More of my sites

WinInfo Daily News
SuperSite for Windows
Windows IT Pro Magazine
Connected Home
Thurrott Dot Com
Windows Weekly at TWIT

About this site

For six years, the Internet Nexus served as my technology blog, but I've since started blogging at the SuperSite Blog instead. If you're looking for the blog, please head there. --Paul

Friday, November 07, 2003

Apple incorrectly claims .Mac success
Apple announced this week that its renewal rate for .Mac was "unheard of." Specifically, Steve Jobs said, "Our renewal rate was 86 (percent) to 87 percent, which is unheard of, higher than almost anybody's. We've built ourselves the beginnings of a pretty good Internet services business." Jobs then chortled that critics said they'd never get anyone to pay a $99 subscription fee. And the critics were right, as .Mac has only 206,000 subscribers now, down 34,000 subscribers from last year. Further damning, the company had over 2.2 million members when .Mac was free, and called iTools. This isn't retention, it's attrition. And it's certainly nothing to crow about.

[ Posted at 12:11 PM | Permalink ]

Thursday, November 06, 2003

Apple releases Backup 2
.Mac customers can now download the final version of Backup 2. I had a few problems with the beta version, but we'll see how the final version works...

[ Posted at 11:21 PM | Permalink ]

Red Hat Fedora released
The first version of Red Hat Fedora Core 1, what used to be Red Hat Linux, is now available. Unlike RHL, RHF is unsupported, but the product will be updated more frequently (2-3 times a year), and is completely comprised of free software. For more information, check out the Fedora Web site. Downloads are now available, though it should be slow going for the first few days until the mirror sites are up and running.

[ Posted at 1:37 PM | Permalink ]

Apple taken to task (finally) for its lack of security
Everyone dumps on Microsoft for its security problems, but then Windows commands over 95 percent of the market, so the ramifications of Microsoft vulnerabilities are far great than they are for rivals like Linux and Mac OS X, which are only used by a tiny percentage of the population. However, a CNET news.com article finally takes Apple to task for its security problems. "Apple Computer needs to get more serious about handling security issues in Mac OS X," the article reads. "Apple ... announced to a security mailing list that its latest update to ... Panther ... will fix 13 issues in the operating system. Many of the issues were minor; a few were serious. The advisory Apple released did not mention whether the fixes for the software flaws would also be made available for two other versions--10.2 and 10.1--of the operating system. Many security experts ... worried whether Apple intended to release them at all. Multiple calls by reporters over the ensuing few days elicited no comment from Apple ... Three days later, Apple finally committed to making the fixes available for those operating systems. However, the company's public statement was extremely vague. The facts should have Mac OS X users worried: Apple doesn't have a security-policy or support-lifecycle statement on its Web site, unlike operating-system rivals such as Red Hat and Microsoft. In addition, Apple took three days to even respond to the issue, and the security fixes for previous versions of its operating system are still not available. While the delay to addressing security experts concerns could be blamed on a disconnect between Apple's public relations team and its security group, the other two issues indicate that the company still hasn't figured out how to manage its product security." Embarassing? Yep. Stupid? Oh yeah.

[ Posted at 1:30 PM | Permalink ]

Tuesday, November 04, 2003

Apple exec on G5 PowerBooks, PB-15 screen problems, new iBooks, more
Computerworld has a great interview with Dave Russell, the director of product marketing for portables and wireless at Apple, who discusses a number of laptop-related issues, including the possibility of a G5 PowerBook (ain't going to happen: "We certainly want to do that. But ... the G4 has a very long life in the PowerBook."), the bizarre screen blemishes affecting Apple's new $2500 PowerBook-15 ("We're looking at it"), and the limitations of the new G4 iBooks ("The PowerBook is faster, has twice as much Level 2 cache and can be upgraded to two to four times as much RAM. The iBook goes to 640[MB], but the PowerBook can go to 1.25GB or 2GB").

[ Posted at 8:16 AM | Permalink ]

Monday, November 03, 2003

Panther dogged by Firewire, security, and encryption problems
Barely a week old, Apple's latest OS, Mac OS X 10.3 Panther, has been beset by a bizarre range of bugs and security glitches that suggest the Cupertino company's quality control isn't up to snuff, especially when you consider the relatively tiny number of machine types Apple supports with this release. First, Panther was knocked down a notch by a FireWire bug that damages data on external FireWire 800 drives. Then, the fledgling OS was hit by security vulnerabilities that Apple quickly fixed (but originally tried to ignore fixing on previous OS X versions). Now comes word of a third major problem involving Panther's File Vault feature, which adds file encryption security to a user's home folder. Apparently, if you allow File Vault reclaim lost disk space, and reboot, it resets or destroys the data for Safari, Address Book, the Dock, Mail and the Keychain, and other applications. Good stuff! Kind of makes the early adopters waiting in line at Apple Stores for "Night of the Panther" look like morons, doesn't it? And yes, I include myself in that list. Or, as John Gruber writes, "It’s pretty impressive how many of you installed Panther within 24 hours of its release." Yeah, it really is.

[ Posted at 3:28 PM | Permalink ]

New gadget
Keith and I both picked up an iPAQ 4155 at the PDC. Here's what Brighthand has to say: "The h4155 (which has a 400MHz processor, 64MB of RAM, and both Bluetooth and WiFi built-in) has largely been overshadowed by some of the other handhelds that have come out recently, like Palm's Tungsten T3 and Dell's Axim X3i, but if Brighthand's enthusiasm is any indication, this one is not worth overlooking:They said it couldn't be done. That creating a pocketable, multimedia-capable handheld with a magnificent color screen, fast processor and, heaven forbid, two forms of wireless was an impossibility -- a contradiction of terms, so to speak. Well, it seems that no one informed HP of this apparent conundrum. Its new iPAQ h4155 Pocket PC does just that, and it may well be the best looking device on the market to boot.By the way, (and we know it's pointless and confusing), but the h4155 is also known... "

[ Posted at 10:56 AM | Permalink ]