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.

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.