Veerle's blog

Longhorn on a diet

There’s much going on in the computer industry these days, for example on Friday Microsoft said it would cut back one of the major features that would make Longhorn a revolution “WinFS”. WinFS promised to be a smart file storage system that would make searching a whole lot easier then when using separate search programs. Apple will have a similar feature called “Spotlight” ready in Tiger in the first half of 2005. In the coming days we will also know if there will be cut-backs in “Avalon” Microsoft’s equivalent of Apple’s Quartz rendering engine. With all those axes they plan on getting it out the door in late 2006. In other words “Longhorn” sounds awfully like the good old Copland days. Copland was a much hyped Apple system that was never released.

The company (Portal Player) that produces the chip that drives the Apple’s iPod is getting ready to be featured on the Stock Exchange. The main reason for this is that they are hoping to raise $75 Million for future investments. So why is this interesting you ask? Well, to be featured on the Stock Exchange they need to file all kind of documents about the company and that’s where it gets interesting.

My initial reaction to Dashboard was like most people “it’s just like Konfabulator”. As you know Konfabulator is a JavaScript runtime engine. If you look on Apple’s Dashboard page it says “build your own widgets using the JavaScript language”, but that’s sort of misleading. With some clarification provided by Dave Hyatt, it looks like Dashboard will be more then just JavaScript. The Dashboard widgets are in fact just Web pages. Every widget can hold CSS2, DOM2, JS, HTML, XMLHttpRequest, Flash, Quicktime, Java, etc. With this knowledge the possibilities are more accessible for people like me with limited knowledge of JavaScript.

Today is the day that most of us Mac users have been waiting for. At 10 AM San Francisco time Steve Jobs will unveil 10.4 aka “Tiger”. Unlike last year there will be no broadcast of the event. Good news is that we have somebody at the WWDC and if luck is on our side I should receive live updates through iChat/iSight(?) and will post them on my blog. In its boldest move to date Apple is already displaying some banners at the WWDC which sends a pretty clear picture about Apple’s feelings towards Microsoft upcoming operating system. 

In just a few weeks we will know more of what’s coming in Apple’s next operating system 10.4 aka “Tiger”. Steve Jobs will reveal everything at this years World Wide Developers Conference 2004 taken place from June 28th till July 2nd in San Francisco. The slogan alone makes me just more curious “Innovation never sleeps. Preview the highly evolved Mac OS X “Tiger”