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Security Expert: “Mac OS X Is Safer, But Less Secure”

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Tech site H-Online has an interesting story today, quoting security expert Charlie Miller about his forthcoming talk at the CanSecWest conference next week.
He says OS X is full of security holes. There are lots more than in Windows, he claims.
And yet: OS X is a safer system to use. Why? Because, in the words [...]

Apple Devotes Entire Home Page To Jerome York Obituary

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If ever you needed a sign that Apple was a different kind of technology company, this is it.
What other computer manufacturer would remove its top-selling, hype-inducing, industry-altering new product from the prime spot on its website home page, and replace it with an obituary to an investor?
This is one of those “Here’s to the [...]

Coming Soon: Steve Jobs, the Sitcom

Fake Steve creator Dan Lyons just signed a deal to bring Steve Jobs to another small screen near you.
The half-hour series called “iCon” is billed by the presser as “a savage satire centering on a fictional Silicon Valley CEO whose ego is a study in power and greed.”
Making sure the barbs prick will be the [...]

What’s Next For the iPad? A Tabletop iPad, According to Xerox PARC Circa 1991

Way back in 1991, just as Apple was transitioning from 68k to PowerPC chips, the braniacs at Xerox PARC were predicting it’s entire iPod, iPhone and iPad strategy. And next up for the iPad is a blackboard-sized device.
Nearly 20 years ago, just as personal desktop computers were taking off, researchers at Xerox started thinking about [...]

Coolest Hackintosh — Ever!

Okay I know it’s an oxymoron, but work with me here.

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link to the full video

Mac|Life reports that a OQO user has managed to get Leopard up and running on his hand-held, complete with a pretty impressive video on YouTube. Ordinarily, I could give to shakes for some beige box running OS X, but the OQO device is actually cool enough that I’d actually buy one if we can get OS X on it stable.

Whats notable from the video is that OS X Boots Sloooooooow, and runs Slooooooow on the device. But I’m pretty sure there are some clever folks out there who work out a way to speed it up. And besides, OQO was founded by ex-Apple folks, so the design is pretty slick, too.

So the utter blasphemy of a Hackintosh aside, this really reinfoces the fact that consumers want something more than an iPhone, but less than a full-on Mac.

What do you think? If someone offered this thing commercially (Hopefully Apple) would you buy one?

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About the author

LeighMcMullen

Leigh McMullen leads the Advisory Services & Strategy practices for the professional services arm of one of the Big-Five firms. He has written several books that would cure any insomnia you might have, and is an avid Mac junkie.

Email the author | Read more posts by Leigh McMullen.

8 comments

    Not if it ran that slow. Sheesh! I mean, I love my Leopard, but put Black Box or SOMETHING stripped down on that thing so it’ll fly.

    Now if you beef up the specs under the hood and Leopard flew on it, I’d take this thing everywhere with me. ;)

    It is slow, All of the Hackintoshes boot slow, no idea why, probably an EFI bootloader thing. The thing has got specs of a last generation Mini, so it ought to do well if you tune down the graphics and such…

    I think the concept is wicked cool.

    Id love to buy something bigger than iphone. My wife bought an iPod Touch. Great little machine, but the expereince of typing on such a small screen is not one for me. Apple have done a great job with the touch screen, what a shame its wasted on such a small screen.

    Im a teacher, and an ebook sized machien done by Apple would be a knock out for me, and many others. Something the size of a book, with a touchscreen. It would make the “Amazon Kindle” redundant, finish off the dying PDA, and give people something that bridges the gap between the cell phone and notebook computer.

    Surely the success of the little Asus attests to peoples desire for something moderatly priced and small, but not as small as a phone?

    @greg:

    Totally. The whole laptop concept is five years from antiquity (this is based on the same measure that suggests that desktops are antiquated at present (he says as he types this on his Mac Pro Tower)).

    In the cloud computing world that is literally right around the corner, the need for on board processing and storage is so minimized that device convenience will rise above device capability as a selling factor.

    That is literally: ‘How portable is it’, ‘how ergonomic’, ‘how easy to use’, will replace: ‘how powerful is it’ as the primary measure.

    Apple actually owns ALL of the above measures, (easy, ergonomic, portable AND powerful), what they need to realize very quickly lest they become Akai to Sony’s walkman, is that once power is irrelevant, the first three dominate.

    i would buy one this instant if apple made one. I am even strongly considering buying either this or the similar product from sony ( the SONY VAIO UX490N UMPC probably from ebay) to run os x

    also this would probably (strangely enough) reduce the laptop sails a bit and increase desktop sales, as 85 % of the time people use there laptops are at their own desk – so more sails of the imac / mac pro

    now ONLY if apple would stop trying to shovel file syncing into .MAC and instead introduce a home server (or the features into normal os x) a bit like Microsoft has done, and one that allows the “remote home” feature so that the files (and setting that allow you bookmarks keychain etc… ) one one mac are reflected on the other then machines like this (being a supplement to your main machine) would be perfect for what they are intended for!

    james churchman

    … this really reinfoces the fact that consumers want something more than an iPhone, but less than a full-on Mac.

    Right on!!!

    I would buy a modern Newton in a flash.

    Echoing Greg, I am a teacher too, and to have a reincarnation of the Palm PDA (AKA ‘walking zombie’) in the form, concept and shape of Apple wrapped around OSX…?

    To have access to my teaching content, ipod media output capabilities…

    …I would buy one instantly.

    “this really reinfoces the fact that consumers want something more than an iPhone, but less than a full-on Mac”

    You must be kidding?! How can one hack be representative of market desires? Also, do you know what a spell checker is????

    You get paid how much to write this inane drivel????

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