Leander Kahney Quotations

But French legislators aren't just looking at Apple. They're looking ahead to a time when most entertainment is online, a shift with profound consequences for consumers and culture in general. French lawmakers want to protect the consumer from one or two companies holding the keys to all of its culture, just as Microsoft holds the keys to today's desktop computers... Apple may not qualify as a literal monopoly -- there are lots of ways to get music and buying online accounts for only a small fraction of total music sales. But the sliver it does control it controls almost completely, and it's not out of the question to suggest that this sliver will ultimately become the only way people will buy music in the future.

Jobs has said nary a word on behalf of important social issues, reserving his talents of persuasion for selling Apple products.

To them it's a rational choice. It's just the best computer around.

Consider this: Apple says its stores are now making more than $1 billion in sales per quarter. Just two years ago, the stores were making $1 billion a year -- and at that time they were the fastest-growing retail operation in history, beating the previous record holder The Gap to $1 billion annual sales in just three years, according to Ron Johnson, the executive in charge of Apple's retail operations. The company's 136 stores now account for about 17 percent of its total revenue... Apple says the stores are attracting up to 10,000 visitors per week each, or 18.1 million visitors a year in total. These are extraordinary figures.

The same is true of Windows and other platformsthere are dozens of potential ways in, according to the SANS Institute, but a vulnerability does not an exploit make. These Mac security holes are a storm in a teacup. They've inspired hundreds of stories in the press and even the national network news, but if they were Windows holes, no one would have blinked.

It's huge news for the Mac community. It's a real bombshell. Hell has frozen over, black is white, two plus two equals five, the whole fabric of the universe has been ripped open.

In New York, researchers have created a working prototype of an amazing touch-screen interface for a computer that, unlike most touch screens, supports multiple touch points -- or multiple people. Running on OS X, the interface is reminiscent of Steven Spielberg's fictional, gesture-based UI in Minority Report -- but much cooler.