great unwashed. The news agenda about Apple, particularly in North America, is being set by... Apple. For example, when did you last see an article about Nokia's worldwide success?

...

Mac Security not all it's cracked up to be

Security experts mock mac security - The Inquirer

FOR AGES Apple has been peddling its Macs as being more secure than PCs simply because hackers could not be bothered targeting them.

However according to MSNBC the recent Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas has been dicing and slicing the Mac's reputation for security with a number of exploits found in Apple's hardware and software.

Dino Dai Zovi disclosed a software flaw that hackers could use to take control of Macs and steal data that is scrambled to protect it from identity thieves.

The show has also been bad news for Iphone users, which were told that Apple's encryption is a joke and that the Jesus phone could be broken into by someone sending you an SMS.

The show was told that if Macs gain market share there will be a danger that hackers will start having a look under the bonnets of the machines. If they do, they will find it pretty easy to defeat them, presenters said.

... read more at the links

Is Apple losing the plot?

Is Apple losing the plot? - The Inquirer

APPLE IS KNOWN FOR A LOT OF THINGS, being overpriced, having nice design, attracting fanboys who religiously believe that Steve Jobs is a Messiah. But for years the build quality of the gear has never been questioned.

Now it seems that Apple has reverted to the days of the Apple II which used to catch fire even if you looked at it in a funny way or did something to place the electrics under pressure... such as turning it on.

Toy explodes in office

PowerBook explodes in London office - The Inquirer



Make sure to heed battery recall notices.

Apple trying to make modifying the iPone illegal

Iphone jailbreaking to become illegal - The Inquirer

APPLE IS TRYING TO MAKE the act of modifying the Iphone operating system to allow the installation of third party software illegal.
...

The EFF offers interesting analogy: "Ford might tell us that, for our own safety, all servicing should be done by an authorized Ford dealer using only genuine Ford parts. Toyota might say that swapping your engine could reduce the reliability of your car. And Mazda could say that those who throw a supercharger on their MX5s frequently exceed the legal speed limit.

"But we'd never accept this corporate paternalism as a justification for welding every car bonnet shut and imposing legal liability on car buffs tinkering in their garages.

Apple pays for shoddy workmanship on original ipods

Apple coughs up $22 million for damaged Ipods - The Inquirer

The full cost of the settlement, which of course allows Apple to get away without admitting it did anything wrong, is expected to be $22.5 million

Gadgest that make you look like a jerk

Gadgets that make you look like a jerk - Tech and gadgets- msnbc.com

OSX upgrade crashes Mac

OSX upgrade crashes Macs- The Inquirer

readers have been finding their Macs hanging or suffering from
post-update reboot blues. The Airport and wired network connections
keeps dropping and there are audio bleeps when users try to restart.

The Mail application refuses to quit, fails to connect or crashes
while attempting to connect to the mail server. And it really hates
messages with attachments according to reports.

The upgrade is self-censoring too. Instead of warning the user that
there is a problem, the system goes mysteriously silent as if there was
no problem at all. Much like the Apple press office when it comes to
bad news.

One user reported that the upgrade made his Imac into a brick,
complete with a white screen which just bleeps at him, which is
probably a wrongly-reported RAM fault.

Sales of Mac declining

Apple suffers in economic downturn - The Inquirer

THE US PRESS seem deeply shocked that even Jobs' Mob is feeling the pinch in the economic downturn.

A recent article by the Wall Street Journal said that even
Apple is beginning to suffer in this year's dismal holiday season, as
if it expected the outfit to be immune to the woes of the economy.

With hushed breath it noted that sales of Macs had actually declined
a year ago while sales of other brands of PCs managed to increase by
two percent. 

How can that be? People always buy Apple don't they? Steve Jobs told them so.

NPD analyst Steve Baker pointed out that there had been a 35 per cent drop in sales of desktop Macs

If Steve Jobs ran one of the big three car companies - what would the car be like?

diggmakesmegigglelikealittlegirl.jpg (JPEG Image, 830x3118 pixels)

New Apple toys outfitted for gaming are crashing

AppleInsider | Apple investigating graphics issues on new MacBook lines

Didn't anyone tell the customers that this is a toy, not a computer? Of course it can't play games.

Grandma got a new mac

Humor: Grandma Got a New Mac

Cracked iPhones

Iphone cracked - The INQUIRER

The latest court case against the Cupertino outfit says that, not only did
Jobs' Mob ship shonky phones with 3G reception that cut out, they also came with
hairline cracks that ultimately would lead to the death of the phone.

Mac Upgrades - quick and easy

096.jpg (JPEG Image, 567×525 pixels)

In other Mac news:
I worked on a Mac the other day. The client had just installed the latest OS X update and now her $400 laser printer won't work and she can't undo the update. I found out that the update made it so her operating system no longer recognizes her printer and there is no driver for her updated operating system version. There is a driver for this printer for Windows Vista, Windows XP and previous versions of Windows. But not for the Latest Mac OS.

Time to shell out $ for a new printer.

Mac just works, with only a few things.

2,000 year old toy found near Stonehenge

Britain's Oldest Toy Found Buried with Stonehenge Baby?