After waiting a decent length of time to make sure that there were no serious issues with Snow Leopard1 and with the release of OS X 10.6.1 I’ve finally got around to installing the thing. Here’s how things went for me. Hope my experiences help you if – and – when you install.
Archive for the 'Software' Category
Internet Explorer 8 was released on Thursday but I have to admit that I haven’t touched it. The last beta that I saw (which wasn’t that long ago) still identified itself as being IE7 in the about dialog but there have been a lot of improvements made over previous version. There are new features too: increased performance, “porn mode” private browsing, data accelerators and improved crash recovery (here’s an idea: try and not crash in the first place).
I have an issue with the first sentence of Wired’s First Look review. Internet Explorer is not the most popular web browser in the world. It is simply the most widely used.
Looking at the IE8 page of the Microsoft website doesn’t bode well for Microsoft’s claims of paying attention to standards compliance or maybe this doesn’t apply to all aspects of their work. Of course, there’s also the __VIEWSTATE nonsense that results from coding your pages with .NET and in this case the hidden form field value is a whopping 68KB which is included in any request.
On visiting the page I was prompted to upgrade the Microsoft Silverlight plugin. I first installed this purely for CNN’s Photosynth of Obama’s inauguration two months ago. The Silverlight 2 GDR1 upgrade was released one month ago which just goes to show you just how low the adoption rate has been from the slew of websites I visit.
Silverlight isn’t the only threat to Adobe’s Flash dominance. Emergent technology like HTML5 and CSS3 Chrome experiments that are being supported in modern browsers like Google Chrome and Apple’s Safari are being used with JavaScript to achieve some promising results. Competition is good.
Speaking of Safari, the browser was also in the tech news on Thursday but for the wrong reasons. Safari was the first to fall to a serious vulnerability – albeit with several hours of preparatory work. IE8 and Firefox fell soon afterward. Chrome was the only browser to resist the attentions of the hackers. Interestingly, there was no mention of Opera. Does it really have that insignificant share of the browser market that nobody wants to try and exploit it?
The Internet tubes today were mainly full of comments about two things: Gmail going down and Apple releasing a public beta of Safari 4. Had the Gmail outage coincided with Twitter going belly-up at the same time then I think that productivity levels around the planet would have rocketed. As it was, Twitter stayed up as people whined about Gmail and I bathed in some smugness as I rarely use it because of this exact scenario. Then Apple came along with something to distract the Twitterverse from bemoaning their complete lack of emails: a new version of Safari.
From my early impressions, Safari 4 has taken the best bits of other browsers and added a bit of Apple polish to them. The Awesome Bar from Firefox, Opera’s Speed Dial, Chrome’s Tabs-on-Top, Webkit’s blazing fast JavaScript engine (but with a sensible name) and Developer Tools. Notice the glaring omission from that list? Yes, nothing from Internet Explorer made the grade. Funny that.
The new functionality that is included in the version 2.0 software release fixes a couple of the few things that annoyed me with the iPhone. I installed it last night after people with too much time on their hands found the software on Apple’s servers thanks to examining a bunch of XML files. I was in two minds as to whether or not to go ahead or wait for the official release from Apple but I was starting to adjust my body clock and needed something to do. I did have problems and was kicking myself for being impatient but after a few restarts of software and reboots of hardware I managed to restore my iPhone and update the software successfully.
Isn’t technology wonderful? I was worried about missing the Champions League final and probably would have had to change my flight had Liverpool beaten Chelsea in the semi but it turns out that I needn’t have worried. WestJet had ESPN available on their seat-back screens so I managed to catch the game at 40,000 feet. Annoyingly we landed 30 minutes ahead of schedule so I missed a large chunk of the second half but I made it through baggage reclaim in plenty time to take up a seat at the bar for extra time and the ensuing penalties.
I have to say that I’m glad Manchester United won. I only actually dislike them now compared with hating Chelsea with a passion and I think that it was somehow a fitting victory 50 years on from the Munich disaster. Bobby Charlton showed so much decorum when Platini tried to give him a winners medal and you have to admire the sportsman in Paul Scholes who went straight to console the opposition.
I had another celebratory pint with the Liverpool supporting barman and then made my way into Vancouver on the Airporter bus trying to spot anything that looked vaguely familiar but a lot has changed in the six years since I last visited the city.
Recently there was some amount of ill feeling directed toward Apple after they started installing their Safari Internet browser with their iTunes software update. (I also just noticed that “up to date” is no longer hyphenated in OS X 10.5 Leopard Software Update but that’s a discussion for another day.)
While this in itself is bad enough behaviour for any software company, it is not the main annoyance I have with their practices. I like to keep things organised how I like them. Like my “Start Menu” for instance.
Every single frickin’ time that I update iTunes (and Quicktime) Apple deems it acceptable for them to place a couple of shortcuts in my Start Menu, Quick Launch area and on my Desktop which I then have to delete.
Update 18/04/08: It would seem that Apple have listened to the unrest in the community.
US Patent law is frankly in somewhat of a mess. Any system that allows a man to hold a patent on a method for playing on a swing needs or awarded on a staple element of computing (like the linked list) to be looked at in my opinion. The Patent Office just doesn’t have the staff to give each application the diligence it needs and the subsequent backlog is increasing as is the number of submarine patents and patents awarded despite overwhelming prior art. Obviousness and prior art is supposed to invalidate a patent but this doesn’t stop anyone from trying their luck. Amazon are frequently quoted in geek forums for this. Trying to cash in once someone big enough does something of note (Smartphones) or popular (online games) that may possibly be covered by a vague patent is big business.
Finally, the tide may finally be turning.
Speaking as a developer I was glad to hear about a project that aims to address the inherent problems with the system with regard to software. Imaginatively called End Software Patents, it seeks to highlight the absurdity in the idea that source code and natural mathematics can somehow be patented.
Microsoft has been sabre-rattling of late, claiming that Linux infringes on hundreds of patents that they hold (read: purchased). Co-incidentally, they do have a very pertinent patent for detecting user frustration when using their software.
Just as I was beginning to think that the UK was understanding some of the problems with legal aspects of software and the implications of software patents it looks like we’re heading in the same direction. The UK government is currently embroiled in a legal case with Symbian which will hopefully clarify things.
Just don’t get me started on gene patents.
This year has already started to see the blurring of the edges between online Web 2.0 and traditional desktop applications. The traditional downside to this software as a service (SaaS) has been what to do when there is no connection to the Internet. There are various technologies now available from the big players (Adobe AIR, Google Gears, Microsoft Silverlight, Mozilla Prism and Sun with JavaFX). These all allow developers to keep your data in sync when you don’t have Internet access to their applications.
Another obstacle is changing attitudes to software. You will no longer own the software that you use but instead be charged either on a pay-as-you-go tariff or, more likely, on a monthly subscription basis.
There is also a gathering trend toward smaller, more portable computing devices with limited hard drive capacity like the Asus Eee PC. New solid state Flash drives offering a reasonable amount of storage are still expensive but these drives offer better battery performance and allow for smaller footprints.
Couple these new machines with a wireless connection, offline synchronisation and advancing online applications and you’re not a million miles away from the thin client model of computing in the 1970s. The major difference I can see between the aged dumb terminals and the new emerging way is a matter of the public perception of security and trust online. Throw in reliability (or lack thereof) issues, encryption bottlenecks and the economics of dealing with a serious amount of bandwidth into the mix and it’s clear than there is still a lot of progress to be made.
“Bad artists copy. Great artists steal.”
- Pablo Picasso
Imitation is rife. Apple may just have been inspired by Braun design from the ’60s and ’70s for the iPhone calculator, iPod and G5 tower. The Apple vs. Microsoft vs. Xerox GUI copyright lawsuits are well known.
Over the past couple of years I’ve noticed more and more pieces of PC software that try to achieve one thing: make the PC behave more like OS X. The application notifiers Growl and Snarl. The application enhancers Quicksilver and Colibri. The window managers Expose and Exposer. Unsurprisingly not one of them quite match-up to the Apple versions.
Now after years of mediocrity it seems that the PC manufacturers have finally realised that good design will set them apart. The days of the big beige box are thankfully long gone but until very recently the aesthetics of the offerings from Dell, Gateway and the like have been distinctly poor. Dell have upped their product design staff to 90 (from just six a few years ago) and are already receiving plaudits from the industry for their efforts.
In this years Microsoft CES keynote Bill Gates boldly predicted that we’ll be relying less on the keyboard and mouse in the next five years. Gosh Bill, do you really think so? What a revelation! Take a look at some bleeding-edge design concepts for some examples that might just make it to market over the next few years.
Today’s (and probably the last of the year) Edinburgh Coffee Morning was the busiest it has been for a good while. The cryptic promise of some gifts that Ewan McIntosh left in a Facebook message last night turned out to be some really nice signed Hugh MacLeod posters for Stormhoek. The season of goodwill and giving continued with some warmed Panettone and some chilled Prosecco courtesy of our hosts at Centotre. Many thanks to the aforementioned for their generosity.
A couple of stand out things from this morning before the conversations paired off as things are wont to do in group dynamics. Ewan briefly demoed Seesmic which seems to be some kind of video Twitter. I’ve never sent a “tweet” in my life and do have difficulty of seeing the point of it if I’m being honest. At least with Seesmic, there is an element of a two way thing going on.
Via Will Richardson, I found this video of Johnny Chung Lee turning the tables on the light sensing aspect of the Wiimote to produce an interaction whiteboard for around £40 much more interesting:
