I didn't see any mention of the even bigger iPod news story. Real is launching a competitor to iTMS that like Apple uses AAC and thus supports iPods. (Indeed iPods are the only players I know of that support it) Real Networks
This is big for Apple. First of iTMS is a loss leader so competitors aren't that big a deal unless the recording industry gets their heads out of their asses, promotes downloads, and standardizes on a few outlets. (No sign of that happening) Anyway, Real will end up selling more iPods for Apple.
Of course this all makes sense. Real is getting hit from Microsoft's player as well as the success of iTunes/iTMS. Unless they get something going, even at a loss, they may disappear in a few years. So they've got to come up with an iTunes/iTMS competior -- likely supporting video unlike iTunes. Will it work? It's hard to say. The old RealJukebox from a few years back was my favorite player but became dated quickly and then was killed in favor of a subscription based RealOne. Plus most other iTMS competitors haven't done well. And there are more coming including one from Sony. Meanwhile Apple's system is garnering the best reviews, despite heavy marketing from companies like Napster. With the new Pepsi ad compaign I don't see anyone toppling them.
But perhaps they can manage to be the Pepse to Apple's Coke. (Yea, ironic, isn't it?) Right now iTMS and others may not make money. But three or four years from now the market may shift such that this becomes the standard distribution channel and bandwidth becomes such that you can make more money at it. Look at Amazon. How long did they lose money?
Did you read all the articles about the iPod battery? You can purchase new ones for $50 from lots of dealers. They aren't that difficult to install. (Although admittedly you need a screwdriver so they aren't as simple as say a laptop) I don't understand all this commotion about batteries and the iPod.
What I don't understand is the DVD part. Most people have DVD players -- even on their computer. Too bad they don't offer it as an option. (And I pray they have it in black instead of that ugly faux aluminum which has been popular the past few years) I also wonder how the data is shared. Is it in some directory? Will the device work with Linux and OSX? Or is it some custom Windows only setup?
Over at El Gato they have a similar product that does work with OSX. El Gato Eye Home. There are numerous similar products for music only as well. Some even support streaming radio stations. My favorite sounding is the Roku Labs one although I hasten to add I don't own one. But the iTunes integration for both PCs and Macs sounds very intriguing.
I don't understand why this is an issue. It's like my cell phone. When I'm in the car I plug it into the charger in my armrest. When I'm at home I plug it into my computer. The whole time I've had my iPod I've only lost charge twice, once when I hadn't plugged it in for a week and once while up in the mountains hiking.
Plus, I don't need to purchase batteries. (Which really bug me - give me a large rechargable any time)
The "don't need a computer" bit I don't understand either. While there may be a few luddites out there without a computer fast enough to do MP-3s, there aren't many. The advantage of the computer is that you don't destroy CDs like you used to. (How many CDs have I got all scratched up in the car or what not!) You digitize them and put them away. Also with an iPod I can do things like have randomly created playlists for different genres. I rarely listen to the same stuff twice.
"Maybe in look and feel but it performs like crap. It's too disconnected; too much stuff done at runtime; too dynamic to be used for core components."
As others said you can optimize individual areas in C++. Also you are now discussing core components which seem a different issue to the person using frameworks. They don't care how the framework is written. Certainly even obj-C advocates don't think it the solution to everything. Other languages have their place.
I wonder though, why you criticize obj-C when even Microsoft is moving to a more runtime oriented system with.NET. It seems obj-C's main competitors are C#/VB.net and Java.
Those of you who use OSX probably have a program fairly similar to what Microsoft is offering. Little Snitch is a program that sits in the background watching for internet traffic. It then lets you specify rules, temporarily disallow, or temporarily allow any connection from a particular program. It is very easy to use and lets you specify only connecting to a particular server, port, or so forth.
What is most interesting about this is how many programs actually call home about various things. There was a bit of a scandal as a few programs were rewriting the Little Snitch rules, allowing net access without the user knowing. It reportedly has new features to prevent this. I hope Microsoft adds that in as well otherwise trojan horses or the like may just "disable" this feature so you don't know what they are doing.
A lot of what they announced seems remarkably similar to what was discussed at MacNN prior to Safari being released.
I must admit that now I've become used to Safari, the ideas we discussed then don't seem quite as exciting as they once did. I find that when I have too many tabs with Safari I simply open up a new window. I do wish Safari allowed tabs to be rearranged and drug between windows though. However that may infringe upon Adobe's patent. (Although Microsoft has a similar interface in some applications like Visual Studio with apparently no problem)
I also have to say that I rarely have more than about six tabs open. I get lost easily with Safari (or Phoenix's) tabs then. Perhaps Omniweb will help here. On the other hand working with Expose makes me wonder about the drawer/sidebar approach as textual data really doesn't communicate well when reduced. And most of my tabs are pages from similar sites. (i.e. I tend to open all the slashdot articles I'm interested in and then read each tab)
Some of the other features, such as RSS feeds do seem more exciting. However to be honest, it will be hard to compete with Safari. Safari really does do nearly everything I want in a browser.
Office is a carbon version. I see it more as a rewrite than a quick port. But clearly it could be better - but let's be fair. It was written for 10.1. It's problem is a lack of an update for quite some time. Appleworks on the other hand just sucks and has tons of Sys9 elements scattered throughout.
Appleworks isn't free, merely bundled with many Macs. It wasn't bundled with mine (a dual 867 last year) and I made the mistake of purchasing it. While not bad for casual users, the interface is a poor Carbon port. Still better than OpenOffice on the Mac, but not as good as MS Office. Apple supposedly has a new version coming out soon. Some have it being released this month. We'll see how it looks and works along with the cost...
This is a good point. KOffice's word processor, for instance, really reminds me of a stripped down FrameMaker. I have my qualms about its interface, but it is nice to have a different approach from what most have been taking. (MS Word, AppleWorks, OpenOffice, AbiWrite)
I'm rather looking forward to the next iteration of KDE I've been reading about. If it comes out *native* for the Mac, then that's just one more big benifit for the Mac.
I'm not sure what you mean by "KDE had to be hacked to run natively on OSX." So far as I know KDE doesn't run "natively" on OSX. Unless you mean the KDE that is part of Fink and runs under X11. I'm not sure what dependencies were there. I know Fink still doesn't have the latest version of Gnome running yet. (Although I believe DarwinPorts does) So I admittedly am not familiar with other low-level features.
The port of Konquerer and KOffice is using the native QT/Mac port. This is great for two reasons. For one it helps find bugs and missing features in QT/Mac. That'll make porting future projects easier and make using QT/Mac for cross platform development better. Secondly it will enable a lot of fairly good programs to run native.
I agree that KOffice isn't that great, although it holds promise. But having it native is a big deal. Open Office might be more powerful, but because it is an X11 app, it really doesn't have an Aqua look and feel. Further cutting and pasting of graphics or drag and drop don't work. That's a rather large failing with Open Office. (I also think Open Office is weak compared to MS Office and further Apple is expected by some to be releasing its office suite this winter or spring)
I'd kind of like to have a native Konquerer, if only to deal with directories with lots of files. Something the Finder doesn't deal well with. Using it to organize my web directories would be very nice as well...
I'm truly impressed with how Amazon has improved over the years. I actually did something like 90% of my Christmas shopping through Amazon buying sheets, books, bathroom stuff, lingerie, winter coats and more. It was very convenient, somewhat like a shopping mall experience without the crowds and with very good information online. Now I'm rather spoiled by brick and mortar experiendes (although clearly they are important for some products).
The thing about Amazon is that they haven't sat on their laurels. Digitizing whole books and making them searchable is invaluable and basically mimicks that old ability to browse books.
I worry though that we'll end up with these large super-conglomerates who hold whole market segments, somewhat like Microsoft achieved in computers in the 90's. The only real competitor to Amazon for books is Barnes and Nobel, but Amazon's really beating them in many ways.
Will this include his version of "The Real Slim Shady" done as spoken word? He sang this on the Star Trek episode of Futurama shown on CartoonNetwork last week.
Far superior to Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds...
It is really just a variation of Grand Theft Auto, but the Simpsons Hit and Run is a fun and hilarious game. It really captures the feel of the TV show and has lots of little asides for those familiar with the show.
I believe gcc is better optimized for the x86 series, although Apple is doing their best to improve things. The more interesting compiler for the G5 is XLC from IBM. However that is still in beta, although promising. Unfortunately I've heard it does what Intel's compiler does with certain benchmarks, making it difficult to compare completely. There was an extended discussion of this over on Ars Technica a couple of months ago.
"You hid an ipod battery up your ass for two years??"
He didn't mention he had an iPod up there too. His ass made really funny sounds at times. Unfortunately he seems to have only had tuba solos in his playlist...
I actually used the term zealot due to the connotations with Maczealtory that I see a lot. And I say that while I prefer OSX to any other OS. Yet zealots for that platform often made discussions into heated religious debates with far more passion than was warranted. They also were gleeful at the misfortunes of others.
Since then I've noticed zealotry amongst GPL advocates, Linux advocates, Opensource advocates, and even Windows advocates. It is often amazing to me that people get excited at the misfortunes of others and often fail to note the weaknesses in ones own preferences. (Heavens, while I love OSX, I still have numerous outstanding issues with the platform -- just fewer than with others)
As I said, I think that many people are passionate about their particular computing issue. However with the PathFinder issue I was particularly disgusted with how people were actually demanding source code regardless of whether the developers of iTerm and Pathfinder could reach an equitable and fair agreement. It seemed to me to manifest many of the features of the GPL that people fear.
But, I'll note, that was why I wrote the comments I did. Were there more anti-FUD like the parent article out there, then these particular forms of zealtory would be far less invasive and give people like me far less of a bitter taste. So, I actually was trying to make comments positive of the GPL. i.e. the assumptions about the "viral" nature of the GPL aren't borne out by a careful read and this could have helped avoid these horrible situations with ignorant zealots.
This FAQ is very helpful. I suspect a lot that happened to the poor developer of PathFinder for the Mac would have been avoided had this FAQ been available.
For those of you not familiar with that situation, the author borrowed and modified some open source code for a terminal app into a Finder alternative. A bunch of GPL zealots then started a flame war with many actually demanding that he release the entire source code to the world under the GPL! What was worse was that the author had already helped the community by releasing many of the classes he had developed!
While such zealots obviously can't be taken as representative of GPL supporters, it is cases like that which gives the GPL a bad name.
It sounds, from what I've read, that the Java Desktop System should be seen as Sun's competition to Novell's Ximian. They have slightly different strengths but that seems like the general idea.
BTW - Am I the only one who thinks Sun is confusing the term "Java" nearly as much as Microsoft made ".NET" a near meaningless term? People had bad enough trouble confusing Java and Javascript. Now with what seems a Gnome distro being called Java who knows what confusion will reign.
At the same time Apple supplies a driver for NTFS that is read only. (I think it is a variation of the Linux driver) I wonder if MS is going to go after Apple on this. Also Apple, unlike Linux, can't access Windows dlls to read the drivers.
Actually to be fair though after a blaze of publicity with the Mac port I've not heard much else. There were supposed to be versions of KOffice and so forth "easily" ported to the Mac but I've not seen one running version.
Everytime I read one of these threads and see "Indy Film" I think that Spielberg and Lucas are finally making the next Indiana Jones film. Instead it is about some company that makes films about gay cowboys eating pudding...
A 3 billion dollar negative is nothing to sneeze at. Where did you get the 350 years? Admittedly some of those debts are "artificial." But by any measure they've lost a hell of a lot of money the past three years.
Slashdot Mirror
This is big for Apple. First of iTMS is a loss leader so competitors aren't that big a deal unless the recording industry gets their heads out of their asses, promotes downloads, and standardizes on a few outlets. (No sign of that happening) Anyway, Real will end up selling more iPods for Apple.
Of course this all makes sense. Real is getting hit from Microsoft's player as well as the success of iTunes/iTMS. Unless they get something going, even at a loss, they may disappear in a few years. So they've got to come up with an iTunes/iTMS competior -- likely supporting video unlike iTunes. Will it work? It's hard to say. The old RealJukebox from a few years back was my favorite player but became dated quickly and then was killed in favor of a subscription based RealOne. Plus most other iTMS competitors haven't done well. And there are more coming including one from Sony. Meanwhile Apple's system is garnering the best reviews, despite heavy marketing from companies like Napster. With the new Pepsi ad compaign I don't see anyone toppling them.
But perhaps they can manage to be the Pepse to Apple's Coke. (Yea, ironic, isn't it?) Right now iTMS and others may not make money. But three or four years from now the market may shift such that this becomes the standard distribution channel and bandwidth becomes such that you can make more money at it. Look at Amazon. How long did they lose money?
Did you read all the articles about the iPod battery? You can purchase new ones for $50 from lots of dealers. They aren't that difficult to install. (Although admittedly you need a screwdriver so they aren't as simple as say a laptop) I don't understand all this commotion about batteries and the iPod.
Over at El Gato they have a similar product that does work with OSX. El Gato Eye Home. There are numerous similar products for music only as well. Some even support streaming radio stations. My favorite sounding is the Roku Labs one although I hasten to add I don't own one. But the iTunes integration for both PCs and Macs sounds very intriguing.
Plus, I don't need to purchase batteries. (Which really bug me - give me a large rechargable any time)
The "don't need a computer" bit I don't understand either. While there may be a few luddites out there without a computer fast enough to do MP-3s, there aren't many. The advantage of the computer is that you don't destroy CDs like you used to. (How many CDs have I got all scratched up in the car or what not!) You digitize them and put them away. Also with an iPod I can do things like have randomly created playlists for different genres. I rarely listen to the same stuff twice.
As others said you can optimize individual areas in C++. Also you are now discussing core components which seem a different issue to the person using frameworks. They don't care how the framework is written. Certainly even obj-C advocates don't think it the solution to everything. Other languages have their place.
I wonder though, why you criticize obj-C when even Microsoft is moving to a more runtime oriented system with .NET. It seems obj-C's main competitors are C#/VB.net and Java.
What is most interesting about this is how many programs actually call home about various things. There was a bit of a scandal as a few programs were rewriting the Little Snitch rules, allowing net access without the user knowing. It reportedly has new features to prevent this. I hope Microsoft adds that in as well otherwise trojan horses or the like may just "disable" this feature so you don't know what they are doing.
I must admit that now I've become used to Safari, the ideas we discussed then don't seem quite as exciting as they once did. I find that when I have too many tabs with Safari I simply open up a new window. I do wish Safari allowed tabs to be rearranged and drug between windows though. However that may infringe upon Adobe's patent. (Although Microsoft has a similar interface in some applications like Visual Studio with apparently no problem)
I also have to say that I rarely have more than about six tabs open. I get lost easily with Safari (or Phoenix's) tabs then. Perhaps Omniweb will help here. On the other hand working with Expose makes me wonder about the drawer/sidebar approach as textual data really doesn't communicate well when reduced. And most of my tabs are pages from similar sites. (i.e. I tend to open all the slashdot articles I'm interested in and then read each tab)
Some of the other features, such as RSS feeds do seem more exciting. However to be honest, it will be hard to compete with Safari. Safari really does do nearly everything I want in a browser.
Office is a carbon version. I see it more as a rewrite than a quick port. But clearly it could be better - but let's be fair. It was written for 10.1. It's problem is a lack of an update for quite some time. Appleworks on the other hand just sucks and has tons of Sys9 elements scattered throughout.
Appleworks isn't free, merely bundled with many Macs. It wasn't bundled with mine (a dual 867 last year) and I made the mistake of purchasing it. While not bad for casual users, the interface is a poor Carbon port. Still better than OpenOffice on the Mac, but not as good as MS Office. Apple supposedly has a new version coming out soon. Some have it being released this month. We'll see how it looks and works along with the cost...
I'm rather looking forward to the next iteration of KDE I've been reading about. If it comes out *native* for the Mac, then that's just one more big benifit for the Mac.
The port of Konquerer and KOffice is using the native QT/Mac port. This is great for two reasons. For one it helps find bugs and missing features in QT/Mac. That'll make porting future projects easier and make using QT/Mac for cross platform development better. Secondly it will enable a lot of fairly good programs to run native.
I agree that KOffice isn't that great, although it holds promise. But having it native is a big deal. Open Office might be more powerful, but because it is an X11 app, it really doesn't have an Aqua look and feel. Further cutting and pasting of graphics or drag and drop don't work. That's a rather large failing with Open Office. (I also think Open Office is weak compared to MS Office and further Apple is expected by some to be releasing its office suite this winter or spring)
I'd kind of like to have a native Konquerer, if only to deal with directories with lots of files. Something the Finder doesn't deal well with. Using it to organize my web directories would be very nice as well...
The thing about Amazon is that they haven't sat on their laurels. Digitizing whole books and making them searchable is invaluable and basically mimicks that old ability to browse books.
I worry though that we'll end up with these large super-conglomerates who hold whole market segments, somewhat like Microsoft achieved in computers in the 90's. The only real competitor to Amazon for books is Barnes and Nobel, but Amazon's really beating them in many ways.
Will this include his version of "The Real Slim Shady" done as spoken word? He sang this on the Star Trek episode of Futurama shown on CartoonNetwork last week. Far superior to Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds...
It is really just a variation of Grand Theft Auto, but the Simpsons Hit and Run is a fun and hilarious game. It really captures the feel of the TV show and has lots of little asides for those familiar with the show.
I believe gcc is better optimized for the x86 series, although Apple is doing their best to improve things. The more interesting compiler for the G5 is XLC from IBM. However that is still in beta, although promising. Unfortunately I've heard it does what Intel's compiler does with certain benchmarks, making it difficult to compare completely. There was an extended discussion of this over on Ars Technica a couple of months ago.
He didn't mention he had an iPod up there too. His ass made really funny sounds at times. Unfortunately he seems to have only had tuba solos in his playlist...
Since then I've noticed zealotry amongst GPL advocates, Linux advocates, Opensource advocates, and even Windows advocates. It is often amazing to me that people get excited at the misfortunes of others and often fail to note the weaknesses in ones own preferences. (Heavens, while I love OSX, I still have numerous outstanding issues with the platform -- just fewer than with others)
As I said, I think that many people are passionate about their particular computing issue. However with the PathFinder issue I was particularly disgusted with how people were actually demanding source code regardless of whether the developers of iTerm and Pathfinder could reach an equitable and fair agreement. It seemed to me to manifest many of the features of the GPL that people fear.
But, I'll note, that was why I wrote the comments I did. Were there more anti-FUD like the parent article out there, then these particular forms of zealtory would be far less invasive and give people like me far less of a bitter taste. So, I actually was trying to make comments positive of the GPL. i.e. the assumptions about the "viral" nature of the GPL aren't borne out by a careful read and this could have helped avoid these horrible situations with ignorant zealots.
http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/10/31/ 1944213&mode=nested&tid=117&tid=185&tid=99
Clearly not everyone or even near a majority were zealots. But there certainly were a surprising number.
For those of you not familiar with that situation, the author borrowed and modified some open source code for a terminal app into a Finder alternative. A bunch of GPL zealots then started a flame war with many actually demanding that he release the entire source code to the world under the GPL! What was worse was that the author had already helped the community by releasing many of the classes he had developed!
While such zealots obviously can't be taken as representative of GPL supporters, it is cases like that which gives the GPL a bad name.
BTW - Am I the only one who thinks Sun is confusing the term "Java" nearly as much as Microsoft made ".NET" a near meaningless term? People had bad enough trouble confusing Java and Javascript. Now with what seems a Gnome distro being called Java who knows what confusion will reign.
At the same time Apple supplies a driver for NTFS that is read only. (I think it is a variation of the Linux driver) I wonder if MS is going to go after Apple on this. Also Apple, unlike Linux, can't access Windows dlls to read the drivers.
I was talking about native aqua versions using the native version of their toolkit. Not the version of KDE you can install with Fink or DarwinPorts.
Actually to be fair though after a blaze of publicity with the Mac port I've not heard much else. There were supposed to be versions of KOffice and so forth "easily" ported to the Mac but I've not seen one running version.
Everytime I read one of these threads and see "Indy Film" I think that Spielberg and Lucas are finally making the next Indiana Jones film. Instead it is about some company that makes films about gay cowboys eating pudding...
A 3 billion dollar negative is nothing to sneeze at. Where did you get the 350 years? Admittedly some of those debts are "artificial." But by any measure they've lost a hell of a lot of money the past three years.