By John Gruber
WorkOS launches auth.md — an open protocol for agent registration.
Linked List: January 10, 2006
Tuesday, 10 January 2006
- Apple: DTK Exchange Program ★
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Apple is exchanging the $1000 Developer Transition Kit machines for 17-inch Intel iMacs, one for one, cross-shipped, shipping costs paid both ways. Pretty sweet deal, considering everyone thought they’d have to send back the DTKs in exchange for a steaming pile of corporate gratitude. (Thanks to Nat Irons for that turn of phrase.)
- Tom Yager on Apple’s Intel Benchmarking ★
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There are lies, damn lies, and benchmarks, but InfoWorld’s Tom Yager thinks Apple’s new benchmarks are especially bogus:
In short, Apple used multiprocessor benchmarks to skew the performance advantage that its Intel-based machines enjoy compared to single-core PowerPC G4 and G5. Apple used the industry-standard SPEC suite components SPECint2000 and SPECfp2000, but here’s the catch: Apple used SPECint_rate2000 and SPECfp_rate2000. Both tests spawn multiple parallel benchmark processes and are specifically intended for comparing multiprocessor systems. Single CPU, or single-core machines do positively lousy on SPEC*_rate2000 tests. That’s predictable and universally understood. […]
Apple uses SPEC*_rate2000 tests as a foundation for claims that Intel-based Macs outperform PowerPC G4 and G5 by a factor of 2 to 5. Well, yeah. A dual-core anything outperforms a single-core anything else by a factor of 2 to 5 in benchmark tests that make use of multiple threads or processes, tests crafted specifically for the purpose of stressing SMP-based systems.
- All iLife ’06 Apps Using iTunes’ Theme-Without-a-Name ★
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It’s hard to tell for certain from the shrunken screenshots on Apple’s web site, but it looks to me like all the new iLife apps (other than the still utterly goofy-looking GarageBand, of course) are using the same unnamed “looks like unified-title-and-toolbar but dark like brushed metal with curiously squared-off window corners” theme introduced with iTunes 5. (If anyone at the show can let me know for sure, please do.)
- Comparing the MacBook Pro to the PowerBook G4 ★
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Nice comparison chart from Paul Thurrott; the lack of estimated battery life from Apple is either ominous or curious.
- Big Chunks of Adobe Lightroom Written in Lua ★
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Gus Mueller, on the fact that 40 percent of Lightroom is reportedly written in Lua, a scripting language:
Holy Crap. 40%? Wow. That’s nuts. I had heard it described as a Cocoa app, so I needed to download it to check it out.
The first thing I did when I got the .dmg was to open up the package and snoop around a bit. Not that many .nib files laying around, but I bet they are using Cocoa. I found a couple of .lua files.. but they were in byte code for so I couldn’t see what was in them (damn!). A little shell script action reveals that there are 223 different .lua files in there. Wow.