2005 March | The Mac Night Owl

Archive for March, 2005

Can We Survive Without Mac Rumor Sites?

Saturday, March 19th, 2005

Of course we all love gossip. Will Brad and Jen get together again, or is Angelina in the picture for good? Which famous show business couple is headed for divorce next? Is that actor who was arrested for DUI going to spend a few months in rehab? The supermarket tabloids used to be the only purveyors of this stuff, but it’s now spread throughout the mainstream press.

With the eyes of the world on Apple Computer, it’s no wonder that the legal skirmishing with Mac rumor sites has dominated the technology pages in recent weeks. Is it a freedom of the press issue, or just some folks breaking the law by stealing trade secrets? Or a combination of both?

I expect a lot of you don’t remember MacWeek. Although oriented towards business users, it was a must-read for any dedicated Mac user. Its most popular feature, “Mac the Knife,” contained rumors, speculation and general chit-chat about possible future Apple products.

During the dark days at Apple, and with declining ad revenue, MacWeek bit the dust, but its legacy lives on, at least so far as rumors are concerned, in several popular Web sites. Now in those days, I always believed that Apple executives would sometimes feed the rumor mills strictly to test out product ideas, although you could never know for sure. Otherwise, I expect the sources then were of the same variety as they are now, people who knew the inside details about a new product and wanted their 15 minutes of fame, even if the names couldn’t be revealed.

The death of “Mac the Knife” created a vacuum filled by Apple Insider, PowerPage, Think Secret and a few others. Now maybe they didn’t enjoy the same credibility that MacWeek achieved, but, as you know, the quality of their work improved greatly over the years. Of late, some of the rumors have been dead on, or close enough to accurately reflect the basics of a new iPod, new Mac or new software release.

Over the years, Apple merely tolerated the ongoing gossip. I rather suspect some folks in the company were amused by the interest in what they were up to. Consider how things are on that other computing platform. I mean how many sites devote themselves to the goings on at Dell or Gateway? I’m not holding my breath.

However, when Steve Jobs became the ship’s captain, things changed drastically. The information pipelines were restricted. Where Mac publications were given advanced looks at new products in order to get the information in print when those products shipped, now they had to get in line with the rest of the world and wait until the official public announcement.

Rumor sites that dared to print actual photos of a new product got letters from Apple’s legal team demanding removal of those photos. Since these sites are small operations, run part time by one or two people; teenagers in some cases, they didn’t have the deep pockets to defend themselves, so they complied.

The court decision last week that gives Apple the right to get information from a Mac rumor site’s email provider about the source of new product leaks could, perhaps, signal the potential death of such information resources. Or at least the ones that deliver accurate information. Now I don’t pretend to know how things will ultimately turn out. There are appeals, and appeals of those appeals to consider. And I suppose it’s always possible for one or more of those sources to turn themselves in to get the online publications who protected them off the hook. Of course, I don’t think that’s likely right now, but in the end, they’d have to consider the havoc they’ve caused and whether it was all worth it.

Whatever happens, the decision will definitely set the boundaries of how far rumor sites can go before triggering legal action. If the courts paint a broad brush on what constitutes a trade secret, those sites will most likely have to fold up their tents and move on.

Of course, we’ll still speculate on future Apple products, but without any solid information to feed that speculation, it’s a pastime that’ll lose its charm. We’ll have to move on to some other topic, I suppose, but don’t the wrong idea. I do not for a moment approve of someone violating a confidentiality agreement and revealing information about a new product or service to the press, with just one exception. And that is whether that information might affect the health and welfare of the populace.

But in the end, an online world without Mac rumor sites just won’t be as much fun.

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MSN for Mac, We Hardly Knew Ye!

Saturday, March 19th, 2005

No doubt you’ve read the story that Microsoft is ditching its Mac OS X MSN client. MSN? Yes, it’s Microsoft’s online service, the one once touted as a potential AOL killer. Yeah, that one. But does it mean that the few Mac subscribers to MSN will have to look for another ISP, as some reports suggest?

Not quite, as you’ll see shortly.

But there’s the general perception that Mac users are shut out of some ISP options, and it’s perfectly true. Have you seen all those TV commercials for People PC, the low-cost dial-up service from EarthLink? Yes, pay $10.95 and get everything you need, including a Smart Dialer that’s supposed to automatically select the best available numbers to get connected.

But when you read the fine print at the Web site, and it’s not easy to find, you discover that it’s only available for Windows users. Why should this be? Well, I suppose the dialing software, but I can’t imagine not being able to produce a similar application for the Mac in a few weeks, if you put a full-time programmer to the task.

All right, but aren’t there other choices for low-priced Internet service? Well, have you seen those TV ads for Netscape? It beats NetZero, so they say, except that it’s not available for Mac users either, and you have to do a little sleuthing to realize that. Will that ever change? Do you care?

Oh, yes, there are low-priced supports that support the Mac, such as FasterMac.net. And, here’s where NetZero beats Netscape hands down . Like the other online services provided by United Online, NetZero does have Mac software. By the way, FasterMac.net doesn’t require any special software, unless you want to use its Web accelerator feature.

Now about Microsoft’s decision about MSN for Mac OS X. Well, if you’re a member of this service, don’t despair. You won’t have to use Windows to get connected. In fact, you’ll still be able to access your MSN account via your Web browser when support ends on May 31, and your email via Entourage. Actually, the MSN software was, itself, no more than a glorified browser, rather a buggy one in fact, so there’s not much lost here.

Now about everyone’s favorite whipping boy (or girl), AOL. Yes, it still comes in Mac form, but the software has, once again, lagged behind the Windows version. In addition, Windows AOL users also get free virus protection software and spyware detection. Of course you don’t really need the former, at least for now, and spyware issues are irrelevant on the Mac platform, but those ubiquitous TV ads simply don’t make clear that Mac users are shut out. I suppose it may smack of false advertising, though I suppose if you look closely enough, maybe there’s a tiny disclaimer somewhere. I didn’t see it, however, and my eyesight isn’t that bad.

Of course, more and more of you have gone broadband, and there you have plenty of choices, if you live in a reasonably densely populated area, that is. Your local cable TV provider, your local phone company, some independent providers and even a satellite service can set you up and place you on the fast lane. You generally don’t need any special software, just some basic information on configuring your Mac to access the service and retrieve email. This can take all of five minutes, tops.

So in the scheme of things, not having Mac compatible versions of Netscape and People PC might not be such a great loss. What is strange, however, is the fact that EarthLink, which is, as I said, the parent company of People PC, happens to be Apple’s default ISP. The company supposedly has superior Mac support. In fact, it says at EarthLink’s Web site: “According to the J.D. Power and Associates 2004 Internet Service Provider Residential Customer Satisfaction Study, EarthLink is ranked highest in customer satisfaction among high-speed and dial up Internet Service Providers.”

I suppose that could be true. On the other hand, I’ve had encounters with EarthLink over the years that weren’t quite so favorable, and some of my clients have quit them in disgust. Maybe it’s like the cell phone industry. There are lots of bad apples, and you just pick the one that has the smallest number of blemishes. That being said, though, the tiny ISPs that cater to a single city, or have a custom orientation, say primarily for Mac users, tend to deliver more personal and knowledgeable customer support.

Oh and by the way, I’ll still keep my MSN membership, at least for now. It has some interesting content, even though most of it is available to non-members too. And Microsoft pledges continued Mac support, but obviously it’ll concentrate on products that deliver a profit. That clearly puts MSN out of the picture.

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