Ubuntu 10.04 and Windows 7 vs HP Officejet 8500, Fight!

I am perhaps the biggest Linux geek left in Springfield (Mike, you suck for leaving), so I can't turn down a chance to boast about my OS of choice.

I've spent the last week working with an HP Officejet 8500 on a wireless network with two Windows 7 Pro PCs. When the printer is connected via USB to either PC all of it's features work just fine. When the PC is only connected via the wireless network it can print from both machines, but it's faxing and scanning features are a bust. HPs software can't detect the printer.

Let me be clear. Windows 7 can detect the printer and can install the drivers. It can print anything I send at it. The problem lies in HP's software.

This printer was originally designed to work with Windows XP. It's software was updated to work with Windows Vista, but that was a headache. It is supposed to work with Windows 7, but apparently quite a few people are having problems. Google HP Officejet 8500 scanning and you will find forums replete with people begging for help and getting very few answers from HP officials or Microsoft officials. HP did finally release an update on December 15th. (It didn't work in this instance.)

To troubleshoot I've followed the standard steps: uninstall and reinstall the drivers, install drivers from the manufacturer, uninstall and reinstall hp's software, install the latest versions of the software and all patches, reconfigure the network, blah, blah, blah. In the end, I even connected the printer to the router with Cat5e. HP's software still would not detect the printer. I finally connected it via USB directly to one of the PCs. That was the only thing I could do to make the software work in Windows 7. The second PC can only print, but HP's software still doesn't detect the printer.

Any honest Linux aficionado will admit that getting all of the features of a lot of printers to work is about as fun as wrestling with porcupines naked. With enough patience it can be done, but you can also move all of Mt. Everest to Texas with enough patience. That's why I was pleasantly surprised when all of the printer's functions worked wirelessly with Ubuntu without any headaches, especially after all of the frustration in Windows.

I turned on my laptop, booted to Ubuntu. It was a second's work to connect to the network. I then opened the print manager (similar to "add a printer" in Windows). It found the printer right away. I was printing a test page in less than two minutes from booting up. Then, on a lark, I opened the simple scanning program. This is a Linux native program, no one at HP had anything to do with it. It started scanning on the first click of the scan button, without configuring anything. It just worked, which was honestly a frustrating moment.

If I were going to pick between Windows and Ubuntu for losing to this printer, I would have assumed getting the printer to work wirelessly in Linux should have been ridiculously difficult, but it was simple. I still can't get it work wirelessly in Windows. It's frustrating, because I can't migrate him and his office to Linux. He doesn't have the know-how, and I don't have the time to hand-hold him. Additionally, he has software that only works in Windows that is essential to what he's doing. I also can't solve his problem if he wants to keep this printer.

The take away is that its not a hardware issue. The hardware works flawlessly with an operating system that has less than 5% market share, and is more often found in server rooms than on desktops. Its a software issue. It's a crap situation, and it's been extremely frustrating for both myself and the person I'm helping. My guy tells me he's also spent several hours on the phone with HP tech support, and that they can't figure it out either. They've offered to send him a warranty replacement printer. The short term fix for him is going to be to use the printer with a USB connection on his main computer for scanning and faxing, and wirelessly to print from the other. My honest recommendation is a new printer that has been released in the last year.

Compiz vs Aero Snap, Round 2, Fight!

Now that we've seen tiling is nothing new to any operating system, let's take a look at how it's implemented.

Windows 7 gives you some good options to manage tiling. The default is the Aero Snap, which let's you manage two windows by dragging them to the screen edges. The limit to this is that it only allows you to manage two Windows at a time. What happens if you want to tile three or more windows?

You can always just snap additonal windows, and leave them stacked on top of each other. It hides the Windows in the background, but it is a simple matter to alt+tab to bring the window you want to the foreground.

Microsoft left in most of the tiling manager from XP. If you right click on the dock (I mean taskbar) you can tile and cascade all open windows. It gives you the option of tiling them vertically (windows are side by side) or horizontally (stacked on top of each other.) Microsoft, for whatever reason, left out the grid option. (With three or more windows this option displays windows in a pre-arranged grid.)

If you want to tile specific windows, you have to resort to manually grabbing them and using Aero snap, or opening the task manager and ctrl+clicking the applications you want to tile.

Here's a video:



Ubuntu with Compiz gives us three different tiling options. The default is the grid plugin.

The grid divides the screen into 8 regions. By default it uses the numeric keypad to manage windows along that grid. You place the foreground window in a corresponsing location by hitting ctl+alt+ numpad key. For instance, if I want a screen to tile horizontally across the top of the screen, I hit ctrl+alt+num8. The window takes up the top half of the screen. If I select another window and hit ctrl+alt+num2 it will tile across the bottom half of the screen. 4 and 6 do the same for left and right. 7, 9, 1, and 3 will reduce the windows to squares and place them in the corresponding corners.

An added feature to grid is that each area has three levels of tiling. Re-entering the hotkey sequence toggles through resizing the window to occupy 1/3, 1/2, and 2/3 of the screen.

Here's an explanation of how to bind it to the mouse:



Here's a video of the main function, the explanation starts at 1:43:



The next option for tiling is the Maximumize plugin. This plugin is a bit more fluid than grid. It allows you to control which direction a window expands or contracts in. By default windows are controlled through hot keys. The primary hotkey is super+m. It will cause the selected window to expand in all directions until it encounters another window or fills the screen. There are options to expand only vertically, only horizontally, only up, only down, only left, and only right. There are corresponding minimizing options as well.

Here's a video:


The final option is the the tiling plugin. It maps traditional tiling to hotkeys, and will tile all open windows simultaneously. It has hotkeys for using the grid, tiling vertically, tiling horizontally, and cascading windows.

Here's a video:

Hi. I'm *nix, and Windows 7 was my idea.

There's an old saying that the eyes are the windows of the soul. In this case, the windowing manager is the window of the OS's soul. After gazing longingly into the eyes of Unix and Linux's window managers, Microsoft has incorporated some fun eye-candy into it's latest operating system.

First up is the Aero Snap effect. This is Microsoft's implementation of tiling for Windows 7. Tiling is nothing new. It's merely resizing windows so that they can be displayed side by side, either vertically or horizontally. It is also possible to cascade windows, so that they are neatly stacked one ontop of another. Old school users will remember that PARC's Star (the GUI copied by Apple, which was copied by Microsoft) was the first tiling window manager. That was in 1980.

What Microsoft does is apply a little flair to the tiling.

Here's Microsoft's commercial:



And here's another demo:



You'll notice that the Windows have a slight 3d effect to them, and there's a nice transparency effect. The interface has been simplified a bit. It has been combined with keyboard shortcuts (windows key + left/right/up), as well as the use of screen edges. (More on screen edges later.) All in all, it's a nice update to an old feature. These features were in beta in 2008.

Now let's take a look at what Linux was doing in 2005 and 2006:



This video is from May of 2006. The user is showing off several Compiz features, including tiling and scaling.





Here's a more specific example. Seems a little familiar? Here, the user is demonstrating tiling in the Beryl compositing window manager. Beryl is a fork (an off-shoot) of the Compiz project started by Novell back in 2004. They released Compiz as an open-source project back in January 2006. Novell's spin on tiling included some transparency, some very nice 3D effects, customizable keyboard shortcuts, you get the picture.

Love your neighbor.

Anne Rice, who ten years ago famously rejoined Christianity, has recently renounced Christianity, in the name of Christ. This was done on her Facebook after a series of postings about things rather notorious "Evangelical Christian" groups have done; most notably Westbrook Baptist Church, famous for protesting soldiers and declaring that God hates people.

Ann's Facebook Page



While the Westbrook group is extreme, and most Christians would argue that they are off base by declaring that "God hates the world and all it's people," there is a tremendous amount of antipathy and hostility coming from America's pulpits. A lot of it is directed towards the homosexual community, and towards the "liberals". This stems from Evangelical Christianity's focus on "holiness" and "righteousness".



There is an idea among Evangelical Christians that they must obey the moral laws laid down in the Bible, and that failure to do so equates to damnation. This is coupled with the idea that God is actively punishing people and nations for failure to adhere to the moral laws laid out in scripture. I believe that these ideas are off base, and are missing a larger point.



In the books of Romans and Galatians, the apostle Paul spends quite a bit of time re-emphasizing one point in various ways. It is this, no one is able to obey all of God's moral laws because we are all broken in some way, God knows this, and he has provided a means of help. To put a more modern spin on it 1.) everyone has issues, and everyone has done things they shouldn't have. That is human nature. 2.) Actions have consequences, and sometimes the consequences are harsh. At the same time, everyone needs forgiveness, and everyone needs help dealing with life. God gets this and provides mediation and forgiveness through Christ. 3.) No one is perfect, but the goal is to become better. The idea is to be kind, loving, and patient with each other and to each other. God provides an example and help to this end through Christ and through his Spirit.


Anne further goes on to say that:

"It's simply impossible for me to "belong" to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group."

She continues to say that she refuses to be anti-gay, anti-Democrat, anti-feminist, etc. In a video interview, she says that she has struggled with how much Christianity backs away from the teachings of love and forgiveness for others, and sites several examples. Her over-arching argument is that the teachings of Christ emphasize loving others, and she doesn't see that in Christianity. She makes the argument that, historically, you see quite the opposite in Christianity. Sadly, this is true.

I think that a lot of Christian leadership has gotten caught up in what it thinks are the pressing moral issues of the day, and entirely misses the point. It then becomes a matter of fighting with society over moral issues, or fighting with other Christians over doctrinal positions.

The pressing moral and doctrinal issue of any day is to love people. Christ taught, that of all God's moral laws two were most important. They were these: 1.) Love God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength. 2.) Love your neighbor just as you love yourself.

When Christ taught about the judgment of God, he didn't speak about what rules people broke. He spoke about judging people based on how they treated others.


Matthew 25:31-40

31)"When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his throne in heavenly glory. 32.)All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. 33.) He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.


34.) "Then the King will say to those on his right, 'Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. 35.) For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, 36.) I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.'


37.) "Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? 38.) When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? 39.) When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?'


40.) "The King will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.'


What we can take from this, from the two great commandments, and from the famous Sermon on the Mount is rather simple:

How you treat others is how you treat God.

"Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me."

How you let others treat you is how you let others treat God.

How you treat yourself is how you treat God.

"Love your neighbor as yourself."

It changes things when you consider that God considers everyone you deal with, Christian or not, a representative of himself, and that he judges us based on how we treat him/them. It changes how you treat people in traffic. It changes how you treat your spouse. It changes how you treat your children. It changes how you treat strangers. It requires you to be more thoughtful and deliberate in your dealings with others. It also requires you to be more deliberate in how you live your daily life.

For example, when a Christ follower is dealing with people who don't believe in Christ, God's judgment would be something like: "My immortal soul was in danger, and I needed someone to show me who Christ is and what He's all about, and you did that for me." (or the scary/bad ending) "And you didn't do that for me."

or

"I was dealing with a rough patch in life, and I needed someone to walk with me through that and you did" or "and you didn't do that for me."

or

"I was struggling with issues of sexual orientation and you told me you disagreed with the lifestyle, but remained a compassionate and loyal friend", or "you held protests against me, ostracized me, and told me I was going to hell."

It's really hard to hold the moral high ground when you understand that God doesn't judge you based on how well you obey moral laws; but judges based on whether you accept the forgiveness he offers, and on how well you treat those around you.


Sources:

Galatians 2:11-21

11When Peter came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he was clearly in the wrong. 12Before certain men came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles. But when they arrived, he began to draw back and separate himself from the Gentiles because he was afraid of those who belonged to the circumcision group. 13The other Jews joined him in his hypocrisy, so that by their hypocrisy even Barnabas was led astray.

14When I saw that they were not acting in line with the truth of the gospel, I said to Peter in front of them all, "You are a Jew, yet you live like a Gentile and not like a Jew. How is it, then, that you force Gentiles to follow Jewish customs?

15"We who are Jews by birth and not 'Gentile sinners' 16know that a man is not justified by observing the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ. So we, too, have put our faith in Christ Jesus that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by observing the law, because by observing the law no one will be justified.

17"If, while we seek to be justified in Christ, it becomes evident that we ourselves are sinners, does that mean that Christ promotes sin? Absolutely not! 18If I rebuild what I destroyed, I prove that I am a lawbreaker. 19For through the law I died to the law so that I might live for God. 20I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. 21I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!"[d]





Matthew 5:44-48


43)"You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor[h] and hate your enemy.' 44.)But I tell you: Love your enemies[i] and pray for those who persecute you, 45.) that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. 46.) If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? 47.) And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? 48.) Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.


Matthew 25:31-40

31)"When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his throne in heavenly glory. 32.)All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. 33.) He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.

34.) "Then the King will say to those on his right, 'Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. 35.) For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, 36.) I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.'

37.) "Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? 38.) When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? 39.) When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?'

40.) "The King will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.'


1 John 4:7-21

7) Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8) Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9) This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son[b] into the world that we might live through him. 10)This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for[c] our sins. 11) Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12) No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.

13) We know that we live in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. 14) And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. 15) If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in him and he in God. 16)And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.
God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him. 17) In this way, love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment, because in this world we are like him. 18) There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.

19) We love because he first loved us. 20) If anyone says, "I love God," yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. 21) And he has given us this command: Whoever loves God must also love his brother.


Romans 7:7-25

Romans 7:7-25 (New International Version)

Struggling With Sin
7What shall we say, then? Is the law sin? Certainly not! Indeed I would not have known what sin was except through the law. For I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said, "Do not covet."[a] 8But sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, produced in me every kind of covetous desire. For apart from law, sin is dead. 9Once I was alive apart from law; but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died. 10I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring life actually brought death.

11For sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, deceived me, and through the commandment put me to death. 12So then, the law is holy, and the commandment is holy, righteous and good. 13Did that which is good, then, become death to me? By no means! But in order that sin might be recognized as sin, it produced death in me through what was good, so that through the commandment sin might become utterly sinful.

14We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. 15I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. 16And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. 17As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. 18I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature.[b] For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. 19For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. 20Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.

21So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. 22For in my inner being I delight in God's law; 23but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. 24What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? 25Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!
So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God's law, but in the sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.


The Parable of the Good Samaritan

Luke 10:25-37

25On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. "Teacher," he asked, "what must I do to inherit eternal life?"

26"What is written in the Law?" he replied. "How do you read it?"

27He answered: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind'[c]; and, 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'[d]"

28"You have answered correctly," Jesus replied. "Do this and you will live."

29But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, "And who is my neighbor?"

30In reply Jesus said: "A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he fell into the hands of robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. 31A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. 32So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. 33But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. 34He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, took him to an inn and took care of him. 35The next day he took out two silver coins[e] and gave them to the innkeeper. 'Look after him,' he said, 'and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.'

36"Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?"

37The expert in the law replied, "The one who had mercy on him."
Jesus told him, "Go and do likewise."

I'm OS X, and Windows 7 was my idea.

In this series we are taking a look at the ideas Microsoft copied from other operating systems. This is pretty standard procedure for Microsoft, and with Windows 7 it is safe to say they've mostly gotten it right. Linux and OS X can be proud of their love-child.

We will start by taking a look at some of the new features in the GUI. First up is the Taskbar, aka “Not a Dock.”

There's an old saying: If it looks like a Dock:



(OS X 10.0 Cheetah, released in 2001. Notice the transparent dock with large icons that runs the length of the screen. This was standard until 2007's OS X 10.5 Leopard.)



(OS X 10.5 Leopard 2D dock, released in 2007. Notice the transparent dock with large icons that runs the length of the screen. )



(Windows 7, released in 2009. Notice the transparent “taskbar that is not a dock” with large icons that runs the length of the screen.)

and Acts like a Dock:

(Descriptions from Apple and Microsoft's official websites:)

http://www.apple.com/macosx/what-is-macosx/dock-and-finder.html

• The Dock at the bottom of the screen gives you quick access to your most frequently used applications, files, and folders


• To add a new application or folder, just grab it from the Finder and move it onto the Dock.


• Removing and rearranging items is simple: Click and drag.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/help/better-stronger-faster-the-windows-7-taskbar

• It’s that familiar horizontal strip at the bottom of your desktop where your open files and programs appear... When you first start using Windows 7, each of your open programs appears as an individual unlabeled button. Looks neat and tidy, doesn’t it?


• ...with Windows 7, you can also pin programs anywhere on the taskbar. By pinning a program to the taskbar, it’s always right there in front of you so you can open it with a single click


• Now you can rearrange them in the order you want by clicking and dragging.

It's probably a dock.

Despite protestations to the contrary, the new Windows 7 taskbar is essentially Microsoft's rendition of the OS X dock. As you can see, Apple has been using a Dock since 2001. It used to look a lot like the W7 taskbar currently does, and it still does if you run it in 2D mode. Apple's current Dock has been in use since 2007. They have removed and added a number of features over the years. It currently serves as an application launcher, allows you to dock various applications you use frequently, hosts the running applications and open windows, and has context sensitive menus for the docked items.

Sound familiar? That is almost exactly how MS describe the W7 Dock, I mean taskbar.

Windows integrates many of its Window management tools directly into the dock, I mean taskbar. It's preview system, called Aero Peek, groups similar applications under one icon, shows thumbnails of those applications above the taskbar, and will provide a magnified view of each thumbnail if you hover over it.



The W7 Peek is supposed to be an advancement of the Aero Peek from Vista. It's a logical next step to let users interact with the preview windows. You can close windows, and you can hover the mouse over an open thumbnail to get a larger preview.

The taskbar also allows the use of context sensitive menus, called jumplists, for many applications. Microsoft demos how well the jump-lists work for their applications, i.e. IE (I had to), Word, Power Point, etc. What they don't show you is that it doesn't work well with many 3rd party apps, such as Firefox. You have to install additional software (called winfox) to get the jump-lists to work properly for FireFox.

Again, this is similar in concept to what OS X has been doing for years. The execution has a different look, and places more emphasis on management from the taskbar.

The Mac's preview system is spread out over two features called Expose' and Quicklooks. Expose will show small versions of all open windows and applications when you move the mouse into a predesignated corner, or hit the Expose' hotkey. Users can click on the previews to open them. It can also hide all windows and provide immediate access to the desktop. Users can also interact with the preview windows. You can copy and paste from them, close them, and rearrange them.



(This is the premiere of Expose for OSX Panther back in 2003. Around 2:16 Jobs describes the Expose feature that lets you view only the open windows for a particular application.)


Expose hasn't changed much. Apple has added a few refinements that allow for more control directly from the dock:



(Look for this feature in Windows 8.)

Quicklooks is a preview system that works in conjunction with Finder. (Windows Explorer is similar to Finder.) It provides large previews of files, allowing users to read files and even navigate through documents in a moderately sized preview window.



And then there's the "new" contextualized menus called "jumplists". Here's OS X's contextualized menu:




Here's Windows 7's jumplists:



I'm OS X, and Windows 7 was my idea.

iMock part 3 iMitation

iMock part 3

The Mac look for cheap.

Now that I have vented my mockery of the Mac I will leave off on the series with iMitation. Despite it's flaws, and ridiculous costs, Macs are very visually appealing. A quick check of youtube will reveal a host of instructions for making Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7, and Ubuntu look like a Mac. Basically you throw up some wall paper and install rocketdock, AWN, or Cairodock. You then move your task bar to the top of the screen and you're set. The effect isn't quite perfect in Windows, but it works well.

If you want the exact look of the Mac, the best bet is to convert Ubuntu Linux. There's a simple install called Mac4Lin. You download it from sourceforge, run the script, and change the background. Installing a dock involves a simple trip to launchpad for a ppa, or a few easy entries in the terminal.

Here's some videos:

Windows:



Ubuntu:





You get the Mac look for the PC price. Save yourself some money, or buy one PC for yourself, and two more for some friends.

iMock part 2

It's time for iMock 2.0. In iMock 1.0 I mocked the Mac's price. Here, I mock the Mac's problems, and I bust the myth that they don't have any.

According to Apple's ads, you don't get the same problems on a Mac that you do on a PC. They name crashes, viruses, and "a ton of headaches"




Let's start with crashes.

You will recall from a previous blog entry that I explained how hard drives work. (What! You haven't read my previous posts! Blasphemy!) To recap, hard drives are a series of fragile, magnetic platters spinning at high speeds (around 7200 rpm.) Data is written to and read from hard drives by a magnetic read/write head that is not supposed to touch the platters. When you walk around with your laptop or Macbook powered on it creates instability in the platter spin and will eventually result in the platters touching the heads. This is when your computer crashes.

Apple purports that it's line of computers are the indestructible kings of computers. I believe this tends to make Mac users careless, and more likely to walk around using them. This results in hard drive crashes.

Now let's talk about headaches.

Apple, like many PC manufacturers, was using Nvidia cards for their integrated graphics cards back from 2007 through 2009. Every major manufacturer, including Apple, was caught by surprise when Nvidia shipped factory loads of defective cards. Here's some links:

http://support.apple.com/kb/ts2377 Apple gets hit and has to recall a ton of products.

HP has the same problem.

Dell gets hit, but refuses to recall or repair the effected systems.

Sony gets hit too!
Sony Support


Pretty much everyone that used the Nvidia GeForce 8000 series got hosed there. Apple wasn't immune. And if you think having a system that won't boot because the graphics card fried isn't a headache, you never figured out where the on button was on your Macbook.

There are whole websites run by Mac users devoted to complaining about defective Apple products. Here's a few:

appledefects.com

briancometa.com

Here's Apple's official recall page:

Apple exchange/repair


Not to mention that iPods and iPhones can turn into grenades.

The only truth to the ad is that Macs don't get viruses. There may be one recorded virus for the Mac, and it requires user stupidity to work.

On the other hand, Macs are extremely vulnerable to hacking. There is an annual competition for hackers called Pwn2Own, held by CanSecWest. They offer a series of computers as prizes for hackers, as well as a cash reward. Basically the first person or team to hack a device gets to keep it. Apple's computers are always the first to fall, and always get hacked within a matter of minutes.

Hacker commentary:

Why Safari?  Why didn’t you go after IE or Safari?
“It’s really simple. Safari on the Mac is easier to exploit.  The things that Windows do to make it harder (for an exploit to work), Macs don’t do.  Hacking into Macs is so much easier. You don’t have to jump through hoops and deal with all the anti-exploit mitigations you’d find in Windows.
It’s more about the operating system than the (target) program.  Firefox on Mac is pretty easy too.  The underlying OS doesn’t have anti-exploit stuff built into it.” --Charlie Miller, hacker.

Reports of hacks:
Mac falls in 2007

Mac falls in 2008

Mac falls in 2009

Mac falls in 2010.

So there you have it. Mac's crash. Mac's have faulty hardware. Mac's have recalls. Mac's are easy to hack and exploit. And Mac's have sites run by Mac users to complain about Mac's. Let's call this myth busted.