/dev/blog

In this article, Mathewson is essentially saying that Apple switched to Intel in order to compete with Microsoft in the OS market.

I personally don’t think so. The reason is that Apple is a hardware company, and that is where they make most of their money. I’ve heard that their profit margin is up to 30% for hardware. And they can’t possibly make that much on operating systems alone. Sure they make more in terms of profit margin, but in terms of money, it is not possible. For example, the 20″ iMac currently sells for $1699, and so that’ll be a profit of about $500 using the 30% number, or $340 using 20%. By selling copies of OS X can never reach that height, at least not in the short run. Also, if they become a software company, their business model has to change completely. Right now, yes, they are great at making software, but all that work is just to cause more hardware sales. OS X for the computers and iTunes + iTMS for the iPod. I personally don’t see how Apple could possibly only sell software in the future.

Apparently, there will be two more Apple Stores opening in the Greater Los Angeles area. One in Beverly Center, and the other in Sherman Oaks.

You can get more information here.

If there will be free shirts, I’ll be at at least one of the openings, most likely the Beverly Center one.

Hope to see some of you there!

Well, I just recieved an email from Apple saying that the Brea Mall will have an Apple Store grand opening on Saturday the 12th. For the past two openings in Greater Los Angeles, I’ve missed due to events like the SAT test and a dragon boating contest. Nothing, I repeat, NOTHING, will get in my way of going to this one, and getting my own Apple shirt.

Anyways, enough ranting. Is there anyone that might be interested in going together? I can take a couple of friends with me. Leave a comment if you are interested, and I’ll give a confirmation if I still can take people or not.

Well, WebKit, which is essentially what Safari is, is now open source, and the newest version is the first to pass the Acid2 test!

Anyways, I find it pretty good, now that it complies to most likely all the web standards, I’ve switched back from Camino to Safari/WebKit.

You can find info on WebKit here.

Get WebKit the easy way, using NightShift. It installs WebKit for you, updates to the most recent nightly build for you if you want to, and offers you the option to revert to a previous version if the new one is too buggy, all without touching Safari.

It’s pretty good if you ask me. I’ll report back if there are any problems.

According to ifoapplestore.com, Apple stores will begin carrying Apple logo merchandise.

I myself wouldn’t mind a shirt and a hat. Hope they will have them at the Beverly Center opening.

P.S. Gah, I didn’t even know that the Company store at Cupertino sold the stuff. I went there during Christmas break, and it turned out that Apple HQ was empty, and the store wasn’t open. I should’ve went back the next day to buy some stuff.

And, sadly, I don’t think I can go.

The one at Century City was right on the day of my SAT II Physics test, so I couldn’t go. And this one at Manhattan Village falls directly on the Dragon Boating competition.

The good part is that I heard that there will be one around Beverly Hills or Hollywood somewhere, and is opening soon. Hope I can make it to that one, and join the celebration. Also to grab a free über-cool Apple T-shirt

Security Awareness for Ma, Pa and the Corporate Clueless

Here’s the rage of the internet right now. The blog of a company that switched from Wintel to Macs, including a Wintel bigot that now “sees the light”.

I find the posts interesting, and worth reading. The posts are not really biased in any way, other than the guy being pissed at Windows, causing the switch.

Oh, and, man, it feels good when a previous Win-bigot begins to see that he was wrong.

Well, I am right now at the Vegas Apple Store at Fashion Show. It looks a bit different from the “common” ones, and is actually a bit smaller than both the Pasadena and the San Diego ones I’ve been to.

Well, time to go off and have a little fun with the Dual 2.7 GHz G5 with the 30″ monitor

Today, I have just discovered Speakable Items in Mac OS X, and, man, is it *awesome*!

I just turned on Listening in your System Preferences, and my iBook began listening for voice commands. It also provided a floating palette for feedback, so I could see if it heard me. I could optionally have it listen only if a key is pressed and held, or after I say a key word, like “Computer”. There’s also a Speakable Items palette that shows the user what commands the computer knows, and one can add one’s own commands by making AppleScripts that run the command, and name it whatever you want to say to run the command, then move it to the ~/Library/Speech/Speakable\ Items/ folder

I easily made some iTunes scripts for play, pause, and other commands.

The speech recognition worked real well, and understood my commands most of the time. What really surprised me was when it understood the command “open nFoldMan” and actually started the application.

Mac OS X continues to give me wonderful surprises even after I used it for a year. And I definitely don’t regret switching.

In CompSci class, we’ve just got an assignment where we have to work on a program in Java. It can be on anything and can do anything, but has to be worth about 4-5 weeks of work.

Well, I’ve decided to do something with Cocoa, just to start getting familiar with it. But, I need some ideas for the project. Someone in our group proposed a stock simulation. I think it may be too easy if we just pull stock information off the internet, and too complex if we simulate stocks by making our own class.

Well, any ideas on how/what to do with the stocks? Or maybe some other project we can work on?

And, no, it cannot be in Objective C. The class is *Java* orientated.

*Update*: Well, the group has decided to do a Chess game instead.