Frank 'viperteq' Young's Profile

My apologies.... their website sucks. With that said, I don't think I'd write about a software company that doesn't have a proper website to discuss and display their apps.

@gm80: Apple already has a mobile OS: it's what powers the iPod. It would be nothing for Apple Developers to add a few features, reconfigure others and co-opt for use on a cell phone/PDA.

Realisticly speaking, a MacBook Pro about 10 to 12-inches is going to be a bit small internally to fit all of the extra goodies that you want in it. So. EV-DO? That's out. GPS? That's out. Firewire 800? That's out, too! PC Card slot? Maybe, but you're gonna be pushing it. Everything else is doable though. I agree with Bad Beaver: Apple does need to make a Tablet-based laptop. I say give it a swivel touch screen, the new Samsung Flash-based Hard Drive, Airport (802.11n), Bluetooth, IR and let the battery be able to be charged via a FireWire port. That way when I sync my tablet with my iMac it charges at the same time. Lose the DVD drive and re-configure OS X so that all of my information (emails, preferences, etc.) stores itself on the flash drive as a .plist file: They're easier to write and they take up less romm on the Hard Drive. Also, they should right an application that would allow me to sync the tablet to my master Mac without having to put the tablet in Target Disk Mode (takes to long). Make a slot in the casing to hold a stylus/pen and give the stylus/pen a rechargeble battery that charges when the stylus/pen is inside the slot. OOOOOH!!! And for a cool factor effect, give the outer casing to the tablet a display section like the new ASUS laptops so I can bring up my widgets without having to open up the tablet. Then you really could call that Dashboard. Man I would SO buy that if they ever made one......

LOL!!!! My bad, I didn't realize that you were using custom settings for the software. I saw the photos and thought that they looked grainier than the original output photos. Now that I know that that isn't how the preset output looks, I'm more interested in trying out this software...especially since I'm picking up an iSight for my PowerBook today! Thanks for the review!

Ok, about Dashcode. It is NOT going to be easy for anyone to just open up Dashcode and crank out a widget in 20 minutes or less. THIS IS A DEVELOPER TOOL, hence the Javascript debugger. Heavy use of Javascript is going to required to get some good functionality out of a widget. That is why they instroduced WebClips, which anyone WILL be able to use to make a widget in 10 minutes or less. However, I bet you a thousand dollars that users will not be able to share webclips. I think that Apple will jsut have it that if'd like to make a widget and then share it, you need to be using Dashcode....

Opening OS X up to be used on any box that can meet the spec is what I've been advocating all along. I'm a huge Mac user, been one for a while. As much as I love the hardware, it's the software that makes me a fan. Too much rabble going on about Windows vs. OS X vs. Linux. Truth be told this is all rah-rah. OS X IS Linux. It is the best representation of what other distros want to become. Redmond just wants us to keep ducking it out because that means a larger slice of the pie for Windows. Bill Gates fears the day that Steve Jobs and the board at Apple vote to dis-continue making hardware and solely focus on software and open OS X up to other boxes. Michael Dell has already publicly stated that he would ship Dell boxes with OS X pre-installed if Apple opened the OS up to other hardware. When the world's largest PC maunfacturer teams up with the world's sexiest OS, things are going to start looking shaky for Windows. It is for this reason that the Gates and crew have been looking for other areas to expand Windows into such as Mobile Phones and Gaming Platforms. All the Xbox is is a computer with Windows running on top of it optimized for the gaming experience. It is for this reason that Apple needs to start looking at becoming more of a software copmpany in order to remain solvent for the for-seeable future. Let's not kid ourelves into thinking that Steve and crew will be able to keep spinning the iPod 10 to 15 years down the line. Eventually, they'll reach a point in which they've done all that they can do with the iPod. That example has already been given with Sony and the Walkman. No, for Apple, the future lies in software: OS X, Pro Applications (Final Cut, Aperture, Logic, iWeb Pro (?) ), the iLife Suite, Keynote and iWork and any apps that third party developers are making for the OS X platform. Add to this a revamping of the OS X Server software and a revamp of the .Mac platform and you have the makings of a very intimidated Gates and Ballmer.

Man, what I would love to see is native Mac apps getting ported to Windows. You see I was using a G4 Flat-Panel iMac at home to do my developing/designing on. But now I'm doing some traveling for a while and all I have to work on is my ThinkPad 600X. I was going to run Linux off of it, but I could never get any of the distros to work properly so I'm back to using Windows. Since coming back, I've tried to set the notebook up so that I can work seamlessly as I did on the G4, but it's been hella dicey. Got FeedDemon so I could keep up with my feeds, but it's so clumsy and garrish compared to NetNewsWire. None of the FTP programs that I have tried out for Windows even comes close to Transmit. Picasa is cool, but it's no iPhoto. Nvu and PSPad work "ok", but why should I have to use two different programs to write code when I could just use SubEthaEdit on the Mac which handles all of the programming languages? And that's just the hardcore stuff. It would be nice if Apple ported iCal and Address Book and iSync to Windows: The Palm app is just plain ugly and Thunderbird can't hold a candle to Address Book. If anything I'd like to see all of these great Mac-centric programs get ported to Windows that way I could remain productive until I can get my hands on the MacBook Pro.

I find this an interesting thought. Women are often portrayed as the more creative, emotional portions of the human while men are the more logical, rationizing portion. You could actually do two kinds of ads: One in which the husband is frustrated because he can't get Windows/Linux to operate correctly and meanwhile the wife has typed a report, downloaded a new recipe for dinner and created a new playlist in iTunes all in the same amount of time it took for the husband to finally get his computer to function. The second add would be geared towards the women who DO like tinkering with their OS X. You could show one ad with a woman installing more RAM or one where she's pairing her Blooetooth phone to her Mac or even on in which a woamn effortlessly configures OS X server for her blog. I'd also show ads of women using Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro or Photoshop CS2. The second set of ads would be aimed at showing that tasks that seem unbearably difficult in Windows/Linux are so easy with OS X that women have no problem performing the tasks themselves.