Was Macworld Apple Keynote 2009 really a yawn?

After the Mac Rumors blooper yesterday, I'm actually watching the Apple Keynote Address in Quicktime. Wired calls this years Macworld Apple Keynote a huge yawn - but now was it really?


Wired's primary complaints are that Steve Jobs wasn't there, and that there were no new really exciting hardware. The first point I consider ridiculously exagerrated, Steve Jobs is a great icon, but Apple has a lot to offer besides his turtle neck. The second point is more interesting though - Apple has always pointed out that it is a computer manufacturer though me it's certainly won with it's elegant software - I could almost be happy with running a hackint0sh as long as I get OS X.

This year the show was almost completely focused on software and services (even though they said the focus would be "the Mac") such as iLife, iWork and iTunes Store. This is remarkable, especially as the rest of the world, mac fans in particular, have been moving rapidly towards "the cloud", Web 2.0 services and making the personal computer almost disposable. Apple obviously has every interest to make their beautiful machines everything but disposable, but is this tug-of-war possible to win?

As my old PowerBook's disk grew more and more full and I got a DSLR Camera some time ago, I had to abandon iPhoto for managing my photos, putting my originals on my server and keeping only scaled-down versions in manually managed folders on my laptop. This is obviously both unsafe and messy, but iPhoto simple didn't help me, it was too slow and I don't want to buy Aperture. With the cool features displayed of iLife and iWork (do check out the demos in the keynote!), I'm almost tempted to go back.

Sure I've seen people using iPhoto, but has any of you really spotted in the w iMovie, Pages, Keynote or Numbers "spotted in the wild"? Also, what about my fancy flickr use and Web 2.0? I just fell in love with Google Docs! Well, I'm convinced Apple is struggling both with getting users to their fancy applications, and that they need to get on the train to Web 2.0 and maybe they will get somewhere with their iWork.com beta, but there still is a long way to go. I'll end this rant with a very simple video of why cloud stuff like Google Docs is so great, if you don't know it already, you really, really need to learn:

A yawn or not, Macworld is still receiving a lot of coverage in the press, such as here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here.

See also my other posts about Apple or Web 2.0.

Steve Jobs is dead - the state of computer security is sorry

 

The late Steve Jobs, left, interviewed
together with Bill Gates,
at D5 conference in 2007

Ok, hopefully no-one died from heart attacks reading this yet, but it's just a bad joke. When covering the Apple Keynote in the Macworld conference today, the extremely popular web site Mac Rumors got its live coverage web site hacked by people crediting Anonymous / 4chan.

No shadow on Mac Rumors staff really, since in my opinion computer security in general is in a very sorry state. I want to carry on writing on this topic soon, but be sure, it was Mac Rumors today, it can very well be your site or service tomorrow. It's not a matter of some being more vulnerable than others - if you are unlucky to be targeted, you are very likely to get huge trouble.

Stitched screenshot of the defaced live stream below:


A yawn or not, Macworld is still receiving a lot of coverage in the press, such as here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here.

Be back later for more of my rants and info about the hack.

New iTunes 8, and why you should start using it

Rumor has it that Apple will be releasing both a new major iTunes version and a new minor version of the iPhone firmware during their "Let's Rock" event (Tuesday) September 9th.

It is still curious how even releases of just software updates from Apple still manage to stir some excitement. However, when Apple releases a new version of iTunes for example, it usually indicates some pretty big new feature somewhere in the Apple product family. iPod video, iPhone, movie rentals through iTunes and other big announcements from Apple have all been accompanied by a feature update of iTunes. So if iTunes 8 is released tomorrow, at least I am curious about what will come with it. My best bet is that Apple is moving towards the location aware-market with the GPS iPhone, I suspect they will have some cool location-related feature.

Even with how great iTunes is already today, there are several of you out there who haven't realized it, so here goes my favourite features of the current iTunes:

• DAAP / iTunes server using (the free!) Firefly on my home server gives me seamless access to all of my music archive. Now I'm just missing iTunes remote speakers in software, but I guess I can live without it (Yay, there exists, cool now I will have to try it! - Umm... no "The key stored in iTunes has been extracted by Jon Lech Johansen, enabling 3rd party software to stream music to an Airport Express. However, the key stored in the AirPort Express is not yet known, and 3rd party software that mimics an Airport Express is thus not possible"):
  
  


• iTunes party shuffle is very nice to keep track of the playlist not only during parties. You see what next bunch of songs will be played and can modify it, you can add tracks manually or let them fill automatically as you play. Unfortunately DAAP / iTunes servers doesn't offer a party shuffle:
  
  


• iTunes manages my podcasts and syncs them to my iPod, including displaying which I have listened to. Very convenient:
  
  


• last.fm scrobbler plugin logs what music I listen to and keeps track of it in my online profile. Besides providing a great smörgåsbord of music, as I have previously written last.fm also keeps a great track of upcoming events:
  
  

These great features aside, iTunes is nifty for cleaning up the ID3 tags and filenames when you're an compulsive order nut like me, and of course it's simple and convenient for mom to rip her CDs in iTunes.

(Update: So that's it (on IDG here and here) indeed iTunes 8 was released, and except as I said, another version of an already great program, it's got some nice new shuffle function and a closer connection to the iTunes Music Store. Cool. iTunes is still the only program which cares and does justice to your cover art)

So you thought your OS was secure?

When looking for information about the IDA disassembler (anyone who knows it and can give me a few hints?) I found an interesting video at Google Videos. Alex Sotirov discussed how he found a very applicable "ANI" exploit in WinXP and Vista, including showing his best IDA tricks. Quite academic and extremely technical. As food for thought he ends the lectures with this diagrams about what OS provides what security measures:


We Mac users sometimes brag about how secure OS X is, while in reality it probably has a pretty solid base in Darwin and provides a reliable development environment with Cocoa... but when bugs and exploits are found, OS X is standing there almost absolutely naked and defenseless.

Of course, Windows drags a larger pile of legacy code behind itself, but it also is a lot more under fire, it makes a lot more sense to produce exploits and viruses for Windows.

My advice (which I hope will soon be published at mjukvara.se are still simple: 1) use good, secure software which throws away popups and spam 2) install system updates as they become available 3) run some sort of firewall and maybe free antivirus software . You, or if someone does it for you, need to keep your computer reasonably clean and well-oiled. Don't blame a virus if it's you who's filled up your disk. By these simple principles, my systems have been essentially perfectly free from virus trouble for at least five years. Knock on wood :-)

A little PS about that dangerous Internet hole which recently was "discovered" by Anton Kapela and Alex Pilosov. Experts are saying that indeed the "hole" is there, but everyone concerned were already aware of it and will not have much problems with it. If anything it is a small reminder that whenever you transmit passwords or any sensitive data over the Internet, you should not make any assumptions that the network is not wiretapped.

iPhone 3G is released by EMT in Estonia

Estonian EMT has released the iPhone 3G too now. If I understand the newsletter correctly the contracts are all 24 months, so it's not comparable to the 18 months column above. I was saying that I think traffic should be cheaper in Estonia, but instead it seems they simply do not provide any "maxi" plan, and charge a bit more than Telia does in Sweden. My phone bills are currently too high, but I am not very excited about this deal.

price plan	traffic included	monthly fee	iPhone 3G 8 GB, tied 24 months	iPhone 3G 16 GB, tied 24 months
i550	100 minutes, 100 SMS, 100 MB	550 EEK (= 329 SEK)	2670+24·550 = 15870 EEK (= 9486 SEK)	3960+24·550 = 17160 EEK (= 10257 SEK)
i890	250 minutes, 250 SMS, 250 MB	890 EEK (= 532 SEK)	1490+24·890 = 22850 EEK (= 13658 SEK)	2780+24·890 = 24140 (= 14429 SEK)

Now I would buy an iPhone! If only it had buttons...

Yesterday the lesser of two annual events in the Apple world took place - the Apple WWDC - World Wide Developers Conference keynote (the more significant one being the January Macworld Expo).

Apple are really amazing about being able to create a buzz about every little thing they are doing. They used to broadcast the conference keynote live, but nowadays (apparently not for technical reasons) they keep them for a while but bloggers provide both live text and commentary. The day afterward, the event is available over QuickTime.

Of course, yesterday's event was focused on the iPhone (and is of course in both DN.se and NyTeknik). Some have complained that the keynote provided little juicy news for developers in terms of hardware or development tools, but the biggest thing for me is the new 3G iPhone, with GPS capability and roughly half the price of the old iPhone. The deal is: 8GB 3G iPhone with GPS at $199 ^* ≈ 1990 EEK ≈ 1190 SEK ≈ 127 € ≈ "Twice as fast, half the price" (with significant coolness added). I am very very tempted at getting one now.

Still, the major hurdle I've learnt of the iPhone remains - it has no buttons... It was the most revolutionary thing with the iPhone, to use as much as possible of the device surface for adaptable buttons and display, great. Though, it also requires way too much attention to input, it gives no feedback to touch so it may be the worst example but - how can you SMS while drivingwalking for example?! I have inherited a Sony Ericsson Walkman phone, and it may be subtle, but it has a lot of features you require of your phone! Finding contacts, forwarding SMSs or texting, it is really fast when you don't have to pay attention to what you're doing and can just let your fingers type away. So Apple, it's great that you have been trying to cater to enterprise users, now please figure out a way to work with the iPhone even with minimal attention, and it will really start selling.

The second most interesting bang from the WWDC is the wealth and variety of applications which seem to be coming for the iPhone. Sure, games are fun, but I am really keeping a keen eye on location aware and social mobile applications like Loopt or for that matter, my friend Peter's social picture messaging application MoYuMe (I recently found him in a video by some Latvian blogger). If you think the GSM phone, IM and SMS have changed the way people live and what they do, the scale of the mobile social revolution is breathtaking. Reactionaries object that who cares about all that social and mobile silliness, but remember they said the same about mobile phones and SMS. You heard it here first (well, unless you heard it somewhere else before), and for a head start of understanding the revolution, head over to our friends CommonCraft explaining Twitter in plain English:

(Update: In Sweden Telia and in Estonia EMT will be selling the iPhone 3G, and at least in Estonia you can pre-sign up already. I think EMT's ad is much cooler than Telia's press release at least)

(Update 2: Teliasonera has released it's price plans for the iPhone 3G:

price plan	traffic included	monthly fee	iPhone 3G 8 GB, tied 24 months	iPhone 3G 16 GB, tied 18 months
iMini	100 minutes, 100 SMS, 100 MB	299 SEK	1695+24·299 = 8871 SEK	3295+18·299 = 8677 SEK
iMidi	250 minutes, 250 SMS, 250 MB	489 SEK	995+24·489 = 12731 SEK	2695+18·489 = 11497 SEK
iMaxi	1000 minutes, 1000 SMS, 1000 MB	859 SEK	1+24·859 = 20617 SEK	2195+18·859 = 17657 SEK

No surprise really, after the initial pretty useless buzz Apple released, $199^* has the asterisk so to say - the subscriptions you this time probably will be tied to in the store are pretty horrendous. I think a "3G-soap" as they are called in Stockholm, a 3G USB modem for the laptop costs roughly 500 SEK per month, and that's still less limited and a lot more versatile than what you can do with an iPhone and 250 MB.

Swedish wireless access prices are generally ridiculous compared to Estonian and I hope to see that EMT will be less scotch. Also, count on me writing a piece on how to forever get rid of the despited "high speed extreme use"-clauses in broadband contracts, also discussed in Swedish here)

(Update 3: Estonian EMT has released the iPhone 3G too now. If I understand the newsletter correctly the contracts are all 24 months, so it's not comparable to the 18 months column above. I was saying that I think traffic should be cheaper in Estonia, but instead it seems they simply do not provide any "maxi" plan, and charge a bit more than Telia does in Sweden.)

price plan	traffic included	monthly fee	iPhone 3G 8 GB, tied 24 months	iPhone 3G 16 GB, tied 24 months
i550	100 minutes, 100 SMS, 100 MB	550 EEK (= 329 SEK)	2670+24·550 = 15870 EEK (= 9486 SEK)	3960+24·550 = 17160 EEK (= 10257 SEK)
i890	250 minutes, 250 SMS, 250 MB	890 EEK (= 532 SEK)	1490+24·890 = 22850 EEK (= 13658 SEK)	2780+24·890 = 24140 (= 14429 SEK)