BeOS: the Mac OS X might-have-been
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The multimedia OS that debuted years before Vista Forgotten Tech As World+Dog gets its head around Windows Vista, lets look back at an operating system that might have been a contender, very nearly becoming Apple's next-generation OS and, but for Linux, almost certainly the key alternative to Windows in the x86 world. Ladies and gentlemen, who remembers the Be OS?â¦
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A team of researchers is evaluating how Linux and Mac OS X stack up against Windows for internal use.
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Printing with Lightroom on Leopard...getting Photoshopped for Christmas...cell phones with 5x optical zoom...the optical triangle illusion
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The near-final version of Mac OS X Leopard, unveiled today at the World Wide Developers Conference, introduces over 300 new features. They include a new Desktop and Dock with Stacks; an updated Finder featuring Cover Flow and a new way to easily browse and share files between multiple Macs; Quick Look, a new way to rapidly preview most files without opening an application; Time Machine, a new way to easily and automatically back up and restore lost files or a complete Mac; Spaces, a powerful new feature to create groups of applications and instantly switch between them; and enhanced iChat and Mail applications, which easily allow users to communicate even more creatively. Mac OS X Leopard, the sixth major release of the worldâs most advanced operating system, is scheduled to ship in October.
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In 1980, I signed a deal with a company to market a product I was developing. The contract required me to turn over the source code, which I did. One day I went to a meeting at the office of the company, and there on the product manager's desk, right next to a door that opened to the outside, was a floppy labeled "Dave Winer's source code" in big letters.  If you own a Mac you may soon find out what that felt like. It's amazing to me that the tech blogosphere doesn't treat Apple's policy re broken hard disks as the huge gaping security hole that it is.  Think about it. We worry about bad people getting their hands on little pieces of data that, when added together, give them the power to be you in banking and credit transactions.  Think about what you would do if your laptop was stolen. Well, if you own a Mac and its hard disk goes bad, and you make the mistake of bringing it to Apple for service, you will turn over all that data to Apple. Not "may" or "might" but "will." What Apple in turn does with that data is none of your affair. They don't sign anything or offer any guarantees that they won't sell the disk to a data miner. Think it can't happen or that it's unlikely? I don't gain much comfort from your feeling of security. I've been writing about this issue since December 22. Usually when I write something critical of Apple, the results are mixed. Some people are supportive, but far more people attack. This time the ratio is very different. Almost everyone who has commented gets that there's a huge problem here. Can we solve this problem? Of course we can.  Some say that other vendors do this too. That gives me less comfort, not more. That means there's no escaping this crazy way of treating user's confidentiality. Ultimately it hurts the vendors because people can't use their computers for things the manufacturers say we can.  Further, it's got to be an issue for the banks, brokerage firms, credit agencies. If you are a newspaper and you employ reporters and they use a computer, how exactly are you guarding the confidentiality of your sources? If you're a confidential source, don't you have an interest when the reporter gives their computer manufacturer all their data to do with as they please? Imagine what you would do if it turned out there was a bug in a Netgear or Linksys router that allowed, under special circumstances, a mailicous person to gain access to the full content of your hard disk at any time. Would you have a problem with that? This is worse than Microsoft's neglect of malware that got me to stop using their computers. In that case it was Microsoft being neglegent. This time Apple itself is the cause of the problem. It's as if they planted a virus in their operating system that entitled them, under special circumstances, completely out of the user's control, to gain access to everything on your disk, with as much time as they want, with no way for you to prevent or even detect the intrusion.  See also: My letter to Steve Jobs.
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Apple showed off lots of new features of its upcoming Leopard release of Mac OS X at WWDC on Monday. Here's a look at some of the highlights.
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Windows? Linux? Mac OS? One day it won't matter.
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Pierre-Alain Joye has a little reminder posted to his blog today about two posts from planet-debian and Apache that refer to clones/references in PHP4 and PHP5 and some of the misconceptions presented there.   Reading planet-debian and Apache (from Sven and David), I catched two posts about clones and references in php4 and php5. I do not think it is worth to explain again everything here as Sara wrote a very good post already, check it out here.   He mentions his annoyance with articles/posts like these and the impact that it has on PHP as well as the person posting.   I wonder when the OS community in general will be mature enough to stop bitching at each other. And that's valid for PHP developers, gnome-kde and other well established wars.
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Making a strong case for Macs in the enterprise world, Tom Yager of InforWorld.com writes: &#147;Apple&#146;s latest Macs and OS deserve a good, hard look as mainstream enterprise fare.&#148;
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Adobe late with Photoshop Elements for Mac...iStockphoto tightens model release requirements...Canon 5D Mark II rumor...PDF now an ISO standard
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First a little background. I stopped using a Mac in 1997, as Apple was transitioning to the new operating system. I started using the Mac again as my primary OS in late 2005, a little more than two years ago. This is the first new version of the OS to come out since I switched back. Based on a tour of the new features, pretty late at the end of a long week, it's safe to say an OS is still just an OS, the purpose of the OS is to stay out of your way until you need it. Leopard may be prettier than the last version, I'm not sure it is or isn't. Not sure I'll use many of the new features. For people who hadn't used VNC before, "screen sharing" would certainly be a big new feature if they're working in a networked enviroment. And maybe the new backup code will fit into my routine. I have some ideas about that. (Maybe I'll just have one computer on my LAN that is backed up and copy things there if I want them backed up.) File sharing is more convenient in Leopard, the shared computers are listed in every Finder window, and this is good. FInding the disks that are available on each of these computers is one step easier too.  The Preferences applicaiton appears largely unchanged, except the Networking section where a lot of functionality seems to be missing. I have to look at this more closely. The Download stack is lost on me since I don't use Safari or Apple's mail app. I would find it useful if Firefox had a similar feature (but they kind of do, I can direct all downloads to a specific folder). All in all, changes to an OS aren't that important. The action is in the apps, and for me, just a couple of primary ones, the web browser and my integrated writing and programming environment. It's been quite a while since there have been meaningful improvements to either, and those improvements would end up meaning a lot more to me than improvements to the OS. There isn't much you can do, after the Mac has been around for 23 years, that hasn't already been done.  Net-net, my first impression of Leopard is that it isn't a big deal one way or the other.  PS: I wonder if the next version of the OS will be called Leonard, to honor Leonard Rosenthal, a famous Mac developer in the 80s and 90s.
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Calling Leopard the âapple of my eye,â Dwight Sliverman (Houston Chronicle) tells us that as heâs played with the newest version of Mac OS X, âIâm constantly being surprised by smart, useful and convenient touches. It is a pleasure to use.â For example, he calls Spaces his âfavorite Leopard feature, because it instantly multiplies your desktop real estate. Those who use portable computers will particularly appreciate it. On my MacBook itâs a godsend.â
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In early October Apple released a small series of patches for Mac OS X version 10.2 and later. Most of the fixes in this group blocked possible denial-of-service problems that are, to date, theoretical.
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One of the first pieces of malicious code targeting Apple's Mac OS X operating system has been discovered.
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Our editor compares the prices of similarly configured Macs and PCs. What he finds out may surprise you.
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Isn't this only supposed to happen to Windoze users? Security researchers have discovered a serious, unpatched vulnerability in Mac OS X. The memory corruption bug creates a means for attackers to take control of even fully patched systems.â¦
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Debate rages over whether the Mac operating system is inherently safer than Windows. Part of a series on hot security topics.