this isn't entirely true. rumors were around about apple's new desktop metaphor called "piles". no one knew what they would look like, but we knew it was coming in the next release.
eventually the gecko runtime will be a separate library such that you can install it on the machine and then no longer have to distribute it with every app. give it time. as it currently stands you still have to install the entire mozilla suite in linux to install epiphany or galeon.
i think another welcomed edition to this of suite of apps would be a contacts editor, and task editor (much akin to the outlook suite's combination of apps). the day you can syntax exchange amongst the mozilla suite across all 3 big platforms (*nix, windows, mac) would be a great day.
outlook is a horrible design. leave it to microsoft to come up with the cludge of an interface of outlook. simply put users shouldn't have to go to their email app to edit their contacts. they shouldn't have to go to their calendar app to check their email, etc. breaking each component up into individual pieces and allowing each piece to integrate properly through designated interfaces is the way to go. it makes the mozilla suite not only more modular, but easier to use. just take one look at the powerful combo in os x: iCal, Mail.app, and AddressBook work VERY well together and they are totally separate apps. it's not a pipe dream, and they've proved it can be done and that it works well.
simply put, sunbird will run on windows, linux, and os x. it will run decently on all 3 platforms (thanks to XUL and the new os x pinstripe theme used in firefox and thunerbird).
people won't have the excuse of "i can't run that" or "it costs money", etc. it's quite a nice thing, actually. and the bigger plus yet is i don't have to ask people to download the entire mozilla suite + a plugin.
your argument might be valid if there weren't so many people with a dvd burner complaining about the lack of an official dvd. we want it, we're tired of waiting, and they are refusing to make one? that just doesn't make sense. if so many LESS people have dvd burners, they won't have to worry so much about the dvd download will they? 5 gigs is a lot of room. i bet the amount of work it takes to add/remove software packages to the knoppix cd is pretty slim. they could easily just have a simple system to add another 3.5 gigs of useful software. instead they waste all that potential.
i was looking for this post. and i was thinking of modding it up but felt i'd rather reply. you hit the nail on the head. if sun doesn't open up java now, it stands to let C# walk all over it. there's a major problem with java right now in that no distro in linux can bundle it. installing it in most distros is a pain in the freaking ass and requires going to some java website, clicking agree on a bunch of stupid licsense agreements, etc. in short, it's not SEAMLESS. and java support should be in every distro out of the box such that java could become *the* new language for desktop development via java gtk/gnome bindings. you have to take a look at the current stance of java. it's preinstalled on all os x machines. it *could* be bundled with linux machines, or easily installed via apt-get install sun-jdk or emerge sun-jdk, but as it stands we can't do this because it requires that damn website/license agreement crap. switching to gpl would fix this, and suddently grind the C# momentum to a halt i think. c# honestly has a few nice perks but the advantages stop there. the ONLY advantage you get out of supporting C# is the windows world suddently has the ability to run your apps. and i'm all for allowing easy porting, but i don't think the solution to porting is to make it easy for the crappiest OS in existance to have easy port capabilities. we should set our standards higher, and worry more about making the best environment out of the tools we have. and currently java is more portable via applets, preinstalled on os x, and if gpled preinstalled in linux, than just supporting windows.
No, that is not the point. You know what I do if I want to install gimp?
apt-get install gimp
you know it's pretty much that easy in os x too. just visit http://gimp-app.sourceforge.net/ After downloading the gimp-2.0.dmg file, you drag Gimp.app to/Applications and just double click it! the only pre-requirement is you need X11 installed. that's IT. not too bad.
you should really try out one of the various launcher programs for os x. they are 10 times beter than anything you can find in windows/linux.
i recommend launchbar (4.0beta) above all. these other two are free, but they have speed/feature/ease of use issues: quicksilver and butler. you should be able to find those all easily on the mac software circuits (versiontracker/macupdate)
Darwinports: Does not resolve dependencies. Very limited.
WHAT?? this is coming straight from the mouth of a darwinports contributor. it supports dependencies, including specific versions, build dependencies, run dependencies, and even config-level dependencies. darwinports is also much more pure to the bsd roots than fink. fink puts things in/sw, which is not a file system hierarchy standard, whereas darwinports puts them in/opt, where the file system standard says they belong. if you take a look at freebsd some time, you'll know just now anal people are about sticking to the hierarchy specs unlike most linux distros which can't agree on squat (/usr/bin,/usr/local/bin are never the same per-distro).
darwinports also has superior gtk-app support, including gtk2 versions of most apps (abiword, gnumeric, gimp, pan, and more) long before fink did. some fink still doesn't have.
in spite of all this, darwinports was *almost* included in panther, but for some reason was pulled last minute. i do hope that 10.4 ships with darwinports, as it is the official opendarwin-supported project, and with mac os x being based off darwin and all i would imagine they'd pick the official one.
ah, my apologies then. i was unaware of this. perhaps gaim should ship with your theme then, because it doesn't. yes, there is a gtk1 port for native os x apps. however you'll notice it's about as ugly as can be, and does not resemble an os x app at all. my concept of a "native port" is a fully native-looking app, down to the buttons, menus, and everything.
i believe the reason i said qt is at 2.0 for windows was that FOSS software can only use the 2.0 library, which is why it's impractical to use for cross platform software since no one supports 2.0. i may be wrong with this statement though. the os x port is horrible. plain and simple. it's not native. it's a bad theme. i've tried some qt3 apps ported to os x. namely production quality software and much of the kde software that's been ported by ranger rick, and it looks like crap.
yeah.. mozilla's XUL system isn't *quite* there yet. but it is promising. i suppose leaves a lot to be desired.
yes, mozilla does infact have a gtk port. if i'm correct, i believe this means it uses gtk's drawing functions to handle menus, buttons, etc, rather than pure xlib.
likewise following this analogy, there should be a quartz and GDI port for native mac and windows.
Eclipse? a platform? i think more specifically you mean:
GTK
Qt
OOo's in-house toolkit
XUL
SWT
as i said in another post in this thread, these are ALL different things. Each accomplishes different goals. These all share one thing in common: GUI. However each one encompasses other things. SWT for example is limited to java. Java cannot be distributed in just about any distro, so this rules it out as a viable platform. GTK is highly portable, but it is however horrible when it comes to any platform but linux. It runs in windows, without a windows theme to match. it runs in os x, but only via x11. Gtk's in a pretty sad state considering how "portable" it's supposed to be. Qt's one of the better-off toolkits, but it suffers from gtk's problems too. It's only good on linux. half-assed os x port (at least it's not x11 dependent) and the windows port is totally unmaintained (yay 2.0!). Openoffice is unskinnable, ugly, and requires X11 in os x. That rules it out. That really just leaves us with XUL. To be honest, XUL's not half bad. I've seen mozilla. it looks fantastic on all 3 platforms. can you say the same for any of these other toolkits besides SWT (which is java only and has licensing issues)? nope. XUL is WAY under appreciated i think.
I don't deny that XUL is a good cross platform development tool, but Qt, GTK, and XUL are all very differnet things. Qt is a comprehensive C++ API, including networking, threading, images, GUI, and more. GTK is strickly a GUI toolkit, plus it's written in C which allows it to very easily be linked with almost anything. XUL is not a toolkit, but a platform-independent GUI description made with XML. This allows you to write XUL apps that look like native os x apps in os x, native windows apps, and well crappy skinned apps in linux. They are all different things really. So one can't mutally replace the others (i.e. XUL replacing Qt).
It would be an interesting proof-of-concept though if someone wrote an XUL based desktop environment. So far XUL is really missing a killer-app (besides mozilla).
this will make an iso9660 compatible cd (readable by os x, windows, os 9, linux, etc, etc). you can then burn this in the console with os x's handy hdiutil command.
Apple includes proprietary Mac OS X only programs for everything: music, photo, movies, DVD player, email, contacts, and office programs.
then use xmms, gimp, mplayer, avidemux, evolution, and openoffice. there's not much stopping you with fink/darwinports and x11. there are plenty of native mac equivalents to those. the difference though is these programs are all included in the cost of the OS ($129). this is not so bad a deal considering all you get.
Apple makes sure that everything that goes into their computers has their logo and their stamp of a aproval on it. They insure that you cannot purchase components directly from the supplier so that they make as much money as possible, another great way to support open standards.
this is far more a problem with the industry than it is apple. if there were several cpu manufacturers, several mobo manufacturers, etc, then economies of scale would allow you to build a ppc os x compatible machine. don't complain to apple for this, complain to the hardware companies for not offering more solutions.
Their OS while based on Unix can only be installed on Mac hardware while its base suggests that it could be run on X86 machines and other formfactors becides their own.
windows can only be installed on x86. why can't i install it on ppc? that sure is vendor lock in! don't give me that crap. apple doesn't make money off it's OS. it makes money off it's hardware. if you want os x for intel, keep dreaming. if it wasn't made for ppc only, apple would probably go out of business.
And just as MS pushes MSN and.net, Apple pushes Apple.com and.mac accounts.
um, those have nothing to do with each other..NET is a programming api. that buzzword is used for many other things, but that is what i was talking about. not.mac. if you don't like.mac, don't use.mac. however for.NET, the programming api, it's pure microsoft platform lock-in using system.windows.forms, which is heavily windows-only. unlike java.
If anything, it is Apple that is the worst infraction to open standards computing, since they make sure that their standards are open only to other mac users. In essence, Appe takes from the open source community, mutates its function and intent, and then spits it back out with a high price and fruity colors. Going Apple is okay if thats your thing, but heralding their openness is like saying you purchased Windows for the stability
so would you rather apple implement a proprietary closed standard for EVERY SINGLE THING they do? i know a company who does this.. they are called microsoft. go look up your history books sometime. the fact that apple leverages open source is an ADVANTAGE. it means they spend less time concentrating on OS security bugs, and more time producing great software using the power of all this open source. if you don't like the fact that it costs more, then don't buy it. if you don't like the fact that it looks better than windows (because aqua does) then quit bitching and apply a theme (go to uninsanity's website). yes, i AM hearlding their openness. because they are 100 times more open than the most proprietary, monopolistic company, on the planet.
that would be true if microsoft windows was based on freebsd, but i believe you're mistaken.
lets take a looksie
windows has the registry. apple has xml files
outlook and outlook express use a proprietary database format. apple uses mbox
windows uses a proprietary network file sharing protocol. apple uses nfs
windows has a closed kernel. mac uses a freebsd kernel (of which you can download on apple's website).
microsoft uses it's own proprietary messaging protocol. apple uses oscar (which may not be open, but it's a hell of a lot more used and standard)
microsoft's browser defaults searches to msn. apple's browser defaults to google.
microsoft's browser is based on a non-standards compliant closed source engine. apple's is based off the open source khtml library.
microsoft's compiler and IDE is closed and costs thousands. apple's is free (xcode) and based off an open source compiler (gcc).
microsoft's backing.net and includes a very crappy jvm implementation. apple uses's sun's official jvm with performance improvements and native widget toolkits in os x, and this is installed by default
microsoft uses a closed source web server. apple ships os x with an open source webserver, apache.
microsoft implemented a proprietary api for game development, directx. apple bases their display system (quartz extreme) off opengl, and supports openal now as well.
x86 machines use proprietary bioses for each motherboard. apple uses openfirmware, developed by sun and ibm i believe.
i think i've made my point, but believe me, there's more. that sounds a lot more like open-standards based than microsoft.
where's the valid research showing the time and effort put into usability studies regarding this? where are the documented usability testing and trials, including focus groups?
i wonder sometimes if people sit back and analyze their own projects, because this one seems to have relatively little benefit for any users, average or power user. the simple fact is 3d or eye candy doesn't make a person use the computer faster or easier. it's a balancing act between prividing ascetically pleasing environments that function easily
if you're even remotely a *nix user in os x, you should already have fink and darwinports already installed. it's a simple port install ethereal and you're done.
how can you properly use a language without understand what makes the language fundamentally different from others? each language has it's own set of useful features that make certain design patterns obsolete or easier. none of them cover the CORE of cocoa! obj-c. they all do a half-assed job in my opinion, so i bought and read a book just on objective-c. i highly recommend Programming in Objective-C by Stephen Kochan. I've written a large tutorial on the objective-c language by itself based off of many of his examples, and have provided links to other objective-c tutorials and cocoa/obj-c books at the bottom of the page.
There's an error in your tutorial. In the "Dynamic Types" section, the main.m has misleading comments. The three [sq isKindOfClass:...] checks all return YES, but the code comments claim that they are true, false, and false.
oops! thanks. that's fixed now.
i'm still kinda new to obj-c, so i can't answer this with a lot of certainty. however what i believe happens is calling init on nsautoreleasepool creates a stack of release pools. so if i did this:
NSAutoreleasePool *pool1 = [[NSAutoreleasePool alloc] init]; NSString *str1 = [NSString stringWithString: @"belongs to pool1"]; NSAutoreleasePool *pool2 = [[NSAutoreleasePool alloc] init]; NSString *str2 = [NSString stringWithString: @"belongs to pool2"]; [pool2 release];// this releases everything created and owned by an autorelease pool inbetween the last created pool, i.e. pool2 [pool1 release];// this releases everything created and owned by the first release pool, i.e. pool1
however, i'm not sure. the best way of course is to test this yourself! (i'll have to do that just to make sure i understand it better. perhaps i'll add it to the tutorial).
I wish someone in linux would implement a system that mimics the functionality of apple script. before people go off flaming me, let me explain for those who don't know what it does. apple script basically lets you set hooks in the program in a standard way so that anyone can script an application by manipulating objects in the program. the program registers with the applescript by giving it a list of all the objects it has and the methods these objects have that you can call on them. it's a very clean interface, and requries little extra work from the developers (which is nice). even if this does exist for KDE/gnome.. it's under documented, or no one uses it!
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this isn't entirely true. rumors were around about apple's new desktop metaphor called "piles". no one knew what they would look like, but we knew it was coming in the next release.
i've been looking for something like this.. these appear to be the ONLY dvi/adc kvms that can even handle 1920x1200. now if it only wasn't $500 :-/
eventually the gecko runtime will be a separate library such that you can install it on the machine and then no longer have to distribute it with every app. give it time. as it currently stands you still have to install the entire mozilla suite in linux to install epiphany or galeon.
i think another welcomed edition to this of suite of apps would be a contacts editor, and task editor (much akin to the outlook suite's combination of apps). the day you can syntax exchange amongst the mozilla suite across all 3 big platforms (*nix, windows, mac) would be a great day.
outlook is a horrible design. leave it to microsoft to come up with the cludge of an interface of outlook. simply put users shouldn't have to go to their email app to edit their contacts. they shouldn't have to go to their calendar app to check their email, etc. breaking each component up into individual pieces and allowing each piece to integrate properly through designated interfaces is the way to go. it makes the mozilla suite not only more modular, but easier to use. just take one look at the powerful combo in os x: iCal, Mail.app, and AddressBook work VERY well together and they are totally separate apps. it's not a pipe dream, and they've proved it can be done and that it works well.
simply put, sunbird will run on windows, linux, and os x. it will run decently on all 3 platforms (thanks to XUL and the new os x pinstripe theme used in firefox and thunerbird).
people won't have the excuse of "i can't run that" or "it costs money", etc. it's quite a nice thing, actually. and the bigger plus yet is i don't have to ask people to download the entire mozilla suite + a plugin.
your argument might be valid if there weren't so many people with a dvd burner complaining about the lack of an official dvd. we want it, we're tired of waiting, and they are refusing to make one? that just doesn't make sense. if so many LESS people have dvd burners, they won't have to worry so much about the dvd download will they? 5 gigs is a lot of room. i bet the amount of work it takes to add/remove software packages to the knoppix cd is pretty slim. they could easily just have a simple system to add another 3.5 gigs of useful software. instead they waste all that potential.
i was looking for this post. and i was thinking of modding it up but felt i'd rather reply. you hit the nail on the head. if sun doesn't open up java now, it stands to let C# walk all over it. there's a major problem with java right now in that no distro in linux can bundle it. installing it in most distros is a pain in the freaking ass and requires going to some java website, clicking agree on a bunch of stupid licsense agreements, etc. in short, it's not SEAMLESS. and java support should be in every distro out of the box such that java could become *the* new language for desktop development via java gtk/gnome bindings. you have to take a look at the current stance of java. it's preinstalled on all os x machines. it *could* be bundled with linux machines, or easily installed via apt-get install sun-jdk or emerge sun-jdk, but as it stands we can't do this because it requires that damn website/license agreement crap. switching to gpl would fix this, and suddently grind the C# momentum to a halt i think. c# honestly has a few nice perks but the advantages stop there. the ONLY advantage you get out of supporting C# is the windows world suddently has the ability to run your apps. and i'm all for allowing easy porting, but i don't think the solution to porting is to make it easy for the crappiest OS in existance to have easy port capabilities. we should set our standards higher, and worry more about making the best environment out of the tools we have. and currently java is more portable via applets, preinstalled on os x, and if gpled preinstalled in linux, than just supporting windows.
No, that is not the point. You know what I do if I want to install gimp?
/Applications and just double click it! the only pre-requirement is you need X11 installed. that's IT. not too bad.
apt-get install gimp
you know it's pretty much that easy in os x too. just visit http://gimp-app.sourceforge.net/ After downloading the gimp-2.0.dmg file, you drag Gimp.app to
you should really try out one of the various launcher programs for os x. they are 10 times beter than anything you can find in windows/linux.
i recommend launchbar (4.0beta) above all. these other two are free, but they have speed/feature/ease of use issues: quicksilver and butler. you should be able to find those all easily on the mac software circuits (versiontracker/macupdate)
obligatory family guy quite:
"Tony robbins, hungry." aahhhrmmm. ahhhhrrmm.
Darwinports: Does not resolve dependencies. Very limited.
/sw, which is not a file system hierarchy standard, whereas darwinports puts them in /opt, where the file system standard says they belong. if you take a look at freebsd some time, you'll know just now anal people are about sticking to the hierarchy specs unlike most linux distros which can't agree on squat (/usr/bin, /usr/local/bin are never the same per-distro).
WHAT?? this is coming straight from the mouth of a darwinports contributor. it supports dependencies, including specific versions, build dependencies, run dependencies, and even config-level dependencies. darwinports is also much more pure to the bsd roots than fink. fink puts things in
darwinports also has superior gtk-app support, including gtk2 versions of most apps (abiword, gnumeric, gimp, pan, and more) long before fink did. some fink still doesn't have.
in spite of all this, darwinports was *almost* included in panther, but for some reason was pulled last minute. i do hope that 10.4 ships with darwinports, as it is the official opendarwin-supported project, and with mac os x being based off darwin and all i would imagine they'd pick the official one.
ah, my apologies then. i was unaware of this. perhaps gaim should ship with your theme then, because it doesn't. yes, there is a gtk1 port for native os x apps. however you'll notice it's about as ugly as can be, and does not resemble an os x app at all. my concept of a "native port" is a fully native-looking app, down to the buttons, menus, and everything.
i believe the reason i said qt is at 2.0 for windows was that FOSS software can only use the 2.0 library, which is why it's impractical to use for cross platform software since no one supports 2.0. i may be wrong with this statement though. the os x port is horrible. plain and simple. it's not native. it's a bad theme. i've tried some qt3 apps ported to os x. namely production quality software and much of the kde software that's been ported by ranger rick, and it looks like crap.
yeah.. mozilla's XUL system isn't *quite* there yet. but it is promising. i suppose leaves a lot to be desired.
yes, mozilla does infact have a gtk port. if i'm correct, i believe this means it uses gtk's drawing functions to handle menus, buttons, etc, rather than pure xlib.
likewise following this analogy, there should be a quartz and GDI port for native mac and windows.
as i said in another post in this thread, these are ALL different things. Each accomplishes different goals. These all share one thing in common: GUI. However each one encompasses other things. SWT for example is limited to java. Java cannot be distributed in just about any distro, so this rules it out as a viable platform. GTK is highly portable, but it is however horrible when it comes to any platform but linux. It runs in windows, without a windows theme to match. it runs in os x, but only via x11. Gtk's in a pretty sad state considering how "portable" it's supposed to be. Qt's one of the better-off toolkits, but it suffers from gtk's problems too. It's only good on linux. half-assed os x port (at least it's not x11 dependent) and the windows port is totally unmaintained (yay 2.0!). Openoffice is unskinnable, ugly, and requires X11 in os x. That rules it out. That really just leaves us with XUL. To be honest, XUL's not half bad. I've seen mozilla. it looks fantastic on all 3 platforms. can you say the same for any of these other toolkits besides SWT (which is java only and has licensing issues)? nope. XUL is WAY under appreciated i think.
I don't deny that XUL is a good cross platform development tool, but Qt, GTK, and XUL are all very differnet things. Qt is a comprehensive C++ API, including networking, threading, images, GUI, and more. GTK is strickly a GUI toolkit, plus it's written in C which allows it to very easily be linked with almost anything. XUL is not a toolkit, but a platform-independent GUI description made with XML. This allows you to write XUL apps that look like native os x apps in os x, native windows apps, and well crappy skinned apps in linux. They are all different things really. So one can't mutally replace the others (i.e. XUL replacing Qt).
It would be an interesting proof-of-concept though if someone wrote an XUL based desktop environment. So far XUL is really missing a killer-app (besides mozilla).
this will make an iso9660 compatible cd (readable by os x, windows, os 9, linux, etc, etc). you can then burn this in the console with os x's handy hdiutil command.
this works the same for dvds too btw
Apple includes proprietary Mac OS X only programs for everything: music, photo, movies, DVD player, email, contacts, and office programs.
.net, Apple pushes Apple.com and .mac accounts. .NET is a programming api. that buzzword is used for many other things, but that is what i was talking about. not .mac. if you don't like .mac, don't use .mac. however for .NET, the programming api, it's pure microsoft platform lock-in using system.windows.forms, which is heavily windows-only. unlike java.
then use xmms, gimp, mplayer, avidemux, evolution, and openoffice. there's not much stopping you with fink/darwinports and x11. there are plenty of native mac equivalents to those. the difference though is these programs are all included in the cost of the OS ($129). this is not so bad a deal considering all you get.
Apple makes sure that everything that goes into their computers has their logo and their stamp of a aproval on it. They insure that you cannot purchase components directly from the supplier so that they make as much money as possible, another great way to support open standards.
this is far more a problem with the industry than it is apple. if there were several cpu manufacturers, several mobo manufacturers, etc, then economies of scale would allow you to build a ppc os x compatible machine. don't complain to apple for this, complain to the hardware companies for not offering more solutions.
Their OS while based on Unix can only be installed on Mac hardware while its base suggests that it could be run on X86 machines and other formfactors becides their own.
windows can only be installed on x86. why can't i install it on ppc? that sure is vendor lock in! don't give me that crap. apple doesn't make money off it's OS. it makes money off it's hardware. if you want os x for intel, keep dreaming. if it wasn't made for ppc only, apple would probably go out of business.
And just as MS pushes MSN and
um, those have nothing to do with each other.
If anything, it is Apple that is the worst infraction to open standards computing, since they make sure that their standards are open only to other mac users. In essence, Appe takes from the open source community, mutates its function and intent, and then spits it back out with a high price and fruity colors. Going Apple is okay if thats your thing, but heralding their openness is like saying you purchased Windows for the stability
so would you rather apple implement a proprietary closed standard for EVERY SINGLE THING they do? i know a company who does this.. they are called microsoft. go look up your history books sometime. the fact that apple leverages open source is an ADVANTAGE. it means they spend less time concentrating on OS security bugs, and more time producing great software using the power of all this open source. if you don't like the fact that it costs more, then don't buy it. if you don't like the fact that it looks better than windows (because aqua does) then quit bitching and apply a theme (go to uninsanity's website). yes, i AM hearlding their openness. because they are 100 times more open than the most proprietary, monopolistic company, on the planet.
that would be true if microsoft windows was based on freebsd, but i believe you're mistaken.
.net and includes a very crappy jvm implementation. apple uses's sun's official jvm with performance improvements and native widget toolkits in os x, and this is installed by default
lets take a looksie
windows has the registry. apple has xml files
outlook and outlook express use a proprietary database format. apple uses mbox
windows uses a proprietary network file sharing protocol. apple uses nfs
windows has a closed kernel. mac uses a freebsd kernel (of which you can download on apple's website).
microsoft uses it's own proprietary messaging protocol. apple uses oscar (which may not be open, but it's a hell of a lot more used and standard)
microsoft's browser defaults searches to msn. apple's browser defaults to google.
microsoft's browser is based on a non-standards compliant closed source engine. apple's is based off the open source khtml library.
microsoft's compiler and IDE is closed and costs thousands. apple's is free (xcode) and based off an open source compiler (gcc).
microsoft's backing
microsoft uses a closed source web server. apple ships os x with an open source webserver, apache.
microsoft implemented a proprietary api for game development, directx. apple bases their display system (quartz extreme) off opengl, and supports openal now as well.
x86 machines use proprietary bioses for each motherboard. apple uses openfirmware, developed by sun and ibm i believe.
i think i've made my point, but believe me, there's more. that sounds a lot more like open-standards based than microsoft.
where's the valid research showing the time and effort put into usability studies regarding this? where are the documented usability testing and trials, including focus groups?
i wonder sometimes if people sit back and analyze their own projects, because this one seems to have relatively little benefit for any users, average or power user. the simple fact is 3d or eye candy doesn't make a person use the computer faster or easier. it's a balancing act between prividing ascetically pleasing environments that function easily
if you're even remotely a *nix user in os x, you should already have fink and darwinports already installed. it's a simple port install ethereal and you're done.
Note to employees: The beatings will continue until morale improves.
how can you properly use a language without understand what makes the language fundamentally different from others? each language has it's own set of useful features that make certain design patterns obsolete or easier. none of them cover the CORE of cocoa! obj-c. they all do a half-assed job in my opinion, so i bought and read a book just on objective-c. i highly recommend Programming in Objective-C by Stephen Kochan. I've written a large tutorial on the objective-c language by itself based off of many of his examples, and have provided links to other objective-c tutorials and cocoa/obj-c books at the bottom of the page.
i'm still kinda new to obj-c, so i can't answer this with a lot of certainty. however what i believe happens is calling init on nsautoreleasepool creates a stack of release pools. so if i did this:however, i'm not sure. the best way of course is to test this yourself! (i'll have to do that just to make sure i understand it better. perhaps i'll add it to the tutorial).
I wish someone in linux would implement a system that mimics the functionality of apple script. before people go off flaming me, let me explain for those who don't know what it does. apple script basically lets you set hooks in the program in a standard way so that anyone can script an application by manipulating objects in the program. the program registers with the applescript by giving it a list of all the objects it has and the methods these objects have that you can call on them. it's a very clean interface, and requries little extra work from the developers (which is nice). even if this does exist for KDE/gnome.. it's under documented, or no one uses it!
i did reference his book at the bottom, and much of the code is modified from his examples.