Well it’s time again for another MacOSG Sour Apple Award

This weeks award goes to Neil Archibald who is a senior security researcher for Suresec. Recently in an interview with ZDNet Australia, Mr. Archibald states that Mac OS X contains security holes that were fixed on alternative operating systems decades ago. Mr. Archibald says in his interview and I quote “Some of the security vulnerabilities we've seen during research on OS X were fixed on most other operating systems 10 to 15 years ago”.

After further reading it appears that Mr. Archibald is miffed because Apple doesn’t offer any “Incentives” for researchers like himself to delay releasing information regarding security issues on Mac OS X. It sounds to me like it’s a pay me to keep my mouth shut situation. I think there’s a word for this practice.

Because of Mr. Archibald's narrow views, he is the proud recipient of the MacOSG Sour Apple Award for this week. Congratulations Mr. Archibald, you’ve earned yourself the MacOSG Sour Apple Award. Please be sure and pick up your web badge at MacOSG Podcast

Welcome to another MacOSG Sour Apple Award. They’re still letting me give this award, so I won’t waste any more time.

This week the award goes to the Operating System Development Department at Microsoft. When MS previewed Vista a couple of weeks ago at the Consumer Electronic Show the features hi-lighted weren’t that much of a surprise to us Mac OS X users. Windows Media Player finally gives you a preview of video in the task bar, something we Mac OS X users have had for a quite a while. Mini applets seem to look and behave like widgets. It was obviously a blatant rip-off of Mac OS X. Microsoft continues to look for innovation for their operating system at the best place to find innovation...Apple Computer.

With that said I’d like to present Microsoft with this weeks MacOSG Sour Apple Award. Congratulations and be sure to pick up your web badge at MacOSG Podcast

This week the MacOSG Sour Apple Award goes out to the Symantec Corporation. At one time Symantec was a leader in utilities for the Macintosh platform. Norton Utilities for Mac and Norton Anti-Virus for Macintosh were a staple in everybody's software collections. With the advent of Mac OS X Norton Utilities stopped functioning correctly. Even when they released a Mac OS X version on Norton Utilities it ended up causing more harm than good and Symantec eventually discontinued that product. Now it appears that Norton Antivirus for Macintosh actually causes more harm than good also.

I fear that Symantec will eventually abandon the Macintosh platform and we’ll lose those wonderful products. This is a shame, because I have resurrected data using Norton Utilities more than once, and my mind was at ease using Norton Anti-Virus. Now just having their software installed on my computer causes me more fear and angst than not having it. For this, I’m going to award this weeks Sour Apple award to Symantec.

Congratulations and feel free to download your Sour Apple web badge at MacOSG Podcast

Welcome again everybody to this weeks MacOSG Sour Apple Award. Once again, I’m KCMac and I’ll be presenting this weeks award. The opinions in this segment are mine and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of MacOSG members or it’s staff.

For those of us that like to have the lyrics to the music we purchase from iTMS in that nifty little Lyrics tab in the get into box, there was an easy way to accomplish this using a program by Walter Ritter called PearLyrics. It was fast, efficient and worked flawlessly. It would monitor iTunes and search the internet for the lyrics of the current song playing, download them and import them into the Lyrics tab of the song info in iTunes.

Earlier this week Walt received a letter from Warner/Chappel Music threatening legal action if he continued to distribute his program and he immediately pulled access to his software.

It appears that sheet music publishers feel they need to hop into the legal wagon along with the major studios. Just because you buy a song or a cd for that matter doesn’t give you the right to read the lyrics? Next thing you know, we will risk a criminal record for singing along with our favorite songs as we’re driving down the road, or people will be arrested for singing in the shower (well, in my experiences, that might not be such a bad thing). But still, to threaten legal action for making it easy for all of us to scour the internet for lyrics to songs that we have already purchased is a bit far fetched. In my opinion, the music industry (not the artists personally, but the bean counters and executives) are going to end up losing the industry more revenue than they create using their current tactics.

I realize this is an old rant, but this last week it appears that even the publishers of sheet music have adopted this same mentality. The Electronic Frontier Foundation got involved in this matter shortly after this happened and had their legal staff send a letter to Warner/Chappel which prompted an apology to Walter Ritter. Although Warner/Chappel formally apologized to Mr. Ritter. The knee-jerk reaction of threatening legal action and shutting down distribution of Pear has earned them the MacOSG Sour Apple Award.

Congratulations Warner/Chappel Music, you are this weeks recipients of the MacOSG Sour Apple Award. If you would like proudly display our Sour Apple web badge on your site you can pick one up at MacOSG Podcast

Welcome to our very first MacOSG Sour Apple Award. This is a new award given by the MacOSG Podcast Crew to the person or persons that have shown shallowness or narrow minded thinking regarding Apple Computers or Mac OS X. I’m KCMac, and I’ll be presenting this week's award. The opinions in this segment are those of the presenter and not necessarily those of the MacOSG members or staff.

This week, the MacOSG Sour Apple Award is presented to none other than Steve Wozniak. Steve is the inventor and creator behind the Apple II computer and is one of the two Steves that ushered the personal computer into our lives.

I recently ran across in an interview with Woz by a Stanford University student on Mac360, in it Steve is quoted as saying “I get the worst, worst software almost always from Apple.” When asked to name a specific title, his response was “I couldn’t give you an example. It happens just all the time. Over and over.”

What ever happened to: “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all”? It’s one thing to criticize software, but to say that Apple generates the worst is a great injustice to Apple and their software. They have made my purchases of music easier. They have made it easier for me to organize my photo collections. They put the ability for everyday people to edit and create professional quality home movies with ease. I can carry on a conversation with somebody in a different country and see them as we chat with the click of one button. All this can be done with a new iMac G5, straight out of the box, and with little to no configuration or effort from the end user.

When you purchase a peripheral, and you look at the installation manual, you’ll notice there are multiple pages for other operating systems, driver installation CDs, configuration instructions and so on. When you look at the installation instructions for Macintosh, it usually consists of one sentence...“Plug it in”. It’s because the software is so tightly knit with the hardware that this happens. So...

I have a lot of respect for you Mr. Wozniak, but in light of this recent event, I’m obliged to award our very first Sour Apple Award to you. Congratulations Woz for being this week's MacOSG Sour Apple Award recipient. We have a web badge available for you to download and proudly display on your web site at MacOSG Podcast