Life really hates me…. mostly around tea time on a Sunday…
I’ve not been using X11 on Leopard that much but there are something I really dislike; like it absolutely have to open xterm when I launch X11, and it’s close to impossible to stop it doing so.
There is more talk about the issues on the X11 discussion list.
And some one (that is Tim Baur) have figured out how to roll back X11 to the version from Tiger. Here is one post about it.
Hey, it’s new it’s bright, and it works – kind of.
I do some web development on my Macbook Pro, and one thing I’ve found is that even though Apple decided to ship PHP5 with Leopard, they did not compile it with (as I have found until now) the following modules:
- mysqli
- gd
I can live without ‘mysqli‘, but I cannot live without gd, as it would mean that I cannot do any graphics manipulation.
Vidyut Luther have a good list of what’s in Leopard and what is not.
For PHP5 there is Entropy, but it’s not yet for Leopard, there is NAMP which looks like a better solution. But then one have to rely on their Apache installation and not the one which comes with Leopard.
I don’t know which is the worst, or the best, but both of the option annoy me, as Apple could have compiled the missing modules into PHP.
Update:
Just found that there is also XAMPP.
Well kind of, but still. I’ve had my MacBook Pro for 19months and is still quite happy about it, I’ve applied all the patches for OSX they’ve asked me to apply, and it still works (there was an issue with wireless and battery, but there was a workaround for that).
As for the hardware, I got the first battery replaced as there was something wrong with the one which it came with, and now the last couple of weeks I’ve seen that the battery charge went from 45% to 0% in a matter of minutes. So I found this technical document on their support site saying that if this and that is the case; call support….
Which I did, and now I’m getting a new battery again – for free!! how cool is that?
Update; well it turns out that the replacement battery is free, only if the new if returned within 10 days – got an email with stated that it was €102 for the battery, and after calling Apple Support again, I was told that they will only bill me if I don’t return the old battery with in 10 days, pew…..
technorati tags: MacBook Pro, battery
YES!, ehhhem no, not really, but at least it’s now possible to install maps onto ones Garmin GPS gadget from Apple OSX.
Garmin have released MapInstall for the Mac, and it’s available here.
It also includes Map Manager.
So when are we to see MapSource on the Mac??? it’s almost a year and a half ago they told us that it would be at the end of 2006, and now we are getting close to the end of 2007 and still nothing.
Well this is better than nothing.
technorati tags: Apple OSX, MapInstall, MapSource
There have been reports that AirPort in Apple MacBook’s and MacBook Pro’s stops working after applying OSX Security Update 2007-007 (10.4.10 Universal).
I did not have it initially, and only saw it when I was using my MBP on battery, and it’s even worse some people as they get kernel panics.
Mine even got worse after I installed the AirPort update AirPort Extreme Update 2007-004.
But lucky us, someone have figured out how to downgrade the AirPort driver, to the one prior to 10.4.10, read about what to do here.
Please be advised that this could render your computer useless….
As a follow up on my comments in “Five crucial things the Linux community doesn’t understand about the average computer userâ€, I saw a reference to this interview with Con Kolivas on /., who until recently was the maintainer of the -ck tree (linux kernel patch tree).
Even though people are already trying to bash each other with nifty comments about why, or why not Con is right in his statements.
There is one thing in this interview with stands out, and make the whole thing interesting. He did try, and he failed, for me (well I’m just a nobody) it looks like some of the kernel developers (sorry I’m not one of them, and I have to admit that most of them are very good at what they do) lack the perspective to be able to understand that they might not be doing the right thing – even if they actually are.
Many yeas ago I got my diploma as a software developer, and one of the things I learned doing that, is that the end user is always right (could also be the customer), that is as long as they do not want something which is obviously stupid.
Now we have a bunch of desktop users who would like to use GNU/Linux, but find that they a) lack support for their hardware b) they have the latest and brightest (which works), but still they don’t get the bang for their money. Well in that case, maybe the people who are responsible for what ever part of the kernel should have a look at it – yes the user might be wrong, and will be told off, but what if there is something wrong, can we afford that it does not get fixed?
In my humble opinion, we cannot afford to ignore the end user no matter how annoying it can be annoying to be told that ones code is rubbish by someone who doesn’t even know anything about programming……
technorati tags: Con Kolivas
I wrote “The end of the Mac roadâ€???, as a response to Ian Betteridge, now it seams that things have happened in “choose your OS” world….
Adrian Kingsley-Hughes from ZDnet have written a comment to “why does people still use Windows” discussion.
First installment: Five crucial things the Linux community doesn’t understand about the average computer user, second installment and follow up: Three more things that the Linux community doesn’t get.
The sad thing is that he is mostly right, how do you convince anyone to change to something they do not know anything, and btw. cannot promise that it will work.
Over the years I’ve have many and quite intense discussions with both sides of the fence so to say (I can be quite good at playing the devil advocate).
And what I have found is that, for the common user it is most of the time it’s ease of use which is the main thing, and there after applications, most people do not mind OpenOffice>, FireFox, and Thunderbird, but they want their OS to work – that is with all the weird hardware addons they can buy in the local hardware store.
For the corporate user; it a different story all together, companies mostly rely on applications which are not available for any other OS than the one they use. Sometimes they can get around it and move the applications to a web based solution, but that is not always the case, and in some cases that does not even help, as some web applications require Microsoft Internet Explorer (version x.xx, and not y.yy, with Microsoft JVM, and not Sun JVM, and specifically not IBM JVM).
As Adrian points out, there is a huge thing which most advocates for OpenSource sometime forget; Support (not only the free variant), no one is willing to pay for support, that is the end user, corporations know that they need it, I know that for RedHat and Novell SuSE (SuSE Linux Enterprise Desktop) provide pay for support, and if one buys a box distribution for specifically for consumers there might be 90 days phone installation support, but it is not always the case (correct me if I’m wrong). And in most cases the support is based on installation only, not support for X usb device, or Y harddisk controler.
Then we are back at “what does Microsoft provide”, not much I’m afraid, but most hardware works with Microsoft (they probably sponsor hardware vendors), and “everyone knows Windows“, which means that if you buy into the Microsoft family you know that the next door neighbor probably will have a 15 year old kid who can help you for a small amount of money, or just for the kick of helping you out.
So what do we have left; we don’t want Microsoft Windows, and we cannot really get people to use GNU/Linux as it not ready for consumer use (I’m playing the devils advocate here), well there is Apple, they have a nifty thing called OSX (pronounced: OS 10), which is Unix, with a (in my eyes) cool graphical interface, it works, and in many cases it’s very stable. Yes there might be some issues with hardware addon’s and other things, but in general terms it works. As Adrian points out you pay for it, it’s not being sold separately so you’ll have to by the hardware from Apple for a fairly high price – read: you buy in to Apple, and stay there, well that is a truth with modifications, these days you can run Microsoft Windows on your Mac (and also Linux), so do as the Apple PC looks cool – a very expensive way to look cool, but we all have our faults.
Back to the question of GNU/Linux, well it have come a long way, someone pointed out to me the other week that Microsoft Windows 1.x wasn’t that workable either, and that it have come a long way – yes it have, and yes it does work in an environment where everyone plays by the rules, that is follow the standards, do not use any extensions which a specific to one OS only, then GNU/Linux will work just fine, and when ever the Graphic Card vendors get around to write drivers which are working, then things would be even better. But we do not live in a perfect world (wouldn’t that be nice), so we have to adapt. I use GNU/Linux on one desktop as I have applications which only run on that, and I use Microsoft Windows when I need Microsoft Internet Explorer, and mostly I use OSX as that is the common nominator where most of everything works (in some way, with a bit help), and because I still have a terminal which can do what I need.
I wrote this on my Macbook Pro, using Firefox, sitting on my balcony – how cool is that:-)
As I was reading Slashdot I saw a link to this article on LinuxWorld AU about driver support on GNU/Linux, and it seams that things a moving forward on that issue.
And I did not even get around to moan about stability, viruses, and what ever other nasty things are out there, and why it’s “GNU/Linux” and not “Linux”.
technorati tags: Ian Betteridge, OpenSource, OSX, Apple, GNU/Linux, Linux