So....I left my Macbook idle for a couple hours to do some stuff, and when I came back...the screensaver was an ad for the new iPad...

Look I'm not going to go off on a rant about how irritating I find it to hit my with ads on the screensaver, or how if Microsoft tried that with Windows Apple would be the first company to sue for antitrust violations...

I'm just going to politely and calmly ask 'why am I getting Apple ads as my screensaver, and how do I turn them off so that I never see ads again?'

you must have the Apple Newsfeed as your screensaver.

Just go to Settings in the Dock, find "Screensaver" and change it.

Actually it was set at 'random' which I guess is why I've never seen an ad before now...in previous times it apparently chose a different random screensaver.

Heh, better than getting a PC and having to spend hours removing all the junk when you first start it up

Yeah, you're right, spending $100 more at Best Buy or ordering direct online from Microsoft.com to get a PC without crapware is such a gigantic hassle that the only possible solution is to spend 3 times as much money as you need to buy a Mac!

Don't get me wrong, I love both. I have a mac desktop and a pc laptop - I just find Macs much easier right out of the box, and safer to use!

Haha uh oh! Not looking for an argument, just my personal experience from years of using both

Never heard of Flashback! Now I know never to do anything with it, thank you!

I know there are viruses out there for Macs, yes. Seems like there are far less than for PCs? Correct me if I'm wrong on that.

In the past there has been less Mac malware because the market wasn't big enough. Now it is big enough to be worthwhile attacking.

Dun dun dunnn I'll just be extra careful, with both my PC and my Mac

(insert obligatory Linux advocacy here)

WorBlux? Is that you?

Except for the 700,000 Macs that have been infected with the Flashback botnet, this botnet is in fact the worst outbreak of malware in many years, and is, proportionally, worse than any Windows based malware in history.

The worst Windows based malware ever is 'Conficker' which, at its peak afflicted 0.7% of all Windows PC's in October 2010....by comparison, Flashback at its peak has hit more than 2% of all Macs in use.....

So in other words, in terms the percentage of infected computers, Flashback has caused more than twice as much damage as ANY Windows based malware in history.

And it gets worse than that...

Conficker was released in late 2009, but it targeted a vulnerability in Windows XP that was patched in early 2008, more than 18 months earlier. The only people afflicted are the one who were badly out of date on their updates.

On the other hand, Flashback first appeared in October 2011, the vulnerability that it attacked was not patched until 7 months later, in April 2012.

So what that means is, a Windows user who installs all the Windows updates had zero chance of getting hit with Conficker. But a Mac user who had installed all the updates had ABSOLUTELY NO PROTECTION against Flashback for more than 7 months.

That's a truly awful record of security.

I wish I could say I always install windows updates On my second to last laptop, a windows update installed on its own and then it locked me out of my own admin status, cutting some of my capabilities. Took it in for tests and they couldn't figure out how to crack it. So I usually turn those off and only install necessary ones.

The thing I wish Apple people could be made to understand is that the extreme zealotry of so much of the Apple faithful is a big turn off and a huge PR problem for the company...

It's human nature that when people feel like they are being pushed too aggressively in one direction they tend to overreact by pushing back in an extreme way in the opposite direction....


In my life I've had so many conservations that go like this....

Pushy Guy: Dude did you see 'Game of Thones' last night?'

Me: No, I don't want that show, I'm sure it's an okay show but it's just not really my kind of thing...

Pushy Guy: Really? How can you not love this show, I think it's great, I think it's the best thing on TV

Me: I saw part of an episode once while flipping through the channels, and I didn't like it

Pushy Guy: How can you not like it? It's great!

Me: Not only do I not like it, I think it's terrible, it's awful, I hate it

Pushy Guy: Oh come on, it's great, you must not be very smart if you can't appreciate how great this show is

Me: It's not only the worst thing I've ever seen, I think it's the worst thing ever to be on TV, I hate it, and I hate the people who watch it!


Now, if that pushy guy pushes me any further, I'm gonna say that not only do I hate the show and everyone who watches it, I'm gonna say that it's the worst thing ever...and not just stuff on TV and that the writers for the show should all be given capital punishment...and then I'm going to go to a 'Game of Thrones' discussion board and start trolling by starting a thread about how stupid the show is and how much I hate it and wish it would be cancelled....


What I'm saying is that the extreme zealotry and the refusal to just say 'oh, okay, I guess it's not for everybody' when I said I didn't watch the show forced me into a position I didn't really believe by saying it is the worst thing ever, a position I take simply out of spite simply because I resent the way it is being pushed on me....


Does this parable make any sense to you guys at all? Every 'Apple hater' is a guy who at one point was merely indifferent but who got annoyed by the constant badgering....

it must be he was enjoying the 'conservation'

personally, i am ambivalent to apple...in the way that i am ambivalent to microsoft.. they both exist... let's move on

I always call this the Donald Duck syndrome, because James Thurber wrote a story in which a man and his wife got into a fight about her admiration for some movie star and the husband said he thought Donald Duck was a better actor and convinced himself that DD really was better... a silly story, but I always like Thurber He's the one who invented Walter Mitty.