Open source always has the original ideas

Apple is so, so totally ripping off open source stuff. For instance, compare the new features of Safari 3 with Firefox 2: 1) Rip off tabs. Firefox has had them for a while. 2) Web inspector: Firefox has a very popular extension called Firebug, and the new Safari web inspector is so totally ripped off straight from Firebug, with a nice iTunesy GUI. 3) Restore previous session. I believe Firefox 1 had this, and Firefox 2+ definitely has it. So totally ripped off. In fact I think apple is very into open source, as you can see: 1) The Mac OS X kernel, Darwin, is open source. You can get the source code straight from apple. 2) Mac OS X uses OpenGL graphics software, which is self-explanatarily open source. 3) The apple developing software, XCode, uses GCC C compiler for compiling (which I believe is developed by GNU and is open source). 4) Mac OS X's shell is GNU Bash, and alot of other GNU tools come with OS X, such as: nano; emacs; and a few others. So to a certain extent, Apple is incorporating open source into their own software, and also incorporate features into their proprietary software that were originally in open source projects a long time ago. See what I mean? Open source always has the original ideas. But when you take microsoft into the argument, apple suddenly seem like the open source people. Microsoft, undoubtedly, rips off apple and that doesn't even need any examples, work them out yourself. So you can think of it as a kind of chain: first open source projects such as firefox develop the original ideas; then apple rips them off; then M$ rip off apple. Now that's what I call third rate, literally. Hooray for open source!!! And fuck M$.

iLife '08

Soon I'll be getting iLife '08 for free, and hope to do some kind of web developing with the tools that it provides (like iWeb). I've never actually used the iLife programs, and I'd like to try out iMovie as well as stuff like GarageBand.

Kernel panic!

UPDATE: three now, as it kernel panicked on startup this morning for no apparent reason :(. Macs never crash eh?

I have had my PowerMac G5 dual processor 2.0GHz 512MB DDR Low-density SDRAM for about a year now, and have had two real and serious kernel panics. One of them was before I updated to Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, and one of them was, sadly, after. The first time my sister was fiddling with the power button (i.e. making it go thru loads of sleep/wake cycles very quickly) and I read that that can make certain machines Kernel Panic. That was when I was running Mac OS X 10.4.10 Tiger. The second time was when I put it under tremendous load (remember I only have 512 MB RAM), i.e. opening these apps and probably lots of others: Google Earth; Macromedia Flash Pro 8; 6 TextEdit windows; Safari; Apple Mail; iTunes; Adobe Photoshop CS; 76 xterms all running another xterm (i.e. in a long chain of xterms); 2 normal terminal windows (one running top); Google Sketchup; Google Sketchup Pro and countless other RAM hogging apps. That was when I was running Mac OS X 10.5.1 Leopard. I was in expose when it crashed.

Leopard review ... finally!

Ok I've finally gathered together some pretty cool screenshots of Mac OS X 10.5, Leopard. First, here is the default desktop that came up just after I'd installed leopard:















Everyone knows that macs are easy and intuitive, right? Well you should see help in leopard. I'm not joking, anyone could use it!















Coverflow in finder looks cool... (and the BSoD PC icons are funny!)

Quick Look is an absolute lifesaver.

Genie might not be a new leopard thing, but it's cool anyway! (here you can see that I've set the new Arabesque screensaver as my desktop background, and I'm installing developer tools 3.0 from the install DVD.)

Stacks are just eyecandy (although cooler than cool):

And last, but certainly not least, Spaces. NOTE: Spaces is very similar to compiz fusion, and it is not an original idea. But as far as i can tell, it's the first time anything like it has come to the mac.

Overall I think leopard is an excellent upgrade. I think you definitely get your moneys worth, especially for it being only £85/$129. Here are just a few of the new features that I can think of off the top of my head:

Completely redesigned finder (including coverflow and quicklook)
Mail.app stationary
Spaces
Dashcode, and all other developer tools ('Xcode 3.0') free
Web clips
Tabbed terminal interface
Time Machine
Front Row (works with PPC macs now :D)
Stacks
iChat
Built in VNC in iChat and Finder
New screensavers 'Arabesque' and 'Shell', and new voice 'Alex'.
Eyecandy, and lots of it!
Loads of redesigned menus and things, e.g the translucent menu bar and the 3D dock.

Leopard *growl*

Me and fela just installed Leopard - it's AMAZING. Seriously, I think it's the best OS that has come out of apple so far.

Screenshots and review soon.

Leopard tommorow...

Me (rot13srynznfyra) and Mal are sharing the £85 price tag for the new version of Mac OS X, 10.5 Leopard. I'm gonna go and get it from the apple store tomorrow. Anyway, I'll/we'll give you a proper review when it comes. I am ready for teh bugz life! No seriously, I'm gonna be careful cos I heard that there was a bug where if you try and move (note that I say move and not copy) file(s) over to/from an external drive, and while the data's still moving over the drive accidentally gets unplugged, the Finder thinks that it's copied it all over, and deletes the original file (that's cos you said move and not copy), so you lose part of your data, or all of it if it's one file. Be careful about that one! Hope they fix it soon.

Leopard look-alike

I've got the Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard look on my gnome desktop pretty good now, as you can see. The main drawback is that I don't have a good enough graphics card for compiz, and consequently can't use Avant Window Navigator to emulate a dock.

mac4lin

Mac4Lin is a good set of themes and stuff for gnome, that imitates OS X, and does it quite well. You can find the homepage on google, i can't be bothered to give it to you! Well, reccomended for any mac GUI nerds switching to linux! Also, here is another good site for that kinda stuff.

OSX Linux

Here's my Linux pretending to be Mac OS X: (click on it to get a bigger picture)

Fire

I use Mac OS X, and until recently I was forced to use M$ messenger for IM. But just now I switched to Fire, an alternative. Note that if you click that link it will automatically start the download from sourceforge.net. I'll give reviews later on, when I've used it and found bugs. I hope to stop using ANY Micro$oft software in the near future! (only got M$ office and M$ VPC to go!)