With Shark's System Trace, you get a detailed view of how your code interacts with Mac OS X. This advanced article digs deep into Shark, and how it helps you optimize your code.

GNOME 2.13.91 has been released. As always, the odd-numbered branches indicate dev-branches, and as such the 2.13.x series is the step-up to the GNOME 2.14 release, planned for March this year. The 2.13.91 release is the second beta. Release notes: platform, desktop, and bindings; downloads: platform, desktop, and bindings.

Today we're happy to feature an interview by Grant Hayes of MacSlash with Paul Leroux, a technology analyst with QNX Software Systems, who is participating in Embedded World 2006. In the interview, Paul discusses the changes QSS has experienced in the last couple years, new and established competition, and moving forward in the marketplace with new technology.

"Apple has shiny new x86 based iMacs and the eloquently named MacBooks (yech) out on the market, and reviews, barring a few fawning toadies in the print media, are exceptionally rare. The usual Apple cooked benchmarks abound, but there is no real third party analysis, I think mainly because it is afraid of what will be found. The biggest bloomer is its tacit non-denials of the fact that the current x86 macs will never run XP in an approved or corporately acceptable fashion, and Vista is a long long long shot. Apple knows, is doing nothing to quell the rumours and speculation, and I think that's irresponsible."

Linus may have it wrong on digital rights management, but it's the vague wording and confusing concepts - like what is meant by a 'derivative work' - that is causing the real headaches over the next General Public License. A representative of the Free Software Foundation, leading the effort around GPL 3.0, said that Linux creator Linus Torvalds had 'misread' the license's provisional terms.

"If we were to get dramatic, we would say: 'Intel came, Intel saw and Intel conquered.' The fact of the matter is, Intel did just that. It promised the holy grail of mobile computing by increasing performance without battery life trade off, and delivered on all promises. If you waited for the Core Duos to come out, you made a wise decision. Intel's Core Duo is the best you can buy in mobility right now. It runs cooler, faster and more efficiently than anything anyone has to offer right now."

"I had a situation where I needed to control two computers over the Internet. The best solution for me was to use VNC networking technology. VNC stands for Virtual Network Computer and is a real nice way to remotely control computers through a GUI interface in which you see the remote desktop. I tried all of the Mac OS X VNC clients I came across and from my experience Chicken of the VNC is the way to go."

"Ever wonder how virtualization works? Where is it used? What role could virtualization play in the future of Windows, for example? How will it evolve over time? We recently met with some of the Microsoft Virtualization people to find some answers to these questions and learn a whole lot about virtualization, hypervisor, and the future of this super cool and important technology."

"After using PC-BSD several days, I was impressed with how easy it is to use. It's a good desktop OS, and a great way to introduce BSD to new users. The 1.0 release has a few rough edges, but nothing that should scare off prospective users. For the future, I'd like to see something like Synaptic to manage PBI packages and allow users to browse for software without having to visit the PC-BSD Web site, and it would be nice if the site had a little more documentation, but I expect such things will come along in due time as the project matures."

IBM released a new PowerPC 970 workstation: the System p5 185. A 2-way 2.5GHz system with 2GB of RAM and two SCSI drives will set you back $4000 without any OS licenses. "The new System p5 185 Express server is our lowest priced system based on the IBM Power Architecture with features designed for excellent and secure performance whether running AIX 5L or Linux applications.

Camino 1.0 for PPC and Intel-Mac is now available. Camino is a web browser optimized for Mac OS X with a Cocoa user interface, and powerful Gecko layout engine. It practices the art of simplicity with an uncluttered user interface but with the features you expect from a modern browser like tabbed browsing and pop-up blocking settings. On other browser news, Access has announced new Netfront plans.

OpenBinder is the core technology that ex-Be engineers started at Be, Inc. as the "next generation BeOS", finished implementing at PalmSource as one of the key foundations of the Cobalt system, and is now being open-sourced running for Linux. Dianne Hackborn, a legendary engineer throughout the BeOS history and later a key engineer in the creation of PalmOS Cobalt, is describing OpenBinder below and then a mini-interview follows.

"AMD has developed more details in its cunning plan to counter Intel's Viiv scheme - it provisionally rolled the idea out during the Consumer Electronics Show with a whimper rather than Chipzilla's big bang. Intel finally realised that it should go back to the future with a tweaked Pentium 3 as it performed better than the overclocked Pentium 4 generation. That's whats Pentium M and Merom are ultimately based on and this puts Intel in much better shape than it enjoyed in 2005. AMD plans to embrace the Athlon FX and X2 and to sell them as part of the Live platform." At least this name doesn't require pronunciation advice.

Sun Microsystems fulfilled a pledge Tuesday to release UltraSparc chip details in an effort to make it easier to bring Linux and versions of BSD Unix to its systems. Sun announced the availability of the specifications in conjunction with this week's Open Source Business Conference in San Francisco, at which Sun President Jonathan Schwartz is delivering the opening keynote speech on Tuesday morning.