OSnews - Exploring the Future of Computing

Just how Different are Intel-Macs from Intel PCs?

Eugenia Loli 2006-01-13 Apple 44 Comments

The very first Apple computers, distributed nationwide in 1977, had a hood you could pry off to reveal the CPU, the memory, and the motherboard. But almost three decades later, the company that pioneered "open architecture" with the Apple II, even with thousands of admirers looking on, was reluctant to pry the back panel off its new Intel Core Duo-based iMacs and MacBook Pro portables.

GNU/Linux vs Microsoft on R&D: Answering the Microsoft

Eugenia Loli 2006-01-13 Rumors 34 Comments

Linux News raises questions about Microsoft's alleged $6 billion per year investment in R&D. Is it money well spent, or are they just throwing it away?

Submitted by Tyr. 2006-01-13 macOS 35 Comments

Microsoft has officially halted development of its Windows Media Player for the Mac and plans no future Apple Computer versions of its music-playing software, CNET News.com has learned. "It's basically a business decision for Microsoft," Anderson said. "Like any other company, we have business priorities. Our focus really is in delivering the best experience to Windows customers." Instead, users should now use this, which has a few problems though, according to some Mac users.

Running Commercial Linux Software on FreeBSD

Submitted by Nix_User 2006-01-13 FreeBSD 9 Comments

"One of the more intriguing capabilities of the BSD operating systems is their ability to run binaries for other Unix-like operating systems. I recently found myself requiring the commercial PGP Command Line for a project. Rather than install a Linux box just for this one piece of software, I jumped through some hoops and made it work perfectly on one of my existing FreeBSD systems. Getting a random piece of commercial Linux software running on a FreeBSD system isn't always as transparent as you might like, but you can do it with a minimum of fuss if you have a few extra troubleshooting skills".

Google – Tomorrow The World

Eugenia Loli 2006-01-13 Google 9 Comments

"As the managing director of an Internet company people often (wrongly) assume that I’m an expert about everything to do with the Internet. So it is that I’m often asked whether Google is worth its currently high share price. I try to be diplomatic in my response, and point out that I’m neither a stockbroker nor an accountant, so what do I know? continue reading."

Submitted by LDiederich 2006-01-13 General Development 1 Comment

REAL Software announced today that REALbasic 2006 Release 1 is shipping. This new product features enhanced compatibility with Visual Basic, simplified localization and improved reliability and stability.

Intel Macs May Boot Windows XP After All?

Submitted by Dan Warne 2006-01-13 Apple 89 Comments

Reports spreading across the web that Intel Macs can’t boot Windows XP might be inaccurate. Intel Australia, while being careful not to comment on Apple’s hardware specifically, says motherboards based on the Intel 945 chipset already support EFI and can boot Windows with no problems. The key appears to be whether Apple has included a "compatibility support module". Explored in more depth in this article at APC Magazine.

FAT Patent Fight Not Over Yet

Eugenia Loli 2006-01-13 Microsoft 36 Comments

On Tuesday, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) reaffirmed Microsoft's FAT patents (covering the File Allocation Table), but sources close to the Public Patent Foundation indicate that this is not the end of the story of efforts to overthrow these patents. According to sources cited by Linux-Watch.com, the re-issuance of the patent was based on the examiner's having accepted an argument previously advanced by Microsoft, and previously rejected.

RHEL4 and Windows Integration Using Samba-3

Submitted by Jane Walker 2006-01-12 Internet 25 Comments

Follow Ken Milberg as he sets up Samba-3 on RHEL4 server, so that Wintel clients can access file and print services like Wintel servers.

Sun and Apple Almost Merged Three Times – Bill Joy

Eugenia Loli 2006-01-12 Oracle and SUN 30 Comments

Sun Microsystems tried to acquire Apple once and then almost merged with Apple on two other occasions, according to Sun co-founder Bill Joy. Beyond these deals, the two companies almost teamed on three other projects including sharing a user interface and the SPARC architecture.

Remote Desktop Apps Compared

Eugenia Loli 2006-01-12 RISC OS 10 Comments

Together with sharing files over a network, being able to control another computer remotely is particularly appealing to users with their own networks - especially when printers, scanners and other gadgets are connected to the alien machine. RISC OS has a number of applications to achieve this and while each are very similar, they have their own individual features that make them stand out in different ways.

Secure Java Apps on Linux Using MD5 Crypt

Eugenia Loli 2006-01-12 Java 6 Comments

If you are a security developer and need to interface a Java application with the local operating system user registry, what do you do? This article gives you the answer: UNIX/Linux PAM-compatible systems that use authentication based on the GNU MD5 extensions to the crypt() system call. A pure Java implementation of MD5 crypt can provide a simple interface that can be used by Web applications to authenticate against the local UNIX registry.

The ABCs Of Programming Windows Communication Foundation

Eugenia Loli 2006-01-12 .NET 3 Comments

WCF is a new step in distributed programming for developers using the .NET Framework. If you currently build systems using any of today's .NET distributed technologies, it's time to start paying attention to WCF and the future it holds. It's only a matter of time before all .NET-targeted code related to communications will be written using WCF.

Submitted by Resolution 2006-01-12 Bugs & Viruses 97 Comments

Users of Windows who have set the Automatic Updates option to "Download updates for me, but let me choose when to install them" were surprised to find that the latest WMF patch had overridden these settings and not only installed the patch, but rebooted the machines as well.

GTK+ fundamentals, Part 2: How to use GTK+

Eugenia Loli 2006-01-11 GTK+ 46 Comments

This article, the second in a three-part series titled "GTK+ fundamentals," introduces you to programming with GTK+. It analyzes a sample GTK+ application written in C, then shows that same application written in Python and C#. Finally, it discusses some useful tools that can help you develop better applications faster with GTK+.

Submitted by Buck 2006-01-11 Apple 23 Comments

Apple last week asked the US Patent and Trademark Office to grant it a trademark on the term "Mobile Me," AppleInsider has discovered. My take: I have blogged about this in the past, here and here.

Submitted by Valour 2006-01-11 OS News 13 Comments

Back in November, VMware released version 5.5 of their Workstation virtual machine product. Overall it's not a big improvement over version 5.0, but might be just the right "next step up" for those still on Workstation 4.x, says TheJemReport.

MS Office 12 Beta 1 Preview

Submitted by Bob 2006-01-11 Office 19 Comments

Office 12 is all about taking it to a whole new level in terms of interaction with the core Office applications and new ways of managing Office documents. Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access and Outlook Composer 12 all feature an innovative “new” user interface. This new user interface promises to deliver on that dream of making access to the tools you use the most in your Office applications not just easier, but with more relevance to the entire user experience and task at hand, writes ActiveWin.

KHTML and Webcore Come a Little Closer

Submitted by Anonymous 2006-01-11 KDE 39 Comments

KDE developer George Staikos recently announced that now KHTML uses a version of KJS that is nearly 100% in sync with Apple's JavaScriptCore. Other portions of KHTML will be shared with Apple's WebCore in the near future. This comes after a long and heated debate.

Lost in Transition: Overcane of Antflower Milk

Eugenia Loli 2006-01-11 Apple 71 Comments

"Today Apple announced the MacBook Pro. It has quite a few changes compared to the previous PowerBook. For one, it uses an Intel Core Duo (formally known as Yonah) chip. This is a dual core processor and no, unlike what Steve Jobs stated, this does not have two processors. This will help a lot with responsiveness. I've been dreaming of a dual core laptop for quite a while. However, the realization of my dream coupled with the changes seen makes me cry", writes Unsanity. UPDATE: Windows XP won't run on the new Intel Macs because of EFI. Vista is supposed to work though.