Apple: "Windows 7 is still Windows, complex and expensive"

Apple has come out swinging, or at least Brian Croll, Vice President of Apple'sMac OS X worldwide product marketing has when it comes to the new offerings from Microsoft.

Croll states that "Windows users are really tired of all the headaches that they've been getting over the years, starting all the way back from Windows Meto NT to Vista and now Windows 7," he said. "As a result, I think people are looking for something different, and the Mac offers real ease of use, stability and security."

In his defense, Apple did just release their quarterly earnings which do backup some of his statements. In Q3 (July to the end of September) Apple had its best quarter ever for Mac sales; this would indicate that more users are switching to OS X than keeping Windows.

Croll did not stop there; he went on to say that "Windows 7 is still just Windows. It doesn't change a lot. It's still complex, it's still really expensive when you look at the cost of the upgrade, and there's still security concerns," he said.

"It also still requires a lot of assembly. It turns out when you get Windows 7 it doesn't even have some of the basic applications like mail or chat, or programs to manage your photos. You actually have to go and find them and download them."

The irony, in his second statement, is that if Microsoft were to include such applications they would come under fire for anti-competitive practices. The latest issues over including IE 8 as the default web browser can attest to Microsoft's lack of inclusion of such programs.

There is more mud slinging over at telegraph.co.uk but can you blame Apple for being a bit nervous? When Vista launched it had a negative public perception that Apple was able to use to its advantage. Apple recently announced some product refreshes and a new mouse two days before the Windows 7 launch. Shortly after the Windows 7 launch, Apple released three new "I'm a Mac" adverts targeted at Windows 7. Now that Windows 7 has launched and is receiving public praise, what will Apple's new strategy be?

Download Google Chrome Offline Installer

Google Chrome is one of the premier browsers nowadays and is in much demand due to its popular features such as fast browsing, low resource usage, clean/minimal user interface and ofcourse the trustable google brand. Google Chrome has seen immense growth since its launch and has a market share of about 3% right now. The official Google Chrome website lets you download the latest stable version or the beta version. If you decide to download through there, you will download a small file around 500kB which itself is only the google chrome installer and not the actual browser. The installer will then download the browser which should be around 8MB. This is all good and such but you may experience problems when you have to install the browser on several computers, and some of which may not have internet connectivity. The solution is to download thegoogle chrome offline installer.

Steps to Download Google Chrome Offline Installer

1. Once you click the “Download Google Chrome” button on the chrome website, you are taken to the google chrome terms of service page which will have an “accept and install” button. If you click the button now, you will only be able to download the 500kb google chrome installer file, which is not the file you need.
2. To download the google chrome offline installer, add “?standalone=1″ (without the quotes) at the end of the url on the address bar so your full url should behttp://www.google.com/chrome/eula.html?standalone=1
3. Once you have added the above line into your address bar and hit the enter button, you will notice that the page will reload but there wont be any noticeable changes. This time, however, if you click the “accept and install” button, you will be prompted to download a bigger sized file around 8-9MB. This is the Google Chrome Offline Installer!
4. Download the file and use it at any computer you desire.

Similarly, if you want to download the latest beta version chrome offline installer, just add the “standalone=1″ parameter at the end of the address bar though you will need to add the “&” sign before this parameter to separate it from the beta version parameter. The final url after you have added the above parameter, should be http://www.google.com/chrome/eula.html?extra=betachannel&standalone=1

Dev channel: http://www.google.com/chrome/eula.html?extra=devchannel&standalone=1

Adobe Systems' Portable Document Format (PDF) is one of the great successes of the software industry. PDF has been the de facto standard for document

Adobe Systems' Portable Document Format (PDF) is one of the great successes of the software industry. PDF has been the de facto standard for document exchange since the mid-1990s, but it wasn't an official ISO standard until 2008.

Unfortunately, the ubiquity of Adobe Reader and other PDF software has made the format a target for malware perpetrators. Along with Sun's Java, Adobe's Flash Player, and Apple's QuickTime media players, it's imperative that you keep your PDF reader up-to-date to prevent it from becoming an entryway for viruses. (I wrote about the importance of keeping your apps updated in a post from last April.)

So when I heard last week about an important security update for Adobe Reader 9, I hurried to the Adobe site to download the new version 9.2. But the 45MB download included a separate program: Acrobat.com with Adobe AIR. This is a Web service for sharing and collaborating on documents. It was formerly called Create Adobe PDF Online.

I hadn't signed up for Acrobat.com—registration is required to use the service—I just wanted the Adobe Reader update. I couldn't find it offered on Adobe's site minus the Acrobat.com add-on I didn't want. I contacted Adobe to ask them about this. Adobe spokesperson John Cristofano told me the following via e-mail:

"(I)f a user downloads the full installer of Adobe Reader 9.2 (Windows or Macintosh in English) from the 'Get Adobe Reader' page on Adobe.com, the Acrobat.com on Adobe AIR application will be included. If a user already has a previous version of Adobe Reader 9.x installed on his/her system and the Adobe Updater delivers that person the version 9.2 update (the latest dot release update to their existing product), Acrobat.com on Adobe AIR is not included."

I didn't recall installing Acrobat.com with AIR on my system, but I can't verify that it wasn't installed prior to the update to version 9.2, either. The machine's only six months old though, and I hadn't signed up for the Acrobat.com service, so I certainly had never used Acrobat.com with AIR if it were on this PC.

In any event, I wasn't inclined to wait for Adobe Reader's auto-update component to fetch and install the latest security patch without Acrobat.com, nor would I recommend that other Adobe Reader 9.x users wait to update their version. And if you updated the program manually from Adobe's download site, you got Acrobat.com with AIR, whether you wanted it or not.

Downloading Adobe Reader 9.2 from the Adobe site requires that you also install Acrobat.com with Adobe AIR.

(Credit: Adobe Systems)

You're also offered a free McAfee Security Scan, but at least you can uncheck that option to do without the scan. (If you're still using Adobe Reader 7 or 8, you can update to versions 7.1.4 and 8.1.7, respectively, without having to install any other programs.)

I could've saved myself a lot of time and trouble if I had just stuck with Foxit Reader, the free PDF reader from Foxit Software. I used Foxit Reader exclusively on my old laptop, but for some reason I switched back to Adobe Reader when I bought my new machine last spring. Foxit Reader has a lot of fans, but it's far from the only free Adobe Reader alternative.

Tracker Software Products' PDF-XChange Viewer does a good job of matching Adobe Reader's features and interface while—like Foxit Reader—taking up much less disk space (though at 15MB, PDF-XChange Viewer is almost three times as large as Foxit Reader).

If small is what you're after, try the open-source Sumatra PDF Viewer, which at just over 1MB is downright lilliputian, compared to the competition. The program may lack some of the polish of its larger brethren, but it might be all the PDF reader you need.

An even-smaller free PDF reader is PDF2EXE Software's CoolPDF Reader, which weighs in at a modest 900KB. You'll find capsule reviews of these and one other free PDF reader at the Tech Support Alert site.

By the way, if you're looking for a free way to create PDFs, I described one in a post from March 2008: Acro Software's CutePDF Writer. Coincidentally, that post also included information about the free trial of Create Adobe PDF Online, which has since become Acrobat.com. Talk about going full circle!

Yahoo Mail outages plague some users

Yahoo Mail users reported problems Monday morning, with the service inaccessible for some and spotty for others.

TechCrunch noticed a Twitter spike in reports of problems with Yahoo Mail, and another company called Downrightnow also reported problems accessing the service over the last several hours. Several CNET employees reported that they could access their in-boxes, but mine is unavailable. Yahoo Messenger and Yahoo's home page appeared to be working fine.

Please let us know if you're having trouble in the comments below, and we'll update this post with more information as we go.

Yahoo Mail is the most widely used Web e-mail service in the world by a wide margin, with over 100 million unique users in July, according to ComScore. Gmail, Google's Web e-mail service, is growing fast as the third most-popular e-mail service behind Microsoft's Hotmail but has suffered a few high-profile outages this year.

Update at 8:58 a.m. PDT: Yahoo released a statement confirming the problems but downplayed the breadth. "A small fraction of Yahoo Mail users are experiencing intermittent email issues today, October 26. We are actively working to resolve the issue and apologize for any inconvenience this causes."

With 'memorialized' profiles, Facebook sees dead people

With over 300 million active users around the world, it's a legitimate concern for social network Facebook to come up with a solution for what happens when members die. The company has now spelled out the process on its official blog (in a post that's a little bit awkwardly close to Halloween, considering the sensitivity of the subject matter).

Facebook's Max Kelly explains in the blog post: "Obviously, we wanted to be able to model people's relationships on Facebook, but how do you deal with an interaction with someone who is no longer able to log on? When someone leaves us, they don't leave our memories or our social network. To reflect that reality, we created the idea of 'memorialized' profiles as a place where people can save and share their memories of those who've passed."

To "memorialize" a profile, members are encouraged to use a feedback form that asks for some proof of a relationship to the person in question (knowledge of an e-mail address and birthday, for example), as well as a link to proof of death (like a news article or obituary). When a profile has been memorialized, "sensitive" information, like phone numbers, are removed, and the profile is locked up to anyone who was not already a confirmed friend (non-friends can't find the profile in search queries, either).

But for those who were confirmed friends of the deceased, they can continue to leave "wall" posts in remembrance.

Memorialized profiles are also locked to future log-ins to prevent hacking--something that highlights how Facebook will have to be very vigilant about making sure that mean-spirited members don't try to "memorialize" one another's profiles as a macabre prank.

New Macbook Pros in the works?

It appears Mac lovers might be in for a treat in the near future, following some digging by Apple technology site Applesana.es.

Having browsed through the configuration files of the latest build of Mac OS X, the most recent operating system out of Cupertino, the site claims to have found references to two new Macbook Pro models.

It is reported that the 10.6.2 update to the operating system (build 10C531) hold the configuration files in which Applesana made the discovery. Within the files references to Macbook Pro 6.1 and Macbook Pro 6.1b are made. The current crops of Macbook Pros are designated numbers from 5.1 through to 5.5.

Although speculative, it is not unfathomable to think Apple will soon update its Macbook Pro line, given that it was not updated during the latest Apple product refresh, which saw iMacs gain the powerful Intel Core i5 and i7 processors.

The Intel Core i7 mobile processor in particular offers greater performance than any of its predecessors. Specifically, the i7 mobile has the technology to increase clock speed by up to 75% to match the workload of the system, and has strong performance with multi-threaded applications.

The last Macbook Pro update took place in June 2009, which featured Intel's Core 2 Duo processors and nVidia GeForce 9400M/9600M GT video cards.


Image hosted by Applesana.es

eBay tightens rules around unpaid item disputes

EBay has announced changes to the unpaid item dispute process; a move aimed at curbing the friction that can occur between buyers and sellers when something goes wrong at the auction site.

The announcements specifically relate to unpaid items, which are those that are not paid for within a reasonable amount of time. eBay typically encourage users to contact one another to resolve potential issues in this event, but if this cannot or does not happen the resolution process kicks in.

The changes to the unpaid item dispute process include:

- Reducing the waiting period before a dispute can be opened from 7 days to 4 days
- Reducing the dispute resolution process from up to 60 days to around 30 days
- Reducing the period of time following the sale of an item in which a dispute can be filed from 45 days down to 32 days

In addition to the above changes, eBay has indicated that there are fewer forms to be filled when lodging an unpaid item dispute. There is now also no need to liaise directly with the other party back and forth; the item seller instead determines how much communication they are willing to take part in with the buyer.

EBay has also taken the role of 'middleman' under the changes, authoring all emails between the buyer and the seller to give them a more neutral tone.

Finally, the language used on the site regarding unpaid items is being softened so that terms like "unpaid item strike" are no longer used, although such occurrences still have the same negative impact on the buyer.

It has been announced that these changes take place immediately.