mac

Apple's free pass on open source

Some open-source backers, including myself, have noted in the past Apple's ironic "free pass" when it comes to sharing code.

Despite using copious amounts of open source, Apple remains the most proprietary company on the planet. You can hardly say the name "Apple" without signing an NDA.

And yet many in the open-source world love Apple. I am one of them. Some suggest that open-source development is better on the Mac, and I've offered reasons for this. However, TechCrunch is right to question the love affair with all-things-Apple:

[Apple] built OS X on FreeBSD..., … Read more

Unix, Linux, and Mac housing projects

This is one of the funniest, best posts I've read in a long time. Randy Jensen wrote it back in 2007, but it just popped up on Digg today. I had never read it. It's hilarious.

Jensen compares different operating systems to types of houses, and comes up with some gems like this:

Windows is the government housing. The houses are built quickly, cheaply and go up anywhere and everywhere. Unfortunately since they were all built so cheaply, you end up spending twice as much later to keep the place standing.

And this:

Linux is the carpenter/designer'… Read more

MobileMe still sputtering

Apple's MobileMe service promises features which, like the release of Mac OS X Leopard, made me regret the recent purchase of another Windows Vista laptop, at least for a moment.

Having lost two laptops and five years of life history to theft several weeks ago, the allure of having precious data pushed automatically from a laptop to the "cloud," coupled with Time Machine backup, feeds my desire for security as well as my laziness (yes, I review software, and I didn't have a third backup). It seemed MobileMe could serve me better than the new iPhone … Read more

Back-to-school, MacBook rumors, and pizza metaphors: The week in laptops

My new tagline for This Week in Laptops: The antidote to iPhone fever. Catchy, no?

While our colleagues toiled away on iPhone rumors, iPhone release stories, iPhone reviews, and iPhone software news, the CNET Laptop Reviews team continued to fill out our roundup of back-to-school laptops that will be on retailers' shelves this summer. The latest additions: a $649 Dell Inspiron 1525, the $799 HP Pavilion dv2915nr, and the $799 Gateway T-6836. Keep checking back for more reviews as the first day of classes draws near (already?!). Not wanting to leave gamers out in the cold, we also pulled together … Read more

Microsoft ahead of Apple, Ubuntu in OS update reliability

A company that measures Internet service reliability has given Microsoft the top score in a test of operating system update services.

Microsoft's Windows Update was available 100 percent of the second quarter of 2008, Pingdom said in a blog posting Friday. Apple's service was down 2 hours and 34 minutes, with 99.9 percent uptime, and Canonical's Ubuntu version of Linux was down 1 day, 5 hours, and 45 minutes, for 98.64 percent uptime.

"Microsoft wins this one hands down," Pingdom said. It noted that Ubuntu's service also is available through mirror sites, … Read more

Buzz Out Loud 764: iPhail?

On the first day of the iPhone 3G massive amounts of fanatics went home frustrated. Activation problems meant a lot of folks couldn't go home with a working iPhone. Some didn't even have a working phone at all, as the old phone got deactivated but the new one was not brought into working order. Meanwhile FCC goes Medieval on Comcast and announces the four freedoms of the Internet will be enforced. Listen now: Download today's podcast

EPISODE 764

iPhone 3G goes on sale http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-iphone-3g-goes-on-sale-plagued-by-activation-problems/ http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080711-launch-woes-turn-iphone-parousia-into-activation-apocalypse.html … Read more

When you're Robert Scoble, you don't wait for an iPhone

SAN FRANCISCO--The perks of being a famous tech blogger include not having to stand in line all night for the latest gadget.

I was out in front of the Apple store near Union Square here at 9 p.m. PDT on Thursday standing in line for the iPhone 3G that makes its debut today. Robert Scoble walks up at 7:15 a.m., 45 minutes before the doors are scheduled to open, and a fan lets him take cuts in line.

It would be easier to be bitter if Scoble wasn't such a nice guy. It's 15 minutes … Read more

Post-mortem on Road Trip 2008 gadgets

TAMPA, Fla.--And so it ends.

After driving through nine Southern states and crossing innumerable borders, Road Trip 2008 has come to an end.

What began in Orlando, Fla., ended 4,593 miles later here in Tampa. Along the way, the trip has taken me to a Space Shuttle landing, to the Corvette factory, to watch the Blue Angels practice at their home base, to being banned from Graceland, and much, much more.

Through it all I carried with me thousands of dollars worth of tech gear, aiming to road test it all. The list of gadgets included some of … Read more

Don't mock me for iPhone lust

SAN FRANCISCO--The twenty-something woman trash-talking us is definitely no fan girl.

"They'll be selling these stupid phones on eBay in a year," she snarls as she stalks past the 25 of us lined up outside Apple's store here late Thursday evening.

She's wearing a sweatshirt from a college in the Midwest and toting a shopping bag so someone barks back: "tourist!" But she's not the only one who mocks us for camping out all night--braving this city's shivery summer air--for something as ho-hum as a cell phone. "Is it really … Read more

Going thin on Road Trip 2008 with the MacBook Air

SAN FRANCISCO--After working on an Apple MacBook Air for the last month while on Road Trip 2008, it was a real shock when I returned home and picked up my regular work MacBook Pro for the first time.

Compared to the Air, which I'd really gotten used to as I drove around the South, the Pro was really heavy. Shockingly so. And thinking back over the countless hours I spent with the Air in my backpack on my back as I visited endless places, I'm eternally grateful for all that weight I didn't have to carry.

And … Read more