iWarez 829
asv108 writes "It seems that people are finding new uses for their iPod. According to this story in Wired, a Dallas area CompUsa employee caught a teenager transferring a fresh copy of Office for OSX to his iPod from a store demo machine."
Re:Wait a minute... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:And I Thought... (Score:5, Informative)
It's irrelevant, I guess, since nobody actually reads the stories anymore.
Re:would it work? (Score:3, Informative)
I've done clean MacOS installs (which replace the system folder with a fresh one) and then, the next time Office ran, it executed the "first run" routine which placed the proper files back in the System folder -- essentially replicating the process of dragging an Office installation from one machine to another without the installer app. In fact, one of the install methods that the Office CD offers (at least, my Mac Office 2001 Educational Edition, since I work in a university) is to just copy a folder from CD to hard disk.
So yes, it will work when copied from the iPod to another Mac, at least if it's Office 2001 -- I don't know for sure if Office 10 does this as well, though we also have the educational edition of that. (I've never tried.)
I had to look it up. (Score:2, Informative)
One entry found for imbroglio.
Main Entry: imbroglio Pronunciation: im-'brOl-(")yO Function: noun Inflected Form(s): plural -glios Etymology: Italian, from imbrogliare to entangle, from Middle French embrouiller -- more at EMBROIL Date: 1750 1 : a confused mass 2 a : an intricate or complicated situation (as in a drama or novel) b : an acutely painful or embarrassing misunderstanding c : a violently confused or bitterly complicated altercation : EMBROILMEN
Found it here. [m-w.com]
Your are right! (Score:5, Informative)
Webb watched the teenager copy a couple of other applications. He left the kid to find a CompUSA employee. "I went over and told a CompUSA guy, but he looked at me like I was clueless," Webb said.
Unsure whether the kid was a thief or an out-of-uniform employee, Webb watched as he left the store. "I thought there's no point in getting any more involved in this imbroglio," Webb said. "Besides, this is Texas. You never know what he might have been carrying."
CompUSA representatives didn't respond to requests for comment. Neither did Apple officials.
So basically the CompUSA people had no clue what was going on. Typical.
Also note that nobody was caught as the poster claimed. The event was merely witnessed, nobody was caught.
Re:So beatiful.... (Score:2, Informative)
I've never used it, but supposedly it works well.
Re:And this is news...? (Score:2, Informative)
The problem with dragging the Office folder-- aren't the preferences/serial/whatnot stored elsewhere? I remember in my days of using a Mac and buying a new one I'd have to sort out the preferences files in the system folder to move my programs over to my new computer and avoid the hassle of restoring them. Microsoft programs, in particular, like to scatter things all over the place.
Who knows. Maybe OS X is different, I haven't bothered to touch it after experiencing repeated kernel panics.
-Sara
Re:And I Thought... (Score:3, Informative)
"To install..." (Score:4, Informative)
That's what it says on the Office X CD. You copy that folder, and when you launch an Office app for the first time it checks to see if that other stuff isn't there. If it's not, it copies it there to complete the install.
From the article: When installing Office, users simply drag and drop the Office folder to their hard drive. Everything is included, including a self-repair mechanism that replaces critical files in the system folder.
Chances are, just copying the Office folder worked like a charm. If not, it's not like he can't grab a
~Philly
Re:And this is news...? (Score:2, Informative)
I'm not exactly sure why, but all you need to copy an application is the folder containing it and related files. I think that it must just create all of the preference files and such the first time you open the application (this is also why you can delete the preference file of an application at any time with no ramifcations). This works on even seemingly complicated applications, like Mathematica. Not that I would know or anything.
Actually. CompUSA (in Dallas) is pretty good (Score:2, Informative)
Re:It's newsworthy (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Is that bad? (Score:3, Informative)
According to the rules, those are the only things that should be outsid the application bundle except for saved files which would be normally saved in ~/Documents.
An application bundle is a folder that looks like a signle file application but is in reality a folder. Nobody puts their files inside an app bundle. That would be as asinine as trying to save everything on the root level of your hard drive in windows.
Re:Prevention suggestions (Score:2, Informative)
Now why the demo machine needed to have Office installed is another question. In my experience, CompUSA/Best Buy/etc. try to prevent customers from being able to do anything useful on the demo machines.
Re:quick delete.. (Score:5, Informative)
Depends on your definition of "quickly"; it can be done [apple.com], but you'll need another Mac handy....
Re:Hmm (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Mac Installation Still Works Like That??? (Score:1, Informative)
On the original Mac in 1984, an application was just one file, but that file had two forks, one with the data and one with resources such as bitmaps and such stored in it. If you wanted to access the resources, you had to get a special editing program to open that part of the file and copy or change icons and bitmaps.
In Mac OS X, an application appears to be just one file, and acts like one file if you run it, but it is actually a special kind of folder called a bundle. Inside the bundle is a whole hierarchy of folders, with resources such as bitmaps, sounds, and icons are all stored as independent files. If you want to change something, you can replace a file. It's like a whole Web site is turned into one document, but inside that document you still have
I like it because the inside of the bundle is sort of like backstage, a place where developers can be developers and name their files whatever they want, and the outside of the bundle is onstage, showing only what the user is interested in. If they do want to look inside (backstage), that is also easy to do. You can Control+click on an application bundle and choose "Show Contents" and it opens as a folder. You can also "Show Info" on a bundle and if the app uses plug-ins, there is an "install plug-in" item in the Finder's Inspector. The idea with all of this is that the user doesn't have to navigate the file system to make things work.
You can also rename or move an app bundle wherever you want, which is why it was easy for this guy to move Office from
Honestly, I was "installing" an app last night (download a disk image, open it, it mounts like a CD would, and then you drag the item from there to wherever you want) and I flashed back to when I used Windows, where you run an installer and afterwards find out that you can't run RealPlayer anymore or something. I don't know how Windows users do it in this age of a billion apps all over the Internet.
Finally, one last advantage is that you can put an alias (shortcut) to your
Re:Oh that is so true... (Score:2, Informative)