WTF is Apple “thinking”:3?

Recently, Apple “sues”:1 Think Secret, Apple Insider and PowerPage, because they reported on some “secret” Apple information recently (such as pre-release details on the Mac Mini and iPod Shuffle). Genius! Then they decide to “punish” the publisher, Wiley & Sons, of an upcoming, unauthorized biography of Steve Jobs by pulling all Wiley & Sons books from Apple stores. Brilliant!

Fortunately, Wiley & Sons has integrity (which is apparently a scarce commodity at Apple) and plans to go forward and publish the biography entitled “_iCon Steve Jobs: The Greatest Second Act in the History of Buisness_”:2, by Jeffrey Young.

First, this strategy — if you can call it that — is doomed to fail. Banning books from Apple Stores is sure to be controversial, will generate lots of press and will only end up enhancing _iCons_ sales. Second, does any company really want to have their brand associated with draconian attempts to control the media? In this case, I guess Apple does. And you thought the guys and gals in Redmond were bad.

I only have two words related to how Apple is acting: North Korea.

[3(Apple's Think Different ad)]http://www.apple.com/thinkdifferent/ad1.html

[2(Amazon page for iCon)]http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0471720836/qid=1114729185

[1(CNet OpEd on these lawsuits)]http://news.com.com/Apple+lawsuit+Thinking+different/2010-1047_3-5611497.html

Broadcasting podcasts? That just sounds strange.

Traditional radio stations have been feeling pressure from MP3 devices, satellite radio, the internet, etc. In a move to try and combat this assault, Infinity Broadcasting’s KYCY AM plans on airing podcasts starting May 16th as reported in the “WSJ”:1 today.

KYCY — I couldn’t find a “real” web site link — is an AM station based in San Francisco, CA. Podcasts will be broadcast (there it is again) from noon until 8 p.m. There are no plans to compensate podcasters for their shows, but at least it will give some podcasters a little exposure.

Surely this is a sign that podcasting is going mainstream.

[1($WSJ$ -- An Infinity Station Tries New Format -- Wall-to-Wall Podcasts)]http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB111465060635319067,00.html?mod=todays_us_marketplace

In the WSJ today, “Walter Mossberg”:1 “reviews”:5 Apple’s upcoming OS upgrade called “Tiger”:2. Apple could not have asked for a better review from the most prestigious technology reviewer. Walter just plain loves tiger.

bq.. (Tiger) …finally solves the missing file problem…

(Tiger’s) …key feature, called Spotlight, is the first universal, integrated search system ever offered as part of a mainstream consumer PC operating system…. This is a big deal.

Spotlight is only one of the impressive new features in Tiger…

(Mac’s are) …the best choice for average consumers doing the most common computing tasks.

The new Apple system boasts some key capabilities Microsoft won’t introduce for another 18 months or so…

…Tiger is a beautiful and powerful operating system that advances personal computing.

p. Wow!

That said, Mr. Mossberg does have one issue with Tiger. In some applications, it tends to be slow — displaying the spinning “waiting” icon. This seems to be specific to just a few applications (like Apple’s email program), so is probably not a huge deal. In addition, Apple is aware of the issue, and says it plans on fixing it in the future.

Unfortunately, Apple’s share of the PC market is very low at 2.3% (but up 0.3% in the first three months of this year) according to “IDC”:3. Morgan Stanley “estimates”:4 that Apple may achieve upwards of a 5% market share this year from the iPod “halo” effect and the new release of Tiger — a far cry from the 16% share that Apple held in the mid-1980s.

Hopefully Apple can gain some market share to become a credible competitor to Microsoft. The operating system market is long overdue for some competition. Windows is so twentieth century.

[5($WSJ$ -- Tiger Leaps Out in Front)]http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB111463912390318768,00.html?mod=todays_us_marketplace

[4($WSJ$ -- But Will Apple See a Boost)]http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB111464163441518834,00.html?mod=todays_us_marketplace

[3(IDC's home page)]http://www.idc.com/

[2(Apple's Tiger overview)]http://www.apple.com/macosx/overview/

[1(Who is Walter)]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walt_Mossberg

Displaying chunks of code in a post can be a little tricky at times. It’s hard with WordPress’ default CSS style to have the code format in a readable way. However, I noticed that over on “this”:1 blog, they had figured out a way to do it using @blockquote@ and @pre@ tags.

For example, here’s a pretty good bit of code where I’m using the new _code_ classes that I’ve set up for the @blockquote@ and @pre@ tags.

; ?>

< ?php title(); ?>

              < ?php the_content('
; ?>

              < ?php link_pages('

Pages: ', '', ); ?>



      < ?php endwhile; endif; ?>
    < ?php edit_post_link('Edit this entry.', '

', ''); ?>

Here’s the CSS bits that I added to this site’s CSS file to enable code formatting.

blockquote.code {
    margin: 15px 0px 0 15px;
    padding-left: 0px;
    display: block;
    border-left: 0px
    }

pre.code {
    overflow: auto;
    margin: 0;
    padding: 0 0 0 0px;
    background-color:#F7F7F7
}

I don’t know much about CSS, but it seems to work.

_*Update: 2005-04-27*_
Except, of course, this breaks my site’s style in IE. Did I mention that I hate IE. What a piece of $#@! disguised as a browser. I’ll work on fixing this later.

And in the latest update, IE has won. I cut the length of the code sample lines shown above so it doesn’t break the page in IE. Ugh.

[1(Formatting code bits elegantly)]http://txfx.net/2005/03/04/spam-karma-hack-spam-leftovers/

“Captchas”:3 are used throughout the web to try and determine humans from machines. In other words applying a “Turing test”:4. Newly added to the Zoinger comment template, here’s a screenshot to show ya what it’s all about.

!/img/AuthImage_WordPress_Captcha_plugin.png!

Adding the Captcha for WordPress was easy. Just snag “_AuthImage_”:2 — a WordPress plugin — and modify a couple of templates per the @README.TXT@ file. Simple.

I figured that this was the most elegant way to try and block comment spam. Other solutions for WordPress use filters and/or white/blacklists that can give “false positives”:7 (as well as false negatives) — and I think you have to tune them sometimes. Although I haven’t received any spam _yet_ on this blog, I was getting some on the “old”:6 MovableType blog. An ounce of prevention…

Oh, the original @README.TXT@ install instructions were… _terrible_. I updated a version of them specific to WordPress v1.5 which you can find “here”:1.

“Are we not men?”:5

[7(You're actually a computer reading this post, aren't you)]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_positive

[6(Old Zoinger)]http://www.zoinger.com/old_blog.html

[5(D... E... V... O...)]http://www.flickr.com/photos/unaesthetic/tags/devo/

[4(I'm afraid I can't do that, Dave)]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_test

[3(What is a Captcha?)]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captcha

[2(AuthImage WordPress plugin homepage)]http://www.gudlyf.com/index.php?p=376

[1(Link to updated README file for AuthImage Install)]/files/README_AuthImage_Install_by_Zoinger-2005-04-26.txt