Preaching beyond the Mac faithful
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In the past three weeks, shares of Apple Computer Inc. have flirted with all-time highs after a wave of reports from investment houses like Piper Jaffray, Merrill Lynch and JP Morgan issued glowing projections about the Cupertino firm&#39;s future.
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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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A Win/Mac developer recently asked me what I thought about his plan to create a binary of his application and sell it to interested Linux sound and music people. He asked with some trepidation, having already received a rather critical chorus of objection from some overly enthusiastic Linux users. This man's work is excellent and his software already runs nicely under Wine.read more
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Blog: Tim and I gave back-to-back keynotes at this year's Ubuntu Live.  Tim is not nearly as dogmatic as I am, and here's how we came out....
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The OSx86 Scene forum is offering full instructions on how to install the newest Mac OS on Windows PCs.
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The line between consumer and pro in Apple inc.'s hardware lineup can be a blurry one, says columnist Seth Weintraub. But that can be good for companies that may be eying Mac hardware for their users.
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Continuing the thread from yesterday. I got absolutely nowhere, some people suggested I use a smart playlist, missing the point that I'm a developer working on a podcatcher, not a user trying to use iTunes as a podcatcher. I'm sure it's an excellent way to subscribe to podcasts, but I have my own ideas how podcatchers should work, and I want to integrate them with other stuff I'm working on. Integrating with iTunes is proving to be quite a challenge, or maybe it's an art, we'll see.  As usual Mac users are superior sumbitches.  (Quoting the James Brolin character the first time we meet him in the third season finale of The West Wing.) Anyway, the search continues, I tried another more direct tack, and looked for glue for iTunes for UserLand, and bingo, there's a match, from 2001, a well-known Frontier programmer Sean Elfstrom, apparently converted glue for the Sonic SoundJam app that iTunes used to be, before Apple acquired it.  I installed the glue in the OPML Editor. It's daunting, for sure, but let's see what I can get working.
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Mozilla&#39;s new Firefox Web browser can make believers even out of loyal Internet Explorer proponents. By Scot Finnie, Desktop Pipeline.
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It's the preferred tool for Mac OS X Server file sharing and user management. Ryan Faas gives you tips and tricks for how to make it work for you.
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Jesse Noyes writes for the Boston Herald, &#147;&#145;Big.&#146; That&#146;s the first word that pops into mind when you sit yourself down in front of the new iMac&#146;s 24-inch display.&#148;
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My new Mac Pro is a badass computer; but how many cycles do I need to print pictures of my kids? Commentary by Leander Kahney.
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Derrick Story writes for the O&#146;Reilly MacDevCenter, summarizing a Mac OS X Tiger preview recently presented to the O&#146;Reilly Mac OS X Conference by Apple product manager Chris Bourdon. [Nov 17]
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The CanSecWest security research conference promoters are thinking about giving hackers another shot at cracking the Mac. Only this time, they're looking to broaden the field.
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I'm back, with a very interesting topic too!  Joel Spolsky, ex-Microsoft Manager and software engineering guru has a new essay, How Microsoft Lost the API War that is creating quite a big storm in the blogging communitiy.  Joel posits that the priests in the holy Temple of Microsoft have lost their way, because it has split into two factions, and the wrong faction is winning. One faction worships on the alter of backward compatibility, while the other is led by fervent priests who are proselytizing to raise up the new gods of .NET and Longhorn. Joel suggests that the new gods will cause the destruction of the holy Temple because Microsoft's great victories were built on the altar of keeping customers happy with backward compatibility. Furthermore the old gods of the Windows API continue to grow more grotesque and cruel with the passing of time, driving former worshipers into the arms of the friendlier gods of World Wide Web.  This story sounds extremely plausible. I must admit that i fit the profile of the developer who used to develop on the Window's API, is familiar with COM and Win32 who now develops mostly using PHP and Python. However I continue to develop and maintain Windows apps that keep our customers happy, and we still plan to develop new Windows apps. Some points:  Temple of the Blind? Firstly, Microsoft is still a compelling place to work for to people who feel that they can make a difference. The Temple continues to attract talented people with a Unix background. For example we have the recent hiring of Ward Cunningham, author of the Wiki.  Microsoft is still able to keep talented people like Raymond Chen, and others like him who continue to look after the Windows API, and Longhorn apparently will still give high priority to backward compatibility. Open sourcerers like Miguel Icaza are sufficiently attracted to the .NET vision to stake their careers on Mono. Longhorn and .NET are compelling technologies, so even if Win32 is not so cute anymore, M'soft is providing something that remains very attractive.  What i do see M'soft doing wrong is that they aren't disseminating the .NET runtime fast enough. It remains an optional install in XP Service Pack 2 for example. Also their IE dev team appears to be hog-tied due to political reasons; nevertheless IE remains good enough, particularly when I can embed IE as an activeX control, something I cannot do with Mozilla (AFAIK) - Update: I'm wrong.  Temple of the Spider?  Secondly, people don't merely use a web browser. They run the web browser in the OS.  So let me ask you, if you are using DreamWeaver or HomeSite or Photoshop or vi or emacs or Gimp, how many of you are willing to give it up for a java applet (or whatever your favorite technology is) running in your web-browser? Precisely.  Temple of the Abandoned?  Third, Joel makes the claim that developers are not developing to the Windows API. Well he could be right. But I bet a lot of them are still calling Win32.  If you are using a framework or IDE like Delphi or wxWindows (or .NET or VB) then you certainly are insulated from the Windows API, but that doesn't mean that you're not calling the Windows API all the time. I don't see Borland dropping their Windows version of Delphi at any point in time.   In fact, the fact that many developers are using some form of framework is a compelling argument for Microsoft to enhance the .NET framework to attract developers who are using other frameworks.  Today, not that many students learn x86 assembler, but that doesn't mean that Intel lost the CPU wars. Just because fewer people are learning Win32 doesn't mean Microsoft has lost the API wars, if the frameworks run predominantly on Win32.  Temple of the Lost  Joel even warns you in the beginning that "because I'm talking about big trends, I need to exaggerate and generalize". But you still get sucked in because Joel Spolsky is a first-class writer, in the same order as Philip Greenspun or Eric Raymond. That makes him so persuasive and plausible. But this is not Indiana Jones and doomed temples, but Steve Jobs and reality distortion fields.  Other opinions:  Harry Fuecks (PHP is ASP's upgrade path),  Dennis Hamilton (M'soft is just covering all bases), Robert McLaws (Joel is wrong in 7 points), Oliver Travers (the web is not good enough), One Run-time to Rule them all....
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At San Francisco shindig, Mac community gets first look at book-size budget PC and low-end music player.  Photos: Scenes from Macworld
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Tinkerer Iain Sharp couldn't bear to part with his first computer -- a Mac SE/30 -- so he turned it into a powerful media server using a mini PC motherboard and a software emulator. By Leander Kahney.
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A few weeks ago I suggested you try a new Internet browser, Firefox. And many of you did. You liked it, for the most part. One thing I forgot to mention was Apple Macintosh users need to be running OS X to