On a more serious note. It's hard actually to see what they are patenting, which I guess is the hallmark of a good money grabbing patent. I think, though, that prior art will probably deal with this. The patent system is being slowly broken by people patenting the gimcrack, and the money grubbing rather than the truly novel.
Where are the Classic users clinging on?
on
Mac OS X 10.3 vs. Linux
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
I'm surprised that he reckons that vast swaths of Classic users are cling gin on. Even people who were held back by Quark not upgrading quickly enough are moving now. What's more OS X can provide a very classic like user experience if you want it to.
I'm also wondering about his assessment of the speed of OS X on his G4. Now maybe 16 years of Mac use has blinded me to how slow Mac OS X really is, but I find it (on a 500Mhz G3) pretty snappy and nothing to complain about. Maybe I should see the light and install Linux.
I think not though, productivity would grind to a halt as I tried to get Linux to do the things I wanted it to.
One things is to be said, I would have never;learnt any *nix stuff or run any X11 programmes without OS X. OpenOffice 1.0.3 is now my Office suite of choice, although the sooner they sort out the terrible human interface the better. And that's my major gripe with Linux and other *nix flavours, is the terrible human interface. Now Aqua is not perfect but one thing Apple has managed to do over the years is keep the interface consistent and persuade developers to make their interfaces consistent with the OS. What linux needs is an Open Human Interface Standard if it want's to succeed on the desktop.
News Forge appears to be getting the/. treatment, so here's the article:
An early eval of Apple's Mac OS X 10.3
By: Chris Gulker
Apple's BSD-based Mac OS X 10.3 Panther offers 64-bit processor support and new features wrapped in the latest version of a GUI that has its roots in the NeXT desktop. While Panther sets a new standard for ease of use and interface look and feel, it still lacks features that Linux users have long enjoyed.
Panther, billed as "the evolution of the species" and built on the open source Darwin project's version of BSD 5, really is an evolutionary step -- not a revolutionary new operating system. Panther does offer admirable user-interface consistency and ease-of-use, but its new Finder is bound to draw complaints from died-in-the-wool Mac users,
particularly the large base of users who still cling to Mac OS 9 "Classic."
*NIX users will find this one of the most polished GUIs ever bolted onto a UNIX-like OS and probably won't have issues with the file browser. Mac developers groaned audibly when Steve Jobs presented an OS X Finder based on the NeXT columnar file browser at the ADC conference in 1998, and Mac OS Classic users continue to resist it in favor of traditional Mac windows, icons, and folders. In Panther, columnar view is the default window behavior.
Apple has taken the sleek, brushed chrome interface featured on apps like iTunes and Safari and applied it to the new version of Finder, the always-on application that provides the Mac desktop and handles chores like connecting to servers and other shared resources. Gone are many of the shiny, translucent Aqua interface widgets and light gray pin stripes that debuted barely three years ago.
Finder windows offer a new pane, called a Sidebar, that weds the NeXT-like columnar file hierarchy view with a Windows XP-like list of storage devices and common sub-directories in the user's home folder. Buttons on the customizable window allow users to select iconic, list or column views and turn the Sidebar on and off.
While this will be handy for people who are at home with hierarchical file systems, it has potential to confuse others because it can mask parts of the hierarchy, particularly when the list or icon views are selected. At first glance, files appear to live at the top of whatever directory is selected in the Sidebar -- intervening folders and subfolders are not shown. Sidebar does not have an option for the tree view common to Linux and Windows desktop windows.
ExposZ allows for one-click tiling of all open windows.
A new feature called ExposZ allows one-button (or one-click) tiling of all the open windows as thumbnails, and is a very handy way to find a specific window on a crowded desktop with many apps running.
Panther continues Apple's commitment to making it easy to use Macs in heterogenous network environments. Mac OS X 10.3 offers easy one-click access to network servers in the underlying BSD 5 subsystem. A click-to-start list in the Systems Preferences Sharing panel turns on ASIP (AppleShare over IP), SMB, Apache, FTP, and printer sharing via LPD/LPR and CUPS. NFS, surprisingly can only be turned on using the command line or a GUI config app like Marcel Bresink's NFS Manager.
Panther also discovers and connects to virtually any Windows or *NIX server, although, in practice, the process didn't always work smoothly, and occasionally not at all. Panther generated username/password errors and refused to connect to a Red Hat Linux 9 box running NFS on a local subnet. For its part, the Red Hat box could see the Mac in its UNIX network browser, but returned an error when attempting to open a directory. For some reason, SuSE 8.2 worked fine, in both directions, and the Mac happily connected via ASIP to the netatalk server on the RH 9 box.
Panther also features Rendezvous, Apple's version of zeroconf, that does a good job of discovering
Clearly you've never seen me pace about the room with a tiny phone inconveniently wedged between shoulder and chin. I've never really been convinced by handsfree not least because the things either fall out of my ear or look far to Britney Spears for my liking
(call me an old fuddyduddy if you like, but it's mainly that I like to keep the number of pieces of kit i carry around with me to a minimum, now if someone could make a handsfree kit that worked inline with the headphones i use with my iPod)
The feature set and screen on this device are excellent but for a media player to only have 64Mb of memory to store MP3s etc. (there's a separate 25Mb of system and PIM memory). The Browser and other interface look great. Digital TV i can do without, why not DAB? (To answer my own question, DAB is less universal than DVB). That feature set in a P900 style enclosure would be better, but probably still wouldn't tempt me into purchasing.
in common with the 3300 and the N-Gage you have to hold it edge on to your head to use the phone which looks silly, is counter intuitive and means you can't wedge the phone between chin and shoulder. It's also quite large. too big for a trouser pocket. Too much like the cancer bricks of the 80s.
It has a tiny memory capacity (64Mb) and only upgradable in cards of 128Mb and i assume like the N-Gage and 3300 you have to remove the back and the battery to swap cards.
I'm not averse to accessing all my data through my phone but currently the Sony Erricsson T610 provides the best way of accessing it. Small, light, good battery life. Both this and the P-8/900 are too big for me.
not as good as my 3rd generation iPod but good nonetheless. It looks pretty big to me but the photos may not do it justice. It doesn't appear to have PIM features , which I find very useful on the iPod, but I'm sure a small software updates would sort that out.
I'd like to see some real world battery life figures. I get much less than the Apple advertised 8 hours but then I use it to drive fairly high impedance headphones.
We'll have to see how it sells though and how it faces up in a marketplace dominated by the iPod in terms of marketing and brand recognition.
In Europe any screen has to turn off automatically if the car's speed gets above 5km/h, if it's in the driver's field of vision. The sound stays but the picture goes.
Seems perfectly sensible to me.
Even if it wasn't specifically legislated for it would be covered by the 'driving without due care and attention' law which basically is a catchall that can pick up people eating a mars bar at the wheel if it causes them to drive unsafely.
Based on my dad's experience with Plasma screens they seem to give up the ghost on average about once every 8 months. And that's bolted to a brick wall, not being bounced up and down in a Humvee. They are phenomenally noisy compared to pretty much any other display technology (even projectors). Unless the technology improves dramatically a plasma screen is not even going to make it into my living room, let alone a tank.
Not really, Microsoft is removing a key feature of the product (or at least support for it) is really cutting off the nose to spite the face. But selling VPC for Mac I don't was their key motive for buying connectix. The want to make devlopment for mac cheaper and to have a virtual XP to bolt onto Longhorn for backward compatibility, Carbon it isn't.
I've only ever used VPC to try out various things with various other *nixs. What I'd really want to do is run multiple instances of OSX or other PPC based *nix. No matter though I'm sure VPC 7 will continue to work just fine.
What I fear from microsoft's purchase of VPC is that future versions of microsoft products for mac will use windows code run through a built in emulator. One can only help that Open Office gets an interface to rival the (hard to admit that it is) excellent interface of Office v.X. The last Office to have a largely windows codebase (98) was a complete dog to use.
Google's key user service (not it's key revenue earning service) is the search engine and right now its broken. it doesn't work like it used to, it hasn't worked out how to over come link farms and trackbacks. Sure its got a work round but the search engine does not work well any more. it could be overhauled in effectiveness by another team of students with a clever idea (I'm sure somebody is working on it), that's what happened to altavista etc.
Sure, google could buy up such a company but so could M$ ($ very appropriate here) or anyone else. People will use the best search technology. google makes its money through advertising, but are people going to advertise with number 2, even adwords will loose its cachet. Money also flows from licensing its search services, but who's going to buy number 2.
Google needs to sort out the technology before it floats. Maybe they have something up their sleeves, but we shall see.
I think hype is going to overturn caution and google will end up over-valued. Without improvements in the technology, realised or forthcoming (in a non vapourous way), the shares will not be worth the premium.
I think the key feature of the OS X security model is that the root account is disabled by default. Doing admin by sudo instead of su seems much safer. I agree wholeheartedly with the above post and would like to add that I find the continual challenging for admin passwords very reassuring.
Fair enough, passwords are only as secure as you keep them but I am fairly confident, using OSX, that no one can get my password without me specifically telling them (which isn't going to happen).
Motorola selling off its microprocessor division may cause the new company to focus on PowerPC again. It's a very good processor and although Apple is the only major customer there is no reason why it couldn't develop the chip and aim it at 'Media Centre' devices, Linux workstations or even try to rebuild the relationship with Apple. Competition between strong suppliers would be very healthy for Apple; look what happened when Motorola went off the boil just recently.
I mean really ugly. Also it is far from zero emission, the electricity has to be generated somehow and not that much comes from renewable or nuclear power yet. Furthermore, think of all of the emissions produced making the car and all the emissions produced when it is scrapped. Emissions reduction should be aimed at the Complete life cycle of a product not just at the in-use emissions.
The cup of tea I'm drinking produces no emissions but there were plenty emitted during its production.
The next IBM 750 series of processors will have faster main cores and Altivec extensions so G3s will be back even if they don't get called G3s by apple. What is a G3 with altivec if not a G4 (ish, sort of).
I will interested to see how this will affect lower end powerbook sales.
I wish MS would not tie things like this to.NET. There's a legitimate use and demand for IRM but why does everyone who uses it, (and people in certain organisations will be compelled to use this or feel its a good idea to use it), have to hand over personal details over to MS.
I'm fairly sure MS wouldn't use the data for nefarious purposes but it seems unnecessary for them to have it for this purpose.
(NB:- I am writing this with my Powerbook balanced on me knee connected to Ethernet, Power, iPod, USB Sound Card)
Wires are faster, cheaper and more secure. What's more wireless chomps the battery so quickly you have to have at least one wire to power it. Sure wireless has its function and will become more useful over time as power consumption decreases and batteries get better.
Bluetooth, in a way, is of more use than WiFi. It's lower power and much easier for the average john smith to configure and use.
Where were all the 10BaseT hookups in coffee bars and airports, I know that's not entirely relevant to this discussion, but it's worth considering the the grand scheme of wireless.
Slashdot Mirror
for that document to stand up in court.
On a more serious note. It's hard actually to see what they are patenting, which I guess is the hallmark of a good money grabbing patent. I think, though, that prior art will probably deal with this. The patent system is being slowly broken by people patenting the gimcrack, and the money grubbing rather than the truly novel.
I'm surprised that he reckons that vast swaths of Classic users are cling gin on. Even people who were held back by Quark not upgrading quickly enough are moving now. What's more OS X can provide a very classic like user experience if you want it to.
;learnt any *nix stuff or run any X11 programmes without OS X. OpenOffice 1.0.3 is now my Office suite of choice, although the sooner they sort out the terrible human interface the better. And that's my major gripe with Linux and other *nix flavours, is the terrible human interface. Now Aqua is not perfect but one thing Apple has managed to do over the years is keep the interface consistent and persuade developers to make their interfaces consistent with the OS. What linux needs is an Open Human Interface Standard if it want's to succeed on the desktop.
I'm also wondering about his assessment of the speed of OS X on his G4. Now maybe 16 years of Mac use has blinded me to how slow Mac OS X really is, but I find it (on a 500Mhz G3) pretty snappy and nothing to complain about. Maybe I should see the light and install Linux.
I think not though, productivity would grind to a halt as I tried to get Linux to do the things I wanted it to.
One things is to be said, I would have never
News Forge appears to be getting the /. treatment, so here's the article:
An early eval of Apple's Mac OS X 10.3
By: Chris Gulker
Apple's BSD-based Mac OS X 10.3 Panther offers 64-bit processor support and new features wrapped in the latest version of a GUI that has its roots in the NeXT desktop. While Panther sets a new standard for ease of use and interface look and feel, it still lacks features that Linux users have long enjoyed.
Panther, billed as "the evolution of the species" and built on the open source Darwin project's version of BSD 5, really is an evolutionary step -- not a revolutionary new operating system. Panther does offer admirable user-interface consistency and ease-of-use, but its new Finder is bound to draw complaints from died-in-the-wool Mac users,
particularly the large base of users who still cling to Mac OS 9 "Classic."
*NIX users will find this one of the most polished GUIs ever bolted onto a UNIX-like OS and probably won't have issues with the file browser. Mac developers groaned audibly when Steve Jobs presented an OS X Finder based on the NeXT columnar file browser at the ADC conference in 1998, and Mac OS Classic users continue to resist it in favor of traditional Mac windows, icons, and folders. In Panther, columnar view is the default window behavior.
Apple has taken the sleek, brushed chrome interface featured on apps like iTunes and Safari and applied it to the new version of Finder, the always-on application that provides the Mac desktop and handles chores like connecting to servers and other shared resources. Gone are many of the shiny, translucent Aqua interface widgets and light gray pin stripes that debuted barely three years ago.
Finder windows offer a new pane, called a Sidebar, that weds the NeXT-like columnar file hierarchy view with a Windows XP-like list of storage devices and common sub-directories in the user's home folder. Buttons on the customizable window allow users to select iconic, list or column views and turn the Sidebar on and off.
While this will be handy for people who are at home with hierarchical file systems, it has potential to confuse others because it can mask parts of the hierarchy, particularly when the list or icon views are selected. At first glance, files appear to live at the top of whatever directory is selected in the Sidebar -- intervening folders and subfolders are not shown. Sidebar does not have an option for the tree view common to Linux and Windows desktop windows.
ExposZ allows for one-click tiling of all open windows.
A new feature called ExposZ allows one-button (or one-click) tiling of all the open windows as thumbnails, and is a very handy way to find a specific window on a crowded desktop with many apps running.
Panther continues Apple's commitment to making it easy to use Macs in heterogenous network environments. Mac OS X 10.3 offers easy one-click access to network servers in the underlying BSD 5 subsystem. A click-to-start list in the Systems Preferences Sharing panel turns on ASIP (AppleShare over IP), SMB, Apache, FTP, and printer sharing via LPD/LPR and CUPS. NFS, surprisingly can only be turned on using the command line or a GUI config app like Marcel Bresink's NFS Manager.
Panther also discovers and connects to virtually any Windows or *NIX server, although, in practice, the process didn't always work smoothly, and occasionally not at all. Panther generated username/password errors and refused to connect to a Red Hat Linux 9 box running NFS on a local subnet. For its part, the Red Hat box could see the Mac in its UNIX network browser, but returned an error when attempting to open a directory. For some reason, SuSE 8.2 worked fine, in both directions, and the Mac happily connected via ASIP to the netatalk server on the RH 9 box.
Panther also features Rendezvous, Apple's version of zeroconf, that does a good job of discovering
I'm quite happy to let others uncover the bugs first. Although so far bugs and incompatibilities seem to be thin on the ground so far.
Clearly you've never seen me pace about the room with a tiny phone inconveniently wedged between shoulder and chin. I've never really been convinced by handsfree not least because the things either fall out of my ear or look far to Britney Spears for my liking
(call me an old fuddyduddy if you like, but it's mainly that I like to keep the number of pieces of kit i carry around with me to a minimum, now if someone could make a handsfree kit that worked inline with the headphones i use with my iPod)
The feature set and screen on this device are excellent but for a media player to only have 64Mb of memory to store MP3s etc. (there's a separate 25Mb of system and PIM memory). The Browser and other interface look great. Digital TV i can do without, why not DAB? (To answer my own question, DAB is less universal than DVB). That feature set in a P900 style enclosure would be better, but probably still wouldn't tempt me into purchasing.
Might be worthwhile, but I'd rather DAB on a phone just because I am less bothered about watching Tv on the move than listening to the Radio.
in common with the 3300 and the N-Gage you have to hold it edge on to your head to use the phone which looks silly, is counter intuitive and means you can't wedge the phone between chin and shoulder. It's also quite large. too big for a trouser pocket. Too much like the cancer bricks of the 80s.
It has a tiny memory capacity (64Mb) and only upgradable in cards of 128Mb and i assume like the N-Gage and 3300 you have to remove the back and the battery to swap cards.
I'm not averse to accessing all my data through my phone but currently the Sony Erricsson T610 provides the best way of accessing it. Small, light, good battery life. Both this and the P-8/900 are too big for me.
Mobile media, I'll stick to my iPod.
not as good as my 3rd generation iPod but good nonetheless. It looks pretty big to me but the photos may not do it justice. It doesn't appear to have PIM features , which I find very useful on the iPod, but I'm sure a small software updates would sort that out.
I'd like to see some real world battery life figures. I get much less than the Apple advertised 8 hours but then I use it to drive fairly high impedance headphones.
We'll have to see how it sells though and how it faces up in a marketplace dominated by the iPod in terms of marketing and brand recognition.
In Europe any screen has to turn off automatically if the car's speed gets above 5km/h, if it's in the driver's field of vision. The sound stays but the picture goes.
Seems perfectly sensible to me.
Even if it wasn't specifically legislated for it would be covered by the 'driving without due care and attention' law which basically is a catchall that can pick up people eating a mars bar at the wheel if it causes them to drive unsafely.
Based on my dad's experience with Plasma screens they seem to give up the ghost on average about once every 8 months. And that's bolted to a brick wall, not being bounced up and down in a Humvee. They are phenomenally noisy compared to pretty much any other display technology (even projectors). Unless the technology improves dramatically a plasma screen is not even going to make it into my living room, let alone a tank.
Does anyone know of a manufacturer of a good cycle pannier that fits apple laptops. Something to take the worst of London weather and London potholes.
Not really, Microsoft is removing a key feature of the product (or at least support for it) is really cutting off the nose to spite the face. But selling VPC for Mac I don't was their key motive for buying connectix. The want to make devlopment for mac cheaper and to have a virtual XP to bolt onto Longhorn for backward compatibility, Carbon it isn't.
I've only ever used VPC to try out various things with various other *nixs. What I'd really want to do is run multiple instances of OSX or other PPC based *nix. No matter though I'm sure VPC 7 will continue to work just fine.
What I fear from microsoft's purchase of VPC is that future versions of microsoft products for mac will use windows code run through a built in emulator. One can only help that Open Office gets an interface to rival the (hard to admit that it is) excellent interface of Office v.X. The last Office to have a largely windows codebase (98) was a complete dog to use.
Google's key user service (not it's key revenue earning service) is the search engine and right now its broken. it doesn't work like it used to, it hasn't worked out how to over come link farms and trackbacks. Sure its got a work round but the search engine does not work well any more. it could be overhauled in effectiveness by another team of students with a clever idea (I'm sure somebody is working on it), that's what happened to altavista etc.
Sure, google could buy up such a company but so could M$ ($ very appropriate here) or anyone else. People will use the best search technology. google makes its money through advertising, but are people going to advertise with number 2, even adwords will loose its cachet. Money also flows from licensing its search services, but who's going to buy number 2.
Google needs to sort out the technology before it floats. Maybe they have something up their sleeves, but we shall see.
I think hype is going to overturn caution and google will end up over-valued. Without improvements in the technology, realised or forthcoming (in a non vapourous way), the shares will not be worth the premium.
I think the key feature of the OS X security model is that the root account is disabled by default. Doing admin by sudo instead of su seems much safer. I agree wholeheartedly with the above post and would like to add that I find the continual challenging for admin passwords very reassuring. Fair enough, passwords are only as secure as you keep them but I am fairly confident, using OSX, that no one can get my password without me specifically telling them (which isn't going to happen).
Motorola selling off its microprocessor division may cause the new company to focus on PowerPC again. It's a very good processor and although Apple is the only major customer there is no reason why it couldn't develop the chip and aim it at 'Media Centre' devices, Linux workstations or even try to rebuild the relationship with Apple. Competition between strong suppliers would be very healthy for Apple; look what happened when Motorola went off the boil just recently.
The cup of tea I'm drinking produces no emissions but there were plenty emitted during its production.
A fair while yet. Beige G3s are 1997/8 vintage IIRC, so maybe another 4/5 years at least.
To be fair I can't find anything on Apple's site that says these processors are IBM or Motorola.
remember 15" widescreen is not the same as 14" at 4:3 ration, but you are quite right regarding the premium.
The next IBM 750 series of processors will have faster main cores and Altivec extensions so G3s will be back even if they don't get called G3s by apple. What is a G3 with altivec if not a G4 (ish, sort of).
I will interested to see how this will affect lower end powerbook sales.
That sounds much better.
I wish MS would not tie things like this to .NET. There's a legitimate use and demand for IRM but why does everyone who uses it, (and people in certain organisations will be compelled to use this or feel its a good idea to use it), have to hand over personal details over to MS.
I'm fairly sure MS wouldn't use the data for nefarious purposes but it seems unnecessary for them to have it for this purpose.
Is there an open standard to compete with this?
In the original announcement Steve told us all that all albums would be 9.99 irrespective of the number of tracks they contained.
(NB:- I am writing this with my Powerbook balanced on me knee connected to Ethernet, Power, iPod, USB Sound Card)
Wires are faster, cheaper and more secure. What's more wireless chomps the battery so quickly you have to have at least one wire to power it. Sure wireless has its function and will become more useful over time as power consumption decreases and batteries get better.
Bluetooth, in a way, is of more use than WiFi. It's lower power and much easier for the average john smith to configure and use.
Where were all the 10BaseT hookups in coffee bars and airports, I know that's not entirely relevant to this discussion, but it's worth considering the the grand scheme of wireless.