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David Adams Archive

Mac Marketshare Broken Down by Country

Switzerland has the highest percentage of Mac users than any other with a 17.61% share. Luxembourg comes in second with a 15.79% share while the US occupies the third slot with a 15.36% share. Countries that just missed the top 10 include the UK, Japan, and France. Interestingly, Nordic countries seem to love their Macs as all five of them (Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, and Denmark) all made the top 20.

MonoMac 1.0 Released

From the release announcement: "Almost a year ago we started building a set of Mono bindings for building native MacOS X applications. Our original goals were modest: bind enough of AppKit that you could build native desktop applications for OSX using C# or your favorite .NET language. We leveraged a lot of the code that we built for MonoTouch our binding to the CocoaTouch APIs."

IE9 Subject to Old, Unpatched IE Vulnerability

Microsoft has confirmed that an old known vulnerability has struck their newest version of their browser, Internet Explorer 9. According to Microsoft: "Microsoft is investigating new public reports of a vulnerability in all supported editions of Microsoft Windows. The vulnerability could allow an attacker to cause a victim to run malicious scripts when visiting various Web sites, resulting in information disclosure. "

FreeBSD Needs Fresh Blood

"How long have you been using FreeBSD. Months? Years? Decades? And you love using it because of whatever reason but at the same time you're feeling a bit guilty to use it all for free without giving anything back? Well now you'll have the chance to change that. We at FreeBSD are always in need of new people who are willing to spare some of their time and effort into FreeBSD development."

Oracle Making Java, Solaris Certifications Pricier

Later this year, Oracle will begin requiring people interested in gaining Java and Solaris certifications to attend "hands-on" training courses, at an additional cost of thousands of dollars. The new rule goes into effect Aug. 1 and regards Java Architect, Java Developer, Solaris System Administrator and Solaris Security Administrator certification paths, according to a notice on Oracle's website.

Upgrading from Windows 1.0 to 7

If you had asked me, I would have guessed that this wouldn't be possible. One intrepid OS explorer has made a video wherein he not only installs every version of Windows since 1985's Windows 1.0, but proceeds to upgrade from one to another. The video, titled Chain of Fools: an Exploration of Windows upgrade procedures, shows how DOS and Windows are installed in a VMWare VM, and how a couple of DOS games were installed to see how newer versions of Windows handle backward compatibility. Similarly, various customizations were made to the Windows preferences to see how they survived the upgrades. Video embedded after the break.

Microsoft Ships Windows 7 Service Pack 1

Microsoft has announced that the first service pack release for Windows 7 and Windows 2008 R2 will hit the download servers starting today. The company had already released the final code to OEM partners earlier on February 9, followed by MSDN customers, TechNet subscribers and volume licensing customers on February 16, but now anyone will be able to get it either via Microsoft's Download Center website or through Windows Update.

Cybercriminals Shifting Focus To Non-Windows Systems

In a major cybercrime turning point, scammers have begun shifting their focus away from Windows-based PCs to other operating systems and platforms, including smart phones, tablet computers, and mobile platforms in general, according to the a new Cisco report. The report also finds that 2010 was the first year in the history of the Internet that spam volume decreased, that cybercriminals are investing heavily in "money muling," and that users continue to fall prey to myriad forms of trust exploitation.

How the Atari ST Almost Had Real Unix

What would have happened if the ST had run a BSD based UNIX rather than TOS and GEM? "To run Unix effectively we needed some hardware that was very fast, that was simple enough to put into a minor spin of the ST’s memory controller with little project risk, and that would still provide some kind of memory relocation and protection. The ability to have separate address spaces to isolate processes would be good, too."

An iPhone Developer’s First Look at Windows Phone 7

"I'm a Mac and iOS developer and just spent the past week using a Windows Phone 7 powered Samsung Focus as my primary phone rather than an iPhone 4 as I have for the past three years Anytime a new phone hits the market, I want to pick it up. I was also intrigued by the screenshots and previews I've been reading on Engadget for the past few months. Windows Phone 7 looked like nothing else I've seen on the market."

Oracle Highlights Solaris Unix Plans

Oracle executives talked up on Thursday the planned Solaris 11 release due in 2011, with the Unix OS upgrade offering advancements in availability, security, and virtualization. The OS will feature next-generation networking capabilities for scalability and performance, said John Fowler, Oracle executive vice president of systems, at a company event in Santa Clara, Calif. "It's a complete reworking of enterprise OS," he said. Oracle took over Solaris when the company acquired Sun Microsystems early this year.

Apple’s Tablet Computer History

The iPad has been a long time coming. Apple has produced innumerable tablet computer prototypes and of course developed and released the much-maligned and much-beloved iPad precursor, the Messagepad2000/2001 a decade ago. There are some nifty designs outlined in this retrospective of Apple tablets but sadly, lack of advancement in flat screen technology made them largely a pipe dream at the time. Steve Jobs, however, was very interesting in putting Apple's R&D fully behind developing LCD monitors back in the 80s, and if the board had let him, it may have changed the mobile computing timeline substantially.