Alright, that isn’t entirely true. I installed Vista on my new MacBook Pro with Ubuntu and SuSE at the same time. I only did so because Fry’s no longer stocks XP. This is the first time I have honestly used it (with SP1). It feels like XP except for a little more annoying (I had trouble finding display settings in the control panel, the new start menu being embedded with a scroll pane was annoying at first until I figured it out, etc.) I still see a lot of the same in many places though. One thing is the all to famous common color picker dialog (same since Windows 3.1). Other then that, nothing to special with it from my view (except getting to play with .NET 3.5 but its still slow even on this brand new 2.6ghz macbook, Nvidia Geforce 8600 with 4g of ram running in bootcamp).
The biggest reason for installing it is to test an application that runs in Vista that I’m maintaining in my free time that has a bug running on Vista. One of my friends told he had a bug and after investigating I blame the DRM in Windows sound. (His older Creative card has horrible support on Vista.) I gave him a copy of Ubuntu and he is running like a champ (he complained about not having I haven’t iTunes to play his DRM encoded music but I showed him Wine and he was good to go. Thanks to Mono, my app runs on Linux (in fact I developed it on Linux and thats the only place I’ve ever tested it and it worked for everyone on Windows that used it until I heard this bug on Vista happening). (I’ve mentioned DRM twice so far so that can’t be good).
I’m putting together a public release of that program later and a making some cool YouTube videos on the topic on what is to come (hoping to generate some excitement). I have to admit that its mainly written in C but it embeds Mono on the Linux and Mac versions. It’s little but its big at the same time.
That’s all the details you get. No planned release date yet. (don’t you wish you knew what it was yet?).
I’m ordered a new MacBook Pro last week. Still waiting on it to arrive. I can’t wait!
As many may remember my troubles with Dell and Alienware on waiting over 3 months with both companies trying to get a super-maxed out laptop shipped to me back in 2005-06 and both constantly stringing me out and delaying me for so long that the machines dropped in price by the time they wanted to ship. The second pass I got the Alienware finally but it turned into the worst nightmare ever (this is before Dell bought Alienware too). I spent over $4500 on that machine. The sad part is that saga still hasn’t ended. I filed a lemon law claim review request with the Florida district attorney (where Alienware is located) after the hardware failed within a week after getting it back from service, on three separate occasions, each time taking around 30 to 45 days to repair. By the time I got to make any use of the machine, it was already antiquated and outdated and only worth $1500 if bought brand new. Machine is collecting dust because it failed a 4th time.
I’ve been investing in Apple lately. Bought in at $122 and the stock rose to $185 a few days ago. Nice 50% return in unrealized profit. I knew it was going to happen. Even as much as I’ve dogged Apple’s developer program in previous blog posts, the device and the OS are still kick ass from the development perspective. OpenMoko is posed to give it a run for its money. Not a big fan of Andriod (which is a joke if you ask me… an almost side stepped evolution of J2ME junk). The iPhone is basically a desktop OS with all the pieces, so everything ports nicely which is the right direction for mobile software (desktop/laptop and mobile will be indistinguishable soon, so Android is dead from the start). OpenMoko and Nokia’s Maemo (or even ACCESS’s linux platform and the Qtopia from Trolltech) are far better off.
Playing with PS3 this weekend while I wait on my laptop. Got Metal Gear Solid 4. As a developer, thinking of how much there is too it, its amazing. If you know anything about game development, 3D rendering, or just a ultra geek about gaming, then this is the game of the year. The online part is a little lacking but makes use of bit torrent for updating.