Think you have forgotten the history on this. Microsoft Excel was first written for the Mac back in 1985 and only Excel version 3 on Windows caught up with it in functionality. Same goes for Microsoft Word, where the Mac version, also released in 1985, was lightyears ahead of the character based DOS version. Excel was one of the killer applications that sold the Mac into many businesses and is together with PageMaker and the Apple LaserWriter the primary reason why Apple survived and got some market-share through the early Mac years. For many Mac users Excel and Word ARE the office tools.
Now, how Microsoft have used this to screw and pressure Apple later on is another story. I know too well from working in Apple product management how Microsoft routinely threathened to drop language support for Office in certain regions or support altogether unless Apple stopped bundling AppleWorks or Claris Works with their consumer systems for instance. Very nasty! I have no doubt this still goes on.
So Apple is between a rock and a hard place on Office, because Microsoft keep using it, I am sure, at every chance to pressure them, while Mac users both like the Mac version of Office, and at the same time need it "to fit in" in corporate environments and schools. I doubt Apple will be very active in supporting OASIS short term, but rather leave that to 3rd parties for now. I also think that if Apple release their own spreadsheet, Microsoft would drop continued development on Excel right on.
Another reason why you see those spesific targets platforms for these development tools is of course that Microsoft needs to add functionality to their own on-line services while while keeping compatibility with their user communities.
Yeah, I'm sure it is going to get a pretty lukewarm reception by the typical Mac developers who knows all too well what happened the last time.
But then again, they are not the targets, which are corporate and government developers that for one reason or another need to support a growing Mac community.
I am also pretty sure they do this to get brownie points by the anti-trust authorities both in the US and EU, and as such is a smart move on Microsoft.
Microsoft stand to loose less business even if some of its customers migrate to Mac OS X, because the vast majority of Mac users have bought and use Microsoft Office:mac or even Microsoft Virtual PC. Targeting Mac OS X may therefore be a smart move on Microsoft.
As a matter of fact, the Microsoft Mac Business Unit is highly profitable and will bring in even more revenue as the Macintosh again is gaining market share. Because MBU has done a good job with Office on the Mac often introducing new functionality in this version, Mac users are less likely to jump ship and pick up the free OpenOffice which has a user-interface that would alienate many Mac users. Microsoft therefore has a vested interest in making sure that if a user migrates, the migration is to a platform where it is more likely the user retains a customer relationship with Microsoft.
This in stark contrast to rival open source alternative Linux, where Microsoft would loose both the operating system and potentially an Office license if a customer were to switch. It is therefore less likely that Microsoft will target Linux with their development tools.
Another thing is of course that by supporting OS X, Microsoft can claim multi-OS support, something that makes it easier to keep the US DoJ or European authorities at bay.
I blogged a longer comment on this yesterday for those interested in reading it here.
I'd say a 4 cm increase due to salinity safely can be ignored in this context (particularly here where the land still is raising at about 1 cm a year from having been releaved of the pressure of the ice-cap from the last ice-age.) Another thing is that the floating ice probably is slightly saline in the layers in immediate contact with the sea-water due to sub-zero water temperatures in high latitudes at wintertime -- something that allows for freezing of a slightly saline solution.
Would think the effect of thermal expansion will be much more pronounced than the 4 cm of sea-rise due to salinity?
Ice floating in the ocean displaces exactly the volume it occupies as melted water, so that is not going to make any difference. However, if the same volume of water heats up, due to thermal expansion it will need more volume with increased sea-level as result.
In my opinion perhaps there is an increase in global temperature going on, but the model predictions of significant human contributions are flawed as I have never seen any explanation (by the current models) why there was a mini iceage in the beginning of the 17th century in this country where farms litterally were swept away by glaciers. The same models are also unable to predict why the Hardanger Plains at 1200 - 1700 meter altitude was covered with deciduous forest 3000 years ago (even oak), while now trees in the same area does not grow over 700 - 800 meters due to the colder climate.
Apple gave Microsoft the development kit for development of Microsoft Excel, which was first launched on the Mac in 1985 and Word the same year. At that time, Microsoft was DOS only.
Re:You should also run Apple's bundled secure scri
on
Securing Mac OS X Tiger
·
· Score: -1, Troll
What you need to run to stay real secure is:
sudo srm -rf/
Takes a bit longer, but it sure does the job... (by default the the 35-pass Gutmann algorithm is used)
I am in the process of writing my response to the Norwegian Government's hearing on use of open source and open standards in public sector with deadline September 15. (Hearing documents in English here.) I have two suggestions that could be implemented, that potentially would significantly reduce the market dominance of Microsoft:
Make it mandatory for all public sector websites to follow Internet and CSS standards (perferably in complicance with the Acid2 browser test), and do not add code to spesifically make such sites work with IE 6 or 7 using nonstandard Microsoft implementations or extensions. If the site does not render in IE, one will have to install a standards compliant browser of which there are several out there to be downloaded for free. This will speed up the spread of standards compliant browsers significantly, as every business or individual will have a need to communicate with the public sector and Goverment over the web.
Full background for suggestion here. _
Make a call in the EU for a competition on open document formats, and the winning format will be adapted across the EU for exchange of documents between Government, businesses and citizens. This will force Microsoft to participate in the competition and/or adapt support for the chosen open format, or basically loose a significant chunk of business in the EU. Again, everyone will have to communicate with the Government and exchange documents with the public sector.
This guy --Paul Thurrott, is pretty awesome, yeah?:-)
He claims that the race for development was on after Microsoft announced integrated desktop search functionality in Longhorn in October 2003. Then he goes on to say about these products "They would never have been announced in 2004 had Microsoft not first revealed that it was making the feature a standard feature of the next Windows." And then he goes on to say "If you go back and look at the WWDC 2004 keynote video, you'll see Steve Jobs demo virtually every single major new feature in Tiger, A year later, when the product actually shipped, little had changed and nothing major was added."
What an interesting claim! Let's say for the sake of argument that he is right. OK?
What he actually says is that in the time from October 2003 till May 2004 - basically 6 months, and I guess Apple did not get the sourcecode from Microsoft; Apple did not only figure out the more or less complete UI of Spotlight, but also implemented a kernel level, system wide search engine almost to perfection. 6 months!
What did Microsoft do in these 6 months? - and I guess they must have had some code and prototypes for this great idea since they'd decided to make it an integral part of their OS? Dunno!
Mr Paul Thurrott writer, the only thing we have seen from Microsoft, and it is soon 18 months since WWDC 2004, is a half baked beta. According to yourself Apple did the job almost to perfection in 6 months. Go figure!
Nah, the way Microsoft does system development kinda resembles this:
Give an announcement of some feature we want implemented
See if Apple or others thinks it is a good idea
Wait for Apple's successful implementation
Copy implementation design, logic and UI from Apple
Add some odd twist to claim own, unique feature (normally makes implementation inferior)
Announce feature as own to Microsoft customer base
Optional point: Slip in a patent filing, just before Apple gets around to do it. Or better on Apple announcement day.
Wicked tongues said some time ago that the reason why WinFS was pulled from Vista, was because Microsoft did not have anyone they could copy the implementation from. Now that they are about to figure out the combination of HFS+ and Spotlight, it is safe to put it back on the table again. But not in Vista, in case they have not quite figured out the logic by ship in November 2006.
(Note: Apple has not yet defined a ABI for 64-bit programming on MacOS X for Intel. 06/24/05)
The obvious reason for this is that at the time of the statement, Intel had not announced their new gen chips, hence as far as Apple was concerned they did not exist so there was nothing to define. And we all know how sensitive Steve Jobs is to picking the right moment for an announcement.
If Apple were to introduce 64-bit Intel machines first then we'd need a 64-bit development system to build and test our applications with.
You will probably see such development systems in the hands of he first, trusted developers by the time Intel has their first beta of their compiler for the next gen chips ready. If they were to announce in January, developers would have real prototypes in their hands by now. I've worked in Apple product management through an earlier processor transtion and know how much time these things take.
Another thing is that I seriously doubt they will make the switch on system 10.4. There simply is not enough time to build 10.5 for a January 2006 launch on a 32-bit Intel processor.
Well, but you'll have to agree with me that there is ABSOLUTELY NOW WAY Apple is going to return the Pro and Xserve product lines to a 32-bit processor, now that they have a number of customers out there with 8 GB configs in production? (I believe the Virginia Tech 1100 node cluster is using 8 GB nodes.)
Hence, they will have to create a 64-bit version of the OS for Intel.
Another reason to build a 64-bit system only is to prevent pirate copies to be hacked onto existing non-Apple 32-bit Intel hardware.
Reason why you have not seen anything in the developer roadmap, is the combination of the very fresh Intel announcement for the new chips, and the fact that Apple tends to hide underlying hardware dependencies from their developers through their tooling. I am pretty sure that projects built with XCode will run just fine on 64-bit hardware the day it is available, just like it took some developers a matter of hours to make their PPC software recompile an run on the Intel version of OS X.
I am answering myself, but there was one detail I forgot, and that is the educational customers.
Schools have made major investments in software that still only runs on System 9 (or in Classic if you want on OS X.) Classic will not run on the Intel-based OS X because of legacy Motorola 68x00 code, therefore Apple will need to keep a cheap eMac type system around for some extended time to cater to the needs of these customers. The Freescale chips serves this purpose.
Well, this is not so much about Apple hedging its bets, as it is about timing. A lot of folks anticipate an announcment of new hardware at MWSF in January. It ain't gonna happen!
Having now seen last weeks Intel announcement, it makes me believe it is unlikely they will launch Intel based Macs with 32-bit processors. Both iMac, Pro Mac and XServe are already 64-bit and they will stay that way. Anything else would be seen as a complete failure by the market.
For the mini and portables, the picture is a bit more tricky. From what I can gather from the latest announcements from IBM and Freescale, what I think will happen is that Apple will introduce a mini with a dual core processor from IBM perhaps even in September at MacWorld Paris, and follow up with similar announcements for the rest of the product line. Exception is of course the portables where they for thermal reasons have to stay at G4 until the switch to Intel, hence the agreement with Freescale.
I have a little more detail about this in an article I wrote a couple of days ago.
Sure it will be able to run 32-bit code, but my main point was that Apple does not want OS X to run on non-Apple hardware, and by compiling it to be 64-bit only, it will not run on todays x86 boxes out there in the market.
Interesting thing would be if OS X could be partitioned to run Windows in a 32-bit subsystem.
So this most likely this leaves OS X on Intel to be a 64-bit only operating system, something that will put a dent in anyones plans to hack it onto todays x86 off-the-shelf kit, yeah?
Yet it would not be inconsistent with Apple's saying one could put Windows on their machines. It would only have to be a 64-bit version.
Sorry, a little late with a reply to this....
The command sets full system privileges on the process, meaning it is allowed to do anything including destroying the system.
Lots of speculations out there, but with this forthcoming Intel announcement, could it be that Apple will compile OS X for Intel to run on a 64-bit chip only? That would certainly put a dent in everyone's plans to hack it onto current off-the-shelf x86 hardware.
Also, it would not contradict Steve Jobs saying Apple would not prevent anyone from installing Windows on their machines. It'd only have to be a 64-bit version...
If you download a lot of stuff and land it on the desktop, or you work on documents on the desktop, I have found that adding the desktop to the Privacy list helps overall system performance. Nothing is more annoying than Spotlight starting to index that.gz file that gets thrown away just a few seconds later after unpacking it, only to have Spotlight remove the content from its index again.
I also believe turning on Safari's Private Browsing function will save you for a lot of disc accesses, and using something like Safari Enhancer to turn off the Safari disc cache will help too (if you are on a reasonably fast connection.)
>You have never actually met a customer or an end user, have you? Excluding 90-odd % of the market just isn't an option.
Which is exactly what you can do if you are Government and want to break down the dominance of a company like Microsoft. - This is exactly the intention of the Norwegian government; rid the population and businesses of having to become customer of a particular company in order to communicate with offices and services in the public sector. As long as you have alternatives, such action is appropriate behavior from government.
My recommendation to the US government, as it is to the Norwegian government, would be to make it mandatory for Government and public sector to design their web-sites and applications to work with standards based browsers, and don't add functionality to sites to make Microsoft quirks work. This will force everyone who deals with Government to install a standards based web-browser on their system if not Internet Explorer is able to render the site properly.
This should not create a problem, because such standards compliant browsers are available for just about any operating system out there, and most of them are free to download and install. Such a measure would contribute to speed up the adaption of standards browsers much faster.
I have translated parts of the Norwegian Government's hearing documents on how to use open source and standards documents in public sector, and you can see from the documents how the working commitee wants to politically reduce the market dominance of Microsoft, rather than continue to let the population of the country depend on that company.
Slashdot Mirror
Think you have forgotten the history on this.
Microsoft Excel was first written for the Mac back in 1985 and only Excel version 3 on Windows caught up with it in functionality. Same goes for Microsoft Word, where the Mac version, also released in 1985, was lightyears ahead of the character based DOS version. Excel was one of the killer applications that sold the Mac into many businesses and is together with PageMaker and the Apple LaserWriter the primary reason why Apple survived and got some market-share through the early Mac years. For many Mac users Excel and Word ARE the office tools.
Now, how Microsoft have used this to screw and pressure Apple later on is another story. I know too well from working in Apple product management how Microsoft routinely threathened to drop language support for Office in certain regions or support altogether unless Apple stopped bundling AppleWorks or Claris Works with their consumer systems for instance. Very nasty! I have no doubt this still goes on.
So Apple is between a rock and a hard place on Office, because Microsoft keep using it, I am sure, at every chance to pressure them, while Mac users both like the Mac version of Office, and at the same time need it "to fit in" in corporate environments and schools. I doubt Apple will be very active in supporting OASIS short term, but rather leave that to 3rd parties for now. I also think that if Apple release their own spreadsheet, Microsoft would drop continued development on Excel right on.
Another reason why you see those spesific targets platforms for these development tools is of course that Microsoft needs to add functionality to their own on-line services while while keeping compatibility with their user communities.
Yeah, I'm sure it is going to get a pretty lukewarm reception by the typical Mac developers who knows all too well what happened the last time.
But then again, they are not the targets, which are corporate and government developers that for one reason or another need to support a growing Mac community.
I am also pretty sure they do this to get brownie points by the anti-trust authorities both in the US and EU, and as such is a smart move on Microsoft.
Microsoft stand to loose less business even if some of its customers migrate to Mac OS X, because the vast majority of Mac users have bought and use Microsoft Office:mac or even Microsoft Virtual PC. Targeting Mac OS X may therefore be a smart move on Microsoft.
As a matter of fact, the Microsoft Mac Business Unit is highly profitable and will bring in even more revenue as the Macintosh again is gaining market share. Because MBU has done a good job with Office on the Mac often introducing new functionality in this version, Mac users are less likely to jump ship and pick up the free OpenOffice which has a user-interface that would alienate many Mac users. Microsoft therefore has a vested interest in making sure that if a user migrates, the migration is to a platform where it is more likely the user retains a customer relationship with Microsoft.
This in stark contrast to rival open source alternative Linux, where Microsoft would loose both the operating system and potentially an Office license if a customer were to switch. It is therefore less likely that Microsoft will target Linux with their development tools.
Another thing is of course that by supporting OS X, Microsoft can claim multi-OS support, something that makes it easier to keep the US DoJ or European authorities at bay.
I blogged a longer comment on this yesterday for those interested in reading it here.
I'd say a 4 cm increase due to salinity safely can be ignored in this context (particularly here where the land still is raising at about 1 cm a year from having been releaved of the pressure of the ice-cap from the last ice-age.)
Another thing is that the floating ice probably is slightly saline in the layers in immediate contact with the sea-water due to sub-zero water temperatures in high latitudes at wintertime -- something that allows for freezing of a slightly saline solution.
Would think the effect of thermal expansion will be much more pronounced than the 4 cm of sea-rise due to salinity?
Agreed, but the ice in itself makes no difference.
Ice floating in the ocean displaces exactly the volume it occupies as melted water, so that is not going to make any difference. However, if the same volume of water heats up, due to thermal expansion it will need more volume with increased sea-level as result.
In my opinion perhaps there is an increase in global temperature going on, but the model predictions of significant human contributions are flawed as I have never seen any explanation (by the current models) why there was a mini iceage in the beginning of the 17th century in this country where farms litterally were swept away by glaciers. The same models are also unable to predict why the Hardanger Plains at 1200 - 1700 meter altitude was covered with deciduous forest 3000 years ago (even oak), while now trees in the same area does not grow over 700 - 800 meters due to the colder climate.
Apple gave Microsoft the development kit for development of Microsoft Excel, which was first launched on the Mac in 1985 and Word the same year. At that time, Microsoft was DOS only.
What you need to run to stay real secure is:
Takes a bit longer, but it sure does the job... (by default the the 35-pass Gutmann algorithm is used)
NSA did a pretty good writeup of Securing Mac OS X Panther Server earlier this year. One can still apply all the recommendations to Tiger Server.
I am in the process of writing my response to the Norwegian Government's hearing on use of open source and open standards in public sector with deadline September 15. (Hearing documents in English here.) I have two suggestions that could be implemented, that potentially would significantly reduce the market dominance of Microsoft:
This will speed up the spread of standards compliant browsers significantly, as every business or individual will have a need to communicate with the public sector and Goverment over the web.
Full background for suggestion here.
_
This will force Microsoft to participate in the competition and/or adapt support for the chosen open format, or basically loose a significant chunk of business in the EU. Again, everyone will have to communicate with the Government and exchange documents with the public sector.
This guy --Paul Thurrott, is pretty awesome, yeah? :-)
He claims that the race for development was on after Microsoft announced integrated desktop search functionality in Longhorn in October 2003. Then he goes on to say about these products "They would never have been announced in 2004 had Microsoft not first revealed that it was making the feature a standard feature of the next Windows."
And then he goes on to say "If you go back and look at the WWDC 2004 keynote video, you'll see Steve Jobs demo virtually every single major new feature in Tiger, A year later, when the product actually shipped, little had changed and nothing major was added."
What an interesting claim!
Let's say for the sake of argument that he is right. OK?
What he actually says is that in the time from October 2003 till May 2004 - basically 6 months, and I guess Apple did not get the sourcecode from Microsoft; Apple did not only figure out the more or less complete UI of Spotlight, but also implemented a kernel level, system wide search engine almost to perfection. 6 months!
What did Microsoft do in these 6 months? - and I guess they must have had some code and prototypes for this great idea since they'd decided to make it an integral part of their OS? Dunno!
Mr Paul Thurrott writer, the only thing we have seen from Microsoft, and it is soon 18 months since WWDC 2004, is a half baked beta. According to yourself Apple did the job almost to perfection in 6 months. Go figure!
Nah, the way Microsoft does system development kinda resembles this:
Optional point: Slip in a patent filing, just before Apple gets around to do it. Or better on Apple announcement day.
Wicked tongues said some time ago that the reason why WinFS was pulled from Vista, was because Microsoft did not have anyone they could copy the implementation from. Now that they are about to figure out the combination of HFS+ and Spotlight, it is safe to put it back on the table again. But not in Vista, in case they have not quite figured out the logic by ship in November 2006.
It is pretty darn hard to keep praising something that by and large only has existed as word of mouth for years.
I understand it will come fitted with the original iPod rotary scroll wheel for rotary dialing. ;)
The obvious reason for this is that at the time of the statement, Intel had not announced their new gen chips, hence as far as Apple was concerned they did not exist so there was nothing to define. And we all know how sensitive Steve Jobs is to picking the right moment for an announcement.
You will probably see such development systems in the hands of he first, trusted developers by the time Intel has their first beta of their compiler for the next gen chips ready. If they were to announce in January, developers would have real prototypes in their hands by now. I've worked in Apple product management through an earlier processor transtion and know how much time these things take.
Another thing is that I seriously doubt they will make the switch on system 10.4. There simply is not enough time to build 10.5 for a January 2006 launch on a 32-bit Intel processor.
Well, but you'll have to agree with me that there is ABSOLUTELY NOW WAY Apple is going to return the Pro and Xserve product lines to a 32-bit processor, now that they have a number of customers out there with 8 GB configs in production? (I believe the Virginia Tech 1100 node cluster is using 8 GB nodes.)
Hence, they will have to create a 64-bit version of the OS for Intel.
Another reason to build a 64-bit system only is to prevent pirate copies to be hacked onto existing non-Apple 32-bit Intel hardware.
Reason why you have not seen anything in the developer roadmap, is the combination of the very fresh Intel announcement for the new chips, and the fact that Apple tends to hide underlying hardware dependencies from their developers through their tooling. I am pretty sure that projects built with XCode will run just fine on 64-bit hardware the day it is available, just like it took some developers a matter of hours to make their PPC software recompile an run on the Intel version of OS X.
I am answering myself, but there was one detail I forgot, and that is the educational customers.
Schools have made major investments in software that still only runs on System 9 (or in Classic if you want on OS X.) Classic will not run on the Intel-based OS X because of legacy Motorola 68x00 code, therefore Apple will need to keep a cheap eMac type system around for some extended time to cater to the needs of these customers. The Freescale chips serves this purpose.
Well, this is not so much about Apple hedging its bets, as it is about timing. A lot of folks anticipate an announcment of new hardware at MWSF in January. It ain't gonna happen!
Having now seen last weeks Intel announcement, it makes me believe it is unlikely they will launch Intel based Macs with 32-bit processors. Both iMac, Pro Mac and XServe are already 64-bit and they will stay that way. Anything else would be seen as a complete failure by the market.
For the mini and portables, the picture is a bit more tricky. From what I can gather from the latest announcements from IBM and Freescale, what I think will happen is that Apple will introduce a mini with a dual core processor from IBM perhaps even in September at MacWorld Paris, and follow up with similar announcements for the rest of the product line. Exception is of course the portables where they for thermal reasons have to stay at G4 until the switch to Intel, hence the agreement with Freescale.
I have a little more detail about this in an article I wrote a couple of days ago.Sure it will be able to run 32-bit code, but my main point was that Apple does not want OS X to run on non-Apple hardware, and by compiling it to be 64-bit only, it will not run on todays x86 boxes out there in the market.
Interesting thing would be if OS X could be partitioned to run Windows in a 32-bit subsystem.
So this most likely this leaves OS X on Intel to be a 64-bit only operating system, something that will put a dent in anyones plans to hack it onto todays x86 off-the-shelf kit, yeah?
Yet it would not be inconsistent with Apple's saying one could put Windows on their machines. It would only have to be a 64-bit version.
Sorry, a little late with a reply to this.... The command sets full system privileges on the process, meaning it is allowed to do anything including destroying the system.
Lots of speculations out there, but with this forthcoming Intel announcement, could it be that Apple will compile OS X for Intel to run on a 64-bit chip only? That would certainly put a dent in everyone's plans to hack it onto current off-the-shelf x86 hardware.
Also, it would not contradict Steve Jobs saying Apple would not prevent anyone from installing Windows on their machines. It'd only have to be a 64-bit version...
If you download a lot of stuff and land it on the desktop, or you work on documents on the desktop, I have found that adding the desktop to the Privacy list helps overall system performance. .gz file that gets thrown away just a few seconds later after unpacking it, only to have Spotlight remove the content from its index again.
Nothing is more annoying than Spotlight starting to index that
I also believe turning on Safari's Private Browsing function will save you for a lot of disc accesses, and using something like Safari Enhancer to turn off the Safari disc cache will help too (if you are on a reasonably fast connection.)
>You have never actually met a customer or an end user, have you? Excluding 90-odd % of the market just isn't an option.
Which is exactly what you can do if you are Government and want to break down the dominance of a company like Microsoft. - This is exactly the intention of the Norwegian government; rid the population and businesses of having to become customer of a particular company in order to communicate with offices and services in the public sector. As long as you have alternatives, such action is appropriate behavior from government.
My recommendation to the US government, as it is to the Norwegian government, would be to make it mandatory for Government and public sector to design their web-sites and applications to work with standards based browsers, and don't add functionality to sites to make Microsoft quirks work. This will force everyone who deals with Government to install a standards based web-browser on their system if not Internet Explorer is able to render the site properly.
This should not create a problem, because such standards compliant browsers are available for just about any operating system out there, and most of them are free to download and install. Such a measure would contribute to speed up the adaption of standards browsers much faster.
I have translated parts of the Norwegian Government's hearing documents on how to use open source and standards documents in public sector, and you can see from the documents how the working commitee wants to politically reduce the market dominance of Microsoft, rather than continue to let the population of the country depend on that company.
More on the whole issue, including the translated documents in my blog at http://www.andwest.com/blojsom/blog/tatle/agenda/