Apple’s move to junk Java on the Mac may make things a little more complex but could ultimately make the platform more secure, some experts say.
Apple recently revealed plans to abandon native OS X support for Java, following this news up with an alliance with Oracle under which Java on Mac development and maintenance passes to the OpenJDK project for Mac OS X.
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Why lawyers choose a Mac instead of a PC
Legal professionals are embracing Apple solutions in ever greater numbers, new research provided by online software as service supplier, Clio, claims.
In a survey of 835 US lawyers, Clio found 55 percent of the group already use Macs: 18 percent of Mac-using lawyers have been using a Mac for under a year, 41 percent between 1-3 years and the rest for over 3 years.
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Relax developers, relax developers, for today Oracle and Apple have announced how they intend maintaining Java on the Mac — and to be honest it looks like it will be better than before.
Apple will contribute nearly all the key components, tools and technology required for a Java SE 7 implementation on Mac OS X, including a 32-bit and 64-bit HotSpot-based Java virtual machine, class libraries, a networking stack and the foundation for a new graphical client.
OpenJDK will then make Apple’s Java technology available to open source developers so they can access and contribute to the effort.
Press release follows:
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COMPUTERWORLD: Apple is deadly serious about its plans for the Mac App Store. The company is about to disrupt the entire retail software sales industry in order to create the world’s biggest market for consumer software sales — only on a Mac.
An unverified email from Steve Jobs seems to indicate that Final Cut Pro will finally get updated early 2011. Oh, and it will be great.
A great release of Final Cut is coming early next year.
Sent from my iPad
A report claims Apple may have crippled AirPrint before it began, abandoning support for printers shared via a network-connected PC or Mac.
On launch, Apple promised: “AirPrint is Apple’s powerful new printing architecture that matches the simplicity of iOS—no set up, no configuration, no printer drivers and no software to download,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “iPad, iPhone and iPod touch users can simply tap to print their documents or photos wirelessly to an HP ePrint printer or to a printer shared on a Mac or PC.”
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According to Business Week, BlackBerry’s iPad-competitor, PlayBook, will cost less than $500, making it priced very aggressively against the iPad. Ever since the PlayBook’s introduction in late September it has been dubbed a potential iPad killer. The tablet features a 1 GHz processor, 1 GB of RAM and has two cameras (front and back). The device features a high-resolution 7 inch screen making it DOA since it apparently won’t include an accessory to shrink its user’s fingers.
Still, BlackBerry’s Playbook is an enticing offering with its fantastic technical specifications, dual cameras, portability, great operating system, and of course the token BlackBerry e-mail client and enterprise integration. RIM’s CEO, Jim Balsillie reportedly said:
“The product will be very competitively priced,” and when asked whether it will be about $500, Balsillie said “no, it will be under that.”
Apple’s iPad starts at $499 for the base model that includes WiFi and 16 GB of flash-based storage. When RIM’s CEO was asked if his tablet would be under $500 he could very well mean $499 or something in the $399 to $479 range. If RIM placed their entry PlayBook into the market at $399 that would surely give the iPad a run for its money. Only time will tell how well the BlackBerry PlayBook does but we think many will agree the PlayBook could make a nice dent into the tablet market with a sub-$500 pricing point.
COMPUTERWORLD: We’ve talked a lot about how the iPad is making Apple some space in the enterprise. On launch, critics slammed the device for neither being fit for enterprise use nor for use as a netbook replacement. They were wrong. With iOS 4.2 the iPad is an even better fit for business. I’ve taken a short look at what’s coming inside the upgrade, and identified five high-level iPad apps for business users.
Adobe has introduced a public beta of Audition for Mac, its professional audio toolset for recording, mixing, editing and mastering.
Apple has iWork 11 ready for release but is holding back its introduction to debut the software along with the Mac App Store, itself scheduled for launch by early next year.
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COMPUTERWORLD: There’s been some talk on Lion’s new user interfaces and the removal of active indicators to show active applications in the Dock. Does this mean the Dock itself is set for change? Today a new European patent filing has emerged which describes an all-new system of “scrollable menus and toolbars.”
Toshiba has introduced new solid state storage that’s compatible with the MacBook Air but offers up to 256GB of capacity.
These are the same as those used in the MacBook Air, which are also manufactured by Toshiba. Apple’s association with Toshiba is extensive. Toshiba made the hard drives at the center of the original iPod range, for example).
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Currently, the only thing limiting OSX Server running virtualized on generic hardware is Apple’s insistance that it only run on Apple hardware. VMWare, VirtualBox and Parallels have complied and made it impossible for OSX to run on anything but Xserves and Mac Pros.
Apple has allowed the virtualization of OSX on Apple’s own hardware since a change of EULA in Leopard.
But perhaps Apple is loosening its hold on the OSX Server? An interesting tidbit from Virtualization.info shows there is some code which could indicate that Apple OSX Server might be made to run as a VM on its vSphere Cloud infrastructure software.
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According to French Website MacGeneration, Steve Jobs replied to a reader sympathetic to the plight of the XServes with the short explanation that they simply weren’t selling.
An interesting little exchange of words went down at the XSanity forums this weekend. After Friday’s news of the death of the Xserve, Eric Zelenka, Apple Senior Worldwide Product Marketing Manager for server, storage, and management products, chimed in with something to rest everyone’s beating hearts.
Apple remains committed to the development of server products, technologies and services. Today’s announcement does not impact the future of Xsan or server software on Mac OS X.
A little over nine hours later, he deleted the message. Why?
Apple adapter foreground, Kanex in the back.
If you are an Apple customer who’ve had a 30-inch display since the time Apple announced they’d be going from DVI adapters to Mini DisplayPort, you’ve probably gone through the wringer like me.
Display flicker Issues with Apple’s adapter
That link is to the timeline up until last year. I’m not alone, here are two Apple Discussions threads with thousands of people with similar problems:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=8680802
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=8674416
Amazon too
Now Apple’s product, after three firmware updates over two years and significant user outrage, mostly works, but I still have a problem pictured above often when I return to my Dell and HP monitors after sleep. By clicking input on my monitor and shutting it off and on a few times, it snaps back into shape. But that is a pain especially since I can hook up my DVI MacBook Pro without issue (and it works fine on my Unibody running Windows in Bootcamp!) What to do? Kanex to the rescue…
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COMPUTERWORLD: Strange days, on the one hand you see Apple discontinue its main enterprise product (the Xserve) in the same week as we see the company’s enterprise credentials climb a notch or two, and we also learn the company’s looking to mobile payment solutions in order to bring people without credit cards inside its future iWallet economy.
Yet more Apple moves in corporate America, where the iPhone and iPad are gaining more traction than the actually pretty good Xserve ever did — it seems Bank of America and Citigroup are considering whether to let employees use the Apple Inc. phone as an alternative to Research In Motion Ltd.’s BlackBerry for corporate e-mail.
From out tips:
At PwC, we go live with iPhone roll-out in January – available to all 30,000 US employees. No word yet on availability to our foreign comrades (roughly 120,000 of them worldwide).
– Talkin’ Bout A Revolution
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Well, Apple didn’t take long to replace its Xserve today. Noting the change in its Xserve transition documents (PDF), we headed over to the Apple Store and lo and behold, there is a new Mac Pro Server option that fits nicely where the Xserve now does.
It ships within a month and can be configured with 12 cores where the Xserve maxes out at 8. We’ve compared max out setups below:
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Wow. As of January 31st, the Xserve will be no more. After almost a decade (it was introduced in 2002), Apple will no longer have a rack mounable server product unless you consider things like MacMini Colo a rack mountable solution.
The Enterprise business really never took off for Apple and besides some brief notoriety for their G5 Supercomputers in the middle part of the decade, Apple’s Xserves never really stood out in the greater enterprise community. Although they looked good and were great machines, they were expensive for their performance.
This will be a big blow to the businesses that use Macs as servers, but like everything else, Apple likely sees these businesses moving to the cloud for their Apple server needs. Perhaps we’ll see a MobileMe Enterprise edition coming out of North Carolina?
On the hardware side, businesses that would have otherwise bought an Xserve will be forced into buying Mac Pros or Minis…unless Apple decides to license its Server software to someone else. But we’re not even sure there will be a new version of OSX Server.
Does this also put 10.7 Lion Server on the endangered species list?
All we can say is: RIP to the best looking 1U Rack mountable server out there. It was always especially interesting to open them up and see how Apple arranged those motherboards, hard drives and other equipment in two dimensions. :(
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COMPUTERWORLD: I’ve said it before now I’m saying it again, the iPad is indeed cannibalizing netbook sales. For proof, you don’t have to ask Best Buy’s boss, nor do you have to listen to the analysts, you just need to speak with Microsoft. Apple’s iPad is exploding into the enterprise, defining new categories and generating huge disruption across many industries, meanwhile competitors are simply unable to keep up as Apple does the business.
There’s an observed trend among enterprise users to move to embrace the iPad, now big business is being urged to make serious plans to integrate the device into their IT infrastructure, on strong advice from the Gartner Group.
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According to CNET, Lightpeek 10Gb Tx/Rx bus technology is on the way for a 2011 debut, likely in Apple’s Macintosh computeres.
But Apple is expected to back Light Peak, if past comments from Intel still hold. Shortly after its annual developer conference in 2009, Intel said that it had showed the technology to third parties, got feedback, then incorporated the feedback into the next design, adding, at that time, that “Apple is an innovating force in the industry.
Steve Jobs recently panned USB3 in an email saying that Intel didn’t directly support it in their chips. Intel will natively support Light Peak. Below is a video on Light Peak:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izNoF1SWtSg&w=640&h=385]
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Apple’s loosened-up its deal for AppleCare customers, enabling them to transfer their maintenance and support agreements to new products.
“As of 28 October 2010, customers who want to transfer their AppleCare Protection Plan (APP) coverage to a new product may do so instead of having to cancel the agreement and purchase a new one.”
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