How To Quit A Job...... If You're A Jerk!!!

There's a good chance that this guy isn't going to get a letter of reference, as this developer came up with a unique way of quitting. Got to give it to him, as there are not to many people who would go through the trouble of creating a Mac OS X app just to give his former employer the finger.

Check the quote:

"He believed he was in a temp-to-hire position, and after three months of extra hours and butt-kissing, turns out it's just a temp position. He was a good worker too. I'd have recommended him. Too bad he burned his bridges... Obviously he had contemplated quitting long enough to make this thing, but still refused to speak to anyone about his feelings. Ironically, he complained about the 'divas' at his last job."

Well at least he can say that he quit with style!!!

[Gizmodo]

To Beta or Not To Beta?

Many tech enthusiasts have ventured into the waters of trying a computer program that is a "Beta" product- A product still under construction from both a coding and quality assurance point of view. When anyone does this; they are taking a risk (albeit a calculated one if you're experienced and have confidence in a company's ability to put out beta builds that are stable).

The thing is, it's still a risk. One way to mitigate that risk is to either have a test partition on your hard drive that you can choose to boot to; or run a virtual machine which provides a "sandbox" that more or less faithfully reproduces an operating system. (I highly recommend ALWAYS going this route; even if it's something you trust)

Why?

Because if you don't, other software may become unstable (your whole OS for instance) if a new dll file is installed overwriting one that other programs depend on to be stable. New programs sometimes upgrade known dll's (or other file types) without your knowledge; and whats worse, just because you uninstall the "beta" program; many 9if not most) times files from the beta are not either removed or placed back to it's prior state.

This can be any kind of file and can happen on a Mac OSX, Linux, Windows, or any other type of O.S.

Vista has made some strides in this area by segregating installed files from each other so that installing something (in theory) shouldn't crash other apps or your OS altogether.

So my question is regarding the new beta of Google Chrome, and/or Microsoft's IE8 Beta II. of those who've tried it out. Are you protecting yourself by installing it in a "non-live" environment? If you're installing it on a live environment; make a case for why you think it's no big deal.

The only reason I can think of to do my last proposal is because you have shadow copies, or frequently ghosted images of your system.

Also, whether you've installed the beta of Google Chrome or IE8 beta II; have you noticed any degraded performance on your O.S. or other apps? (test or not).

And finally; if you do use a test system for betas, what do you use? Microsoft's Virtual PC? VMWare? Zen? other hard drive or partition.

This should be an interesting discussion.

God Bless the iMac

So today I finally gave in to the devil and purchased a 20" iMac. And let me tell you, this thing is cool as hell. Built in camera and microphone. The iLife suite for picture editing, video editing/creation, etc. I also purchased a wireless keyboard and mouse, and let me tell you the little keyboard is the coolest thing I've ever seen All of which comes with a remote.

The more impressive thing to me? The thinness of the machine. For having a built in wireless N network card, bluetooth, dvd burner, 3 USB plugs, 2 firewire, etc. this thing is no thicker than a standard monitor. But the resolution and display on it is probably the best I've seen. Did I mention it comes with a miniature remote? And it's so quiet.

And the Leopard OS is on it. I've been playing around with some of this. I do have a hard time with only one aspect, and that is the yearly cost for a .Mac account (email, 10GB of storage, web pages, hosting) so we'll see. I have signed up for the 60 day free trial of it to see if it is worth it. I imagine that down the line I will probably go ahead and add that, but for now it's just learning the subtle differences.

I will tell you this, the drag and drop functionality built inside of this is incredible. And the OS just screams...and that's with only 1GB of RAM. I haven't played with it too terribly much yet tonight, shockingly, so a further post with a review of it will be forthcoming.

Now comes the part where I push for my trillian astra account to get me access to the mac portion and then try to screw with people on iChat. The possibilities are endless!

OS X Leopard and Darwin. What might it mean?

I apologize in advance for the long post; it is necessary.
I am attempting to give more direct information about what you will likely conclude; is a roadmap for where Apple is taking OS X.

DARWIN is named for Charles Darwin. He was known as the guy who brought us evolution theory.

DARWIN is an open source product that Apple has been creating via "Open Source for years. It's purpose has always been about creating an OS X like experience on non apple computers. There is no refuting this. Check out how long this has been going on here. and I will write down the URL here as well because I want everyone to see that this is APPLE'S puppy; not anyone else. It's part of the site map for APPLE. http://www.opensource.apple.com/darwinsource/

Ok, that being said, the following webpage used to solely explain Apples development of an O.S. named Darwin. It was/and is open source so as not to create to much thunder. You can see it here. Again, notice the URL when this page comes up. It's APPLE'S.

Last year, this Apple website was directly making Darwin as an "experiment" to see if they could provide a "open source" solution to folks who wanted OS X on a P.C.

At this time; unlike last year, it doesn't work so hard to misdirect you to thinking it's just an experiment. In a year, it has become a very blatant instruction guide on how to get OS X to work on a P.C.

Also, consider that there now is purportedly a "Hack" that makes OS X Leopard install just fine on a P.C. (Nelson posted it just a few days ago here) How do you think it was possible that in 2 or 3 days, a person could get Leopard to work on a P.C. ?

I guarantee this person was WELL VERSED in Darwin.

It's hard for me to see how can one conclude that Apple is not intending to eventually market either a straight version of Leopard on a P.C. or completely accurate facsimile called Darwin?

For Pete's sake, the whole O.S. what rebuilt to run on Intel chips! This was one of many steps pointing out the "roadmap" or "Evolution" named DARWIN has created an new species of the OS X Leopard.

Please all, tell me your thoughts.

Personally, I think it's wonderful! Finally some real head to head competition may arise!

Leopard Golden Master Leaked

Well at least Apple was able to keep this from happening until the last two days before release. But you knew that it was bound to happen.

The The Golden Master build of Mac OS X 10.5 or Leopard as it is commonly known, has been leaked. It's currently on Usenet and some other big bit-torrent site with the NFO file reading “You know what this is….”, and word is that it works perfectly.

Big ups to Apple for being able to keep this locked down for as long as they have. And with the release coming this Friday, you might as well wait and buy it then. No need of getting the pants sued off of you.

Leopard [Apple via Crunchgear]

Leopard Beta Leaked: Apple Users Start Your Torrents

It looks like the WWDC beta of Leopard was leaked onto the Oink BitTorrent Web site. Nobody’s completely downloaded the 6GB file yet, but the site’s forum is red hot with activity and the file already has 205 comments.

Choice lines about the leak in recent days have included “this is f*#$ing ridiculous. i want leopard, and i want it now. hurry, before some heads start to roll” and “Please do not talk about this torrent file outside of OINK.”

Someone should notify Apple.

Oh, and my favorite screen shot is below, that one made me giggle!!!
Click on it to enlarge.

Apple To Support HD DVD?

Could Apple be throwing its support behind both Blu-ray and HD DVD? We already know that Apple is a member of the Blu-ray Disc Association, but according to a WWDC attendee’s post on the Mac Rumors forum, Leopard’s DVD player now has HD DVD settings in the preferences menu.

Hit the jump for more details. [Mac Rumors]

Courtesy of Engadget

Apple's Mac OS X Leopard fully unveiled

Posted Jun 11th 2007 11:11AM by Paul Miller
Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

No matter what rampant rumors have been tossed around, we always knew there was going to be one main attraction to WWDC 2007: a feature-complete version of Leopard. Steve Jobs and co. didn't disappoint, announcing 10 of the "300 new features of the OS."

1. New Desktop - First off is the new desktop, featuring a new menu bar, a snazzed up dock and "Stacks" to help you keep your desktop clean. For instance, there's a default Stack that collects all your downloads in one place on the dock.

2. New Finder - More on the aesthetics side, Apple is going with a unified look for apps, which nixes the brushed metal style and instead mimics the current iTunes theme -- surprise, surprise. In fact, the new Finder looks and performs almost exactly like iTunes, all the way down to integrated Cover Flow for shuffling through your files. You can also save smart searches in the "playlists" side of the interface. On the back end of things, Leopard includes "Back to my Mac," which keeps track of your home Mac's IP address through various (and secure!) magicks, letting you browse your files remotely as if they were on a local network. Spotlight search also works over networks now, as expected.

3. Quick Look - Another new Finder integrated function, Quick Look lets you open up previews of most common document types without opening the respective app, and unsupported doc types can be added through extensions.

Keep reading for the rest!

4. 64-bit top to bottom - Apple is driving a hard line and going fully 64-bit in every aspect of Leopard. Hard luck for those rocking older machines, but the speed demons should rejoice

5. Core Animation - Same song as last year, but enough crowd pleasing effects to make it worth a second gander.

6. Boot Camp - Sadly, there aren't any surprise Parallels-killing functions here, but the lack of need to burn a drivers CD should take this one out of the hax0rs' court and see more users taking advantage of it.

7. Spaces - Once again, nothing new here.

8. Dashboard - Yeah, 10 new features? Not so much. Web Clip still sounds fun.

9. iChat - Now features tabbed chats and uses AAC for audio, along with those other fancy features like Photo Booth effects mentioned last year. You can also show off any Quick Look-supported document over a chat, movies included.

10. Time Machine - Backup for noobs, and previews in Quick Look

So no multi-touch interfacing or anything fancy like that, but still a crowd-pleasing offering. $129 and she's yours, come October.