Mac OS X users know when a product doesn't quite "feel right", and so do product reviewers. Despite the similarities that seem to exist between the Microsoft Windows 95/98/2000 and Windows XP user interfaces (UI) and the Aqua interface of Mac OS X, there are significant appearance and behavioral differences. A successful Windows to Mac OS X transition requires abandoning key elements of the Windows user experience in favor of the Mac OS X alternatives. This document outlines typical areas of concern when porting a Microsoft Windows application to Mac OS X, and provides guidance for transitioning to the Mac OS X UI.

Slow news day today, so here is a new poll. Vote for the architecture that Apple should switch to, if such a switch is necessary. Please note that we did not include options like MIPS, SPARC or Crusoe as they do not make much sense at this point as suitable candidates for different reasons each. But the most popular choices are listed and awaiting your vote!

" Still, Open Source software fails to lead in many areas. This could be from a historical disadvantage -- the means of connecting and organizing people for sizable Open Source projects only recently became available and are only starting to approach the tight-knit nature of companies. But I think it's for a whole different reason. Open Source software lacks leadership, unity and direction." Read the editorial at NewsForge.

OSNews reader Don Cox writes: "Dock system for the new AmigaOS is shown here. The author is Stefan Robl, who also has an interesting Coldfire-based hardware project. Would users of Mac OS X like to compare this Amiga dock with the Mac one?" Our Take: The Dock for AmigaOS4 sounds good, but it does not look good. While it is said to be customizable, the defaults matter. I hope the author lose the background image for the dock, and instead deliver something professional-looking, refined and clean for the final version of the OS. Some alpha around the icons wouldn't hurt either.

Read the five newly released AMD x86-64 architecture tech documents in PDF format.

Roman Zippel recently released version 0.4 of his new configuration system for the 2.5 Linux kernel, a replacement for the aging CML currently in use. He has attempted to make the transition to this new system much simpler than was the case with CML2 in a hope to have it merged into the 2.5 kernel.

Guillaume Maillard of the BlueEyed OS is talking to TotallyBe. He speaks of the differences between their project and OBOS and Cosmoe. He also claims that when programmed for and/or patched the right way, the Linux kernel and XFree can be very fast and perform pretty adequately to BeOS 5 (UI responsiveness - the main advantage of the BeOS experience), while in most of the "other" cases, Linux is much faster than BeOS 5 (eg. server operations, compilation times, SMP scaling, VM etc).

Regular changes to the Apache 2 API has developers questioning its usability.Also, extremely low uptake of Apache 2 has caused its producers to advocate freez-ing development of the open-source Web server until makers of add-in software catch up. Almost six months after the launch of Apache 2, less than one percent of sites use it, due to a lack of suitable third-party modules.

Two top execs at the high-end computing pioneer explain how the troubled company's turnaround strategy is going. Silicon Graphics (SGI ) was one of Silicon Valley's computing pioneers. It invented much of the visualization and graphics technology used today by the Defense Dept., Hollywood, and the medical industries for manipulating vast amounts of complex data and for working in graphics-rich computer environments.

Code Completion is now back, in the new version of SharpDevelop.The forms designer received a major working over and now can handle invisible controls and autogenerates C# and VB.NET code for the forms. Stability overall also has improved. In similar news, Borland Software Corp will increase its support for .NET with development tools the company believes will win corporate backing despite reduced IT spending, Gavin Clarke writes.

A new project by Intel and Philips is using the Linux operating system to boost the market for converged consumer electronics. The Pronto++ reference platform, announced on Tuesday, is based on Intel's XScale line of embedded processors and, initially at least, an embedded Linux distribution.

Be Inc, the well known OS company that produced the multimedia-oriented OS BeOS, was acquired by Palm Inc. a year ago. The further development of BeOS was stopped, since Palm doesn't seem to care about it. Will the BeOS spirit survive with the BeOS clones currently flourishing?

Exceptionally good news for the commercial Linux developers. Rational has released PurifyPlus for Linux. For hobby developers, the free Valgrind is better than nothing, but for commercial projects and for projects that require a full featured memory management tool, PurifyPlus has no match. Demo available.

A bug fixed version of the popular Unix windowing system XFree86, version 4.2.1, was just released.