Lunchtime notes, CFP day 1

Posted on

Quote of the day, from a T-shirt sported here: “Every time Linux is booted, a penguin gets his wings.”

Opening speech this morning from Senator Leahy, from the great state that will not apologize for its cheese. Full text available here, shorter: “Security good. Privacy good. I’ll elide my role in passing legislation that eroded the latter and didn’t do much for the former. The Bush administration went too far. We need more hearings, discussion, and bipartisanship.” Before passing more laws eroding privacy (Jeff addendum).

More shortly from a panel discussing federal regulation.

My day at the NSA

Posted on

You know it’s an interesting day when you start at the National Security Agency and end at Public Citizen.

Today was the first day of CFP2006, and my first activity was the guided tour of the NSA. Or so we thought. Our first stop was at the entrance to the barbed wire fences that surround the NSA parking lot, where security boarded the bus to check the IDs of 50 privacy advocates. We were then warned to leave behind all cameras and electronics on the bus, especially cell phones and pagers, before going to the Visitor’s Center.

nsa.jpgI was towards the rear of the line (having a cigarette and vaguely wondering if a Zippo was a weapon), so I didn’t get to see the inside of the Visitor’s Center before the front of the line was sent back out—we actually hadn’t been cleared to be visitors. So we all tromped back to the bus, with a quick pause while another attendee grabbed a few telephoto shots of the Death Star building through the inner line of fencing.

I was left to wonder about the security precautions for the Visitor’s Center. You can’t see it in this Wikipedia shot; it’s a small building in the center of the parking lot, below the lower right of the photo here. It’s completely separate from the main building; I’ve been closer to the interior of the White House standing on Pennsylvania Avenue. So why are cell phones forbidden? My best guesses are: 1) greater concerns over Nokia bombers than shoe bombers; 2) just because; and 3) it makes (most) visitors feel really special to be seen as security risks, or reassures them about NSA security. As critical as I am of the NSA, I would generally give them the credit not to have anything in the Visitor’s Center too sensitive to be near a camera or an open phone line. I hope.

In any case, we tromped back aboard the bus, drove back out through the barbed wire, past the Shell station (20 cents a gallon cheaper than in DC), and to the National Cryptologic Museum, where we were supposed to be in the first place. “Can we bring our gadgets?” “Bring anything you like, this time.”

vigilancepark.jpgSuitably equipped with implements of destruction, we were all treated to a fine tour of the museum. We had already seen National Vigilance Park on the drive over, a re-creation of three planes that had been shot down during intelligence missions over the years. Those engagements, as well as others that cost the lives of NSA personnel, are commemorated in Memorial Hall, the first room we saw.

We were then conducted into a treasure trove of geek mathematical history, including a collection of Enigma machines and the Bombe that was used to decode them. An Enigma on display is exposed, so you can type in whatever you like and see the lights flash on as it is encrypted. I asked our guide how much they had to do to keep it working. He said, “It just works. We have 50,000 visitors a year, and kids love to bang on it. Every once in a while we have to change the light bulbs.” The machine continues to be battery powered, as per its original design, and could still serve as a 35-pound spy laptop.

The tour discussed the breaking of WWII German and Japanese codes, the security of the equivalent American codes after 1943 (which were used through the early 60s), and showed an array of fascinating artifacts from throughout the 20th century.

Almost. The notable thing about the NCM is that history ends in 1972 or so. If there’s anything there regarding satellites or the Internet, I missed it. Certainly nothing regarding wiretapping or other present-day issues. And of course, one wouldn’t necessarily expect to see such things at a museum that’s meant to give a positive impression of the Agency.

Which it does, and which is largely deserved. I recommend the NCM to history and technology buffs alike, and the underlying message—that the NSA has a history of serving its country well and with sacrifice—is worth repeating. Which is perhaps why one might regret that its present day actions are not similarly untarnished. I look forward to visiting the museum again in 2036 to see what it says then.

Postscript: as we were driving into the NSA, a wave of laughter passed through the bus because one of the cars there had a vanity license plate which was very amusing in the context of the NSA. I had originally intended to include it here, but I thought twice about it. Certainly, if this person does not want it widely known that he works at the NSA, his choice of vanity plates (and his parking near the visitors’ entrance) is extremely unwise. And yet… someone knows this plate and knows who drives that car. Perhaps that someone shouldn’t know where that car is driven to. So I’ll refrain from passing along the joke, just in case.

Twain. Mencken. Colbert.

Posted on

Who says there’s nothing entertaining on C-SPAN? Tune in to Stephen Colbert’s address to the White House Correspondent’s Association dinner for the most scathing satire I’ve heard in many years. Co-starring Helen Thomas as the Terminator.

The video is in two parts — the video itself is SFW, but the site that hosts it may have some, er, interesting stills on the rest of the page. Part one, part two.

jeff@themovies: Protocols of Zion (2005)

Posted on

A few years ago, I attended a conference in Europe where one of the participants was an Egyptian graduate student. As it turned out, she was also an outspoken anti-Semite, as we found out shortly after she made the mistake of assuming that the redheaded guy from Texas was a safe person to talk to. Apparently in Egypt there are no Jewish redheads.

In the space of about an hour, those of us at the conference who were Jewish became palpably aware of it, both in ourselves and in our acquaintances. It’s not that we suddenly distrusted the goyim—in fact, the universal rejection of this woman’s beliefs at an international conference was highly encouraging—but for an American who happens to be Jewish, it was a sudden reminder that others see me as a Jew who happens to be American, should they happen to care.

At the end of that conference, I had a long conversation with one of its organizers, who had been hidden during World War II from Nazi sympathizers. He is secular and (so far as I know) staunchly agnostic, but he’s from a Jewish family, and he would have died at the age of six if a few dozen people hadn’t given him a place to be. During this conversation, I commented that as an American, I think of anti-Semitism as a largely historical artifact.

He responded, in essence, that I had the luxury of believing this because I was young and naive, and that I lived in a place that temporarily allowed me to remain ignorant. If I were lucky, I could remain so, but he didn’t expect this would happen.

This experience has informed my view of both Judaism and anti-Semitism since, and it’s with this in mind that I think every Jew should be required to watch the HBO documentary Protocols of Zion. I think it’s a fairly important movie for everyone in the anti-hate community, Jewish or gentile, but for us it’s compulsory. Especially for those of us living in urban areas where being Jewish is so common that we forget for years at a time that it makes us different. Separate. Apes and pigs, in the words of one three-year-old interviewed in the documentary.

The thing about being Jewish is that we forget that it’s not us who decides whether it matters. I’ve been called a kike from time to time, but so far as I know I’ve never been discriminated against, nor do I think it’s in the least bit likely. But cultures have a way of changing course, and I note how simple it has been to flare up anti-Muslim hatred in the last five years. It seems to me to be a short step from hating the followers of Allah to hating the followers of, well, the same God but without the Jesus part. It’s something I think about when evangelicals use the language of religion in the pursuit of political office. It’s something I think about when I hear hateful, and sometimes justifiable, things being said about Israel in regards to their Palestinian policies.

In 1990, I got lost on the Leningrad subway, and a local who spoke English escorted me halfway across town and spoke with me for nearly an hour. I introduced myself as an American. He introduced himself as a Jew. He planned to emigrate to Israel, where he would then be regarded as Russian, and probably persecuted for that. He was teaching his children self-defense, because the one thing he knew is that they would be in many fights at schools in both countries.

He didn’t decide that he was a member of something Other. That was done for him. And while I still think it ludicrous that my own ancestry might ever do the same to me here, history has a tendency of surprising the hell out of many people who felt the same way I do.

Protocols of Zion is available on Cinemax on Demand through May 10th.

About the Cult of Macintosh

Posted on

You can rapidly judge whether an argument is emotional or rational by the amount of backstory that’s necessary to justify it.

This argument will require a lot of backstory.

I’m replying to Brian’s Being All That Apple Can Be essay here, and I can already tell that I’ll spend as much time talking about the “Apple community” and my experience working with Apples (dating back to 1981 or so) as I am going to discuss these nifty new machines that can boot Windows. In fact, in this essay, the Mac community is all I have room to discuss.

We’re Not Zealots, We’re Fanatics

The first thing I’d like to address is the term “zealot”. Yes, Apple users are, well, emotionally involved with their computers. Actually, all computer users are emotionally involved with their computers, and if you don’t think so, then you’ve never seen an undergraduate have a breakdown in a computer lab when his senior thesis got eaten by a power surge.

We’re all human (most of us, anyway), and we anthropomorphize the technologies we rely on. We name our cars. We customize our cell phones. And we chant reassuring incantations to our computers to encourage them to do what we want.

What differentiates Apple users from the superset of all computer users is that we attach our pet concepts to the brand name. I doubt that there’s any computer user on the planet who hasn’t verbally attacked his computer—brand name notwithstanding—when it foiled his plans for the day. But what Apple users have noticed is that we seem to say nice things to our computers more often than the rest of you.

Perhaps that’s no longer true. Perhaps there are thousands of Windows XP users out there who have named their laptop “Strawberry” and who sing metaphorical lullabies to it when it goes to sleep. All I can say is that I haven’t met those people, but I meet their Apple counterparts on a daily basis.

The vast majority of my interaction with “average” computer users is at Starbucks and other public Wifi points. All I can report on is this anecdotal experience. There was once a time when I would frequently be the only Apple user in the store. Today that ratio is closer to 50% or greater. Apple users talk to each other; the glowing bat-signal on the case is a beacon that invites conversation. I’ve seen this rarely with Palm users; never with Windows laptops.

The distinction between zealots and fanatics is that zealots are engaged in religious battles. Fanatics have reasons, however tenuous, for their devotion. The Apple community does have its zealots, no question; arguably, this dynamic was created when the zealots of the 1980s believed that any computer with a graphic interface was a “toy”. But most of us do stick with Apple for sound reasons, and most of us do note when Apple makes a misstep.

Our Relation to the Mothership

There’s no doubt that most computer companies do not have users sticking decals on their cars. Few non-Mac users ever cared about the loss of graphic doodads on their computers like we noted the discontinuation of the rainbow Apple and the happy Mac.

But we also remember, and not with fondness, John Scully and Gil Amelio. We remember the proliferation of beige boxes with incomprehensible numbers and completely different architectures. We remember the twelve different versions of System 7.

Which is why we treat Steve Jobs like a demigod: not because he is the head of Apple, but because he remade Apple into the company we wanted it to be.

And what do we want it to be? Brian accuses us as follows:

Among the most brand-loyal consumers on the planet, the Zealots believe that Apple is a different kind of company.  Nicer.  Purer.  Out for something more than generating profit for its shareholders.  Out to make the world a better place.  The only company on the planet that would willingly forego something profitable for something “cool.” The Luke Skywalker to Microsoft’s Darth Vader. The Ben & Jerry’s of personal computing.

This is almost entirely accurate. Apple isn’t alone in this, either; Ben & Jerry’s does quite nicely on its own corporate benevolence policies, and there are even organizations that promote the idea that turning a profit should not be the be-all and end-all of a corporation, as heretical as that might seem in the halls of Wharton.

Where it is inaccurate is the belief that we don’t care whether Apple turns a profit. You can’t go out today and buy a Timex/Sinclair, or an Amiga, or a SpectraVideo, despite the fact that each of these computers had some rather nifty features. If Apple collapses as a company, then the day comes when we can’t go out and buy a Macintosh. I am seriously invested in using Macintoshes; this is something I care about.

But let’s explore the idea of “cool” for a moment. No, Apple didn’t invent the GUI, but Apple did popularize it. Apple did set the standard for twenty years (and counting) of what a computer should do. Apple also introduced trackballs and palm rests into their laptops. Apple arguably set the stage for Palm devices. Apple was the first to popularize Wifi computing, and the first to build Bluetooth into an entire line of laptops.

Are these merely cool features? Hardly. These are affordances; design choices that allow the average person to do things with technology that were previously impossible. These things did not happen because they were guaranteed to be profitable; they happened because the designers at Apple do think that they are working towards some goal that is higher than the pursuit of profit.

I don’t know what the accountants in 1993 had to say about the profitability of the palm rest design. What I can say, with little fear of contradiction, is that having worked with Apple laptops for 13 years, 10-12 hours per day, seven days a week, I probably owe my lack of a crippling RSI injury to some anonymous industrial designer working at Apple when I was an undergraduate. Now that these are the industry standard, so does nearly every other laptop user.

As Brian points out, Apple enjoys a level of rockstar coverage in the tech world and mainstream press that is far out of proportion to its market share. Is that because the news media has been brainwashed by the Jobs Reality Distortion Field, like we are? Or because it’s generally recognized that when you go to an Apple announcement, you are likely going to see something that makes news, even for non-Apple users?

This is why we give allegiance to Apple. Making the world a better place should not be an accusation.

Safety in (Low) Numbers

Which brings us to the perennial market share argument. A few years ago, I found myself quoted extensively on the Internet with the line, “Yes, it’s true: Windows has 50,000 applications you will never use, while the Macintosh has only 10,000 applications you will never use.” From the user perspective, the market share argument has much the same dimensions.

No question, there are more Windows users out there than Mac users, by some vast number. There are constant arguments about what percentage of people use Macs, since market sales overlook the fact that Macs have longer lifespans than Windows machines.

I’ll leave that aside for now; pick your pundit and run with his numbers. I’ll just return to Starbucks. In Washington DC, New York, and Philadelphia, at Wifi hotspots, the number of Apples has been steadily growing for years. It’s not uncommon to only see Apples in such places. Maybe all the Windows users have desktops. Maybe Windows has complete market domination of the red states. Maybe the Mac users like their laptops more and bring them with them to coffeeshops in greater numbers. Doesn’t much matter; the community is visibly growing and has been for some time.

There are two viewpoints a current Mac user could bring to this phenomenon:

1) They might like being part of a small, special clique, a member of the “rest of us”, and view with some suspicion any move by Apple that will grow the market share quickly.

2) They might just like using Apples and talking to other people who use Apples, and the more, the merrier.

Of course, I’m firmly in the second camp. I make my living selling clever ideas to people who use Macs, and every new Mac user is part of Jeff’s expanded target market. However, all of us in camp 2 share some concerns with camp 1:

1) If Apple expands their market by creating radically different computers (i.e., computers that suck), then since we have to buy those computers eventually, we fear that someday our computers won’t be as enjoyable to use.

2) A flood of new people means people who don’t enculturate into the existing community as smoothly. Cf. the “Christmas modemers” of the late 1980s who changed the nature of many BBS systems, or the AOL onslaught that caused the “death of USENET”. Mac users are self-selected, and so part of why we have a community is because we might share some things in common. Expand that community rapidly, and the commonality fades.

I personally don’t think either is likely; Apple’s next computers are different, but they don’t suck and I don’t expect that to change. And I’ll worry about the community changes that come with larger market share when it happens; that would alter the community, but there will be concomitant benefits.

In my next essay, I’ll cover technical details that Brian brings up, and get into more detail about shipping hardware.

jeff@themovies: The Aristocrats (2005) and Jesus is Magic (2005)

Posted on

This is apparently my week for truly sick comedy. Warning to all readers: these are two very funny movies. Provided you like the sort of humor where you’re constantly saying, “I can’t believe she just said that.” If your sense of humor is not sufficiently twisted, then move along, there’s nothing to see here.

That line came to mind because the South Park urchins make an appearance in The Aristocrats, along with just about every other name comedian of the last two generations. Give producers Paul Provenza and Penn Jillette props for thoroughness, since this comedy documentary includes talent from the Borscht Belt, 80s “where are they now” folks, and current HBO headliners. If you missed the reviews, the movie tracks what is widely considered to be the filthiest joke in history through the improv variations given it by various comedians; along the way, we get several interesting commentaries on the nature of comedy and the business. And a mime act that nearly made me burst a lung.

For my part, the film reminded me of something I’ve learned from spending time with several insanely talented comedians, artists, and actors: it just sucks that I don’t have any talent. Because when you’re performing, you then get to hang afterwards with other professionals as they do their damnedest to make beer shoot out of your nose. Stand-up comedy is probably the hardest job on Earth, but these people seem to have more fun after the show than any one human being should have.

And if I were in the industry, I’d definitely want to meet Sarah Silverman. Sure, she’s got that cute Jewish thing working, but more importantly, she’s smart and funny. You can pick up most (but as Ebert points out, not all) of her act in Jesus Is Magic. Like the Aristocrats, this is comedy for limited (i.e., sick and twisted) tastes; Silverman does material on rape, the Holocaust, and AIDS. Oh, and infant mutilation.

The downside of this film is that it suffers from HBO-itis; has there ever been a “comedy special” where the crap they bookended the show with was funny? Here, unfunny material bookends and is interspersed throughout the movie; the show would have been far better if they just let the stand-up, er, stand up on its own.

Regardless, this is well worth 70 minutes of your time, and be sure to stick around for the encore and the funniest performance of Amazing Grace you’ll ever see.

Activist notes

Posted on

Some interesting events on this week’s agenda:

Tomorrow, the Rally to Stop Genocide will be holding a march in Washington, and in other cities around the country. I’m swamped with client work this weekend, so I don’t know if I’ll be able to attend, but if I do I’ll report back here with interesting doings from the DC version. If anyone is going to this one or one of the local rallies, please let me know.

Starting Tuesday I’ll be attending the CFP2006 conference. I’m doing an article about the conference for an online publication, but if anyone has anything in particular they want to hear about, just let me know.

At the end of the week is the National Intelligence Conference; I’m not (yet) invited, but I have a friend who is and I’ll see if I can’t crash a few parties.

jeff@themovies: Crash (2004)

Posted on

I gave Crash a miss in the theaters last year, because a review or two suggested that I’d be wasting my time watching a formulaic race relations film. But the Best Picture Oscar got me to reconsider.

What I’m now reconsidering is my interest in seeing movies that have won Best Picture Oscars.

Which is not to say that this is a worthless film, because the acting is excellent, and the screenplay does have continual zing. But there were two things that truly set me off from this film; here the spoilers commence, so if you have not seen it yet this might be a good time to stop reading.

The first problem is that I’ve been to Los Angeles, and I thought it was a fairly large town, but according to this movie it surely can’t be more than eight square blocks. At least, that appears to be the frequency with which the characters run into each other and appear at the same locations. In the history of policing, I doubt that any detective has wandered from his own car crash to the police scene where his brother is the murder victim.

The second problem is that I’ve known a few racists, both overt and subtle, and I’ve spent my life living in the sort of urban environment where, like L.A., racism is a steady undercurrent but rarely talked about. I grew up as the sole Jewish kid in a neighborhood that was approximately 95% black. And no one talks the way these characters do. At least, not to each other. Maybe at home, or at the bar that only caters to one race or ethnicity. But not to each other. Never to each other.

Matt Dillon plays the only character I think I might meet, because he’s a bigot, and bigots frequently have a tin ear. Although most bigots have the awareness to know when not to insult people from whom they’re asking a favor.

And maybe this white Jewish guy isn’t the right judge to say whether Terrence Howard’s portrayal of a black man conflicted about “acting white” doesn’t ring true. But I can say that I don’t think that any of my friends who have discussed this with me felt the need to risk suicide by cop to absolve themselves of their guilt.

Closing the movie review, if you want to see a great movie about the human condition and our interconnectedness, try Grand Canyon. Or Thirteen Conversations About One Thing.

And to close the race commentary… a few months ago, I got hassled on the street by a plainclothes cop who had the idea that the cigarette I just finished smoking was a joint. For around five minutes, I was talking to a guy who was convinced I was wrong, who had the power to arrest me, and who—most disturbingly—I absolutely could not convince that I was one of the good guys.

I’ve almost been arrested when I was breaking the law, and it wasn’t nearly as upsetting as this was.

I’m white. I don’t expect cops to look at me twice. I tend not to think of those two being connected, but I’m told that I’m naive that way. And it wasn’t until a cop looked at me twice that I really got what that was about.

The hell with accuracy, I want better alarms

Posted on

The Register reports that cesium atomic clocks are on deck to be replaced with strontium models for higher accuracy. The strontiums (strontia?) are now good enough that you can’t use a “plain old atomic clock” to measure them.

According to Wikipedia, a cesium clock set accurately at midnight today will lose or gain about a second by New Year’s Day, 2038. So perhaps more accuracy might seem silly, until it’s noted that the same inaccuracy translates into about a foot per second at the speed of light.

Belgium proves that men are stupid

Posted on

Here’s some shocking research for you: attractive women make men stupid. Unfortunately, the article doesn’t cover the real answers that might make this information useful to occasionally stupid men.

1) Why only men aged from 18 to 28? I personally have a stronger interest in knowing how many IQ points, say, a 36-year-old might drop. How much does alcohol enhance this effect? That’s a bell curve I’d like to see.

2) When characterizing something as an “unfair offer”, how did they account for the men thinking, “hey, better than nothing”? Again, how much does alcohol enhance this effect?

3) It would be really useful to run a few thousand more subjects through and come up with one-to-one correlations that say that “attractive feature X” is good for “lost IQ points Y”. (Less tongue-in-cheek, since attractiveness is subjective, it would be really fascinating to use this to come up with objective measures across a wide population of men and women, or to find cultural differences in the size of the effect.)

4) Women aren’t affected? Hogwash. I know too many women with too many regrets. You’re not trying hard enough.

Spending my summer in Boot Camp

Posted on

Only Nixon could go to China, and only Jobs could give away a means of booting Windows on shipping Macs.

Amidst the vast quantity of misinformed speculation about Apple that has circulated in the last week, two things have reliably occurred:

1) Apple is getting front-page headlines.

2) Pundits are jumping up and down to declare the death or radical transformation of Apple as a company Mac OS.

Suffice to say, as a guy who makes his living using Mac OS, yes, I do have a game plan to learn more about Windows in the next eight months, but not because I’m going to be switching business models. It’s because I think I’m going to have to extend my business model.

Future Directions for Mac OS X

The first point worth addressing is the theory that this will be the death of Mac OS X because developers will only write for Windows and tell Mac users to use the Windows versions of their software. As one website replied, developers could also tell users to hit themselves in the head with hammers.

The existing Mac developer (and consulting) community has two good reasons to support Mac users: it’s profitable, and it’s enjoyable. I suspect that I have the mental chops to become a Windows consultant, but I just don’t like working with Windows the way I enjoy working with Macs. The professional support community won’t voluntarily stop working with Macs due to this quality-of-life issue, and they won’t be forced to make that switch unless working on Macs ceases to be profitable.

(This might be a good time to resurrect a hoary chestnut I’ve been telling for ten years. I did have to stop solely being a Mac consultant a decade ago in favor of being a Mac/Internet/database consultant. My independent Windows colleagues did very well for themselves with a roster of a dozen clients or so; my own similarly-sized roster of Mac clients didn’t pay nearly as well, because Mac clients simply didn’t need professional support as often. I think of this every time I see the phrase “total cost of ownership”.)

The death knell argument goes something like this, to quote an Engadget podcast I listened to recently: Rhapsody, the online music service, is Windows-only. Given that Mac users can “just boot into Windows” to listen to Rhapsody, the service has zero incentive to write a Mac version.

Excepting, of course, that booting into Windows requires shutting down all of the other applications you might be running. You have to really like Rhapsody in order to do that. It’s a viable strategy for mission-critical software, but it’s simply not going to fly for anything of lesser importance. Mac-based businesses that have software like that already have their one PC sitting over in the corner of the office, next to the last typewriter that they use for envelopes; Boot Camp just means that that computer won’t be replaced in the next upgrade cycle.

The ecosystem supporting both Apple and people who make their living on Apple hardware is going to continue apace. What’s changed is that the membrane separating us from the rest of you just became more semi-permeable. That is a fairly major change, but not one that’s going to adversely affect the health of our community. In fact, the more likely outcome is that this will completely change the landscape of the computing industry by 2008.

Windows for the Rest of Us

This is what a multiplatform environment looks like on a Macintosh, as of two weeks ago:

multiplatform thumb.png

Here you’ve got the three major operating system environments, side by side. iTunes is the native Mac software in the upper-left. Windows runs in emulation in its own window (actually, in emulated emulation; that’s a screenshot rather than Virtual PC). In the upper right, I have pan running under X11 using GNOME, which in turn uses the Aqua window manager to make those windows mostly interoperable with other Mac software. You can see the Mac Growl notification popping up in the upper right on top of the X11 window to tell me the newest song playing in iTunes.

If I wanted to, I could bring up a fourth environment, Mac OS Classic, where I could run OS 9 and earlier software, also in their own floating windows much like pan.

There are two interesting things to note about this setup:

1) X11, like Windows, normally ships in its own environment with OS widgets like desktops, file navigation, etc. If you like, you do have the option of turning this back on with Apple’s X11 implementation, and then switch back and forth (without rebooting) between both environments. But as with Classic, Apple shipped the much more useful system of allowing these windows to live side-by-side.

2) In fact, Apple has never shipped concurrent OS software for OS X that forced you to switch into multiple environments. The beta of X11 for Jaguar did require this, but the shipping version with Panther had the option.

Boot Camp, lest we forget, is in beta.

I’ll hasten to add that I have absolutely no idea what would be required to free Windows windows from the tyranny of an enclosing desktop. It might very well be impossible, or at the very least require too much horsepower to be usable. But we’re talking about the people who shipped a version of Unix that your grandmother can use. When it comes to Apple, I tend to redefine my outer limits of what’s possible.

This extends John Gruber’s idea that Macs are no longer different, they’re special. That is, buy an Intel Mac, and you can do anything you could do with a Dell or a Sony. And then some. Side-by-side windowing takes this further. Copy a picture out of iPhoto and paste it into Act!. iSync your Outlook calendar to iCal and publish it to .Mac.

If I really wanted to push this idea, I’d suggest the possibility of using Automator (an AppleScript utility that lets you write programs without knowing a single line of code) and Apple GUI Scripting (a framework that allows AppleScript to work with applications that don’t have their own AppleScript hooks) to give Windows users the ability to automate their software right out of the box, in ways that are impossible on a native Windows-only machine.

(Some of you may have noted that my side-by-side environment contradicts the argument I made earlier about Rhapsody. If this is how it plays out, I still think that Mac software will be written and developed, but it will have to continue to be better than the Windows equivalent. I expect that even in the most highly integrated environment, there will be programming hooks that allow you to do more in Mac native software than with Windows.)

Regardless of what Apple does here, there is one thing that I think is self-evident: Apple is going to do what it can to make Windows on a Mac better than Windows elsewhere. Windows on your MacBook Pro—a branding change that perhaps makes more sense now—is going to blow the doors off your Vaio. Somehow.

2007: A Mac Odyssey

Which brings us to the question of what Apple is going to ship with 10.5, and what it’s going to do to the computer industry.

The first one is a no-brainer: Apple is going to ship configurations that are preloaded with Mac OS X and Windows. After all, other companies are doing this already. And we can presume that Apple’s OEM Windows is going to have critical differences from the stock model, so perhaps with the right support options in place (i.e., same-day on-site service at any Apple Store), it might behoove switchers to buy Apple’s dual-OS system rather than just load in their existing copy.

The reverse case is a bit tougher; I’m trying to decide whether we’ll see an Apple-sanctioned method to run Mac OS on non-Apple hardware. This has also been done already, but there’s a big difference between hacking it together and using a version sanctioned by the mothership. Last year I theorized that Apple could do this by selling cheap copies of Tiger after Leopard is released, but Gruber has me rethinking this with his commentary that Apple makes money selling Macs, not software. I’m further rethinking this because by definition, Tiger will be a second-class experience after Leopard is released, and it’s not Apple’s style to pitch that, even as a loss-leader to entice people to buy Macs next time around.

That being said, it would be trivial to design the next version of OS X so that it does things on Mac hardware that it won’t do elsewhere, and to do the same thing with Apple’s OEM Windows release. (All such DRM would be hackable, but only by the elite; I don’t see this as a market barrier to differentiating Mac hardware by making the software more featuriffic.) So I do still see a market to allow Apple to siphon off the most profitable Windows customers (again, using Gruber’s thinking here) by giving them a dirt cheap way to play with Tiger, in the expectation that they’ll shortly thereafter upgrade their home and SOHO machines to get their hands on Leopard and iLife ’08, or whatever the latest-and-greatest turns out to be.

The requirement here is that Apple can’t be seen as selling a substandard solution for non-Mac hardware. If they think that’s the way it will play in the marketplace, they’ll never sanction this. But if their marketing people—who also have been known to pull off a few miracles—can come up with a way to sell this as the “cheap option which is better than what you have,” and the “better hardware option with the best and most flexible environment on the planet,” then that might be your cue to sell your stock in Dell.

Which brings me to my own game plan, as a Mac guru. I think that it’s a given that at some point shortly, my clients will be using dual-boot environments (at the very least), and it’s a safe bet I’ll be running one myself. (I am really looking forward to playing Half-Life 2 on my laptop.) I have very little doubt that there are individual Windows apps I’d like to use regularly in a side-by-side environment, and it’s my job to recommend to my clients the best tool for their needs. So I’ll be designing a crash course to become Windows-fluent between now and the release of Leopard. I anticipate (and I suspect Apple is anticipating the same thing) that time spent in Windows is going to be 10% pleasant interaction with useful software, and 90% wishing that I were back in my home environment.

But it’s what I think will be necessary in order to hit the ground running when Apple releases 10.5, because no matter what it can and cannot do, it’s definitely true that it’ll contain some interesting surprises.

[The Red and the Blue: Brian Greenberg disagrees with me eloquently and vociferously.]

The morality of bombing civilians

Posted on

Strongly recommended, from WHYY’s Radio Times:

Did the Allies in WWII commit war crimes by carpet-bombing Germany and Japanese cities? We talk with ANTHONY GRAYLING a British philosopher whose latest book is “Among the Dead Cities: The History and Moral Legacy of the WWII Bombing of Civilians in Germany and Japan.” Grayling is a professor of Philosophy at Birkbeck College at the University of London.

Available in RealAudio if you don’t subscribe to the podcast.

The Portable MacBrick Pro

Posted on

Peter Green is clearly my kind of guy. Or, at least, he’s the kind of guy who would take a Mac mini and turn it into a laptop.

I spent a few weeks a while back working out what I’d need to do to turn my PowerBook into a wearable Borg attachment. Turns out, it’s not that difficult: monitor glasses, a Bluetooth chordal keyboard and trackpad, and Bluetooth wireless connections to the cellphone for Internet when Wifi isn’t available. The only problem I didn’t get around to gracefully solving: re-engineering my backpack to provide suitable cooling to a snugly encased (and poorly ventilated) PowerBook running at full tilt, but the beta version had that issue solved with (if you will) a hot-swap cold pack.

Mind you, I chickened out on actually building the thing out of fears that I’d fry my laptop. Oh, and fears that no one would speak to me, ever again. But I do have an extra laptop or two lying around….

I am never leaving the house again

Posted on

For reasons far too difficult to explain, I recently became one of those people who get every possible channel from their cable company.

So, four hundred channels, that I was prepared for. What’s new and different is the video-on-demand option when you get the whole shmear. I decided it was too difficult to use the onscreen guide or the website, so naturally I wrote an AppleScript/FileMaker combination that scrapes the web and gives me a database.

And hence I can report, with no exaggeration, that I have access to a video library of 2,981 different shows.

2,981 shows. On demand. In addition to the 24 hour feeds on the actual stations.

And the scary thing is, it’s still more convenient to use BitTorrent to download the shows I really want to watch.

Subversive programming for Apple

Posted on

This story is old news, but I suspect some of my regulars haven’t heard it before. The true story of how Graphing Calculator shipped on 20 million Macs, and was used to demo an entire new generation of hardware, despite the small problem that the project was canceled and all the employees had been fired.

You have the option of reading the story or listening to it in RealAudio.

In August 1993, the project was canceled. A year of my work evaporated, my contract ended, and I was unemployed. I was frustrated by all the wasted effort, so I decided to uncancel my small part of the project. I asked my friend Greg Robbins to help me. His contract in another division at Apple had just ended, so he told his manager that he would start reporting to me. She didn’t ask who I was and let him keep his office and badge. In turn, I told people that I was reporting to him. Since that left no managers in the loop, we had no meetings and could be extremely productive.