No, I haven’t stopped blogging. I just finished a major update that consumed most of my time. Starting my day at 7:00 AM and being up until 11:30 PM didn’t allow me much time to update my blog. Sorry.
Now, just in time for better weather, I have time!
Let me touch upon some popular topics:
Apple. Wow. What non-news at the recent World-Wide Developer’s Conference. Apple introduced some new stuff that, thanks to a sophisticated rumor mill, everyone already knew about. Yawn. Even Apple’s stock took a dive, though I think that has more to do with questions about CEO Steve Jobs’ health than the health of the company.
Microsoft. They bought Skype! Now the question is, how can Microsoft transform a useful program into something that everyone can universally despise? I’m serious. Look what they did to Hotmail! In my opinion, Microsoft doesn’t understand the consumer. Either that, or their internal management structure is so screwed up that they just can’t do any better.
Tablets. I’m excited about the Galaxy Tab 10.1. Everyone pretty much knew that the original Galaxy Tab, on which I wrote a book Samsung Galaxy Tab For Dummies, was kind of a beta test. Granted, I like my Tab. It comes in immensity handy for when I’m in waiting rooms or traveling across the country. It saw more action than my laptop on my last trip. Anyway, I hear tremendously good things about the Tab 10.1. It’s supposedly out next month.
The Mac Virus. Oh, I just can’t stop laughing. I’m not laughing because the Mac boasts that it doesn’t get viruses, it’s because people don’t understand the entire virus things. Computer security is pretty good these days, on both Mac and Windows. So the only way a virus is getting into your computer — Mac or PC — is for you to invite it in. Mac users can suffer from Human Engineering just as well as PC users.
What was surprising about the Mac Virus episode was Apple’s initial denial. Then again, my hat’s off to Apple for at least answering the phone. I do occasionally hear from someone who actually speaks to someone at Microsoft Tech Support. But most often what you get from Microsoft is, “That’s a printer issue, call HP.” Oh, I love that!
Laptops. Saw a laptop the other day that claimed a 40-hour battery life. Holy poop! That’s longer than my cell phone lasts! Is that common these days? Even so, I figure the 40-hour boast is probably equal to 20 hours of uptime, if that. Maybe the thing doesn’t have a screen.
I found the Mac defender issue quite funny as well, most PC users are quite aware that when something pops up saying you have a virus problem you don’t click on it you exit the site or shut down your PC. I think they should have just come clean straight away and said looks like there is a problem with this Mac defender malware please don’t install it, look at what happened to the Play station network, it took them a long time to admit there was a problem. I would like to think most people would be a bit more understanding if they were honest.
Comment by chiefnoobie — June 14, 2011 @ 3:43 am
As a Mac user, I got hit by the Defender prompt a few times. It was scary. The screen looks exactly like the Finder and the “scan” starts at once. Though, because I’m using FireFox, the prompt came up to download the file, and I clicked NO. That ended it. But on Safari, the prompt didn’t appear and the file automatically downloaded and installed. That’s exactly how the old Outlook Express used to infect people: Automatically. Mac Defender is an exploit of a weakness in Apple’s system. Hopefully they fix that automatic-stuff.
Comment by admin — June 14, 2011 @ 7:21 am
How is a feature that automatically downloads and runs things without confirming it with you useful? Because I can’t understand why they would make it like that.
Comment by gamerguy473 — June 14, 2011 @ 8:11 am
It’s an option called “Automatically open ‘safe’ files.” That runs a big assumption up the flag pole: That any file on a computer is ‘safe.’ Is any?
Comment by admin — June 14, 2011 @ 8:15 am
I seriously want to know who thought it was a good idea, though. Have you ever been on a site and gone: “Gee, It’s so hard to click ‘download’; I wish there was something that downloaded it without asking me first! That would be such a great feature!”
Comment by gamerguy473 — June 14, 2011 @ 9:26 am
People do have issues downloading things. I’ve ranted on this before: The myth is that computers are “easy to use.” All of Microsoft’s and Apple’s marketing muscle went into that campaign for years. Decades. It worked. Few, if any, today, believe that they can’t use a computer because it’s intimidating. Even if they do, they use the computer anyway.
The veneer of “easy to use” covers a complex device that I would guess fewer than one percent of computer users truly understand. Until people learn about computers — and I mean real computer science — they will be subject to viral attacks, spam, spoofs, phishing, and every other scam. I find it difficult to forgive them for that.
Comment by admin — June 14, 2011 @ 9:49 am
It sounds very similar to a PC version of this type of Malware it happened to me when I was using the Opera web browser a pop up came up saying your PC is infected please download an update, before I had time to exit the window a scan bar appeared telling me I had hundreds of viruses. What made me chuckle was the screen that came up was made using XP when I was using Windows 7! To be fair though it could have easily fooled an inexperienced user. Also the fake window inside the web browser would not close so I had to use task manager. I would guess it is similar for the Mac Malware.
Comment by chiefnoobie — June 14, 2011 @ 9:53 am
It’s exactly what happened, Chief! It looked exactly like a Finder window and the download box looked authentic. I can see how people got fooled. I saw it and recognized it at once. I said, “Damn!”
There have been many times on the Mac I’ve used the Force Quit command to get out of a browser window that wouldn’t close properly. I haven’t had that problem since updating to FireFox, however.
Comment by admin — June 14, 2011 @ 10:09 am