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Why the heck everybody beliefs, that it´s sufficient to build a descent graphical interface to build a so called "Mac OS X" killer or even an Vista-Killer like Rich ... As long you get told "you have to echo this sequence into that file in the /proc file system for suspend/resume" and you have to twiddle here and to twiddle there even to get the basic stuff running, Linux isn´t anywhere near of being a desktop operating system outside the restricted environment of corporate desktops. At maximum it´s a smaller variant of the favorite operating system of some server jockeys.

Usability is more than a rotating cube with desktops. This is a sugar icing on the cake, but in the case of the desktop usage for Joe Sixpack the there misses something important: a finished cake under the icing. And to be honest, in the past years i didn´t saw Linux catching up. Today it´s perhaps there, where MacOS X was at 10.0, you can use it, but your environment learns a swearword every minute So, as long OS/X will be developed by Apple and Microsoft makes a bad rip off of all the good feature every 5 years or so, i don´t see a Linux distro as an killer for anything for the next time.

Ich brauche hier im Weblog ja ziemlich häufig Thumbnails oder einfach etwas verkleinerte Version von Bildern. Ich habe vor einigen Tagen ein recht elegantes Tool dafür gefunden: Thumbscrew. Verkleinern, Rand drum, DropShadow und falls gewünscht auch Bild drehen in einem Schritt. Mordsnützlich.

Everybody who wasn´t essentially dead the last few years knows the ipod silhouettes: The company who made this ads posted some before/after example of their work for the ad agency of apple. I find the silhouettes more appealing than the originals. Sometimes things shouldn´t be uncovered. (via: tuaw

Sieht wohl so aus, als würde in das appleeigene Terminalprogramm das Feature nachgerüstet, das momentan noch iTerm für mich zum Programm der Wahl macht: Tabs. Sehr nützlich wenn man ein paar mehr Shells in Benutzung hat.

I´ve decided not to buy the new Airport Extreme. I thought about it, because it would further condense my networking gadgets so i can retire my fileserver. But there is one feature missing: The fileserving part doesn´t seem to have at least RAID 1. Fileserver without RAID? Just say no!

Apple will sell the 802.11n enabler for 1.99$ Can someone in the US please stop this universal excuse for many many moronic rules ... after all, SOX says only "CEO, sign your financial statement with blood, that it´s correct". Okay, the CEO doesn´t want to be sued and asks his or her CFO, who doesn´t want to be sued as well. She or he ask a consulting company, which doesn´t want to be sued as well: So you end with a maximum conservative, maximum play-safe set of rules, which upset everybody: Employees, executives and customers.

Einer der wichtigsten Aspekte des iPhones kann jetzt überprüft werden: Wie sieht das iPhone mit Kratzern aus? Oder mit Fingerabdrücke? Bei Bram.us findet sich ein Tool zum Selbersiffen.

I think we are at the brink of an development, that leads at final to the fullfilment of the vision of John Gage: The Network is the computer. This blog entry is a summary of some comments i´ve made in the last few days in my blog and in discussions. There were several comments, that the iPhone will fail, because of it´s lack of an open programming interface. But all this critics looks at the wrong angle. You don´t need an open programming interface when you have network connectivity and a browser. Because your applications run on central server resources. And the quote of Steven Jobs "Nobody uses Java" makes sense from a special point of view. Do you know a actual application in the nternet that uses a Java GUI? And i have several customers that think about web-enabled interfaces for their core applications.

When you look at this angle to the iPhone, all things get clear: Applications you need local ... the basic communication infrastructure is installed as local programms. The browser, the mail client, the address book, the calendar. Stuff, you possibly need even without network access.

For all the rest, you use the internet, or your own networks: Bookmarks? del.icio.us! RSS Feeds? Google Reader! You get the idea? You don´t need expandibilty on your phone. You need a stable, comfortable internet plattform. Your application runs somewhere else. In a more effective manner.

Example: Syncing the RSS clients on dozens of workstations? You don´t need it anymore. As there runs a single instance of your environment on a central server, you don´t have the problem of syncing. I don´t want another client, that has to synchronize it´s read/unread information. As i use regulary four devices (lorien (my Nokia E61), hadhafang (my Mac Mini), silmarillion (my venerable G4 Powerbook) and Sun Ray Server with a really boring name) this would get really nasty. To be honest ... even syncing NetNewsWire between hadhafang and silmarillion doesn´t really sync in realtime. It´s a mess to use two machines in parallel, don´t speak about four. Google Reader solves the problem.

It was no coincidence that the CEO of Google and Yahoo were on stage with his Steveness. Both companies drive forward the concept of central applictations in the network.

I have the impression, that most of the industry pundits didn´t understand the concept behind the iPhone. It´s smartphone for the rest of us. It´s a mobile keyboard,mouse and monitor. It´s not your computer. Your computer is in the network. The network is your computer.

PS: When you think about it, the bet of Sun makes perfectly sense: Central IT for millions of user is parallelism to the extreme. Niagara, Niagara II and Rock are designed to be the technological spine for such a world. Maybe not the fastest on asingle task, but this will be your smallest problem in the future.

You find nice example how mad SOX can go, when you look to this rumour at iLounge:

I’m not going to claim to understand this next part, which really just makes no sense to me at all, but the claim Apple’s making is that it can’t give you the 802.11n-unlocking software for free. The reason: the Core 2 Duo Macs weren’t advertised as 802.11n-ready, and a little law called the Sarbanes-Oxley Act supposedly prohibits Apple from giving away an unadvertised new feature for one of its products. Hence, said the Apple rep, the company’s not distributing new features in Software Update any more, just bug fixes. Because of Sarbanes-Oxley. If this is an accurate statement of Apple’s position, which as an attorney (but not one with any Sarbanes background) I find at least plausible, this is really crazy.

This backs my opinion that SOX is the biggest wet dream for lawyers, but a major pain in the a... for everybody else.

Nun regen sich wieder allerortens berufene und unberufene Schreibe darüber auf, das es wohl nicht möglich sein wird, eigene Programme auf einem iPhone zu installieren. Okay, das ist doof, bietet weniger Möglichkeiten zum Rumspielen.

Aber wenn ich jetzt mal in meinem Bekannten- und Kollegenkreis nachdenke: Wozu wird ein Handy benutzt? Zum Telephonieren ... ja klar, zunehmend um auch Mails abzurufen und um ins Internet schnell etwas zu gucken. Man will einfach, das das Handy funktioniert. Man will, das die Synchronisation perfekt funktioniert, ohne das man da noch gross irgendwelche Beschwörungstänze um das Handy machen muss. Er will ein Handy, das sich einfach bedienen lässt. Die einzige Applikation, die nachinstalliert wird, ist bei den Kollegen mit Nokia E61 Google Maps, wenn ich das mal auf meinem Handy vorführe.

Für den intendierten Kundenkreis ist ein iPhone ohne eigene Erweiterungsmöglichkeiten völlig okay. Man darf nicht von technikliteraten Menschen auf die breite Käuferschicht schliessen. Viele iPod-Nutzer sehen schliesslich ihren Computer auch nur als bessere Schreibmaschine. Und die gleichen Käufer sollen durch das iPhone angesprochen werden, denn dort steckt das Geld.

Ist wahrscheinlich typisch Mann: Da sieht man das ultimative Techgadget, und man kann es nicht haben. Und ärgert sich. Das ist ja schlimmer als Weihnachten, wenn man die Geschenke im Schlafzimmerschrank der Eltern gefunden hat. Bis Ende des Jahres warten. Geht garnicht.

Aber mal ernsthaft: Ich glaube wirklich, das wir da gestern was besonderes gesehen haben. Da kommt Apple einfach mal an, designt ein Telephon und zeigt eigentlich den versammelten üblichen Verdächtigen von Sony, Motorola, Nokia uswusw, wie man ein wirkliches Smartphone designt. Sozusagen die versammelten Platzhirsche vorgeführt. Deswegen hat es wohl auch so lange gedauert.

Darüberhinaus glaube ich, das das nur der erste Wurf ist. Auf der technischen Basis werden mit Sicherheit noch viele weitere Features nachgeruestet, sozusagen iPhone Tiger, iPhone Leopard, iPhone Garfield. Ich kann mir durchaus vorstellen, das die Integration der Handschrifterkennung aus dem Newton beziehungsweise Inkwell aus Mac OS X bereits in den Schubladen liegt. Das Teil schreit darüberhinaus nach einer Integration für die Präsentationssoftware Keynote nebst Anschlussstück für DVI-Beamer. Dann kann ich zukünftig das Notebook zuhause lassen, und nehme nur noch ein iPhone nebst DVI-Kabel mit zum Kunden.

What a keynote! The announcement for Apple TV was cool, but Apple simply redefined the topic "mobile phone. Okay, there is no new service onboard. I can build a rip off with my Nokia E61 out of dozens of programs. But this is the problem. No integration. The iPhone integrates all in such a dense package un such an integrated fashion, that it´s incredible. This mobile phone is truly one like i imagined a perfect mobile phone. Steve, when this device arrives in Europe, i will buy one! Wait, one thing is still missing: GPS.

PS: I will have a further look, but the Apple TV looks like a must-buy,too

Heute abend ist wieder eine der berühmt berüchtigten Keynotes ihrer Steveness. Ich hoffe inständig, das wenn die Gerüchte stimmen, diese nicht sofort lieferbar sind. Sonst gibt es Probleme mit der Bank. So ein iTV waere ja nett ... und ein Apple Handy und nach einem MacBook Pro schiele ich schon so lange ... und ... und ...

With Mac OS X you can type an enormous amount of charakters with the keybord. But who can memorize all this combinations of the propeller, function, control and option keys, to get to wanted charakter. I find the Characterpal-Widget really usefull to save some brain cycles to more important things.

Think Secret presents another proof for the integration ZFS into Mac 10.5. It seems, that the integration in all the graphical tools is still a work in process, but unter the hood ZFS is already usable.

(found via: Unix Admin)