Apple vs GNU+Linux

People complaining about lack of Linux support should try to install MacOS on anything apart from Mac hardware. Unless you have a cracked version, it's not even possible (and good luck finding/trusting new ones!) Even with hacked versions, try to find driver support for all your hardware. Linux is worlds ahead when you want to choose your hardware. If you don't feel like shelling out a thousand or more bucks every time a computer dies, using an older computer, or making a special-purpose computer for a friend without taking out a loan, the choice is clear. If you want to be guaranteed the same compatibility you get with Apple's OS, then you can still use Linux, pre-installed in a laptop from Dell, etc. Wow, it just works! Magic! :P

Linux (especially Ubuntu, lately), has become a definite advantage to people who want to choose their hardware, and it gets better with every release.

With Apple, unfortunately, you buy more than just hardware and an OS, you've officially bought a style, image, and a glowing apple to make sure everyone knows that the computer is far more important than whatever you happen to be doing on it. Apple's marketing machine makes sure that every Mac user is a walking/talking advertisement for it. That's good for Apple, but that's a lot of pretentious corporate overhead for me. I don't want to buy an image. I don't want endless throngs of consumer drones commenting "Wow, is that the new Apple whatsit? I want one of those!" People don't care what you're doing. It's all about that Mac with the glowy apple logo. You might as well not be there. I'd much rather be using Blender, GIMP, Photoshop, Open Office, and be appreciated for what I'm doing, rather than having endless queries about Apple's latest gadget. I do a lot of cool stuff, so it helps (especially for my business) to have people's focus on the artwork, and not the laptop.

People will even attribute your success to Apple's hardware. "Well, I could be good too, if I had one!" Of course, disillusionment follows, after having shelling out the money for one; No, no, you can't be good just for buying an overpriced machine with go-faster stripes. It takes a lot of hard work! Endless hours of practice, and honing your skills to be good, even with Apple's glory-glory ware! They will happily take credit for your work. And people merrily give it to them. "Yeah.. huh huh. I use a Mac! Macs are BETTER for graphic design!" Yea? Try graphic design without Adobe's software. You realise Apple doesn't make that, right? Try using iPhoto. Then you see how much better Apple is at graphic design! Better yet, try and find where that crapware stored the file you're working on? Thousands of high-res photos/projects? Notice how iPhoto takes 4 minutes to load? Yep. Better!

I know a whole company of graphic designers, all on Mac, all very very embarrassed to be walking Apple stereotypes, and just waiting for something else to come along that runs the latest version of Adobe's Creative Suite. Unfortunately, only available for Macs and Windows PCs. (Adobe's fault, not Linux).

I'm a professional graphic designer (with 12 years of industry experience). I choose Linux, and if Photoshop is a must (it is sometimes), I use WINE. If the latest version of the Creative Suite is a must (Often it is for the printing/publishing industry to deal with), I'll run a VM with Windows XP.
Or maybe I could run OSX in a VM? Oh wait... no, no I can't. Apple's suing machine won't allow an of the VM developers to make that possible. Okay. Well... guess I have NO USE for OSX then... at all! :D

I do this all from my laptop/Linux workstation, which I paid like $400.00 for, from a guy selling it to buy an iPad. Lol. I guess there IS some benefit to Apple's advertising machine after all! :D I haven't needed a desktop machine, (or a laptop that costs over $600) for anything in over a decade.

Moreover, I have a full install of Ubuntu 10.10 installation on a USB keychain, so if my hard drive fails, I can boot off the keychain and keep working from my backed up files (using Ubuntu One's free cloud) while I order a new one, without missing a beat. I don't even have to go home from the coffee shop! Magic! :D

I'm sure when Apple does the same (or strikingly similar) thing, they will call it the best innovation ever, and praise themselves for being ahead of the game in all things. "All others can only follow", and other rabid fanboy rubbish. So when that happens (again), know that the better informed world is laughing at everyone who adopts idiotic mantras like that. To those people, we're happy to tell you your wrong, explain clearly why, then watch you snort, put your nose up in the air and continue to pretend your Mac makes you more sophisticated, efficient, and cool.

We'll smile, and continue using Linux, and reaping the benefits, making it better and easier to use for the "average person" (like it's not already? Try Ubuntu 10.10), and enjoying some of the best eye-candy interfaces out there, for free (thanks Compiz folks!).

To end this bloody dissertation (TLDR)
I'd like to extend thanks to the Linux community (including Canonical) for making supremely good software that everyone can use free of charge, and continuing to make Linux better, and easier to use for everyone.

And remember, kids: It doesn't matter what Apple fanboys "think". You could slap an Apple logo on anything and they'd take out a second mortgage just to have it. If you listen to that kind of opinion, you certainly deserve to be excluded from the joys of Linux. :)

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Apple, Linux welcomes you to 1998!

A lot of people are buzzing about Apple's Mac App Store, but I'm nonplussed. I've had the same features on Linux since the late 90's.
Granted, I'm being a little snarky — but only a little. Apple's App Store for the iPhone was a big deal because, before Apple, the application landscape for mobile phones was not that rosy. Apple simplified getting applications on the phone without having to deal directly with the carriers — so some credit is due there. They've also raised the bar in terms of what developers are shooting for for mobile devices, so kudos to Apple for that.
But the buzz over the Apple Mac App Store? Meh. Look at the features that Apple touts:

• Install any app with ease
• Keep your apps up to date
• The app you need. When you need it
• Buy, download, and even redownload

Linux folks, sound familiar? We've had all of this, modulo "buy", for a decade at least. The Advanced Package Tool, a.k.a. "APT" for Debian-based systems (that includes Ubuntu), has made all of this possible for years and years. Granted, this has primarily focused on free and open source software, but paid apps are possible too. The Ubuntu folks have had a paid software store since Ubuntu 10.10. (It is, I admit, sparsely populated when it comes to proprietary/paid software.)
But the installation, updating, and such? All very possible with APT — or Yum or Zypper, if you happen to be using an RPM-based distro. (Or APT for RPM, if that's still being maintained.)
Apple brags about having more than 1,000 apps available at launch... Ubuntu users can find 32,000-plus packages in the software repository for Ubuntu 10.10. Now, a bunch of those packages are not end-user applications — this includes things like libraries, system utilities, fonts, and so forth. But you could easily find 5,000 end user apps, many of which are competitive with the proprietary stuff being offered through the Apple Mac App Store. Oh, and free. Free as in cost, and all open source. (Not all Free by definition of the Free Software Foundation, though, but that's another topic entirely.)
Of course, what Apple has done that's unique shows Linux folks what we need to be better at doing: marketing, developer and ISV relations, and standardization. Lest you think I'm only hear to praise Linux or kick Apple, I'm not. Linux has had the raw tools to do this for a decade, but the communities and companies behind Linux have yet to gain enough momentum to pull this off on the desktop. Or the will to chuck tribal differences between desktops, toolkits, etc. and unify on one damn stack to attract the kind of developers that are filling up Apple's App Store. Canonical, bless their hearts, are trying — but it's unclear as of yet whether Canonical has enough pull to rally enough developers and inspire enough ISVs to drive even 100 paid desktop apps to Linux, much less 1,000.
The Linux community should get some credit here, though. What has been hard for the users of arguably the easiest operating system to use, has been easy for Linux users for years. A quick "apt-get update" and my entire system is updated, apps and all. A quick "apt-get install" and I can have everything from the Banshee media player to the latest Chrome release. Typing is not required, of course. Each distribution has GUI tools that make it very easy to install and manage applications.
And, it's important to add — I can do all this without the blessing of any single company. You see, while Apple controls everything that goes into the App store, nobody controls what users add to their APT, Yum, or Zypper repos.
So Linux users have had the tools and freedom, just a severe lack of marketing and developer relations smarts. That includes failing to have a single dominant toolchain (GUI toolkit, etc.) for companies to target. Seems that Nokia (with Qt) might be on to something here, though. It's pretty clear what the overall Linux community and vendors need to address, just a question if they do and if it's not too little and too late for any mainstream traction.
I do hope others in the tech press will at least, in passing, note that Apple has not invented something new with its App Store — merely taken an old idea and run with it better than the competition. Which, come to think of it, seems to be the company's specialty.

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The 10 best Android hacks

The web’s massed fanboy armies will debate the relative merits of iOS and Android until the apocalypse, but there’s no denying Google’s OS wins out when it comes to customisation – and, if you’ve taken the plunge and rooted your device, then a whole load more options will become available.

It sounds like a complex procedure but, for virtually all Android handsets, it’s surprisingly easy: our own Technical Editor, Darien Graham-Smith, explained how to do it back in September, and instructions for major handsets – such as the HTC Desire, Samsung Galaxy S and Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 are easy enough to find, although you’ll be taking your phone and, perhaps, your warranty, into your own hands if you proceed.

Still, that’s not to say that you need a rooted handset to take advantages of some of these tweaks – here are ten of our favourite Android hacks and tricks, rooted or not:

Replace your car’s satnav system

This will only work if you’ve got a phone that can connect over a TV-out cable – that’ll restrict you to a mere handful of handsets, including the Samsung Galaxy S, HTC EVO 4G and Droid Incredible, which is used in this video – and a car that’ll display the signal on its screen.

If you tick those boxes, though, you could be in for a money-saving treat. Why invest in a satnav, after all, when you could use Google’s own software? It’s got undoubted pedigree: we put it through real-world road tests in the summer against many of its rivals and found it to be the best satnav option.

Satnav’s only the tip of the iceberg. Connect your phone to access your music collection, read your Twitter feed, check the latest headlines or perform any other function on your dashboard. While Android in cars has been mooted before, no concrete models have appeared, so this is the next best thing.

Run Android on your old iPhone

If you’ve still got an iPhone 2G or 3G gathering dust, it can be hard to know what to do with it – after all, you’ve likely replaced that older model with a snazzy new iPhone 4. If you’d like to experience the unrestricted pastures of Android, though – and perhaps try out apps that Steve Jobs has deemed unacceptable, such as the Wikileaks cables – then follow these steps, which begin with jailbreaking your phone.

You’re not restricted to installing Android on an old iPhone, either. Intrepid developers have busily ensured that a whole range of devices can be hacked to run Google’s OS: from the Windows Mobile-running HTC HD2 to an old netbook.

Overclock your handset

You’ll need to have rooted before trying this trick, but it’s worth it if your phone struggles when multi-tasking or running intensive applications.

Of course, as with a desktop PC, overclocking a phone comes with risks. The processor inside your handset’s been designed to run at a specific speed and, without any active cooling inside its chassis, running the chip at a faster pace will generate additional heat and use more power.

The versatility of these apps does mean that it’s possible to combat these symptoms by underclocking your phone’s processor, saving battery power and potentially prolonging the chip’s life in the process.

Play classic games

One potentially dubious benefit of Android’s open approach is that its market is full of software emulators for classic games consoles: a quick scan on AppBrain reveals software like SNesoid, GameBoid and Ataroid – apps that wear their retro allegiances firmly on their sleeves.

While these tools occupy some particularly murky legal ground, that hasn’t stopped several developers creating apps to download ROMs – the software needed to play classic games. Some have been even more imaginative, with one intrepid Dell Streak owner attaching a NES controller to his devicefor more realistic retro gaming action.

Install Ubuntu

Why settle for just only open-source OS on your device? We suspect that this particular trick won’t work if you own older and less powerful Android devices such as the HTC Hero, but owners of newer, faster handsets might want to take a gander at this guide.

It’s an impressive trick – just imagine pulling out your Nexus One at a (very, very geeky) party and booting into Ubuntu. As neat as it is, we’re struggling to think of practical uses for this trickery. After all, Ubuntu isn’t designed for touch interfaces and small smartphone screens could be problematic, too.

Change your look

Android is the most versatile mobile OS around. Don’t believe us? Take a look at the sheer number of apps, themes and graphics that are available for customising your phone. Numerous apps are designed to replace Android’s stock front-end or manufacturer-provided software, with tools such as LauncherPro, Home++ and HelixLauncher just three of many in the Market.

That’s just the start. Basic modifications like wallpaper changes can be livened up with animated backgrounds, and new icons can be downloaded if you don’t like the standard ones included with your home screen replacement. Tools such as Beautiful Widgets have their own communities churning out hundreds of stylish skins for its software.

It’s also worth taking a gander at some of the home screens posted on Reddit’s Android forum: with examples such as this, this and this regularly making the rounds, it’s no surprise that Google’s OS is doing so well for itself.

Install root-only apps

Rooting your phone opens it up to a whole new world of options, not least the chance to install apps that aren’t available in the regular Market. Plenty of these allow extra control over the behind-the-scenes operations of your phone: some provide quick booting options, others allow your system to access extra memory, and more permit developers to access and edit the SQL databases used by most standard apps.

Plenty of root apps prove themselves useful in other ways. Screenshot tools will prove invaluable if you’re used to the faff of getting screenshots from a stock Android phone, which involves installing the Android SDK and jumping through several dozen hoops. Backup tools, Wi-Fi tethering and battery-management and conservation utilities are all commonplace, too. Root apps tend to be on the geeky end of the spectrum, but they’re very useful.

Control your media centre

Having a smartphone means that your media collection needn’t be limited to your PC. Install an app like Gmote alongside its PC server software and you’ll see what we mean: by using Wi-Fi streaming it’ll grant access to your entire media collection.

Its slick interface makes navigating your media collection a doddle and a couple of options mean that you can choose to play files on your PC or on your phone. It’s also possible to switch to a touchpad-style interface that allows you to take control of your PC from your touchscreen.

Open your garage door

Yes, seriously. It’s the work of one imaginative Android owner, and it’s brilliant.

Get the latest Android versions, fast

Every Android user is familiar with the seemingly endless waiting that punctuates every OS update: while Google might announce that the latest version is available, handset owners still have to twiddle their thumbs while their manufacturer and phone network tweak the software and add plenty of crapware before releasing it to paying customers.

If you’ve rooted your phone, though, then you don’t have to go through any of that hassle; instead, merely wait for an eager developer to release a ROM of the latest Android build and you’re good to go. It certainly beats waiting months for HTC to release the 2.1 update for the Hero.

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Shamelessly stolen from: http://www.pcpro.co.uk/blogs/2011/01/02/the-10-best-android-hacks/
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The ten worst products of 2010

We’ve seen some absolutely brilliant kit this year. Stand-outs include the obvious (think the Apple iPad) and the less obvious (why hello there, Sony VAIO Z13), but this blog is to celebrate the rubbish. The stuff that, with any luck, may already have been pulled off the shelves due to its sheer stupidity.

In a very particular order, here goes:

10. HTC Smart

Oh the irony of HTC’s naming schemes. HTC was attempting to be clever, to release what we described as “a poor man’s smartphone”, but it got everything wrong.

Wrong OS: Brew MP was designed not by a world-renowned software developer but by Qualcomm, a chipset maker, and boy it showed. Wrong price: £25 per month on a 24-month contract? Hello? Wrong sync options: jump through hoops and get nowhere. Thankfully, the HTC Wildfire came along and saved HTC’s cheap phone blushes.

9. Super Talent MasterDrive GL 16GB

This product was so appalling we never actually put the review up on the website: only readers of issue 188 could savour its one-star review. A low price of £71 inc VAT might mean “it’s tempting to give the MasterDrive a whirl,” we wrote. “If you do, you’ll regret it. It came last or second to last in eight of our ten tests.” When we used it as a boot drive, freezes “were a frequent, unpredictable occurrence”. One to avoid folks.

8. Norton Utilities

I’ll admit some bias: we’ve never been big fans of utility suites. If we had collective eyebrows, we’d raise them whenever a new one appeared on our desk. Although we have more than one desk and, between us, many eyebrows, so perhaps it’s best to leave that metaphor at this point.

There are some good ones (utility suites, that is, not metaphors). We were pleasantly surprised by TuneUp Utilities 2011 earlier this month, for instance. How disappointing, then, that Norton Utilities failed to deliver when we reviewed it at the tail-end of 2009; it went on sale “proper” in 2010, which is why it squeezes into this list.

A one-click “Optimize” button is probably the highlight, and it did knock off three seconds from our boot-up time – but in doing so dropped our available memory by 113MB. There are many better ways to spend £39.

7. iPad made simple

In June, Apress released a 704-page book called “iPad made simple”. Let me repeat that: a book containing 704 pages of advice on how to use a device that’s universally acknowledged as being ridiculously easy to use.

Even accounting for the fact that readers aren’t its target audience, it beggars belief that anyone would resort to a book costing more than £16 rather than just experimenting with the darn thing or picking up a much cheaper, briefer guide.

6. BeBook Club

 So it’s November 2010. Amazon has hit the headlines for all the right reasons by releasing a bargain Kindle for £109, complete with seamless integration with Amazon’s bookstore. What does BeBook do? It releases a more expensive eReader – £149 to be exact – that doesn’t beat the Kindle on any major features, doesn’t integrate with any eBook stores, and doesn’t even have Wi-Fi for direct downloads from the internet.

To add insult to injury, it uses inferior screen technology so text looks worse! We like many of BeBook’s products, but this one goes straight into the remainders bin.

5. Energy Sistem 7502

 What makes the Energy Sistem 7502 so disappointing, apart from its appalling name, is that we had such high hopes for it. This media player promised so much that the iPod touch can’t deliver, with the highlight being Digital TV playback. Sadly, it was rubbish.

“The EPG… is woeful,” wrote our reviewer. “While you can select channels and see the next week’s programmes, there’s no way to access programme information or actually watch shows being broadcast from within the EPG. Instead, you need to exit the EPG, open up the TV section, navigate to the channel and tune back in.”

Add a sluggish interface and only 2GB of storage, and another great idea was consigned to the garbage heap of dashed hopes.

4. ATI Radeon HD 5830

ATI – strictly speaking, we should now say AMD, but we won’t because life’s confusing enough already – had more hits than misses in 2010, but the HD 5830 falls decisively into the latter category. It was ATI’s attempt to offer top-end performance for an affordable price, although by affordable we’re still talking £200. Why, we kept asking, would anyone pay that much when around £20 more could get them the faster HD 5850?

With wide gaps in performance in more demanding tasks, the answer was a great big no-one. All the HD 5830 did was create more confusion for potential buyers and eke a bit more life out of the ageing Cypress core that powered 2009’s ATI Radeon HD 5870 to A List success. We don’t know who’s more cynical, ATI or us.

3. Apple Mac mini

Grerrk. That sound? That’s me girding myself up for the mound of criticism about to come my way for daring to list an Apple product as one of the worst of 2010.

In many ways, I agree, it’s unfair. The new Mac mini looks beautiful in its minimalist magnesium casing and includes some stunning design moves to make it so small. There’s an HDMI port, Gigabit Ethernet, four USB 2 connectors, FireWire 800, 802.11n Wi-Fi: in port terms, it’s well hung.

Delve inside, though, and it disappoints. A Core 2 processor released in 2008, stingy 320GB hard disk and 2GB of RAM. What killed it for us, though, was the price. The base model was expensive at £650, but if you want to upgrade to a larger hard disk or faster processor Apple was charging double or sometimes triple the “real” price difference. Great design, but what a rip-off.

2. Dell Inspiron Duo

 Oh Dell, you great big lovable ball of hardware goodness, how could you do this to us? We so wanted to love the Inspiron Duo, and at first glance it seems so fantastic, but in the end we were more let down than a student who voted Lib Dem.

The idea behind the Duo is great. A cheap netbook that converts, with one very sexy flip of the lid, into a tablet. We were so impressed we wrote, “the Duo’s transformation from notebook to tablet is almost balletic”. Meanwhile, the “rounded, rubberised edges practically beg to be touched, and the 1.36kg chassis oozes a solidity and class that belies the budget price [of £449]”.

The first sign of disappointment came from a battery life of less than four hours under light use. The kick in the teeth, though, became obvious once we’d used it in tablet mode for a while. Over to the review to explain why:

“Tap an icon and you’re unceremoniously shunted [from Dell’s finger-friendly DuoStage software] back to the Windows desktop as it labours into view. And while we’d have expected each application to form part of a slick unified user-interface, the reality is amateurish at best.

“The Internet icon simply launches Internet Explorer; the Games icon lazily shunts you back to the paltry selection of games included with Windows 7; and the Paint icon loads up CyberLink’s YouPaint software, which regularly moans that ‘The current screen resolution is not recommended for this application’.”

As we went on to say, “when a tablet leaves you longing to return to a keyboard and a touchpad, there’s clearly something wrong”.

1. Next 7in media tablet

 Never mind worst product of the year, this is probably the worst product of the century. Normally when reviewing a product we can find something positive to say, but the highlight for the Next tablet was its eight-page Quick Start Guide.

Imagine, if you will, a product “designed” for surfing the web that makes the experience of web browsing so painfully slow you want to head butt a nearby wall.

Imagine an interface so unresponsive and poorly designed you have a better chance of reaching your intended destination by prodding randomly than trying to reason with it.

Imagine a portable device that won’t even last for two blinking hours away from the mains without collapsing in a sulky heap.

If you’ve imagined all that, then you’re very close to imagining the appalling Next 7in media tablet. If you got one for Christmas, don’t open it, just beg for the receipt. If that fails, head to your nearest Next, fall to your knees and beg for a pair of Argyll socks in exchange.

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