Tag: mac-os-x

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Apple

Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard Delayed

According to Apple Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard is delayed until October. This was posted on Apple Hot News (though no permalink unfortunately meaning it will likely disappear:

iPhone has already passed several of its required certification tests and is on schedule to ship in late June as planned. We can’t wait until customers get their hands (and fingers) on it and experience what a revolutionary and magical product it is. However, iPhone contains the most sophisticated software ever shipped on a mobile device, and finishing it on time has not come without a price — we had to borrow some key software engineering and QA resources from our Mac OS X team, and as a result we will not be able to release Leopard at our Worldwide Developers Conference in early June as planned. While Leopard’s features will be complete by then, we cannot deliver the quality release that we and our customers expect from us. We now plan to show our developers a near final version of Leopard at the conference, give them a beta copy to take home so they can do their final testing, and ship Leopard in October. We think it will be well worth the wait. Life often presents tradeoffs, and in this case we’re sure we’ve made the right ones. [Apr 12, 2007]

On the plus side I guess a few months of being feature complete would provide for a very stable release. I wonder if pre-orders will be taken prior to October? June seems slightly early to start. My guess would be Sept 1, with an announcement of when to expect pre-ordering in June.

Categories
Apple Hardware Software

MacWorld SF

It’s MacWorld tomorrow. I’ll be watching the net closely to see what the almighty Steve announces. I’ve got the following predictions:

  • Mac OS X 10.5 Announced (99% Chance) – That means I get to be a geek and preorder from the Apple store.
  • More Video/Movies On iTunes (95% Chance) – This will be a big focus since Apple really wants this market.
  • .Mac Overhaul (80% Chance) – Don’t really care about this one personally since I don’t use the service.
  • iTV (72% Chance) – I doubt it’s ready. Either an announcement to expect summer delivery, and/or a more detailed preview. I could be wrong, but I don’t think they are ready.
  • Incremental Bumps For Various Computers (70% Chance) – Rather lame and generic for a prediction, but I think at least 1 computer line (most likely iMac, and Mac Pro) will see a speed bump. For the Mac Pro it would make most sense, since Intel just announced Quad Core Xeons.
  • Airport Extreme 802.11n Edition (68% Chance) – The rumors exist, and I think there is a decent shot. They likely need it for iTV.
  • Phone (60% Chance) – If it is, it will be the fabled ‘iPhone’, though likely under another name. Only reason I give it 60% odds is because of all the press. Otherwise I’d put it down to 25%. I don’t think it’s extremely likely, but there is to much press to ignore. Then again, I’m still waiting for my Apple PDA (ended up being the iPod).
  • New iPod (51% Chance) – I’m going out on a limb here. Despite pretty much no press, I think it’s time for the full screen iPod, with a true chipset designed for the purpose of video. I mentioned this before.
  • Software Upgrade(50% Chance) – Very likely some software, either an iWorks upgrade, or iTunes version.

So there are my predictions. I do believe it will be a very busy MacWorld with more announcements than usual. I expect volume to be one of the more notable things. A lot of things on all fronts. Not so much of a war on Microsoft, but a big grab at the “digital lifestyle”.

Lets see how I pan out this year.

Categories
Apple Funny Software

David Pogue’s Windows Vista Review

David Pogue’s Vista Review has to be one of the funniest things I’ve seen in a long time. I’ve been a fan of his for years, but this has to be one of the funniest things he’s ever done. Being a Mac fan of course I really understood the joke, though Windows people would too if they were honest with themselves. If you haven’t seen it yet, you should. Apparently he upset a few people who didn’t quite get it.

Categories
Apple

iTV and Leopard Oh My!

According to Rob Enderle, I’ll be pre-ordering Leopard shortly after Christmas. Hopefully Leopard on PPC won’t suck yet. There still millions of us out there with those PPC chips.

Categories
Apple

Windows XP on Intel Mac

It looks like someone may soon be declared a hero. Hopefully some verification of the process (and the process itself) will be made public soon.

Edit [3/16/2005 @ 1:17 PM EST]: Here are the instructions/downloads what you need to use Windows XP on an Intel Mac… now if only I had an Intel Mac.

Categories
Hardware Software

2 failures in a week

Last week my private server had some corruption on the system partition. Seems to be related to the system log file from what I can figure out. I’ve got it back up and running, mostly. Though not 100%. If it was running something newer than 10.2 Jaguar, I’d likely be in better shape. Not much work, but because it’s 266MHz, it takes a year to do something as simple as upgrade perl. Despite that, the tough little box is still chugging away. Thanks to partitioning, and putting the drive in an external enclosure and hooking it up to my Mac Mini with Mac OS X 10.4, all user data is intact. That’s really what’s important.

Now today a Windows XP system decides to corrupt itself. Not quite done with evaluating the damage and repairs. I got it to boot, not sure what else is hiding under the murky waters of Windows XP. That’s the goal for tonight.

What did I learn? I really need to get some better backup systems working on these two computers. I’m sick of doing this.

Categories
Apple Networking

Windows Loopback

Why does windows have a crummy loopback interface?

Once again, thank you Mac OS X for being there for me.

Edit: oh yea, 802.11 support isn’t to good either. Not sure whose fault that is. Took me a few minutes to figure that out.

Categories
Hardware

When did Logitech drop the ball

I’ve been a fan of Logitech products for a while. I’m typing on a Logitech Cordless Navigator Duo right now. My only complaints about this Keyboard/Mouse combo are:

  1. Mouse batteries drain way to fast. Should be rechargeable.
  2. Software for it is extremely buggy. Doesn’t work on my Mac, and causes my PC to blue screen about 3X a day if installed. So I use the built in drivers on both OS’s. Meaning most extra keys don’t work.

I like some of the newer models like the MX 3100 (which you can find cheaper at ZipZoomFly. But no Mac support, and I’ve read it has issues with some KVM’s (which I do have). They also have a Mac Keyboard. Which is listed on Amazon @ $99.

Why the heck are their platform specific keyboards? For a long time keyboards worked well on either platform, then Logitech apparently stopped caring about the Mac drivers, and moved on to their next generation (leaving their PC drivers in the dust too).

Are their best days behind them? Their products have always been nice, but unless they start working on drivers and compatibility, I’ve got to start looking elsewhere.

For now I think I’ve got to get some Radio Shack brand rechargeable batteries, and just forget about all the extra keys on my keyboard. I considered a replacement several months ago. But I don’t see a good alternative to what I have. Mine works pretty well with a KVM and cross platform. Heck mine even has Apple and Alt written on the same key.

Someone should tell Logitech to stop making half assed products. They aren’t the only ones. I’ll be ranting about more in coming months. Some companies seem to intentionally cripple products, and it’s just stupid.

Categories
Apple

PS3 the next Mac

Sony states:

The operating system has also yet to be clarified. The integrated Cell processor will be able to support a variety of operating systems (such as Linux or Apple’s Tiger).

A very interesting proposal. It’s not surprising that they would be supported, especially considering who developed the Cell processor. It would be interesting to see if Apple would create a Mac OS X distribution for the PS3. It would have some potential of increasing the user base, and providing a new avenue to showcase the OS’s features and capabilities while not really infringing on the computer business (people aren’t likely to trade in their PC’s for PS3’s just yet). Apple may have had this in mind for some time, just take a look at technologies such as Inkwell, VoiceOver, and of course Speech (which has really been around for several years). It’s perfect for the PS3.

[Hat tip MacNN]

Categories
Internet Mozilla

CNN Relaunch

CNN Relaunched with a slightly tweaked site (nothing to major, some XHTML, and slight code clean up apparently). The big feature is now the video (which was subscription only since 2002) is now free. The downside is that it’s no longer Real Player, but Windows Media. The quality isn’t at all bad. It didn’t detect WMP in Firefox, but it has a button to override detection, so I could still view the video just fine, but not good for Mac and Linux users. I wish they would have stuck with Real Media. At least they are relatively decent at being cross platform, even if their player is extremely bloated. If you want to support all platforms, and use one of the big 3, Real Media is still the best. If Mac and Windows is your target, Apple wins by a longshot (the player is essentially identical on both platforms). Real is a bit lacking on non-windows platforms, but does appear to cover the most with a player.

At least there’s free video now. Finally catching up to MSNBC and FoxNews. MSNBC obviously uses Windows Media, while FoxNews uses Flash, which is slightly lower in quality, but cross platform, and loads relatively quickly.

Update: I reinstalled WindowsMedia for OS X, and it did detect just as it did with Firefox on Windows. But it for some reason never got past my Firewall (unlike the windows version). Both systems are behind the extact same firewall with the exact same settings. So it didn’t work, but it’s progress. Perhaps with the next update it will work, or there’s a work around. I’m open to any comments/suggestions on getting it to work in Firefox and/or Safari on OS X.