Just ordered Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger. I wanted to do it over a week ago but have been too busy.
Pinkerton has a great post that will likely be a Mac OS X 10.4.1 update. If your a Mac fan and not reading his and Hyatt’s blog… you should start.
On another note Camino update is out.
Did I ever mention that I love my Mac?
Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger has a really cool new screensaver (video available through the link).
I think having the new reporter tool’s “Top 10 Worst Offenders” list as a screensaver to make an official “wall of shame” would be rather cool. I think that will be my new screensaver when it ships.
As usual David Hyatt has the roundup on the changes for Safari 1.3. A must read blog post for all web developers.
My big question is how long will Mac OS X 10.3 be supported and receive Safari Upgrades? IMHO that’s the big problem. Microsoft at least makes most of it’s upgrades for all OS’s, so the majority of IE Users are 5.5 or 6.0 at this point. Firefox and Opera don’t really care you can update at any point. It’s hard for web developers to take advantage of these fixes if Mac OS 10.2 users still don’t have them. Not everyone upgraded (especially businesses) to 10.3. I know 2 of my systems aren’t upgraded because Panther feels slower on them. I doubt everyone is upgrading to Tiger. While nice, I don’t think average joe will see it worth the effort/price.
I ask Apple to help us out here. Make Safari so that it’s available for 10.2+ and supports 10.2+. All updates go to all Mac OS X versions. That way people upgrade and Safari becomes easier to support. I don’t want to support several versions of Safari. This makes Mac’s easier to support, and that’s good for everyone. Come on Apple.
Title says it all. I think it’s about time to start pre-ordering Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger. $94.99 isn’t a bad price. If your a student, you might be able to get the Apple Discount to get down to $69.99 (though likely a few bucks extra shipping). I’m guessing Apple will start taking orders relatively soon as the expected announcement is April 1. Good to see Apple isn’t raising prices. I’m guessing computers built after April 1 will get Tiger from the factory.
Hopefully the Apple Store will have a WiFi Upgrade kit for my mini by then.
Apple is taking RSS feeds to the next level by allowing you to display them in a more meaningful way. In Apple’s brilliance, they realized that sometimes users need more than just a title to decide if they want to read the article. So I propose that Firefox take RSS feeds to another level:
I propose that Firefox (1.5 or 2.0) have the ability to display feeds in a format similar to Planet with the ability to do several things to modify the view:
This would serve as a massive gain for Firefox. It gives users a whole new way of reading RSS feeds, finally they can sort, search, organize they way they wish to see them. It also makes the ideal start page. It’s visually pleasing, organized, and all content is of interest.
I’m envisioning something more like Planet, than Apple’s, with the ability to handle a fair number of feeds with ease. Being able to easily organize feeds is critical to this feature being successful. Easy to navigate, XHTML/JS based. Because the RSS feeds would be cached, the response time would be pretty much instant when searching, sorting, etc. Something online services can’t provide. Not to mention no need to signup, or look at ads.
Any thoughts on this? Any takers?
Anyone successfully install Oracle 9i Database Release 2 on Mac OS X 10.2.8 Jaguar?
Tried today at work with no success
I’m looking at:
http://otn.oracle.com/pub/articles/rohrer_macosx.html
All goes good until you run that script (createDb). Runs in .0001 sec with no output.
Apparantly the script craps out at:
Source for script
Yes, the variable ORACLE_SID and is set correctly. I even used echo to make sure it is.
Any ideas?
It should be great to read the Mac OS X Address Book from within Mozilla/Thunderbird. This patch is really a big leap for Mac OS X Thunderbird users. Thunderbird so far hasn’t had many of the integration features for the Mac like it has for the PC (mainly MAPI). So this is a big step on bringing it up to that level for the Mac.
What would be great is if we can get Sunbird, Camino and Firefox to start leveraging some of iSync’s power. Perhaps I’m dreaming, but it’s a sweet dream.
But for that we need Apple to release a SDK for iSync. Come on Apple!!! Someone should really start a campaign on this one. Would be nice to have the ability for third parties to write drivers for phones, web browsers, and other software to patch into the system.
On a sidenote, the contest is still running for a Gmail Account. Since most of the jokes so far are rather pathetic… I’m extending it. Come on people. I’m easy. All you have to do it tell a joke to get a chance. You control your odds. No bidding, begging, objectives. Just tell a joke ;-).
Yes, I know, I’m a Mac nut. My favorite OS is Mac OS X, I dream of the G5 at night. The dual processor G5 is hot (in more ways than one)…
But Apple just made my day. The AirPort Express is just what I’ve been wanting.
I could see a few uses for me:
The question is if I’ll upgrade my laptop to 802.11g (only if I can do it integrated via an IBM upgrade of the mini-pci card). That would make it super sexy. Perhaps that will be part II, since I’m not filthy rich.
And if I should get cables. Apple has that $39 kit which sounds pretty handy, though I might be able to do better.
Way to cool. Just way to cool. I’m thinking it fits me wants and needs perfectly.
Anyone know if there will be a way to pipe all audio (not just iTunes) over the Airport Express? Would be nice to do more than just music (games for example).
Now I guess it’s pretty much written in stone that a iWiFi enabled Pod is coming soon. I can’t see Apple missing out on that.
2 out of 4 computers had problems today. Yea! Home computing is fun!!! 🙁
One was a relatively quick fix. Simple disk scan ended up fixing the permissions error, or whatever was wrong with it. The other (Bender, the file server), wasn’t so easy. Something ravished permissions on the System drive, causing tons of errors. Ended up formatting the System drive and doing a clean install. Easier than trying to fix it all, since that validate permissions option is a load of BS. As I type, I’m recompiling Perl 5.8.3(since Jaguar has 5.6.1). Overall, not to hard, since OS X comes so nicely packaged. Also a good excuse to update everything to more recent versions.
Previous uptime record is 28 days for that box. I think we can do better this time around 🙂
I did get a change to go workout though, so It’s not an ubergeek day.
I don’t think I need to say I’m a Mac lover. I’ve been very satisfied with my Macs, and love OS X. But I got to agree with CNET about Apple’s recent trends.
Product Life Cycle
Apple’s been pretty firm about the 5 year rule for hardware. After that period, your not really getting hardware support. It’s a pretty solid rule, and one you can depend on (for good or bad). Developers, both hardware and software are well aware of it.
Unfortunately, there is a lack of an official product life cycle for software. Microsoft has a clear product life cycle. I sincerely hope Apple matches Microsoft and adopts a similar policy. For at least that length of time (if not longer), and sticks to it. The mystery involving product life is a real turn off for companies. How can you evaluate what Macs will cost? A good security issue may require the entire office upgrade their OS version. In such cases, a product cycle would allow an IT department to know very well what it will cost to keep Macs afloat. And dispel some cost myths.
I would like to propose a Security/Product Cycle Policy for Apple to adopt:
A product will be officially supported for 5 years after general availability. During this time, full support will be provided. This is the same as Microsofts policy. During this time. All security and bug fixes are available. No new features are required (though could be offered). For example, a WebCore update would fall in this category. Keeping Safari up to date and fixing rendering bugs. New OS X features such as Exposé, would not. That’s for a new product, and new product cycle.
A Security Phase would proceed for a period of minimum 2 years, during this time, only security bugs will be fixed. Keeping Safari up to date, and fixing crashes wouldn’t qualify. Only bugs that provide a security risk.
So in theory, a company can have a system for 7 years, and be able to maintain it for the original cost. Of course they will most likely want new features, and would upgrade in that time. But they have a buffer up to 7 years. This compares with Windows XP’s current product cycle.
A very inclining offer for IT departments. Buy a pretty powerful computer, and know for 5 years you have hardware support for new OS versions. For 7 years, your current OS will be secure. And we mean Mac OS X secure. Not Windows Secure 😉
Apple needs to use it’s strong point. A solid UNIX security model. Take advantage of the fact that it can do so. Security is a big advantage the Mac platform has. It will cost more to support older OS’s. But in the end, will make the OS much more attractive than it is now.