Book Reviews


[Day Permalink] Friday, October 24, 2003

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Robert X. Cringely writes about Microsoft vs. Linux: "Against Ballmer's glib insincerity we have Linus Torvalds, a very solid guy totally devoted to both the concept of creating powerful software and to giving it away. No wonder he is so misunderstood in Redmond."


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Apple's Knowledge Navigator revisited: knowledge navigator "During my session at BloggerCon I referred to Apple's famous Knowledge Navigator concept video. I first saw that video in 1988. Today I tracked down a copy and watched it again. It stands the test of time rather well! Certain elements of that vision are now routine -- for example, Google found me the video and WiFi delivered it to a PowerBook which, when equipped with its iSight camera, bears a family resemblance to the Dynabook-like talking computer featured in the video. Other aspects are still far out of reach, especially the conversational interface based on deep understanding of natural language." [Jon's Radio]


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Dive into mark writes: "Panther, Panther, Panther. Mac OS X 10.3 (Panther) is out. I took a few screenshots and wrote up a few thoughts. OK, I took 100 screenshots and wrote up 11 pages."


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Apple Third Time Lucky: "In summary, this is a far-reaching and impressive upgrade to the Mac experience. It justifies its cost far more than the 0.1 version change would suggest." (The Guardian via MyAppleMenu) [MyAppleMenu]


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This generic joke came from a colleague who tried to be politically correct:
Q: How many people belonging to a certain ethnic group does it take to perform a particular menial activity?

A: A finite positive integer. One to perform the activity, and the rest to behave in a manner stereotypical of their ethnic group!

I hope this was not too offensive.


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DarwinPorts seems to be a nice alternative to Fink for installing software on Mac OS X.


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New York Times has an insightful review of Mac OS X: "In Panther, Apple has taken an already sparkling, super-stable operating system and made it faster, better equipped and more secure."

If moving from Mac OS X 10.1 to 10.2 was like moving from Windows 2000 to XP, moving from Mac OS X 10.2 to 10.3 must be like moving from XP to Windows 2005 (or 2010?).

Update:: There is followup to the NYT article on Mac OS X 10.3.