It's pretty clear that
Apple left no stone unturned in Leopard, making changes and fixes throughout the new operating system. Unfortunately, that also included an upgrade to its crucial smugness subsystem: the image you see above of an old school CRT monitor with a blue screen of death is actually the not-so-subtle gag icon Leopard uses to represent Windows machines on your local network. (Is it any wonder why PC and Mac fanboys tend to get in so many fights?) Granted, many Leopard beta users have seen this icon since the early releases, but we didn't actually think the shipping version would include something so pompous and galling to the other 90%.
We'll save the missive on the subject (although if that's what you're looking for,
Anil Dash wrote a pretty good one), and skip straight to the problem solving: hidden away deep within the recesses of Leopard, far, far away from the reaches of Spotlight, is an unassuming icon file that's doing a great job at perpetuating the myth of Mac users' disdainful sense of self-superiority. Luckily it's an easy fix, and we'll show you the three easy steps necessary to get rid of the BSOD and make your Mac a little less condescending.
Ok, so the file in question (public.generic-pc.icns) lives in /System/Library/CoreServices/CoreTypes.bundle/Contents/Resources/, which is basically a pretty boring place to cruise around (unless you like looking at hundreds of sets of icons). And unfortunately for us, boring places like this are usually locked down tight in Unix systems, so we'll need to use the command line to make some changes.
This is a pretty easy process, especially if you know your way around a command line. First, open up Terminal (it's at Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app), or the terminal app of your choice (we also like
iTerm).
Then, type in the following three commands:
- cd /System/Library/CoreServices/CoreTypes.bundle/Contents/Resources/
- sudo mv public.generic-pc.icns public.generic-pc_lame.icns
[enter your admin password]
- sudo cp com.apple.mac.icns public.generic-pc.icns
That's it! You've backed up the BSOD icon and moved the generic Apple Mac icon to where the system was expecting it, which, if we're not mistaken, should stop it from showing up when browsing your local Windows network. (Of course, you're also free to use another icon instead of the generic Mac icon.) Enjoy, and try not to go around telling people how much more amazing your Leopard machine is than their Vista laptop (and vice versa), ok? It's unbecoming.
posted October 30th 2007 2:54PM
An interesting read. Carried it on http://www.winvistaclub.com as
Leopard makes fun of Windows BSOD's, while choking on its own !
Thanx :-)
Crack open a high-end Mac and a high-end PC side by side. Take a look at the components. Compare and contrast. What you'll find may surprise you. Apple historically uses internal components of lesser quality. Period. The proof is under the hood. Do you want to pay a 175% markup on that IBM Deskstor drive? Go ahead and buy an Apple. I'm also not quite sure why Apple continues to overlook GLARING bottlenecks in all of their systems. 16gb of ram means absolutely nothing if you're still using 7200rpm drives, throughput continues to be (and always has been) one of Apple's biggest, most obvious oversights. Hello, McFly? Can we start using 10K drives like the REST of the computing world yet? Or are you waiting to see how much of a markup you can get away with on those before making the decision to use them...and then act like you're doing the world a huge favor by making the big decision to use them? Get with the program, Apple!
I haven’t read any comments since the first page, but this is all quite funny... When it comes down to the numbers, Microsoft has much more of the market, therefore the individuals that are attempting to perform malicious tasks will go after only that which could potentially have the largest impact. Someone posted a link prior about criticizing the writer something along the lines of http://www.macdailynews.com/, well yea good show, check this one out. As of Wednesday, October 31st their homepage features a nifty little article titled Heise Security: Apple’s Mac OS X Leopard firewall fails every test. so GG guys, GG.
Now on terms of the iphone, I agree with anyone that asks the same question of, "why do I have to hack it to make it do what I want it to do?", yet another accomplishment made by apple, let’s just release a product that everyone is going to want and attempt to bind it with a service that no one really wants. I'm not going to even get into the new ipods, because in all honesty, what is an MP3 Player, something you listen to music on, now what apple has attempted to turn it into, creative has released a much better line of MP3 players... and rightly so considering the fact that what does Creative do? thats right... sound devices as a primary, no? All iPod is, is a fashion statement, if you don’t agree with that, please take a moment to watch some TV or even youtube, and look up or find an iPod commercial. Does Microsoft really ever have any TV commercials? No, because they don’t have to, their stuff is doing well enough that they don’t have to hire a movie star or a some pop sensation to be videotaped holding their product.
Vista may have its issues, but at least we have a community of people that want to fix the damn issues instead of sitting around looking at our competitors stuff and formulating a plot to criticize the next minor thing that comes up. I look at Windows XP no I see an Operating system that is widely supported and deployed in the larger portion of industry. Then I look at Vista and I see improvements upon that system however along with that I see biased opinions based on false claims, people that badmouth Vista don’t know what they are talking about because most of the time they haven’t taken the time to actually sit down and screw around with the operating system, nothing is going to be widely user acceptable some people are always going to want to change something, and with vista all you have to do is a few tweaks here and there and you can make it what you want. Then I take a look at Mac OSx any release that was our prior, I could care less, yea it works, it gets the job done, however then we see Leopard, a few improvements, but it is still running on the same core, so the fact that it has a whole separate marketing and publicity parade makes no sense, lets reinvent the wheel over and over again, repackage it and patent it. Then they have the nerve to insert an icon into this release that criticizes another OS? Yea basically that equates down to the concept that they can’t do anything better to try to counter it than result to a childish pun that only proves how hot and bothered they are about how much better Microsoft tends to be, in this case within the networking world.
So without further adue I leave you with these words and a little entertainment for all of you... some of it might be NSFW, however I do believe this guy sums it all up in these two articles.
http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=macs_cant
http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=iphone
Oh, and I've used both Macs and PC's side by side on a KVM switch for the past 6 years doing high level graphic and video editing work. I know EXACTLY what the strength's and weaknesses of each OS are, and at the end of the day I go home to a custom built PC. This argument will continue infinatum, only until you've used both systems extensively in a high load production oriented environment can you truly draw comparisons. If I had a dollar for every time one of my people said, "This is taking forever on the Mac..." and I respond with, "Then use the PC..." I'd be retired by now.
Given the poor security, maybe they should have called it Leptard or Schleppard.
Leper.
I'm just kidding, I promise! Here, a random bit of MacOS praise to keep the apologists off our tail: Apple's software documentation is amazing. As good as, if not better than, buying an expensive book on the programs.
Digital Research invented the OS (CP/M) and the first OS that sported a GUI (GEM.) Apple bought all their early OS's from DR and Microsoft bought DOS from Seattle Labs. Neither started off making their own OS.
All i'm seeing is two sects of nerds arguing over which identical products is better. I think the reality is we all know the computer world is changing. Change scares the piss out of people.
I'm a gamer and neither Microsoft nor Apple has given me any love in their recent OS's. DirectX 10 is cool as hell... now how do I strip that garbage OS around it out? Is there a option or a Vista flavor to have a Windows 3.11 like OS with DirectX 10? That would be the flavor of Windows Vista I'd buy!
Apple? bleh! I use them for work. But Apple has never given love to the gamers. Apple I think hates gamers and has always ignored us and hoped we go away since the dawn of the Apple II. Do I wave their banner, cheering? HELL NO!
Why? Because i'm not a nerd and computer OS's isn't my religion.
I will cheer for the next OS that can show me the games and gives me top dog performance. So far... all are duds.
http://hritcu.files.wordpress.com/2007/01/crash-different-2-small.jpg
http://flickr.com/search/?q=GSOD+mac
Yep,yep,yep. Anyone using a Mac for a few years would get used to seeing this. I'm amazed that more people don't discuss the "Grey screen of death"...
I love that thing. A hardware-powered failure message with absolutely no attempt to explain the problem. The "prety and intuitive" design philosophy should be thrown out the window as soon a crash occurs, in favour a more informative message helpful to the people who will be wondering what the heck has gone wrong.
Why isn't the software able to figure this out and do a safe, informative, localized BSOD with a crash report and working keyboard input? (Like Windows or Linux tend to do). It's pretty dangerous that a rogue process is allowed to pop around for a minute before that message appears.
Anyway, the BSoD doesn't work anymore. In XP, the system just shuts down with a user-friendly error report when it is booted again.
Apple: Update your jokes!
BSoD hasn't been common for over 5 years. The new anti-Windows meme is "Cancel or Allow?"
It has probably been mentioned in the 5 pages of comments, but since the original article hasn't been updated, maybe not...
That icon does exist in Leopard, and if you go looking for it you can find it.
However, it is *not* the icon Leopard uses to show a Windows machine on your network (at least, not on any of the 3 Leopard running Macs I've checked.) The icon it uses has a blue screen and some text in the top left, a la a terminal program on a generic monitor.
Anil Dash was all wrong on this, and so is Engadget:
Smug Ugly: Taking A Joke Too Seriously.
Let's try this:
http://thesmallwave.com/TSW/Home/Entries/2007/10/29_Taking_A_Joke_Too_Seriously..html
The fight between Mac and Windows started when windows was stolen from Mac. I was in school and it was in the 80's. It is good to see the two groups coming together to end the feud. Maybe the consumer will benefit. Before Apple came out with the graphic interface Microsoft was running dos the great hacking tool. Mac is still the industry's graphic interface choice.
We need people to be honest and work together to create better products. Money isn't everything community is more important.
The icon would have been funny and relevant...8 years ago when Windows ME and Windows 98 reigned supreme.
In late August of this year, I encountered a blue screen error for the first time in many months--it was during an attempted install of Windows XP on a brand new system. I didn't understand, at the time, that XP would not install on a system that has nothing but SATA drives--you have to hit the F6 key at the beginning of the install, so that the install will halt long enough for an SATA driver to be loaded from a floppy.
I didn't do this, didn't know I had to do it...and the install promptly halted, at the point where it would have normally displayed drives and partitions...instead of seeing that screen, I found myself staring at a blue screen Windows Protection Error.
Okay...learn by confusion and by doing. After locating an appropriate SATA driver and putting it on a floppy disk, I began the installation again and there were no further issues.
I can't recall ***when*** I've seen a blue screen error other than the above, with XP or Vista. When Microsoft did away with DOS on their consumer-based operating systems, blue screen errors plummeted.
Apple, get with the times...the joke isn't funny to anyone except diehard Apple fans, because it's extremely old and no longer relevant.
I video edit heavily on a PC with XP, and I get blue screens every other day. Thats why I bought a mac last saturday. So far not a single lockup.
I've been using a PC for video/audio editing for several years...to date, not a single blue screen error, with either XP or Vista.
Having a joke icon appear is at least just that, a joke, compared with MS devious and anti-competitive practices in preventing users running other systems, by generating fake error messages.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/1999/11/05/how_ms_played_the_incompatibility/
It would be nice if some of the more rabid commentators here actually did about 10 seconds of research (you do have Google, don't you?) before committing fingers to keyboard. There you go, that's what happens with PEBKAS.
You guys are all losers, and I think it's time you just shut it.
In the time it took most of you geeks to read through all this crap, I:
1) had sex with my smokin-hot wife, twice
2) took a drive in my Porshe
3) found a cure for cancer, and
4) grew hair on my chest, shaved it, and watched it grow right back in.
Seriously though, shut up - all of you. Put your World of Warcraft game on pause and go out and get some. Maybe then you won't care what other people are saying about your computer or what you think of their computer, at least you got some tail while they were sitting at their keyboard whining about fanboys and blue screens and operating systems.
If an icon popped up for me when I was in your network, it would be a superhero saving a baby from a burning building while drinking a beer. That would be rad.
I don't know. Your new icon features an Apple display with the Tiger background, which is not exactly representative of a "Generic PC."
Furthermore, I doubt Apple has the legal grounds to actually put a screenshot of Windows with the Bliss wallpaper on their icon, so they had to choose something immediately recognizable in icon form as a PC. Since every other icon had an image on the monitor, they went with some generic text.
You're making too much of it, and decreasing usability with your choice of a Mac-like substitute icon.
Meh, its a Mac.
*ahem*
Linux.
:D
On the bright side, it's a beautifully rendered icon.
what ever happened to a sense of humor? Being funny = being pompous now?
never someone will be saying this is like an OS hate crime or OS racial slur or something.. yeeesh
" Microsoft invented this business, so I'm pretty sure they know what they're doing. Apple started to catch on 4 years ago with the ipod 3G and they're trying to transfer some of that success to their computers. They should respect Microsoft, they have a lot to learn still."
How old are you, anyway. Jeesh.
@Spencer: Or, you know, they could have just made a generic PC icon. Or a generic drive icon, since it's not just Windows PCs that Apple mocks with their icon.
I read a lot of the replies and kinda had a laugh. I also had deja vu because the Apple vs. Microsoft argument is sour. I know Windows inside and out and I've been an avid Mac user for years, and a Windows user since i was a child. Both of them have their pros and cons depending on what you do. If you're a gamer, you get a PC (in my case I skipped a PC and got an Xbox 360--an absolutely fantastic Microsoft product). If you're a web designer/web master/graphic artist like me, you use a Mac. Games aren't the focus of Macs because they're primarily geared towards power users and creative fields.
To be perfectly honest though, I hate Windows with a passion due to the amount of grief it's have given me for the past 18 to 20 years or so. I was using DOS before that and still remember my DOS commands. Imagine that--a Mac user that remembers DOS commands.
It's not about what is better or what does what and what doesn't. It's about who you are as a user and what suits your needs. People like me just happen to prefer the Apple alternative. My reasons being that it's built on UNIX thus it's stable, and the applications and power suit my needs.