I've spent so much time lately complaining about my unfortunate brush with the lousy new "Office 2007" (which I narrowly avoided , much to my delight), that I've completely forgotten to waste any of my time berating Apple computers and their pretentious users..... silly me!

So let's rectify that little problem right now. I have not one.... not two.... but THREE different stories that I will use to ridicule Apple, and Macs, and Mac users, and pretty much anything Apple related in general. It should be loads of fun, so pull up a chair...

First off, I would like to point out an article by a brilliant and witty Englishman named Charlie Brooker. Granted, I hadn't even heard of Charlie until yesterday, and frankly, I don't know a d@mn thing about him... (or even that it is a "him", considering how those Brits are with their gender-neutral names ), but I know that he/she/it wrote this article... and it's brilliant and witty, so I just put two and two together.  The article pretty much sums up everything I've ever thought about Mac users, but have been too stupid to put into words.... and he's British, which makes it funnier, because he uses goofy expressions like "tosser" and "slagging off", neither of which I know the meaning of, but they still make me laugh.

Next we move on to the more technical side. We've all heard that argument that Macs are more secure and stable than PC's. You know... that Macs are impenetrable and rock solid, while PC's are just worthless, virus-infected slag heaps of silicon and plastic? Well, some dude decided to put that to the test. He decided that he was gonna see if he could find any bugs or exploits in the Mac OS. But not just one random bug..... a new bug... every single day... for a month. He called the experiment "The Month of Apple Bugs " (or MOAB, for short). He performed it during January 2007 (last month), and much to the surprise of... well... pretty much just the clueless Mac users.... he was completely successful. He found a new exploit/bug every single day of the month, and documented them all on his page. Of course, the only thing I was surprised about was that he only found one a day.

And finally, from the "and you thought Microsoft was the only monopoly" department... speculation is going around in the tech world about a move that Apple made regarding it's iTunes software. It turns out that they're urging users not to upgrade to Windows Vista because iTunes isn't fully compatible with it yet (even though they've had, literally, years to get ready for Vista). Meanwhile, Apple has been flooding the airwaves with FUD-filled commercials about how difficult it will be to upgrade to Vista, while prompting users to get a Mac instead. And since Apple owns over 70% of the online music market, some people, including the folks at the Inquirer, are pointing out that this looks a lot like monopolistic strong arming. Think about it... you know that most people have your software installed on their computer. You tell them not to upgrade to your competitor's operating system while using your software as leverage... and then you spend all your marketing money on telling them that they should upgrade to your operating system instead.

Of course, if it was Microsoft that was doing this... it would already be front page news, the EU would have already started yet another tribunal, and Bill Gates would, again, have been compared to Hitler on every Mac blog on the internet.

Anyway... that's all for this week. But you can be sure that the next time I run across news that makes Apple look bad and makes their users look like "preening tossers", you'll be the first to hear about it.... unless, of course, I'm too busy trying to deal with some crappy new software that Microsoft puts out.

WATYF