What I Hate About The Mac

1) USB Devices Always Wake the Computer - If my computer is sleeping, and I unplug my iPod to go out, why does my computer wake up? Why, why, why? Same if I’m unplugging my display/USB hub to use my computer as a laptop. The computer should NOT wake up.

2) USB Drives Can’t Simply Be Unplugged - In a similar vein to the first one, I should be able to yank out my USB drive and go. Why do I have to eject the drive first? I don’t on Windows…

3) No Cut and Paste in the Finder - Before I start, I understand the motivation for utilizing drag and drop. And for the most part, I love using drag an drop. But when I’m moving a file from one folder nested in Adam/Documents/Important/Files/Taxes/NotReallyTaxes/Games/MoveThis.file all the way to Adam/Movies/Films/A-F/Crappy Movies/ThisFileWas.moved, Drag and Drop isn’t the best option. Even if it isn’t called cut and paste (I’m aware of the problem with the name scheme), call it “Sticky Move” or “Smart Move” or something. Just include it.

4) No Universal Uninstaller - I love that applications in OS X are for the most part self contained. You can drag to a folder to install, and uninstall by dragging to trash. But for applications like Adobe Photoshop CS3, or Apple’s own Final Cut Studio, they are not self contained and to properly uninstall, one needs to resort to third party apps like AppDelete and AppZapper. Windows has an uninstaller (albeit a hit or miss one) built in. Why can’t OS X? It wouldn’t be used that much, but when it is needed, it would be invaluable.

5) Empty Trash is Severely Crippled - If I drop a file into the trash that an application is using, the trash won’t empty. It will throw up a message saying that “Trash cannot empty because such and such is in use.” This is all fine and well, unless, as I find happens much too often, none of your open applications seem to be using it. I have quit all my apps too many times to count only to find that the file was still “in use.” Is it too much to ask for OS X to at least tell me what process is using it? Then I could kill it with Activity Monitor.


What I Love About Windows

1) Ability To Install Almost Any Software - What’s the oldest software you can run natively on a new Mac? About three years. What’s the oldest software you can run natively on Windows? Way over 10 years. I had an OS9 version of Photoshop Elements. Ran in Classic on my Power PC Mac, Didn’t run at all on my Intel Mac. The Windows version (bundled on the same CD) Ran like a charm on Windows XP.

2) Maximize Done Right - I know that the green button in OS X isn’t technically a Maximize button, but I don’t know what it is. In iTunes and Calculator, its a mode switcher. In Safari, it’s a resizer. In iPhoto, iMovie, Aperture, and Firefox, it’s a maximizer. In Windows, it has, does, and always will expand the window to full screen. I understand why maximization isn’t practical in todays world of huge screens, but neither is a multi purpose vague button marked with a plus that may, in fact, make the window smaller.

3) Access to the Innards - Quick and Easy. I can delete any System File without being told I don’t have privileges even though I’m the freakin’ administrator. Great for tinkerers.

4) Easy Force Quit - By and large, it takes three clicks of “Force Quit” in OS X to actually make it force quit. In Windows, as long as you can get the Task Manager up, you can quit anything. It’s as easy as Ctrl-Alt-Del.

5) Settings are Remembered - OS X, If I leave my Finder window in the corner, I want it to stay in the corner. Windows knows this, you can learn too. Thanks.


Πηγή: http://www.appletell.com/technologytell/article/ten-things-i-hate-about-my-mac-and-love-about-windows/

The “CEO of the Decade” is no longer CEO.

After the initial shock, a general impulse seems to have seized commenters, which is to reassure everyone that everything will be OK.

“Apple will do amazingly well without Steve Jobs,” says Slate’s Farhad Manjoo.

PC World‘s Tony Bradley says we shouldn’t panic, because “Apple Is Still Apple.”

“Apple will continue to shine without Jobs at the helm,” says Seeking Alpha‘s Carl Howe.

Why? Because Apple “is more than Steve Jobs,” according to Christina Rexrode of the Associated Press.

All these headlines are technically true, but add up to wishful thinking that masks the larger truth. Yes, Apple is more than Steve Jobs.” But Apple without Steve Jobs is less than Apple with him. A lot less.


Why Steve Jobs was the Greatest CEO Ever

Some CEOs are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them.

In Jobs’ case, all three are true.

Jobs’ entire life was a “perfect storm” of elements for the man to lead Apple and make it the company it has become. Jobs was born at exactly the right time in exactly the right place with exactly the right personality to become the ultimate consumer electronics visionary.

Jobs was born with a personality containing equal parts perfectionism, narcissism, impatience and a quality you might call extremism.

Above all, Jobs was born with the DNA of a writer. (It’s not a coincidence that both his biological sister and daughter are successful writers.)

Writer DNA predisposes the victim to gravitate to the larger issue, whenever confronting particulars, to larger truths when confronting facts. For example, Jobs never viewed Apple as a company that makes computers and consumer electronics gadgets. To him, Apple makes culture accelerators. It manufactures human experience. Apple doesn’t “succeed in the marketplace.” It “changes the world.”

Critics always slam Jobs as “merely a salesman.” But that’s wrong. Jobs thinks like a writer, understanding and obsessing over larger truths and aspirations, and conveying them with piercing, emotive and unforgettable language. This is what great novelists do.

Jobs was born with qualities that made him the greatest CEO ever, but he also acquired greatness as a CEO. The hard way.

Throughout all his personal transitions, from wandering hippy to enfant terrible to pop-collar douchebag to hard-nosed businessman to the impossible-to-stereotype person that he is today, Jobs has been constantly confronted by challenge after challenge. And each one of them has made Jobs grow as a leader.

The kid who couldn’t be trusted by investors to lead the company as CEO in the 1970s had no idea what he was doing. The man who strode back into Apple in the 1990s as part of the NeXT acquisition was an unprecedented master of the art of running a technology company. During those two decades, Jobs experienced an education like no other. NeXT enabled him to take all he had learned at Apple, and apply it to a startup. Then he took all he had learned at the startup and applied it to Apple.

This perfect storm of DNA, experience and circumstance transformed Jobs into the CEO of the Decade. But what is it about Jobs as CEO that brought Apple from the brink of failure to the most valuable technology company in history?


How Jobs Ruled Apple

The trouble with dictatorship or absolute monarchy is that success or failure depend entirely upon the quality of the despot. That’s why they fail. And that’s why a democracy that limits the power of leaders is best — it still works, more or less, even when incompetent morons are in power.

But what about when the dictator is literally the single best person to lead? In those almost non-existently rare instances, despotism is by far the best form of government. Heaven, for example, is not a democracy.

In the case of Apple, it’s not just that Steve Jobs had become an amazing CEO, but that within Apple, he ruled unchallenged. Sure, he had a razor sharp vision for how things should be. But equally important: Nobody could over-rule Jobs. Not the owners of the company (the shareholders), not the board, not the desires of the users — literally nobody.

People outside the industry often fail to appreciate how powerful this is.

You will note, by the way, that all the most successful companies in technology are run by their visionary founders (Apple, Google, Oracle), and lose focus after those founders depart (Microsoft, HP).

The reason is that without the visionary despot, “groupthink” takes over. Everyone’s got their own agenda, and all these disparate visions tend to cancel each other out. Ultimately, the only criteria for deciding anything is either what’s best for shareholders (short-term thinking) or what users want (obsolete thinking).

At Apple, Jobs’ rule was so absolute that if Jobs wanted decision A, and most of the board, most of the executives, most of the user surveys and most of the shareholders wanted decision B, there was no question: We go with A.

I once heard an eye-opening talk by Palm Pilot creator Jeff Hawkins, who said that in bringing the Palm Pilot to market, he spent much of his time overcoming groupthink. The engineers made compelling arguments for why more buttons would be better, a faster processor would be better, more applications would be better. Ultimately, the original Pilot succeeded only because Hawkins was able to bat down all these disparate visions, which were all based on false assumptions like “more is better,” “more powerful is better,” and realize his own vision “simplicity is better.”

It didn’t take long after the Pilot’s initial success for Hawkins to lose control. The result was a company dominated by multiple agendas and classic groupthink ending ultimately with the announcement last week that the Palm line would be terminated.

Jobs’ power and influence within Apple did not come from his title. His vote was the only one that counted not because his business card said CEO, but because he’s fricken Steve Jobs, and this is fricken Apple. Who is going to over-rule him?

Apple isn’t just getting a new ruler. It’s getting a new form of government. Yesterday, Apple was a totalitarian dictatorship. Today, it’s a democratic oligarchy.

Unlike Jobs, Cook will have to balance the competing interests of various VPs and board members, taking into account the interests of shareholders and users on every decision.

Yes, Jobs is still Chairman, still Cook’s boss. But it was Jobs’ involvement in every little detail that made Apple what it is today. Google’s Vic Gundotra told the story yesterday of getting a call on Sunday from Steve Jobs over a color on an icon. It wasn’t the absolutely perfect shade of yellow, and therefore it was an urgent crisis that had to be resolved immediately. Every. Little. Detail.

Those days are gone.

Apple will continue to be a successful company. This is in part because Jobs has put such a great team in place. The governing criteria for all decisions for the time being will be: What would Steve do?

Over time, however, Apple will and must gravitate toward normalcy, toward average, toward mediocrity. In fact, the success of Apple as a company has always perfectly correlated to the degree of Jobs’ control.

Nobody wants to hear this. I don’t want to say it. But the truth is that Steve Jobs is perfectly irreplaceable. And it was his unprecedented, unrepeatable leadership that made Apple what it is today.

Tomorrow, it will become a different Apple, a lesser Apple.

Companies are only as great as the people who lead them. And today we’re forced to admit that it was, all along, Steve Jobs who made Apple think different.

Apple will continue to be a great company. But it was Steve Jobs who was insanely great.


Πηγή: http://www.cultofmac.com/110518/no-apple-wont-be-the-same-without-steve-jobs/

H παγκοσμίως γνωστή ομάδα Ευρωπαίων χάκερ Chaos Computer Club καταγγέλει ότι η γερμανική αστυνομία έχει σχεδιάσει έτσι το λογισμικό που, υπό όρους και δη, δικαστική εντολή, της επιτρέπει την συνακρόαση διαδικτυακών συνομιλιών ώστε να μπορεί με ευκολία να παρακολουθεί ακόμα και τα τεκταινόμενα στον ίδιο χώρο με τον υπολογιστή του φερόμενου ως ύποπτου χρήστη ενεργοποιώντας κάμερα και μικρόφωνο.

Σύμφωνα με τα όσα καταγγέλει το CCC, οι Αρχές μπορούν να ξεπεράσουν τη δικαιοδοσία τους εάν δεν υπάρχει έλεγχος. Μάλιστα προσθέτουν ότι ο σχεδιασμός του λογισμικού αυτού είναι τόσο φτωχός ώστε θα μπορούσε να γίνει αντικείμενο εκμετάλλευσης όχι μόνο από τις Αρχές αλλά και από τρίτους.

Επίσης, αναφέρουν ότι η ανάλυση που έκαναν τους οδήγησε στο συμπέρασμα ότι η κερκόπορτα που ανοίγει ο «δούρειος ίππος» των Αρχών είναι ανοικτή ακόμα και για τη μεταφορά ή τη διαγραφή αρχείων στον υπολογιστή του χρήστη, γεγονός που θέτει υπό αμφισβήτηση την μέθοδο έρευνας που έχουν υιοθετήσει οι Αρχές,  με την άδεια του Ομοσπονδιακού Συνταγματικού Δικαστηρίου, από το 2008.

Διαβάστε πως τεκμηριώνει τους ισχυρισμούς της η ομάδα Chaos Computer Club.

Εντούτοις, το "malware" που υποστηρίζει ότι έχει στα χέρια της η ομάδα δεν έχει επιβεβαιωθεί ότι ανήκει στην γερμανική κυβέρνηση, σύμφωνα με την εταιρεία αντιικού λογισμικού F-Secure, η οποία εξέτασε τον κώδικα και επιβεβαίωσε ότι περιέχει keylogger, δηλαδή καταγράφει ότι πληκτρολογεί ο χρήστης σε σειρά εφαρμογών, όπως στην εφαρμογή διαδικτυακής επικοινωνίας με φωνή, κείμενο ή βίντεο Skype, τον browser Firefox, το πρόγραμμα ανταλλαγής μηνυμάτων MSN Messenger, το ICQ και άλλα. Επίσης επιβεβαίωσε ότι μπορεί να παίρνει screenshot και να καταγράφει συνομιλίες με ήχο.

Πάντως, σύμφωνα με άρθρο στο δικτυακό τόπο faz.net γερμανικής εφημερίδας η ύπαρξη της κερκόπορτας στο trojan της γερμανικής κυβέρνησης είναι γνωστή και έχει συζητηθεί δημοσίως.


Πηγή: http://tech.in.gr/news/article/?aid=1231132416

Μέσα από την εκδήλωση MAX 2011 από την Adobe παρουσιάστηκε πριν από λίγες μέρες μια νέα τεχνολογία η οποία “κάνει … θαύματα” σε θολωμένες εικόνες. Βασίζεται σε έναν αλγόριθμο που έχει αναπτύξει ο Jue Wang, ερευνητής επιστήμονας της Adobe.

Με την τεχνολογία αυτή φωτογραφίες οι οποίες είναι θολές, είτε περιέχουν γράμματα που φαίνονται απλά μπορούν να “καθαρίσουν” σε ελάχιστα μόλις βήματα και χωρίς ιδιαίτερες γνώσεις επεξεργασίας εικόνων. Σύμφωνα με αναφορές ο αλγόριθμος φαίνεται να λειτουργεί ακόμη και σε χαμηλής ανάλυσης φωτογραφίες, τραβηγμένες από κινητό τηλέφωνο.

Παρακάτω μπορείτε να δείτε μια εικόνα που περιέχει κείμενο και είναι θολωμένη σε σημείο που το κείμενο δεν είναι ευανάγνωστο. Το αποτέλεσμα είναι παραπάνω από εντυπωσιακό και δε δίνει καθόλου την αίσθηση ότι πρόκειται για φωτογραφία που αρχικά ήταν θολή.

Στα παραδείγματα φωτογραφιών της εταιρείες χρησιμοποιήθηκαν φωτογραφίες που “κουνήθηκαν” επίτηδες κατά τη λήψη τους, αλλά και καθαρές φωτογραφίες που θολώθηκαν τεχνητά για τις ανάγκες της παρουσίασης.

Φυσικά ο αλγόριθμος δυσκολεύτηκε περισσότερο στην πρώτη περίπτωση σε αντίθεση με το τεχνητό blur.

Η τεχνολογία δεν είναι ακόμη τελειοποιημένη ενώ υπάρχει μεγάλη πιθανότητα να ενσωματωθεί σε κάποια μελλοντική έκδοση του Adobe Photoshop.

Πηγή: techit.gr

To survive its late founder, Apple and Steve Jobs planned a training program in which company executives will be taught to think like him, in 'a forum to impart that DNA to future generations.' Key to this effort is Joel Podolny, former Yale Business School dean.

Reporting from San Francisco— Apple Inc. now has to get down to the business of surviving its founder.

It's something that Apple — and Steve Jobs himself — had been painstakingly planning for years.

Deep inside its sprawling Cupertino, Calif., campus, one of the world's most successful and secretive companies has had a team of experts hard at work on a closely guarded project.

But it isn't a cool new gadget. It's an executive training program called Apple University that Jobs considered vital to the company's future: Teaching Apple executives to think like him.

"Steve was looking to his legacy. The idea was to take what is unique about Apple and create a forum that can impart that DNA to future generations of Apple employees," said a former Apple executive who spoke on the condition of anonymity to preserve his relationship with the company. "No other company has a university charged with probing so deeply into the roots of what makes the company so successful."

Jobs oversaw the most remarkable corporate turnaround in Silicon Valley history after returning to Apple in 1997. For more than a decade, he was behind every crucial decision as Apple rolled out blockbuster hits from the iPod to the iPad, changing how people listen to music and watch entertainment, reshaping entire industries and making Apple the world's most valuable tech company.

The challenge of maintaining that momentum came into sharp focus Tuesday when Apple's newly minted chief executive Tim Cook took Jobs' place on stage to show off an updated version of the world's best-selling smart phone. Without its master pitchman, Apple didn't get the kind of adulation for the iPhone's new features to which it's accustomed.

Apple would not comment on Apple University. But people familiar with the project say Jobs personally recruited the dean of Yale's Business School in 2008 to run it. Joel Podolny's assignment: Help Apple internalize the thoughts of its visionary founder to prepare for the day when he's not around anymore.

"One of the things that Steve Jobs understood very well is that Apple is like no other company on the planet," said longtime Apple analyst Tim Bajarin. "It became pretty clear that Apple needed a set of educational materials so that Apple employees could learn to think and make decisions as if they were Steve Jobs."

Podolny tasked leading business professors including Harvard University's Richard Tedlow, who wrote a biography of former Intel chief Andy Grove with researching the company's major decisions and the top executives who make them. Those executives — including Cook — have used those case studies to teach courses that groom the company's next generation of leaders.

Analysts say Jobs drew inspiration for the university from Bill Hewlett and David Packard, whose greatest creation was not the pocket calculator or the minicomputer, but Hewlett-Packard itself. Hewlett and Packard famously set out their company's core values in "The HP Way."

With Apple University, Jobs was trying to achieve something similar, people familiar with the project say. He identified tenets that he believes unleash innovation and sustain success at Apple — accountability, attention to detail, perfectionism, simplicity, secrecy. And he oversaw the creation of university-caliber courses that demonstrate how those principles translate into business strategies and operating practices.

The idea of building an ivory tower on a corporate campus goes back decades with the best-known — and oldest — run by General Electric. Corporate universities fell out of favor in the 1990s, considered too expensive, bureaucratic and out of touch with the companies they were supposed to serve. Even Apple shut down its corporate university.

But Jobs' interest in a corporate university never wavered, former employees say. For years he pressed for a way to study the success of Apple's executive team as well as Apple's culture and history. His model was Pixar. The animation studio that Jobs sold to Disney for $7.5 billion in 2006 runs Pixar University, a professional development program that offers courses in fine arts and filmmaking as well as leadership and management to steep employees in the company's culture, history and values as well as its craft.

"He had the university concept at Pixar, and he believed in it," said a former Apple executive who also spoke on the condition of anonymity to preserve his relationship with the company.

What Jobs needed was someone to carry out his vision.

Apple began approaching Podolny and other academics about five years ago, according to people who were contacted. The project took on greater urgency in 2008 shortly before Jobs took his second medical leave from Apple.

Podolny, an accomplished scholar and administrator whose resume includes teaching at two of the nation's top business schools, Stanford and Harvard, is an economic sociologist who focuses on leadership and organizational behavior.

Podolny didn't just study leaders; he became one. In 2005, at the age of 39, he left Harvard for the Yale School of Management where he rethought how the faculty taught future MBAs to better prepare them for the business world. Yale scrapped its staid single-subject courses in marketing and accounting for more holistic, multidisciplinary programs that focused on "the employee," "the innovator" and "the state and society."

By all accounts, Podolny lifted the fortunes of the young business school. He was credited with helping applications rise 50% during his 3½-year tenure. He recruited top scholars, increasing the size of the faculty by 20%. And his prodigious efforts on the stump helped the school raise more than $170 million. He was also in the classroom more often than most deans and responded to every email, frequently by 4:30 a.m.

"I remember scratching my head and thinking, 'This guy is not going to last at this rate.' Sure enough, he left sooner than we had hoped," Yale business professor Doug Rae said.

In October 2008, Podolny was at the top of his academic game with many expecting he would go on to become a university president. He stunned colleagues by abruptly stepping down as dean in the middle of the term and officially joining Apple in early 2009.

"The timing surprised everyone. Deans are typically in these positions for significantly longer; a decade would not be an unusual term. He had gone to really put the Yale School of Management on a different trajectory and that takes time," said Garth Saloner, dean of Stanford's Business School.

But Podolny was someone who had flouted convention to work on the cutting edge of academia. "Joel is an innovator and very creative and he's always looking for new areas to apply that talent," Saloner said.

Like others Jobs has recruited over the years, observers say Podolny fell under Jobs' spell. Podolny said he decided to leave Yale for the chance to work with a modern-day Thomas Edison.

Podolny recalled writing his first computer program on an Apple II and pulling an all-nighter to watch his Laserwriter print his undergraduate thesis at the rate of seven minutes a page.

"While there are many great companies, I cannot think of one that has had as tremendous personal meaning for me as Apple," he wrote in a farewell note to Yale students.

The importance of his new position at Apple was apparent from the first day. Podolny moved into an office in between Jobs and Cook, he confided in former colleagues. And, in a testament to Jobs' faith in Podolny, he was later named vice president of human resources.

Columbia University social scientist Peter Bearman, who was Podolny's advisor for his thesis on the role of Juan Carlos I in helping Spain establish a parliamentary democracy, said Podolny pursued his career-long interest in leadership at Apple.

"The idea that he was helping to build a structure for Apple into the future probably appealed to him," Bearman said.

jessica.guynn@latimes.com

Πηγή: LA Times