OS X will rule the world

by raneko

Ten Myths of Apple’s iPad: 10. It needs Mac OS X
[Via RoughlyDrafted Magazine]

Daniel Eran Dilger Here’s segment ten in my series taking on iPad myths: no the iPad doesn’t need to run Mac OS X. Ten Myth of Apple’s iPad: 1. It’s just a big iPod touch Ten Myth of Apple’s iPad: 2. iPad needs Adobe Flash Ten Myths of Apple’s iPad: 3. It’s ad-evil Ten Myths of Apple’s iPad: 4. It [...]

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I have loved reading Daniel’s work for a long time. This column has some of the best reasoning explaining why the Mac OS can be found on such a wide range of very popular devices while other OS, such as Windows or Linux, simply are not successful.

It is a great demonstration of why creating a ‘best of breed’ product can provide a more resilient item than trying to just get something that works. MS has always been this way, bolting Windows onto DOS, or onto a mobile DOS. It’s one attempt to create an all new OS, Windows NT, simply was unable to remove the stranglehold Windows has, even within MS.

Apple consistently removes the barriers legacy software and hardware put in its way. MS has really never found such a path, opting for the easy approach of simply bolting on a new veneer onto old technology.

While Apple, because it started with the idea of having the best, not the just good enough, has an OS that is flexible enough to change with the world without too much disruption.

Because the world will always change. Apple can adapt but MS seems to always have some problems.

Our everlasting fight against bacteria

by BertBeckers

Rising Threat of Infections Unfazed by Antibiotics
[Via NYT > Health]

A minor-league pitcher in his younger days, Richard Armbruster kept playing baseball recreationally into his 70s, until his right hip started bothering him. Last February he went to a St. Louis hospital for what was to be a routine hip replacement.

By late March, Mr. Armbruster, then 78, was dead. After a series of postsurgical complications, the final blow was a bloodstream infection that sent him into shock and resisted treatment with antibiotics.

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As I wrote yesterday, our use of antibiotics is probably making bacteria much better are getting around all the different barriers we put up. Now we have bacteria we have not been targeting with antibiotics causing problems.

INterestingly, the report comments on several people who were able to fight off the infection.

Our immune systems protect us against infection by being adaptive, changing our response depending on how the infectious agent adapts. Perhaps we should also look at finding ways to enhance our immune responses.

The other thing is for hospitals to do a better job with their own sanitation procedures. Lack of proper hand washing and cleansing is a big problem.

The publishers should be the frantic ones, not Apple or Amazon

by austinevan

Amazon frantically phoned publishers as Steve Jobs unveiled iPad
[Via AppleInsider]

Apple chief executive Steve Jobs was still standing on stage addressing an auditorium full of media reps last month when higher-ups at Amazon began phoning publishers in an effort to extract details on the deals they were given to supply content on the new iPad device he was touting.



The move came as the online retailer and eBook reader pioneer was pressing its publisher partners to agree to long-term licensing deals that would guarantee Amazon Kindle owners would always be afforded the lowest possible price for content, in exchange for publishers seeing higher revenues from each sale, according to the New York Times.

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This just creates such wonderful visions in my head. Because this means that two smart companies, Apple and Amazon, are going to compete head-to-head but will keep the publishers caught in the middle.

Just like the record companies, and the movie companies, and the TV companies, the print media will try to exercise control and keep their high-priced models around (Who will really spend as much for an ebook as for the real thing?) I expect the smart guys at Apple and Amazon, who understand much more the new world we inhabit, to run rings around these guys.

And, just like with digital MP3 downloads, they will have large effects on what we get to download, even as it turns out when all the dust settle, that Amazon and Apple were really not head-to-head after all. That is, they sell similar things in slightly different ays and to different people.

In the end, the customer is the one who wins. As it should when capitalism works correctly.

Guessing voices

How Well Do You Know Celebrity Commercial Voices?

[Via TV Squad]

There are a lot more celebrities doing voice overs than you might think. Sure, we can all instantly recognize David Duchovny when he plugs dog food, but there are a lot of other celebrities doing ads and you probably don’t even realize it as you’re watching the commercials (if you still watch commercials and don’t speed through them on DVR).

TV.com has a quiz to see if you can guess which voice is on various commercials (don’t read the comments on that page because they give away some of the answers). They show you the commercials and then you type in the actual name of the person (no multiple choice with this quiz, sorry).

A few of the voices will be familiar to you right away while some of them are going to leave you scratching your head a bit. I only got six out of fifteen, though all of the voices sounded familiar to me. I’m really angry at myself for missing number three…

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This was a fun quiz. I did pretty well, considering they did not use some of the easiest ones, such as Donald Sutherland. Give it a try. A nice relaxing thing to do on a Saturday.

Apps on the desktop

by sciondriver

Former Apple Senior Engineer says OS X could adopt Front-Row-style iPhone OS implementation in future version | Cult of Mac
[Via Cult of Mac]

After January 27th’s unveiling of the iPad, it became abundantly clear that Apple has meaningful plans for iPhone OS outside of the smartphone arena. In fact, given the App Store’s runaway success, it’s just good business sense for Apple to try to get iPhone apps on as many devices as possible: not just phones, portable media players and tablets, but more traditional laptop and desktop machines as well.

The question is, then, when will OS X and iPhone OS begin to converge? When will OS X become compatible with iPhone OS?

In a recent New York Times blog post, Nick Bilton examines this very question, and talks to a former senior Apple Engineer to get to the bottom of whether or not iPhone apps could run natively on OS X one day.

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iPhone Apps on the Mac. I wonder just how useful those would be. They would definitely need to multitask. It would certainly open up a lot of possibilities.

I guess some of the apps could be pretty big. Lots more memory and real estate to deal with. It would be interesting to see what comes up.

The idea of getting some pretty nice bits of software for 10s of dollars instead of hundreds is appealing also.

DNA is not everything and could be misleading

DNA links Everett man to second cold-case slaying
[Via The Seattle Times: Local News]

A 73-year-old Everett man arrested by Seattle police in connection with a cold-case murder from 1972 was ordered held without bail Friday during a brief hearing that the ailing defendant declined to attend.

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DNA’s Dirty Little Secret
[Via Political Animal]

DNA’S DIRTY LITTLE SECRET…. Is DNA evidence, a forensic tool known for exonerating the innocent, being used to put them behind bars? That’s what lawyer and journalist Michael Bobelian argues in the new issue of Washington Monthly. DNA has a…

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Too many people think that DNA is total proof. Read the comments to the Seattle Times article. They have already convicted the guy and want him dead.

But read the second article and discover how the statistics they so often use to try and make DNA testing sound so strong can simply fall apart when looking at cold cases where the DNA is the only evidence.

Degraded DNA. Incomplete markers. These rapidly reduce the statistics. If there is a 1 in a million chance of something and you search for it in a database of 10 million people, chances are you will find several matches just by random chance.

So, if they search a database of 333,000, they have a 1 in 3 chance of finding someone just by random. If there is nothing else to put the person at the scene of the crime, should they be convicted by a 1 in 3 chance?

The prosecutor himself said that there were 18 other people in California at the time that would have the same DNA profile. So, if they had a database of everyone in California, they would have had 18 suspects.

Lucky for them they had a much smaller database.

The horrible thing is that the defense lawyers are often prevented from bringing this point up. They also are often not permitted to do independent tests because all of the original sample was used up in the first test.

How in the world can someone be put in prison e=because of faulty statistics, a fact that they are not even allowed to present in their defense.

Apple versus Flash

★ Yet More on the Unfolding Future-of-Flash-and-the-Web Saga
[Via Daring Fireball]

I love this whole unfolding future-of-Flash saga because it’s a wonderful mix of politics and technology. It’s complex and multivariate, but not too complex to get a handle on the basic gist. It occurred to me this week, after both reading and writing quite a bit regarding Flash Player’s performance issues, that the whole performance angle is a distraction from the fundamental issues at hand.

I linked to this piece by Jeffrey Zeldman three weeks ago, but it’s worth a re-link. His first paragraph nails it:

Lack of Flash in the iPad (and before that, in the iPhone) is a win for accessible, standards-based design. Not because Flash is bad, but because the increasing popularity of devices that don’t support Flash is going to force recalcitrant web developers to build the semantic HTML layer first. Additional layers of Flash UX can then be optionally added in, just as, in proper, accessible, standards-based development, JavaScript UX enhancements are added only after we verify that the site works without them.

I.e. if you think people using iPhone OS devices are an important segment of your intended audience, you can no longer build a Flash-dependent web site. (And if you don’t think people using iPhone OS devices are an important segment of your intended audience, you’re probably wrong.)

Flash’s performance problems on Mac OS X and mobile devices are very much real. (As of today, note that there still is no shipping version of the full Flash Player for any major mobile platform.) And I do think these performance issues are a factor in Apple’s decision not to include it in iPhone OS. But I believe the larger issue goes beyond performance. Apple sees the web as a platform based on open standards. Flash isn’t part of that.

So at the moment, Flash’s performance issues provide Apple with a good apolitical explanation for why Flash Player isn’t included with iPhone OS. It’s a way for Apple to argue that they can’t rather than that they won’t.

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Flash appears to have some real problems for mobile devices. And using it on touch screens seems to offer some further difficulties. Adobe is a smart company. Can they come up with something that works before HTML5 takes over?

And i think this point is the heart of the matter.

From Apple’s perspective, when it comes to software platforms, theirs is best (Cocoa/Cocoa Touch), because they have complete control. Everyone’s is good (the web), because Apple has control over their own implementation and can influence the future direction of the standards. What Apple doesn’t want is someone else’sproprietary platform, where they have no control at all. That’s what Flash is.

Flash is one of the major proprietary bits of the web that Apple has no ability to control the implementation. That is what really concerns Apple, and probably should concern most companies.

If your ability to provide the best experience for your customers is dependent on what another company decides to do, you should be concerned.