MacBook WiFi Exploit Finally Published

Remember last year's brouhaha (or was it ballyhoo) about the MacBook wireless exploit reported by the Washington Post's Brian Krebs?

Well, David Maynor finally published the details of his original MacBook hack. I have to say, I was always very skeptical of Maynor's whole story, starting with the problems in the original Post story—problems which I still attribute to Kreb's poor reporting, further accerbated by George Ou's babbling. But, Maynor appears to have found a serious problem at the time.

I think the lesson here is how not to report on a security flaw. I also can't help but wonder just exactly what Apple was doing during this time.

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Crash Windows Vista With Two Keystrokes

I caught this one via Fake Steve, a weblog that continues to be interesting and hilarious even after the New York Times exposed the true author.

According to Fake Steve and Information Week Windows Vista has a serious achillies heel: the "E" key. Apparently, holding the Window key and the letter "E" for ten seconds, will totally crash the system.
Nice. I can't wait to get calls from people because family cat managed to make the new Vista machine completely unresponsive by stepping across the keyboard.

Mark Cuban Effuses on MacBook, Flails English Language

Mark Cuban, owner of the NBA's Dallas Mavericks, was so frustrated with his experience with Windows Vista that he purchased a MacBook and apparently loves it. Interestingly enough, the self-anointed 'technology maverick' once starred in his very own HP commercial.

First is that when I close my MacBook without turning it off, it doesn't lose power. It can sit there for hours and then work when I open it up. The 2nd is that it rarely freezes up. Maybe 3 or 4 times in months. Finally, i LOVE the fact that it boots up in 1/1000000000 of the time it takes my PC. It probably will add years to my life .. (ok an exaggeration).

Great Mark, now maybe we can do something about this:

When you get as many emails as I do. Thats a problem. When it also causes the system to freeze, its more than just a problem. My first step was to get a copy of CPU Magazine with Vista tricks. The tricks helped. Everything froze or crashed less often. Significantly less often. But the annoyance factor was beyond belief. I dont run any special applications. I run outlook, Office and firefox. Thats it.

Seriously, Mark there's this thing called a comma, try it sometime.

The iPhone, Buy One Seriously

Everyone has already written everything that could be written about the iPhone, so I'll be quick, it's just really cool. The interface is so fantastic it makes people smile and there are so many thoughtful touches abound that I can't help but be impressed.

Lots of tech pundits will babble endlessly about the lack of 3G, expandable memory, and the lack of a hard keyboard, but quite simply the iPhone rises about these possible flaws with an interface that it's so intuitive as to be nearly magical. Is it perfect? Not by a long shot, but it is very, very good.

The Urge Merges

The Washington Post reports that MTV has abandoned it's partnership with Microsoft by taking their Urge service to RealNetworks. The new service, called Rhapsody America, will work with Verizon's V-Cast, as well as Windows and some digital music-players.

MTV has abandoned it's partnership with Microsoft by taking their Urge digital music service to RealNetworks. The new service, called Rhapsody America, will work with Verizon's V-Cast phones, providing mobile distribution in addition the the usual internet offerings of the previous Urge service.

Doomed by Microsoft's disinterest after the introduction of the Zune player, which was incompatible with the "PlaysForSure" framework originally designed by Microsoft, the Urge service had failed to bring in more than a token number of subscribers. This new service hopes to compete against iTunes and the iPhone, but according to Verizon's Chief Marketing Officer, the service is "..not somehow about how we collectively compete with the iPhone. I think that's a very limiting definition."

Instead, the service hopes its larger pool of hardware devices will lead to a competitive advantage. According to Ron Glaser, CEO of RealNetworks, "This is a close collaboration of partners that believes in the idea of openness. Consumers should get to pick what mobile phone they want and get great music on it." However, a quick review of previous attempts, including those by RealNetworks and MTV, to topple Apple's iTunes indicates that this strategy may not bring consumers away from the iTunes ecosystem.

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The Things We Carry - Flickr Pool

A great little Flickr pool I've found by way of Daring Fireball. It's amazing how prevalent Moleskine notebooks are.

Here's mine, in case you were interested.

Link.

HD-DVD and Blu-Ray dependent on console sales.

One of the most notable thing about this C|Net article on HD-DVD and Blu-Ray sales, is just how dependent the formats are on video game consoles. According to the article, Sony's Playstation 3 accounts for 1.4 Million of purchased Blu-Ray players (only 100,000 are set-top boxes) and the XBox accounts for half of the 300,000 HD-DVD players sold. This is a tiny percentage of the 13 Million XBox systems Microsoft expects to sell by June 2007.

This was already well understood that Blu-Ray would be buttressed by the PS3's introduction, however, so far without the PS3 Blu-Ray is just a flash in the pan. Surprisingly, HD-DVD is also hampered by poor sales, and the Microsoft juggernaut appears strangely uncomitted with their own pet format, having waited until late 2006 to introduce a drive for the XBox to play HD-DVD.

So, while C|Net writes: "...but just six months after the first Blu-ray players went on sale, the numbers show that the fight may be nearing its conclusion..." I can't imagine that this fight is over just yet, rather I'd expect a long internecine war of price drops and PR campaigns.

My own advice, keep your standard DVD player.

AT&T Reports iPhone News, Apple Stock Takes Beating

...and I can't figure out why. According to AT&T's first-quarter financial results, there were 146,000 activations of the iPhone in less than two days. From the report:

Sales of the Apple iPhone have been robust. The June 29 launch allowed for less than two days of sales and activations before the end of the quarter. In that time, AT&T activated 146,000 iPhone subscribers, more than 40 percent of them new subscribers. Sales of the iPhone continue to be strong in July with store traffic above historical levels.

The iPhone was introduced for sale at 6:00 p.m. on June 29 and AT&T's financial quarter ended on June 30. Of course, the stock market reacted to the news and Apple's stock dropped $8.81, according to the NYTimes.

Is the market simply confused between sales, estimated at nearly 700,000 during the weekend, and activations over a shorter time period and hampered by faltering activation servers?

I guess we'll know on Wednesday when Apple reports its own quarterly earnings. It's the only way to be sure.