OS X Mountain Lion Out Tomorrow 230
Apple revealed in its third quarter earnings release today that OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion will be released tomorrow, July 25th. "As a quick recap, the $19.99 software update brings a handful of iOS features to Macs, including the notes and reminders apps. It adds a few other things, like Twitter integration, Apple's Game Center and iMessage services. There's also a new security feature called Gatekeeper, designed to fend off malware by controlling what applications can and cannot be installed." The release also noted that iOS 6 will be coming out this fall, and that the company sold 17 million iPads in the third quarter, up 84% from sales in the third quarter of last year.
Mac vs. the Linux Desktop (Score:4, Insightful)
We keep replacing our desktop environment every once in a while, now recently with Unity/GNOME3. Have we actually gone anywhere? At the same time OS X is in many ways very similar to the original Mac interface almost 30 years ago.
Can the Linux desktop survive that long?
Re:Wifi (Score:5, Insightful)
After upgrading to Lion, my 2008 iMac suddenly started dropping the wifi connection periodically, while my 2010 MacBook Air is rock stable. Anyhow, that's my experience. Anyhow, we'll need a bigger sample in order to determine if Macs really have more wifi-issues than Windows computers. Statistics matters.
Re:Wifi (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you telling me the GP paid a not-insignificant markup for a luxury, premium laptop which proponents will consistently reiterate is made of superior parts and Just Works(c), and it's flawed?
In related news, there's a BMW repair shop near my house. There's a difference between "well made" and "magically impervious to any kind of damage or defect imaginable".
Re:GateKeeper eh (Score:5, Insightful)
As long as Apple keeps it simple enough for people who know what they're doing to install and use software outside of the Mac App Store, it's my opinion that an OS X "walled garden" is a hugely excellent feature for the majority of users.
Upgrading immediately is a BAD idea. (Score:2, Insightful)
I "upgraded" from Snow Leopard to Lion at the urging of a friend who had it already and
that upgrade has been an unmitigated disaster. I then spent many hours getting things
which had "just worked" working again. The loss of productivity which resulted was significant.
Snow Leopard was stable, and did everything I needed to do.
Lion includes a bunch of iOS mimicry which is a stupid mistake and which makes me
regret being an Apple user because it feels like I have been duped into thinking I was
buying great design when I have been hoodwinked into buying consumer-level crap.
Apple's attempt at forcing the merging of iOS device and laptop interface design is
beyond merely annoying ; it has degraded the usefulness of my machine in a permanent
manner and there is no fix short of going back to Snow Leopard.
There will be no further "upgrades" for me, not when reduced functionality at the expense
of satisfying the idiotic design decision which makes my high-end laptop act like an
iPad.
I may be a bit premature but I think this is the beginning of the end of Apple's run of
making great operating systems and great laptops ( glued-in battery ? No thanks ! )
Tim Cook is going to be famous for leading Apple into the abyss.
Mark my words.
Re:GateKeeper eh (Score:5, Insightful)
There are three settings to Gatekeeper.
First is the walled garden - Mac App Store apps *only*.
Second is the default secure - Mac App Store apps AND verified developer ID signed apps. The latter is a program where developers buy a signing cert from Apple, then the developer can sign anything with it. Just like the current code signing certificate Microsoft has, except the OS enforces the signature.
Third is the "full open" mode - any valid executable can run. Developers probably will use this mode to avoid needing to get a signing certificate (and we'd hope developers are smart enough to not click on any random executable that comes their way...).
The second is default because there are a whole class of programs that cannot work under the Mac App Store. First - the Mac App Store has a limit of $999.99 as the maximum price - some programs cost more than that (e.g., AutoCAD 2012 vs. AutoCAD 2012LE (which IS on the Mac App Store)). Second - big names don't want to be subject to the Mac App Store terms - they want to do things their own way. You know, a little company called Adobe who makes a little-used program call Photoshop. Or a tiny Washington-based company who makes an insignificant productivity suite they called Office.
Finally, another reason is utilities - disk defragmenters, disk repair tools, data recovery suites, even things like hardware drivers cannot be done via the Mac App Store - they must be distributed separately.
Hell, developers cannot distribute a DEMO version of their app via Mac App Store - they have to host those themselves.
I think for a good 60% of users, the Mac App Store is all they need. For another 35% the default setting is perfect, and the last 5% are hopefully smart enough to be the ones to turn it off completely and not do stupid things.
As for the signing requirement - well, a developer can't sign any old binary as their name is attached to it. If they sign some malware, it won't be long until said certificate is revoked by Apple and all apps signed by that developer stop working (until overridden by the last option, or they approve the app again). So developers have an interest in not signing everything.
Heck, Firefox did the smart thing and got TWO certificates - release builds are signed with one, and nightly builds and such are auto-signed with the other. This prevents the revokation of one key from disrupting firefox development.
Re:ML drops support for my perfectly capable Mac P (Score:5, Insightful)
See, here's the thing you're missing. You have a fully functional machine which is running an OS more than 5 years newer than it, and it's doing it just fine. Lion will continue to work on it and be patched for the foreseeable future, and most software will run on it as well. What obligation does Apple have towards you? Did they sell you a machine that promised more than 5 years of updates? Or did they promise EFI64, which is what's needed to boot ML? (hint: they didn't [wikipedia.org]). They sold you a 64-bit workstation, and you got a 64-bit workstation, and you've had no trouble upgrading the OS twice.
Via hacks and other messy stuff, you might be able to get it to work, and I expect directions will be available shortly and relatively straightforward, but it's hard to blame Apple for not wanting to mess up the experience. They seem happy to allow "hacks" to extend their product's functionality, but they're not really the kind of company to give you enough rope to hang yourself with, which is how they keep their reputation that anything "Apple-sanctioned" "just works"