WinInfo Short Takes: Week of October 13, 2008

An often irreverent look at some of the week's other news, including a Windows Vista Secrets SP1 Edition give-away, Yahoo! and wishful thinking, the Apple-addicted press, security fix silliness across the aisle, AMD's looming irrelevance, and so much more...

WinInfo Blog
Last week, I announced the arrival of my new book, Windows Vista Secrets SP1 Edition. Now, I'd like to start giving it away to readers of this newsletter, my sites, and listeners of the podcast. I'll be doing this in stages, but starting mid-week next week I'll be giving away copies of the book via my SuperSite for Windows Web site (http://www.winsupersite.com/book/). In the meantime, you can still order the book from Amazon at a hefty 37 percent discount.
http://tinyurl.com/vistasecrets

Leo and I recorded a new episode of the Windows Weekly podcast this week on Thursday as usual, so it should be online sometime this weekend.
http://www.winsupersite.com/paul/podcast.asp

But wait, there's more. Don't forget to follow me on Twitter (http://www.twitter.com/thurrott), Friendfeed (http://www.friendfeed.com) and the SuperSite Blog (http://community.winsupersite.com/blogs/paul/default.aspx).
Short Takes

Yahoo! Investor Still Wishes for Microsoft Takeover
Mithras Capital, a private equity fund that owns 1.9 million shares (0.14 percent) of Yahoo! would like to see the slumping Internet giant renew talks with Microsoft and sell itself to the software giant for $22 a share. But get this: That price represents a 74 percent premium over Yahoo!'s current stock price, a higher premium than what Microsoft originally offered for the company back in July. So sit back and enjoy the peals of laughter coming from the Thurrott household this morning because that is the single stupidest thing I've read all week. All week. I've said it before, and I've said it again: Yahoo! is doomed and any company purchasing that train wreck will simply be screwing themselves for years going forward. Don't give in, Microsoft. You may think things are bad now, but they'd be much worse with the weight of Yahoo! hanging over you.

New Laptops Coming from Apple Next Week
And let's be honest here. So freaking what? When was the last time you saw the New York Times or Wall Street Journal write articles about Dell or HP planning to announce laptops sometime in the future? Never, right? But for some reason, when Apple reveals that such an announcement is coming, it warrants a story. So I'm calling BS on this one. Many companies, including Dell and HP, continue to sell far more innovative laptops than does Apple. And many companies--Lenovo anyone?--also make dramatically superior products across the board. So let's stop giving Apple all the free publicity, shall we? Seriously. Give me a break.

Security Fix O' the Week
Next Tuesday, as part of its planned monthly security fix update, Microsoft will ship 11 fixes, four of them that are rated critical. But if that sounds bad, thank the heavens you're not using a Mac. This week, as part of its unannounced, much more frequent, and much more sporadic OS X security fix release non-schedule, Apple fixed a whopping 40 security flaws. And this mega-patch, which weighs in at as much as 200MB, depending on your OS X version, is just one of many such patches the Cupertino company shipped this year alone. Man, it must be awful having to install all those security updates so frequently. Someone should make a commercial about *that*.

AMD's Split Is the Beginning of the End
Looking at the bizarre AMD news of this past week, in which the company split off its chip fabrication and manufacturing capabilities to a sketchy-sounding consortium of Middle Eastern financial backers, I'm reminded of two things: First, the plot from a James Bond movie. Second, Atari: Back in the 1980s the Trammiel family somehow managed to get a hold of Atari from Warner Bros. in the wake of the '83 video game bust and then proceeded to run the thing like it was a high tech flea market. After a half-hearted attempt to kill Commodore's Amiga with the woeful ST, the Trammiels refused to put any money into Atari, choosing instead to simply suck the life out of whatever decrepit products were already in the works. The result was a decade-long descent into irrelevancy. And that, I fear, is what awaits AMD. Irrelevancy.

Microsoft, Sony Expect Big Season for Video Games
This one is kind of interesting: With the planet sliding ever further into a worldwide financial crisis, you might think that video game makers such as Microsoft and Sony would be concerned about the future. And let's face it, given their sales compared to the Nintendo Wii, both companies could use a convenient excuse. Curiously, they're not taking it. Instead, both companies feel that the upcoming holiday season will be a financial bonanza. The reason? With fewer consumers able to afford high-priced vacations and other expensive forms of entertainment, maybe they'll choose to stay home and do something less costly, like play video games. I guess there's a certain sense to that, but I wouldn't call the Xbox 360 ($200 and up) or the PlayStation 3 ($400 and up), or their games ($60 each) particularly inexpensive.

Mozilla Finalizes Firefox 3.1 Feature List
Mozilla delayed the release of its Firefox 3.1 browser release by several weeks recently (note to self: Has Mozilla ever shipped anything on schedule?) to add a private browsing mode to the product and help it better compete with Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) 8 and Google Chrome. But that's not the only functional change coming in Firefox 3.1: The browser will also improve JavaScript performance, make changes to the Address Bar and tabs features, and add support for video HTML coding. The company says it will ship Firefox 3.1 Beta 1 next week, Beta 2 in November, and the final version in December or January. Anyone care to bet whether that will really happen?

End of Article

"So let's stop giving Apple all the free publicity, shall we? Seriously. Give me a break."

And yet you're giving Apple free publicity by reporting on it.

Reflections October 10, 2008 (Article Rating:

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"So let's stop giving Apple all the free publicity, shall we? Seriously. Give me a break."

What? So Apple is coming out with new laptops?! I hadn't heard that. Great! I think I'll buy one. Thanks for giving them the free publicity, Paul !

nim55 October 10, 2008 (Article Rating:

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Paul, seriously, man -- give it up. You're unending attempt to dump on Apple is pathetic; you can't even support your assertions.

Security is so bad on an Apple? Really? Name one OS X targeted virus. Just one. Now name the number of Windows XP and Vista targeted viruses. How much spyware protection does the average Mac need vs. the average PC? Hmm?

"... weighs in at as much as 200MB, depending on your OS X ..." Or how about you write ... weighs in at as *little* as 31MB, depending on your OS X (the most common - Leopard client) ... I guess the wording depends on one's bias intent.

And this was the seventh security-only patch of the year, so really, "much more frequent"? How about you just give the number instead of these obfuscating phrases.

And as for the laptops: So freakin' what? I'll tell you what. Possibly a state of the art manufacturing process and Apple will start to seriously compete on price with a below $900 laptop. Watch as still more of the laptop market share goes to Apple. Also, Apple rocked the world with the announcement of the iMac, the iPod and the iPhone -- they deserve the attention. What has Microsoft released that even compares?

wlow3 October 10, 2008 (Article Rating:

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Here, here, wlow3!

Paul's Apple-bashing is just immature and tired. And when he indulges in it, he uses the very same "tricks" he often accuses others of using: biased language, obfuscating phrases, misleading assertions passed off as truths, etc.

To me, when he does this, he just comes across as a whiney child who's upset because the other kids are getting shinier toys. "iCabal" anyone? Give it a rest and grow up a little, Paul.

pollycat October 10, 2008 (Article Rating:

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wiow3:

"What has Microsoft released that even compares"

Windows 95. Nothing since.

RunTimeError October 10, 2008 (Article Rating:

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@wlow3 & pollycat:

Objectively and honestly speaking, much of the press (tech and otherwise) fall over themselves to salivate over and report on the rumors that Apple just might release some new device or software. Granted, the sex appeal of Apple is undeniable. But much of the attention is relatively undeserved. If you feel that ALL of Apple's new products are bleeding-edge wonderful (when only some are), then you are deluding yourself and have passively joined the ranks of the Apple fanbois (regardless of gender).

mwrisner October 10, 2008 (Article Rating:

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@mwrisner:

"Granted, the sex appeal of Apple is undeniable".

I think you've identified why Apple gets a lot of attention, the press is not going to ignore sex appeal, and it is going to ignore products and companies that don't have it.

Apple's products aren't all wonderful, and Version 1.0 products are often riddled with flaws and bugs. But their sex appeal and potential and, quite often, sheer novelty are what attract attention.

I call BS on Paul's claim that other vendors offer "more innovative" and "dramatically superior" products - if this is the case, where are his reviews of such products? And why is he still buying MacBooks? Why doesn't he put his money where his mouth is? And how do you even objectively verify such claims as "more innovative" or "dramatically superior"? These are subjective values. The only "drama" I read here is Paul's hyperbole when bashing Apple.

This is "WindowsITPro", Paul should stick to writing about Microsoft and Windows and stop making petulant comments about other companies and products.

pollycat October 10, 2008 (Article Rating:

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I think mac lemmings, sorry mean mac fans are quite funny. They get sooo upset over anyone bagging apple in any way.

Ill take a dell XPS laptop any day over an apple laptop. Twice as fast, half the cost. Plus you get windows too!

Keep up the reporting Paul! I enjoy reading this column every week, especially the comments.

scasperson October 12, 2008 (Article Rating:

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"And this mega-patch, which weighs in at as much as 200MB"

Of course, you ignore the fact that the vast majority of Mac users won't have to download anything near that - on my machine for example, the download weighed in at around 31.3MB - still large yes, but not 200MB Paul - surely, 10 seconds of research would have told you that? If someone out there was shouting about how massive the full file download of SP1 is, I'm sure you'd be the first to point out that Microsoft Update will typically deliver something smaller.

Also, you talk as if security patching is something that shows how terrible an OS is. Security patching is just a fact of computer operating systems. It happens on all platforms, ALL of them. Including Vista.

MLomasIcomm October 13, 2008 (Article Rating:

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