2009 June

Jun 09

Apple’s Myopia

Posted in: Apple by Damien Barrett 4 Comments »

apple_blur Apple is completely screwing over a significant portion of its most valued customers by making laptops with non-removable batteries.

At the school where I work, we’re planning to lease 1000+ Mac laptops for a 1:1 laptop program to start in August of 2010. Until yesterday’s keynote, we were thinking that Apple’s 13″ Unibody MacBook would fit our needs well. In case you hadn’t noticed, Apple changed their laptop lineup yesterday, converting their Unibody MacBook into an entry-level MacBook Pro and making the only MacBook in the lineup the white polycarbonate one.

The problem here is that the only laptop in their lineup now that has a removable battery is the older style white plastic one. The desirable durability improvements of the newer Unibody models make it a better choice for our students (4th – 12th grades) and faculty, but the non-removable battery invalidates this model from our decision-making process. With limited power in our rooms and on our campuses, we were planning to rely on banks of battery-charging stations to allow our students and faculty to get through the day by simply swapping out a drained battery for a charged one. This solution has successfully been deployed in many 1:1 schools. A non-removable battery renders this solution unworkable for the vast majority of 1:1 laptop programs around the country.

And let’s not forget about the legions of MacBook Pro-toting photographers and film industry professionals who rely on MacBook Pros and swappable batteries to get their work done while in the field

When Apple released the 17″ Unibody MacBook Pro with a non-removable battery, I wrote it off as an experiment by Apple in their product line. I should have seen the writing on the wall and foreseen that they’d move this “innovation” into the rest of the new product line. Apple claims that these non-removable batteries get a 7-hour charge, which may be true for a brand-new battery. But what would we do when we are two years into our three-year 1:1 lease and the batteries start to fail (as all rechargeable batteries do). Apple certainly wouldn’t replace the failing batteries, even under AppleCare. Nor would they pay for the extra labor involved in replacing 1000 non-removable batteries. A significant reason my school is considering the Apple platform is because our small technical staff can adequately administer 1000 Mac laptops. For our school to consider a Windows-based 1:1 laptop program, we’d have to double or even triple our technical staff, a showstopper. The laptop program simply wouldn’t happen.

I’ve been trying to figure out why Apple would make such a myopic decision with their popular line of laptops and keep coming up bewildered. Their official explanation offered at MWSF (ostensibly it provides a larger battery with a longer lifespan) just doesn’t hold any water with me. Everyone I know who needs a longer charge would rather buy another battery and swap it out whether on the plane, or in the field, or in a 1:1 classroom. It’s a stupid decision by Apple and it’s alienating some of their most important and valued customers.

Everyone makes their decisions based on their own circumstances and environment(s). For some, a non-removable battery isn’t a problem. For many more, it’s the problem. A $500 netbook running a Linux distro is starting to look much more attractive than I ever thought it would be. It’s half the cost of the decidedly non-durable white MacBook and yet can still do 90% of our planned technology integration. Apple, are you listening?

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Jun 02

Why I’m Blocking Bing.com on my School’s Network

Posted in: Software by Damien Barrett 11 Comments »

bingcom1 Like the rest of the IT industry, I noticed when Microsoft–the proverbial 800lb gorilla in the room–waded into the search engine market with what appeared to be a fairly sophisticated new product, Bing. Billed as a “Google killer”, it does actually show some promise: clean interface, fairly accurate results, decent customization options, and it’s fast–all things that a good engine should be. Unfortunately, Microsoft’s cluelessness has once again bitten them in the ass and rendered their shiny new search engine completely unusable by the vast majority of school systems in this country. Here’s why.

Like most schools, we have a content filter. Ours happens to be [redacted], but these filters all work the same way, by blocking content from known-bad lists of domains. Some use fuzzy logic as well, but most are fairly straight-foward category-based content filters. Before we go further, try this as a experiment:

1) Go to Bing.com

2) Search for “Jenna Jameson” or any porn star name

3) Click on Videos at the top.

4) Turn off “safe search” if you haven’t done so already.

5) Now scrub your mouse over each of the videos in the search fields.

6) Voila! Instant porn, available to anyone, regardless of a content filter.

Right, okay, so what to do? As an IT administrator in a K-12 school, I can’t very well allow this content on my network. I’ve contacted my content filter provider and they said this:

After doing some research, it looks like Microsoft has developed Bing is such a way that will make it very, very difficult to block the inappropriate and/or dangerous content on the video links.

Most sites like this will have a page for turning on adult content, will allow a parameter to be passed that enforces safe searches, or other things. Microsoft appears to have done everything in the most difficult possible way. Everything is parameter based and mostly driven by javascript and random id numbers with zero clue as to content. Whereas Google and others embed the URL of the site where the content came from, which allows a partner to filter individual pieces out of results, bing does none of this. As there is no current way to block individual portions of a page and/or tools to enable something similar to “safe search”, at this time our recommendation is to simply block bing.com in your policies if you are concerned about users accessing inappropriate content.

So that’s my solution. Microsoft has left me with no option except to block their entire search engine. Good job, Microsoft. You’ll never win the search engine game with solutions as clueless as this.

6-17-2009: A day or so ago, Microsoft changed how their search results are delivered. Virtually all porn content is now pulled from “explicit.bing.com” instead of from the main domain itself. Very simply, they’ve listed to the complaints (including mine) and have made it much easier for me to use my existing content filter to block explicit content without having to resort to blocking the entire domain. Today I’ve unblocked “bing.com” and blocked “explicit.bing.com”. In all my testing so far, our content filter is working exactly as it’s supposed to and Bing.com can now be a resource our students can utilize.

More: TechCrunch. FoxNews. Loic Le Meur

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Apple’s Myopia

Why I’m Blocking Bing.com on my School’s Network

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