I have a couple of questions: When does speculation become a rumor? When is a rumor really speculation?

Here’s why I ask: yesterday afternoon I wrote up a piece for The Apple Blog regarding the photos of the banners hung in Moscone Center for next week’s WWDC. I noted John Gruber’s belief that dropping the “Mac” from Mac OS X is an attempt to unify the OS X brand (OS X iPhone and OS X Leopard), and I noted that “this is probably the simplest and most logical explanation.”

And then I jumped into speculative fun times: is Apple planning to license the Mac OS again? Considering the fact that rumors are pointing toward Apple turning .mac into something more platform-agnostic, and the fact that Apple has yet to do anything publicly in regards to Psystar, maker of the “Open Computer” Mac clone, as well as some other conjecture, I put this all together and raised some questions. Do I really think we’ll really see Apple jump into cloning again? I don’t think so. But you can never count anything out when it comes to Steve Jobs (see also: Apple switching to Intel—who saw that one coming?). So I offered my admittedly absurd speculation (said so in the article), and it somehow ended up on MacRumors.

Yes, that’s right. My article. On MacRumors, one of the biggest Mac sites out there. Excuse me while I pass out.

That’s the backstory. So I’ll ask again, when does speculation become rumor, and when…
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One thing I hate is when people criticize for criticism’s sake. OK, we all do it—I do it from time to time—I won’t deny that. But if you need to do it, at least make it look like you tried to come up with some meaningful criticism. A couple days ago, Fortune Small Business posted an article entitled Why Macs still aren’t right for most businesses (via Gruber). Some of the points raised are perfectly valid, like some incompatibilities with VPN clients, but many are, well, downright absurd. Let’s dive in.

The article starts off well enough. Author Jonathan Blum discusses a small business that successfully switched to Macs, then states the following:

“My verdict? Though Apple computers can produce excellent results for small business, expect issues: Macs remain a niche product. Your transition from Windows will not be without bumps.”

OK, so far it’s not too far off point. Macs are a niche product in terms of their small overall share and the fact that Apple basically focuses on three markets: home, creative, and education--though that doesn’t make them unsuitable for business. And with any transition, there are going to be bums bumps¹ in the road.

But then the wheels fall off:

“No matter what you do with a Mac, you have to face Apple’s peculiar vision of all things computerish. First off, the packaging is seriously overdone: The slogan “Designed by Apple in California” posivitively shouts at you from the box. Like I care.”

Seriously? You’re criticizing this? Somehow…
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Four Palo Alto, California teens claim they were banned from the Apple Store after jailbreaking an iPhone on display, according to an article in the Palo Alto Daily News. Here’s the gist of how it went down: Three friends were waiting for a fourth friend, so they decided to wait at the Apple Store on University Ave. in Palo Alto. while there, they jailbroke a display iPhone, downloaded a game, and started playing it. The fourth friend shows up, and after a few minutes, the four of them leave the store. While walking away from the store, the manager and a security guard called them back in and held them for two and a half hours. The manager purportedly took their photographs to send to other Apple Stores — think of “Wanted” posters — and told them they would be banned from the Apple Store.

OK, I know what you’re thinking; is this for real? After all, Apple denied banning the four. My gut feeling is yes, or at the very least, it was the product of a gross misunderstanding. One of the four is Eric Vicenti, a former writer with us here at Deep Thought. While Eric wasn’t with us for much more than a few months, he always came across as very honest. And I think the manager overreacted. Jailbreaking an iPhone at the Apple Store? Probably not a great idea. But anything more than a warning to me seems like overkill. Anyway, that’s my take on it. What…
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If there’s one product category where there is no shortage of options for Mac users, it’s newsreaders. NetNewsWire, NewsFire, NewsLife, and company are being joined by Times, a newsreader that takes a different approach.

Many of the existing newsreaders approach news feeds like an email client handles emails: you have a list of headlines and you click on each headline to read on. For the most part, these newsreaders do what they do well.

Times approaches feeds differently. Times looks and feels less like a desktop app, and more like a physical newspaper. The result is a newsreader that, like a newspaper, allows you to quickly glance over the headlines and article blurbs all at once. So how well does it work? Let’s find out.

The main Times window. The page headers in blue indicate new
unread articles. Click thumb for full-size image.

By default, Times breaks down articles into five “pages” — World, Technology, Science, Entertainment, and Sports. You can add pages, delete them, and rename them as you please. Adding feeds to each page is as simple as dragging and dropping a feed to a page. Feeds are displayed in a Dashboard-like collapsable panel:

Looks kinda familiar, eh?

Each page has three sections for feeds; two sections display “featured”…
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I’m sure everyone has heard the news about how Apple is pushing Safari 3.1 to Windows iTunes customers through the Apple Software Update utility. If you don’t have Safari installed, it still offers you Safari 3.1 and it’s checked, by default, to be installed. How is new software an update?

I thought it was just common sense about how sleazy this is. I thought everyone would agree that Apple should do this differently. But no! The Mac message boards are loaded with the Mac faithful defending Apple’s right. I find it amazing.

The arguments submitted by the Mac zealots are typically the following:

1. You aren’t forced to do anything and it’s your own fault if you install it accidentally.
2. Microsoft has been doing it for years.
3. Apple told us they were going to do this.

In response to #1, I tell them to remember this argument the next time they accidentally install some malware on Windows. This argument is just really weak. Yes, you can uncheck Safari and not install it, however I agree with John Lily of Mozilla that people should trust their software updater to just update their existing software and not use it to push software onto people who didn’t ask for it.

In response to #2, I don’t think it is true that Microsoft has done this for years. I have a fresh install of Vista Home Premium and the default behavior is to only offer me updates for Windows. There is a link…
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