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you may also want to check out Setting up a Site Server with Jaguar

Anyway, if you run your own name server on your local box, you'll get more control over how long you'll cache hosts for and most likely greatly reduce the number of outbound queries.

It's easy to do if you're on OS X, and most likely just as easy on linux. Sux to be windowz users tho. HEH. unless they hack something thru cygwin? heh.

In any case, in the Aqua interface, trays are a specific & unambiguous interface style that for whatever reason hasn't been used very often so far. The best example I can think of from one of the "core" applications is Mail.app, for which there is a screenshot at Apple's site. The other big application I can think of right now is Omniweb, which uses a drawer to organize bookmarks. (I'm not an Omniweb user, so I wasn't aware of that until searching for this post :). Of freeware apps that I use regularly, the best example I can think of is (the very slick) MacJournal, which uses two trays -- one to present a list of journals, the other to present entries within a particular journal (for example).

Now that I poke around a bit, the best critical reviews of the tray interface I can find so far are this MacEdition review and this Oreillynet tutorial. (John Siracusa also wrote some excellent OSX reviews for Ars Technica, but I can't find a section that focuses on drawers in particular.)

But the authoritative reference -- which unfortunately doesn't seem to have screenshots to go along with the prose -- is the Apple MacOS X Human Interface Guidelines:

Drawers are a special window type, found only in Mac OS X. They are child windows--which slide out from a parent window--that users can open or close (show or hide) while the parent window is open. These windows should be used for tools or controls that are closely associated with the parent window and frequently accessed, but do not need to be visible all the time. For example, Mail uses a drawer to provide access to the user's mailboxes.

So while this isn't incompatible with what you're asking for, it looks to me like it's not quite the same thing. This is an existing toolkit that could be called on by any Cocoa or Carbon application, and it seems to me like this is a perfect example of where best to apply it.

Over at O'Reilly's there's a 2 part article about incorporating Rendezvous in Cocoa apps:
Incorporating Rendezvous into Your Cocoa Applications, Part 1

Oh, my spalling does suck, but nevermind about that :)

But if anyone wants to throw links to great places new Mac ownsers can go to (such as http://fink.sourceforge.net/ ) I'd LOVE to see your thoughts, links, suggestions, etc.

The Mac dev center has been around longer. :)

microsoft is not a hardware company. they make software which is closed, proprietary and holds a monopoly position. apple makes both hardware (mostly closed, although in many places standards-compliant) and software (much closed, but much open).

Apple wouldn't have had to create a "switch" campaign if they hadn't reversed their decision to license out their OS.

why not? they still would have a different hardware architecture (whether it was made by umax or apple) and a different os.

As I recall, Power Computing at one point sold more Mac-OS running computers than Apple did!

which is why the macsimilies were cancelled. apple is primarily a hardware company and uses the hardware profits to subsidize the r&d costs of the os. if hardware profits are cut, the os suffers, thus decreasing the attractiveness of the entire platform and further eating marketshare.

Their market share keeps declining, even as the quality and innovation of their products is on the upswing. How strange.

this statement could be interpreted as meaning that market share and quality/innovation of product are somehow causally related. if this were true we'd have been watching betamax tapes and driving bmw's for the last ten years. don't trust me... trust derrick from o'reilley.

It's eerily similar to watching socialist command economies flounder and fall, while free-market ones thrive and give consumers more choices at better prices.

no... it's earily familiar to watching monarchies flounder and fail while revolutionaries thrive. my analogy is no better or worse than yours. both are unsubstantiated and ubsubstantiatable and serve to do little other than inflame.

For all of these creative artists, most laboring in obscurity, being well-enough known to be pirated would be a crowning achievement. Piracy is a kind of progressive taxation, which may shave a few percentage points off the sales of well-known artists (and I say "may" because even that point is not proven), in exchange for massive benefits to the far greater number for whom exposure may lead to increased revenues.

A few weeks ago, I wrote Microsoft Mac FUD, Phooey, complaining about Microsoft Macintosh Business Unit head Kevin Browne's comments on the eve of Macworld.

This is such a despicable tactic. Microsoft embraced Apple and gave them funding at the height of the antitrust investigation, as a way of sustaining the idea that there was still competition in the market. Now that Apple's back on their feet, and OS X is giving them a run for the money, they pull out of the market. This decision may end up as badly for Microsoft's Office division as Lotus' decision to skip Windows.

Hackers and "alpha geeks" push the envelope, start to use the new technology, and get more out of their systems long before ordinary users even know what's possible.

A good example that's still a bit far out, but that I'm confident is significant. I held a summit of peer-to-peer networking developers, and when we were sitting around having a beer afterwards, a young FreeNet developer said to Kevin Lenzo (who was there because of his early work on IRC infobots): "You sound familiar."

Kevin mentioned that he was the developer of festvox, an open source speech synthesis package, and that he was the source of one of the voices distributed with the package. "Oh, that's why. I listen to you all the time. I pipe IRC to festival so I can listen to it in the background when I'm coding."

Now I'll guarantee that lots of people will routinely be converting text to speech in a few years, and I know it because the hackers are already doing it. It's been possible for a long time, but now it's ripening toward the mainstream.

" ... I know several who have started using Darwin on Intel hardware as there[sic] Unix underpinnings of choice ... "

Todd Hoff writes:

I'm a Windows-only user and I plan to switch to the Mac on my next purchase because of XP's DRM approach. Using XP would be like voluntarily entering a jail cell and closing the door.

From an interface perspective, I don't find the Mac superior.

Amen to your DRM concerns. Apple has been relatively more enlightened on the subject of DRM, recognizing that most users are fundamentally honest, and unwilling to support the extreme position of fear-mongering media executives.

When industry gets handed lemons on this scale, it has no choice but to turn them into marketing. A common reckoning is that one-third of software is used illegally, but not every theft represents a lost sale. If economic theory has any claim on the real world, Microsoft's pricing should naturally gravitate toward producing an optimum amount of theft. That is, thieves who wouldn't use the product if they had to pay for it, but who might become future customers or who become part of a network of users that makes the software more valuable to legitimate buyers.
...
A sore subject at its antitrust trial, for instance, was Microsoft's practice of awarding large discounts to computer makers who bought a Windows license for every machine they shipped, whether or not Windows was actually loaded. This was supposed to be proof of monopolistic intent, but the only real competitor for Windows is a Windows bootleg. Microsoft's pricing strategy was designed to induce customers not to steal.
...
The entertainment industry is still getting used to the idea that anybody who wants to take the trouble can get its products for free. But as Microsoft has been showing for years, that's no excuse for not making bundles of money.

For all of these creative artists, most laboring in obscurity, being well-enough known to be pirated would be a crowning achievement. Piracy is a kind of progressive taxation, which may shave a few percentage points off the sales of well-known artists (and I say "may" because even that point is not proven), in exchange for massive benefits to the far greater number for whom exposure may lead to increased revenues.

A few weeks ago, I wrote Microsoft Mac FUD, Phooey, complaining about Microsoft Macintosh Business Unit head Kevin Browne's comments on the eve of Macworld.

This is such a despicable tactic. Microsoft embraced Apple and gave them funding at the height of the antitrust investigation, as a way of sustaining the idea that there was still competition in the market. Now that Apple's back on their feet, and OS X is giving them a run for the money, they pull out of the market. This decision may end up as badly for Microsoft's Office division as Lotus' decision to skip Windows.

Hackers and "alpha geeks" push the envelope, start to use the new technology, and get more out of their systems long before ordinary users even know what's possible.

A good example that's still a bit far out, but that I'm confident is significant. I held a summit of peer-to-peer networking developers, and when we were sitting around having a beer afterwards, a young FreeNet developer said to Kevin Lenzo (who was there because of his early work on IRC infobots): "You sound familiar."

Kevin mentioned that he was the developer of festvox, an open source speech synthesis package, and that he was the source of one of the voices distributed with the package. "Oh, that's why. I listen to you all the time. I pipe IRC to festival so I can listen to it in the background when I'm coding."

Now I'll guarantee that lots of people will routinely be converting text to speech in a few years, and I know it because the hackers are already doing it. It's been possible for a long time, but now it's ripening toward the mainstream.

" ... I know several who have started using Darwin on Intel hardware as there[sic] Unix underpinnings of choice ... "

Todd Hoff writes:

I'm a Windows-only user and I plan to switch to the Mac on my next purchase because of XP's DRM approach. Using XP would be like voluntarily entering a jail cell and closing the door.

From an interface perspective, I don't find the Mac superior.

Amen to your DRM concerns. Apple has been relatively more enlightened on the subject of DRM, recognizing that most users are fundamentally honest, and unwilling to support the extreme position of fear-mongering media executives.

When industry gets handed lemons on this scale, it has no choice but to turn them into marketing. A common reckoning is that one-third of software is used illegally, but not every theft represents a lost sale. If economic theory has any claim on the real world, Microsoft's pricing should naturally gravitate toward producing an optimum amount of theft. That is, thieves who wouldn't use the product if they had to pay for it, but who might become future customers or who become part of a network of users that makes the software more valuable to legitimate buyers.
...
A sore subject at its antitrust trial, for instance, was Microsoft's practice of awarding large discounts to computer makers who bought a Windows license for every machine they shipped, whether or not Windows was actually loaded. This was supposed to be proof of monopolistic intent, but the only real competitor for Windows is a Windows bootleg. Microsoft's pricing strategy was designed to induce customers not to steal.
...
The entertainment industry is still getting used to the idea that anybody who wants to take the trouble can get its products for free. But as Microsoft has been showing for years, that's no excuse for not making bundles of money.

If this is the same code that was discussed over at O'Reilly you need to start tweaking how Apache or other things run.

There was a discussion of this over at MacNN Forums as well.

I'm pretty fast in Windows explorer, I have to be navigating between hundreds of source files. I've learned just about all the shortcut keys and my hands move to wherever is fastest to accomplish a given task, mouse or keyboard. When I started working on the mac I was frustrated by the amount of mouse effort I had to expend. If my hands are on the keyboard and I need to do some UI navigation I don't want to have to use the mouse. I call that poor UI. I know there are probably keys there I don't know about, but they certainly aren't readily apparent in the help files. The tab between controls functionality windows has seems to be largely missing. I'm not incapable of learning new shortcut commands, I just need to be able to find out what they are without installing 4 third party applications that add them.

See here for more details, #10 in the linked article. Otherwise, your mac will go beep beep beep and devour your webpages. It's like.....a total bummer and stuff.

in obj-c memory mgmt is much better handled. when you make an object a "reserve" is put on it. when yr done with the object, you "release" it. you can add as many reserves as you want and release them when you wish. when the reserve count finally reaches zero, the object is deallocated. brilliant!

the skinny on obj-c and memory is here

if you find you have objects deallocating prematurely and are losing track of yr reference counting, get the object meter from omni group (makers of omniweb). there's a free demo license that works quite well for the budget-challenged.

Also, O'Reilly's Building Cocoa Applications is excellent for the beginner, although I wish they would publish AppKit & Foundation in a Nutshell for a good off-line reference.

Some other good references:

• http://www.stepwise.com/
• http://macdevcenter.com/
• http://www.cocoadevcentral.com/

Hey little girl,

Hope over the this mac site, and read all the material on Apple-Apache.

I think the site is written with an audience of 6+ in mind, you shouldn't have any problems with it, if you do, come over to AOL, type keyword Apple.

I guess the people at O'Reilly are finally realizing what they are: geeks.

Oh really? You think so?

Um, correct me if I'm wrong, but can't you already run the X server under OS X? I could swear you can Unless of course I'm misinterpreting what you said.As for the mouse, as has been said over and over and over and over, PLUG THE DAMN 12 BUTTON MOUSE INTO THE MAC

Didn't MacDevcenter do something on that a few weeks ago?

I am not the right person for this, but maybe you should check out Tim O'Reilly's piece on switchers today some interesting perspectives there.

...Rhapsody was actually Gil Amelio's strategy where all applications would need to be rewritten as "yellow box" applications. "Yellow box" referred to the combination of OpenStep with Apple technologies and allowed applications to run under Rhapsody (which ran on both Apple and Intel hardware) as well as allowing applications to run under Windows(!) using libraries to be available licence free to developers.

O'Reilly's OS X Developer Center link

One item I'd like to add is that there are many Mac "hobbyists out there that like to tinker and experiment with their systems, and an array of web sites supporting them. I put myself in that category, as in addition to knowing I have reliable Mac system that'll last 3 years or more, I also like to keep them up-to-date without buying a new system. My G3s occurred by purchasing and installing (1 minute) G3 upgrades to surplus 8600 systems I bought for $150 long ago. The upgrade was $200 and I overclocked it to 333 MHz. and if had 1MB cache so the slower disk and bus speeds were hidden. Photoshop on my G3s and G4 runs better than on any of my PCs, and exploiting ALTIVEC for scientific floating point calculations, as per NASA Engineer, Craig Hunter can reach 681 MFLOPS

My 1.6GB G4 cost $700 (eBay helped). I plan to update my Linux/Windows laptop next week to a G4 Powerbook for many of the same reasons you cite. Thus, although I don't consider myself a "guru", I feel confident that anyone with a Mac and the plethora of web info can experiment and "tinker" to upgrade CPUs, CDRW, video, SDRAM, and even run OS/X on 8600s upgraded to G3s, just as I have done.

Thus, even in the 5%, there's a large community of MAC "tinkerers" who can probably hold their own (and find much in common) with their PC comrades who like to "mess with their system" and not just fix power supplies.

• Yellow Dog
• Linux PPC
• Mac On Linux
• 68k Linux
• MkLinux -the original Mac distro

I came across an O'Reilly article today that discusses this. It's titled "Wireless at Sea: A Report from the MacMania Alaska Cruise".

An excerpt:

The connection speed was, as expected, both slow and highly latent because of the satellite relay, but it was effective enough to handle email and limited Web browsing, as well as an upload of my dog mushing pictures.

--Bruce

1. Why would you delete an app because it's built with the Carbon API? This O'Reilly article puts things in perspective. Other commonly used Carbon apps: IE and Finder.
2. I can understand your "looks awful" point.
3. See a post above for editing your prefs to block pop-up adds.
4. OmniWeb has poor support for standards.

Part Two of the original article is now available. I submitted a story on this, but who knows if it is going to be accepted.