No. 1 paid utility in Mac App Store steals browser history, sendsit to Chinese server

On 2018-11-08 9:52 p.m., nospam wrote:
In article , SilverSlimer
wrote:


however, chromebooks are very strong in education.

And as a teacher, I have to admit that I made the choice to move to
Chromebooks myself in the school I worked at a few years ago. They tend
to last longer than any PC and since they reset with each reboot, you
don't have to worry about security as much as you would a PC in general.
Whatever PCs the schools do reset as well since they load the operating
system from scratch every time, but the boot process ends up being
insanely slow in contract to a generic Chromebook.

yep, and if a chromebook is damaged, simply replace it, the kid logs in
and all of his work is as it was before. they're also cheap enough that
it doesn't matter that much.

It's the way that I saw it at the time too. They were looking to buy
tablets but I quickly pointed out that tablets become very obsolete,
very fast and that they provided little to no security in addition to
being completely useless for typing. Making the case for the Chromebook
was rather easy and I imagine that other teachers made similar cases
elsewhere considering how well they're selling.


--
SilverSlimer
Minds: @silverslimer

On 11/8/18 7:03 PM, SilverSlimer wrote:
On 2018-11-08 9:49 a.m., nospam wrote:
In article , SilverSlimer
wrote:


It had DOS as much as it needed to since people, by using Windows 95,
were migrating from a massive platform onto a new one and still needed
some sort of assurance that their software would continue to operate.
Much of it could within Windows 9x, but some couldn't and being able to
load DOS to run it became necessary.

win 95 was a shell on top of dos, which greatly limited what it could
do.

That's how most people saw it as well and I have to admit that I had no
reason to think otherwise but Peter Köhlmann in comp.os.linux.advocacy
made a decent case for why it _wasn't_ just a shell.

It was still DOS... with some changes / improvements and a GUI shell.

However, 9x in general was more
capable than MacOS at the time and even Apple knew it.

nonsense.

Nope.

Largely opinion based, but in most ways Mac OS was ahead in the GUI
area, Windows had some benefits in its multitasking and the like (though
the difference was not as big as some claimed -- BOTH were too prone to
crashing).

That's why they
started to develop Copland in response to it and eventually felt the
obligation to attempt to purchase BeOS. It didn't happen and they moved
onto NeXT.

no, that's not why they started to develop copland.

copland actually began in the late 1980s, long before there was a
windows 95 or even win 3.x, but by 1995, it was a mismanaged mess, in a
mismanaged company.

Regardless of when the development started, there was no doubt that
Copland was going to end up being a response to Windows 9x since 9x
remedied many of the drawbacks of MacOS.

Mac OS was beginning to struggle under Extensions and other changed
tacked on to an older OS. Apple knew they had to move to a newer /
better kernel.

The original Mac line was very much proprietary.

it was not.

You clearly see the Mac's history with rose-coloured glasses and have a
skewed definition of proprietary.

more accurately, you have a clear *lack* of knowledge about many things
apple, believing many of the myths.

I have no reason to doubt the historians especially since they are not
zealots in any way.

By all means show support. I am open to it.

....

We're still at an impasse in regards to your definition of proprietary.
Proprietary does not prevent anyone from developing for a platform.
Windows is proprietary yet people develop for it all the time. However,
on the PC side, only the operating system is proprietary if you use
Windows and the hardware is very much standardized across the board,
unlike the original Mac and much of Apple's hardware going into the late
90s.

apple uses industry standards wherever possible.

the problem is that many of those are not that good, so apple either
chose something more capable or they designed something better.

the original mac had rs422 serial ports, which were a superset of
rs232. existing rs232 devices worked perfectly fine without *any*
issue, however, they could never be as fast as rs422 devices.

the mac ii's slots were nubus, which was designed by texas instruments.
later, apple switched to pci slots, also not their design.

as mentioned above, macs supported postscript, another industry
standard.

the list goes on...

You make a good case and I'd be a fool to challenge you. I surrender to
your wealth of knowledge, good sir.

I am impressed.


--
Personal attacks from those who troll show their own insecurity. They
cannot use reason to show the message to be wrong so they try to feel
somehow superior by attacking the messenger.

They cling to their attacks and ignore the message time and time again.

https://youtu.be/H4NW-Cqh308

On 11/8/18 7:52 PM, nospam wrote:
In article , Snit
wrote:


You can see am emulator for Classic Mac OS he

http://jamesfriend.com.au/pce-js/pce-js-apps/

Now this is System 7, which is more advanced than the original 1984
version but also shares a LOT in common with it (biggest difference
likely being the ability to switch between running programs).

switching among multiple apps existed well before system 7.

Unless you mean desk accessories I think that was System 6, but I was
comparing it to "the original 1984 version".

desk accessories do count since they could be used alongside standard
apps, and were even preemptively scheduled. some of them were really
full fledged apps in disguise.

however, i was thinking of switcher, which was introduced with system 5
in 1987, a little more than 3 years after the mac came out and about 4
years before system 7, in 1991.

Ah, I was thinking System 6... fair enough.


--
Personal attacks from those who troll show their own insecurity. They
cannot use reason to show the message to be wrong so they try to feel
somehow superior by attacking the messenger.

They cling to their attacks and ignore the message time and time again.

https://youtu.be/H4NW-Cqh308

On 11/8/18 7:52 PM, nospam wrote:
In article , SilverSlimer
wrote:


however, chromebooks are very strong in education.

And as a teacher, I have to admit that I made the choice to move to
Chromebooks myself in the school I worked at a few years ago. They tend
to last longer than any PC and since they reset with each reboot, you
don't have to worry about security as much as you would a PC in general.
Whatever PCs the schools do reset as well since they load the operating
system from scratch every time, but the boot process ends up being
insanely slow in contract to a generic Chromebook.

yep, and if a chromebook is damaged, simply replace it, the kid logs in
and all of his work is as it was before. they're also cheap enough that
it doesn't matter that much.


Cheap enough if the school has money... which is sadly not a given.

--
Personal attacks from those who troll show their own insecurity. They
cannot use reason to show the message to be wrong so they try to feel
somehow superior by attacking the messenger.

They cling to their attacks and ignore the message time and time again.

https://youtu.be/H4NW-Cqh308

On 11/8/18 7:52 PM, nospam wrote:
In article , Snit
wrote:


Nah, they both copied Xerox. And it was the GUI they copied, not the OS.

Some of the GUI in Mac OS was inspired by Xerox's GUI...

...but large swaths of what we take for granted were added by Apple.

nearly all of it, actually.

there was only a casual similarity between the xerox star and classic
mac os.

Here is the Star:

https://youtu.be/Cn4vC80Pv6Q

You can see where the Mac was inspired from it, but Apple made a LOT of
changes.

yes i know. i used to use a xerox star and am *very* familiar with it.

one of the more amusing bits was there was a xerox font, which had only
4 letters: e o r x. its sole reason for existence was so that one could
type 'xerox' and have it match the logo.

Cute.

--
Personal attacks from those who troll show their own insecurity. They
cannot use reason to show the message to be wrong so they try to feel
somehow superior by attacking the messenger.

They cling to their attacks and ignore the message time and time again.

https://youtu.be/H4NW-Cqh308

On 2018-11-08 9:52 p.m., nospam wrote:
In article , SilverSlimer
wrote:

It had DOS as much as it needed to since people, by using Windows 95,
were migrating from a massive platform onto a new one and still needed
some sort of assurance that their software would continue to operate.
Much of it could within Windows 9x, but some couldn't and being able to
load DOS to run it became necessary.

win 95 was a shell on top of dos, which greatly limited what it could
do.

That's how most people saw it as well and I have to admit that I had no
reason to think otherwise

because that's what it is.

but Peter Köhlmann in comp.os.linux.advocacy
made a decent case for why it _wasn't_ just a shell.

much of what he says is wrong, especially about macs.

Well, he _has_ been proven wrong on several occasions but he tends to
get things right along the way.

However, 9x in general was more
capable than MacOS at the time and even Apple knew it.

nonsense.

Nope.

not nope.

win95 was catching up to where mac os was a decade earlier, but still
wasn't quite there.

apple's problem was that they mostly sat on their butt all that time,
with a lot of internal infighting and canceled projects, plus microsoft
abused their monopoly position.

To me, it's fairly debatable as to whether Microsoft already had a
monopoly position by the time Windows 95 was released. If there was a
moment in time at which other companies could still oust Microsoft, it
was 1994/1995 but admittedly, once 95 was released, it was pretty clear
that a monopoly was forming. Nobody could deny that it was an
unprecedented success.

As for Mac sitting on its ass, I agree since that's more or less what I
experienced. The PC was moving forward fairly quickly but it seemed that
Apple, most of the time, just came up with pointless ideas which didn't
benefit the company or users in any way. They seemed to be banking on
the fact that their product wasn't the PC and was therefore interesting
as an alternative.

That's why they
started to develop Copland in response to it and eventually felt the
obligation to attempt to purchase BeOS. It didn't happen and they moved
onto NeXT.

no, that's not why they started to develop copland.

copland actually began in the late 1980s, long before there was a
windows 95 or even win 3.x, but by 1995, it was a mismanaged mess, in a
mismanaged company.

Regardless of when the development started, there was no doubt that
Copland was going to end up being a response to Windows 9x since 9x
remedied many of the drawbacks of MacOS.

nope. copland began well before win95 and was very definitely *not* a
response to win95.

What I'm saying is that had it released, it would have been _perceived_
as a response to Windows 95.

there were non-apple printers, although not that many early on since
writing a printer driver was fairly involved and printer companies were
still deciding whether supporting the mac was worth it from a business
perspective. apple did not prevent anything.

Yet, had Apple used the same ports as what the PC and other platforms
were using, chances are that the number of available printers would have
been multiplied. They purposely chose a different standard and limited a
customer's options.

completely wrong. apple did not limit anything.

the imagewriter was actually a c.itoh printer which used a standard
rs232 connection, and in fact, worked with dos computers.

the issue was writing drivers for graphic output instead of using it as
a generic dot matrix printer that spits out whatever ascii text it
receives in a single font.

in mac os, a printer was just another window, just one that was
rendered on paper rather than screen, which was how all apps could be
wysiwyg without any additional effort by the developer.

writing mac printer drivers was a fair amount of work, and a lot of
printer makers chose not to do it, at least until the mac gained some
traction and became worth their effort.

apple not only didn't limit what printers could be used, but they had
documentation on how to write printer drivers and also offered tech
support to anyone who wanted to do it.

not only that, but there was at least one mac software company that
wrote printer drivers for printer manufacturers.

macs also supported postscript, another industry standard, however,
that was better suited for laser printers and high end typesetting
equipment than cheap dot matrix printers.

Quite possible, I won't challenge that.

not only possible, but that's exactly what happened.

We're still at an impasse in regards to your definition of proprietary.
Proprietary does not prevent anyone from developing for a platform.
Windows is proprietary yet people develop for it all the time. However,
on the PC side, only the operating system is proprietary if you use
Windows and the hardware is very much standardized across the board,
unlike the original Mac and much of Apple's hardware going into the late
90s.

apple uses industry standards wherever possible.

the problem is that many of those are not that good, so apple either
chose something more capable or they designed something better.

the original mac had rs422 serial ports, which were a superset of
rs232. existing rs232 devices worked perfectly fine without *any*
issue, however, they could never be as fast as rs422 devices.

the mac ii's slots were nubus, which was designed by texas instruments.
later, apple switched to pci slots, also not their design.

as mentioned above, macs supported postscript, another industry
standard.

the list goes on...

You make a good case and I'd be a fool to challenge you. I surrender to
your wealth of knowledge, good sir.

thanks. sometimes i'm surprised at how much i remember from back then.

btw, i dug up inside mac, and not only did it give the pinouts for the
various ports, but it even gave partial schematics, in addition to how
to write drivers.

https://i.imgur.com/P369DRz.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/kAACU57.jpg

anyone who wanted to design hardware or software for the mac could
easily do so, something which many companies did.

those who claim apple blocked anything were simply looking for an
excuse to blame someone else.

It's hard to imagine that the people reminiscing about the old days in
technology have a bone to pick with Apple but it is possible that they
are very biased in reporting what the company was doing.

--
SilverSlimer
Minds: @silverslimer

In article , Snit
wrote:

You can see am emulator for Classic Mac OS he

http://jamesfriend.com.au/pce-js/pce-js-apps/

Now this is System 7, which is more advanced than the original 1984
version but also shares a LOT in common with it (biggest difference
likely being the ability to switch between running programs).

switching among multiple apps existed well before system 7.

Unless you mean desk accessories I think that was System 6, but I was
comparing it to "the original 1984 version".

desk accessories do count since they could be used alongside standard
apps, and were even preemptively scheduled. some of them were really
full fledged apps in disguise.

however, i was thinking of switcher, which was introduced with system 5
in 1987, a little more than 3 years after the mac came out and about 4
years before system 7, in 1991.

Ah, I was thinking System 6... fair enough.

actually, it was multifinder with system 5.

switcher was 1985, a year after the mac came out.

On 11/8/18 8:16 PM, nospam wrote:
In article , Snit
wrote:

You can see am emulator for Classic Mac OS he

http://jamesfriend.com.au/pce-js/pce-js-apps/

Now this is System 7, which is more advanced than the original 1984
version but also shares a LOT in common with it (biggest difference
likely being the ability to switch between running programs).

switching among multiple apps existed well before system 7.

Unless you mean desk accessories I think that was System 6, but I was
comparing it to "the original 1984 version".

desk accessories do count since they could be used alongside standard
apps, and were even preemptively scheduled. some of them were really
full fledged apps in disguise.

however, i was thinking of switcher, which was introduced with system 5
in 1987, a little more than 3 years after the mac came out and about 4
years before system 7, in 1991.

Ah, I was thinking System 6... fair enough.

actually, it was multifinder with system 5.

switcher was 1985, a year after the mac came out.

Cool... so very early on. Thanks.

--
Personal attacks from those who troll show their own insecurity. They
cannot use reason to show the message to be wrong so they try to feel
somehow superior by attacking the messenger.

They cling to their attacks and ignore the message time and time again.

https://youtu.be/H4NW-Cqh308

In article , Snit
wrote:

Mac OS was beginning to struggle under Extensions and other changed
tacked on to an older OS.

that's because extensions patched all sorts of stuff, often not that
well, causing problems with other extensions, especially ones that
patched the same traps, as well as unrelated apps.

Apple knew they had to move to a newer /
better kernel.

yep. and they're thinking about that even now. technology moves fast.
nothing lasts forever.

In article , Snit
wrote:

however, chromebooks are very strong in education.

And as a teacher, I have to admit that I made the choice to move to
Chromebooks myself in the school I worked at a few years ago. They tend
to last longer than any PC and since they reset with each reboot, you
don't have to worry about security as much as you would a PC in general.
Whatever PCs the schools do reset as well since they load the operating
system from scratch every time, but the boot process ends up being
insanely slow in contract to a generic Chromebook.

yep, and if a chromebook is damaged, simply replace it, the kid logs in
and all of his work is as it was before. they're also cheap enough that
it doesn't matter that much.


Cheap enough if the school has money... which is sadly not a given.

that is very true.

On 11/8/18 8:13 PM, SilverSlimer wrote:
On 2018-11-08 9:52 p.m., nospam wrote:
In article , SilverSlimer
wrote:

It had DOS as much as it needed to since people, by using Windows 95,
were migrating from a massive platform onto a new one and still needed
some sort of assurance that their software would continue to operate.
Much of it could within Windows 9x, but some couldn't and being
able to
load DOS to run it became necessary.

win 95 was a shell on top of dos, which greatly limited what it could
do.

That's how most people saw it as well and I have to admit that I had no
reason to think otherwise

because that's what it is.

but Peter Köhlmann in comp.os.linux.advocacy
made a decent case for why it _wasn't_ just a shell.

much of what he says is wrong, especially about macs.

Well, he _has_ been proven wrong on several occasions but he tends to
get things right along the way.

He is wrong more often than he is right.

However, 9x in general was more
capable than MacOS at the time and even Apple knew it.

nonsense.

Nope.

not nope.

win95 was catching up to where mac os was a decade earlier, but still
wasn't quite there.

apple's problem was that they mostly sat on their butt all that time,
with a lot of internal infighting and canceled projects, plus microsoft
abused their monopoly position.

To me, it's fairly debatable as to whether Microsoft already had a
monopoly position by the time Windows 95 was released. If there was a
moment in time at which other companies could still oust Microsoft, it
was 1994/1995 but admittedly, once 95 was released, it was pretty clear
that a monopoly was forming. Nobody could deny that it was an
unprecedented success.

Even before that they had the lion's share of the market.

As for Mac sitting on its ass, I agree since that's more or less what I
experienced. The PC was moving forward fairly quickly but it seemed that
Apple, most of the time, just came up with pointless ideas which didn't
benefit the company or users in any way. They seemed to be banking on
the fact that their product wasn't the PC and was therefore interesting
as an alternative.

They were struggling to modernize, and had a number of years where they
were not innovating as much as I would have liked. Jobs coming back was
a HUGE benefit to them. And their customers... and really the industry
as a whole.

That's why they
started to develop Copland in response to it and eventually felt the
obligation to attempt to purchase BeOS. It didn't happen and they
moved
onto NeXT.

no, that's not why they started to develop copland.

copland actually began in the late 1980s, long before there was a
windows 95 or even win 3.x, but by 1995, it was a mismanaged mess, in a
mismanaged company.

Regardless of when the development started, there was no doubt that
Copland was going to end up being a response to Windows 9x since 9x
remedied many of the drawbacks of MacOS.

nope. copland began well before win95 and was very definitely *not* a
response to win95.

What I'm saying is that had it released, it would have been _perceived_
as a response to Windows 95.

Maybe... but that is quite different than BEING one.

....
btw, i dug up inside mac, and not only did it give the pinouts for the
various ports, but it even gave partial schematics, in addition to how
to write drivers.

https://i.imgur.com/P369DRz.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/kAACU57.jpg

anyone who wanted to design hardware or software for the mac could
easily do so, something which many companies did.

those who claim apple blocked anything were simply looking for an
excuse to blame someone else.

It's hard to imagine that the people reminiscing about the old days in
technology have a bone to pick with Apple but it is possible that they
are very biased in reporting what the company was doing.

Do you not see bias now? It was the same then.

--
Personal attacks from those who troll show their own insecurity. They
cannot use reason to show the message to be wrong so they try to feel
somehow superior by attacking the messenger.

They cling to their attacks and ignore the message time and time again.

https://youtu.be/H4NW-Cqh308

On 11/8/18 8:19 PM, nospam wrote:
In article , Snit
wrote:

however, chromebooks are very strong in education.

And as a teacher, I have to admit that I made the choice to move to
Chromebooks myself in the school I worked at a few years ago. They tend
to last longer than any PC and since they reset with each reboot, you
don't have to worry about security as much as you would a PC in general.
Whatever PCs the schools do reset as well since they load the operating
system from scratch every time, but the boot process ends up being
insanely slow in contract to a generic Chromebook.

yep, and if a chromebook is damaged, simply replace it, the kid logs in
and all of his work is as it was before. they're also cheap enough that
it doesn't matter that much.


Cheap enough if the school has money... which is sadly not a given.

that is very true.

Schools in my district have no text books. It is insane.


--
Personal attacks from those who troll show their own insecurity. They
cannot use reason to show the message to be wrong so they try to feel
somehow superior by attacking the messenger.

They cling to their attacks and ignore the message time and time again.

https://youtu.be/H4NW-Cqh308

On Thu, 8 Nov 2018 20:32:30 -0700, Snit, tweeted:
On 11/8/18 8:19 PM, nospam wrote:
In article , Snit
wrote:

however, chromebooks are very strong in education.

And as a teacher, I have to admit that I made the choice to move to
Chromebooks myself in the school I worked at a few years ago. They tend
to last longer than any PC and since they reset with each reboot, you
don't have to worry about security as much as you would a PC in general.
Whatever PCs the schools do reset as well since they load the operating
system from scratch every time, but the boot process ends up being
insanely slow in contract to a generic Chromebook.

yep, and if a chromebook is damaged, simply replace it, the kid logs in
and all of his work is as it was before. they're also cheap enough that
it doesn't matter that much.


Cheap enough if the school has money... which is sadly not a given.

that is very true.

Schools in my district have no text books. It is insane.

It isn't insane.
Do you live in a poor area?
Money doesn't grow on trees.
Someone has to earn it to pay the taxes that support the school.

--
Do not write below this line
____________________________

Rene Lamontagne wrote:
[...]

I use a landline phone for reliability, BUT I would buy a Cellphone only
if it had a 3 inch screen and fit in my shirt pocket, AND expand into a
27 inch screen when put into my teseract. :-)

Just put it in a VR-mount and Bob's your uncle! :-)

Wolf K wrote:
On 2018-11-08 16:30, nospam wrote:
In article , Wolf K
wrote:
[...]
A year or three from now, people will be whinging about how tablets
aren't real computers,

they have been doing that since tablets first appeared, mostly from
people who don't know what a tablet can actually do.

True, but just watch what happens when laptops become a niche. They're
well on the way.

Not here (The Netherlands) they aren't. What we do see is a trend to
have more and more small - 11 - 14" - laptops with SSDs (etc.) (in
addition to the bigger (15.6/17") ones).

I don't think laptops will become a niche any time soon, because many
people want/need a real keyboard, touchpad and (USB etc.) connectivity,
which (non-Windows) tablets don't have.

[...]

Some tablets are being offered with 4G, ie, you can use them as a
phone if you want. Some people want.

4g on tablets is for data, not voice, so that one can be connected when
wifi is not available, and since it's data-only, the fees are less.

A recent flyer from our local pusher highlighted the phone feature.

that means nothing.

Oh yes it does. It indicates that the marketers have decided that it's a
feature that quite a lot of people either already want, or will want as
soon as they realise they can have it. If marketing sees a possible
increase in margin, that's significant. Of course, it may turn out
they've over-interpreted their data, but it's too soon to tell.

[...]

So a tablet with phone is an obvious next step I think.

it isn't.

who wants to carry a tablet-sized phone everywhere??

You have a point, but then, who wants to carry two devices if one will
do the job? People will buy all kinds of stuff because they think it's
practical. Practical is a variety of cool, and cool is powerful.

Indeed. People might want a large screen for several reasons, but not
carry two devices.

Also note that many people carry their phone in their hand. Carrying a
tablet in your hand isn't much harder than carrying a phone.

That said, I just carry my all-in-one and be done with it! :-)

[...]