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About this siteFor six years, the Internet Nexus served as my technology blog, but I've since started blogging at the SuperSite Blog instead. If you're looking for the blog, please head there. --Paul Friday, May 21, 2004Adieu, iMacSo I sold my 17-inch widescreen iMac to a friend (for a smoking deal) this week. I had purchased the machine about 14 months ago in order to work on a book, and after I completed working on that title last fall, my iMac usage fell off sharply. The reason is simple: Because it's a desktop machine, it was stuck in my office, and I've been working from around the house for the past several months more and more often (my wife jokingly calls this the "Baywatch Factor," but the truth is, it's just nice to have a change of scenery).Meanwhile, my aged 2001 iBook (a 500 MHz G3 model with a DVD drive) is barely acceptable for anything more than casual Web browsing, and though I took the device on most business trips for a couple of years, its batteries have now withered to the point where that's impossible (or pointless): One battery gets a bit under 2 hours of charge, but the other is more like 45 minutes; they used to both get around 4.5 hours. A G3 is no kind of machine for a power user, period. So the questions start. What now? Part of me honestly considered bagging Apple altogether: I've switched from the iPod to the superior Dell DJ anyway, and I've stopped purchasing songs from Apple's iTunes Music Store. I've been unimpressed with the performance of the Macs I've owned (and have no desire to spend $3000 or more on a new Mac) and have been equally unimpressed with the quality of Mac OS X, which yes, is beautiful, and in some ways quite capable, but still lags XP in key areas. So if you have a second, and are interesting in doing more than just dump on me for being a Windows shill or whatever warped thing it is you think I am, I'm really looking for some advice. I figure I can spend about $2000 on a portable Mac without raising too many red flags with my accountant/wife. But I have questions. I also have requirements. - It has to burn DVDs. - Should I get the 14-inch iBook G4? - Or is the 12-inch PowerBook a better deal? - Should I wait for the WWDC? (Inevitably, Apple will introduce faster machines the second I buy mine). Am I missing anything? One thing I can promise is that, whatever it is, I'll likely return to bringing this device with me on business trips, which I can assure you, causes no end of discussion in the Microsoft-oriented world which I frequently ply in my day job. I'm happy to keep covering Apple--I figure this machine should last two years, or less than the iBook did--but it's pretty clear that won't happen regularly from my home office. Is this the right thing to do? [ Posted at 8:38 PM | Permalink ]
Divide and Conquer: Why Apple Has An iPod DivisionI, Cringely: "The news was that Apple was creating a separate iPod division because the little music players are such a huge success. Conventional business school wisdom also says that starting a separate division is a way of isolating startup costs, making them more obvious to Wall Street and thus minimizing negative impacts because of course, even Apple has to spend money to make money. Or, like 3Com did with Palm Computing (and even Apple once did with Claris before changing its mind), you can structure a division to spin-off or have a separate IPO. This all makes sense on the surface, but then I recalled something I was told more than 20 years ago by a much younger Steve Jobs. Back then Apple had three divisions – Apple II, Lisa, and Macintosh. Why have separate divisions? 'Because it’s easier to shut one down,' said Steve ... I can imagine that Apple might stop Mac sales entirely and become a consumer electronics and software company. Think about it. The upgrade to G5 cycle isn’t going as well as Apple had hoped it would, but if the company did an Intel upgrade cycle EVERYONE would move up. That’s 20 million users instead of four to five million. Such a move would boost profits (the software’s already paid for, remember, so the margins can be HUGE) and make the company look even better, at least for awhile ... I think iPod really means 'not Macintosh.' It wouldn’t surprise me if the company did more types of consumer devices, but the point is not to sell a workstation you get paid for once, but to create a revenue stream that pays you every week. That’s what Steve is groping for, I’m sure of it."Voila. Robert X. Cringely agrees with me about the implications of Apple's reorg moves. [ Posted at 1:33 PM | Permalink ]
Recent Software Flaws Bite Into Apple's SecurityLA Times (free registration required): "Enthusiastic Macintosh owners brag that the digital plagues of worms, viruses and Trojan horses so common to Microsoft Corp.'s Windows operating system rarely visit their sleek machines. It may be, though, that Apple doesn't fall too far from the PC. Three times this month, Apple Computer Inc. has been accused of failing to warn Mac owners of serious flaws in their software. In the most recent instance, users of Apple's OS X operating system could have data deleted or stolen if they follow an e-mail link to websites built by hackers. At the sites, PCs can be compromised by malicious code."I've long opined that Mac OS X (and Linux, for that matter) isn't inherently more secure than Windows, and that the only reason it's not hacked as often is that its small user base simply doesn't make it a viable target for hackers. This month's security vulnerabilities bear out this opinion: Mac OS X, it seems, is just as easy to hack as any other OS. Maybe more so: As this article notes, "The recent discoveries of flaws in Mac software comprise the most serious issues being found at one time in the company's history, said Chris Wysopal, vice president of security consulting firm AtStake." [ Posted at 1:28 PM | Permalink ]
No Fedora love in virtual machinesI'm having the same problems with the final version of Fedora Core 2 that I did during the beta: The thing just refuses to install on Virtual PC, and though it does appear to install on VMWare 4.5, the X server refuses to start on initial reboot, so there's no GUI. Has anyone had any success with this? [ Posted at 1:24 PM | Permalink ]
Thursday, May 20, 2004Some Notes on the 'Who wrote Linux' Kerfuffle, Release 1.3Minix author Andy Tanenbaum chimes in on the "who wrote Linux" debate. "There are worse people to ask ... about the history of UNIX. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, I spent several summers in the UNIX group at Bell Labs. I knew Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and the rest of the people involved in the development of UNIX. I have stayed at Rob Pike's house and Al Aho's house for extended periods of time. Dennis Ritchie, Steve Johnson, and Peter Weinberger, among others have stayed at my house in Amsterdam ... although I had nothing to do with the development of the original UNIX, I knew all the people involved and much of the history quite well ... Years later, I was teaching a course on operating systems and using John Lions' book on UNIX Version 6. When AT&T decided to forbid the teaching of the UNIX internals, I decided to write my own version of UNIX, free of all AT&T code and restrictions, so I could teach from it ... I set out to write a minimal UNIX clone, MINIX, and did it alone. The code was 100% free of AT&T's intellectual property."Very interesting, and required reading for anyone that's into Linux. [ Posted at 4:13 PM | Permalink ]
Helix Player and RealPlayer 10 for Linux Alpha availableHelix Community: Vikram Dendi, the Program Manager & Project Lead for Helix Player Project and RealPlayer10 for Linux, says he has "finished uploading the last of the various packages for the Helix Player 1.0/RealPlayer 10 Alpha to the player downloads site. The Helix Player is now 100% open source, and includes support for Ogg Vorbis /and/ Ogg Theora, as well as SMIL 2.0 so that you can combine Theora videos with JPEG, GIF, or PNG images and RealText. The RealPlayer 10 alpha is a superset of the Helix Player alpha, and adds support for RealAudio, RealVideo, MP3, and Flash."Neat. [ Posted at 4:02 PM | Permalink ]
Napster Launches in Europe Ahead of iTunes ... As Apple splits into Mac/iPod organizationsWinInfo: "Digital-music download and subscription service Napster became the first service of its kind to open its virtual doors in Europe, handing key rival Apple iTunes Music Store an embarrassing defeat ... In related news, Apple announced this week that it will split the company, operationally, into two parts, separating the people who develop iPod-related products from those who work on the company's flailing Macintosh computers. The move corroborates opinions, including that of yours truly, that Apple is slowly shedding its computer-maker roots to concentrate on consumer electronics, and the company is expected to make a series of consumer-electronics-related announcements next month at an annual developer show. Furthermore, Apple's Chief Software Technical Officer Avie Tevanian revealed last week that the company can't afford to keep up its Mac OS X development pace and will scale back those efforts. Presumably, the high-margin iPods and the popular iTunes Music Store service have given company a bigger Return on Investment (ROI) than slogging it out with Microsoft in an unwinnable OS battle." [ Posted at 4:00 PM | Permalink ]
Red Hat ships Fedora Core 2No word yet on how this release will fare in virtual machines (I never did get Test 2 to work), but here's the skinny: "Fedora Core 2 is now available from Red Hat and at distinguished mirror sites near you, and is also available in the torrent. Fedora Core has expanded in this release to four binary ISO images and four source ISO images, and is available for both x86-64 and i386." [ Posted at 9:25 AM | Permalink ]
Mozilla 1.7 Release Candidate 2 AvailableMozillaZine: "The Mozilla Foundation has made Mozilla 1.7 Release Candidate 2 available for download. Like the first release candidate, which came out last month, this build is designed to ensure that there are no major bugs remaining before the final release of Mozilla 1.7. The Mac OS X version of RC 2 now includes the Quality Feedback Agent (Talkback) crash reporting tool, bringing it in to line with Windows and Linux and making it much easier for developers to pinpoint the causes of crashes. 1.7 RC 2 will probably be followed by a further release candidate before the final launch of Mozilla 1.7 ... More information about this latest release candidate can be found in the Mozilla 1.7 RC 2 Release Notes." [ Posted at 9:13 AM | Permalink ]
Wednesday, May 19, 2004OSX is running on my Athlon!Thanks to Jordan Kovacs for the tip: TechTV's Kevin Rose has written up a nice step-by-step guide to getting OS X installed on PearPC running under Windows. "Here are the details you need to know: It's slow, very very slow – as in 286 SX slow, as in iTunes for Windows slow... you get the idea. Certain machines work, others don't. From what I've seen in the forums it's about a 50/50 shot it will work on your PC. You must own OS X. Lots of bugs.. think of it as a proof of concept for the time being." [ Posted at 11:01 AM | Permalink ]
PearPC 0.1: Is It A Miracle?OSNews has a nice look at the process of installing OS X in the PearPC virtual machine environment on top of Windows proving, at the least, that it is possible. I'd like to see a better step-by-step guide, however. Anyone know of one? [ Posted at 10:25 AM | Permalink ]
Apple to slow OS X developmentMacWorld UK: "Apple has announced that it is going to slow the pace of Mac OS X developments. Apple chief software technology officer Avie Tevanian said: 'We're slowing that pace down a little bit because it's not a sustainable rate. But you'll still see us go really fast.' Since the launch of Mac OS X in 2001 Apple has released three major updates, and plans to show Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger at its worldwide developers conference (WWDC) in July. The company has not announced when Tiger will ship."A couple of obvious comments here. Given Apple's never-ending marketshare losses, this is probably a bad idea. OS X is even with, or behind, Windows XP in many areas, but you have to start thinking about the next generation. With Microsoft getting ready to ship Longhorn in two years, now is the time that Apple should be churning out the upgrades and getting a lead on XP for a change. You know, maybe actually innovate for a change and make the OS as easy to use as it is beautiful to look at. One (unrealistic) thing I'd like to see Apple do is stop charging its loyal customers for every single minor OS X upgrade. For three of the last four years, OS X customers have had to pay dearly for Apple's development process, at a rate of $130 a pop. That's unfair to customers, but it's also the only way Apple can afford to keep developing OS X, so it's sort of a Catch-22. Meanwhile, Microsoft, with its mountains of cash and steady corporate licensing fees, has been improving XP over the years, and not charging customers for the privilege (or charging them very little, such as the $20 fee one would pay for Plus! Digital Media Edition). Apple doesn't benefit from Microsoft's economics, but I find it odd that the company would soak its most loyal customers so readily: Only the true diehards have been using and upgrading OS X every year. [ Posted at 10:16 AM | Permalink ]
Dell Digital Jukebox to Sync With Desktop Linux MachinesPRNewswire: "Lindows announced today the commercial support of the Dell Digital Jukebox (Dell DJ), a portable MP3 music player for desktop Linux. MP3 players are tapping into the expanding Linux desktop market by offering Linux music fans simplicity, portability, flexibility and value for a personalized music experience ... Dell DJ support is available for Linux through the Lsongs music player and offers users an easy way to manage their music portfolio. By engineering the hardware and software to work seamlessly every step of the way, Dell DJ users can easily update their music library's content and playlists."What's interesting here, of course, is that Lindows now has better support for the best portable audio player on the market than do some of the Windows-based services, including Real and Napster. Most curious. Also, Lindows talked to Apple about getting iPod support, but Apple "wants to keep that a closed system." Typical. [ Posted at 9:20 AM | Permalink ]
Tuesday, May 18, 2004Dell Unveils New Axim PDAsPC World: "Dell is releasing three new Axim personal digital assistants, adding the Bluetooth short-range wireless networking technology to its PDAs for the first time. The new Axim X30 models are also Dell's first PDAs to use Intel's new XScale processors. Four PXA270 processors were released in April, featuring various clock speeds and improved security and multimedia features. Dell customers can choose between the 312-MHz processor or the fastest chip in the group, the 624MHz processor."These PDAs look sweet, and in typical Dell fashion, they're priced to sell. Good stuff. [ Posted at 9:32 PM | Permalink ]
Apple's platform agnosticismYour Tech Weblog: "In another sign of Apple's increasing platform agnosticism, the firm now lets .Mac members create HomePage Web pages on PCs (that's right, not Macs) running Windows XP and Internet Explorer 6. Just about every .Mac offering (including account signup) works with Windows now. Looks like iTunes and the iPod for Windows were only the beginning..."Interesting. According to Apple's New Features page for HomePage (and you might have to be a .Mac subscriber to read this), the new versions includes "new support for creating and editing pages on Windows XP ... Now you can access HomePage from PCs running Internet Explorer 6 on Windows XP. Create and edit pages just the way you do on your Mac." [ Posted at 9:25 PM | Permalink ]
Monday, May 17, 2004Science fun: Weather may explain Mexico UFO stirMy, the conspiracy theorists are going to have a field day with this one. CNN is reporting that "a cluster of mysterious objects that surrounded a Mexican Air Force plane, alarming the pilots and sparking a UFO scare, could be a weather phenomenon known as ball lightning," according to a scientist. "Nuclear science researcher Julio Herrera said the blobs of light may have been nothing more than ball lightning -- glowing spheres that are little understood but often sighted near the ground during thunderstorms." [ Posted at 12:01 PM | Permalink ]
WordPerfect Office Upgrade Breaks Little New GroundWashington Post (free registration required): "This release is the least consequential upgrade I've ever used. I can't see why an owner of either the Office 11 Corel released last year or any reasonably current version of Microsoft Office would bother paying the $150 upgrade price (Win 98 or newer required) for this bundle of WordPerfect, the Quattro Pro spreadsheet and the Presentations slide-show editor. Nor can I see too many home users lining up to pay $300 for the full release, not when OpenOffice (www.openoffice.org) provides comparable utility and better Microsoft Office file-format compatibility for free."This is a sobering but, alas, accurate appraisal of WordPerfect 12, which Corel had billed as being a Microsoft Office replacement, with a supposed Microsoft Office UI mode. It's all bogus, folks, and hugely disappointing. Shame on Corel for not doing better than this. [ Posted at 10:37 AM | Permalink ]
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