One of the most powerful features of Mac OS X is not a Mac OS X specific feature but one that has been around for almost as long as *NIX operating systems but is one of the most under-utilised features of Mac OS X. It's power makes for some interesting ways of forcing software to conform to your way of storing files. This magical feature is called Aliases.

In layman's terms an alias is a shortcut but it does more than just create an icon to a file or application. The best way to describe an alias is to think of a railway junction. When a train is coming to said junction it will default to a single path, however throw a switch and the train is diverted to another path. That's the function of an alias. The beauty of an alias is that if an application such as iWeb, iPhoto, Bento, etc requires a dedicated path for a file you can create an alias in that directory to point to a file in a separate directory or even external drive or network path. This way you can keep files stored in a central location and have a number of machines connecting to the same file.

The caveat is that if you try to run the applications that require that file on multiple machines at the same time you run the risk of corrupting that file. Thankfully though many applications can lock a file so that it can't be edited by more than one person at a time.

Have we lost the ability to question? Has computing removed our ability to get the information we are really looking for?

 

My questions come from the complete waste of time that is search engines. We often resort to these when trying to find information but ninety percent of the time we get information that is so completely removed from what we want. The problem is search engines do a really bad job of searching.

It's amazing, the more I read about what Apple is planning for Snow Leopard the more I realise I've already been there.

I'm not knocking Apple but I came from where Apple is heading when I left the sadly sinking ship that was the Amiga. Everything Apple is planning to do has been done on the Amiga back in the 80's and 90's.

Let me explain. Apple is shrinking Mac OS X instead of expanding it. Effectively Apple is removing things that make it bloated namely Carbon. Carbon was designed as a quick way to get Mac OS 9 apps onto Mac OS X. Unfortunately Many developers relied on Carbon to do things that Cocoa wasn't able to do at the time. When Cocoa became more inline with what Carbon did people still didn't move to Cocoa. Now Snow Leopard apparently is removing or at least reducing functionality of Carbon which means a lot of apps need redeveloping and by which I mean most likely Office and Adobe's apps. If apps are already written in Cocoa then there will be no issues.

Well it's that time of year again when the Mac world contemplates what Apple has in store for developers. As always there's those that don't get the concept of a Developer's Conference and naturally assume that Apple is going to release updated Macs and iPhones.

The gimme is that Apple is going to fully release the SDK for iPhone as well as v2.0 of OS X which is not to be confused with Mac OS X which is the version of OS X for the Mac not the iPhone/iPod Touch. Confused yet? It's a gimme because that's what Apple said was going to happen so you don't need a degree in rocket science to figure that one... just a pair of working ears.

I'm looking forward to seeing what the SDK is going to bring in terms of native apps for the iPhone but contrary to popular belief viruses and malware are not it. If we haven't seen a rash of viruses and malware since the release of XCode what seriously is leading people to think that this is going to be the case with the iPhone SDK?

If you've been reading the news about Apple you'd know that over the last few years Apple has been hit with numerous court cases regarding patent disputes. Apple has in fact settled on some, most notably the Creative case where Creative reckoned it had the patent on the iPod's menu system.

You may remember during the launch of the iPhone Steve Jobs said Apple had patented the hell out of it. It's an interesting situation because up until this Apple hadn't really taken out a lot of patents on account of the fact that they like to just get on with the job of developing great tools (and a Mac is a tool on account of the fact it allows us to do work as opposed to a PC running Windows which tries its damnedest to prevent us from doing work). But the patent system of America has rewarded morons the ability to take Apple to court to try and milk it for money these morons don't deserve.

Some drongo managed to pass a bill in the late 90's that allowed people to patent ideas and software. While I can sort of understand the idea of patenting software the ideas thing irritates me because the very idea that someone would never have the same idea as you is somewhat arrogant in nature. Okay, I admit that I'm pretty sure no one has had the same idea as me with regards to how Hannibal Lecter's face wearing tendencies could benefit society but I come from a planet called Kashyyyk so I have a certain degree of leeway on that. But humans by nature have a tendency to invent, it's what made New Zealand a great nation in the past (although thanks to globalisation I believe we're losing those skills), and because humans are the only creatures that have the ability to think on many planes it stands to reason that two people will have the same idea as to how to achieve something. So the very idea of patenting an idea with nothing to prove the idea is dubious at best.

So on Thursday Apple supplied developers the tools to create native apps and in doing so made the iPhone and iPod Touch the next computing platform. One of the most interesting aspects of this is that both these devices can now become what Palm and Windows Mobile have failed to achieve, truly great portable platforms. Don't get me wrong, Palm and Microsoft have been around for a long while and have huge development resources but clearly have a long way to being great multipurpose tools. Don't get me wrong I love my Palm (as dodgy as that sounds) but the software available for it has left me feeling this device is going the way of the Dodo which is ironically mostly due it it's own undoing. Don't even get me started on how pathetic Windows Mobile is. But the iPhone and iPod Touch are interesting. I read on Ars Technica this gem of a quote: [quote]Jobs asserted that Flash ran too slowly on the iPhone—which is another way of saying the iPhone isn't fast enough to run Flash—and suggested that something else was needed.[/quote]

Clearly this was BEFORE the SDK launch because if the iPhone and iPod Touch can play 3D games like the one invented by Apple and Spore from EA so very well then clearly that speaks of the incompetence of  Adobe to build resource friendly apps.

My favourite app that was shown in the Event video was from a company called Epocrates. This medical app pulled of some absolutely mind blowing things all done in two weeks utilising one of the lesser known parts of Mac OS X that of SQL Lite. The app was able to store the entire database of pills within the builtin SQL Lite database meaning doctors and nurses could get all the information in one place without needing to be connected to the network. Considering the policies against cellphones in hospitals this is very handy.

Daniel over on Roughly Drafted posted his list of possible annoucements for MacWorld but the one that caught my eye the most was his idea of an XServe Mini:

http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2007/12/29/ten-big-predictions-for-apple-in-2008/

To quote him:

There's a couple of flaws in the views of Phil's. Firstly to say that the timeline allows more power is actually not true, in fact quite the opposite. While iMovie '06 does allow for a better volume adjustment, the fact that it only allows for two audio tracks + whatever audio is in the video means it is woefully inadequate.

My comments were going to be too long for the comment system so I decided to make a blog post in reply to Phil's post here:

The timeline does matter - to me and Apple!?

When Apple released iMovie '08 this year it caused one of the most vocal attacks that has ever happened in Apple history. Why? Well, Apple changed its interface so vastly it took people by surprise. It seems not many people like surprises. But is iMovie's lack of timeline really a problem and should Apple carried iMovie's interface to Final Cut Express if this is their new thinking?