Linked List: September 10, 2009

Thursday, 10 September 2009

Libdispatch 

Apple has released the source code to Snow Leopard’s new Grand Central Dispatch.

iFixit Takes Apart a New iPod Nano 

So much tech in so little space.

From the DF Archive: The $64,000 Question 

A brief refresher from April 2008 on how Mac OS X got to where it is with regard to support for 64-bit apps:

When Leopard was first announced at WWDC 2006 nine months prior, it included full 64-bit support for both Carbon and Cocoa.

64-bit Carbon wasn’t promised to be coming “sometime”, like with, say, resolution independence. It was promised for 10.5.0. And it existed — developer seeds of Leopard up through WWDC 2007 had in-progress 64-bit Carbon libraries, and Adobe engineers were developing against them. Several sources have confirmed to me that Adobe found out that Apple was dropping support for 64-bit Carbon at the same time everyone else outside Apple did: on the first day of WWDC 2007.

If Apple had shipped Leopard with the 64-bit Carbon support promised at WWDC 2006, Photoshop CS4 would run in 64-bit mode on the Mac.

Garrett Murray’s Side-by-Side Comparison of iTunes 8 Versus 9 User Interface 

Technically, a rollover comparison, not a side-by-side one. But you know what I mean. And it’s a way to spot some of the subtle changes, like the lighter shade of blue in the sidebar, and the new icons.

Mac OS X 10.6.1 Is Out 

Includes the latest version of Flash. Hard to believe we survived without it.

Motorola Unveils Cliq 

Their first Android phone, running MotoBlur, their customized version of Android. It’ll be on T-Mobile “later this year”, no pricing yet.

More Logical File System Organization With iTunes 9 

Nice catch by Zach Holman:

iTunes now lets you organize everything into an upper level “iTunes Media” folder structure, which then breaks out neatly into logical groupings: movies, apps, shows, and so on.

Rene Ritchie on What’s New in iPhone OS 3.1 

Not a ton of new features, but some nice improvements.

Mac Dev Center: What’s New in Mac OS X v10.6 

Developer-level documentation from Apple on what’s new in Snow Leopard.

Exploded Store 

I’m a sucker for these t-shirts.

New App Store Chart for ‘Top Grossing’ Applications 

Stuart Dredge:

Apple has introduced a new chart on its App Store, and developers are sure to be pleased. Alongside Top Paid and Top Free apps will be Top Grossing apps.

In other words, applications will be ranked on that chart by the amount of revenue they have generated, which should ensure more expensive apps aren’t buried beneath the dozens of popular 99-cent apps, as they are on the current paid chart.

Not sure why they have the story marked as “Exclusive”, though.