The Talk Show: Live From WWDC
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Linked List: May 17, 2006

Wednesday, 17 May 2006

New $25 bookmark manager with Delicious integration and a gay name.

Blue Security is the anti-spam company that, when faced by a counter-attack two weeks ago from a network of zombie PCs controlled by a spammer, cowardly redirected all incoming traffic to its web site to Six Apart’s network (where Blue Security hosted their TypePad weblog), which caused an hours-long outage that brought down all TypePad and LiveJournal sites.

Well, it ends up that Blue Security has decided to fold rather than fight. The spammers are bastards, but considering Blue Security’s track record, I’m not sure this is a bad thing.

Apple Closes the Source to x86 Version of Darwin Kernel ★

Tom Yager writes on Apple’s decision to at least temporarily close the source code to the x86 version of the Darwin kernel. I think he takes things much too far with his conclusions, though:

Apple’s retreat to a proprietary kernel means that all users must accept a fixed level of performance. The default OS X kernels are built for broad compatibility rather than breakneck speed and throughput. That doesn’t matter at present, because all Intel Macs are built on the same Core Duo/Core Solo 32-bit architecture. But Apple’s workstation and server will be built using next-generation 64-bit x86 CPUs. […] Macs will inherit the benefits of Core Microarchitecture’s evolution, but OS X is limited in the degree to which it can exploit specific new features without creating branch after branch of OS code to handle each tweak to the architecture.

The insinuation here is that if the source code to Darwin’s kernel were available, users of high-end Power Macs (or whatever they’re going to call them) and Xserves would be able to run their own hot-rodded kernels and yet still run Mac OS X. I suppose technically that might be possible, it certainly doesn’t sound plausible. I highly doubt one could just plop down a recompiled kernel and expect the rest of Mac OS X to continue “just working”.

The truth is that other than serving as a nice symbolic gesture, I’m not sure there’s been any practical benefit to the fact that the Darwin kernel has been available as open source. In other words, I think it’s hard to make a case that most Mac users should care whether the Darwin kernel is open source or not.

Cork’d ★

Lovely new community site for wine aficionados from my friends Dan Benjamin and Dan Cederholm. Terrific design and a great idea — you rate and comment upon the wines that you drink, and you get recommendations based on the ratings from other users.

I’m particularly fond of their domain name: very short, very memorable. If Flickr operated like the patent trolls at Creative Labs, they’d have filed for a patent for “a technique to remove the ‘e’ from the suffix of a common word for use in creating a distinctive, memorable domain name for a web application.”

The “Zen Patent”: Creative Sues Apple Over Media Player Interface ★

This is the last-ditch effort from a company on its way down the toilet. They’ve lost in the battle for customers, and they’ve lost in the stock market (Creative’s stock is at a 4-year low). In spirit, this lawsuit reminds me of Apple’s doomed “look and feel” suit against Microsoft in the early 1990’s, when they decided to fight the rise of Windows through litigation instead of innovation.

My gut feeling is that Apple feels confident they will win this suit; if they were unsure, I think they would have settled. (It’s possible, though, that Apple tried to settle and Creative held out for too much money.) The iPod almost certainly does violate the patent; the problem is that this patent never should have been issued — it’s way too broad and way too obvious.

Secret Advanced iPhoto 6 Edit Mode ★

Press Control-Caps Lock-9 while editing a photo in iPhoto 6.

MacBook Cheaper Than Comparable Machine From Dell ★

It’s not even that close, really. These MacBooks are priced very aggressively.

Google Notebook ★

This is apparently Google’s answer to Delicious — a way to store and share URLs with notes. Except it’s not a web app, it’s a browser extension, and it’s only available for IE and Firefox.

Curmudgeon Gamer: History of Console Prices ★

In light of the recently-announced $500 starting price for the upcoming PlayStation 3, an inflation-adjusted graph of video game console prices since 1976.

Macworld: First Look: Apple’s New MacBook ★

Jason Snell does a great job with these first impressions.