Views from the Ivory Tower - March 2006
by Ted Bade
Steve Jobs and Disney Corporation - You probably heard that Disney purchased Pixar. By bringing Pixar into Disney, they bring in a lot of talent, not to mention they get to distribute all future Pixar studio movies. I wish the best for all the Pixar talent. The two Pixar top dogs were given nice positions in the Disney structure.
What you might not have heard is that this purchase makes Steve Jobs a major holder of Disney stock personally holding about 6.5%. Steve Jobs also becomes a member of Disney’s board of directors.
There is some speculation that bringing Mr. Jobs into Disney might be what Disney needs to grow into an even more successful company. He has proven that he knows what the consumer wants. Look at the success of the iPod and the iTunes music store. If he could bring that knack to Disney projects, who knows what will happen.
Also, his position might benefit Apple and Apple users in general. One would think that he would steer technology decisions at Disney toward Apple or to ensure that loyal Apple customers are not left out.
For the moment all we can do is speculate. Although right after the purchase, Disney shorts became available at the iTunes Music Store. Let us hope that this purchase/merger is good for all parties involved and especially good for consumers.
Booting XP on a MacBook - We knew it wouldn’t take people long to begin trying to figure out how to run XP on an Intel based Mac. Virtual PC is nice, but running native in hardware is always the best and obviously fastest solution.
Since I don’t own an Intel based Mac, the whole argument is academic for me, but I expect I will own one at some point and would like to be able to use Windows on a rare occasion. Right now, VirtualPC is my useful although somewhat sluggish solution.
I found one site that explains how to do this on a MacBook. Presumably, the author of this web page actually did this http://neosmart.net/blog/dual-booting-windows-xp-on-a-macbook/. I won’t cover any of the details. If you are interested, read the information on the web site. There are a couple of requirements that might be hard to accomplish.
If anyone personally gets this working, I would like to hear about your experiences. Take a moment and drop me an email.
There is another solution that I found very interesting. This is a means of running Windows applications from a non-Windows OS. In this case we turn to the great people involved with Open Source applications. There is an Open Source application called WINE, http://www.winehq.com/. This application can be considered a compatibility layer on tope of your current OS, allowing it to run applications designed to be run under Windows.
Since this is an open source application, it can be worked on my anyone. apparently some people have recompiled it to work on the UNIX inside of Mac OS X, providing another solution for people who need to run a Windows application.
If you are interested in reading about how this process is coming along, visit the following forum http://forum.osx86project.org/index.php?s=d866e88db220f38aee1b548e90eafb33&showtopic=8699&st=0&p=54080&#entry54080. There is a live discussion with a person who is actually doing the recompiling. This is posted on the OSX86 Project website, a site dedicated to keeping track of the new Intel based Macs and their abilities. If you are interested in this topic, you should consider visiting their web site - http://www.osx86project.org/index.php?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=1.
I think this is a cool solution. I might like to run a Window’s application, but I might not want to run Windows to do it. This would be my favorite solution, but I am sure there are limitations and there will be problems to work through. I plan to keep an eye on this one!
Looking forward to April 1, 2006 - Apple Computer Corporation will celebrate its 30th year of business on April 1, 2006. I expect Steve Jobs will use this anniversary day to unveil something new from Apple, perhaps even something major.
We could guess all day what it might be and would still have to wait and see what happens! I expect it will have something to do with digital entertainment. The iPod is the top dog with audio, so perhaps something for videos. But then again, it is April Fools day, perhaps it will be nothing at all. ;-)
Is it a Virus? Is it a Trojan? The debate goes on about the first Mac OS X bit of Mal-ware. - Apparently there is a Trojan Horse mal-ware called Oompa-Loompa. This is how it works, by some means you get a copy of a file called “ latestpics.tgz” which when unarchived, appears to be a JPEG image. It is in fact an executable file. If you run it, it will creates a newer copy of itself which can affect other real applications making them useless. The mal-ware propagates itself through iChat.
Of course, there isn’t much information about what would cause a person to try to execute what they thought was a JPEG image. I guess double-clicking on the image would essentially run it, but what I wonder, is why a person would find a archived file on their computer, have no idea where it comes from, unarchive it, then double-click on the resulting file, then provide a password to allow it to install a program.
Also, the above tgz file is stored in your /tmp directory. What, you didn’t know you had a /tmp directory? Most gui users will never see this directory. Just about the only way to get to it is by using the Terminal application. Am I just ignorant about how this works or is this just a non-problem virus?
Okay, so the virus is a “Concept” virus, that is one that proves that a virus can be created for Mac OS X. It doesn’t necessarily have to actually do anything to be a concept virus, it just has to show it does something. But then, under that definition, we could make a hardware virus right here.
1: go to hardware store
2: buy hammer
3: bring hammer to computer
4: smash hammer into your display screen
Please, don’t let this one get out, it could cause a lot of damage ;-)
TV shows and the iPod - It is interesting to note that some networks have seen an increase in the number of viewers of those shows that have episodes available in the iTunes Music Store. Pretty interesting. I know a lot of TV people were very apprehensive about having their video material available in the digital domain.
According to an article found on the Reuter’s web site,
an executive from ABC/Disney says there has been an increase in ratings since the availability of video.
Like cassette tapes, and VHS recorders, the digital domain will pass along as just another way for the entertainment industry to make additional money. They always complain at the beginning, until the money starts rolling in!
One Billion songs - (That is 1,000,000,000, for those of you who like zeros.) Apple announced the winner of the contest to be the person who purchased the 1 billionth song from the ITMS. The lucky dog from Michigan will receive a 20” iMac, ten fifth-generation iPods and a gift card for $10,000 for purchased at the iTMS. That comes to ten thousand songs or five thousand videos! Not bad for a $1 investment! As part of the deal, Apple will also establish a scholarship in this person’s name at the Juilliard School (a famous art school in NYC).
The iTunes Music Store has come a long way from its inception. I always thought the concept was a good idea and apparently so has the music consumer! Great Job Apple! Let’s look forward to the next billion songs sold.
