Think Different by Doing Nothing
by Zube (zube@stat.colostate.edu)
Created: Mar 2, 2006
Updated: Apr 18, 2006
http://www.stat.colostate.edu/~zube/docs/appleblah.txt

[Additions, suggestions, corrections or thoughtful discussion always welcome.]

I haven't had a lot of experience with Macs, but with their newfound
popularity, I thought I would give OSX a go.  It took less than 5 minutes
to realize they are just as bad as every other OS when I had to type 
this:

launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.mDNSResponder.plist

to disable the mDNSResponder garbage.  Welcome to the NeXT II.

But I digress.

This rant is directly squarely at Apple.

So, Apple, what the hell is your software lifecycle, huh?  More specifically,
is Mac OSX 10.2.8 supported or not?  If it is supported, where are the 
patches? If it isn't supported, could you perhaps document that somewhere?

I've spent a fair bit of time trying to track down this information to
no avail.

I know you are a huge company and banning Wiley books from Apple stores
must take up most of your time, but honestly.  Even Microsoft, a
company I must seriously grit my teeth to praise does this a zillion
times better than you do:

(Aside: 'This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers 
no rights' is the inanity that lives at the foot of every Microsoft Security 
Response Center blog entry.  This is why my teeth are in such bad shape.)

http://support.microsoft.com/gp/lifeselect

and I can tell in a couple of clicks that Windows 2000 Professional will
go off extended support on 6/30/2010.

Open source does this better than you.  A milk carton with an expiration 
date does this better than you.  

So Apple << milk, for those of you trying to plan upgrades.

And while I'm on my Apple soapbox, let's talk about version numbers.
When I go to this page:

http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/standalone.html

to download the latest quicktime, it would be nice to know what version
I'm actually downloading, either on the page or in the file name.

These "oversights" make me wonder just how serious Apple is about anything.