WWDC ‘09/Snow Leopard Preview

 

I was browsing the web recently and I came across some intresting facts and rumors about Snow Leopard which can easily be linked to the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference. In this way I can predict a date for the release of Snow Leopard and can I also conclude something else about the WWDC keynotes.

First of all, Apple already announced the many performance improvements of Mac OSX 10.6, but a performance improvement wasn’t enough to justify the price of $129 for a new Mac OSX. So Apple took iTunes as an example and started developing a new GUI. The GUI will be darker than the current one and will be smoother. So now we can conclude that Mac OSX 10.6 will cost money but will certainly not be a small update. Snow Leopard will be the fastest and most stable operating system in the world and will have a completely new interface.

What about the date?
Snow Leopard will be released 2 months after the WWDC ‘09 on the 8th of June, so that makes somewhere mid August, probably the 10th.

There is yet another conclusion : Steve Jobs will be back to perform a keynote on WWDC ‘09! 
He would be away for about a half year and the WWDC is  about half a year after his departure. So he will probably announce the new OS himself.

Windows fanboys “?”, Mac Fanboys quiet, Linux Fanboys bitching.

Yes its so far, Mac OSX has a decent marketshare and they are quiet, some are even willing to install windows 7 on bootcamp. If you would have asked that from an OSX fanboy 2 years ago he would have came to visit you with a bazooka. Anyway, this is a result of their rise in marketshare, they are less frustrated and actually becoming objective. 

Windows fanboys, well they have nothing to complain about, they still have 88%. Think about it, 1.000$ is divided between three children, one gets 85$ (Mac OSX), one gets 880$ (Windows) and one gets 8,5$ (Linux). Which one will be frustrated?

So there is another group with a very small marketshare : The Linux Community!
Representing 0,85% of all PC users they think they own the world and the are 100% convinced that Linux will run on 60% of all desktops within 2 years, I present to you : The Linux community.
Now that Apple fanboys finally do shut up, Linux fanboys become arrogant and insulting, why? How can a fly be arrogant to a cheetah and a lion? Well yeah, we all know the answer, flies are irritating.

So message to the Linux fanboys : SHUT THE F*CK UP AND DISCOVER REALISM!

The end is near for Linux, at least for its popularity… or not?

Recent announcements of Windows 7 chook the entire world and microsoft didn’t even say anything, people are. One of the articles that I came across was about the use of Windows 7 on netbooks and I started thinking.

Apple is releasing Mac OSX 10.6 in a while which will make Mac OSX even more stable and probably the fastest OS on the earth.
It’s kind of an Xbox-effect, Mac OSX 10.6 will be released before Windows 7, so it should have an advantage, but…
Windows 7 is already so popular that it has approximately 1,5% of global marketshare which means that Apple will have to come up with something good to get Windows 7 out of the people’s heads.

Did you notice how I didn’t mention Linux? Well what’s there to mention, Ubuntu, the most popular distro has released its latest version a while ago and it wasn’t very special, I hope Ubuntu 9.04 will be more innovative. And for a non commercial OS it has to be. The last chance for Linux, as OS on netbooks is also endangered. Windows 7 will run on netbooks as well, it will even have a direct-on button for simple tasks and will have a lot higher performance. What do you think people would use? Linux or their favorite windows? Well here in Belgium it’s clear, 3/4 of all Linux netbooks are returned to the store after people find out that there is Linux on there instead of Windows, they now even prefer a 6 year old Windows OS above a brand new Linux distro. Says enough doesn’t it?  I don’t think Linux stands much of chance, people will eventually choose Windows above linux, because they are used to it.

My conclusion is that there will be a war next year between the 2 biggest OS’s Mac OSX Snowy Leopard and Windows 7. Linux will have to watch how the two endanger its marketshare. Of course this will not be the end of Linux since it is community driven, but you’d better prepare for a Linux with 0,3% marketshare instead of 0,85%. Unless Ubuntu 9.04 is there to save the day with a superfast booting OS. 

So the big cat and lucky seven are fighting but the penguin is not invited. And apparently I’m not the only one who thinks that way. Tons of blog posts were released of Windows 7 pulverizing Linux. That’s obviously a different attitude than the one at Vista’s release but at the moment you can’t really tell it will go either way or another, so it might turn out a completely other way.
This is just what I think will happen. 

Linux is dead (or isn't it?)

Is vista really that bad?

After having used xp for quite a while instead of vista and having used Mac OSX on a regular base. I return to Windows Vista to make some free disk space and a partition to install the already famous Windows 7. And that’s when I noticed something, is Windows Vista really that bad? After removing some old junk from my hardrive, the boot went as smooth as a baby’s but.

But I also noticed something irritating in this process. To enable me to make room available for a new 20Gb partition I needed to clean my cache with the system cleaning tool and I noticed that all cache and backups, system restore points, page files, … took an astounding 9,82Gb of my harddrive space! I still have pc’s that only have a 40Gb harddrive, imagine that, 10Gb for the Vista installation + 10Gb cache = 50% of the harddisk we used to work with until three years ago. This is huge.
But is Apple any better with their Mac OSX? No, Windows saves all that information to restore your PC in case anything goes wrong. Mac OSX also has such a feature called Time Machine, Time Machine uses an external harddrive to store the info Windows Vista stores in its cache and guess what? Time Machine copies have the same effectiveness but take about 50Gb more on an external harddisk than Windows Vista does in its cache. So this means that if Apple wouldn’t tell you to buy an external HD to backup everything, files on Mac OSX would take twice the normal diskspace. So definitely a good score for windows, you don’t have to buy an external HD and they discovered a highly space efficient method to make backups.

I was afraid for one more thing, after cleaning so many system files and disabling system restore, the paging files, … would Windows Vista still work? If I did this in Windows XP, I have gotten already a BSOD (Blue Screen of Death) or two and in Vista, nothing. It’s obviously more  stable.

What brings me to the next point, Virus Protection. Where my old XP PC’s were constantly infected (nowadays less), Windows Vista hasn’t had one encounter with a virus, I don’t even use an Antivirus but do regular checkups by downloading AV scanning engines and nothing! A clean Vista.

Now UAC, the dreaded new function… Well who told you that Windows Vista sucks? I guess in most cases your PC maker from the local store or a 24/7 downloading uncle. Well what do you do on Windows Vista? Write notes, manage pictures, chat with friends, go online,… How often do you have to install something? PC makers all the time and your uncle every time he installs a new antivirus to try it out or downloads a virus actually. You, not very often, so is it really that hard to enter your password once in a while?

So the conclusion is that Windows Vista is quite fast (if cleaned), is much safer than XP and much more stable as well, all driver and software issues are history and it has an even better backup method than Mac OSX. So is it really that bad? No.

Windows 7 : Windows strikes Back!

After having been commercially destroyed for 3 years windows strikes back with the newest version : Windows 7. The Beta will have been downloaded more than firefox soon. This could be the most successful version of Windows ever as it is even being downloaded by Linux and Mac OSX users out of curiosity, which are normally oblivious to new idea’s especially coming from windows. It provides the improvements of Windows Vista and is even faster than XP enabling it to even run on netbooks. So now we have a full blown state of the art operating system for netbooks. 99% of the people who download it are enthusiastic and the other 1% are filled with prejudice. But the prediction seems true, people have skipped windows Vista and are now going for Windows 7.

My prognosis is that Microsoft will strike back with Windows 7 and once again pulverize the other desktop OS’s. Linux that got its small rise in marketshare by the downfall of Vista will once again lose all of this new gained users, now that Windows is working again, who needs Linux? Take this together with the ability of Windows 7 to run on netbooks and this could mean up to 50% loss for Linux. Mac OSX will do slightly better because the downfall of Vista only inspired Apple to give the marketing of Mac OSX a boost. So people discovered Mac OSX and Mac OSX is more than a decent operating system but this is not the reason why people are buying macs. People buy macs because they have the same brand as the übercool iPods. Buy a Mac or you’re out, this means that the growth of Mac OSX will only slow down and will only mean a slight loss at the release of Windows 7, yes indeed I believe that some Mac OSX users are going to switch to Windows 7 when they have to buy a new computer or are just going to install it on bootcamp. So expect a 20% loss for Apple and a 80% decreased growth.

So the marketshare statistics for 2010, Windows 93,5% Mac OSX 5,5% Linux 0,4% Other 0,6%
If this trend remains we will see a downfall in mac popularity because the Mac frenzy is over, which means :
Windows 96,5% Mac OSX 2,4% Linux 0,3% Other 0,8% 

I seem enthusiastic, don’t I? Well don’t think that this is a bad thing, I’m a developer and one operating system means, having to buy one programming environment and only having to compile code once instead of having to buy three IDE’s, learning the hardest programming languages and having to update three different applications. So I’m very enthusiastic that this is Windows which is the most friendly OS towards developers. But this is also fantastic news for all the Windows users (less for the most hard-core Mac and Linux users because it just isn’t their OS). Do you remember what it was like to see a game in the store and see the big Xbox Logo above it when you only had a gamecube/wii? Well it’s the same thing now, do you see that great application but it’s only available for Mac. Well it will soon be for Windows as well because it is more attractive to developers.

Note that this is a prognosis, things can take an ugly turn.

(Now I’m waiting for the first flame comment by Mac-/Linux Fanboys.)

Mac OSX 10.6 “Snow Leopard” might be free!

After recent announcements by Apple we have reason to believe that Mac OSX 10.6 will be free for all Mac OSX 10.5 users, like they did with version 10.1 Puma.

Snow Leopard will be a Mac OSX version that fixes a lot of the instabilities in Mac OSX 10.5 which is suffering many application crashes. It will also prepare Mac OSX for the flow of games that will also become available for Mac OSX by providing new and more effective graphic card technologies. As you can see these changes aren’t that impressive and that is the first reason.

The second is that Apple did not announce Snow Leopard in the Macworld Keynote. A new Mac version is much more exciting than the a new macbook pro or a DRM free iTunes. But they just didn’t say a word about Mac OSX 10.6. Isn’t that a bit odd, no, because Mac OSX 10.6 is probably going to be a free update without much extra features and therefore not worth mentioning.

The third also envolves the keynote at Macworld, Apple is going to release a Box set with Leopard, iLife and iWork for just $169. Isn’t that also a bit odd. Leopard costs $129, iLife and iWork 2009 $79 = $287. This could have something to do with Snow Leopard being free, which would make $158+ some booklets and box = $169.

Macworld expo 2009 : Keynote overview!

I’m following the Schiller keynote live from CNET and I’m going to report a brief overview of all the changes. It’s not Steve Jobs but it’ll do.

iLife 2009 :

Apparently there is going to be an iLife 2009 suite with the revisions of the following applications :
-iPhoto 2009 : This awesome photo library now provides you with features like face recognition. Add tags to people on pictures and Iphoto will automatically tag and find all other occurrences of these people in other pictures. It also adds GPS geotagging.

-iMovie 2009 : This new version of the movie editing tool includes : a precision editor, drag and drop features, new themes and animated travel maps and a video stabilization function.

 

iMovie 2009 - source : news CNET.com

 

 

-Garageband 2009 : This is probably the most fun application of iLife.  Now it will learn you how to play an instrument. Very impressive if you ask me! This could even change the face of music making on the mac. Apparently you will be able to learn guitar and keyboard at your own pace and in no time. The tutorial features, fall out boy, sting and other artists.

Prices : upgrade 79$ or 99$ for a family pack
Release : End of January 2009.

iWork 09 : 

Updates will come especially to the slideshow features. There are new transitions and now you can control you presentations, using your iPhone, by using an application called : “Keynote Remote”. Available for 0,99$ in the App Store.

Pages is also getting an update with full-screen view, a function where you can hide applications with ease behind the text to avoid distraction, outlining and creating outlined pages, MathType and EndNote will also be supported as a part of Pages, these will be oftenly used by the scientific community.

Numbers provides better sorting functions and more powerful formula’s.

 

iWorks 2009 - Slideshow remote on Iphone - Source : CNET.com news

 

 

Prices : 49$ with a new mac, $79 upgrade and $99 for a family pack. Mac Box Set with Leopard, iLife ‘09, and iWork ‘09 for $169.
Release : End of January 2009.

There will also come an iwork.com web service, which will enable you to share documents online fast and with ease.

New 17-Inch macbook pro :

The new macbook pro will have unibody,  weighs 6.6 pounds, and very thin for a notebook of its size. It should have the best display ever on a macbook pro. It also features a mini-display port, glass trackpad, new graphics card (nVidia 9500GT ), supports up to 8Gb of memory, has an SSD option and also works with the cinema displays. It support up to 1920×1200 pixel resolution, ideal for graphics artists.

It also has a new lithium-polymer battery which lasts for 8-hours and thousand recharges. This means it is the longest lasting mac battery ever, fitting in this thin notebook. It will not be removable.

The new Macbook Pro uses less power and is made from aluminum and glass, also the battery lasts for 5 years. So this could be the most environmentally friendly notebook ever.

 

The new MacBook Pro - Source: CNET.com News

 

 

Price : $2,799 with 4Gb of memory
Shipping : End of January 2009

iTunes

There are three new price levels in the itunes music store : 69 cents, by default 99 cents, and $1.29. This means a price change in the iTunes music store.

Another interesting fact is the coming of DRM free songs, by the end of  this quarter there will be 10 million DRM free songs in the iTunes music store.

You will also be able to access the iTunes store by 3G on the iPhone. Before you could only access it if there was a wifi network at hand.

This ends this macworld Expo Keynote by Apple. (They are ending with some songs by Tony Benett)
So this will probably be the last Macworld with Apple. When will we ever hear Steve Jobs doing his wonderful keynote again, sigh… 

I must say, the MacWorld announcements this year were far from amazing and apparently the investors thought the same thing since apple is going down again.

What I like and dislike about some operating systems

Here I’m going to explain what I like and dislike about the top operating systems. I’m not a fanboy, I actually have dislikes and likes in each OS. Here you have them.

Windows 
What I really like about Windows is that it has such an extended software library and not only because it has the top marketshare, but simply because it has the greatest IDE’s. GCC, netbeans and Xcode are nothing compared to the ease and effectiveness of Visual Studio and Delphi. Another nice thing is the way they have come, some people might not notice it, but OSX and linux do influence microsoft. They have built more impressive interfaces and have actually done an attempt to increase security. But the best improvement is the fact that in Windows everything can be fixed easily. You don’t need the commandline, you don’t need an external harddisk. Just download steadystate, use system restore, download a patch from MS or millions of other software developers.

What I dislike about windows is the security and the fact that it is so bloated and actually functioning bad on some PC’s. Microsoft has had thousands of threats and malware. And what do they do? Create a tool that does not work. How hard can it be to keep the windows folder away from any interference and only allow the docs&sets users folder to be edited. You would nearly think that they have some kind of agreement with Antivirus producers. Another fact is : Windows Vista is bloated. People with new pre-installed Windows machines on a decent laptop  or desktop do not notice this, but people with older PC’s or self assembled PC’s can sometimes discover that Windows Vista is running slow on a computer that costed nearly 2.000$.

Linux
What I like about Linux is its stability and ability to run on almost anything with some electronics inside it. This enables it to be a great OS for embedded devices. As an Operating system for PC, I really dislike it actually. But the greatest advantage with most distributions is that it is free and that the support is fantastic. Linux and its community are one of the biggest contributors to all software technologies and innovations.

What I dislike is one term : “Open Source”. Many people encourage it without really knowing what it is. Students think it is great but if you ask them which advantage they have using Open Source rather than using normal freeware, they simply don’t know. Open Source has become a term like “green power” or “third world aid”. Open source isn’t a beautiful gesture, it won’t keep thousands of people from starving, won’t cure aids and it will not contribute to the protection of the environment. Other software developers even encourage Open Source without knowing the consequences of a global open source domination. It is already forcing normal developers into lowering prices making freeware and is already damaging one of the biggest industries on the earth, the software industrie. I expect that as a result of possible Open Source domination the revenue of the software industrie will be 80% lower. All incomings due to desktop software sales will completely disappear and developers will be forced to get revenue from support bought by companies resulting in the bankruptcy of thousands of small software developers. So some people are destroying their own future without even knowing it. Open Source isn’t fantastic people, it is the biggest threat to the economy since the big bang.
The second thing I dislike is that Linux is complex without the developers even knowing it. They are so ingenious when it comes to computers that they forget how it is to be a normal human being and what these people want.

Mac OSX
Here I’m going to start where I ended with what I dislike about Linux. Apple knows exactly what people want, they pay people to find out. A mac is extremely easy to operate, almost nothing can go wrong and users can’t screw up their entire system by screwing around with settings and system folders. Another remarkable feature of Mac OSX is the interface, people, this is pure art. Everyone wants to copy it in their application and with reason. Mac OSX is extremely secure, nothing can get in without prompting the users for a password and applications don’t leave tracks. Also Mac OSX is extremely fast.

Everything seems fine, so what is bad? Well a mac is expensive, I had numerous arguments with the notorious Mac-fanboys about the price of Mac OSX with as biggest stupidities that I heard : “A mac is cheap, it’s cheaper than another decent PC with windows.”, I tested it, believe me a Macbook pro is nearly 1.000$ more expensive than a Dell with exactly the same specifications, and “A mac lasts longer.” This is pure propaganda from the site, you can have an acer that lasts 5 years and a Macbook that only lasts one and the other way around so this was never proven, so actually it is not a valid argument. Another problem that I encountered in OSX is that it is extremely hard to create native applications. This is a harsh statement but, Xcode is crap! For the Iphone SDK it’s even worse. No wonder the Mac software library is limited, half of those applications aren’t even native and are written in Java thanks to the user-friendliness of Xcode.

OS-fanboys, the most annoying people around!

What is it with people defending their OS like they are in some kind of cult? The OS enthusiasts will tell you that you are “a bastard” or “a retard” because you don’t use the OS of their chose. Well in this article I will explain why they can all go to hell.

I take a look at many IT communities daily and its something I must face. If there is an article about Apple, you will immediately get a bunch Windows users telling that Mac OSX sucks without having even tried it. If there is an article about Windows it is even worse, you will get a combination of Linux and Mac OSX fanboys telling all the Windows users to “shut up” and “go to hell”, they than say that MS stole all innovations from their operating system. When there is a linux article, things are a bit less messy, maybe because Linux has the most fanboys, but you can still read comments as “Linux is for nerds” or “It’s inferior”. 

Well I have to disappoint all those fanboys. No popular operating system is inferior or superior. Indeed you have less popular operating systems who don’t even have a GUI, well yeah these are inferior, but OSX or Linux is certainly not inferior or superior to Windows and all people who claim this probably haven’t even used the OS they are complaining about. Windows is versatile and easy to use, Mac OSX has a nice interface and is fast and Linux is stable and free, every OS has its strengths and weaknesses. 

But every day it gets more sad, if you even dare to say that Mac OSX is expensive (reality!) you will get a bunch of hate mail or flame comments. If you say that Windows is slow you will get the top 10 reasons why windows isn’t slow and if you say that Linux is for nerds you will be called a “stupid nazi bastard”.  

So I am doing a call to all fanboys: “Shut the **** up!”

Will Windows 7 be more successful than Windows Vista?

In this article I will discuss the success rate of Windows 7. We all know WIndows Vista was a bad move, but is Windows 7 a good one?

 

To begin with a strong point for Windows 7, the first BETA has already been downloaded 8.000 times from multiple torrent sites. This is something I discovered after some research. A year before the real release Windows 7 is already a hype. I expect that Windows 7 will have more marketshare than Linux before the day of its release.

A bad point for Windows 7 is that everyone compares it to Vista. Just a few hours ago I heard people saying : “Windows 7 is practically the same as Vista”. This is certainly not true, it is faster, has a new interface, has a new software package, is much lighter, has a whole load of new features and revolutionary touch screen functions. (Note to the Mac Fanboys : Yes, the Iphone has Touch screen and no MS did not steal it from Apple. Phones and computers are totally different, otherwise I could say that Apple stole the touch screen idea from Nintendo.)
So there are more changes in this new windows version than have ever been in a new version of Ubuntu, let’s call it a new release shall we?

Another good point is that many people who were skipping Vista will now upgrade from XP to Windows 7. Windows 7 will also attract a lot of curious non-windows users or people who abandoned Windows for Linux or Mac OSX because of its revolutionary touch screen functions and new features.

Also Windows 7 will be compatible with Windows Vista executables which means that more applications will be directly compatible giving Windows 7 a good start with less problems.

Conclusion :  The chance is big that Windows 7 will be one of the biggest hyped Windows releases. As long as the jealousy of users who can’t immediately upgrade (as seen with Vista) and the comparison with Windows Vista isn’t too big to bring the entire release down. You could say that Windows Vista was only the BETA to Windows 7.