Wednesday, June 27
Ignore those
pretenders, who are simply grasping at fame and acclaim with their assertions that they've got the scoop. You know who has the real contacts, the real info, the real dirt -- and that who's name isn't Suzy-Loo.
It's me... is what I'm getting at.
Look, I talked to Apple's top, TOP brass at WWDC, and while, you know, they couldn't come right out and SAY what's happening with Leopard, well, let's just say they said ENOUGH. Enough so I could piece together this very detailed roadmap of Leopard's development:
July:- A handful of new features will be added -- ones that didn't make it the WWDC beta, but were clearly needed. Not many! (It's too close to release.)
- Bugs will be squashed -- 'regression' bugs will be given special priority.
- Performance will continue to be improved.
- Special emphasis will be placed on not introducing any new bugs at this stage.
- If a build seems particularly solid, we may see an interim beta released for developers.
August:- Only a couple of new features will be added -- ones that didn't make it in July, but are absolutely needed. The number will be extremely limited.
- More bugs will be fixed -- most attention will be given to things that used to work in Tiger, but don't any more.
- Even more performance tuning!
- "No new bugs" will be the goal.
- Depending on conditions, Apple may release a beta just to developers, to test against.
September:- The smallest possible number of new features will be added -- only ones that didn't make it in August, but are totally necessary. These will require special approval!
- Bugs fixing will be at a feverish pace -- especially bugs introduced in Leopard!
- The system will see speedups throughout, BUT...
- It will be unacceptable to introduce any regressions at this point.
- Developers may get a beta during September, if the build seems very solid, and Apple wants to verify it.
October:- Leopard!
- Unless it's delayed, in which case my sources say it'll come out later.
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Hopefully I don't get my friends at Apple in trouble with this incredibly detailed peek inside their software process! Hopefully if I've revealed too much, my friends at Apple Legal will send me a cease and desist and I'll get even MORE PUBLICITY FOR MY SITE.
Labels: humor?, mac community
Friday, June 8
Just in case anyone is wondering (especially people, say, at Apple), I got my entire interview with
wired.com cleared with Apple PR before sending it off. (And, no, they didn't ask for any changes.)
In general, talking about the features of their unreleased OS would be a violation of my NDA(s) with Apple, but in this case Apple had already put up public web pages about the CoreAnimation features I mentioned, so legally speaking that creates an exception to my NDA.
But there may be other terms in the Leopard prerelease that I didn't notice, and, as you might imagine, I wanted to make EXTRA SURE I didn't step on anyone's toes, so I got explicit sign-off on my interview from the mother ship. Nobody can call me Jonathan Schwartz. (Interesting fact: Jonathan gave me my first contract when I formed The Omni Group, 16 years ago.)
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I actually tried to get an exception for my blog, as well, so I could write a pimp-my-code article on how cool Objective-C 2.0 is. Sadly, no dice, so you'll have to wait until October. Not that I'm saying it's cool. Or not. I'm not saying one way or another. I offer no opinion at this time.
Labels: business, mac community
Friday, June 1
While many people believe that Adobe products are DRM-free, did you know that they, in fact, have a
"poison tip?"It's true... when you buy an Adobe product, be it Illustrator or the entire Creative Suite, Adobe brazenly stores important personal information about you
right on your hard disk. If you don't believe me, look on your machine at
file:///Library/Application%20Support/Adobe/Adobe%20Registration%20Database ... you'll see entries like this:
EPIC_ORG=Delicious Monster Software, LLC
EPIC_NAME=Wil ShipleyI was shocked! Shocked! They didn't even bother to try to disguise it!
I talked to a lawyer from EFF about this, and his comment was, "We feel it is a huge invasion of a consumer's privacy for Adobe to take personal information the user has entered and store it locally on that user's machine, in a file only accessible to the user, right beside all the user's other personal files, where it is protected by passwords and firewalls."
I couldn't agree more, so I called an Adobe PR person, who spoke to me ONLY on the condition that, "if [she] answered my questions I would get off the phone and let [her] do real work."
I put it to her directly: "Are you saying that I am limited to using Adobe products on my machines, and if I illegally give post my copy of CS3 on the internet,
I might be sharing my first and last name with the world in addition to violating copyright law and being liable for $50,000 in damages? Because I find this simply unacceptable."
The Adobe flak, in typical PR-speak, tried to spin the story this way: "Well... yah. I mean, uh, duh?"
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I will be following this story closely in the following days... I've already heard a rumor that in order to pirate DRM-free iTunes Plus tracks I might have to downsample them to MP3 files, but I simply can't believe Apple would engage in such clearly immoral shenanigans. I mean, making it every-so-slightly difficult to pirate DRM-free music kind of defeats the WHOLE PURPOSE of dropping DRM in the first place, doesn't it?
DOESN'T IT?
Labels: humor?, mac community
Delicious Monster
