Universal Rule

Book Reviews

Thursday, August 29, 2002

How to go where you are going? -- Comment()
Mac OS X: The Tide Is Turning: "There's an old story in the UK about a man who stops an Irishman and asks him the way to Tipperary. The Irishman's answer: 'Well if you want to be going there, I wouldn't start from here.' This response is much like the strategy that Apple could have adopted in its new operating system if it had continued developing Mac OS 9 from where it was four years ago." [osOpinion]

One should also remember the story of NeXT computer: a system which was fine on paper but totally unusable for general users. Happily, Mac OS X is an evolutionary product, which happens to have a solid foundation and some well-thought ideas about future software development. And users have been listened, too. This can be seen in the improvements Jaguar (Mac OS X 10.2) brought to users.

Jaguar and CUPS-based printing on the command line -- Comment()
Jaguar (Mac OS X 10.2) includes CUPS (Common UNIX Printing System). This means that you no longer have to separately configure the Unix command-line printing (commands lpr, lpq etc.). You get a list of the available printers with the command

lpstat -p

After this you can use, e.g., the command

lpr -Pprinter_name file

CUPS can be controlled with a web browser at the local address http://127.0.0.1:631 (this can only be used from the local computer). Also manual pages are available through this address.

The savior of Apple -- Comment()
Jaguar Opens Strong, But Can It Save Apple?: "Apple Computer's new Jaguar operating system opened like a hit summer movie, drawing more than 50,000 people to Friday night's opening events and selling more than 100,000 copies in its first weekend." [osOpinion]

Of course, Apple is really a hardware company. The real question is, can Jaguar bring enough new software and hardware developers to support the Macintosh platform. Also, Apple currently has good easy-to-use systems for consumers, but in the business world it will have great difficulties to move into Windows-based territory.

Where Microsoft is going today? -- Comment()
Microsoft's New Irrelevance. Microsoft has been styled the robber baron of software for nearly two decades now, and as the company's reach has grown longer, the cries of alarm from savvy users have grown louder and more urgent. But a funny thing happened on the way to a Microsoft-ruled IT world. Customers stopped obeying the software titan's whims. [osOpinion]

It certainly has started to look like the era of Microsoft is about to end. Perhaps this is similar to the end of the golden days of mainframe business for IBM.

But who will be the new king of the hill? Sun? IBM? (Again!?) HP? Dell? (World without innovation...)

Apple and business on friendly terms? -- Comment()
Apple's Jaguar Leaps Ahead Of Windows (BusinessWeek via MyAppleMenu) [MyAppleMenu]

This is getting strange: big business-oriented magazines are giving Apple rave reviews. When this happened? Even PC magazines are reviewing products by Apple.