No exececutables or scripts are allowed and even if they do manage to get on there they cannot be executed.
That is all very fine, but it requires that what you originally have is perfect. You won't be able to patch it, put on new codecs for the multimedia, new functionality for the email client, provide any new form of automation (eg form filling and workflow for the office suite), new root certificates for any of the SSL client stuff. That will give the device and its software a very limited lifespan.
Sure you could try solving the update problem with signing, but that either leads to monopolistic control (and who says the monopoly won't take someones money in order to make a codec available that is also spyware?) or the same problem again that general PCs have in allowing updates from many sources.
Currently virus/spyware people have to just pick the easiest way in while reducing the changes of detection and aiming for the most success. And if you remove that way in, they will just find another. Internet Explorer is just the lowest of the low hanging fruit, but that doesn't mean the stuff above it (eg Linux) is that much harder to get in via.
When my friends call me a geek for using Linux, I always retort "Guess when the last time I had a problem with spyware?"
I have been using DOS then Windows since 1984 and have never had spyware or a virus either. In fact I don't even run checkers constantly, just every few weeks to double check. (And for the record I have been doing Linux since late 1991 and not had anything there either).
If you are prepared to put the time and effort into it, it is all pretty easy. You don't blindly run or view stuff from other sources, you don't steal software (if you don't have the originals then you have no idea what you are actually getting), you pay attention to the dialog boxes that various programs display etc. Heck I even read the contents of those dialog boxes with legal agreements in them before clicking Ok or Cancel. Most people just don't do that, and as a result their computers end up with more "helpful" software than they otherwise anticipated.
To say that Linux by design is invulnerable is nonsense. It doesn't take too much to infect an individual user (remember they aren't reading those dialog boxes either). And notice how on many Linuxen, when you try to run an admin tool on your ordinary user desktop, prompt for your (sudo) or the root password and which then leaves a key icon in your panel. That is one thing that can be abused to go from ordinary user to root. In many cases a piece of malware could probably just prompt and the average user would type in the necessary password.
Quite frankly I don't know the answer. Signing stuff doesn't work. User education is futile - why should someone have to know about the internals of their computer, operating system, access and authorisation models? It probably comes down the programmers and user interface. Every time the software has to ask a question, it is being stupid. We need to continually work on the software meeting the user's goals without needing to be babysat, and especially without them having to make these decisions all the time.
The single biggest problem with Mosaic was that it wouldn't display any of the page until it had downloaded every single image and worked out what size they were. IIRC it also only used one network connection to do the image downloads. The big thing that made people say "wow" about Netscape was it showing you the page and then filling in the images, reflowing the page as necessary. That resulted in people dropping Mosaic real quick.
Mosaic was also most at home on Unix. That was all fine for people like me who used Sun Workstations at work, but most didn't have that. The Windows and Mac versions lagged the Unix version, and had to have a lot of different code due to OS differences (those were the days of Win16 for example).
IIRC Netscape was also the first browser to implement tables and do a decent job of it. Within a month or less of the first release of Netscape, I didn't know anyone who used Mosaic any more. There were some more releases of Mosaic by uiuc, but most of their browser and server people had gone to Netscape.
I can't find that deal anyway in the special deals or anywhere else in the store.
I am actually a prime candidate for something like PearPC/CherryOS. I do some open source software which also runs on a Mac (as well as Linux and Windows) but someone else has to do all the Mac work.
I just need to run stuff in order to reproduce visual bugs (cross platform guis like wxWidgets are never perfect).
Unfortunately 2nd hand Macs come with older versions of MacOS so I would have to spring for $129 to upgrade them. The cheapest new one is $800, and if I don't want a monitor then $2000.
Given I already have two monitors, no more desk space and am perfectly happy with all my apps on Linux and Windows, emulation like VMWare is fine by me.
What is needed is telling me what applications I could use with the devices. Many Linux applications use libusb and don't need a driver (in fact you can't use libusb against an interface that a driver has claimed).
So if I plug in a cell phone, I should be told about BitPim for CDMA phones, and whatever is used for GSM phones. Whatever the scanner app is should appear for scanners. Epson printers should cause me to be told about mtink etc.
Actually some of us bought RedHat at the store after downloading it. It turned out that the only way to give them money was by doing that. Yes, I emailled the sales department asking if I could pay for a copy and there was no need to actually send me anything. They insisted I could only buy it from them with some exorbitant shipping fee or at my local store. Not that it matters any more since they decided they no longer wanted my money.
The Google Zeitgeist shows the percentage of browsers used over time, as well as operating systems. You can see the dip happening in IE6. There are two previous abberations but they are cancelled out by IE5 and look more like an error in Google's stats.
Both products can boot off raw hard disks. I even setup a new Gentoo system that way. VPC does however have a 137GB limit on raw disks which VMWare doesn't. Both products run quite slowly when installing an OS - they have to run in a maximum compatibility mode because of all the probing and other stuff OS installs do. Once the guest OS is installed they run faster.
Both products allow you to modify the virtual hardware (adding/removing ports, drives, images etc) after installation. Both products have undoable disks and various forms of networking (host only, share real NIC etc).
The last Connectix version of VPC had VNC access to your guests which was really neat. Microsoft removed that for VPC 2004 on "security" grounds. Technically that is true (VNC is an unecrypted protocol) but I suspect they would have removed it for marketing reasons anyway.
VPC does have a restriction that access to the host from the guest has to be done from kernel mode in the guest. That means for example that the Additions (VPC speak) / Tools (VMWare speak) have to be loaded into the OS in the guest. This prevents random user space programs in the guest from getting host access. I don't know if VMWare does something similar or not. It is however something to consider if untrusted software will be running in your guest.
The 2.6 kernel used in some distros doesn't work on VPC 2004 due to some self modifying code allegedly used in conjunction with the X server. Of course the VPC folks claim it is a Linux problem and the Linux folks say it is a VPC problem. Just remember that Linux is not a supported guest for VPC even though it usually works and MS haven't done anything (yet) to prevent it.
I have never had a response ever to a support issue raised with VMWare. I have had way more compatibility issues with VMWare. For example I have a bootcd that works on every real machine (I have tried over 10) and in VPC but fails in VMWare. With VPC I haven't had to raise support issues since it just works. There is a Microsoft newsgroup for VPC that works well.
Fundamentally both products work well. VPC is simpler and cheaper and does what it does well. VMWare is larger and more complicated and has lots more knobs for fine tuning and is also available for a Linux host.
We can thank MS for buying VPC as it resulted in VMWare dropping their price by almost 40%.
I have Aliens Special Edition on CAV Laserdisc. Even with a player that automatically changes sides, it gets real tedious and I bought the box set on DVD instead:-) I don't think I have any on Laserdisc that won't eventually be on DVD.
And I have several laserdiscs that were bargain bin at the time (ie around $20:-) that I wouldn't buy on DVD anyway. I guess the novelty wore off. Netflix also lets me see everything on DVD whose content I am unsure of, so I no longer buy bargain bin DVDs either.
Sadly there is almost zero market for selling laserdiscs. Many of those on eBay don't even get bids. For those that do get bids, add in the shipping costs and the result is similar in price to DVDs so only few people will buy the disks.
An even bigger problem is the lack of players. Due to the size and weight of the discs, the players do start acting up over time. That makes second hand players a very dicey decision.
Two years ago I needed a new player due to the death of my old one after 7 years of service. The only new one available was the Pioneer DVL-919 at around $1000. That buys a lot of DVDs. Fortunately I managed to get a used player for $50 from my local AV store, but when it dies I'll give up on Laserdisc.
I have about 350 discs, and it will be a sad day when I can no longer watch them. DVDs are a lot more convenient, especially from Netflix:-)
Oh, shucks you caught me. Yes I really am a beast that lives under a bridge. Actually I appear to have caught another person who just did an immediate gut reaction without bothering to read. I never said I need to do device driver development. I did say I need access a USB based device. I do rely on the operating system for some devices and use libusb for others. The existence of the device is what means I can't do remote development (eg using VNC or whatever the Apple equivalent is).
As for the eBay comment, see the many messages in this thread.
Do you have any constructive suggestions that have not already been covered?
The nearest Apple store to me is about 50 miles away. Your summary is spot on. I have looked extensively at refurbs, but they almost never have 10.3 on them. (I usually see several with MacOS 9 on them).
I'll just persevere as I already have done making the best use of what I have. (And all that without charging Mac users, or setting up a small business in order to take tax deductions I am "entitled" to).
But it would be nice if Apple had some solution:-)
You are welcome and the fanboys don't put me off. It is important to me that my software works well on all platforms. One motivation for starting it was the equivalent commercial software from 5 different companies were all Windows only. I do also add in functionality that is platform specific (for example some fields only in Apple's vCards, Evolution support on Linux and Outlook on Windows). The Apple specific stuff is the hardest for me to develop.
It would be great to see a loaner program from Apple. I doubt they would ever enter the virtualisation space (x86 host, powerpc guest) but that would work for me as well.
I have let my users know how happy I'd be with a loaner from them, but they also have the same issues - it is expensive kit to load to someone else.
I have no desire to turn the software into a business. I have looked into the economics of it, and it just isn't there - I couldn't make a full time living from it (I live in expensive California). I also have a quality threshold. The software is currently less than version 1.0. Even in this state there are over 1,000 downloads a day (Windows is 920 of that, Mac 60, Linux 20).
You can't trust anyone to support software. Commercial entities EOL their products, or lose interest. There is a public track record since the inception that shows I support it. And being open source(GPL) means that even if I disappeared tomorrow, others could step in.
I actually object to all the tax shenanigans in the US, and deliberately choose not to play that game. While others seem determined to use every possible regulation and loophole to game the system, I am actually proud that my taxes pay for the wellbeing of the country and its population. It usually takes me 15 minutes to do my taxes online each year and I'd like to keep it that way.
And buying a full price Mac and then doing the small business game doesn't actually save the initial cost of the Mac which is my original problem:-) I'd be happy for a loaner, or for emulation software, or something like an eMac without the builtin monitor if it cost a lot less. The angle of "you have to spend money to save money" doesn't work for me!
Sadly it doesn't help. My app interfaces with the USB port, and it is graphical (the internals account for running in both CLI mode and GUI mode, but not much of the former has been implemented). The app has to be built seperately for 10.2 and 10.3.
A few hundred dollar eMac without monitor, or an emulation environment would be perfect for me.
I am aware of PearPC. There are two issues. The first is that for my project I need to be able to run USB device drivers inside the guest. That is a specific need for my project, and I would expect most won't have that problem. PearPC can't do that (yet). [There is also the sad note on the PearPC page today]
The second is that I have read (but not personally verified) that the license agreement for OS/X requires that you run it on Apple hardware.
I would be very happy to pay $200 for a copy of OS/X including a hosting environment such as PearPC to run it in if I had that option. It would actually even be preferable for me since that solution wouldn't consume any more desk space, and would reuse my existing monitors, hard disks etc.
You seem to be under the impression that I am ragging on Apple. They are a business and are free to do whatever they want. I am merely pointing out one problem that I as an open source developer (getting zero dollars) have in better supporting the Apple platform, and am looking for constructive solutions. If you want to do fan boy ranting or play in a religous war, please pick a different thread.
Did AMD, Intel or Linus Torvalds give you a PC to develop on? If they didn't give you one, did they loan you one to use? Yeah, I thought not.
You are correct that they didn't. I already have x86 based equipment because I have far more options for applications and operating systems. And if I didn't, the costs to acquire them are very low. Additionally I can easily get parts and do partial upgrades (motherboards, CPU, memory, hard disks, graphics cards etc).
The Mac world was really bad at that in the past which is why people like me didn't even consider them and now have an x86 based setup. Apple is now doing a lot better with all those, but that doesn't change the past nor what I already have and the reasons I have it.
Did you see this? Checking eBay superficially, I found this with a price of US$105:
There are still 4 days left on that item. The vast majority of bidding and hence the actual price happens in the last few hours of listing (which you knew if you did eBay more than superficially). For other items in a similar price range, the costs of upgrading to 10.3, plus putting in a new hard drive and memory puts it back in the several hundred dollar range. Not to mention that I don't think 266MHz processors would be too useful for developing and testing my app.
And if you didn't actually already have a physical Mac, why would you be in need of VirtualPC? VirtualPC simulates an Intel clone with Windows on a Mac. Sheesh.
Sorry to burst your fan boy bubble, but I was referencing VMWare and VirtualPC for x86. Those products let you use one host x86 machine, and run almost any x86 operating system as a guest. That makes it easy for an open source developer to support multiple families (and versions) of x86 based operating systems, such as Windows, Linux, *BSD etc (and without dual boot, plus undoable disks etc).
So talking about open source development, the cost of entry and the tools available are quite a bit lower in the x86 world. As an open source developer I want to support the Apple environment better, and my constructive suggestion is Apple loaning hardware providing certain constraints are met (such as number of downloads). Do you have any better constructive suggestions?
I am not a professional developer:-) There is one of me, and I need at most one machine. I get exactly $0 for my program. The ADC requires an annual membership fee before you get the discounts, other than occasional special promotions.
This open source developer has a project that works on Windows, Linux and Mac, but sadly doesn't possess a Mac himself - someone else does the Mac builds for me.
I'd love to get a Mac so that I could improve the project on Mac myself, but sadly they are too expensive to acquire. The cheapest Mac I can find new is $800. There are second hand ones around $650, but you usually need to add $130 to upgrade the OS to 10.3 putting you back at the $800 price tag anyway. (Sadly I can't do development remotely as I need to play with USB based devices).
By comparison, you can get x86 based machines for $200-$300, which makes the barrier of entry to Linux/Windows very low. There are also products like VMWare and VirtualPC which help significantly.
It would be nice if Apple had some way for developers like me to get loaned or cheap equipment. They could even set minimum download thresholds from SourceForge or other similar minimum requirements. (My project spent most of last week within the top 100 projects on SF).
I tried looking through the many many long pages about HotMail's terms of service (and passport). I suggest you do the same and see exactly what you are agreeing to. Yahoo's has this little tidbit:
You also agree to: (a) provide true, accurate, current and complete information about yourself as prompted by the Service's registration form (such information being the "Registration Data") and (b) maintain and promptly update the Registration Data to keep it true, accurate, current and complete.
My time isn't free either. So basically to get this "free" software, I have to give them my non-free personal details, and potentially spend several minutes (closer to 30 if you actually read all the legal stuff) to get a "throwaway" email account where I also have to give over my non-free personal details.
What I said was that given mobile infrastructures have to change over time (new speeds, new features, power requirements etc), CDMA is way better for that than TDMA/GSM because of its forwards and backwards compatibility.
And if you want to be pedantic, the 3G GSM network is based on CDMA as well. ie the GSM carriers decided to drop TDMA and move to CDMA for their 3G. From that you can conclude that CDMA is superior to TDMA/GSM for the carrier even of they already paid for a TDMA/GSM infrastructure. The article I linked to explains it all in detail.
As a cell phone user, who cares what the underlying technology is. It is irrelevant if little gremlins inside the phone are what is making it all work. The technology and carriers 3 towns away that I never go to do not matter. All that does matter is what plans, phones and pricing are available where I make and receive calls. What is right for one person won't be right for everyone. Some people only make and receive calls in a small area, and others are national and international travellers.
Slashdot Mirror
That is all very fine, but it requires that what you originally have is perfect. You won't be able to patch it, put on new codecs for the multimedia, new functionality for the email client, provide any new form of automation (eg form filling and workflow for the office suite), new root certificates for any of the SSL client stuff. That will give the device and its software a very limited lifespan.
Sure you could try solving the update problem with signing, but that either leads to monopolistic control (and who says the monopoly won't take someones money in order to make a codec available that is also spyware?) or the same problem again that general PCs have in allowing updates from many sources.
Currently virus/spyware people have to just pick the easiest way in while reducing the changes of detection and aiming for the most success. And if you remove that way in, they will just find another. Internet Explorer is just the lowest of the low hanging fruit, but that doesn't mean the stuff above it (eg Linux) is that much harder to get in via.
I have been using DOS then Windows since 1984 and have never had spyware or a virus either. In fact I don't even run checkers constantly, just every few weeks to double check. (And for the record I have been doing Linux since late 1991 and not had anything there either).
If you are prepared to put the time and effort into it, it is all pretty easy. You don't blindly run or view stuff from other sources, you don't steal software (if you don't have the originals then you have no idea what you are actually getting), you pay attention to the dialog boxes that various programs display etc. Heck I even read the contents of those dialog boxes with legal agreements in them before clicking Ok or Cancel. Most people just don't do that, and as a result their computers end up with more "helpful" software than they otherwise anticipated.
To say that Linux by design is invulnerable is nonsense. It doesn't take too much to infect an individual user (remember they aren't reading those dialog boxes either). And notice how on many Linuxen, when you try to run an admin tool on your ordinary user desktop, prompt for your (sudo) or the root password and which then leaves a key icon in your panel. That is one thing that can be abused to go from ordinary user to root. In many cases a piece of malware could probably just prompt and the average user would type in the necessary password.
Quite frankly I don't know the answer. Signing stuff doesn't work. User education is futile - why should someone have to know about the internals of their computer, operating system, access and authorisation models? It probably comes down the programmers and user interface. Every time the software has to ask a question, it is being stupid. We need to continually work on the software meeting the user's goals without needing to be babysat, and especially without them having to make these decisions all the time.
The single biggest problem with Mosaic was that it wouldn't display any of the page until it had downloaded every single image and worked out what size they were. IIRC it also only used one network connection to do the image downloads. The big thing that made people say "wow" about Netscape was it showing you the page and then filling in the images, reflowing the page as necessary. That resulted in people dropping Mosaic real quick.
Mosaic was also most at home on Unix. That was all fine for people like me who used Sun Workstations at work, but most didn't have that. The Windows and Mac versions lagged the Unix version, and had to have a lot of different code due to OS differences (those were the days of Win16 for example).
IIRC Netscape was also the first browser to implement tables and do a decent job of it. Within a month or less of the first release of Netscape, I didn't know anyone who used Mosaic any more. There were some more releases of Mosaic by uiuc, but most of their browser and server people had gone to Netscape.
I can't find that deal anyway in the special deals or anywhere else in the store.
I am actually a prime candidate for something like PearPC/CherryOS. I do some open source software which also runs on a Mac (as well as Linux and Windows) but someone else has to do all the Mac work.
I just need to run stuff in order to reproduce visual bugs (cross platform guis like wxWidgets are never perfect).
Unfortunately 2nd hand Macs come with older versions of MacOS so I would have to spring for $129 to upgrade them. The cheapest new one is $800, and if I don't want a monitor then $2000.
Given I already have two monitors, no more desk space and am perfectly happy with all my apps on Linux and Windows, emulation like VMWare is fine by me.
Now if only Apple would let you buy a machine without a screen for less than $2000.
What is needed is telling me what applications I could use with the devices. Many Linux applications use libusb and don't need a driver (in fact you can't use libusb against an interface that a driver has claimed).
So if I plug in a cell phone, I should be told about BitPim for CDMA phones, and whatever is used for GSM phones. Whatever the scanner app is should appear for scanners. Epson printers should cause me to be told about mtink etc.
And all this can be done outside the kernel.
Actually some of us bought RedHat at the store after downloading it. It turned out that the only way to give them money was by doing that. Yes, I emailled the sales department asking if I could pay for a copy and there was no need to actually send me anything. They insisted I could only buy it from them with some exorbitant shipping fee or at my local store. Not that it matters any more since they decided they no longer wanted my money.
That may be true today, but who do you think will be the purchasers, decision makers and managers in 20 years time?
The Google Zeitgeist shows the percentage of browsers used over time, as well as operating systems. You can see the dip happening in IE6. There are two previous abberations but they are cancelled out by IE5 and look more like an error in Google's stats.
Both products can boot off raw hard disks. I even setup a new Gentoo system that way. VPC does however have a 137GB limit on raw disks which VMWare doesn't. Both products run quite slowly when installing an OS - they have to run in a maximum compatibility mode because of all the probing and other stuff OS installs do. Once the guest OS is installed they run faster.
Both products allow you to modify the virtual hardware (adding/removing ports, drives, images etc) after installation. Both products have undoable disks and various forms of networking (host only, share real NIC etc).
The last Connectix version of VPC had VNC access to your guests which was really neat. Microsoft removed that for VPC 2004 on "security" grounds. Technically that is true (VNC is an unecrypted protocol) but I suspect they would have removed it for marketing reasons anyway.
VPC does have a restriction that access to the host from the guest has to be done from kernel mode in the guest. That means for example that the Additions (VPC speak) / Tools (VMWare speak) have to be loaded into the OS in the guest. This prevents random user space programs in the guest from getting host access. I don't know if VMWare does something similar or not. It is however something to consider if untrusted software will be running in your guest.
The 2.6 kernel used in some distros doesn't work on VPC 2004 due to some self modifying code allegedly used in conjunction with the X server. Of course the VPC folks claim it is a Linux problem and the Linux folks say it is a VPC problem. Just remember that Linux is not a supported guest for VPC even though it usually works and MS haven't done anything (yet) to prevent it.
I have never had a response ever to a support issue raised with VMWare. I have had way more compatibility issues with VMWare. For example I have a bootcd that works on every real machine (I have tried over 10) and in VPC but fails in VMWare. With VPC I haven't had to raise support issues since it just works. There is a Microsoft newsgroup for VPC that works well.
Fundamentally both products work well. VPC is simpler and cheaper and does what it does well. VMWare is larger and more complicated and has lots more knobs for fine tuning and is also available for a Linux host.
We can thank MS for buying VPC as it resulted in VMWare dropping their price by almost 40%.
I have Aliens Special Edition on CAV Laserdisc. Even with a player that automatically changes sides, it gets real tedious and I bought the box set on DVD instead :-) I don't think I have any on Laserdisc that won't eventually be on DVD.
:-) that I wouldn't buy on DVD anyway. I guess the novelty wore off. Netflix also lets me see everything on DVD whose content I am unsure of, so I no longer buy bargain bin DVDs either.
And I have several laserdiscs that were bargain bin at the time (ie around $20
Sadly there is almost zero market for selling laserdiscs. Many of those on eBay don't even get bids. For those that do get bids, add in the shipping costs and the result is similar in price to DVDs so only few people will buy the disks.
An even bigger problem is the lack of players. Due to the size and weight of the discs, the players do start acting up over time. That makes second hand players a very dicey decision.
Two years ago I needed a new player due to the death of my old one after 7 years of service. The only new one available was the Pioneer DVL-919 at around $1000. That buys a lot of DVDs. Fortunately I managed to get a used player for $50 from my local AV store, but when it dies I'll give up on Laserdisc.
I have about 350 discs, and it will be a sad day when I can no longer watch them. DVDs are a lot more convenient, especially from Netflix :-)
As for the eBay comment, see the many messages in this thread.
Do you have any constructive suggestions that have not already been covered?
The nearest Apple store to me is about 50 miles away. Your summary is spot on. I have looked extensively at refurbs, but they almost never have 10.3 on them. (I usually see several with MacOS 9 on them).
:-)
I'll just persevere as I already have done making the best use of what I have. (And all that without charging Mac users, or setting up a small business in order to take tax deductions I am "entitled" to).
But it would be nice if Apple had some solution
You are welcome and the fanboys don't put me off. It is important to me that my software works well on all platforms. One motivation for starting it was the equivalent commercial software from 5 different companies were all Windows only. I do also add in functionality that is platform specific (for example some fields only in Apple's vCards, Evolution support on Linux and Outlook on Windows). The Apple specific stuff is the hardest for me to develop.
It would be great to see a loaner program from Apple. I doubt they would ever enter the virtualisation space (x86 host, powerpc guest) but that would work for me as well.
I have let my users know how happy I'd be with a loaner from them, but they also have the same issues - it is expensive kit to load to someone else.
I have no desire to turn the software into a business. I have looked into the economics of it, and it just isn't there - I couldn't make a full time living from it (I live in expensive California). I also have a quality threshold. The software is currently less than version 1.0. Even in this state there are over 1,000 downloads a day (Windows is 920 of that, Mac 60, Linux 20).
:-) I'd be happy for a loaner, or for emulation software, or something like an eMac without the builtin monitor if it cost a lot less. The angle of "you have to spend money to save money" doesn't work for me!
You can't trust anyone to support software. Commercial entities EOL their products, or lose interest. There is a public track record since the inception that shows I support it. And being open source(GPL) means that even if I disappeared tomorrow, others could step in.
I actually object to all the tax shenanigans in the US, and deliberately choose not to play that game. While others seem determined to use every possible regulation and loophole to game the system, I am actually proud that my taxes pay for the wellbeing of the country and its population. It usually takes me 15 minutes to do my taxes online each year and I'd like to keep it that way.
And buying a full price Mac and then doing the small business game doesn't actually save the initial cost of the Mac which is my original problem
Sadly it doesn't help. My app interfaces with the USB port, and it is graphical (the internals account for running in both CLI mode and GUI mode, but not much of the former has been implemented). The app has to be built seperately for 10.2 and 10.3.
A few hundred dollar eMac without monitor, or an emulation environment would be perfect for me.
This is something I do for fun. It is not a business. And paying something off over 5 years is still paying for it.
As for the "extra effort", I already do the binary dist, custom icon, online help etc for all platforms including the Mac.
I suppose I could drop the Mac version since you claim I am not supposed to do free software for the Mac.
I am aware of PearPC. There are two issues. The first is that for my project I need to be able to run USB device drivers inside the guest. That is a specific need for my project, and I would expect most won't have that problem. PearPC can't do that (yet). [There is also the sad note on the PearPC page today]
The second is that I have read (but not personally verified) that the license agreement for OS/X requires that you run it on Apple hardware.
I would be very happy to pay $200 for a copy of OS/X including a hosting environment such as PearPC to run it in if I had that option. It would actually even be preferable for me since that solution wouldn't consume any more desk space, and would reuse my existing monitors, hard disks etc.
You seem to be under the impression that I am ragging on Apple. They are a business and are free to do whatever they want. I am merely pointing out one problem that I as an open source developer (getting zero dollars) have in better supporting the Apple platform, and am looking for constructive solutions. If you want to do fan boy ranting or play in a religous war, please pick a different thread.
You are correct that they didn't. I already have x86 based equipment because I have far more options for applications and operating systems. And if I didn't, the costs to acquire them are very low. Additionally I can easily get parts and do partial upgrades (motherboards, CPU, memory, hard disks, graphics cards etc). The Mac world was really bad at that in the past which is why people like me didn't even consider them and now have an x86 based setup. Apple is now doing a lot better with all those, but that doesn't change the past nor what I already have and the reasons I have it.
There are still 4 days left on that item. The vast majority of bidding and hence the actual price happens in the last few hours of listing (which you knew if you did eBay more than superficially). For other items in a similar price range, the costs of upgrading to 10.3, plus putting in a new hard drive and memory puts it back in the several hundred dollar range. Not to mention that I don't think 266MHz processors would be too useful for developing and testing my app.
Sorry to burst your fan boy bubble, but I was referencing VMWare and VirtualPC for x86. Those products let you use one host x86 machine, and run almost any x86 operating system as a guest. That makes it easy for an open source developer to support multiple families (and versions) of x86 based operating systems, such as Windows, Linux, *BSD etc (and without dual boot, plus undoable disks etc).
So talking about open source development, the cost of entry and the tools available are quite a bit lower in the x86 world. As an open source developer I want to support the Apple environment better, and my constructive suggestion is Apple loaning hardware providing certain constraints are met (such as number of downloads). Do you have any better constructive suggestions?
I am not a professional developer :-) There is one of me, and I need at most one machine. I get exactly $0 for my program. The ADC requires an annual membership fee before you get the discounts, other than occasional special promotions.
This open source developer has a project that works on Windows, Linux and Mac, but sadly doesn't possess a Mac himself - someone else does the Mac builds for me.
I'd love to get a Mac so that I could improve the project on Mac myself, but sadly they are too expensive to acquire. The cheapest Mac I can find new is $800. There are second hand ones around $650, but you usually need to add $130 to upgrade the OS to 10.3 putting you back at the $800 price tag anyway. (Sadly I can't do development remotely as I need to play with USB based devices).
By comparison, you can get x86 based machines for $200-$300, which makes the barrier of entry to Linux/Windows very low. There are also products like VMWare and VirtualPC which help significantly.
It would be nice if Apple had some way for developers like me to get loaned or cheap equipment. They could even set minimum download thresholds from SourceForge or other similar minimum requirements. (My project spent most of last week within the top 100 projects on SF).
I tried looking through the many many long pages about HotMail's terms of service (and passport). I suggest you do the same and see exactly what you are agreeing to. Yahoo's has this little tidbit:
My time isn't free either. So basically to get this "free" software, I have to give them my non-free personal details, and potentially spend several minutes (closer to 30 if you actually read all the legal stuff) to get a "throwaway" email account where I also have to give over my non-free personal details.
I sure as hell am not jumping through so many hoops to see if I might like it. (Just because others do like it doesn't mean I will).
Did you actually read the article I posted?
What I said was that given mobile infrastructures have to change over time (new speeds, new features, power requirements etc), CDMA is way better for that than TDMA/GSM because of its forwards and backwards compatibility.
And if you want to be pedantic, the 3G GSM network is based on CDMA as well. ie the GSM carriers decided to drop TDMA and move to CDMA for their 3G. From that you can conclude that CDMA is superior to TDMA/GSM for the carrier even of they already paid for a TDMA/GSM infrastructure. The article I linked to explains it all in detail.
As a cell phone user, who cares what the underlying technology is. It is irrelevant if little gremlins inside the phone are what is making it all work. The technology and carriers 3 towns away that I never go to do not matter. All that does matter is what plans, phones and pricing are available where I make and receive calls. What is right for one person won't be right for everyone. Some people only make and receive calls in a small area, and others are national and international travellers.