Good news, Historian. You can get a “Hackintosh” that will be a Mac in all but name and appearance. You can either get the necessary bios mods from the internet or even buy one ready-made at a local computer place that builds their own hardware. These can be desktops, laptops or even netbooks.

Even here in Brazil, there is a small computer parts and repair facility a couple of blocks from me that will either convert a system you own or sell you one ready-made.

I’m sure that many of these places do not advertise their offerings to evade he perennial threat of lawsuits from a predatory Apple. (doesn’t that sound a lot like Microsoft of a few years ago?)

A converted system looks exactly like a Mac to on-line checks and will accept upgraded software such as OSX 10.6.2 to 10.6.3 and run any Mac application. Does Apple hate this? I’m sure they do. Does anyone really care? Not I, nor anyone else I know.

Google “Hackintosh”. Have fun and place safe, children. :)

Well Stevie Jobs, I didn’t follow you in search of your comet some 30 years ago and I’m not going to now. Nope, I’m happy with my Android and current carrier Sprint. Now with today’s announcement that Android phones have surpassed the iPhone, history again has repeated itself. Like always, Apple is too late to the dance and all of the eligible boys and girls are taken! Will he ever learn?

“If you wonder why something is the way it is, find out who is making money from it being that way.” Cynical? Yes. Accurate? Even more so.

It will be interesting to see what the 4th gen iPhone is like. According to the infamous lost prototypes, it appears to have a different screen resolution. We’re trying to develop future sites and apps to be more ppi agnostic and let the device scale things as appropriate.

“What could possibly be a justifiable reason for the government to step in and take all that away?”

AFAIK, the app store submission process and restrictions are certainly more open than, say, Wiiware for the Wii, or the PS3′s online store. Interestingly, there happens to be roughly the same number of Wii’s as iPhones sold in the world (about 50 million each).

Anyways, say Walmart said they didn’t want to stock shelves with floor lamps that use a particular bulb type because they are suspected of causing house fires and because of that could tarnish the Walmart brand? Would the government jump all over them and force them to stock those lamps? Doubt it. Would that bulb manufacturer that has a vested stake in selling those bulbs (and which has a monopoly) put up a big stink and scream that Walmart was taking away choice from consumers to drum up support for their side? Perhaps.

The cross-compiling brew-ha-ha that Adobe and Apple are having a spat over is mostly just drama, imho. I mean, it’s not like Adobe has an open and standard language governed by a consortium that they want developers to have access to for the ‘greater good’. They control the definition of what Flash ‘is’ and what Actionscript ‘is’ at any given moment and exclusively sell the development tools for it. Adobe has said they don’t want to release Flash control to a consortium (the way they did PDF and Postscript) because they don’t want it to be “designed/managed by committee”, which is obviously a loaded argument.

Adobe’s “choice” campaign is misleading. They are talking about developers’ “choice”, not end-users. The two are mutually exclusive, if you allow developers to make Flash apps, then you have to force the end-users to have Flash to use those apps. It goes so far as to if there was Flash browser support (even if just opt-in) that content providers would find it hard to justify the cost of using more efficient open standards to alternatively deliver content if they can simply say “you need to install Flash to view this content, click here to download!”

In any case, the Flash ‘battle’ should have been 3 years ago when the iPhone came out. The truth is that many (everything I’ve tested so far, except Hulu because they want to force people to watch ads and to ‘secure’ the content from download) have since then migrated away from Flash for mobile devices. The result is less battery drain, better security, and less crashes than the regular desktop cousin’s browser that has Flash.

I say again, you are an intellectual coward. You evade the questions and continue to say things behind the safety of your keyboard that you would never say face-to-face.

So, either back up what you say with some verifiable facts, or do yourself a favor and just STFU.

And perhaps idiot was the wrong word to describe your comments. Ignorant, full of hot air, troll-bait… any of those might work to describe someone who is willing to throw away thousands of dollars worth of Macs, iPhones or iPods simply because they don’t like the way Apple does their business – after they’ve already purchased said items.

I think I offered proof that your comments are misguided at best. You CAN in fact, convert, share and copy media that runs on Apple products. I do it all the time, as do many other people I know. I’m not going to give you lessons on how to convert a song from MP4 to MP3 format, but if you spend all of 2 minutes searching for it, you’ll find the instructions.

The proof that consumers DO want a somewhat closed development/sales business model are the sales figures for iPods, iPhones, iPads and other Apple hardware. Apple is making money hand-over-fist. That’s coming from people who don’t care about tech geekery and just want their phone, computer and music player to work as advertised without viruses, malware, and apps that don’t do what they claim, or drain their battery after 20 minutes of use.

Apple didn’t START putting “profits and control” AHEAD of their customer’s best interest – they’ve ALWAYS placed profits and control as a main focus of their business. That IS in their customer’s best interest – that’s why they’ve been so successful.

I fail to see why it’s so hard to grasp the fact that as long as Apple maintains control over what and how an application finds its way onto my iPhone, iPad, iPod or Mac, it by-and-large will work as advertised. I don’t have to worry about viruses, malware, spyware, and cruddy apps that bring the entire device to its knees.

I could care less what software a developer uses to create the app, or how easy or hard it was to do, or whether or not he has to jump through hoops to get it to work on other platforms. All I care about is if it works on MY APPLE DEVICES.

It’s not a perfect world. But if you’re so put-out that some developer has to learn a new coding method to bring some app to the iTunes Store that you’re willing to throw away your investment over it… send it to me, I’ll gladly take it off your hands (since you’re “finished with Apple” anyway. Good luck running MS, Adobe and Apple software on Linux!

You deny what I said but offer no real contrary proof. You didn’t prove Apple is not trying to control all access and media sources. Apple does want everyone to be tied into their stores for content and applications. The fat that they have not totally succeeded doesn’t change their intent. I doesn’t mater what a company does, there are always people that can find a way around it.

Until you can offer real proof of what you say, stop looking like a bullying fool yourself.

Apple keeping total control IS in the best interests of their customers. That’s what tech pundits don’t seem to “get.” By and large, most users could care less about the “openness” of Apple’s business. They just want a computer, phone, music player that works. Every time. Easily.

The customers is locked into Apple’s stores, software and media? Huh? I can put ANY video, movie or TV show I want on my iPod touch. I can convert any song to MP3 no matter where I bought it – including from the iTunes store – which means I can share it, convert it, and copy it.

Apple’s products aren’t nearly as “closed” as tech journalists and geekoids would have you believe. You have to be smart enough to look past the B.S.

In this equation you have described, Apple comes first, then the service provider, then third-party application designers. The customer is locked into Apple’s stores for product, software and media. At that, a customer doesn’t really own the media as he cannot copy it, share it, or convert it to another format.

Furthermore, media can be remotely deleted if Apple determines (thinks) it’s interests have been violated.

So long, Apple, it’s been a nice ride, but we’re through. Hello Android and Linux.