That's it, I have done it, the unthinkable. I have switched from MacOs X to Windows XP. My idea was first to install Ubuntu on the Mac Mini, but if you want to keep the Mac Os X install, the methods I have read on the web required to use bootcamp. At around the same time I was annoyed by problems I had with bluetooth and Skype in MacOs.
So, with bootcamp installed I decided to give a try to Windows. And it works quite well on the Mac. As I use it mostly as a media box (movies, photos, jukebox, browser and tablature reader) and not really as a developer, I find Windows quite convenient. I have always preferred Picasa to iPhoto. And moving back to Picasa for my photos is a joy. I can't believe the speed difference between the two apps, and it's not a matter of memory, I have 2gb. The crappy ways iPhotos deals with my folders is over. I am also happy to use again foobar2000 instead of bloated (and limited (only MP3s and MP4s)) iTunes. In my quest to look for a convenient setup, I discovered ProjectM visualisation, also available for MacOs X (with iTunes) and Linux. I am quite impressed with the animations. I have the impression that graphics are much faster under Windows than under MacOs, it's probably due to much better optimized drivers.
Today I gave a try to Netbeans 6.0. It's not a dev machine, but I find convenient to sometimes be able modify quickly an existing program, or test some java stuff. It's still in beta, and it shows, I found it so slow! Plus functionality is really not on par with Eclipse when it comes to code analysis. It reports some errors way too long after I corrected them, and it does not report other important errors, for example when a library requires another library. With Netbeans, you see the library problem only at runtime. Under Eclipse, you have an alert in your project, before running it.
What's not working very well is the broken Apple keyboard, I really don't understand why they changed all the non alphanumeric keys in the French keyboard layout. But it's broken in MacOs as well, Another thing is the bluetooth headset. Apple bluetooth drivers don't do that. Anyway Apple bluetooth range in the Mac Mini is a joke. My thinkpad offers a much wider bluetooth range.
Overall I am quite happy with the current setup, being able to use Picasa, foobar2000, Open Office,.and latest software like Skype 3 or Photoshop 9. And I don't have to lose any more time with the freaking Finder backward interface.
Thursday, January 25, 2007
Switching to Windows
That's it, I have done it, the unthinkable. I have switched from MacOs X to Windows XP. My idea was first to install Ubuntu on the Mac Mini, but if you want to keep the Mac Os X install, the methods I have read on the web required to use bootcamp. At around the same time I was annoyed by problems I had with bluetooth and Skype in MacOs.
So, with bootcamp installed I decided to give a try to Windows. And it works quite well on the Mac. As I use it mostly as a media box (movies, photos, jukebox, browser and tablature reader) and not really as a developer, I find Windows quite convenient. I have always preferred Picasa to iPhoto. And moving back to Picasa for my photos is a joy. I can't believe the speed difference between the two apps, and it's not a matter of memory, I have 2gb. The crappy ways iPhotos deals with my folders is over. I am also happy to use again foobar2000 instead of bloated (and limited (only MP3s and MP4s)) iTunes. In my quest to look for a convenient setup, I discovered ProjectM visualisation, also available for MacOs X (with iTunes) and Linux. I am quite impressed with the animations. I have the impression that graphics are much faster under Windows than under MacOs, it's probably due to much better optimized drivers.
Today I gave a try to Netbeans 6.0. It's not a dev machine, but I find convenient to sometimes be able modify quickly an existing program, or test some java stuff. It's still in beta, and it shows, I found it so slow! Plus functionality is really not on par with Eclipse when it comes to code analysis. It reports some errors way too long after I corrected them, and it does not report other important errors, for example when a library requires another library. With Netbeans, you see the library problem only at runtime. Under Eclipse, you have an alert in your project, before running it.
What's not working very well is the broken Apple keyboard, I really don't understand why they changed all the non alphanumeric keys in the French keyboard layout. But it's broken in MacOs as well, Another thing is the bluetooth headset. Apple bluetooth drivers don't do that. Anyway Apple bluetooth range in the Mac Mini is a joke. My thinkpad offers a much wider bluetooth range.
Overall I am quite happy with the current setup, being able to use Picasa, foobar2000, Open Office,.and latest software like Skype 3 or Photoshop 9. And I don't have to lose any more time with the freaking Finder backward interface.
So, with bootcamp installed I decided to give a try to Windows. And it works quite well on the Mac. As I use it mostly as a media box (movies, photos, jukebox, browser and tablature reader) and not really as a developer, I find Windows quite convenient. I have always preferred Picasa to iPhoto. And moving back to Picasa for my photos is a joy. I can't believe the speed difference between the two apps, and it's not a matter of memory, I have 2gb. The crappy ways iPhotos deals with my folders is over. I am also happy to use again foobar2000 instead of bloated (and limited (only MP3s and MP4s)) iTunes. In my quest to look for a convenient setup, I discovered ProjectM visualisation, also available for MacOs X (with iTunes) and Linux. I am quite impressed with the animations. I have the impression that graphics are much faster under Windows than under MacOs, it's probably due to much better optimized drivers.
Today I gave a try to Netbeans 6.0. It's not a dev machine, but I find convenient to sometimes be able modify quickly an existing program, or test some java stuff. It's still in beta, and it shows, I found it so slow! Plus functionality is really not on par with Eclipse when it comes to code analysis. It reports some errors way too long after I corrected them, and it does not report other important errors, for example when a library requires another library. With Netbeans, you see the library problem only at runtime. Under Eclipse, you have an alert in your project, before running it.
What's not working very well is the broken Apple keyboard, I really don't understand why they changed all the non alphanumeric keys in the French keyboard layout. But it's broken in MacOs as well, Another thing is the bluetooth headset. Apple bluetooth drivers don't do that. Anyway Apple bluetooth range in the Mac Mini is a joke. My thinkpad offers a much wider bluetooth range.
Overall I am quite happy with the current setup, being able to use Picasa, foobar2000, Open Office,.and latest software like Skype 3 or Photoshop 9. And I don't have to lose any more time with the freaking Finder backward interface.
Tuesday, January 16, 2007
Social (Web) Revelation: Tags Are Lame
I had a revelation yesterday while thinking about del.icio.us, the most well known social bookmarks site. I find out that I almost never use my tags, and I am often not satisfied by results when I search using tags. What use can you make of 100s of tags? in the end only less than 10 are usable to classify very different stuff. And even then compared to a search it's not a much useful classification.
If del.icio.us search engine was decent then I am sure I would never use tags. But their search engine is slow, and does not search much (it sometimes fails to find results on words in titles).
What is needed is really a social search engine, where you could look things up by user as criteria, and possibly by dates. I googled for it and immediately saw that my "revelation" was quite common. There are several social search engines. There is cranky, where you can see eventual reviews by some users, added to search results. There is eurekster, where you can search in any user bookmarks, but you can't search everybody (how silly). There is Yahoo MyWeb, quite decent if you ignore the presentation and if they added descriptions on results.
A friend of mine told me that furl, another social bookmarks site, is more search oriented, but unfortunately a bit slower to use since it keeps a copy of the page you bookmark.
But still I feel like none of the sites do the right thing, some have too many features, others bad presentation, focusing on useless crap. I actually think that google should have that feature integrated with the common search. I am sure it will in the future, but they seem to be late on the social side of the web.
If del.icio.us search engine was decent then I am sure I would never use tags. But their search engine is slow, and does not search much (it sometimes fails to find results on words in titles).
What is needed is really a social search engine, where you could look things up by user as criteria, and possibly by dates. I googled for it and immediately saw that my "revelation" was quite common. There are several social search engines. There is cranky, where you can see eventual reviews by some users, added to search results. There is eurekster, where you can search in any user bookmarks, but you can't search everybody (how silly). There is Yahoo MyWeb, quite decent if you ignore the presentation and if they added descriptions on results.
A friend of mine told me that furl, another social bookmarks site, is more search oriented, but unfortunately a bit slower to use since it keeps a copy of the page you bookmark.
But still I feel like none of the sites do the right thing, some have too many features, others bad presentation, focusing on useless crap. I actually think that google should have that feature integrated with the common search. I am sure it will in the future, but they seem to be late on the social side of the web.
Social (Web) Revelation: Tags Are Lame
I had a revelation yesterday while thinking about del.icio.us, the most well known social bookmarks site. I find out that I almost never use my tags, and I am often not satisfied by results when I search using tags. What use can you make of 100s of tags? in the end only less than 10 are usable to classify very different stuff. And even then compared to a search it's not a much useful classification.
If del.icio.us search engine was decent then I am sure I would never use tags. But their search engine is slow, and does not search much (it sometimes fails to find results on words in titles).
What is needed is really a social search engine, where you could look things up by user as criteria, and possibly by dates. I googled for it and immediately saw that my "revelation" was quite common. There are several social search engines. There is cranky, where you can see eventual reviews by some users, added to search results. There is eurekster, where you can search in any user bookmarks, but you can't search everybody (how silly). There is Yahoo MyWeb, quite decent if you ignore the presentation and if they added descriptions on results.
A friend of mine told me that furl, another social bookmarks site, is more search oriented, but unfortunately a bit slower to use since it keeps a copy of the page you bookmark.
But still I feel like none of the sites do the right thing, some have too many features, others bad presentation, focusing on useless crap. I actually think that google should have that feature integrated with the common search. I am sure it will in the future, but they seem to be late on the social side of the web.
If del.icio.us search engine was decent then I am sure I would never use tags. But their search engine is slow, and does not search much (it sometimes fails to find results on words in titles).
What is needed is really a social search engine, where you could look things up by user as criteria, and possibly by dates. I googled for it and immediately saw that my "revelation" was quite common. There are several social search engines. There is cranky, where you can see eventual reviews by some users, added to search results. There is eurekster, where you can search in any user bookmarks, but you can't search everybody (how silly). There is Yahoo MyWeb, quite decent if you ignore the presentation and if they added descriptions on results.
A friend of mine told me that furl, another social bookmarks site, is more search oriented, but unfortunately a bit slower to use since it keeps a copy of the page you bookmark.
But still I feel like none of the sites do the right thing, some have too many features, others bad presentation, focusing on useless crap. I actually think that google should have that feature integrated with the common search. I am sure it will in the future, but they seem to be late on the social side of the web.
Monday, January 08, 2007
1 year of mac mini - the deception point
I am less enthusiastic about the Apple experience than I was one year ago.
I am quite enthusiastic with the hardware in general, except the keyboard. The computer is small and quiet, and there are not many competitors at this price on the market.
Experience as a developer
I feel frustrated with MacOs X as a development environment, when compared with Ubuntu Linux. I always miss the multiple desktop, despite expose magnificient look. The standard behaviour for the terminal, bash, vim, etc. are more convenient in Linux. Installing software and updates is much more convenient on Linux thanks to the open source repositories. The key bindings for special characters is awful for a programmer on the Apple keyboard, because non standard, and not even written on the keyboard. Installing linux on a mac mini intel is not trivial, but I am considering it seriously.
Experience as audio/web user
No particular complaint about the web, but I use Firefox instead of Safari, because of Firefox Adblock extension. Chat works well, Skype is ok. There are sometimes problems with bluetooth audio for Skype that, I think, are related to MacOs.
Audio is good too, I end up finding iTunes ok to use, it is fast enough to manipulate 100GB of songs. But I don't use any fancy feature, except cd-burning. It makes a good jukebox, and the remote is handy, but not terrific (any wireless keyboard would do in the PC world, for 90% of the cases).
Photo is not great, I don't like iPhoto that much (especially when compared to Picasa). iPhoto is quite slow for me (and I have 2gb of RAM). I found it a pain to install TheGimp on MacOs, not knowing which X server to use. Photoshop is still not compiled for intel, and dog slow on my mac mini.
Page is not great either. It does render beautiful letters, but overall I don't find it very usable compared to more standard software like OpenOffice, and it's time limited!
Conclusion
Overall I think I would not buy a Mac again if comparable PC hardware exists. MacOs is not a bad OS, but I prefer Ubuntu Linux. If you don't use or like Linux then is really Vista worse? I don't think so.
I am quite enthusiastic with the hardware in general, except the keyboard. The computer is small and quiet, and there are not many competitors at this price on the market.
Experience as a developer
I feel frustrated with MacOs X as a development environment, when compared with Ubuntu Linux. I always miss the multiple desktop, despite expose magnificient look. The standard behaviour for the terminal, bash, vim, etc. are more convenient in Linux. Installing software and updates is much more convenient on Linux thanks to the open source repositories. The key bindings for special characters is awful for a programmer on the Apple keyboard, because non standard, and not even written on the keyboard. Installing linux on a mac mini intel is not trivial, but I am considering it seriously.
Experience as audio/web user
No particular complaint about the web, but I use Firefox instead of Safari, because of Firefox Adblock extension. Chat works well, Skype is ok. There are sometimes problems with bluetooth audio for Skype that, I think, are related to MacOs.
Audio is good too, I end up finding iTunes ok to use, it is fast enough to manipulate 100GB of songs. But I don't use any fancy feature, except cd-burning. It makes a good jukebox, and the remote is handy, but not terrific (any wireless keyboard would do in the PC world, for 90% of the cases).
Photo is not great, I don't like iPhoto that much (especially when compared to Picasa). iPhoto is quite slow for me (and I have 2gb of RAM). I found it a pain to install TheGimp on MacOs, not knowing which X server to use. Photoshop is still not compiled for intel, and dog slow on my mac mini.
Page is not great either. It does render beautiful letters, but overall I don't find it very usable compared to more standard software like OpenOffice, and it's time limited!
Conclusion
Overall I think I would not buy a Mac again if comparable PC hardware exists. MacOs is not a bad OS, but I prefer Ubuntu Linux. If you don't use or like Linux then is really Vista worse? I don't think so.
1 year of mac mini - the deception point
I am less enthusiastic about the Apple experience than I was one year ago.
I am quite enthusiastic with the hardware in general, except the keyboard. The computer is small and quiet, and there are not many competitors at this price on the market.
Experience as a developer
I feel frustrated with MacOs X as a development environment, when compared with Ubuntu Linux. I always miss the multiple desktop, despite expose magnificient look. The standard behaviour for the terminal, bash, vim, etc. are more convenient in Linux. Installing software and updates is much more convenient on Linux thanks to the open source repositories. The key bindings for special characters is awful for a programmer on the Apple keyboard, because non standard, and not even written on the keyboard. Installing linux on a mac mini intel is not trivial, but I am considering it seriously.
Experience as audio/web user
No particular complaint about the web, but I use Firefox instead of Safari, because of Firefox Adblock extension. Chat works well, Skype is ok. There are sometimes problems with bluetooth audio for Skype that, I think, are related to MacOs.
Audio is good too, I end up finding iTunes ok to use, it is fast enough to manipulate 100GB of songs. But I don't use any fancy feature, except cd-burning. It makes a good jukebox, and the remote is handy, but not terrific (any wireless keyboard would do in the PC world, for 90% of the cases).
Photo is not great, I don't like iPhoto that much (especially when compared to Picasa). iPhoto is quite slow for me (and I have 2gb of RAM). I found it a pain to install TheGimp on MacOs, not knowing which X server to use. Photoshop is still not compiled for intel, and dog slow on my mac mini.
Page is not great either. It does render beautiful letters, but overall I don't find it very usable compared to more standard software like OpenOffice, and it's time limited!
Conclusion
Overall I think I would not buy a Mac again if comparable PC hardware exists. MacOs is not a bad OS, but I prefer Ubuntu Linux. If you don't use or like Linux then is really Vista worse? I don't think so.
I am quite enthusiastic with the hardware in general, except the keyboard. The computer is small and quiet, and there are not many competitors at this price on the market.
Experience as a developer
I feel frustrated with MacOs X as a development environment, when compared with Ubuntu Linux. I always miss the multiple desktop, despite expose magnificient look. The standard behaviour for the terminal, bash, vim, etc. are more convenient in Linux. Installing software and updates is much more convenient on Linux thanks to the open source repositories. The key bindings for special characters is awful for a programmer on the Apple keyboard, because non standard, and not even written on the keyboard. Installing linux on a mac mini intel is not trivial, but I am considering it seriously.
Experience as audio/web user
No particular complaint about the web, but I use Firefox instead of Safari, because of Firefox Adblock extension. Chat works well, Skype is ok. There are sometimes problems with bluetooth audio for Skype that, I think, are related to MacOs.
Audio is good too, I end up finding iTunes ok to use, it is fast enough to manipulate 100GB of songs. But I don't use any fancy feature, except cd-burning. It makes a good jukebox, and the remote is handy, but not terrific (any wireless keyboard would do in the PC world, for 90% of the cases).
Photo is not great, I don't like iPhoto that much (especially when compared to Picasa). iPhoto is quite slow for me (and I have 2gb of RAM). I found it a pain to install TheGimp on MacOs, not knowing which X server to use. Photoshop is still not compiled for intel, and dog slow on my mac mini.
Page is not great either. It does render beautiful letters, but overall I don't find it very usable compared to more standard software like OpenOffice, and it's time limited!
Conclusion
Overall I think I would not buy a Mac again if comparable PC hardware exists. MacOs is not a bad OS, but I prefer Ubuntu Linux. If you don't use or like Linux then is really Vista worse? I don't think so.
Thursday, January 04, 2007
Tired Of Bad Singletons
While looking through some code for a project, I saw that:
And I don't think it was done by a newbie... It's actually not far from being correct, it's just that the guy obviously does not know about private constructors. I have seen several broken singleton implementations in previous projects and had several debates on the double-checked locking pattern (it works since JDK1.5 with volatiles but is useless). I am upset to see another half broken implementation. Everybody should have read at least this.
What have you seen as broken singletons?
public static final ProductYP instance = new ProductYP();
public ProductYP()
{
if (instance != null)
throw new RuntimeException("Only one instance allowed");
prods = new HashMap();
}
public static ProductYP getInstance()
{
return instance;
}
And I don't think it was done by a newbie... It's actually not far from being correct, it's just that the guy obviously does not know about private constructors. I have seen several broken singleton implementations in previous projects and had several debates on the double-checked locking pattern (it works since JDK1.5 with volatiles but is useless). I am upset to see another half broken implementation. Everybody should have read at least this.
What have you seen as broken singletons?
Tired Of Bad Singletons
While looking through some code for a project, I saw that:
And I don't think it was done by a newbie... It's actually not far from being correct, it's just that the guy obviously does not know about private constructors. I have seen several broken singleton implementations in previous projects and had several debates on the double-checked locking pattern (it works since JDK1.5 with volatiles but is useless). I am upset to see another half broken implementation. Everybody should have read at least this.
What have you seen as broken singletons?
public static final ProductYP instance = new ProductYP();
public ProductYP()
{
if (instance != null)
throw new RuntimeException("Only one instance allowed");
prods = new HashMap();
}
public static ProductYP getInstance()
{
return instance;
}
And I don't think it was done by a newbie... It's actually not far from being correct, it's just that the guy obviously does not know about private constructors. I have seen several broken singleton implementations in previous projects and had several debates on the double-checked locking pattern (it works since JDK1.5 with volatiles but is useless). I am upset to see another half broken implementation. Everybody should have read at least this.
What have you seen as broken singletons?
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