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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."
With everyone crying about Apple ripping off Watson, pushing out Adobe Premeire, and basicaly running over a number of smaller developers, its easy to forget what they have been giving back in recent months. Lost in hardware rumors Apple is innovating in the developer scene as much as anywhere.
Developing and then giving away Webkit instantly gets a thousand projects off the ground which were previously only musings and ideas (read: netflix manager). The best of open source is when it facilitates truly independent innovative ideas that would be shot down by 'the corporate machine' and never see the light of day (read: SubEthaEdit). Dont forget Apple saw this long ago with Hypercard and have been listening to users wail about its death. Not just of the product but of the idea and philosophy of "I own an Apple, therefore I innovate."
Xcode, Applescript Studio, WebKit, Services, Java, Cocoa..... It looks like taking 5 years to plan a new OS from scratch is _finally_ paying off.
---- The real Slashdot is still here. You just have to browse at -1 to read the comments.
And be sure to check outSubEthaEdit This is the renamed Hydra. Okay, the new name is kinda funky, wouldn't MagrathaEdit have sounded better? And be sure to read the interview the the Coding Monkeys behind SubEthaEdit at O'Reilly. It is really amazing what a small group of programmers have pulled off. Give these guys another six months and they may be nearly feature competitive with BBEdit.
Lee Joramo
SubEthaEdit or whatever is a mind-numbingly STUPID name. I'm going to continue to call it Hydra, just like I still call Phoenix "Phoenix" and Chimera "Chimera". Good lord. Any idea on what the BS "legal issues" are all about? Can't be much of a trademark as I've never heard of any software program called Hydra before. Oh well guess when the C&D hits your mailbox you better fold unless you can afford to win.
I would've just named it "Tafkah"...
Also, just because I"m feeling rude: those guys are really dorky-looking. Except the guy on the left he looks pretty cool. Looks to me like he's trying to get away from the others.....
Say, isn't the guy in the OSX shirt a member of Kraftwerk...? Hmm...
Lux 3.0 - the latest and greatest version of my world domination game - was released last week. It's like the boardgame Risk but with random maps and all sorts of bells and/or whistles.
A Multiplayer Strategy Game for Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux
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.
And moral issues are always relevent to moral people.
But not all morals are the same. I, for instance, think that the GPL is a terrible license. I have no problem with BSD or propietary licenses though. Why?
I see the GPL as being very hypocritical. Preaching some twisted form of freedom while imposing restrictions on software. At least proprietary licenses are very clear in that sense.
Don't let the FSF delude you. We are talking about software here. There are much much much more important issues in the world than software licenses. Your energies would be far better spent on those problems (think world poverty, environmental concerns, the increasing aggressiveness of the USA, etc).
KHTML is LGPL.
Could you restate your point?
Timeo idiotikOS et dona ferentes
>code noone except Mac users care about
Surely the Open Source Darwin Streaming Server is of no interest to anyone but Mac users. Also Open Directory, Rendezvous and the Apple CDSA framework for encrypting etc. is completely useless.
Thanks for telling me I wouldn't have noticed that.
There are two rules for success:
1. Never tell everything you know.
The parent is wrong. Despite all his typos, and Lussarn has it right: LGPL is a recursive license for derived works (e.g. forks). The only difference between LGPL and GPL is for other projects which depend on the licensed one -- if khtml were GPL, then Safari would have to be GPL as well; as it is, Apple only has to release Webkit open source.
However, the big question is -- and this is much bigger than Lussarn gives it credit for! -- why did Apple choose to use khtml at all? They could have written their own rendering engine and kept it completely proprietary. They also could have used Gecko and kept it completely proprietary, since the Mozilla license is, IIRC, a BSD-style non-recursive license. (Anybody know for sure on that one?) Apple had plenty of choices resulting in a completely proprietary Webkit, and they didn't take them.
So saying that "Apple is as much about open source as Microsoft" is just plain wrong. When was the last time Microsoft open sourced anything? Sure, they used open source code in their products -- but they've actively avoided any and all recursive open source licenses.
Apple may not be an angel -- they're a corporation, for heaven's sake, and they're beholden to their shareholders and not to the moral compasses of Slashdot readers -- but they've consciously decided to participate some in the take & give back process of open source when they could very well have just stayed out completely.
And don't try to tell me that hasn't done anything useful for anyone. Or has BSD never pulled a patch from Darwin? Has khtml not examined the optimizations Apple made?