And in other news...

While not exactly related to troubleshooting, these items relate to Apple's troubles:

Rumor sites gone; Apple's hard line Mac rumor reporting can be a risky business. Several readers have asked me what has happened to MacInsider. It has permanently shut down. No specific reason was given, but other reports (themselves rumors!) suggest that Apple applied legal pressure to get them off the Web. Apparently coincidentally, Mac OS Rumors also disappeared for awhile, although they claim this was due to a dispute with their ISP. They are up and running again, but are still waiting for a new DNS address.

Update: Surprise! MacInsider appears to be back after all.
Update: Mac OS Rumors' URL, http://www.macosrumors.com/, now works again.

Personally, I have heard from several reliable sources that there is a new "hard line" at Apple concerning employees talking to the press. According to what I have been told, people's jobs have been threatened even over some recent fairly non-controversial postings here on MacFixIt!

Yale University: Macs vs. Intel If you haven't already done so, check out the story in the Mac Home Journal about how Yale's ITS Director, Daniel Updegrove, sent a letter to undergraduates advising them against buying a Macintosh - and then got a 3 million dollar grant from Intel that seemed contingent on Yale migrating sites away from Macs and towards Window NT machines. Reports (such as on MacInTouch) now indicate that a similar scenario has occurred at several other universities. Now I know I am Mac-biased and probably over-reacting here, but three questions keep bothering me:

• Doesn't what Mr. Updegrove did seem similar to taking a kickback for giving Intel computers preferential treatment on campus?
• Isn't what Intel doing similar to a branch store of a large chain driving out local mom-and-pop businesses by temporarily selling items at a loss until the competition goes out of business?
• In any other environment, wouldn't these things be considered illegal?