Linked by Thom Holwerda on Sat 28th Feb 2009 11:47 UTC
A few days ago, Apple surprised everyone by releasing the first beta of Safari 4, the company's latest version of their WebKit browser. While I generally love Safari on the Mac (my browser of choice on that side of the fence), I've never felt as comfortable with it on the Windows side of things. In any case, this latest beta has made a very bold move in the interface department, and I'm sad to say that it's not for the better. Let me explain where it went wrong for Apple.
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Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/19/13 23:15 UTC
"This is my NeXTstation Turbo Color booting the Mac System 7.1 Operating System using a hardware add-on called 'Daydream'. The Daydream has a Mac ROM and a few custom ICs in it and hooked up to the NeXTs DSP port. Turns your NeXT into a full fledged 68k powered Mac." So cool.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/19/13 23:11 UTC, submitted by Drumhellar
"The NetBSD Project is pleased to announce NetBSD 6.1, the first feature update of the NetBSD 6 release branch. It represents a selected subset of fixes deemed important for security or stability reasons, as well as new features and enhancements. Please note that all fixes in the prior security/bugfix updates (NetBSD 6.0.1 and 6.0.2) are also in 6.1."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 21:06 UTC
"At the end of a week in which Electronic Arts confirmed it wasn't developing a thing for the Wii U, one of the software engineers in EA Sports' Canada studio, in a series of since-deleted tweets, disparaged the console as 'crap' and suggested Nintendo should give up on hardware altogether. 'The Wii U is crap. Less powerful than an Xbox 360. Poor online/store. Weird tablet', tweeted Bob Summerwill, listed as a senior software engineer at EA Canada, in a reply to a tweet posting a link about EA's no-Wii U news. 'Nintendo are walking dead at this point'." The Wii U is turning into the 21st century's Virtual Boy.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 7:37 UTC
"In NixOS, the entire operating system - the kernel, applications, system packages, configuration files, and so on - is built by the Nix package manager from a description in a purely functional build language. The fact that it's purely functional essentially means that building a new configuration cannot overwrite previous configurations. Most of the other features follow from this." Interesting approach. A Linux distribution, sure, but with some very refreshing ideas about system configuration.
Linked by fran on 05/18/13 1:38 UTC
Appfour added, among other features, C/C++ support to its new version of AIDE. From Android-IDE, "Now you can write parts of your app or your whole app in C/C++ on your device. AIDE supports the Standard Android NDK toolchain (GCC 4.6 + Bionic, STL, ...). No changes are necessary if you want to build an app developed on a PC with Eclipse. C/C++ development is fully integrated: Build errors appear in the error list and files can easily be navigated to with Go to file. The editor supports C/C++ syntax highlighting."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 23:35 UTC, submitted by kragil
Ars nails it: "The answer is that Google did announce what amounts to a fairly substantial Android update yesterday. They simply did it without adding to the update fragmentation problems that continue to plague the platform. By focusing on these changes and not the apparently-waiting-in-the-wings update to the core software, Google is showing us one of the ways in which it's trying to fix the update problem."
Linked by MOS6510 on 05/17/13 22:22 UTC
"It is good for programmers to understand what goes on inside a processor. The CPU is at the heart of our career. What goes on inside the CPU? How long does it take for one instruction to run? What does it mean when a new CPU has a 12-stage pipeline, or 18-stage pipeline, or even a 'deep' 31-stage pipeline? Programs generally treat the CPU as a black box. Instructions go into the box in order, instructions come out of the box in order, and some processing magic happens inside. As a programmer, it is useful to learn what happens inside the box. This is especially true if you will be working on tasks like program optimization. If you don't know what is going on inside the CPU, how can you optimize for it? This article is about what goes on inside the x86 processor's deep pipeline."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 22:15 UTC, submitted by Tom
"It was the only moment I heard regret slip into Otellini's voice during the several hours of conversations I had with him. 'The lesson I took away from that was, while we like to speak with data around here, so many times in my career I've ended up making decisions with my gut, and I should have followed my gut,' he said. 'My gut told me to say yes.'" The world would've been a much different place - Apple would have been less dependant on Samsung for its chips, which probably would've meant less money for Samsung to develop its Galaxy business.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 21:41 UTC
Glass is getting some love at Google I/O as well. New applications have been released - Facebook, Twitter, Evernote, Elle, Tumblr, and CNN. Perhaps more interesting: the newly announced Google Glass Developer Kit will allow offline applications and direct hardware access - great for hacking and expanding Glass' potential. This kit will really allow hackers to put Glass through its paces.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 17:04 UTC
"But Beck and Merrill decided that simply banning toxic players wasn't an acceptable solution for their game. Riot Games began experimenting with more constructive modes of player management through a formal player behavior initiative that actually conducts controlled experiments on its player base to see what helps reduce bad behavior. The results of that initiative have been shared at a lecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and on panels at the Penny Arcade Expo East and the Game Developers Conference." Absolutely fascinating stuff. I'm a League of Legends player, and to be honest, the community isn't nearly as bad as some make it out to be. I'm happy Riot games has the guts to employ science to address the issue.More News »
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2009-02-28
reading this rant put a few thoughts into my head.
1) Before I even read the author, I thought: wow, either OSnews is really lowering the standards of what it takes to publish an article, or some 13 year old accidentally hacked the site. When I saw it was a regular poster I then wondered what sort of lacking editorial process the site must have, and how freakishly lucky I've been to have no been exposed to such trash on this site before (and I've been reading for years).
2) Did you actually use the Safari beta? Do you understand what the word Beta means? Typically it's because the software isn't done, but they want to test it. You criticize the fact that the tabs are there and that they aren't perfect, but instead of actually writing a coherent and informed article, you just trash the work they're doing. Nobody from the Apple camp has claimed they are perfect. Sure the feature is in there and there's a hidden option to turn it off, but why would htey roll out a beta with all of the new testing features disabled? that's why they have Safari3.
Now, I will clarify, I'm somebody who keeps daily updates of webkit, and developer version of Firefox as my two main browsers. I'm used to buggy, incomplete and promosing software. Perhaps this venture into 'non-released software' was too much for you to handle, but I would think it would be more embarrassing to whine about how you can't handle change than to just shut up and use non-beta software.
3) Did you even use Safari4 beta on OS X? I really can't associate with half of what you've written here, and when you gave examples, I'm totally unable to find what you're talking about on my OS X install of it - if you are in fact using the Windows version, had you considered that maybe the problems are windows specific?
4) Lets see your suggestions - come on now, lets mockup, animate, or actually code up a better solution - or is that too far beyond you overly developed skillset of whining and complaining when people try to make current software? Where's your solution to it - or are you too afraid that if you tell us what you think is better, there will be far to many people who are more qualified than you who will use evil and means things like 'Logic' and 'Rational Thought' to pick apart the flaws in your design?
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Now, I've been reading your posts for years, and I've seen the transition from just a poster here to a self-appointed UI consultant, but what I have never seen is a single shred of actual UI work you've done. I dont' mind if you say: hey, I'm a UI thinker and this is what I think as a critical user of this software. But when you roll in here and assume Apple has hired total idiots who obviously don't have training or industry experience, and that you, somebody whose only experience is writing on a blog, has FAR more wisdom than a team of industry professionals, it comes across as a little arrogant. Sure, even the best teams make mistakes, but we all know this is a work-in-progress, and please wait until the end to judge.
If you have anything CONSTRUCTIVE to say about how they can solve the issues you as a mere mortal user feel are problems, I'm sure they would love to hear your ideas about solving those issues or finding better ways to present the same information. IF you are not prepared to offer anything constructive or helpful, please, don't insult the intelligence and education of your readers by writing more articles.
I'm sorry to have read this - I lost a lot of faith in you.