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Mac OS X Software Roundup
zpok writes "The Register runs an interview with the two only Mac OS X coders on the OpenOffice Project. In short: no, OO.org for Mac OS X won't be delayed until 2005, but they could really really use some help."
jeblucas writes "There are new versions of Macromedia's media suite: Macromedia Studio MX 2004 with new versions of Dreamweaver, Flash and Fireworks. There's also a professional version of Flash (for PDA, phone, and video authoring with direct links to Final Cut Pro, Adobe Premier, and Avid Express) to be had for $700."
A user writes, "Cricket Media has released a Mac OS X application for hardcore Netflix users who want to manage their accounts without using the website. The app is an interesting example of what can be done with WebKit."
lordDallan writes "Opera had recently released Opera 6.03 for Mac OS X. Purchase of this version includes a free upgrade to 7.0 when it becomes available."
of course there was that period where steve jobs was sent off to wander in the wilderness of NeXT. being a NeXT owner it was of course shocking how NeXT like mac OSX is. all the way down to the spinning multi-colored beach ball.
of course its not really a beach ball. its really a spinning magneto optical disk. a what??? yep the very first next shipped with a magento optical disk as its main drive. It truly sucked (speed wise) and vanished from later editions. (applications launched so slowly you often ended up double and triple launching multiple instances as you clicked on the icon over and over--that probably also one reason why the apple icons hop and can only be launched once). I've always enjoyed the subtle irony of the spinning beachball.
in any case in the next day, NeXT created one of the best RAD gui tool kit ever invented, and a new language to go along with it (objective-C). and gave them away. lots of little groovy app, not major ones, showed up as a result. anyone could make a calculator or an interface to gnuplot. Oh yeah, there was one or two major ones: Mosaic and Zilla (Zilla was not related to 'mozilla', today the modern term for Zilla is 'Grid Computing'. So this strategy of making awesome developmer tools is not new
Its also clear that given how much the mac of today echos its NeXT look and feel (the file browser, the dock, netInfo, three button mice, DisplayPostscript/pdf, cube shaped computers, and of course BSD unix) that not a whole lot of development has happend since its first incarnation. In other words Steve jobs vision got slowed down and only now its taking root and flourishing
playing "what if", would we be further along if he had not cast out? one might speculate that he had to wait for technology to come along. but remember tim bernardslee invented the World wide web to justify buying a NeXT Station, we had postscript, mime e-mail, good sound cards, ethernet,giant screens, and cube shaped computers back in the hey days of NeXT. so maybe we'd be further along indeed if so much time had not been lost.
indeed I think the reason Jobs performance now seems so amazing now is not because is doing anything different but rather because MS and the beigebox makers did not seize the opportunity to innovate during his absence from the scene. the world did not eclipse Jobs it just waited for him to return and lead the way again, showing how to be an early adopter, how to integrate ideas cleverly, and how to tame Unix on the desktop. He didn't have to leap frog his way to the front. he was amazingly enough still there with his NeXT technology. Nothing in principle Sun or MS or IBM could not have done while he was out. BeOS might have been the only one who actually tried, but it was too little too late.
I wonder why apple and jobs seem to be the source of all computer creativity?
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
I definitely agree with you on most of your post. Some restrictions on software you're talking about are my main problems with the GPL, and that's the case I pointed out in my last post ( RMS on Debian offering non-free packages ). I mean, even if I think something is immoral, I won't forbid someone from doing it : that'd be policespeak. I'm all for getting rid of licenses you know, but I do understand that due to the business model mostly used in the software industry right now, some kinds of limits are to be drawn. I'll be quite thrilled if the situation exists where all licenses could be gotten rid of, but that's revolution stuff and I won't get into this here ;)
;)
BTW, I do realize there are MUCH more important issues, and I do spend time on some of the ones you talked about and on others too ( popular education, for example ). But I'm on Slashdot here, not on infoshop.org, you know
United States of America, good ol' backers of world peace.
Oh come on. Climb down from your high horses.
Webkit is forked of khtml dickhead. They are forced to give it away. If they where not there would be no code for you to look at.
Apple is about as much open source as Microsoft. Only giving away code they have to give away or code noone except Mac users care about (darwin).
Apple is in no way in the spirit of open source. I have used other open source operating systems well before Macs barely could multitask and this OS X you speak so highly about give nothing new to the open source table. All the interessting stuff is locked down so tight you can't do anything with it from an open source perspective.
So please. You have a great operating system there in OS X. Lets stay at that. It isn't particulary open source. Apple is a big company and could bring a hell of a lot more to the table then what they do right now. Until they do, many of us will not consider it to be the next open source operating system.
I guess I'm in a karma burning mode today...
Now, browse a little on SourceForge and look at the projects going on under the GPL
That is absolutely the wrong way to judge how many people drink the FSF's kool-aid, for two reasons. First, the GPL has disproportionate mindshare. How many people tack the GPL on their software just because they're buzzword compliant, with little consideration given to what the GPL actually means, much less what the FSF wishes it could mean?
But far more importantly, the GPL (as has been widely discussed elsewhere) is a viral license. It infects, for lack of a better word, other projects without regard to, and sometimes against, the wishes of the authors of that project. So the fact that the GPL is used X times doesn't mean there are X people who buy into the FSF's propaganda. It just means that the sum of the people who buy into the propaganda, the people who don't know any better, and the people who got infected by the GPL equals X.
What about source codes for voting machines, privacy and "national security" concerns ? These are very politically decisive examples, don't you think ?
Nope. Federally owned source code, like all federally owned intellectual property, is either in the public domain, or classified. There's no reason to even bring an anti-capitalist agenda into that discussion.
Refusing to see the political aspect of technology is the problem I'm referring to.
Don't misrepresent my position. I'm not refusing to see it. I absolutely acknowledge it. I'm telling you that it's not what you make it out to be. Source code is not an important political issue, to the extent that it's a political issue at all. You are wasting your time worrying about source code when there are real battles to be fought.
I'd like to know how you think that me being interested in this perspective is a problem to the programming community.
You're wasting your own energy on an unworthy and harmful pursuit. (Your own talents may be negligible, but their value is certainly nonzero.) Also, you're distracting otherwise talented people from worthy pursuits with your blah-blah-blah.
Part of the problem, you see.
BTW, I do realize that Apple getting SOME OF its sources public in a way is already a Good Thing.
Again, you miss the big picture. It is neither a good thing nor a bad thing in any absolute sense. It has both good and bad aspects. For the good, people can read Apple's source code and learn. For the bad, Apple has waived the opportunity to sell access to their source code for a profit, which has a miniscule but real effect on the national economy and the satisfaction of the shareholders. There are both good and bad aspects to giving away IP; one cannot simply embrace the good and ignore the bad and hum one's workers' motto while pretending that the world is a socialist paradise.
It matters to me because of its political implications and possible long-term effects on the software community, in practicality as well. Consider that a molehill if you please ; I don't.
The fact that you lack perspective is the very crux of my bitch. I realize this is important to you. I understand why. I'm telling you that you are wrong to ascribe such importance to this matter, and that by directing so much of your energy toward it at the expense of matters that are actually important, you are causing a net harm to the world.
You're a bad person because you're wasting your time on something that doesn't matter, while attempting to seduce others into doing the same.
If you are going produce a piece of software for collaborative editing, why not name it for the fictionally greatest collaborative work of all time the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Thousands of Hitchhikers submit entries via the SubEtha network. The perfect geek name for a geek product.