Musings

I was visiting Benno, my friend who got both a PowerBook for himself and an iBook for his wife. When I looked at his running applications, I noticed “Norton Antivirus for Mac” running on his computer. I laughed and said, that he wouldn’t need it. To this he answered, that there were indeed viriii for the Mac. I challenged him to name one. He googled and the very first entry said “Why there are no viruses for the Mac”. ...

A most excellent article on the technical details of Apple’s OS X 10.4. There’s a lot more changes than meet the eye. Interesting reading on kernel locks, file meta-data, Quartz architecture and loads of other things. And a pleasant difference to the many “Spotlight/Dashboard, so-what’s really new” articles that I’ve been seeing the last weeks.

I’m still sitting in the train from Bern to Zurich, in the business compartment (the one sporting electrical outlets). As usual there’s a deluge of laptops (mostly Dell). But within 2 meters of me are two other 15" Apple Powerbooks. That’s the highest density I have witnessed in the last 8 months that I have travelled this route. Is the secret plan for world domination starting to work for his Steve-ness? ...

Something good is coming out of the NSA – a guide to secure various operating systems. I have cursorily glanced over the XP and the OS X guides and learnt quite a bit. This goes to my reference stack and will be thoroughly reviewed soon. Very interesting reading! Operating System Security [via vowe]

One of the things that bugged me about writing the blog, is that I usually have time to write when I’m not online (in the train). Recently, this has changed due to the availability of fast (and expensive) GPRS/EDGE, but the prices Swisscom charges for internet access are prohibitive high. I was toying with the idea of running a Lotus Domino based blog, but inertia has kept me from going down that route. While I’m not that happy with my current MT setup, a change is a lot of work. ...

I admit it. I have switched. The Mac Mini was just the beginning, since last week I have a 15" PowerBook. I really, really like it. I will not bore you to death with all the details of why the Mac is better – you have heard those things before. I have to keep my trusty Dell Inspiron for the Lotus Notes development I’m doing, but most of my work day is spent in front of the PowerBook. ...