10.4 on Display at FOSE

CmdrStone writes "Just thought I'd post to let people know that while at FOSE today in the Washington, D.C. Convention center I lingered at the Apple pavilion / booth. To my surprise every machine had 10.4 running. The build number matches the build number found on the rumor sites; 8A428. Does this presage Tiger hitting the shelves soon? Personally, my main interest was how much iSync was expanded to support more devices, phones, etc. The Apple rep confirmed that the number of devices has expanded. He lamented that his Symbian phone, the Nokia 9500 Communicator, still was not included in the supported phones. He did tell me that he was able to tether his Powerbook and get online via his 9500's T-Mobile connection."

Comments

Acronyms by osmosis?

[michaeldot]

How are people supposed to "just know" the acronyms that pop up?

I didn't have a clue what FOSE stood for. I clicked the link to its home page, and not once is it defined there.

A quick Google search fixed this (FOSE - Federal Office Systems Exposition) but really: are things like this so commonly known that they don't need to be defined?

Re:List of devices that will work with iSync?

[Psychic Burrito]

List of compatible iSync devices. Currently addresses version 10.3, but wait until 10.4 is out and the list will prolly be updated immeditately.

Cheers!

What's the Hold Up?

[buckhead_buddy]

If Apple's internal teams have gone final (and that's a big IF) it's not uncommon for a release to still be waiting on:

• notification of changes in code licensed from a vendor or third-party
• a multiple week soak time after the code freeze to discover bugs (eat your own dog food for a while)
• exhaustive documentation of the final changes (both to users and developers)

Even if all of this has been finalized as the rumors indicate, there are still other reasons why a release would be delayed after going final, including:

• Finding the best marketing opportunity to make the introduction (which I know little of).
• Ensuring that one's unfinished hardware has only expected problems and incompatabilities (if any at all).
• Letting the application teams (Final Cut, iWork, iLife, etc) get their work fully compliant before release (the market does have higher expectations for Apple authored apps).

While the Mac rumor sites have been speculating on an early release of Tiger since it was announced last June, I don't think that their rumor-mongering does anything to speed up its release and quite possibly:

• delays distribution of the gold master to developers.
• delays the public announcement until Apple is seen as the one setting the expectations rather than the rumor sites.
• makes open discussion of releases beyond Tiger even more secretive.

Personally, I'm still running Panther. I've got a backup plan, blank media, and a time estimate of about 3 days downtime needed to transition to Tiger and test my setup once it comes out. Beyond that, I've made no plans that depend on an unreleased or rumored feature. I'm anxious for that release date to get here, but I'm prepared as well as I can whether that date is tomorrow or June 30th.

Re:Sharing internet to Bluetooth still does not wo

[As Seen On TV]

Have you gotten a good answer on this yet? From skimming it looks like you haven't. Let me help.

Internet sharing on the Mac works through DHCP. When you turn on Internet sharing on a given interface, an instance of the DHCP server is launched bound to that interface and the kernel is configured to route packets from that interface to the default route.

Bluetooth doesn't work like that. There's no IP-over-Bluetooth. Instead, Bluetooth works like a serial port. While yes, you can certainly shuttle IP over serial using PPP, that's not how the Mac's Internet sharing works.

Why not? Because exactly zero people have submitted feature requests. At this point, the feature list for Mac OS X is so deep, a feature has to be requested by tens of thousands of people before it bubbles up to the top.

So if you get together with 19,999 of your closest friends and submit requests to Radar, I'm sure we'll get right on it.

I know this sounds elitist, but the bottom line is that we only have so many programmers. They can't scratch every user's every itch. If we tried ... well, frankly, we'd be shipping a product with tons of bugs, no documentation and zero user experience. There are already products like that out there. Lots of people like them. Maybe one would be better for you.