Erik's Home

Applegazette has an article named SPECULATION: 5 Predictions for Apple in 2007. One of the predictions is that Parallels will be included in the next Mac OS release (codename Leopard). This would give Mac users the possibility to run windows applications side-by-side with mac apps.

This is not a good idea.

The reason this is bad is that this means that application developers can simply just create a windows version and that way have all the Mac users use it. This will kill some Mac developments and it is one of the reasons OS/2 died. OS/2 was able to run windows applications very well, so why create a native OS/2 version of your application?

Being able to reboot your machine into windows using BootCamp is a different thing. BootCamp doesn't seamlessly integrate into your Mac desktop like Parallels does.

Don't get me wrong, I like what Parallels are doing, but it shouldn't be included in MacOS by default.

So, there is an article on SlashDot titled Is Ubuntu a Serious Desktop Contender? There is also a blog about it here.

Basically, the whole point of the question is "Can Canonical support 6.06 LTS (Dapper) for 5 years if they cannot immediately update Firefox like Red Hat did?" Well, personally, I don't see that as the most critical thing. Rather yet, they've had another issue that makes one of the best opensource applications unusable on Edgy (6.10). Edgy is newer than Dapper and it took almost three months for this issue to be fixed. If Firefox wasn't updated immediately, I can't really see that as the most critical problem.

Another interesting thing, In the blog linked above, Daniel writes: "Personally I sidetrack the whole issue by always using the Firefox and Thunderbird from mozilla.org on my Dapper computer, but that method bring some pros and cons." I feel that this is just more proof that we need a better way to install software under Linux.

Cocotron is a MIT X11-licensed implementation of parts of the Cocoa APIs. It's almost like GnuStep but with a different licence, and code. Use it to build applications for Windows or Linux based on the Cocoa APIs.

This makes it easier to bring Mac programs to windows... Hmm.. more windows programs, is that really what the world needs?

Obviously, they really do break.

Find it interesting that people just cannot accept the fact that the wiimote strap is not very good. People get angry and call you a moron if you break it. Just check out the first comment in the link above. I've seen this on multiple blogs.

Nintendo has done a good machine, they did mess up on the strap, don't blame the people actually using them, by calling them morons etc.

Amazing....

For quite some time, I've felt that installing software on linux is ... well.. not without problems.

There is a very nice blog about this titled "Is Ubuntu an operating system?" I do agree with most of what this blog is saying.

In general there are one or several large repositories of pre-packaged software, for your Linux distribution, Ubuntu has theirs, Fedora has theirs, OpenSuse has theirs, etc. Apart from the obvious double work being done by packaging the same application for different distributions, this also gives other problems.

One very clear example is a very serious bug that made OpenOffice useless under Ubuntu Edgy. This bug was reported Sep 26 and fixed somewhere around Dec 21. That is a three month waiting for a bug that is so serious that it makes one of the best opensource applications, useless. Now, if the OpenOffice team was responsible for packaging OpenOffice for Linux, regardless of which distribution you are using, they would be proud of their product, and nobody would have to wait three months.

I'm not saying the Ubuntu team are doing a bad job, in fact, I believe that Ubuntu is the best distribution ever, but it's a lot of work packaging the world for all your users, there are bound to take some time to fix some problem. If the same problem had occurred in the Windows build of OpenOffice, it would have been fixed quickly by the OpenOffice guys themselves and there would be no more problems.

Of course, there are lot's of issues with this. For example, how do you provide binary compatibility between different distributions? How do you install? Debs? RPMS? Mac-like bundles? etc! But I'm sure these problems could be solved if the different distributions would work together. Instead, it's quite clear that no such work is going to happen soon.

After using a Mac for a while, it's quite clear that being able to go directly to the vendor of the application, as opposed to the vendor of the operating system, has a lot of advantages. For Mac there is even a very nice framework to add auto update functionality to every program, giving you automatic updates without needing a central repository like most Linux distributions need. This is called Sparkle.

Today I got my wiimote. This means that I have the control, and the game (zelda of course), but not the actual wii machine. The amount of fun I can have with these pieces is very limited

With wiisabre I could actually try out the wiimore, and it does work Since I haven't recieved my wii yet, I don't have any IR transmitters, but using two candles actually works.

It's all very fun, can't wait to get the actual Wii....

Our snakes are mating and mating and mating. It's going to be so interesting when it's time for the egg-laying. We have two pairs that we are trying to breed right now. The pair below are enjoying themselves all the time.

We've tried to get babies on another pair, the last two years, but the interest just hasn't been there from the male. We are trying them this year as well, but I think there is a big chance that we will not get any on them. The male just doesn't seem to think that the female is that sexy

And here is the proof.

MacHeist is a great thing. What they have done is that they have contacted lots of developers of none-free software, and made a deal with them, to during a week sell a bundle with a number of different applications, and sell as many licenses as possible. And they are doing it at a VERY low price.

Some people seems to think that this is not fair to the developers. It's amazing that some people can't just accept that other people have a different opinion.
1) They are getting lots of people to buy software they wouldn't buy.
2) They are raising money for charity.
3) They are raising awareness of great applications
4) They are not forcing anyone to be part of this
5) Developers being part of the heist, are saying that they are selling more licenses since the heist started (while it's still going on)

Personally, I haven't bought a single piece of software privately since 1994 (with the exceptions of games). This is because I have always been running Linux and open source software. The heist gave me an opportunity to get some great software that I don't think I would ever have tried otherwise. The heist bundle is the first software I bought in over 10 years. Don't say the heist is bad.

Coming from the Linux world, where everything is free and if someone charge for something, you don't use it. This is a big deal.

Since everyone else is starting a blog, I might as well also. Since I always want to have things on my own server and not run blogger and stuff like that, I simply created a whole site.

This was all done with the wonderful application RapidWeaver, because I'm lazy, I don't particularly like HTML and I'm not very good with layout. Using a simple application like this to create the site, works just fine and gives me time to do other fun things with the computer. Right now, I'm looking into Cocoa programming and general learning more about the mac.