simon% dd if=/dev/zero of=test bs=1m count=17 17+0 records in 17+0 records out 17825792 bytes transferred in 0.297437 secs (59931329 bytes/sec)
simon% ls -l test -rw-r--r-- 1 simon 501 17825792 Nov 5 18:32 test
simon%/usr/bin/time cp test ~/Desktop
0.44 real 0.00 user 0.03 sys
simon% ls -l ~/Desktop/test -rw-r--r-- 1 simon 501 17825792 Nov 5 18:33/Volumes/Users/Users/simon/Desktop/test
simon% uname -a Darwin mac 9.0.0 Darwin Kernel Version 9.0.0: Tue Oct 9 21:35:55 PDT 2007; root:xnu-1228~1/RELEASE_I386 i386
... I suspect you have a hardware problem if it's really taking that long to copy files. The above 0.44 secs (wall-clock time) is on a standard internal SATA disk. No RAID or anything special.
My suggestion is that they deliver what they advertise. That would suit me. It's too late for Comcast now, at least for me, though. I was never a heavy user of P2P, but I was pissed off about losing iChat...
As a thought experiment, how is this "firewall" really any better than no firewall at all? Other than the warm and fuzzy "I have a firewall" effect, what good does it do if it doesn't block connections to applications, and worse, doesn't even properly report this fact to you?
Well, that's the thing, you see. It *does*block connections to applications. Did you miss that part ?
There are some processes that are allowed to punch through the firewall, and Heise found those. I'd not argue against reporting those processes (perhaps in an 'advanced' tab, to prevent unknowing users from worrying needlessly), but anything not running as root, or crypto-signed, is blocked.
Here's another thought-experiment: How do you stop a root process from modifying the firewall on any unix box ? On Linux it could alter the rules, make the connection, break the connection, replace the rules. I guess I don't see the point in trying to block root. That's what 'root' is for...
That this button has almost no actual effect on security is simply awful."
This is of course complete rubbish. It has a huge effect on security.
Enough. I'm done defending this - I think all it needs is some more UI to show the ports remaining open, and perhaps a reason why (root process, crypto-signed,...). Even if they put that in, it won't make a difference to the *actual* security, it'll just be some more information on the current firewall state, anyone who cares that much about it will be using netstat/lsof. If you want to get all in a tizzy about that, feel free.
From the 'help' button available on the same screen (emphasis mine),
In addition to the sharing services you turned on in Sharing preferences, the list may include other services, applications, and programs that are allowed to open ports in the firewall. An application or program might have requested and been given access through the firewall, or might be digitally signed by a trusted certificate and therefore allowed access
IMPORTANT: Some programs have access through the firewall although they don't appear in the list. These might include system applications, services, and processes (for example, those running as "root"). They can also include digitally signed programs that are opened automatically by other programs.
... so if Leopard trusts the service (it's a root process, or it's signed with an acceptable crypto signature), it will have access through the firewall. Since Leopard ships with cryptographically-signed binaries/packages, I guess I'm not seeing the problem - if Jo(e)-evil-cracker already has 'root' on the system, the firewall isn't going to help save the system, after all... Perhaps Heise are just used to using Linux, where the firewall trumps all ?
You could argue that the 'Block all incoming connections' is badly worded, but you could argue that reading the documentation for a new firewall would be a useful thing to do as well.
And, FWIW, if I set the firewall to 'Set Access for specific services and applications', then disable SMB sharing, I can't connect using nmblookup. I can only get through when the service has been enabled (which seems reasonable).
but unless you can point out specifically how the translucency improves usability, Siracusa's point stands: the translucent menu bar's decreased legibility makes the change a net usability loss.
Er, how about it makes it less distracting, less of a sharp contrast between the background and the menu-bar, thus preventing the eye from being dragged to the wrong place (the top of the screen) and subtly directing it to the correct place for most work (the main windows on the desktop).
Besides, it's ~10% transparent, at a guess. The text is perfectly clear on my background (a nature scene with trees and foliage where the menu bar is).
He didn't invent a vocabulary, it's a well-established definition
I think you'll find the acronym would be FTFF, not FFTF...
Most of the complaints about the Finder are rooted in the old single-threaded networking behaviour. That *has* been fixed. I doubt you'll get too many more FTFF threads. Of course you can't please all the people all of the time, but the low-hanging fruit has definitely been gathered in now...
(As much as I love working and programming on the Mac, seeing how nice.NET is really gives me concern for the long-term future of Apple's platform.)
There's a website written by a self-confessed.NET addict, a man who has quite literally written the book on.NET and the new MS frameworks. I recommend you visit his site, and click on the 'Cocoa' sidebar. More recently, he's been getting into ObjC, doing comparisons between the.NET framework, and the Cocoa/Foundation frameworks, between ObjC and the CLR. Pretty much every time, ObjC/Cocoa win out over C#(or whatever)/.NET (as long as we're talking Leopard, anyway, he prefers garbage-collected languages).
ObjC is elegant, powerful and simple at the same time - it's what C++ ought to have been. Objective C is (by leaps and bounds) my language of choice these days, it's one of the most under-appreciated languages in modern use. Certainly, the comparative perception I get is that the frameworks are way ahead of.NET in terms of actual usability - again, read some of his blog posts for the details.
Personally I don't see the beef people have with it. It works well for me. I like the "shelf" look that people are bitching about as well. Perhaps it's because I don't give much of a crap about "the angle at which the icon points", for crying out loud!
The other main complaint is the menubar - it's about 10% (guesstimate) transparent. It just adds a subtle shading to the otherwise-white bar. I rather like it, as did most of the commentators in the discussion that I skimmed through. Some people get far too fixated on minute inconsequential details...
I mean, the only real problems with the "classic" Mac GUI were that there wasn't a easily visible way to keep track of/switch between running programs, and the Finder was a pain to work with. Well, and the lack of right-click context menus
So Leopard has an easy way to switch/keep track of running programs (the Dock), the Finder is no longer a pain to work with, and OSX has a context bar. And this one is worse ? I got to admit, I'm not an "old-mac" fan - I thought the OS was a piece of crap, and I far preferred my unix workstations of the day, so perhaps there's some magic thing the old OS did. I'm *really* not seeing much wrong with Leopard though. It's still the best damn unix workstation I've ever used, and I've used a lot of them...
It seems to me that every last one of those customers that bought an iPhone have decided the pros outweigh the cons (*). That's all the 'free market' ever promises, and it doesn't try to protect the 'collective well-being of society' either, it's purely and simply a model of trade.
"Carrier lock-in" (a con) may translate to lower cost-of-entry (a pro) for the customer. Allowing companies to do this maximises the choice available to the consumer. The free market seems to be functioning perfectly well to me.
Simon.
(*) Of course, buying with the intent to unlock removes some cons, but introduces others in its place. It's still a trade-off.
- Plain old upgrade. Just lays down the new OS on top of the old one
- Archive and install. Takes a backup of your current stuff, lays down a clean OS, and recovers your stuff from the backup it made
- Erase and install. Erases the disk/partition, and installs the OS.
(2) or (3) are the best option. I use (3) because my home directory is on a different disk to my boot disk, and I did that on purpose so I could do nice clean installs. (2) works well too though.
It's in one of the links in the original post, but it's $299/month for 1.5/1.5 dedicated. Since I already pay $245 to co-locate a server I can move back onto the T1, and $200 to comcast, it makes it cheaper for me to get Dish network (at $84/month) and the T1 ($300/month), compared to the $245+$200 for the combined comcast/co-lo costs...
I think I can get a neighbour to cough up a third of the bandwidth costs as well - I'll just open up the WiFi network for him. He's sick of the telco's as well:)
At least, from my perspective. I'm not a huge user of P2P, my ire is more directed at the violation of the principles that founded this 'internets' thing. If we let company-interests direct the future development of the internet, we may as well give up now.
What *did* annoy me, after the decision was taken, was that my difficulties with ichat over the last few months seem to be similarly down to Comcast policies.
I use iChat a lot to keep in touch with my family (all of whom have Macs, and 4-way video-conferencing can be pretty cool). There's several thousand miles between us, so this is one of the few ways we can actually see each other without major travel.
Until a few months ago, it all worked great. Now, I get less than a minute of great picture, and then everything breaks up. I was putting it down to transatlantic bandwidth issues, but then I tried it from work, and (lo and behold) had no problems whatsoever.
I pay (not for long, now though, the T1 arrives in 2 weeks) for the most bandwidth Comcast offer, and I cannot believe I average even 1% of that bandwidth. To have them limit me when I *do* want to use it, as a deliberate *general* policy of theirs, is infuriating. All I can do is cancel the service, and hope others do too. Eventually, hopefully, they'll get the message. Not everyone can cancel due to the monopoly they hold in some areas, but perhaps enough can to make a difference.
Now a T1 used to be a lot of bandwidth, but it's not so much any more (1.5Mbit/sec is pretty poor by advertised-bandwidth standards). I'm willing to trade off the small time-periods I actually can use that advertised bandwidth for the reliability of always having the smaller amount - it may not work for everyone, but it works for me:)
And so, Comcast lose another ~$200/month. Hopefully part of a trend, because won't anyone think of the network ? [grin]
They're doing it for more than just file-sharing. iChat, for example, is suffering. I can no longer video-conference my parents across the Atlantic. At first I just blamed it on bandwidth issues, but it only seems to be a problem when I initiate the connection from a comcast network (home). Others are seeing the same.
Lotus notes is similarly affected. It seems that if you transmit small bursts of packets, Comcast give you the bandwidth you've paid for. If you start streaming data, or the volume of data goes over some (low, ichat only takes ~30 secs) limit, they attack the connection, injecting fake RST packets to the data-stream at both ends. I've decided to bin comcast. Lower (but reliable) bandwidth is far preferable to me.
See NSBlog and read the comments. Accelerated dispatch is only used on legacy PPC machines, not Intel. There's no benefit on Intel boxes.
[aside] What I found quite amazing is that the 'slow' Objective-C message-despatch (when cached) is faster than a virtual method call in C++. It makes sense when you think about it, but I've been trained to think ObjC == slow, C++ == fast. I'm glad someone did the test:)
No, I think they are after the enterprise market, or at least they're moving towards that target. iCal has been able to share calendars (with the 'Subscribe...' menu item) in the same way as Vista for ages now. "iCal server" is the grown-up solution.
"has mac done this or is it just that the OS on a linux bas system is just plain faster"
The implication that the Mac might have got rid of the BIOS (and hence gained speed) is tied to "a linux-based system is just plain faster". You could easily read that as suggesting the Mac is Linux-based.
FWIW, the Mac doesn't use a BIOS, it uses EFI (Extensible Firmware Interface) these days. And it's not Linux-based either.
Well, your machine is nothing like his, of course...
He has
2 quad Xeon (3GHz, which Newegg doesn't even stock), but 2x 2.44GHz= $1080
A top of the range case, with RAID-like disk chassis, better than any PC case I've seen, but let's say a Lian-Li @ $300
16G of PC2-5300 RAM for $1016
4x 750G drives for $1060
The Apple RAID card is a 350 MB/sec sustained transfer. I doubt if a $200 card will perform like a $1000 card...
A Quadro FX4500 will set you back circa $1800, not $300...
Warranty/Support - let's say you find somewhere for a similar $250.
So, in bits, that's $6506, for slower CPUs. And that's US dollars, not AU ones. Now you can argue that you only want what you bought, so it's a good deal for you. My point is that in an apples to apples comparison, it's not that much of a premium to go with the supported config, over the build-it-yourself option. Highway robbery it ain't.
I priced out a lesser spec Mac Pro for myself almost a year ago. It was cheaper than any of the competition for the same parts. And I get to run OSX, of course:)
Have you actually written any iPhone apps ? Or are you just postulating ?
The iPhone essentially runs a cut and trimmed version of OSX, so getting an SDK for it is NOT some massive undertaking
The SDK is *not* the same as the Cocoa SDK on Mac OSX. They use UIKit (all the classes start with 'UI' not 'NS'). They use CoreGraphics directly (so you have CGRect structures, not NSRect structures). The port of the Foundation library is incomplete (there's no NSNetService or NSTask that I can find, for example, though basic things (collections, iterators, etc.) are there).
I mean, look, despite Apple's attempts to keep people from using their own phones, random hax0rs got a working SDK up within days
Those random hackers didn't "get an SDK up in days". They ran classdump on the libraries that *Apple* created, and made the headers available.
A iPhone SDK would use a gcc cross-compiler (since the iPhone isn't running PowerPC or Intel chip -- by the way, gcc makes it easy to build a cross-compiler so this isn't a big deal)
Interesting. Those "random hackers" got the gcc compiler to cross-compile. Oh, but you can't have any methods that return a float (*) like, er, just about every UI class since co-ords are floats in UIKit. Oh, and it can crash with internal errors in cc1. And they're onto the third incarnation of the compiler now. Perhaps it's not so easy after all. The ARM chip is an established supported target for gcc, so building a cross-compiler itself is relatively trivial. Writing the bootstrap code is presumably harder, and writing the support libraries (libarmfp for example) needs to be done as well.
Not a massive undertaking at all.
And here's where you lose all credibility. Not a massive undertaking to write a new 2D-accelerated UI framework from scratch, trying to be as compatible as possible with the 'Mac' way of doing things while incorporating a completely new input method ? On a new hardware platform for the OS ? With a very aggressive release schedule ? And design it so there will be no frequent (ahem) updates in the future ?
No, that's trivial mate. Tell you what, we'll do you two, in case one breaks - have it to you next Tuesday... Not.
Writing whatever they needed for the initial (general public who don't give the shake of a rat's tail about the SDK) release, then writing/polishing a general developer release is so obviously the way to go, I can't believe people are still talking about it. And if you expected 'The Steve' to lay out all his plans ahead of time, you've obviously been in a coma for the last decade. Welcome to the new century.
Simon.
(*) I think this is actually resolved in version-3 of the compiler. I'm still stuck with v2 because I can't get the LLVM part to compiler on my mac for some reason.
Apple have a policy of giving away their full suite of development tools to all ADC members, and ADC "membership" is a free registration away. They just want to know how many people are interested in developing for the Mac, IMHO.
Let me get this straight. Apple released a product that contains an operating system that's still in alpha?
No. Their OS works well and will have passed QA before they shipped. Like any humans, Apple make mistakes, but they generally at least try to adhere to "it just works".
They ported their (stable) OS to a new architecture. The internal developers put up with the codebase (with any extant foibles), and they wrote a completely new UI framework (based on, but different to, Cocoa). They did sufficient QA to get the built-in applications working correctly, and then shipped the device, hitting their target.
Now that it's out, and there's less pressure, they've been tidying it up, and polishing the UI framework, the compilers, any OS routines, and they've announced they're opening it up to 3rd parties. Presumably this means they've been patching the areas they worked around internally.
There's nothing too surprising in any of the above, in fact I'm surprised the "official" SDK will be available so soon. Porting an OS and writing a good accelerated UI framework is a non-trivial task.
Any utility you can get on Linux, you can get on OSX by a recompile. The most popular are as far away as 'sudo port install XXXX'. And you get rsync, tar, bzip2, ssh as standard anyway. As a technical OSX user, I've been using ssh/rsync for a while now, but it's way way over the head of my parents, and they want their digital photos (with which to bore their guests) just as much as I want my '~/src' directory.
Not to mention that 'Apple Backup' has been around for ages. Does incremental/full backups, even off-site to.mac. Optionally uses spotlight to come up with what to back-up; Time-Machine is *still* far better because it's generational, and access to those generational copies is so easy.
Some fact-checking required before you spout off about "the fact of the matter", methinks.
Completely correct, within the confines of the analogy.
So:
YOU buy the car in the full knowledge that the engine isn't customer-servicable.
YOU modify the ECU, in violation of your warranty, with some help over the phone from a garage you found in a dodgy part of town
YOU take the car into the dealer to get "super ECU update"
The dealer *tells* you the update may damage the engine if you've modified it yourself
YOU *choose* to take that risk anyway
The dealer modifies the car engine
YOU have a 3-ton paperweight.
YOU made the incompatible changes. YOU chose to take the risk on those changes. YOU are responsible for the consequences. Far too few people seem to be accepting that.
My iphone is hacked, and you know what ? Due to owning more than one brain cell, I haven't applied the 1.1.1 update. How hard was that ?
Simon
Re:Microsostrich
on
ZOMG New Zunes
·
· Score: 3, Informative
I don't know about that - it doesn't look like it is right now though. From Amazon's MP3 player list, ordered by best-selling:
#1 Apple 4G Nano (silver, latest) #2 Apple 16G ipod touch #3 Apple 80G ipod classic (black, latest) #4 Apple 8G ipod touch #5 Apple 160G ipod classic (black, latest) #6 Apple 80G ipod classic (silver, latest) #7 Apple 8G ipod nano (green, latest) #8 Apple 8G ipod nano (black, latest) #9 Apple 8G ipod nano (blue, latest) #10 Apple 8G ipod nano (silver, latest) #11 Apple 1G ipod shuffle (purple, latest) #12 Sandisk 8G (black) #13 Sandisk 4G +SD #14 Apple 2G nano (silver) #15 Zune 30G (white) (this is the V1 player) ... #28 Zune 30G (black) (this is the V1 player) #29 Sandisk 1G express #30 Zune 4G pink (this is the V2 player) #31 Zune 8G red (this is the V2 player) #32 Zune 4G black (this is the V2 player) #33 Zune 8G pink (this is the V2 player) #34 Zune 4G red (this is the V2 player) #35 Zune 80G black (this is the V2 player) #36 Zune 8G black (this is the V2 player) ... #54 Zune 30G brown
I gave up listing apple players after the first 15 or so. The majority of the missing numbers are Apple MP3 players.
What I think is interesting from this list is that all the top 10 (11 actually) players are the latest-generation players from Apple. The zune V2, even on its launch-day, is languishing in the #30's. It's not even beating the zune V1. I don't think that's a good sign...
Slashdot Mirror
Er, no it's not. It's bad spelling.
:)
Simon
Simon.
My suggestion is that they deliver what they advertise. That would suit me. It's too late for Comcast now, at least for me, though. I was never a heavy user of P2P, but I was pissed off about losing iChat...
Simon
There are some processes that are allowed to punch through the firewall, and Heise found those. I'd not argue against reporting those processes (perhaps in an 'advanced' tab, to prevent unknowing users from worrying needlessly), but anything not running as root, or crypto-signed, is blocked.
Here's another thought-experiment: How do you stop a root process from modifying the firewall on any unix box ? On Linux it could alter the rules, make the connection, break the connection, replace the rules. I guess I don't see the point in trying to block root. That's what 'root' is for...This is of course complete rubbish. It has a huge effect on security.
Enough. I'm done defending this - I think all it needs is some more UI to show the ports remaining open, and perhaps a reason why (root process, crypto-signed,...). Even if they put that in, it won't make a difference to the *actual* security, it'll just be some more information on the current firewall state, anyone who cares that much about it will be using netstat/lsof. If you want to get all in a tizzy about that, feel free.
Simon.
Plain answer - I don't know.
I *think* the only entity who can acceptably sign something at the moment is Apple themselves, but I wouldn't bet my life on it...
Simon.
You could argue that the 'Block all incoming connections' is badly worded, but you could argue that reading the documentation for a new firewall would be a useful thing to do as well.
And, FWIW, if I set the firewall to 'Set Access for specific services and applications', then disable SMB sharing, I can't connect using nmblookup. I can only get through when the service has been enabled (which seems reasonable).
Simon
Besides, it's ~10% transparent, at a guess. The text is perfectly clear on my background (a nature scene with trees and foliage where the menu bar is).
Simon
- He didn't invent a vocabulary, it's a well-established definition
- I think you'll find the acronym would be FTFF, not FFTF...
- Most of the complaints about the Finder are rooted in the old single-threaded networking behaviour. That *has* been fixed. I doubt you'll get too many more FTFF threads. Of course you can't please all the people all of the time, but the low-hanging fruit has definitely been gathered in now...
SimonThere's a website written by a self-confessed
ObjC is elegant, powerful and simple at the same time - it's what C++ ought to have been. Objective C is (by leaps and bounds) my language of choice these days, it's one of the most under-appreciated languages in modern use. Certainly, the comparative perception I get is that the frameworks are way ahead of
Simon.
The other main complaint is the menubar - it's about 10% (guesstimate) transparent. It just adds a subtle shading to the otherwise-white bar. I rather like it, as did most of the commentators in the discussion that I skimmed through. Some people get far too fixated on minute inconsequential details...
So Leopard has an easy way to switch/keep track of running programs (the Dock), the Finder is no longer a pain to work with, and OSX has a context bar. And this one is worse ? I got to admit, I'm not an "old-mac" fan - I thought the OS was a piece of crap, and I far preferred my unix workstations of the day, so perhaps there's some magic thing the old OS did. I'm *really* not seeing much wrong with Leopard though. It's still the best damn unix workstation I've ever used, and I've used a lot of them...
Simon.
It seems to me that every last one of those customers that bought an iPhone have decided the pros outweigh the cons (*). That's all the 'free market' ever promises, and it doesn't try to protect the 'collective well-being of society' either, it's purely and simply a model of trade.
"Carrier lock-in" (a con) may translate to lower cost-of-entry (a pro) for the customer. Allowing companies to do this maximises the choice available to the consumer. The free market seems to be functioning perfectly well to me.
Simon.
(*) Of course, buying with the intent to unlock removes some cons, but introduces others in its place. It's still a trade-off.
There are three options on any Mac OS install
- Plain old upgrade. Just lays down the new OS on top of the old one
- Archive and install. Takes a backup of your current stuff, lays down a clean OS, and recovers your stuff from the backup it made
- Erase and install. Erases the disk/partition, and installs the OS.
(2) or (3) are the best option. I use (3) because my home directory is on a different disk to my boot disk, and I did that on purpose so I could do nice clean installs. (2) works well too though.
It's in one of the links in the original post, but it's $299/month for 1.5/1.5 dedicated. Since I already pay $245 to co-locate a server I can move back onto the T1, and $200 to comcast, it makes it cheaper for me to get Dish network (at $84/month) and the T1 ($300/month), compared to the $245+$200 for the combined comcast/co-lo costs...
:)
I think I can get a neighbour to cough up a third of the bandwidth costs as well - I'll just open up the WiFi network for him. He's sick of the telco's as well
Simon
At least, from my perspective. I'm not a huge user of P2P, my ire is more directed at the violation of the principles that founded this 'internets' thing. If we let company-interests direct the future development of the internet, we may as well give up now.
:)
What *did* annoy me, after the decision was taken, was that my difficulties with ichat over the last few months seem to be similarly down to Comcast policies.
I use iChat a lot to keep in touch with my family (all of whom have Macs, and 4-way video-conferencing can be pretty cool). There's several thousand miles between us, so this is one of the few ways we can actually see each other without major travel.
Until a few months ago, it all worked great. Now, I get less than a minute of great picture, and then everything breaks up. I was putting it down to transatlantic bandwidth issues, but then I tried it from work, and (lo and behold) had no problems whatsoever.
I pay (not for long, now though, the T1 arrives in 2 weeks) for the most bandwidth Comcast offer, and I cannot believe I average even 1% of that bandwidth. To have them limit me when I *do* want to use it, as a deliberate *general* policy of theirs, is infuriating. All I can do is cancel the service, and hope others do too. Eventually, hopefully, they'll get the message. Not everyone can cancel due to the monopoly they hold in some areas, but perhaps enough can to make a difference.
Now a T1 used to be a lot of bandwidth, but it's not so much any more (1.5Mbit/sec is pretty poor by advertised-bandwidth standards). I'm willing to trade off the small time-periods I actually can use that advertised bandwidth for the reliability of always having the smaller amount - it may not work for everyone, but it works for me
And so, Comcast lose another ~$200/month. Hopefully part of a trend, because won't anyone think of the network ? [grin]
Simon.
They're doing it for more than just file-sharing. iChat, for example, is suffering. I can no longer video-conference my parents across the Atlantic. At first I just blamed it on bandwidth issues, but it only seems to be a problem when I initiate the connection from a comcast network (home). Others are seeing the same.
Lotus notes is similarly affected. It seems that if you transmit small bursts of packets, Comcast give you the bandwidth you've paid for. If you start streaming data, or the volume of data goes over some (low, ichat only takes ~30 secs) limit, they attack the connection, injecting fake RST packets to the data-stream at both ends. I've decided to bin comcast. Lower (but reliable) bandwidth is far preferable to me.
Simon
See NSBlog and read the comments. Accelerated dispatch is only used on legacy PPC machines, not Intel. There's no benefit on Intel boxes.
:)
[aside]
What I found quite amazing is that the 'slow' Objective-C message-despatch (when cached) is faster than a virtual method call in C++. It makes sense when you think about it, but I've been trained to think ObjC == slow, C++ == fast. I'm glad someone did the test
Simon.
No, I think they are after the enterprise market, or at least they're moving towards that target. iCal has been able to share calendars (with the 'Subscribe...' menu item) in the same way as Vista for ages now. "iCal server" is the grown-up solution.
Simon
"has mac done this or is it just that the OS on a linux bas system is just plain faster"
The implication that the Mac might have got rid of the BIOS (and hence gained speed) is tied to "a linux-based system is just plain faster". You could easily read that as suggesting the Mac is Linux-based.
FWIW, the Mac doesn't use a BIOS, it uses EFI (Extensible Firmware Interface) these days. And it's not Linux-based either.
Simon.
He has
So, in bits, that's $6506, for slower CPUs. And that's US dollars, not AU ones. Now you can argue that you only want what you bought, so it's a good deal for you. My point is that in an apples to apples comparison, it's not that much of a premium to go with the supported config, over the build-it-yourself option. Highway robbery it ain't.
I priced out a lesser spec Mac Pro for myself almost a year ago. It was cheaper than any of the competition for the same parts. And I get to run OSX, of course
Simon.
The iPhone essentially runs a cut and trimmed version of OSX, so getting an SDK for it is NOT some massive undertaking
I mean, look, despite Apple's attempts to keep people from using their own phones, random hax0rs got a working SDK up within days
A iPhone SDK would use a gcc cross-compiler (since the iPhone isn't running PowerPC or Intel chip -- by the way, gcc makes it easy to build a cross-compiler so this isn't a big deal)
Not a massive undertaking at all.
No, that's trivial mate. Tell you what, we'll do you two, in case one breaks - have it to you next Tuesday... Not.
Writing whatever they needed for the initial (general public who don't give the shake of a rat's tail about the SDK) release, then writing/polishing a general developer release is so obviously the way to go, I can't believe people are still talking about it. And if you expected 'The Steve' to lay out all his plans ahead of time, you've obviously been in a coma for the last decade. Welcome to the new century.
Simon.
(*) I think this is actually resolved in version-3 of the compiler. I'm still stuck with v2 because I can't get the LLVM part to compiler on my mac for some reason.
Apple have a policy of giving away their full suite of development tools to all ADC members, and ADC "membership" is a free registration away. They just want to know how many people are interested in developing for the Mac, IMHO.
Simon
Let me get this straight. Apple released a product that contains an operating system that's still in alpha?
No. Their OS works well and will have passed QA before they shipped. Like any humans, Apple make mistakes, but they generally at least try to adhere to "it just works".
They ported their (stable) OS to a new architecture. The internal developers put up with the codebase (with any extant foibles), and they wrote a completely new UI framework (based on, but different to, Cocoa). They did sufficient QA to get the built-in applications working correctly, and then shipped the device, hitting their target.
Now that it's out, and there's less pressure, they've been tidying it up, and polishing the UI framework, the compilers, any OS routines, and they've announced they're opening it up to 3rd parties. Presumably this means they've been patching the areas they worked around internally.
There's nothing too surprising in any of the above, in fact I'm surprised the "official" SDK will be available so soon. Porting an OS and writing a good accelerated UI framework is a non-trivial task.
Simon.
What a load of tosh.
.mac. Optionally uses spotlight to come up with what to back-up; Time-Machine is *still* far better because it's generational, and access to those generational copies is so easy.
Any utility you can get on Linux, you can get on OSX by a recompile. The most popular are as far away as 'sudo port install XXXX'. And you get rsync, tar, bzip2, ssh as standard anyway. As a technical OSX user, I've been using ssh/rsync for a while now, but it's way way over the head of my parents, and they want their digital photos (with which to bore their guests) just as much as I want my '~/src' directory.
Not to mention that 'Apple Backup' has been around for ages. Does incremental/full backups, even off-site to
Some fact-checking required before you spout off about "the fact of the matter", methinks.
Simon.
So:
YOU buy the car in the full knowledge that the engine isn't customer-servicable.
YOU modify the ECU, in violation of your warranty, with some help over the phone from a garage you found in a dodgy part of town
YOU take the car into the dealer to get "super ECU update"
The dealer *tells* you the update may damage the engine if you've modified it yourself
YOU *choose* to take that risk anyway
The dealer modifies the car engine
YOU have a 3-ton paperweight.
YOU made the incompatible changes. YOU chose to take the risk on those changes. YOU are responsible for the consequences. Far too few people seem to be accepting that.
My iphone is hacked, and you know what ? Due to owning more than one brain cell, I haven't applied the 1.1.1 update. How hard was that ?
Simon
I don't know about that - it doesn't look like it is right now though. From Amazon's MP3 player list, ordered by best-selling:
...
...
#1 Apple 4G Nano (silver, latest)
#2 Apple 16G ipod touch
#3 Apple 80G ipod classic (black, latest)
#4 Apple 8G ipod touch
#5 Apple 160G ipod classic (black, latest)
#6 Apple 80G ipod classic (silver, latest)
#7 Apple 8G ipod nano (green, latest)
#8 Apple 8G ipod nano (black, latest)
#9 Apple 8G ipod nano (blue, latest)
#10 Apple 8G ipod nano (silver, latest)
#11 Apple 1G ipod shuffle (purple, latest)
#12 Sandisk 8G (black)
#13 Sandisk 4G +SD
#14 Apple 2G nano (silver)
#15 Zune 30G (white) (this is the V1 player)
#28 Zune 30G (black) (this is the V1 player)
#29 Sandisk 1G express
#30 Zune 4G pink (this is the V2 player)
#31 Zune 8G red (this is the V2 player)
#32 Zune 4G black (this is the V2 player)
#33 Zune 8G pink (this is the V2 player)
#34 Zune 4G red (this is the V2 player)
#35 Zune 80G black (this is the V2 player)
#36 Zune 8G black (this is the V2 player)
#54 Zune 30G brown
I gave up listing apple players after the first 15 or so. The majority of the missing numbers are Apple MP3 players.
What I think is interesting from this list is that all the top 10 (11 actually) players are the latest-generation players from Apple. The zune V2, even on its launch-day, is languishing in the #30's. It's not even beating the zune V1. I don't think that's a good sign...
Simon