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Apple's Bonjour Available for Windows
inblosam writes "Apple's Bonjour ('also known as zero-configuration networking, enables automatic discovery of computers, devices, and services on IP networks') is now available for Windows! A Bonjour icon shows up in Internet Explorer to enable Bonjour browsing, along with the Bonjour Printer Wizard. Developers can download the Bonjour SDK. The benefits would appear to be for Apple customers (more Bonjouring with more networks) and to gain Apple switchers by enticing Windows customers."
I've been using 2 networked Mac's at home for 2 years now (powerbook, ibook, wlan, ethernet), but never seen this Bonjour stuff. Always connect directly to my samba server etc. Oh wait maybe my Airport talks bonjour?
The glass is half-full. With poison. And there are cracks in the glass. The dirty, dirty glass.
Yes, I was forgetting about them :)
But what I meant was that this seems to be different since it is something that is apparently more tightly tied in to how the OS work, IMHO.
Don't try to fix me. I'm not broken.
I find it interesting that totally generic french words can be held as being relatively strong trademarks in the US.
Granted, the Rendezvous complain had a certain basis, but it's funny to me that anyone would call their technology "Good Day" (litteral translation of Bonjour) (or "Meeting" for that matter) and expect to have a strong mark.
What is it with French being hip? I though the statue of Liberty was destined for the scrapyard and that everything french was suspicious.
Does this mean that Xgrid may also hit the Windows side of the moon?
I don't have too much knowledge of the nuts and bolts of Xgrid, but ZeroConf networking seems to me the first step to porting it on Windows. After all, it is not too much different than distributed number crunching projects (e.g. SETI@Home), or is it?
An "HP Mac" might have been an interesting concept, say, 6 years ago, but today it wouldn't get me expecting anything but a "me too" product.
Now, an "IBM Mac" or a "Sony Mac" just might because IBM (despite the proposed sale of the PC division) and Sony have at least shown an ability to innovate desktop and notebook design, whereas HP, Dell and the rest of the field have barely contributed anything significant in a long time, if at all.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
An IBM Mac would make more sense. IBM already make more-or-less Mac compatible hardware (i.e. hardware that can run OS X inside Mac-On-Linux - similar to VMWare - but not boot it natively). They also target a very different market to Apple - IBM focus on the corporate desktop and the scientific / engineering workstation, while Apple focus on the consumer and the creative / artistic workstation market. Allowing IBM to be a second-source of OS X hardware would be a huge benefit to Apple, without cutting much into their profits - particularly if IBM were selling OS X Server hardware, where Apple would be making several hundred dollars of profit on each IBM sale.
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Apple wont be doing that ,The clone macs caused apple alot of problems mostly related to the fact that it cut proffits by brobdignagian ammounts.
Quite simply , apple makes a hell of alot more off of hardware and support(not so sure about support though) than they do off of software so it would not be in their best intrests.
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
I agree that all browsers available should be supported generally, but the issue here is: zero-configuration networking, enables automatic discovery of computers, devices, and services on IP networks. These things are Operating System issues, the only reason they call it Internet Explorer plugin is probably that it is the file-manager. Opera and Mozilla are not file managers, thus they do not need a plugin to browse available printers etc on the LAN, and they will not work unless the underlying operating system has configured the network etc. :-)
9/11: Never forget it was a false-flag operation
..since all networked HP printers built in the last few years have Bonjour support built in to the JetDirect software.
Check Google for "KDE 3.4" and "zeroconf" to answer that.
Like most Apple technologies, Bonjour/Rendezvous kicks ass on Mac OS X because of its ubiquity on the platform. You get the odd suprise, like high end laser printers supporting it, but the only time I've ever really seen it supported and used effectivly is between two macs. IMHO, the only reason the technology is even remotely effective is that you get the 'it just works' user experience 'out of the box'. The problem with this current distribution plan seems to be that if you can download and install the software, you probably don't need it as ZeroConf is only a bonus if you don't understand networking. To be truely effective it needs to be available as standard on the platform. It would be great if it appeared in SP3.
Scared of flying, pointy things snce 1979!
There are many printers now that work with this technology. It's actually pretty good stuff. I am surprised that this was not already in Windows. Apple usually isn't the type to just release free software for a platform other than theirs, unless of course something is in it for them. Possibly wider ZeroConf adoption in devices? Possible another pc compatible device that apple wants to release, but requires this?
In the US, the trademark is "Microsoft Windows". That's why Microsoft was forced to sue Lindows/Linspire outside of the US, because it couldn't enforce a plain "Windows" trademark in the US.
Just tried Bonjour on Windows, and it automatically detected our two network printers : one's an HP LaserJet 3030 (with a network box) and the other is a Lexmark C510N. I'm really glad I can at last uninstall all the crap that comes with the drivers to make them work... And I won't have to define network ports that crash or fail to detect network names again! Nobody will come ever again to tell me "the printer doesn't work"... I'll switch all our computers to Bonjour as soon as I can. Thanks Apple.
As near as I can tell, having considered this myself, there are essentially two major reasons not to make an x86 version of OSX (OSx86?).
First is that of hardware support. OSX supports a fairly narrow array of hardware--most of it designed for OSX specifically. Driver translation, although not impossible, would take some effort and money. This problem, although not a show stopper (since Apple could, if they wanted to, make it happen), is a significant hurdle. It isn't that there aren't lots of drivers for OSX, but that those drivers would need to be rewritten for a new OS on a new platform. Costly and annoying. Also confusing for those who are purchasing a new bit of hardware.
The second reason is more important, and probably is the show stopper. From what I can tell (and I'm sure others will chime in), Apple makes a good portion of their money from hardware sales--not software. Arguably (though not necessarily) selling OSx86 (I like the nomenclature) would reduce sales of their hardware beyond the point of increased revenue from selling the software (remember that there would be increased development costs). The question is two-fold: would there be a significant reduction in sales of hardware? and, how many peices of software need to be sold in order to make up for one lost sale of a new iMac? If you can answer those questions, then you know whether or not this is a show-stopper. I would guess that it is. The folks at Apple are not stupid (regardless of what some folks will tell you). I am sure that more than one bean counter has run the figures and KNOWS what the costs would be. What they don't know, and probably can't know, is how many people who would NEVER buy a Mac (hardware) would LOVE to have OSx86 (or OSx86-64). I suspect that it would offset sales, but they obviously don't agree.
There is a third reason--Steve Jobs may not want to position themselves to compete directly with MS. It isn't exactly the most healthy way to do business.
A fourth reason also has to do with Jobs--he may just not like the idea, and frankly, that would be enough.
I think that just about covers the argument. That said, I would buy OSx86-64, if only to confuse people!
"We don't know what we are doing, but we are doing it very carefully,..." Wherry, R.J. Personnel Psychology (1995)
I throw 20 people and their laptops into a room. With zeroconf they all automatically notice each other, sort out what IPs they're each going to use, offer their printers to each other (as defined by policy), and magically become a network of machines.
In dumb speak, it just works. DHCP is much better for an organised network, this is much better for an ad-hoc one.
jh
I just noticed Fugu also takes advantage of it. It will show you a list of all Macs in your subnet that have remote logins thru SSH enabled.
Pedro
----
The Insomniac Coder
To be honest, I'd be surprised if the APSL is not DFSG free. On what grounds is it not?
The original license was worded poorly. It's original literal effect was that if anyone anywhere ever used apple over a patent infringement case, everyone world-wide would lose the right to use APSL software. The original was not approved by anybody, and was lambasted as a "timebomb" waiting to go off when some lawyer-happy American gets himself a cheesy patent. v2 "fixed" this, changing the clause to specifically the user of the APSL-licensed software losing the right to use the software if they sue Apple.
While patent reciprocity clauses are generally accepted by OSI, Debian-legal takes a somewhat dim view of licenses that don't restrict reciprocity to the licensed application (ie, FooCorp licenses whizbang allowing you to use and distribute whizbang and its patents, as long as if you add feature Bar to whizbang, you allow FooCorp and anyone else with the software to use any patents related to Bar) but the APSL doesn't read that way. If you have patents on raising chickens, use this software, and Apple decides to go into the farm business... well, maybe the software won't be as important to you as your chicken patent.
I really don't get how someone thinks this will get people to convert to apple. OK, so you port some really great app or function of the apple to windows. Why do I want to leave windows? The function is already on my native OS. It's only after I realize that something is so great isn't available for windows that I would want to switch. apple doesn't have enough market exposure to cause a serious exodus from windows.
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HELLO (Picasa share client)
I wonder if Apple's French language Bonjour download would be called Hello. I hope Google doesn't sue over this one.
Oh wait. Never mind. That might be perceived as evil.
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Seems to me Apple needs to update the Cocoa frameworks for operations on the modern NT variants (2000/XP).
Seems to me they may already me doing that, what with QT7 being a Cocoa app (and I wouldn't be surprised to find iTunes is not far behind).
Seems to me we may see Apple pushing back into the cross-platform application development arena very soon, as a hook to customers to move off Carbon on the OS X platform...
???
Seems to me that this technology has been available on Windows, Linux, FreeBSD for quite some time now in the form of Howl. It's an opensource library that supports Rendezvous/Zero Conf. I've used it for a while now to do all sorts of fun stuff. In fact, the responder portion of it even runs on the WRT54G boxes.
3 6.html
The only difference here is that this is the blessed client by Apple.
Well, to be accurate, if Howl is based on the opensource library for Zero Conf, that, too is blessed by Apple, as they - in the form of Stuart Cheshire - were the ones to come up with it.
http://www.answers.com/topic/zeroconf
http://www.vmeng.com/mc/archives/2002-August/0000
You think router and DNS box makers would come up with Zero Conf by themselves?
Can somebody explain to me what ZeroConf has got over UPnP? There is a lot of industry momentum around UPnP already (most routers ship with it for instance), it's an open standard, and there are open-source implementations of it as well. Is ZeroConf a result of Apple not-invented-here, or does it do something fundamentally different than UPnP?
not so much that French is hip, but "something-you're-not" is
my brother tells me the story of when bicycling through belgium, he came across a guy customizing a hod-rod car. on the side were painted the words "sweet girl." when asked, the belgian responded that he wanted something that looked/sounded exotic. A U.S. equivalent might be "cherchez le femme" (or "churchy lafemme" for you Pogo fans...)
I think that it just has to be in a different language. it promotes the need for some one to ask you what it is. makes you feel smart (though possibly only relative to the person asking... (think bad lawyers and latin.)) I suppose it helps that in the U.S. certain languages/accents have come to be hung with certain stereotypes. BBC style British accent=intelligent, French accent=sexy (or stuck-up (or both, for that matter)), Italian=short tempered gangster/lothario. But in all of these cases the primary thing that the accent or the foreign word implies is simply the sense of the exotic.
In the rest of the world, French was/is frequently considered the international language. though with the advent of airtravel, and by necessity international air-traffic control, that has been moving to english for some time. (most computer languages also have their basis in english (keywords and syntax rules for instance.) I find it fairly interesting that ruby, (developed, as far as I know) primarily in Japan, still uses english for the major keywords.)
Finding a name that is not "sue-able" or offensive is a tricky thing. Exxon spent a lot of time and money looking for a new name when Esso was broken up and managed to find that the XX was uncommon or non-existent in all known languages. The fact that Exxon itself eventually became something of an epithet is unrelated, (but pleasantly ironic.)
Rendezvous, at least, had come into relatively common english parlance.
-- it's ridiculous how many people misspell ridiculous... (damn, damn, damn...)
This isn't exactly new. There was an SDK available for Windows more than a year ago when it was still called Rendezvous.
[...] it's funny to me that anyone would call their technology "Good Day" (litteral translation of Bonjour) (or "Meeting" for that matter) and expect to have a strong mark.
) : "le réseau, simple comme Bonjour".
In french we say "c'est simple comme bonjour!", which means everyone can do it, understand it.
Have a look to the Apple page in french (http://www.apple.com/fr/macosx/features/bonjour/
Well, it's sort of an OS issue, and it's sort of an application issue.
The support for automatic resource discovery should be provided by the operating system, yes, but applications need to integrate this in appropriate ways. Web browsers, for example, need to actually ask for that information, and need to provide an interface for accessing it.
It doesn't really have anything to do with IE's file managing capabilities. With the new version of Bonjour for Windows, Apple has provided a plugin that allows IE users to browse local Rendezvous^W Bonjour HTTP resources from directly in the browser, via both a toolbar icon and a menu option, both of which open up an Explorer Bar panel on the left side of the browser window -- similar to the standard history / media / folders / etc views -- that shows a list of current Rendezvous^H^H^H Bonjour advertised URLs. While the OS, by way of the Bonjour subsystem, is providing the mechanism for finding these resources, the plugin for IE is a separate component that exploits that subsystem from within IE. You need both halves to do anything useful with this.
And boy is this ever useful. At my job, I'm already using the mod_rendezvous_apple^W mod_bonjour Apache module to advertise a list of URLs for things useful to all the staff here -- the phone book, the intranet search engine, the bug tracker, the documentation wiki, etc -- so that all the users of Bonjour capable browsers automatically get a shared bookmark list. So far, this has only been useful for the people using OSX and Safari or Camino, but now it'll be useful to the people using IE on Windows. This would be great, were it not for the fact that we've managed to migrate almost all the Windows users over to Firefox by now. What would be really useful would be for Apple to bundle a Firefox plugin, or for Mozdev or someone to provide one that takes advantage of the Bonjour for Windows [and Linux!] API. If that became available, then everyone would be able to benefit from these automatically advertised resources.
The next step might be to come up with a CUPS/Bonjour bridge, so that the Windows users can automatically discover the CUPS printers in the same way that the OSX and Linux users can. I assume it should be possible...
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
The thing about Apple's UI that annoys me (well, apart from the whole chrome thing, which is just a bit nasty because it's inconsistent) is the way they bark at Windows developers like they're small children when they port their apps to Mac OS and don't conform to every Mac OS UI convention...but when Apple port their apps to Windows? Well, screw the standard UI furniture and behaviour! We're Apple!
Case in point: focus behaviour. Windows and Mac OS deal with focus switching differently. In Mac OS, you click on a window that does not have focus, it switches focus to it, and that's it. It doesn't matter where you click, a Mac window will eat the click. Whereas in Windows, all controls are 'live' even if the window does not have focus. So if you click on a button in a window that does not have focus, the button receives the click (as well as the window receiving focus).
Now, you can argue about which is best all you like, but the important thing is: Windows does it one way, Mac OS does it the other, and users on both platforms are used to that.
Until iTunes for Windows comes along, and it uses the Mac OS focus model. I've only started using iTunes again for a week recently, and I've already lost count of the number of times I've had to double/triple/quadruple click because the first click was eaten etc, and then my intentions were misunderstood by iTunes, and it's let me rename a track instead of playing it as I want to, etc.
It's either ignorance or sheer arrogance, and either way it's annoying. Don't screw with platform standards, just because you think you're so great that you can. iTunes is the only app I run on Windows that behaves like this. Great. Just great.
And don't get me started on why the fsck it uses Aqua scroll bars on Windows. What the hell were they thinking?
Answers like "it's branding" don't wash. To most people, that argument plays in their heads like this: "We don't give a fsck about the users."
Bonjour sounds a lot like UPnP. I thought we were all told to disable the UPnP service because hackers could find our machines and do bad things to them.
Why is Bonjour good and UPnP bad?
Moreover, they've written several times that SubEthaEdit leverages several OSX technologies, including both Bonjour and Cocoa, as well as makes (unorthodox?) use of open protcols like BEEP. From the sound of it, getting SEE to work without this toolkit would be very hard to do.
I'm a little more interested in support for the SEE protocol in an editor like Vim or Emacs. If they can add it, then it'll instantly be available to people using any platform at all, even if SEE never gets ported to anything else. From what I can tell, this is a lot more likely, but so far I haven't heard of anyone working on hacking up these editors to support SEE style collaborative editing. Oh well...
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
...rebooted
Loaded up VLC (watching the latest episode of CSI download via bittorrent).
What'da know... I can get a clean playback... skips, pixlization, lost audio, etc.
uninstalled Bonjour and life is good again.
Jesus fscking christ, Apple. If you're going to release Windows software, at least make sure it's ready for prime time.
A foolish consistency, Emerson once said, is the hobgoblin of little minds.
Consistency in the look and feel of GUI elements is not foolish. It makes it easier for the user to know what will happen when he does something within the interface. It's much more difficult to memorize different scenarios for every application.
That's one of the problems with Windows. All applications do things slightly differently. Apple pushes 3rd party developers hard to comply with their standards, and the system is better for it.
Going on and arbitrarily breaking conventions for Windows just adds to the problem. Of course, Windows sucks pretty heavily in this regard anyway, so it probably doesn't make much of a difference, but it's still hypocritical. You can wail all you want about how the Windows standards "sucks" (which is debatable at best in this case), but in this case, breaking the standards just makes things worse than following the standards you don't like in the first place.
Then again, I don't expect you to listen to any of these arguments, as you seem to be the quintessential Apple fan-boy. Have you ever provided any evidence that you actually work for or are in any way associated with Apple? I've seen you take credit for many design decisions and developments at Apple, and I've seen several people debunking your claims that you're actually an Apple developer of some sort. Do you have any evidence that you speak authoritatively about Apple's internal policies, or do you just refer to Apple as "we" to get more karma?
I've come for the woman, and your head.