I've been using 1.1A and the nightlies (now 1.1b) as my default browser on OS X. For "bleeding edge," it sure is stable. I've had ZERO crashes. It's pretty quick in the Classic skin (which best matches the OS X desktop, anyway).
Yeah, the Aqua anti-aliased fonts are silky smooth. Mozilla looks as good as OmniWeb now, and renders better.
It would be nice to see translucent drop-down menus from the toolbar. Chimera has this running already in 0.3. I see 0.4 is imminent, by the way.
Mozilla has done a marvelous job with the OS X port. I haven't touched IE 5 in months. Moz is now by far the best browser for the platform.
OS News has a thoughtful article on Apple's possible migration from PPC. They address the hardware issue I brought up elsewhere, discussing ways to be certain OS X will only run on Mac boxes. They also give a rah-rah for leapfrogging directly to 64-bit AMD chips.
A sexy thought: OS X running on, say, a 3-gHz, 64-bit chip...with Windows/Linux emulation on-board, maybe? Hmm.
Jobs is needling Motorola. Unless Apple's business model is changing from that of a hardware to a software company, they'll stay with PPC.
When folks see my iBook, they think of it as a "Mac." A Mac is different from a PC (in marketing terms). This difference is why Apple can turn a profit these days when Gateway is posting losses.
If you put OS X on Intel, every beige box will be a "Mac." The name will lose all meaning, and Apple will have surrendered its hardware's marketing position.
It might be that Apple has, indeed, decided the hardware market is too saturated to assure the company's long-term profitability. This is the only reason it would make sense to port OS X to Intel.
I do not agree that the market is tapped out for Apple. If I were Jobs, I would constantly press hardware requirements through technological innovation on the OS and clever new add-on devices. This will keep their existing customer base on an upgrade track. A hot OS and new features, properly marketed, will also serve to attract new users. Their entry point is a hardware purchase.
Given Apple's commitment to their new retail stores, I'd think they still believe they're a hardware company. No Intel for now. Just options.:-)
...a program developed by Arthur Anderson accounting will soon be released to Quicken and Quickbooks users concerned about flaws in their bookeeping systems.
I'm not going to fault Apple for charging for iTools services. I can't remember an "email address for life" promise when I signed for the free account I've used since OS X Day One. Apple is probably within their legal rights to change their TOS, and for-pay iTools is certainly a better business model.
I bet they're betting few users will actually abandon the platform because there's LESS free beer. They know that while they'll lose the bulk of their current uers, thousands will sign up. The paid base will grow slowly as new (and less outraged) OS X 10.2 users decide they want the convenience of a one-stop service that's tightly integrated with the OS.
Mac software is still a great value in comparison to Windows. We get a ton a very good bundled software, and it's still free. iTunes 3.0 is out today, and it's part of the OS. There's also iDVD, iMovie, Mail, and quite a bit more. OS X is still far cheaper than Win XP; it's less draconian; and it's a better user experience. It also has an Open Source community to support it.
I'll stay with Mac, and will likely plop down the $129 for 10.2. It's a full install, and the new features are compelling. 10.2 will really pressure Redmond.
On the other hand, the new.Mac services don't seem worth $99 TO ME. They might be to you. The big iTools draw was (again, to me) the IMAP mailbox. I dump all my other accounts there, even though I've never used a Mac.com return address. I prefer Norton to the "free" virus software offered with.Mac; would rather backup critical files to offline media; and have no need for shared calendaring right now. I'll move my website to a host offering IMAP boxes, and let Mr. Jobs toast my old iTools account.
Y'all need to make the same choices. Do you NEED the 10.2 upgrade right now? Do you NEED the.Mac tools? If you buy 10.2 and not.Mac, do you mind having OS features you can't use?
The final consideration is Apple viability. Are you financially (not just philosophically) committed to a rival *commercial* OS to offset Microsoft's hegemony? Do you want a non-MS OS where you can run mainstream commercial applications unlikely to find their way to Linux anytime soon? If so, pony up the bucks. Apple's next quarter is gonna suck in a magical way. If you want them to stay healthy, pay for what you use. This is a commercial war, not Open Source.
If you can't answer "yes" to the last paragraph, that's fine. Maybe you stick with OS X 10.1x for now, or go find another email address. Or--and this is a great option--look into one of the PPC distros. I'll probably convert my older iBook to Yellow Dog or something when I upgrade to newer Apple hardware.
Which I'll need to do now and then. Selling computers is what Apple is all about, and moving units is a driving force behind OS innovation. It pushes the hardware requirements, and that keeps folks employed in Cupertino.
The creative work I develop in a day would fill many, many floppies.
Floppies are convenient for quick sneakernet transfers of small files, but they're not really a safe backup media, are they? Better a Zip drive, a network directory, or a CD-RW.
I shop at Wal-Mart, and I'm not a Redneck. I just like to be able to shop at 1am, or whenever it is I find I'm out of batteries or something.
Unless the Mandrake PCs sell very well online, I doubt Wal-Mart will put a Linux desktop on the Sales floor anytime soon. The volume they'd push would hardly justify the display space or staff training. Of course, they could pick-and-choose their markets.
Judging by the nasty, elitist comments in this thread, nobody who reads Slashdot shops at Wal-Mart. If I were sitting at Corporate up in Arkansas trying to make a call on whether or not to take a risk on Linux, I'd keep that in mind.
You're right. The floppy bay *would* make a convenient storage slot for business cards or condoms or booklets of stamps or something.
For it to be a Mac feature, it needs a name consistent with the rest of the company's branding. We'll call it "iStore."
The Fall ad campaign will lead, "What will YOU store in your iStore?" It'll feature nerdy-looking guys in black turtlenecks and cute bohemian chics standing against a white background, grinning with satisfaction. The text (set in a tasteful Helvetica font--very clean) will list all the clever lifestyle items these users slip into their iStore: Moby concert tickets...a Sierra Club flyer...maybe the keys to the Rover. Because what really fits best in your iStore is iMagination (tm).
What ya figure? An extra hundred bucks for the iStore? Maybe $150 if you want two. Subject to availability.
I didn't know I wanted a pocket-based version of iPhoto in my life. What I THOUGHT I wanted was inexpensive wireless email, and an improved version of Graffiti that isn't so apres- 1995.
Hmm. No obvious antenna, and that aure looks like a standard Graffiti pad.
...should star as Batman's aging, dissipated, stuck-in-the-Sixties swinging uncle, ala Michael Kane in Goldmember. He drives something which resembles the old Batmobile, and gets about 9 miles per gallon when not in rocket-assist mode. Yeah, bay-bee! Groovy!
His complaints mirror some of those from people I know who have migrated from Linux to Mac OS X. To me, that's a better play than a return to Perdition.
I'm going to take this opportunity to propose a/. "Open Standards" movie ratings system. I've used this myself for quite a while:
ONE DVD (or less): This movie sucks. Your entertainment time would be better spent watching something on cable or--gasp--doing something outdoors.
TWO DVDs: Worth renting, but not good enough to justify a full-freight movie ticket.
THREE DVDs: A good movie--you won't feel ripped off if you drop the cash for a theatre ticket. Buy the DVD if you can find a good price.
FOUR DVDs: A great movie. See it opening weekend, and buy the DVD as soon as it hits the streets.
I think we'll call this the GNUvie Movie Ratings Standard. If it really catches on, expect Microsoft to claim they invented it, and that having just anyone handing out DVDs is bad for the movie industry and national security. You'll only be able to rate movies if you have the appropriate DRM key.
On the GNUvie scale, I'd give MIB2 *TWO* DVDs. It was enjoyable, but I was glad I caught it at a cheap midday show. For me, "Minority Report" was a solid *THREE* DVD flick. I'm pretty stingy with my four-DVD ratings. The last one I saw was probably "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon."
The GNUvie scale. For the people, by the people.;-)
If Citizen Clinton were to run for President tomorrow, he would positively mop the floor with George W. I doubt it would even be close.
Despite his painfully obvious failings, Clinton must surely be the most popular President in the past 50 years. More so even than Kennedy or Reagan: the bloom was long off the Rose of Camelot when Lee Harvey Oswald delivered JFK to a tragic death and the surety of legend. For both parties, Reagan's last term was one embarrassing disaster after another.
No, it's Dittohead hubris to suggest that the US ever rejected Clinton. Term limits retired Clinton, not the electorate. Voters barely rejected his proxy, and I strongly suspect Tipper puttering around the Rose Garden today if her husband had embraced his administration's legacy with anything firmer than a clammy handshake.
Instead, we are saddled with a second-string President whose policies ebb and flow with the warring factions that surround him, and whose squinty-eyed demeanor is mistaken for resoluteness.
Truely, our political system works best when we don't think about it too hard.
Slashdot Mirror
An "Open Source Cookbook" would simply be a list of local pizza delivery places, and the hours they're open.
;-)
Real geeks don't cook, they code.
Yeah, all the Mac development is Mozilla-based now. The builds are coming every few weeks, and they're quite useable now. Yay, indeed. :-)
I've been using 1.1A and the nightlies (now 1.1b) as my default browser on OS X. For "bleeding edge," it sure is stable. I've had ZERO crashes. It's pretty quick in the Classic skin (which best matches the OS X desktop, anyway).
Yeah, the Aqua anti-aliased fonts are silky smooth. Mozilla looks as good as OmniWeb now, and renders better.
It would be nice to see translucent drop-down menus from the toolbar. Chimera has this running already in 0.3. I see 0.4 is imminent, by the way.
Mozilla has done a marvelous job with the OS X port. I haven't touched IE 5 in months. Moz is now by far the best browser for the platform.
Thanks, Mozilla hackers.
We're up to build 14 on AOL for the beta for Mac OS X, and it's Mozilla. It'll go GM that way, I'm sure.
Works well, by the way.
A lot of bands might consider exploding CDs a feature. :-)
OS News has a thoughtful article on Apple's possible migration from PPC. They address the hardware issue I brought up elsewhere, discussing ways to be certain OS X will only run on Mac boxes. They also give a rah-rah for leapfrogging directly to 64-bit AMD chips.
A sexy thought: OS X running on, say, a 3-gHz, 64-bit chip...with Windows/Linux emulation on-board, maybe? Hmm.
http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=1393
I opened the link, but all I can find is an article titled, "TOO POOPED TO PONTIFICATE: ANONYMOUS POSTER WEARY OF COMMON FILE TYPES."
Must be something wrong with my browser. I'll get 'round to checking it.
I very much prefer my Quicktime player, but this Real beta opens a lot of content to OS X users.
At least Real is nice enough to support most OS platforms. That's more than I can say for Brand M and Brand A, which ignore Linux.
Jobs is needling Motorola. Unless Apple's business model is changing from that of a hardware to a software company, they'll stay with PPC.
:-)
When folks see my iBook, they think of it as a "Mac." A Mac is different from a PC (in marketing terms). This difference is why Apple can turn a profit these days when Gateway is posting losses.
If you put OS X on Intel, every beige box will be a "Mac." The name will lose all meaning, and Apple will have surrendered its hardware's marketing position.
It might be that Apple has, indeed, decided the hardware market is too saturated to assure the company's long-term profitability. This is the only reason it would make sense to port OS X to Intel.
I do not agree that the market is tapped out for Apple. If I were Jobs, I would constantly press hardware requirements through technological innovation on the OS and clever new add-on devices. This will keep their existing customer base on an upgrade track. A hot OS and new features, properly marketed, will also serve to attract new users. Their entry point is a hardware purchase.
Given Apple's commitment to their new retail stores, I'd think they still believe they're a hardware company. No Intel for now. Just options.
...a program developed by Arthur Anderson accounting will soon be released to Quicken and Quickbooks users concerned about flaws in their bookeeping systems.
I'm not going to fault Apple for charging for iTools services. I can't remember an "email address for life" promise when I signed for the free account I've used since OS X Day One. Apple is probably within their legal rights to change their TOS, and for-pay iTools is certainly a better business model.
.Mac services don't seem worth $99 TO ME. They might be to you. The big iTools draw was (again, to me) the IMAP mailbox. I dump all my other accounts there, even though I've never used a Mac.com return address. I prefer Norton to the "free" virus software offered with .Mac; would rather backup critical files to offline media; and have no need for shared calendaring right now. I'll move my website to a host offering IMAP boxes, and let Mr. Jobs toast my old iTools account.
.Mac tools? If you buy 10.2 and not .Mac, do you mind having OS features you can't use?
I bet they're betting few users will actually abandon the platform because there's LESS free beer. They know that while they'll lose the bulk of their current uers, thousands will sign up. The paid base will grow slowly as new (and less outraged) OS X 10.2 users decide they want the convenience of a one-stop service that's tightly integrated with the OS.
Mac software is still a great value in comparison to Windows. We get a ton a very good bundled software, and it's still free. iTunes 3.0 is out today, and it's part of the OS. There's also iDVD, iMovie, Mail, and quite a bit more. OS X is still far cheaper than Win XP; it's less draconian; and it's a better user experience. It also has an Open Source community to support it.
I'll stay with Mac, and will likely plop down the $129 for 10.2. It's a full install, and the new features are compelling. 10.2 will really pressure Redmond.
On the other hand, the new
Y'all need to make the same choices. Do you NEED the 10.2 upgrade right now? Do you NEED the
The final consideration is Apple viability. Are you financially (not just philosophically) committed to a rival *commercial* OS to offset Microsoft's hegemony? Do you want a non-MS OS where you can run mainstream commercial applications unlikely to find their way to Linux anytime soon? If so, pony up the bucks. Apple's next quarter is gonna suck in a magical way. If you want them to stay healthy, pay for what you use. This is a commercial war, not Open Source.
If you can't answer "yes" to the last paragraph, that's fine. Maybe you stick with OS X 10.1x for now, or go find another email address. Or--and this is a great option--look into one of the PPC distros. I'll probably convert my older iBook to Yellow Dog or something when I upgrade to newer Apple hardware.
Which I'll need to do now and then. Selling computers is what Apple is all about, and moving units is a driving force behind OS innovation. It pushes the hardware requirements, and that keeps folks employed in Cupertino.
Sorry this is so long.
Gotta agree about the disk image. Nice to be able to have it on hand for archive, too.
Didn't work under the QT6 beta.
I got a clean download on the first try, and it installed smoothly. Nothing has blown up...yet. :-)
The creative work I develop in a day would fill many, many floppies.
;-)
Floppies are convenient for quick sneakernet transfers of small files, but they're not really a safe backup media, are they? Better a Zip drive, a network directory, or a CD-RW.
I thought ALL Slashdotters had CD burners.
I shop at Wal-Mart, and I'm not a Redneck. I just like to be able to shop at 1am, or whenever it is I find I'm out of batteries or something.
Unless the Mandrake PCs sell very well online, I doubt Wal-Mart will put a Linux desktop on the Sales floor anytime soon. The volume they'd push would hardly justify the display space or staff training. Of course, they could pick-and-choose their markets.
Judging by the nasty, elitist comments in this thread, nobody who reads Slashdot shops at Wal-Mart. If I were sitting at Corporate up in Arkansas trying to make a call on whether or not to take a risk on Linux, I'd keep that in mind.
You're right. The floppy bay *would* make a convenient storage slot for business cards or condoms or booklets of stamps or something.
For it to be a Mac feature, it needs a name consistent with the rest of the company's branding. We'll call it "iStore."
The Fall ad campaign will lead, "What will YOU store in your iStore?" It'll feature nerdy-looking guys in black turtlenecks and cute bohemian chics standing against a white background, grinning with satisfaction. The text (set in a tasteful Helvetica font--very clean) will list all the clever lifestyle items these users slip into their iStore: Moby concert tickets...a Sierra Club flyer...maybe the keys to the Rover. Because what really fits best in your iStore is iMagination (tm).
What ya figure? An extra hundred bucks for the iStore? Maybe $150 if you want two. Subject to availability.
Ah, yes...a Mac case with a slot for floppy drive. It's a dead ringer. ;-)
I didn't know I wanted a pocket-based version of iPhoto in my life. What I THOUGHT I wanted was inexpensive wireless email, and an improved version of Graffiti that isn't so apres- 1995.
Hmm. No obvious antenna, and that aure looks like a standard Graffiti pad.
Thanks for straightening me out, Palm!
...should star as Batman's aging, dissipated, stuck-in-the-Sixties swinging uncle, ala Michael Kane in Goldmember. He drives something which resembles the old Batmobile, and gets about 9 miles per gallon when not in rocket-assist mode. Yeah, bay-bee! Groovy!
His complaints mirror some of those from people I know who have migrated from Linux to Mac OS X. To me, that's a better play than a return to Perdition.
I'm going to take this opportunity to propose a /. "Open Standards" movie ratings system. I've used this myself for quite a while:
;-)
ONE DVD (or less): This movie sucks. Your entertainment time would be better spent watching something on cable or--gasp--doing something outdoors.
TWO DVDs: Worth renting, but not good enough to justify a full-freight movie ticket.
THREE DVDs: A good movie--you won't feel ripped off if you drop the cash for a theatre ticket. Buy the DVD if you can find a good price.
FOUR DVDs: A great movie. See it opening weekend, and buy the DVD as soon as it hits the streets.
I think we'll call this the GNUvie Movie Ratings Standard. If it really catches on, expect Microsoft to claim they invented it, and that having just anyone handing out DVDs is bad for the movie industry and national security. You'll only be able to rate movies if you have the appropriate DRM key.
On the GNUvie scale, I'd give MIB2 *TWO* DVDs. It was enjoyable, but I was glad I caught it at a cheap midday show. For me, "Minority Report" was a solid *THREE* DVD flick. I'm pretty stingy with my four-DVD ratings. The last one I saw was probably "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon."
The GNUvie scale. For the people, by the people.
If Citizen Clinton were to run for President tomorrow, he would positively mop the floor with George W. I doubt it would even be close.
Despite his painfully obvious failings, Clinton must surely be the most popular President in the past 50 years. More so even than Kennedy or Reagan: the bloom was long off the Rose of Camelot when Lee Harvey Oswald delivered JFK to a tragic death and the surety of legend. For both parties, Reagan's last term was one embarrassing disaster after another.
No, it's Dittohead hubris to suggest that the US ever rejected Clinton. Term limits retired Clinton, not the electorate. Voters barely rejected his proxy, and I strongly suspect Tipper puttering around the Rose Garden today if her husband had embraced his administration's legacy with anything firmer than a clammy handshake.
Instead, we are saddled with a second-string President whose policies ebb and flow with the warring factions that surround him, and whose squinty-eyed demeanor is mistaken for resoluteness.
Truely, our political system works best when we don't think about it too hard.
Okay, he's unconsitutional, too...
...an article in today's Jersualem Post details the failure of the Palestinian Authority.