Pulse2 Technology and Social Media News » John Gruber

On Macs and Malware

Amit Chowdhry — Fri, 06 May 2011 18:28:13 +0000

Earlier this week Ed Bott of ZDNet wrote a lengthy piece about how the traction of the Mac and iOS products is going to start attract hackers from attracting malware. John Gruber responded by pasting quotes from journalists (great response, John) over the past 7 years about how hackers will be targeting Macs. And yet we are still yet to see any major hacks against the Mac. Yet I am constantly haunted by fixing malware that has spread on my grandparents’ and fiancé’s HPs and Dells. I am in the process of trying to get them to switch to Macs. Why? Not just malware.

Everything I have done on a Mac is faster, smoother, and more stable than I have ever done on a PC. The only major disadvantages I have seen on a Mac is the ability to write macros in Excel and designing websites on the localhost of a PC is a bit easier. General Internet browsing, video editing, designing graphics, and the stability of Macs is a much better experience. While Excel does crash every so often on my Mac, the work is always auto-saved just like it does on a PC. Never had I ever had to deal with fixing a virus on someone else’s Mac… ever. Apple’s security patches makes sure of that, Bott.

I agree to Bott to a certain extent. As the recent PlayStation Network has shown us, no hardware is constantly safe. But Microsoft has not done much for me to recommend PCs over a Mac any more. Earlier when I had some college payments to take care of, I’d always recommend PCs since Macs were more expensive. But these days you can get a solid Mac Mini and a monitor for cheaper than a PC.

The Daily iPad Newspaper Takes A Long Time To Load?

Amit Chowdhry — Sat, 05 Feb 2011 19:27:00 +0000

John Gruber has subscribed to The Daily iPad newspaper. He reported that he read three issues over the last three days and his opinion about it has declined because of the load time involved. Gruber said that from the time he tapped the icon until the issue fully loaded, it took one minute and twenty seconds on Wi-Fi.

“There’s nothing the actual content or interface of the app can do to make up for the fact that it takes way too long to see anything at all. Imagine a paper newspaper that was wrapped in an envelope, and the envelope was so difficult to open that it took over a minute before you could see the front page of the issue,” wrote Gruber in a blog post. The New York Times iPad app takes about 25 seconds to load and Flipboard took seven seconds.

Personally I don’t think that Gruber made a valid point here because to read a new newspaper, we have to wait 24 hours. And in many major cities, the newspapers aren’t available every day anymore. For example, my local newspaper is only available in paper format on Thursdays and Sundays. If you don’t like the load time or price associated with higher quality content, unsubscribe. As a content reader you also have the choice whether or not you want to keep reading this blog or subscribing to it.

Apple Didn’t Censor The Ninjawords App, They Just Told Them To Have A 17+ Rating

Amit Chowdhry — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 19:30:00 +0000

Last night a rumor started about how Apple blocked an application called Ninjawords which is described as:
“[Ninjawords] use awesome, fresh, high quality data with more words and synonyms than you can throw a ninja star at. And best of all, when you look up your words, they all stay on the page. No need to flip back and forth between different pages as you look up multiple words.”

It turns out that rumor has been clarified by Apple SVP of Worldwide Product Marketing Phil Schiller. Apple said that they never tried to censor the dictionary application, but the company wanted to give it a 17+ rating. Instead the developer of the application removed the swears words before publishing it on the App Store.

John Gruber of Daring Fireball started the rumor and then later clarified it. Ninjawords was developed by Matchstick Software.

Why Some People Think The DiggBar Sucks

Amit Chowdhry — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 22:53:25 +0000

Last week Digg introduced the DiggBar, a web-based toolbar where anyone can see the number of Diggs a story received, the number of comments, etc. There is also a random button that shows stories that have received over 2,000 Diggs.

The DiggBar also has a built-in URL shortening feature so that it makes it easier to share stories on Digg through Twitter, Facebook, etc.

Some of the critics believe that the toolbar makes the original website look ugly. This is because when clicking on an external website through Digg.com, the toolbar appears with a frame of the original website below it. The original website still gets the page views, but Digg gets some extra page views too.

Some clever guy put together a reason why the DiggBar sucks by redirecting a DiggBar.com URL to another DiggBar.com URL four times. Below is a screen shot of what it looks like:

Another DiggBar critic John Gruber and writer of the DaringFireball blog created a custom website for anyone that arrives on his website from Digg.com. It reads “Dear Digg, Go f**k yourself. Your pal, JG.”

Several other critics are comparing the DiggBar to the design of websites from the 1990′s. Frames have no longer become acceptable in web design because of cross-compatibility issues. The DiggBar can be removed altogether by turning it off in the user preferences.

StumbleUpon also recently created a web-based toolbar of their own for those who don’t have access to their StumbleUpon toolbar plugin.

[via Wired]