The Network - Apple

Snow Leopard and Photoshop

nospam@example.com (Allison) — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 11:11:33 -0700

As most Macintosh owners are likely aware at this point, Apple's new upgrade of OSX, dubbed Snow Leopard, is coming out tomorrow. One of the biggest questions is whether or not certain applications will continue to work with Snow Leopard, most important for many being Adobe Photoshop.

The good news is that CS4 on Snow Leopard has been tested by the Adobe team, and is all good. The worry for many users however, is that CS3 versions might be impacted. However, according to Adobe's John Nack, the product manager for Photoshop, CS3 should work fine on Snow Leopard. On his official Adobe blog he writes:

I've done some more research into the history of Adobe's work with Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard). I can't speak for product teams besides Photoshop, and in the interests of time, I'm sharing what I've found out so far.

It turns out that the Photoshop team has tested Photoshop CS3 on Snow Leopard, and to the best of our knowledge, PS CS3 works fine on Snow Leopard.

Apple and the Photoshop team worked together closely during the development of Snow Leopard, as we do during the development of every OS revision. The Photoshop QE team reported a couple of dozen problems to Apple, and I'm happy to say that Apple has fixed all the significant issues we found.

This should bring a sigh of relief for those of you who are planning to upgrade to Snow Leopard (I hesitate to call it SL to avoid confusion with Second Life).

Now some other bits of information. Even though Snow Leopard moves OSX to full 64 compatibility, according to reports on OS News, it will default into something called 32 bit mode which in effect, allows all 32 bit applications to run natively. This presumably will be phased out over time as more and more apps are converted to full 64 bit code, but for now it appears the transition may be fairly smooth. We shall see starting tomorrow:

Even though Apple has been hyping up the 64bit nature of its ucpoming Snow Leopard operating system, stating it will be the first Mac OS X release to be 64bit top-to-bottom, reality turns out to be a little bit different so far. With the current Snow Leopard seed, only Xserve users get the 64bit kernel and drivers - all other Macs default to 32bit. By holding down the '6' and '4' keys during boot, you can to boot into full 64bit mode - that is, if your Mac supports it. As it turns out, some Macs with 64bit processors cannot use the 64bit kernel because the EFI is 32bit. Note: I should have included in the article that 64bit applications will run just fine (including benefits) on a 32bit kernel in Mac OS X. Since this was already possible in Leopard, I assumed people were well aware of that. Turns out some were not, so my apologies for that.

For the Adobe blog, click here

For OS News, click here

Apple: 3d Web Standards

nospam@example.com (Allison) — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 11:37:01 -0700

An article at ARS Technicha goes into some detail regarding Apple and 3d web graphics. While 3d web graphics are nothing new, after all we have Flash and 3d virtual worlds such as Second Life, what is interesting about what Apple is doing is the talk of extending of CSS to accommodate 3d and making it an open standard. But before you rush out to start developing 3d worlds on a web browser, there are still two hurdles. First, it hasn't yet been released for anything other than the iPhone. Second, it has yet to be submitted to the W3C for ratification as a standard. However, it's worth looking at anyway.

From the ARS article:

Though many of the 2D transforms and animations are possible to replicate with JavaScript, and Mozilla is experimenting with some JavaScript-based 3D effects, WebKit's CSS transforms offer a serious performance advantage.

"It's hardware accelerated, and all the timing and intervals needed for the animations are handled more efficiently by Safari itself instead of Safari's JavaScript engine," Peter Zich, a Chicago-area developer, told Ars. "The framerate for JS animations on the iPhone usually doesn't get past 5fps, for instance, while with CSS it is far more."

Apple promotes these capabilities as a way for iPhone web app developers to achieve near native speed 3D effects. So why isn't Apple bringing the technology to the desktop? "I talked to Vicki Murley, a Safari Tech Evangelist at Apple, about why they left 3D off of non-Mobile Safari," Zich said. "She said they didn't really have a reason for it... they just hadn't done it."

A ticket in the WebKit team's bug tracker, opened in July of 2008, requests that the transforms be enabled in desktop builds of WebKit.

This may or may not be the future of 3d on the web. It depends what Apple does with the spec and how quickly developers can work with it in the wild. But it is an intriguing step forward, and does bring forth some interesting possibilities. Imagine social networks built using this capability, on web servers, and it could make the idea of a 3d web ready for the mainstream. Stay tuned.

Here's a video showing a demo of the 3d working on the iPhone browser:

Source: ARS Technica

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Forrester: 2009, the iPhone, Business Penetration

nospam@example.com (Allison) — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 18:25:46 -0800

According to Forrester Research, 2009 is going to bring more success for the iPhone. That's not a total surprise, after all, the iPhone is a monster growth area for Apple, and once most people try one, it's difficult to imagine using anything else.

But what is most interesting abut the latest report is that Forrester is seeing Apple opening up more sales for the iPhone in the enterprise sector, specifically penetrating 10% of small to medium enterprises. Not bad for a product that was introduced 18 months ago.

From the report:

we will see growth in the mobile "wannabe" user segment as employees bring their personal devices, such as the iPhone, into work and expect organizations to develop ways to support these new devices — even with the slowdown expected in consumer mobile device purchases

More here.

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Apple: Virtual Reality Headset?

nospam@example.com (Allison) — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 12:48:13 -0800

Anytime Apple does something, it sets the web abuzz with speculation, rumor, hope, and all sorts of interest. Of course sometimes that interest is justified, because it is not uncommon for Apple to hit the market with breakthrough products at the right time. We've all seen the impact of the iPod, the iPhone, and iTunes for example.

But this latest rumor touches on an area that we follow closely here - virtual reality. Apple might be looking to break into that market according to a recent patent filing for something called the "Automatically adjusting media display in a personal display system" which is patent-speak for Virtual Reality Headset.

True this is not an entirely new concept, but the fact that Apple has applied for a patent means several things if this ever comes to market.

First, it will likely have some novel feature(s) we've not seen before. Second, it will have the coolness factor that Apple is famous for. Third, it means that Apple has sights on the virtual immersive market.

The headset design uses eye tracking software to give the user the impression of being immersed in a given 3d environment. So as your eyes move, your view of the world moves with you. Apple has incorporated real life sounds for each environment as part of the design for the unit. It will be interesting to see if this ever comes to market.

Click for Fullsize

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Forrester: About Those Macs Appearing in the Enterprise

nospam@example.com (Allison) — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 17:29:53 -0700

Original Report

The saga of Apple in the enterprise is continuing to impress the major analysts, or perhaps the Apple reality distortion field has finally permeated Gartner, Forrester, and IDC. All joking aside, a new Forrester report indicates that OSX continues to grow in the enterprise, and this despite Apple not having an enterprise IT sales and marketing strategy in place.

Whether you love or hate Apple, you have to admit that their story this decade has been impressive, and it continues to impress. Growth in enterprise IT, in the absence of a sales and marketing strategy to that demographic, is almost unheard of. So in many respects, this story is all the more impressive.

But before we look at Forrester's latest, let's review some of what we've covered regarding Apple so far to date.

1. In February, Gartner lists Apple as one of the top ten trends for IT over the next several years.

2. In May, Gartner issues a report calling Windows Vista "doomed."

3. In June, the Yankee Group issues a report showing that Macs are now found in 80% of enterprises.

4. In July, Forrester issues a report calling Vista "the New Coke."

Now Forrester has a new report which shows that Macs and OSX are actually growing in the enterprise, despite Apple's lack of marketing towards the enterprise. Here's the chart that is most interesting:

Click for Fullsize

Forrester attributes these factors as leading to the enterprise growth:

Strong iPod branding and sales have led to greater consumer sales of Apple PCs; in turn, this has lured enthusiasts and small workgroups with supple IT departments beyond the standard domain of design and media

The way the process has worked is that consumers buy iPods, iPods lead to growth in Mac adoption for personal use, the adoption of Macs for personal use has made them more palatable for a sector of the enterprise IT world. Still, Forrester says Macs can make even more headway into the enterprise if Apple does the following:

Desktop operations professionals now realize that:

1. Emerging client virtualization solutions shift the focus from standardized hardware to more secure and manageable PC architectures and operations.

2. The success of the iPhone is driving many to improve the end-to-end experience with Macs.

3. Tech Populism drives younger, more tech-savvy workers to buy whatever tools they need, to work smarter, faster, and cheaper.

Apple, if it chooses to market to the enterprise, has two trojan horses, assuming Forrester is correct. The iPod and the iPhone. Of the two, the iPhone is the ultimate killer app for enterprise penetration, if Apple can get IT concerns addressed. It remains to be seen if Apple will really focus on the enterprise, but we have to think that these trends are something that the folks in Cupertino must be discussing, so don't be surprised if Apple marketing starts to show more focus on the enterprise.

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Gartner and IDC: Mobile Market

nospam@example.com (Allison) — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 12:21:08 -0700

Gartner

The mobile market is becoming increasingly interesting, not just because of the iPhone, but also because it is increasingly becoming more like a portable computer with phone capabilities than ever before. From the standpoint of social networks and immersive collaborative applications, the potential for change and disruption brought on by the mobile market is huge.

Gartner has issued a report which indicates that worldwide growth in the mobile market for 2008 is expected to be 11%, which compared to the slew of bad news in the economy in general, is excellent news. While the numbers are interesting, let's focus on the five key trends Gartner has identified in this market:

1. Established Vendors Consolidate and New Players Join the Fray. New device vendors, such as Apple and Garmin, are looking to differentiate themselves, while big-name vendors, such as Motorola, face pressure as market shares decline and design innovation becomes increasingly challenging.

Apple's iPhone has clearly been a market changing product. It will be interesting watch how this area continues to change as the iPhone becomes a platform for RIA's.

2. Device Vendors Build Out Ecosystems. This new market will bring changes in relationships between vendors, operators and content providers. Applications relevant to enterprises, such as location and navigation, will increasingly become available directly from device vendors that are integrating GPS into their products.

Again this is where the iPhone is a market disruptor. If Apple can turn the corner on the security issues for enterprise usage of the iPhone, it will be a big winner. It's not clear yet how others, such as Garmin will fare. But it's clear that established phone providers are going to have to follow the iPhone's lead in this area, or else they will suffer in the long term.

3. Devices Makers Will Focus on Removing Complexity for the User.

4. Mobile Devices Increasingly Become Lifestyle Statements.

Smartphones and cell phones have long been some of the most unintuitive devices to use. Again where the iPhone is setting the market pace is in removing complexity in the interface. This allows users to get to applications quickly and easily. As for lifestyle statements, perhaps, although in the enterprise that will be less important. I think the bigger trend is around the social application potential of mobile, and perhaps that is where Gartner is going with this, although I would say that real time mobile collaboration is going to be far more accurate than "lifestyle statements."

5. High-End Device Platforms Become â€œField-Refreshable." As cellular technologies become part of increasingly expensive consumer devices, vendors must manage ongoing support, upgrades and enhancement of drives. Because many users will hold onto high-end devices longer, these platforms will need more life cycle management in the form of upgrades and enhancements.

Gartner is dead on here. The iPhone and its ilk are much more akin to being small laptops, and are treated as such with regards to the ability to upgrade software components easily. Whether hardware upgrades a la the venerable PC are feasible with mobile devices anytime in the near future remains to be seen, but it will be interesting to see if demands for expandability of the hardware grows as the software ecosystems grows in complexity and capability.

EDIT: IDC has added its assessment of the mobile market:

The worldwide mobile phone market continued solid double-digit growth in the second quarter (2Q08) as competition in high-end devices heated up. According to IDC's Worldwide Mobile Phone Tracker, vendors shipped a total of 306.0 million units, an increase of 5.6% from the 289.7 million units shipped during the previous quarter and up 15.3% from the 265.4 million units shipped during 2Q07. Total shipments for the quarter were in line with IDC's expectations, even as vendors cited economic challenges and changing demands within key regions.

"Smartphones are still seeing growth rates hovering around 40.0% year-over-year, while the rest of the industry is growing at roughly 10.0%," said Ryan Reith, senior research analyst with IDCâ€™s Mobile Phone Tracker. "However, grouping 'the rest of the handsets' into one category is doing the industry no justice. The rise of the feature phone has created a battle at the high-end of the market, with the main difference between smartphone and feature phone being the high-level operating system. We expect the competition at the high-end will help drive growth within the market and help move volume to higher-end devices."

Regional Analysis

Despite rising food and oil prices, mobile phone growth in the emerging markets of Asia/Pacific continued to be robust. Nokia reported its highest-ever shipments in India amid subscriber increases in rural areas, while domestic phone makers benefited in China. Pre-empting the threat of the (then) imminent iPhone 3G, converged mobile device vendors in the region, including HP and MWG, also took the opportunity to launch their own offerings in 2Q08.

Volumes in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) rose modestly compared with the first quarter, and saw healthy growth from a year ago. In Western Europe, LG and Samsung increased market share with new line ups of medium and low-end products, while in the emerging markets of Middle East and Africa growth continued to be driven by sales of Nokia's entry level phones.

In North America, mobile phone shipments experienced a healthy lift from last quarter, with vendors introducing a number of feature phones ahead of the much anticipated iPhone 3G. In many cases, these offered touchscreen, music, or GPS. At the same time, the converged mobile device market grew faster than the overall mobile phone market and accounted for nearly a fifth of total mobile phone shipments.

In Latin America, mobile phone shipments continued to show positive growth. With the recent and continuous migration to newer networks and new services offered by carriers throughout the region, the main strategy for vendors and carriers in 2008 has been to promote and convince current users to migrate from low-end phones to more complex feature phones. In response, vendors launched a number of new models during the quarter.

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Gartner: iPhone in the Enterprise

nospam@example.com (Allison) — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 12:07:29 -0700

Summary: Research firm Gartner is offering up some "caveats" for iPhone usage in the enterprise. It should be noted that in my view, the iPhone is a strong candidate for being part of an Enterprise 2.0 strategy, but like Gartner, I have some reservations that would prevent me from recommending it yet as an essential part of a fully developed SOA/Enterprise 2.0 approach.

You can view the entire post by clicking here.

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Gimp on a Mac: How to Run it

nospam@example.com (Alice) — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 17:33:34 -0700

We're receiving a lot of inquiries about how to run the photo editing software Gimp on a Mac. While our tutorials have all been done on Vista and XP, we didn't include any specific information about Macs and Gimp, so this post is to help alleviate those issues. So, here's what you will need to do.

First, you'll need to make sure something called X11 is installed on your Mac. X11 allows you to run a large number of unix applications from inside OSX, and Gimp is one of those applications. You will find X11 on your OSX installation DVD, and if you have installed it, it will appear in your Utilities folder:

Open up the X11 program in that folder, and it will launch a program that will look like this:

Click for Full Size

Now go to your Applications folder (assuming you've installed Gimp already) and launch Gimp. The result should look like this:

Click for Full Size

That's it. You can now run Gimp. Let us know if you have any questions or if you get stuck.

Forrester: Vista is "New Coke"

nospam@example.com (Allison) — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 09:53:34 -0700

Report Link

In May we posted a report stating that Gartner was calling Windows Vista "doomed" and we noted that the outlook sounded bleak for Microsoft. Now Forrester has issued a new report that eviscerates Vista and worse, shows signs that Windows 7 is too far away to be of much help (it's currently slated for a 2010 release).

The Forrester report calls Windows Vista "the New Coke" which is a reference to the infamous 1985 marketing debacle which Coca-Cola wrought upon itself. In the case of Coca-Cola however, the mistake was reversible because Coke was able to reinstate its previous product line and continue forward. In the case of Vista, backpedaling to XP is not a viable long term strategy for Microsoft, and as users begin to defect to alternative operating systems, those users are likely to be lost to Microsoft for the long term.

Eighteen months after the release of Windows Vista, enterprise adoption is still in the single digits, and the majority of that seems to have come from upgrades of legacy Windows versions, not XP. Hereâ€™s a tip: Consider following the lead of Microsoftâ€™s most important partner Intel and re-evaluating the case for Vista. Windows 7 is penciled for release in Q1 2010.

Here's the chart that is the foundation of the tale of Vista:

Click for Full Size Image

According to this Forrester chart, the situation is that XP is not going anywhere, and whatever anemic growth does exist with Vista is at the expense of Win 2k. The growth of OSX and Linux are not yet apparent, but as Gartner noted, OSX is expected to grow in the enterprise by 2011, so it's too early to determine if they are correct in that assessment. Nonetheless, Forrester notes that now is an opportune time for Apple to get some enterprise sales focus, so it remains to be seen if they actually do so.

One other key point in the report concerns browsers and Flash players. On the browser side, Firefox is gaining more acceptance in the enterprise. It is now used by nearly 20% of enterprises, and is up from 17% usage in January. In addition, Flash players are used in 97% of the enterprises. This should indicate that web developers and Enterprise 2.0 development needs to be browser independent. It also indicates that Silverlight has yet to make headway in the enterprise.

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IDC: Growth Areas

nospam@example.com (Allison) — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 12:46:47 -0700

IDC Site

Research firm IDC is reporting that some of the following areas are enjoying growth, this despite a lackluster economy in general and a banking system in disarray (which as an aside, we predict that the next decade is going to belong to tech, information tech, medical tech, and green tech), and an oil industry that is out of control.

These may be early signs that the economy is going to change, and that tech is going to retake the growth position that it held in the pre-Bush years. Here are some of the things that IDC is highlighting:

Apple posts growth nine times the industry average. Takes #3 spot in the US market

Apple executes its market strategy better than any other company. It's consistent in its message, that message is always out there, and it markets to the niches that are most relevant to it, particularly people with disposable income who can afford to buy its products.

That audience will help Apple weather the U.S. economic slowdown better than most computer makers. It's catering to folks with money who are immune to the downturn, so that's good in the short term, maybe even in the medium term.

In the longer term, their global share is still small, around 3%, so the opportunity to take that higher is enormous. Apple's brand is highly recognizable around the world, and now that you have growing middle classes and growing disposable incomes in places like China and India, there will be huge opportunities for Apple.

Overall PC shipments grew 30 percent year-on-year and about 15 percent higher than IDC's initial forecast

Total PCs shipped in the first quarter reached 280,000 units due to strong consumer demand especially for laptops, according to IDC.

PC shipment grew 30 percent year-on-year and about 15 percent higher than IDC's initial forecast, according to a copy of IDC's Quarterly PC tracker obtained by INQUIRER.net.

IDC noted strongest growth in the notebook market, with the entry of more affordable models and small form-factor laptops like the Asus eePC.

Lastly, Open Source

The majority of average company revenue (63 percent) is from software products, with 30 percent from services; revenue from hardware and the resale of third-party products and services is negligible. These vendors are truly software vendors.
The majority of revenue from OSS (59 percent on average) is from subscriptions. In fact, 10 of 21 respondents generated 100 percent of their OSS revenue from subscriptions.

The average OSS revenue from Windows-based products (35 percent) is less than OSS revenue from Linux-based products (54 percent), which is not reflective of the installed base in mainstream enterprises.

On average, revenue from North America represents 62 percent of total OSS revenue, while Europe represents 23 percent.

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Gartner and IDC: Apple is Gaining Market Share

nospam@example.com (Allison) — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 08:28:01 -0700

Back in May we reported that Gartner had issued a report that called Windows Vista "doomed." In April we reported that IDC was showing growth in the market for Apple. And in February we reported on Gartner's Top Technology Trends which indicated that "by 2011, Apple will double its U.S. and Western Europe unit market share in Computers." We also reported that the trend for Macs is not just consumer based, but as reported by the Yankee Group is also happening in the enterprise.

Now both Gartner and IDC are reporting numbers that support their prognostications. Apple's Mac sales grew 38 percent in Q2 2008, and that's just in the US. Ironically, while Windows has slowed to a 4.2 percent growth crawl in the US, globally it is up 16 percent, while Apple only managed 3.2 percent growth outside of the US. Globally Apple now has an 8.5 percent market share, which is up from 6.4 percent in 2007.

These trends, along with the growth of the iPhone, suggest that Apple is poised to become one of the major players in the Enterprise 2.0 landscape, especially in the areas of Computing Fabric and WOA. As such, IT departments should begin to get themselves familiar with OSX, which if they are already versed in Unix shouldn't be too much of a learning curve, but the trends are clear: Apple is going to be part of the new infrastructure.

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