C'est plein d'Étoiles ...

Now that I'm done obsessing about how soon my MacBook will get to me, it's time to turn to something else to look forward. Luckily for my OCD afflicted mind, the Étoilé team have announced 3 days ago that a new version will be available on the 31st (of this month) with hopefully an easy to install set of packages for the popular Linux distributions. Which is a pretty cool news for me, since I still have a PC (as in IBM clone) at home on which I'd love to put something that look modern (unlike, ahem ... GNUStep) and yet use the very same paradigms that I have been getting use to recently (OpenStep/Cocoa and Objective-C). This could allow for some pretty neafty cross-platform apps.

I meant no offense to GNUStep, of course. It's great to be able to copy code across from a Mac and have it compile and run on Linux (as long as you stay away from things too Mac specific such as Core Graphics). The problem is that the UI layer (NeXTStep's look&feel) is very dated (to say the least). That's why Étoilé is such an interesting project (which btw is not limited to just providing a new UI front-end).

Now, what will be über cool, it's to run that environment on top of PureDarwin, the newest attempt to bring Darwin to the non-Mac users :-)

MacBooking

So the MacBook I ordered back on the 15th finally made it to Vancouver this past Friday after a 7 days journey which took it from the banks of the Yangtze river to the Kansai region, then across the Pacific ocean to Alaska, Kentucky, Ontario, Aberta and finally British Columbia ... Way to keep the carbon footprint low there, UPS 9_9

Anyhow ... So far, I'm extremely pleased with the new MacBook. I was a bit worry when I got home Friday, that I may experience some of the issues I had heard about on the MacRumors.com's forums, but luckily non applied (dead pixels, loose battery cover, scratches, bent screen) to my unit (so far at least). In fact, I'm more than pleased: I love it! .. and for the following simple reasons:

• Small and yet very usable
• Sturdy and stylish (feel like a slab of metal)
  
• Nice screen (yeah there some reflections but it's not really a major issue for me at least ...)
• Great battery life
• Nice keyboard
  

Now, it's not (yet) all lovy dovy:

• Hang on me a couple of time
  
• Can't seems to be able to get the # character, it keep showing up as £ (WTF?)
  
• Plugged an external-screen to it and the MacBook display froze (it was still working but the unit own display wasn't, not was the external display)
• The trackpad is tricky to use (maybe that's just me)
  

Okay, we get it Apple ...

Like many people, I find the Get a Mac ads that Apple have been running since 2006, amusing. Poking fun of Windows and Microsoft while showing the many advantages of the Mac, was a great idea ... The problem is that lately the ads have been solely bullying Vista without showing anything that is related to how the Mac works nor make things easier for its users. Unless I'm mistaken, the last ads to have been really on the subject was "Office Stress", announcing the release of the new version of Office for Mac ... that's 10 ads ago. One may argue that "Off the Air" was kinda on the subject too (4 ads ago) ... but not really. Sure it's great that the Genius in the store can help transfer files from PC to Mac when switching, but that's no big deal (in my books at least).

October 20th, 1997

Today is a big day for the few of us for which this matter ... 11 years ago, to the day, the last of the Apple's Newton (MessagePad 2100) was introduced. Until I got my iPod touch back in June of this year, my trusty Newton had been my main PDA since March 1998. It is by far the oldest piece of technology I own that is still in working order (followed by my old Vaio laptop runing BeOS).

Even tough I like very much the new Apple's mobile platform, I still think that the Newton is, in many ways, still ahead of anything else when it comes to low-power, mobile software usage. I know it's hard to beleive if you have never used one ...

Prepared for Shipment ...

Ok, I'm bound to look somewhat silly (as usual), since just a few days ago, I was mostly hostile towards the new supposed look of the Apple's notebook. I changed my mind and ordered the 2.4Ghz MacBook ... The notebook looked much better during the event and on Apple's official pictures, than it did on the leaked shots ... and this new version is more than ever more akin to a small MacBook Pro than the old MacBook. Since I was on the market to replace our aging iBook G3 ... it looked like a very good deal and the reviews so far are mainly (very) positive. Can't wait to hold it in my arms! ... err, I mean start using it!

Pre Apple event blues ...

I have been holding out on replacing my old iBook (2003) with a MacBook (Pro?) since there was a rumor (confirmed last week) of a refreshment of the line. As usual, rumors have gone wild over the couple of days leading to today's event. The latest round of spy-like activities, spured some fuzzy pictures of what is rumored to be the new MacBook Pro ... And I sure hope this is a fake, 'cause I don't like what I see, nor what I read about some models of the line been left un-touched by the update. What kind of #%&@ed-up update will that be?? ... Maybe I should grab one of the current MBP at my local Best Buy before they get replaced by a mobile version of the iMac ...

@superfluous #2

While I'm in whining mood these days (so it seems), let's me talk about a part of Objective-C which I don't like too much: the lack of namespace. This has a unfortunate effect on the way Cocoa can be confusing at time simply because in order to avoid name collision, everyone is prefixing his stuff with some kind of 2 to 3 letters abbreviation. For example, Apple have been using NS since back in the NeXTSTEP days and thus everything in Cocoa is prefixed as such (e.g NSApplication, NSController ...). And this is the problem since at first glance, there is no easy way to tell what a particular keyword is, unless you already know about it. For example, is NSPoint a class? No, it's a structure. NSNumber? a class, NSInteger? a type ... 9_9

Since namespaces are a relatively recent addition to C++, the fact that is missing from Objective-C isn't much of a surprise. However, one may wonders why it has still not been added. In any case, this is somewhat irrelevant, since it is unlikely that Apple will go over Cocoa (and other framework such as Foundation) and make use of some Cocoa namespace; braking everyone code in the process. Alas, something like NS::TInteger, NS::CNumber will have make the developers life a little easier ...

Like our Hungarian friends like to said: A little prefixing can go a long way ...