Chris Howard's Profile

Yeah, DM, it'd be interesting if a third party could make a small and sleek keyboard that wouldn't turn the iPhone into a brick-sized device. It will be interesting to see if the strongly rumored larger form factor iPhone has a keyboard or mini-USB for attaching one. Zato, you don't contribute enough! Always get a chuckle out of your trolling efforts, but of course, don't take them seriously.

Psystar is yet to be proved to be a "real company". It is yet to trade anything. So far all it is is a front for challenging the OS X EULA. Of course Apple will likely send scary lawyers letters to it, telling it to stop. That is an age old bullying technique to test the challenger's intestinal fortitude. Will Psystar have the guts - and money - stand up to the bully? It's reasonable to expect people to pay for software and to not duplicate it. But to then say you can only install it on machines from a particular vendor is really stretching the friendship. Imagine if Pixar came out and said "Sorry, you can only now watch our movies on our authorised players." What if Microsoft came out and said you could only install Windows on MS machines? All the Apple zealots would be the first ones to scream the "M" word (monopolization). (The funny thing that would happen too is Windows would lose marketshare and the profit on the hardware would not offset those losses and subsequent losses on Microsoft's other products such as MS Office.) It's time for this to change. Psystar are rocking the boat and that's all I think they are here to do. But at least they've got the ball rolling.

Totally agree, Hadley. People's fears about clones are based more on maybes and what happened in the past. Particularly, clones will give a lot more to the Mac's PC marketshare than it will take from Apple's own Mac marketshare. If Apple licensed OS X, undoubtedly more computers with OS X would be sold then are now. And yes Apple would concede some sales of its own Macs. But wouldn't it prefer more OS X machines out there? It's like the adage "you have to spend money to make money." That is, Apple has to accept making less money in one stream, to make more in another, an importantly, to long term make more in both streams.

Chris, it's great to have you back. Your writing is better than ever. do agree with this article, of course; however, I do think the evangelistic crusade has lost many of its foot soldiers. Its generals, like Gruber, are finding less and less men standing behind them wanting to fight every little battle to to last breath. Proof of this lies in the response to this article. A couple of years ago there'd be a massive response, with most respondents also debating whether the author should be boiled or roasted. So, although the generals are still calling "charge!", no one much seems to be charging with them.

All the best, Tanner. Have really enjoyed your work. Look forward to hearing more about this mysterious project.

I got no issue with Leander's piece. However, you are right, it doesn't say anything we didn't already know or think about Apple. But it did raise the interesting question in my mind about how will Apple survive without Steve? Any new CEO is likely to embrace more openness and will that hurt Apple? (It'd be impossible to be less open, and near impossible to maintain the status quo.) Regards Think Secret,for many people, morally, what it did was wrong. But journalism operates under different morals where if something might have even the slightest bit of "in the public interest", it is acceptable to publish. Under that code, TS did nothing wrong.

Scott Thurstall said at the SDK presentation that "Apple is a platform company". Does a digital camera fit with that? I don't think so.