This is all over the internet as a possible violation of antitrust laws. Apple has a monopoly on their own product. It should be just fine for other people to repackage their intellectual property and sell it for a profit.

Excuse my cynicism, but that’s plain fecking stupid.

By the same logic it should be legal for a company to buy Coca Cola and put it their own trademarked cans and sell it for profit. If the Coca Cola company doesn’t like it, tough shit.

Coca Cola has a monopoly on Coca Cola. DAMN them.

If you don’t think that’s retarded, go away.

If you want to build a Hackintosh, and run a copy of Leopard on it, it isn’t officially sanctioned but Apple probably won’t care.

If you want to turn a profit using the fruits of Apple’s innovation, Apple is going to kick your ass through the goal post from midfield. 

Apple makes the whole widget. Apple supports the whole widget. When Little Psystar’s econoboxes start crapping out, they’ll have Apple software running them. Little Psystars customers – people with IQs in the mid double digits – will blame Apple. They won’t blame themselves for being stupid enough to buy a piece of crap from a fly-by-night rip off artist. The last thing they see before the damn thing crashes will be an Apple logo. 

Apple cannot support what it cannot control.

I predict Apple will kick Little Psystar in the ass so hard they’ll have to do surgery to get their boot back.

…

I don’t know what Apple’s standards are for accepting Apps into the App Store. It seems like the bar is set pretty low though. Surfing around the store I found a half-dozen or so apps that interested me. I’m not much of a game player, which chops off a huge section of the continent for me right off the bat.

I’m interested in applications that will enhance my life with an indispensable function. It takes a lot of surfing to find any that flip my burger.

Given that, if Apple decides to banish or not accept an app into the App Store, for whatever reason, it’s okay with me. Keep down the clutter.

So, um, the Comic Reader app got banned. Supposedly this was censorship of the flagship comic “Murderdrome.” It’s a poorly drawn, poorly written gore-fest, without redeeming social value (if its blog is any indication).

I’m willing to bet Comic Reader is a sucky application, and “Murderdrome” made the whole package that much less acceptable. Anyway, dumbasses all over the place are screaming, “Censorship.”

It isn’t censorship for Apple to refuse to sell anything. It’s called proprietary discretion. Apple isn’t suppressing the material, just saying, “we don’t sell that here.”

It’s like accusing a grocery store of suppressing auto parts by not having your grade of motor oil on the shelf.

Dumb.

…

In all the years I’ve been using these gadgets I have never seen anything so continuously and brutally ridiculed and pilloried as Vista. Its defenders are rare not very vocal.

Statistically, it’s unanimous: Vista sucks like a pretty hitch hiker in a Ferrari.

…

Dead brain, talking.

…

Barry O’Bama is the Democratic nominee. It’s official. He has no chance of becoming our first Irish president.

…

My fingers are tired.

I smell a rat turd in the grain bin.

Little Psystar (pronounced: SIS-ter) is countersuing Apple. They’re using the tired old reasoning that Apple is using anti-competitive tactics. Apple is unfairly tying its operating system to its hardware.

By not allowing other hardware manufacturers to run OS X, Apple has created a monopoly.

First of all, that’s just stupid. If that stands up in court, it’s time to purge the legal system. Well, okay, we already knew that anyway, but accusing Apple of monopolistic practices on a planet that has a Microsoft is like Russia accusing the U.S. of warmongering.

My real question is, who’s backing those yay-hoos? They don’t have a snowball’s chance in Baghdad of winning. What the hell are they trying to prove? And who’s bankrolling them? The fact that they’re still in business tells me they’ve found some deep pockets somewhere. And those deep pockets are interested in testing Apple’s EULA.

How can anyone accuse Apple of being a monopoly or of being involved in anti-competitive behavior? The computer market has to be pretty narrowly defined for Apple to be counted as owning 10% of it. Purt-near the whole rest of the world is operating a version of Windows, plus a splash of Linux. I don’t know how 10% of anything gets to be worthy of anti-trust litigation.

If there’s a lick of sense in our legal system:

1. Little Psystar will be out of business. Soon.

2. Little Psystar will pay the legal fees for the summary judgment of their asinine lawsuit.

3. Apple’s lawsuit will follow on with criminal charges against Little Psystar for wrongly profiting from Apple’s intellectual property.

4. The owners of Little Psystar will be jailed and spend their first years out of jail paying back legal fees.

The whole thing is ridiculous. I’ll bet my collection of Tito Puente records a careful investigation will turn up some money - or at least the promise of support - from another tech “major player” in Little Psystar’s back pocket.

This thing stinks to high heaven.

…

I would never accuse Dell or Microsoft of that sort of slimy, gutless, underhanded fraud though. I just wouldn’t.

…

Apple is growing their presence in the enterprise market by continuing to build better computers. Saying I told you so is unfashionable and rude, but I told you so.

…

$275

12/31/2008

It’s not too late to ride the wave.

…

Nurse! Press that button again!

That’s better.

Hold my calls.

In bold type are some things that you must be a nincompoop to believe. If you, yourself, personally believe any of these things, please don’t read this blog anymore – unless you’re going to leave comments. You deserve to be ridiculed in public, and I hate to deprive you of that right.

Apple needs to build a cheaper, entry level computer.

If you think this, you’re an idiot. Apple has no need to build a cheaper machine. You wanting a cheap computer obligates Master Jobst Fimil to nothing.

Macs are selling like traffic cones at a Madonna concert. As long as that continues, Apple’s needs are met.

Apple must license OS X.

No. Apple must NOT license OS X. Apple has tried licensing the OS once. It almost destroyed the company.

The idea that licensing the OS would be good for Apple only makes sense if you are a rookie, an idiot, or a Microsoft-paid spokesman. Those possessing all three traits see that as gospel, and they pick their noses in restaurants.

Apple’s perfect record has been marred by (insert some sniveling complaint here).

Every product Apple has ever sold started out with a few minor problems. I don’t remember ever buying or using an Apple product that was perfect.

They’re frigging computers. Computers can’t be perfect. Apple products are so far better than everything else they seem perfect.

In twenty one years, I’ve only ever reformatted two hard drives on Macs. Ever.

EVER.

Both of those were last ditch efforts to save a dying drive. In both cases I saved all my data using Apple software. In both cases the HD was toast.

I know Windows people who consider reformatting hard drives just part of owning a computer.

It isn’t that Apple’s stuff is so good; it’s that everything else is so bad.

Apple’s products are not wonderful. They work a high percentage of the time and are easier to operate correctly than to screw up. That makes them seem wonderful by comparison.

Steve Jobs is mercurial (an asshole).

You’ll see this buried into “serious” articles in “respected” financial magazines. The people who use this are as stupid as a no host bar at a shooting range grand opening. Steve Jobs is the CEO of the company that will be the subject of Business 101 classes for the next frigging century. Go find – anywhere, any time in history – a significant business success who was known as a “nice guy” by the people with whom he or she did business. Good luck with that. You don’t build a corporate behemoth by trying to please everyone.

I’ll bet half a tuna sandwich Steve Jobs didn’t start Apple because he wanted to be liked by the leg-humping pups who currently write for Fortune, Forbes, and BusinessWeak.

If your expectation is for successful CEOs to be snuggly and bland, have whoever is reading this to you stop now.

Macs are going to be less secure now that they’re more popular.

This is the flip side of the “security by obscurity” mythology propagated by people with practically no neuron-synapse function. They both mean the same thing. Both are wrong, and have been wrong long enough for even the most ignorant to grasp. Those who speak this crap are either lying or as dumb as a sack of 512 KB SIMMS.

Macs have been targeted by hackers for years. Remember the Month of Apple Bugs in January of ‘07? Lots of smart hackers have been trying for a long time to compromise OS X. I don’t know how long, but it’s been a few years.

The first hacker who successfully hacks a self-replicating virus, or a non-phishing, non-Trojan Horse piece of malware for the Mac will be a celebrity.

It’s still in the future. It hasn’t happened. There was more malware introduced for Windows today than I’ve had on a Mac in 21 years of running them.

Windows has viruses. Mac doesn’t. When that changes, you can get up on your back legs and honk about how vulnerable OS X is. Until then Mac is more secure than Windows. Saying otherwise indicates either you’re stupid or dishonest. Probably both.

Apple sells a closed system.

No, dumbass. Windows is a closed system.

Connecting a Mac to a Windows network is easier than connecting a Dell running Vista to the same network.

Connecting a Dell running Vista to a Mac network is easier than connecting the same Dell to a Windows network.

When you hear that Apple sells a closed system, an idiot is talking.

…

I have got to do something about that funny noise in the air conditioner.

The U.S. of A. won the gold for indoor volleyball.

Just watched the closing ceremonies.

It’s official.

China is out of the closet.

….

Keep your eyes peeled for the new store. We have the Olympic spirit at Rip Ragged. Chi Pass™ products coming soon.

…

Ellen Degenerate may soon pass Mickey Rooney in wife count. Keep your eyes peeled.

…

Too much beer for a coherent post. Not that I care.

…

I thought it was somebody else’s turn to dry dishes.

That’s why we can’t get the useless “Photosynth” app for our Macs. Maybe if they hired a comic spokesdroid from this century they could be cooler.

Dammit.

…

iPhone killer news:

Nokia N96 is reported as an iPhone killer in the India Times. Some of the features include…

A slide out numeric phone keypad (no qwerty)

16 GB of Flash memory plus a microSD card slot

A bunch of buttons

Black with chrome trim (where did they get that idea?)

No mention of touch screen interface

FM Radio (just like Zune)

Shipping with soon-to-be-obsolete capability for broadcast TV

Master Jobst Fimil will not lose sleep over this one.

The HTC Dream will be the first Android phone. There’s a beta SDK for Android.

Yawn.

Go get ‘em, kids.

…

Now I have something REALLY important to talk about – Scrabble®.

I love to play Scrabble. Wifey-poo and I play it almost daily.

It is beyond absurd that Scrabble® cannot be played via the internet by two people at different computers. I just looked at the ad for EA’s version for the iPhone. It has a “pass and play” mode for multiple players. Dumb.

Dear Hasbro and EA,

The system is broken. Fix it.

I should be able to sit at my computer and play a game of Scrabble with my wife on her iPhone, and vice versa.

Make it be so.

Until it is so, Scrabble is useless as an electronic game.

Thanks,

Rip.

An old AirPort Express that had been languishing in a box on a shelf now feeds an old stereo system and an old pair of speakers in the basement that had been languishing on other shelves.

Pretty cool.

As soon as I reauthorize my old MacBook, the basement will be reinvigorated as a rec room. Bitchin’.

…

The financial press is all agog over what we already knew. Apple is going to do just fine in this “recession.” Why? Because they sell stuff that works. All the Windows geeks and punditbots and fundtards don’t get why lots and lots of people are willing to switch to something that works instead of “the most popular.”

Just between us ranting drooling fanbois, anything that’s “the most popular” automatically makes me suspicious. There are lots of people who are happy with mediocre products and services. Nobody will happily buy something that is widely rumored to be capable of sucking peanut butter through a straw. Vista, for instance; and computers that run Vista; computers that offer you no option except Vista.

Let’s say you absolutely have to buy a new computer. One of those computers runs an operating system you’re unfamiliar with, but everybody says it’s pretty good. Some friends report liking it. The other computer runs an operating system that is widely held to SUCK. Assume the prices aren’t far different. Which one would you buy?

I have a friend who is a die-hard Windows user who says Vista sucks, and I don’t have many friends. I’m guessing everyone with more than three friends in the world knows somebody who uses Vista and thinks it sucks farts.

Apple isn’t getting that kind of press. Apple has 85% customer satisfaction with their products. That is, 85% of people who have bought Apple products are happy about it.

What’s weird is, the punditbots and fundtards refuse to believe what is manifestly true. Over on BusinessWeak, Peter Burrows reports that Apple is planning to build 40,000,000 iPhones over the next twelve months.

Peter says selling that many phones will “hinge on a successful introduction in several countries by the end of next year.” How about 22 countries, today, Pete?

Actually, Peter, if you look at the lines that still exist at stores that sell the iPhone, selling that many phones will largely hinge on building them and getting them to the stores.

…

The Jerry Seinfeld ad campaign, if true, proves that Microsoft is utterly clueless and has zero chance of maintaining its dominance of the computer industry.

The reason Apple is selling piles and piles of Macs is only in part because of the “Get a Mac” ad campaign. There’s that iPod/iPhone “halo effect” thingy. Also the biggest problem for Microsoft is that OS X doesn’t suck.

Vista sucks. The Mojave consumer condescension videos don’t change that. Jerry Seinfeld can’t change that. The only way to correct the suckitude of your OS is to fix the software.

…

Dear Dumbass punditbots and fundtards,

Apple will continue to grow its share of every market in which it competes. In fact that growth will continue to accelerate. Macs and iPhones are going sell more units faster every quarter as long as Apple’s “competitors” continue to build shoddy replicas of Apple products.

Competitors continue to believe they can compete with Apple products by changing the paint job and hiring celebrity spokesmen. That can’t make a dent in people telling one another at lunch, “I love my Mac/iPod/iPhone.”

Apple will continue to be the 800 pound gorilla of innovation. As long as all these companies focus their attention on imitating Apple, their products will continue to be imitations. Oh, and guess what happens when your flagship product is a knock-off. Not only do you look stupid, but your corporate identity becomes “loser.”

…

No soup for you.