Oracular paradoxes -- "What's really going to bake your noodle later is if you would have done it if I hadn't have said anything" -- are part of greek mythology.
I think noodles were invented by the Chinese. How did the Greeks know about the Chinese? Do the Greeks even cook with noodles?
While a great suggestion, it's a bit involved. I actually played around with a number of similar hardware/software/codec solutions, etc. etc.
Timeflush.
Go get one of the Panasonic DVD recorders: go to the Panasonic site and select "DVD Recorders" [sorry for no link: I just quit smoking, so I'm more retarded than usual...]
I've used the DMR-E30. The nice thing is, depending on the model, you can choose between DVD-RAM and DVD-R (for archiving vs. universal playback), and some have internal hard drives, so you can author your archive DVDs accordingly.
I fell in love with the DMR-E30. I'm selling the box I had bought as a dedicated "convert all of my stuff to DVD" box and buying one of the Panasonic recorders instead.
BONUS: I have S-Video out on my laptop, so I go Video out to video in on the DMR: it's the lazy and quick way around converting WMV/MOV/AVI/MPEG/etc. ad nauseum over to a format that will play in most if not all DVD players.
Maybe you shouldn't make assumptions -- I've been using and creating content for both for over 10 years.
...and I get paid for it. I'm not talking about a blog.
Maybe you should have been more specific in your complaint: my reading of it implied that there were UI inconsistencies between the platforms - I don't see any worth mentioning. If you're complaining about the brushed metal UI, not complying with Apple HIG, etc. than state it.
I'm talking about the English language: it's very specific and useful for communicating. Maybe you should try and use it and report back here.
1. Hardware is generally not *too* hard to get a hold of: local businesses are a good source.
2. See if there are any local user groups in your area -- they'll be a good help. Here's a start: http://www.apple.com/usergroups/ -- go find the Apple User Group in your area: they're all a bunch of fanatics, and I'm sure you can weasel a couple of old iMacs out of them.
3. Get your PTA involved. An "old computer" drive shouldn't be that much more difficult than a bake sale. Not to mention parental pressure tends to really help with getting school adminstrators to assist as opposed to hinder what you're trying to accomplish.
4. Get your School Board involved. See my PTA comments above.
5. Once you've achieved a certain amount of momentum, you can try and get the club registered as a user group or SIG for whatever OS/Application/etc. is of interest to you. If you do it at the OS level, you can then start trying to invite different vendors to demo their products at your "user group" meeting. They want the mind share, and while you may not be able to afford the new $200 Flubbawidget version 4.5, they're banking on you being able to get your parents to buy one.
6. Don't limit yourself to the Math department: for example, the Music department might derive some benefit: there are a lot of helpful instuctional tools for ear training, reading, etc. Chemistry. Biology. Astronomy. archive.org has some great historical stuff. The Gutenberg project has some cool stuff as well. Set up an Apache server that's a portal to departmental resources outside of the school -- you'll potentially make the teachers' lives easier and help fellow students get better grades.
-- The common thread with all of these things is that if you can convince someone of the benefit of doing something, whether that benefit is real or perceived, they'll generally go along with it: people don't like saying no.
In any event, whether or not anyone graduates to go onto a computer-related career, the social-engineering experience will prove invaluable.
Assuming there's a keyboard shortcut for "buy music" within iTunes, all you need to do is switch focus to the application and then emulate the keyboard shortcut -- I've had to do this in the past for non-scriptable objects in the classic Finder and FileMaker -- it's not trivial, but it's quite doable with the right OSAX.
I haven't written an applescript in OS X (does OS recognize OSAXs?), so things may have changed.
You can get AppleScript to do all kinds of destructive stuff if you really want to, and Entourage was (is?) a particularly easy delivery method.
... if the quality of these posts is any indication.
Consumer applications does not necessarily mean an application that you have to pay for. QuickTime, iMovie, iDVD, and iTunes are all free -- if you want Pro (prosumer) functionality from QuickTime, you have to pay. If you want your iApps in a neato box, then you pay for iLife.
So now that we got that out of the way...
There's no good reason why Apple would charge for a Windows version of iTunes, but I can think of a couple of really good reasons not to:
1. Sell more iPods. The USB option and a Windows version of iTunes eliminate any other reason (besides the usual "Apple's too expensive") for Windows users not buying one.
2. Get more people to use their Music service.
If you really want to be speculative, the interesting thing is that it's the first consumer app since Steve's return that is being ported to Windows. There's also a.mac disk mounting utility for XP. What's next?
iPhoto would probably be a good next choice, as it would further leverage the.mac service for Windows users, etc. and would be a great opportunity for Steve to stick it to Bill.
I can just picture Jobs announcing iPhoto for Windows at MWSF 2004. Then at MWSF 2005, he can announce that.mac has more paid Windows subscribers then.net
For those of you recently tuning in (I've been on Macs since ~1988) this is more a historical issue with Apple that can be traced to one thing:
Apple is an early adopter:
Cube - lots of complaints about "scratches" and manufacturing issues.
TiBook - manufacturing issues.
AiBook - manufacturing issues.
Consumer computer hardware mass-produced on a pretty quick turnaround to market might impact QC a little. The fact that they have a relatively low market share doesn't help matters.
But that is the Apple way. There are dozens of instances where Apple has looked at the market and said decided that they wanted something cool that wasn't out there. So they build some "new thing" (insert your favorite cool Apple thing here).
We all know what happens next:
1. "mainstream" computer media sniggers, predicts Apple's pending demise (I think Dvorak popped a prolapse when he found out the iMacs were floppy-less).
2. Wintel Intelligencia (oxymoron?) nod their heads in agreement.
3. 18 months later it's a BTO option on the Dell site.
4. Some asshat goes on about this "new thing" being the reason why Wintel is superior to the Macintosh (I actually heard someone say this about QuickTime in a company annual meeting)...
5. Approximately 6 months after that, it's supported in the latest Linux kernel. Sort of. FreeBSD support comes sometime later.
I was an early adopter on the TiBook as well. My rubber feet fell off. Apple put them back on. 3 dead pixels? LCDs have dead pixels on occasion. Sorry, but you won the bad pixel lottery. They happen.
I've had nothing but good service from Apple over the last 15+ years and 5-6 boxes I've purchased ( I've gone through at least 2X as many PeeCees - glad they're so much cheaper...).
Too much of your post sounds like a troll, but I figure I may be wrong and my blood sugar's a bit low, so I bit. HAving said that, I have a real problem believing that you have a warped case and they won't fix it/swap it out/ etc.
I've never had the kind of issues you've had with Apple Support. I *did* have a lemon DP G4 that went back about a half-dozen times: they replaced it and they took really good care of me on the trade up. When I got the feet replaced on my laptop, they took care of a bunch of other minor cosmetic stuff, one of which was replacing the lid on my Tibook. If you're going to buy a laptop from Apple, buy the extended warranty. It's always paid off for me. Whether or not I've had the extended warranty, I've never had the kinds of poor quality problems your talking about, nor have I seen them in the hundreds of Macs I've worked on or around.
It sounds like you'll be a lot happier on a Linux laptop.
Re:Without Virtual PC 5.0, I would not have ...
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Virtual PC 6 Review
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· Score: 1
The nice thing about VPC is that you can easily save your OS file, so once you've gone through installation and configuration, just back it up.
very cool for quick and dirty XPLAT testing: restoring the file is a non-event.
Well said, but it also brings up the point of people whose reflexive need to jump up and down waving their arms in the air screaming "Micro$oft Bad!!!" is downright Pavlovian.
It's pretty clear midway through paragraph 3 that it's OpenOffice FUD.
here's a link for anyone who would actually like to read about XML rather than parrot about it being just another file format.
Just because you say it with smug conviction doesn't make it true.
This is where I think we'll see software distribution going...
Right now, Steam is being tested specifically for delivering Half-Life and various mods such as Counter-Strike, but in a presentation they gave at the Game Developer's Conference a couple of years ago, they discussed how it could be used for delivering any type of software. It's pretty straightforward: you have a user account, you select which application you want to use, the app checks your account against the software, and if validated, updates your software as needed.
More importantly from a developers standpoint, it would theoretically make piracy a lot tougher for the average user. A lot of the incremental Counter-Strike updates delivered via Steam are anti-cheat related, so I can see technology used in a similar way to keep the crackers on their toes.
It's interesting from a Proof Of Concept perspective, and Valve seems to be committed to the app - it would appear they've been spending more time on it then they have developing any games...
There's a whole lot of potential with this type of delivery system, especially for people who aren't comfortable with an ASP model.
SoftWareToGo seems a little late with the kiosk model: it didn't work too well for that company that tried the "burn your own compilation CDs" - I remember seeing one of those kiosks in a neighborhood Wherehouse for about 15 minutes.
first I'd like to clarify that this is not an ad hominem attack [which of course normally preceeds an ad hominem attack, but I'm serious]
You appear to be focused on "Mac Zealots" [nice capitalization by the way] rather than several nice points being made...
Before getting started, a piece of advice: don't capitalize Zealot: makes us feel important.
For starters, Microsoft has been "optimizing" load times of their business applications for years by loading them into RAM on system startup: one of the reasons why they load faster.. Mozilla is now essentially doing the same thing with QuickLaunch, so this is nothing new - Mozilla's just attempting to be more explicit about giving the user the option to do so.
I think characterizing the Macintosh as an application-centric interface is fallacious at best: the macintosh has always been a document-centric OS: the best proof of this would be the amount of metadata traditionally stored with a file -- file type/creator ring any bells?
With the move to OS X, there has been a shift away from this focus, primarily due to the BSD subsystem, from all appearances. It is the only major loss in moving from classic to OS X [my opinion of course.]
Users will always have to manually choose what application they want to open what document (to use your paradigm) -- whether they do it globally at the Operating System level, at the application level (always seems to happen with audio/video files, especially if you have multiple players), or at the command-line level.
As a unix sysadmin, I'm sure you already know this: standard command line synax is generally [command] [file] [argument flag(s)] or [command] [argument] [file], correct? On a very basic level, a command is an application (or utility).
If I cat a directory of httpd logs and pipe it out to grep, I'm going to have a slightly different experience using grep than I would if I used egrep or fgrep. I can always alias grep to resolve to egrep or fgrep, but I'm still manually choosing what tool I'm using on a given file. Once again, as a unix sysadmin, I'm sure you're aware of what I'm talking about...
I realize that this is an incredibly over-simplified view of things, but it's an essentially correct one.
All that time that you're spending in front of a Mac doesn't count if you don't turn it on and use it every once in a while.
...and before you go calling me a "Mac Zealot", please keep in mind there's been a nice little Windows and UNIX tutorial in this post as well.
"With Mac OS 10.3, X11 will be standard equipment"
First I've heard of that.
I'd be interested in hearing how Apple's planning on fitting that in their current UI scheme - seems a bit crowded right now what with quartz and aqua and all.
Do you have any reference URLs for that?
Preferably not macosrumors, thinksecret, or O'Grady's Power Page.
I've got those set in my hosts file to resolve to 127.0.0.1 - I try to keep my browser cache fanboi-free.
I've seen an issue similar to the one he described when upgrading off-license copies of Office 2000 -- I think SP 2 is what blows everything up -- the not recognizing the disks rang a few bells.
In any event, that's not a link I'd send to any corporate IT people I know (especially M$ monkeys) to demonstrate corporate usage of OS X: there are a number of feature compatibility issues with the Mac exchange clients, whether Outlook (classic) or Entourage (OS X) that make them unacceptable in our environment -- I either use a Citrix client or Virtual PC, depending on which computer I'm connecting from and what mood I'm in.
I'm much more interested in what's going on with Eric Traut, Connectix's CTO.
Before Connectix, he worked at Apple as a Senior Software Engineer.
Per his resume, his work at Apple included " Researched, designed, and implemented second-generation 680x0 emulator for PowerPC-based Macintoshes. New emulator design involved "dynamic recompilation," or on-the-fly code translation, from 680x0 to PowerPC instruction sets. Implementation required extensive knowledge of both 680x0 and PowerPC architectures and optimizing compiler techniques. Several patents pending in the area of emulation."
I'm very interested in seeing whether he stays at Connectix or goes somewhere else. Like back to Apple.
Here's his resume. Connectix Executive bios are here.
I certainly haven't found the Carbonized client to be any buggier than the Java one. Plus I've never been able to get the Java client to print. If you have I'd love to know how.
I'll take another look at the OS X Client -- at the time I looked at it, and made the decision to play around with MRJAppBuilder for the first time based on my initial frustrations with it.
I don't know if this will be any help, but our network admins set up the various citrix instances so that our print preferences would follow our profiles across a number of published apps. The way they did this was to create a "Print" instance that users connect to first and mapped to whatever printers that the users want to connect to -- for example, my default printer is Adobe PDF Printer, which has a default save to my private directory on a file server. All of our printers are served via several print servers, so what a new Citrix user does is log in to the "Print" instance, map their printers, and then any published app they log into with their NT account, they get the printers as set up in the "Print" instance.
Our Network Admins aren't very helpful, so that's about as much information as I've got.
I'll have to nose around Ximian's site more: if they've got a connector API, that lends itself to all sorts of alternate solutions - thanks for the info.
The article references a Microsoft Press Release, which makes a few points that has me less than excited about this.
This is not an Exchange client, but "enhanced Exchange functionality" added to Entourage. The only enhanced functionality they seem to be talking about it sharing calendars (more on that below)
The previous Mac Exchange Clients were free. Entourage isn't - a stand-alone copy runs about $90. While it's "free" if you buy office, it's not if you just want Exchange server connectivity.
Microsoft is charging OS X users twice: once for the CAL (Client Access License) and once for Entourage.
There are another two options in a corporate environment that work - one not so well and one that works great:
1. Web Access. This one only works for viewing *your* calendar items: a true shared calendar, i.e. one that lets you see not only what you are doing but what everyone else is doing doesn't work using via Web Access.
2. Citrix. If you're lucky, your company has Citrix implemented for something. Ask your friendly MSCE to create a profile for you that has whatever version of Outlook your company's running. Then you get real feature compatibility.
Note: if you do this, don't use the OS X Citrix client -- it's buggy as hell. Grab the Java version.
I've been running this on my OSX box for about a year now, and it works great, whether I'm in the office or logged into our domain (either VPN or Dial-up).
While Ximian looks promising, they don't appear to have any interest in developing for OS X, and unless they can present a really compelling argument for why I should do so (other than, "we're not Micro$oft"), I don't see why I should give them $60 for their product as opposed to $90 for straight from the horse's...
I just posted a hella long response to a similar response to my original response elsewhere.
In case you don't feel like reading it( it's pretty long) I'll give you an executive summary:
There's not enough upside to the potential downside if they got caught, and it's not worth watching your options go down the toilet for a market advantage that won't last more than a couple of days, especially since enterprise software license purchases are usually on an annual cycle.
Please don't think I'm defending Symantec: the arrogance of their corporate culture is running a strong 3rd behind front-runners Apple and tied for 2nd place contenders Oracle and Microsoft.
There's just no intelligent reason that I can see for doing taking that big a risk.
Wouldn't fixing viruses that you created make you seem more valuable? Job Security?
While some engineers operate under the assumption that code maintenance = job security, I've been fortunate enough not to work with any.
That aside, there are more than enough people creating viruses to keep all of the anti-virus shops busy.
But let's run with this for a second, since a lot of people are apparently entertaining this as a possibility.
From a product liability standpoint, ask yourself this:
1. What is the benefit from a market share standpoint to doing this?
2. How long will that market share benefit be realized?
3. What is the likelihood of getting caught?
4. What will the negative impact be if they get caught?
For #1 - "minimal". For example, hysterical media reports aside, we didn't see sales of anti-virus software skyrocket after the Melissa virus, either in end-user or corporate sales. People are either smart enough to have the software installed or not. Big companies tend to keep anti-virus software as a pretty high priority from a licensing standpoint, at least every place I've worked. If they get caught unprotected, the people responsible (IT management) tend to get fired: it's called Gross Negligence.
While there's a lot of activity as far as keeping virus definitions updated, this is trivial both at the end-user and corporate level due to automation, and is not a significant source of revenue, if it generates any revenue at all.
#2 - also "minimal". The major players all tend to release virus definitions within hours if not days of each other, so any market share benefit would be very short-lived from an income standpoint.
#3 - "somewhat likely". While I realize this is anecdotal, the only people I've found worse at keeping a secret than a 5 year old is a software engineer. If they did do something like that, we'd hear about it - probably not right away, but we'd hear about it eventually, if only via the rumor circuit - the same people who have it from a reliable source that Apple's running OS X on Dells.
#4. - "potentially catastrophic". If it did come to light that Symantec pulled something like this, I'm sure that the corporate sales teams for Sophos, McAfee, and Trend Micro would immediately add this information to their Power Point presentations, and your average corporate IT executive might consider this fact when negotiating a software license renewal contract.
In summary, it looks like (1) the benefit would be small, (2) it would be short-lived, (3) it would eventually get out that they had done it, and (4) they would be faced with a significant reaction from their corporate customers.
Symantec isn't Microsoft: they have real competition, especially in the enterprise market. Factor in a relatively flat job market for software engineers and the fact that Symantec has (at least when I interviewed with them) a pretty attractive option plan, and I can't see why anyone in the organization would think this was a good idea.
Slashdot Mirror
I would think that you had it, since you've managed to give us a fairly complete transcription.
If you don't give up a link then the only logical conclusion is that you're an aspiring novelist.
Which one is it?
There is a really good easy lazy option:
Panasonic DMR-E30.
I just got one -- it's like a VCR but it records DVDs as well. Dunno about hooking this up to a tivo, though.
http://www.barebones.com/products/textwrangler/vs_ Lite.shtml
It's also stuck on Version 6.1 apparently.
I think noodles were invented by the Chinese. How did the Greeks know about the Chinese? Do the Greeks even cook with noodles?
What did they do right?
While a great suggestion, it's a bit involved. I actually played around with a number of similar hardware/software/codec solutions, etc. etc.
Timeflush.
Go get one of the Panasonic DVD recorders: go to the Panasonic site and select "DVD Recorders" [sorry for no link: I just quit smoking, so I'm more retarded than usual...]
I've used the DMR-E30. The nice thing is, depending on the model, you can choose between DVD-RAM and DVD-R (for archiving vs. universal playback), and some have internal hard drives, so you can author your archive DVDs accordingly.
I fell in love with the DMR-E30. I'm selling the box I had bought as a dedicated "convert all of my stuff to DVD" box and buying one of the Panasonic recorders instead.
BONUS: I have S-Video out on my laptop, so I go Video out to video in on the DMR: it's the lazy and quick way around converting WMV/MOV/AVI/MPEG/etc. ad nauseum over to a format that will play in most if not all DVD players.
Maybe you should have been more specific in your complaint: my reading of it implied that there were UI inconsistencies between the platforms - I don't see any worth mentioning. If you're complaining about the brushed metal UI, not complying with Apple HIG, etc. than state it.
I'm talking about the English language: it's very specific and useful for communicating. Maybe you should try and use it and report back here.
Have a nice weekend.
Cool link - thanks.
1. Hardware is generally not *too* hard to get a hold of: local businesses are a good source.
2. See if there are any local user groups in your area -- they'll be a good help. Here's a start: http://www.apple.com/usergroups/ -- go find the Apple User Group in your area: they're all a bunch of fanatics, and I'm sure you can weasel a couple of old iMacs out of them.
3. Get your PTA involved. An "old computer" drive shouldn't be that much more difficult than a bake sale. Not to mention parental pressure tends to really help with getting school adminstrators to assist as opposed to hinder what you're trying to accomplish.
4. Get your School Board involved. See my PTA comments above.
5. Once you've achieved a certain amount of momentum, you can try and get the club registered as a user group or SIG for whatever OS/Application/etc. is of interest to you. If you do it at the OS level, you can then start trying to invite different vendors to demo their products at your "user group" meeting. They want the mind share, and while you may not be able to afford the new $200 Flubbawidget version 4.5, they're banking on you being able to get your parents to buy one.
6. Don't limit yourself to the Math department: for example, the Music department might derive some benefit: there are a lot of helpful instuctional tools for ear training, reading, etc. Chemistry. Biology. Astronomy. archive.org has some great historical stuff. The Gutenberg project has some cool stuff as well. Set up an Apache server that's a portal to departmental resources outside of the school -- you'll potentially make the teachers' lives easier and help fellow students get better grades.
-- The common thread with all of these things is that if you can convince someone of the benefit of doing something, whether that benefit is real or perceived, they'll generally go along with it: people don't like saying no.
In any event, whether or not anyone graduates to go onto a computer-related career, the social-engineering experience will prove invaluable.
I haven't written an applescript in OS X (does OS recognize OSAXs?), so things may have changed.
You can get AppleScript to do all kinds of destructive stuff if you really want to, and Entourage was (is?) a particularly easy delivery method.
Thankfully, no one seems to want to.
The look and feel is practically identical.
Or are you talking about the pesky inconvenience of having to use the CTRL key in Windows -- I'm sure it's tough.
Consumer applications does not necessarily mean an application that you have to pay for. QuickTime, iMovie, iDVD, and iTunes are all free -- if you want Pro (prosumer) functionality from QuickTime, you have to pay. If you want your iApps in a neato box, then you pay for iLife.
So now that we got that out of the way...
There's no good reason why Apple would charge for a Windows version of iTunes, but I can think of a couple of really good reasons not to:
1. Sell more iPods. The USB option and a Windows version of iTunes eliminate any other reason (besides the usual "Apple's too expensive") for Windows users not buying one.
2. Get more people to use their Music service.
If you really want to be speculative, the interesting thing is that it's the first consumer app since Steve's return that is being ported to Windows. There's also a .mac disk mounting utility for XP. What's next?
iPhoto would probably be a good next choice, as it would further leverage the .mac service for Windows users, etc. and would be a great opportunity for Steve to stick it to Bill.
I can just picture Jobs announcing iPhoto for Windows at MWSF 2004. Then at MWSF 2005, he can announce that .mac has more paid Windows subscribers then .net
Or not.
Apple is an early adopter:
Cube - lots of complaints about "scratches" and manufacturing issues.
TiBook - manufacturing issues.
AiBook - manufacturing issues.
Consumer computer hardware mass-produced on a pretty quick turnaround to market might impact QC a little. The fact that they have a relatively low market share doesn't help matters.
But that is the Apple way. There are dozens of instances where Apple has looked at the market and said decided that they wanted something cool that wasn't out there. So they build some "new thing" (insert your favorite cool Apple thing here).
We all know what happens next:
1. "mainstream" computer media sniggers, predicts Apple's pending demise (I think Dvorak popped a prolapse when he found out the iMacs were floppy-less).
2. Wintel Intelligencia (oxymoron?) nod their heads in agreement.
3. 18 months later it's a BTO option on the Dell site.
4. Some asshat goes on about this "new thing" being the reason why Wintel is superior to the Macintosh (I actually heard someone say this about QuickTime in a company annual meeting)...
5. Approximately 6 months after that, it's supported in the latest Linux kernel. Sort of. FreeBSD support comes sometime later.
I was an early adopter on the TiBook as well. My rubber feet fell off. Apple put them back on. 3 dead pixels? LCDs have dead pixels on occasion. Sorry, but you won the bad pixel lottery. They happen.
I've had nothing but good service from Apple over the last 15+ years and 5-6 boxes I've purchased ( I've gone through at least 2X as many PeeCees - glad they're so much cheaper...).
Too much of your post sounds like a troll, but I figure I may be wrong and my blood sugar's a bit low, so I bit. HAving said that, I have a real problem believing that you have a warped case and they won't fix it/swap it out/ etc.
I've never had the kind of issues you've had with Apple Support. I *did* have a lemon DP G4 that went back about a half-dozen times: they replaced it and they took really good care of me on the trade up. When I got the feet replaced on my laptop, they took care of a bunch of other minor cosmetic stuff, one of which was replacing the lid on my Tibook. If you're going to buy a laptop from Apple, buy the extended warranty. It's always paid off for me. Whether or not I've had the extended warranty, I've never had the kinds of poor quality problems your talking about, nor have I seen them in the hundreds of Macs I've worked on or around.
It sounds like you'll be a lot happier on a Linux laptop.
very cool for quick and dirty XPLAT testing: restoring the file is a non-event.
Well said, but it also brings up the point of people whose reflexive need to jump up and down waving their arms in the air screaming "Micro$oft Bad!!!" is downright Pavlovian.
It's pretty clear midway through paragraph 3 that it's OpenOffice FUD.
here's a link for anyone who would actually like to read about XML rather than parrot about it being just another file format.
Just because you say it with smug conviction doesn't make it true.
This is where I think we'll see software distribution going...
Right now, Steam is being tested specifically for delivering Half-Life and various mods such as Counter-Strike, but in a presentation they gave at the Game Developer's Conference a couple of years ago, they discussed how it could be used for delivering any type of software. It's pretty straightforward: you have a user account, you select which application you want to use, the app checks your account against the software, and if validated, updates your software as needed.
More importantly from a developers standpoint, it would theoretically make piracy a lot tougher for the average user. A lot of the incremental Counter-Strike updates delivered via Steam are anti-cheat related, so I can see technology used in a similar way to keep the crackers on their toes.
It's interesting from a Proof Of Concept perspective, and Valve seems to be committed to the app - it would appear they've been spending more time on it then they have developing any games...
There's a whole lot of potential with this type of delivery system, especially for people who aren't comfortable with an ASP model.
SoftWareToGo seems a little late with the kiosk model: it didn't work too well for that company that tried the "burn your own compilation CDs" - I remember seeing one of those kiosks in a neighborhood Wherehouse for about 15 minutes.
You appear to be focused on "Mac Zealots" [nice capitalization by the way] rather than several nice points being made...
Before getting started, a piece of advice: don't capitalize Zealot: makes us feel important.
For starters, Microsoft has been "optimizing" load times of their business applications for years by loading them into RAM on system startup: one of the reasons why they load faster.. Mozilla is now essentially doing the same thing with QuickLaunch, so this is nothing new - Mozilla's just attempting to be more explicit about giving the user the option to do so.
I think characterizing the Macintosh as an application-centric interface is fallacious at best: the macintosh has always been a document-centric OS: the best proof of this would be the amount of metadata traditionally stored with a file -- file type/creator ring any bells?
With the move to OS X, there has been a shift away from this focus, primarily due to the BSD subsystem, from all appearances. It is the only major loss in moving from classic to OS X [my opinion of course.]
Users will always have to manually choose what application they want to open what document (to use your paradigm) -- whether they do it globally at the Operating System level, at the application level (always seems to happen with audio/video files, especially if you have multiple players), or at the command-line level.
As a unix sysadmin, I'm sure you already know this: standard command line synax is generally [command] [file] [argument flag(s)] or [command] [argument] [file], correct? On a very basic level, a command is an application (or utility).
If I cat a directory of httpd logs and pipe it out to grep, I'm going to have a slightly different experience using grep than I would if I used egrep or fgrep. I can always alias grep to resolve to egrep or fgrep, but I'm still manually choosing what tool I'm using on a given file. Once again, as a unix sysadmin, I'm sure you're aware of what I'm talking about...
I realize that this is an incredibly over-simplified view of things, but it's an essentially correct one.
All that time that you're spending in front of a Mac doesn't count if you don't turn it on and use it every once in a while.
First I've heard of that.
I'd be interested in hearing how Apple's planning on fitting that in their current UI scheme - seems a bit crowded right now what with quartz and aqua and all.
Do you have any reference URLs for that?
Preferably not macosrumors, thinksecret, or O'Grady's Power Page.
I've got those set in my hosts file to resolve to 127.0.0.1 - I try to keep my browser cache fanboi-free.
In any event, that's not a link I'd send to any corporate IT people I know (especially M$ monkeys) to demonstrate corporate usage of OS X: there are a number of feature compatibility issues with the Mac exchange clients, whether Outlook (classic) or Entourage (OS X) that make them unacceptable in our environment -- I either use a Citrix client or Virtual PC, depending on which computer I'm connecting from and what mood I'm in.
Before Connectix, he worked at Apple as a Senior Software Engineer.
Per his resume, his work at Apple included " Researched, designed, and implemented second-generation 680x0 emulator for PowerPC-based Macintoshes. New emulator design involved "dynamic recompilation," or on-the-fly code translation, from 680x0 to PowerPC instruction sets. Implementation required extensive knowledge of both 680x0 and PowerPC architectures and optimizing compiler techniques. Several patents pending in the area of emulation."
I'm very interested in seeing whether he stays at Connectix or goes somewhere else. Like back to Apple.
Here's his resume. Connectix Executive bios are here.
I'll take another look at the OS X Client -- at the time I looked at it, and made the decision to play around with MRJAppBuilder for the first time based on my initial frustrations with it.
I don't know if this will be any help, but our network admins set up the various citrix instances so that our print preferences would follow our profiles across a number of published apps. The way they did this was to create a "Print" instance that users connect to first and mapped to whatever printers that the users want to connect to -- for example, my default printer is Adobe PDF Printer, which has a default save to my private directory on a file server. All of our printers are served via several print servers, so what a new Citrix user does is log in to the "Print" instance, map their printers, and then any published app they log into with their NT account, they get the printers as set up in the "Print" instance.
Our Network Admins aren't very helpful, so that's about as much information as I've got.
I'll have to nose around Ximian's site more: if they've got a connector API, that lends itself to all sorts of alternate solutions - thanks for the info.
This is not an Exchange client, but "enhanced Exchange functionality" added to Entourage. The only enhanced functionality they seem to be talking about it sharing calendars (more on that below)
The previous Mac Exchange Clients were free. Entourage isn't - a stand-alone copy runs about $90. While it's "free" if you buy office, it's not if you just want Exchange server connectivity.
Microsoft is charging OS X users twice: once for the CAL (Client Access License) and once for Entourage.
There are another two options in a corporate environment that work - one not so well and one that works great:
1. Web Access. This one only works for viewing *your* calendar items: a true shared calendar, i.e. one that lets you see not only what you are doing but what everyone else is doing doesn't work using via Web Access.
2. Citrix. If you're lucky, your company has Citrix implemented for something. Ask your friendly MSCE to create a profile for you that has whatever version of Outlook your company's running. Then you get real feature compatibility.
Note: if you do this, don't use the OS X Citrix client -- it's buggy as hell. Grab the Java version.
I've been running this on my OSX box for about a year now, and it works great, whether I'm in the office or logged into our domain (either VPN or Dial-up).
While Ximian looks promising, they don't appear to have any interest in developing for OS X, and unless they can present a really compelling argument for why I should do so (other than, "we're not Micro$oft"), I don't see why I should give them $60 for their product as opposed to $90 for straight from the horse's...
Whatever.
No you're not. I actually learned several things from your post.
Thank you.
I am tempted to use "virii is a plague" as my .sig, though. Interesting concept.
In case you don't feel like reading it( it's pretty long) I'll give you an executive summary:
There's not enough upside to the potential downside if they got caught, and it's not worth watching your options go down the toilet for a market advantage that won't last more than a couple of days, especially since enterprise software license purchases are usually on an annual cycle.
Please don't think I'm defending Symantec: the arrogance of their corporate culture is running a strong 3rd behind front-runners Apple and tied for 2nd place contenders Oracle and Microsoft.
There's just no intelligent reason that I can see for doing taking that big a risk.
While some engineers operate under the assumption that code maintenance = job security, I've been fortunate enough not to work with any.
That aside, there are more than enough people creating viruses to keep all of the anti-virus shops busy.
But let's run with this for a second, since a lot of people are apparently entertaining this as a possibility.
From a product liability standpoint, ask yourself this:
1. What is the benefit from a market share standpoint to doing this?
2. How long will that market share benefit be realized?
3. What is the likelihood of getting caught?
4. What will the negative impact be if they get caught?
For #1 - "minimal". For example, hysterical media reports aside, we didn't see sales of anti-virus software skyrocket after the Melissa virus, either in end-user or corporate sales. People are either smart enough to have the software installed or not. Big companies tend to keep anti-virus software as a pretty high priority from a licensing standpoint, at least every place I've worked. If they get caught unprotected, the people responsible (IT management) tend to get fired: it's called Gross Negligence.
While there's a lot of activity as far as keeping virus definitions updated, this is trivial both at the end-user and corporate level due to automation, and is not a significant source of revenue, if it generates any revenue at all.
#2 - also "minimal". The major players all tend to release virus definitions within hours if not days of each other, so any market share benefit would be very short-lived from an income standpoint.
#3 - "somewhat likely". While I realize this is anecdotal, the only people I've found worse at keeping a secret than a 5 year old is a software engineer. If they did do something like that, we'd hear about it - probably not right away, but we'd hear about it eventually, if only via the rumor circuit - the same people who have it from a reliable source that Apple's running OS X on Dells.
#4. - "potentially catastrophic". If it did come to light that Symantec pulled something like this, I'm sure that the corporate sales teams for Sophos, McAfee, and Trend Micro would immediately add this information to their Power Point presentations, and your average corporate IT executive might consider this fact when negotiating a software license renewal contract.
In summary, it looks like (1) the benefit would be small, (2) it would be short-lived, (3) it would eventually get out that they had done it, and (4) they would be faced with a significant reaction from their corporate customers.
Symantec isn't Microsoft: they have real competition, especially in the enterprise market. Factor in a relatively flat job market for software engineers and the fact that Symantec has (at least when I interviewed with them) a pretty attractive option plan, and I can't see why anyone in the organization would think this was a good idea.
But I could be wrong.