Posted in Macrumors.com this week an apparantly lucky so and so received their brand new Mac Mini with a little extra surprise.  A Snow Leopard 10.6 instal disk.  Could this be a mistake?  Could have this been a planned Apple leak?  Is this fake?  You decide.  But it has done a lot to stir up the rumor mill as to when Snow Leopard is shipping.

In fact, most rumors are now pointing to Aug. 28th as the date.  Here is a question for you all.  Since this is WAY earlier than Win 7, will this effect Win 7’s launch at all.  The two positives out the of the gate for Snow Leopard would then be the early release and the price.  Any thoughts?

Pics are below.

Cal

Ok, I am a bit late with this post but Rich over at WindowsObserver.com posted something on Sunday that is quite an eyebrow raiser.  According to rich:

After seeing a few tweets on this I had to go check it out myself and was quite amazed at what I saw. On the Amazon.com MAC OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard product page it shows what customers ultimately buy after viewing the item – and it shows that 75% of them head over and purchase either the Windows 7 Home premium Upgrade (50%) or the Windows 7 Professional Upgrade (25%).

If the OS X update is #1 in Software already then that means a lot of people are buying the Windows 7 upgrade from that page. I would love to talk to some of those folks and find out how they got on that page in the first place and then ended up buying the Windows 7 upgrade.

WHAT?!  Some interesting developments.  What does all this mean? One thing is for sure, the Win7 vs. OSX debate will be a fantastic one once both OS’s are ready to go.

Any thoughts?  We welcome your comments.

Looks like reports are coming in that Apple is going to make an upgrade to Snow Leopard only $9.99 if you buy a Mac between June 8th and September when the new OS is available.  Gee…$20 savings. Wow.  What will I do with that extra cash?  Maybe buy an iTunes gift card? 

Seriously, you have to admit if you are in the Mac camp things are just about perfectly rosy in the upgrade department.  Makes me want to forgo the Dell Mini and get that 13″ MacBook Pro.  More on that on tomorrow night’s show

Thanks to our listener, Craig, for cluing us in that yes indeed you can have spotlight check for system aspects.  Here is a screenshot of system preferences where you can set those items:

Craig also sends us some screen shots of his spotlight results in action

Some Apple developers have leaked some more information about some new implementations in Snow leopard today.  One that is particular interest to me is the way Snow Leopard will allow you to dig deeper into the stack.  I have always considered stacks to be no so ready for prime time.  This looks like a more complete idea.

According to Appleinsider:

Developers testing Snow Leopard can also navigate nested folders from within a Stack. In Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, clicking on a folder from within a Stack would open that folder in the Finder and close the Stack. But in Snow Leopard, users can navigate deep into Stacks presented in grid view, with each parent grid being thrust into a minimized grid window in the upper left-hand corner of the grid as the user digs deeper into the Stack.

Check out the article for more Snow Leopard tidbits.

Ok, as promised, I’m going to vent a little.  For the first time in two or so years in doing this show I felt something strange after doing an episode.  After Episode 79 I went to bed thinking about the Psystar vs. Apple legal argument that Rachel did such a wonderful job arguing with me about.  Something had really bothered me about that conversation.  Bothered me so much that I had trouble getting to sleep that night.  Which is major for me since once my head hits that pillow….I’m usually out like a light.

I kept replaying the specifics of the argument over and over in my head.  More specifically, the point Rachel made about the legality of Apple’s copyright.  She argued that Apple’s tethering of the hardware to the software prevents PC builders to have another option to sell and therefore is anti-competitive.

This bothers me.  Right down to the core.

PC builders have two options.  Windows or Linux.  They don’t have OSX as an option because Apple restricts it to their hardware.  This has been the case since before OSX.  From pre OSX, through the PowerPC, G5 and otherwise, Apple has ALWAYS, locked their products down with the software.  Sure, they toyed with other manufactures in the past making clones…it almost cost them everything.

But now that Macs use basically the same guts as a PC, NOW we fall into anti-competitiveness?  My GOD! What is this world coming to?  Have we come so far down the rabbit hole that we have to litigate in order to compete at every turn?  The problem here really isn’t the fact that Apple is anti-competitive.  The real problem is that Microsoft is having this “identity crisis” and PC builders are the ones left holding the bag.  And when you are backed into a corner what does any self-respecting, red-blooded American company do?….you betcha…they sue!

In order to hit the brakes on this rant before it spins out of control I would like to bring up a point about Sony.  When a manufacturer like say….Yamaha, Panasonic, Pioneer, etc.  wants to build a Blue Ray player they HAVE to buy the processing chip from Sony (not to mention other licensing fees).  They charge these companies anywhere from $300-$500 per chip.  This chip only costs Sony about $20 to build.  Therefore, they have a built in cost advantage hardware AND software wise in Blue Ray players.  PLUS, an artificially created pricing out of the competition.  This is a generally accepted practice and yet it’s OK to sue Apple for being anti-competitive?

Apple is a unique company.  And quite frankly they are far from perfect.  But you know something, maybe this has more to do with the fact that companies are having a hard time competing with Apple.  Maybe things may change with Windows 7.  Who knows.  All I know is that this idea of opening up Apple via the courts is one of the saddest things I’ve heard of in the world of tech in a long time.  I can only hope that the case goes in Apple’s favor.  But if it doesn’t, I think it will be a very sad day in the world of tech.  A closed Apple in the long run is best for us all.  More on that some other time….

From Appleinsider:

Tens of thousands of users who’ve downloaded pirated versions of iWork ‘09 or Photoshop CS4 may have opened their Macs to remote attacks from malicious users.

iWork ‘09

Mac security software maker Intego discovered last week what it calls “OSX.Trojan.iServices.A” in pirated copies of Apple’s iWork ‘09 making the rounds on BitTorrent file sharing networks.  An additional package not found in retail copies of the iWork installer called “iWorkServices.pkg” is installed as a startup item with read/write/execute abilities with the pirated versions.

According to Intego, the rogue software connects to a remote server to notify its creator that the trojan has been installed on different Macs, and he or she can “connect to them and perform various actions remotely”, including downloading additional components to the machine.

Intego considers the risk of infection to be serious, warning of “extremely serious consequences” if a user’s Mac is compromised by software. The security firm said 20,000 people had already downloaded the installer at the time of its alert.  As of now, Intego counts 1,000 more since the initial warning.

I know a lot of people (Rachel) are going to jump on the wagon of “see…see…macs are vulnerable…you can get exploits…see…see.”

Before the deluge of ranting begins (see next cagematch this Thursday) please allow me to say that it has never been said that OSX is invulnerable, and completly safe from exploits.  However, let me make this perfectly clear, if you are brave enough to pirate software then you must have the courage to risk getting exploited with malicious code every once in a while.  That is just the risk and the price you pay when you go surfing through the “torrent” of life.

Take a look at this video and ponder with me if you will about how Apple can stay out of the netbook space:

Mac Wind – The Apple Netbook from Sascha Pallenberg on Vimeo.

Now taking this video into account and a direct quote from Apple COO Tim Cook:

We’re watching that space, but from our [point of view] the products are based on hardware that’s much less powerful, software technology that’s not good, cramped displays. We don’t think that people are going to be pleased with those type of products. It’s a category we watch, we have some ideas here, but we think the products there now are inferior and won’t provide the kind of experience people want.

Translation: There will be some sort of spin on the netbook space from Apple sooner than later.

What are your thoughts?  Leave a comment.

Our buddy from the twitterverse @packard_sonic has taken our challenge seriously and posted his thoughts about UAC from the MAC side of things. I encourage you all to take a gander at his post Notices from Vista: A view from the Mac Side.

Here is an excerpt:

Well, after hearing the challenge as was mentioned in the previous blog post I started my Mac that morning right after work. Well to back up my statements regarding the multiple times Vista’s UAC (User Access Control) window pops up for running programs, etc. Well once I got vista started after a few reboots for file fixing it seemed to believe that needed to be done, I began my work.

Now going back a bit, one of the things that Rachel had mentioned last week about not needing drivers. Now mind you I only connected two items it had not been connected to before. A different monitor and the router I have at my desk. It notified me that it needed to find drivers for these items for them and notified me when this was done. Two windows right there that were already in my way. Once that it did that and got these two new additions set I did not see it again. However, In comparison to when I connect a new item to the Mac it does not generally have to install drivers the moment new devises are plugged in to it. Not saying this is true in all cases, but the only thing I have really ever had to install something for hardware was for printers but that usually came with an install disk which Cal & Rachel will attest to comes with most hardware.