Posts tagged: APPLE

Was the old Mac a hacker's machine?

A recent discussion on the Well came around to the question of whether the classic Macintosh was “hacker’s” machine or not. Conventional wisdom would say no – it was the very definition of buttoned up. You couldn’t even develop software for it without a separate, more expensive computer (the Lisa) in the early days. But I think there’s a counter-argument to be made. Yes, the old Mac was a closed box that didn’t allow access to the internals of the OS.

What is the iPhone running, really?

In case you missed it, Apple has a new product. You can’t, you know, buy it or anything just yet – that’ll be about six months. And $500, please. While you wait you can compare it to the competition. They claim that it runs OS X. Hm. I can imagine there’s a BSD kernel (running on what processor I don’t know), QuickTime, WebKit… but really, how much of the stuff in the standard OS X architecture diagram is actually going to be in that phone?

New MacBook Pro

If you just bought a MacBook Pro (especially the 15"), this will hurt a little: the new ones out today (same prices) all have FW800 in addition to FW400, up to 200GB drives, up to 3GB RAM, and a 6x dual-layer SuperDrive. Oh, and that Intel Core 2 Duo thing.
Obsolescence

Obsolescence

With the help of Flagrant Disregard’s “Motivator” maker and a photo from Wikipedia, I’ve produced this little poster to get you pumped up for your next big computer purchase. (Here’s the full-size version.) Ian Blackman commented : Please may I use yoour obsolescence “motivator” image for a press article I am writing. If you are ok with that would you want us to reference you in anyway? Thanks in anticipation.

Apple battery recall

If you own a 12-inch iBook G4, 12-inch PowerBook G4, or 15-inch PowerBook G4 and are having trouble getting to this page to see whether your battery is included in the recall Apple just announced, here’s a copy of the chart: I just checked, and the battery in my 15" is in the recall. I feel special! Update: Apple has updated their chart to more accurately reflect the batteries covered. See the official page for more.

Mac OS Forge

In the wake of OpenDarwin’s shutdown announcement, Apple has launched Mac OS Forge, a home for selected open source projects from Apple and from the community. The present site feels a bit like a stub – e.g. the WebKit link still goes to OpenDarwin – but it’s good to see Apple stepping up to the plate. Just seeing tickets and commits from Real Apple Developers is exciting. And I give them bonus points for using Trac, too.

A different kind of switching

During the same period that I thought I’d be playing a lot with an old Dell laptop running Ubuntu Linux (but haven’t), several notable Apple fans have made, or are seriously and publicly considering making, the jump from OS X to open-source operating systems like Ubuntu. Mark Pilgrim led the way. (He does work for IBM, though he’s gotten remarkably few snide remarks about that in the comments.) Cory Doctorow is talking like he’s about to do it as well.