Lost in the hype surrounding the announcement of new PowerMac G5's, AirTunes, and AirPort Express this week, several little oddities have surfaced on the fringes of the Apple universe, some of them just plain bizarre. Let's take a look into the Twilight Zone:
The man who became a federal fugitive for no reason: Here we have the strange tale of the poor iTunes user who decided that he was going to have to reformat his computer (so right away we just know he's a Windows user). In order to "ensure" that his music will still be playable after he reformats his computer, he goes and decides to use illegal third-party hackware in order to strip the DRM off the music. And then, after he does his reformat/reinstall, he comes to find out that his altered music won't play at all. But rather than admitting defeat, our friend uses a hex editor to manually alter the internal coding of his songs until he can finally get them to play again. In the end, apparently not aware of just what the "rules" might be, he sums up his experience with "Sorry I tried to play by your rules." By his own admission, he's "just broken any number of federal statutes."
Poor guy. If he'd just paid attention to the iTunes installation splash screen, he'd have known that you can legally play your music on up to five computers, without the need for illegal hackware or hex editors. It seems that all one has to do when asked for "authorization" when playing ones music on a new computer, is to type in ones password...
Silence of the Lambs, Part II: Next we have the peculiar but increasingly popular belief among Windows users that if you install just enough interface-altering shareware onto your PC, it just might actually become a Macintosh. Apparently throwing the whole "lipstick on a pig" metaphor to the wind, and ignoring the fact that the whole thing reads like some rejected script for a high-tech sequel to "Silence of the Lambs," guides are even being written up on how best to go about carrying out the transformation process. All you need to do is install eight different shareware applications (including one that makes iTunes for Windows look more like iTunes for Macintosh, and no I'm not making that up), and you too can have your PC's desktop look vaguely like that of a Mac while still retaining the total crappiness of Windows.
But take a look at the pictures of the modified desktops, and you'll see that a transformation is taking place of a whole other kind. You see, anyone sufficiently possessed by Mac envy as so install eight different applications in an attempt to pretend that they're using a Macintosh, will undoubtedly end up migrating to the real thing before too long...whether they currently realize it or not. Upon realizing that their PC now looks somewhat Mac-like, but they're still not getting any of the joy out of computing that their Mac-using friends are always bragging about, they'll eventually grab that PC off their desk, drop-kick it out of a third-floor window, and put an actual Mac in its place. Within eighteen months, maximum.
Lance Ulanoff: Of the three bold-faced titles in today's column, "Lance Ulanoff" is undoubtedly the most horrific of the three. Every Mac user will vaguely recall his name as the idiot from PC Magazine who stepped up last year, after an obscure security issue was discovered within MacOS X, to ask us Mac users if we now felt "humble." If this site had been giving out the "Beavis of the week" award back in those days, Mr. Ulanoff would surely have seen his name on a plaque.
Anyone keeping score when it comes to the frequency and severity of security issues on the Windows and MacOS X platforms, knows full well that a Windows user trying to taunt a Mac user about security is like the guy who's just taken six bullets to the chest using his last breath to laugh at the guy with the papercut. And although Ulanoff took quite a number of well-deserved whacks to the abdomen from the Mac Web for his indiscretions, I figured he'd step up this month and take advantage of the fact that we Mac users have once again had to deal with a security issue that was almost worth writing about. After all, this is the guy who addressed Mac users last year by writing "Will you be stuffing that superior attitude in your crow or eating it separately, sir?".
And sure enough, Beavis (er, I mean, Lance Ulanoff) did in fact decide to write about Apple this week. But was it about Macintosh security? Nope. More ghost stories about imaginary Macintosh viruses? Nah. Rumors that Steve Jobs has rabies? No-sir-ee. Instead, he steps up this time with an article entitled "A love letter to an iPod mini" that I can only assume (what, you think I'm going to read anything he has to say at this point?) signifies that our friend Mr. Ulanoff has now embarked upon a different path entirely. So here's what I want to know, Lance: when you switch to the Mac eighteen months from now and you have to sit down and write a column about it, will you be stuffing that attitude in your crow...or eating it separately?
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