Crazy Apple News Site

Okay, okay, don’t panic. Just because CARS just got a post is no reason to freak out.  I mean, it’s not a real CARS post, is it? It’s just a link to a Macworld article.  An intelligent, well thought out, and fairly funny Macworld article.  Um… maybe no one will notice.  Maybe it’ll just go away on its own.  Let’s just… let’s just pretend we didn’t see it. That’ll work.  

Oh, and don’t click on these links.  There’s nothing to see out there. 

The CANS labs have reached a shocking conclusion that may affect the outcome of the virtualization wars on the Mac.  

According to our research, Parallels is 28% more effective than VMWare Fusion at keeping the stench of Windows evil out of your Mac OS.  

“It’s well known that Windows exudes a certain amount of evil whenever it’s running,” said our lead testing ninja, “and you have to expect a certain amount of seepage. I mean, your Mac is sharing screen space, memory, audio channels, and everything else, so the Windows evil is soaking into your dock, your desktop picture, everything.”

Overall, we found that, after 100 hours of use, Fusion poured 250 units of evil into our test iMac, while only 180 units had spilled over from Parallels.  VirtualBox was tested, but we really didn’t care about the outcome.

“We think it has something to do with the way each system handles its desktop integration,” our ninjas report.  ”Parallels tries to contain elements in a simple ‘cohesion’, whereas Fusion seeks for real ‘unity’.”

Fortunately, there are ways that you can mitigate the effect of Windows evil when using virtualization technology.  The first, of course, is to always run Windows in “single window” mode, so that the virtualizer will wrap a protective Cocoa frame around Windows.  This also mitigates the evil spread by using a single mouse pointer between two operating systems.

“Never share cursors,” said Leo Laporte.  ”A contaminated cursor can carry corrupted drivers, dirty files, anything.  Be sure your cursor is free of Windows before use, every time.”

Other strong pollutants include Windows Media Player, Microsoft Office, and, of course, Internet Explorer.  

“Basically, running Microsoft products that have perfectly acceptable Mac counterparts degrades the moral shield inherent in OSX and allows a greater flow of evil.”

“Internet Explorer is evil,” said Douglas Adams, who came back from the dead to contribute to this article.

When asked about the effects of running Linux in virtual machines, our lab ninjas simply stared. “Linux. In a virtual machine. On a Mac.  Why?  Why would we do that?”

Apple declined to comment, but was seen buying some E-Z Cleen™ Evil Remover after seeing the test results.

Since its launch, iPhone has been the smoothest, sleekest communication device on the market, able to place, hold, merge and separate calls all from a simple, intuitive interface. This is all well known.  However, one less commonly known feature of the iPhone is its ability to smooth over the actual conversations held using an iPhone.

“My girlfriend called me and told me she was leaving me because all I do is play Neon Tango for upwards of fifteen hours a day,” said Jason Simmons of Rose Park, Washington.   “But when I demonstrated the ability of the iPhone to conference in my mom, her mom, and some telemarketer that called me while we were on the phone, she was convinced that I was the man for her.  Now we play Airburst Extreme head-to-head every day!”

Others have found that the iPhone works equally well in work situations.  ”I called up my boss, to tell him I quit and he can take this job and shove it,” said “Beve Stallmer,” an employee of a large corporation in Washington who wished to remain anonymous.  ”When I got off the phone, however, I was CEO of the company!”

Apple has been quiet about this conversation smoothing technology, but an unnamed source did tell CANS staff that “Steve felt that it would be detrimental to the iPhone’s image if it were to carry crude or painful conversations, as people might associate the iPhone with the work or relationship damage done.  So it was decided that the iPhone would be able to intelligently screen your calls; replacing painful or damaging comments with comments more prone to make people feel that you are intelligent, hip, and basically, a perfect Apple customer.  Now as long as you never speak to people face to face, no one ever has to know that you’re an overweight, opinionated geek!  As you can tell, I’m not using an iPhone right now.”

Apple may have made comments, but all we heard was “Have a nice day” over and over again.

Sad news from the world of open source computing today as Richard Stallman, founder of the Free Software Foundation and principle author of the GNU Public License, was put to sleep.

“It was for his own good, really,” remarked Eric S. Raymond.  ”He was getting, well, rabid is the only way to describe it.  I mean, some of the things he wanted to put into GPL 3.0 were just strange. I won’t get into specifics, but where would we even find a kangaroo suit in Linus Torvalds’ size?”

Raymond assured us that it was done in the most humane way possible. “We brought him into a nice living room with Charles in Charge on the TV. He loved Charles in Charge…” Raymond paused for a moment, his eyes moist. “Sorry…  Anyway, while he was distracted by the antics of the lovable Scott Baio and Nicole Eggert, a technician came in behind him and injected 40,000 lines of pure Windows ME source code into his beard.  Richard was gone before the second commercial break.”  Tears were running openly down his face at this point. “We’ll miss you, big guy.”

In recent months Stallman’s mental stability has weakened, as evidenced by a recent manifesto calling for a change in the name of most operating systems:

In order to underscore the role that GPL’d software plays in our lives, we need to convey to people the idea that the GNU foundation is at the heart of all good software. To this end we need to use the following names:

• All IBM Products will be called “Prison/DOS”
• FreeBSD will be called “GNU/FreeBSD”
• OpenBSD will be called “GNU/OpenBSD”
• No, SERIOUSLY, call it GNU/Linux!  Stop laughing at me!  I mean it!
• OSX has been heavily influenced by free software.  It should be called GNU.5/OSX.  
• Windows will be called “Spawn of Satan”.

…

Leap, the new finder replacement by Ironic software, advertises itself as “better than the finder” at locating both the documents you were looking for and the documents that you didn’t know you were looking for.  However, further testing has proven that Leap is better at locating documents than the actual human brain, and has therefore made the user as useless as an embarrassing vestigial tail.

“With Leap, I no longer need to use my computer,” said tehCatz66 in an online review.  ”All my documents are so easily found, I just think about them and I’m done! Thanks, Ironic Software!”  This is thanks to Ironic’s use of Bluetooth, Bonjour, and Voodoo. 

With Leap you find things based on your natural memory of that file.

says the Leap website.  Macs with wireless connections can automatically connect to your brain, then pull your memories directly from your brain, thus allowing Leap to both index your brain and know what you are looking for, both consciously, as well as subconsciously in the new beta version of Leap 2.0.  ”I won’t say there haven’t been embarrassing situations with the whole ‘subconscious search’ feature,” said Ted Leckie, one of the members of the Ironic team. ”There have.  Like that time that we were demoing the product and this girl with an iPhone walked by.  Leap was searching all the customer’s minds at the time, and suddenly the screen was full of really, really shocking images. Pure lust, in it’s most graphic form.  I mean, it’s just an iPhone!  I’ve got, like, three that I purchased with the proceeds off of Yep.  Don’t tell Tom, by the way. I told him Yep tanked.”

Perhaps the most powerful feature of Leap is the way it can 

…allow you to stumble upon not only the file you were looking for but sometimes an even better one that you weren’t looking for. 

“It’s totally true,” said another user, whose name I haven’t made up yet.  ”I was looking for my will, which I keep as a Pages document, and I found a letter my wife had written to my best friend.  I thought they hated each other, but  now I know that they’re, like, really good friends! Now I can have him over for poker on Wednesdays again! Thanks, Leap!”

Leap is available for only $59 from Ironic software, or if you have overclocked your Time Machine you can go back a couple of weeks and get it as part of the MUPromo Bundle.

In 2008, a hero died. Crazy Apple Rumors Site, known by those who loved it deeply as “Jennifer Frickin’ Connely”, and to the rest of us as CARS, passed into the silent grave of hiatus.  Since then the world of Apple-centric blogging has been barren, a wasteland of egos and self-important Grubers goobers.  Clearly it was time for a new hero to emerge (cue dramatic music, pan out to a sunrise over the crest of a hill) time for a new force in the world of made up humorous Apple news posts. And that new hero is (wait for a dramatic silhouette to rise over the crest of the hill)…ahem.  I said, “And that hero is…” (wait for it.  Someone’s got to be coming…) AND THAT HERO IS…(awww, forget it.)…Someone else, apparently.

But while you wait for a  new paragon of entertainment, you can read this site.  It’s called the Crazy Apple News Site.  You can call it CANS.  Hopefully it’ll be occasionally entertaining and cause you to want to send the editorial staff thousands of dollars worth of free merchandise.  

The current goal of CANS is to get popular enough to get John Gruber to say something nasty about us in person at either MacWorld Expo or WWDC.  It’s not a good goal, but hey, you gotta start somewhere. To this end, posts will be posted, and eventually weekly features will be featured.  New, made up characters will be introduced and improbable personality quirks will be attributed to various people in the Apple organization. You will laugh at our imaginary staff’s antics, smile knowingly at their misdeeds, and, eventually, come to love them.  That’s where the thousands of dollars come in, by the way.  None of this “You are soooo cool! I want to be just like you” crap.  ”You can’t buy food with ‘you are soooo cool’s” is our motto.  If you can’t express your appreciation in the form of cold hard cash or, at the very least, iPod Socks, then you can keep your flower-child love to yourself, you dirty hippies! 

So, um, welcome to CANS.