It's worth noting that this plugin crashes for me in Chrome and Chromium every time I right click on a flash object.

Indeed. Why this is noteworthy, I'm not sure. I think iTunes provides a better news service for iPod updates than any blog does. It's worth knowing if something's wrong with an update, but not really if there's an update out. That's automatic in these hi-tech days of the 21st century.

As much as people would love to have Apple open up the iPhone and eliminate the need for jailbreaking, I think the community has already shown its trustworthiness with such power through the RickRoll worm. Leaving a root password set default and without instruction to users who wouldn't know better is plain stupid. I've been waiting for alpine to rear its ugly head since the first time I tried a jailbreak. The bottom line is that jailbreaking is giving power to users who don't understand what's going on, and can't wield it correctly. I think an enterprise user fits squarely in this category as I've seen plenty of them in my own organization who are more than happy to blindly install firmware hacks and unofficial/unapproved software without any second thought.

There are of course downsides to an unjailbreakable iPhone that may make iPhone less desirable for some users, but I really doubt those few users leaving the platform would put much of a dent in the iPhone user base. I like the idea of "if you can't open it, you don't own it," but realistically, I'm not sold on opening the iPhone being as easy as jailbreaking is today.

Agreed. It'd be a heck of a lot better to spend the time to learn how to make an rsync and cron backup to something like dropbox or a local network server. These are tools that aren't going anywhere and will always operate quietly in the background.

All the problems? I have one of the "affected" computers, it's one model of hard drive, and it was only an annoying noise and it isn't anymore. There's nothing wrong with the current lineup. A good reason to wait would be i7. On that note, the only reason I see apple changing their mobile lineup out of schedule would be i7. The current MBP is only halfway through the usual update cycle, I doubt we'll see any changes for a while.

THIS IS WHY WE CAN'T HAVE NICE THINGS!!!

True that it doesn't help the second issue (assuming it really is different), but I'm happy if they approach the first one given that it's the problem I've got on my MBP.

The problem being fixed isn't limited to 17" MBP machines, but any machine with the 500Gb 7200RPM CTO option, which includes 15" unibody MBPs.

I have this exact problem with a brand new 15" with the 500Gb 7200 RPM drive. I usually just ignore it, but I'm hoping that eventually some solution will come out that Apple will be able to perform on it... I've tried the user ideas such as changing the power settings on the drive and this user account deal (I had one anyhow), but haven't really noticed those helping. Until there's a solution, I've got my eyes peeled.

Agreed that paper lists suffer from a giant flaw, I never have it with me. However, I haven't bought any apps for that. I used Evernote for grocery lists for a while, but now I'm using Google Tasks and it's p-e-r-f-e-c-t for it. I can add things to my list anywhere and any time, and when I get to the store, just flip to the grocery list and start shopping.