Despite being one of the most tightly controlled technology companies on the market, Apple has a surprisingly complicated relationship with open source. Both of Apple’s flagship operating systems, OS X and iOS are based on Darwin, which is in turn based on FreeBSD. Apple has also contributed a large amount of code back to the open source community, most notably WebKit, which is used as the browsing engine in nearly every mobile platform. Considering the recent popularity of Apple’s systems, and since there was a big Apple event happening today, their involvement in open source is worth a look.
Some of the source code for OS X is available on Apple’s open source site. Apple has made a decade of browsable archives available of all OS X releases going back to 10.0. Much of what is there is inherited from FreeBSD, but there are a few Apple developed tools there too. Up until the release of Leopard, or OS X 10.5, Apple made a downloadable ISO available for Darwin. They have since stopped offering the ISO, but significant amounts of source code are still available, enough that another project, PureDarwin, has managed to create a bootable OS.
Understanding Apple’s involvement in open source is easier if you look at it from their point of view. Apple can seem to be generous, as is the case with WebKit and their contributions to zeroconf networking, which they’ve named Bonjour, but there is a strategy behind it. Apple sells hardware, that’s where they make their money. Apple very nearly went out of business in the nineties, and were pushed into a small corner of the market by Microsoft. They’ve since recovered, and found a generous high-end niche market to operate in, but they still bear the scars of the nineties and remember what it taught them. If Apple can’t control the experience themselves, then they don’t want anyone to be able to control it. Microsoft came close to completely owning the web with Internet Explorer, and Apple knows that if there were still a lot of popular sites that required IE to function correctly, the Mac would not seem as appealing. So, it pushes open source adoption of WebKit. Apple believes in open standards, and at times open source, because it believes it can win on a level playing field. Or at least come out with a very profitable margin. So far, it seems to be working.
Many have proclaimed the availability of Flash on Android devices as a huge competitive advantage over Apple’s mobile devices, which rely on HTML5 and native apps for their video and interactivity. But now that Android devices tune into Flash-based video how well is it really working? For a video showing how surprisingly bad the experience is, check out NewTeeVee’s demonstration.
In August, Google’s Chrome web browser jumped up to 7.5 percent market share, following 7.1 percent share in July, according to data from Net Applications. That compares to static market share performances for Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari. Meanwhile, the arrival of Google’s much talked about Chrome OS is imminent, and the company’s overall Chrome strategy is becoming clearer.
Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser still owns 60.4 percent market share among browsers, but its share dropped from 60.7 percent share in July. Firefox has 22.9 percent share, and Apple’s Safari has 5.1 percent share. At 7.5 percent share in August, Chrome was the only one of the major browsers to show market share growth in August, which is just one sign that Google’s Chrome strategy is showing its legs.
It’s easy for many people to forget that the Chrome browser is not just built into Google’s Chrome OS—it’s the central portal to everything that users will do in the operating system. From the beginning, Google has positioned Chrome OS as a cloud operating system, based on the interface metaphors in the Chrome browser.
If you haven’t been using the Chrome browser, you should consider it as either your browser of choice, or a strong adjunct browser. It’s fast and slick. The browser’s 7.5 percent share is almost certainly going to jump strongly later this year as users get familiar with Chrome OS, putting it on track to challenge Firefox as the premiere open source browser.
August was another awesome month with great tutorials and articles oozing from everywhere. Here’s Creative Bookmarks August!
Quick Nav: Photoshop Tutorials Illustrator Tutorials Web/Blogging Tutorials Freebies, Inspiration, & Resources
In this tutorial, by Chris Spooner, you’ll learn how to re-create the sinister and gun-crazy poster for the new movie The Expendables.
In this great tutorial, from PsdTuts+, you’ll learn how to use a combination of photos, 3d elements, and other tricks and techniques to make a cosmic scene.
If you’re looking for an easy way to distribute video and podcasting from your Web site, check out MediaCore, a free open source vide CMS and podcast platform. It’s got a batch of easy-to-use features that make adding media to your site a snap. MediaCore support seven different media formats — yes, even Ogg Theora — and packages content for viewing on both the desktop and mobile devices.
Working with MediaCore is super easy. Store your video files wherever it’s convenient — YouTube, Google Video, Vimeo, or even your own server. Install the MediaCore software on your server (requires MySQL5 and Python 2.5), then use it to manage, organize, access and distribute your media files from a single control panel.
Support for closed-captioning is baked right into the CMS, as it a comment tracker, tagging options, user-upload support, and social media tools. If podcasts are your thing, MediaCore will automatically generate an iTunes and RSS feed for each audio file you create. MediaCore plugins make working with files on open source platforms like WordPress and Joomla a snap.
On August 1st we launched Vandelay Premier, a membership-based site that provides high-quality design resources and career resources. A lot has happened during our first month of operation, including the release of 19 new resources/packs! This post serves as a monthly roundup to display the new resources that are available for our members, as well as to list the new discounts that are available in the marketplace.
A few weeks ago we released the first free resource pack from Vandelay Premier. If you are not already a member you can still download this set of 4 textures as a sample of what is available.
Plain Brown Paper Textures
Beethoven has been dead 183 years but thanks to DRM restrictions you can’t legally share his copyright-free music from a CD you purchase at the local music store. An ambitious project by the team at Musopen wants to build an online library of free music that’s already in the public domain so listeners can share and enjoy the music any way they choose.
Once they raise the necessary funds to pay an orchestra, they’ll record symphonies from Beethoven, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, and Sibelius and share them with organizations like Wikipedia and archive.org. Musopen even plans to integrate the music files into netbooks via the One Laptop Per Child program.
Musopen is a 501(c)(3) tax-deductible nonprofit charity based in California. So far, it has raised nearly 10,400 — just short of its $11,000 goal. Depending on the amount pledged, donors can receive early access to music online ahead of its public release or even get the chance to choose a piece of music to be recorded.
Apple has virtually owned the consumer tablet device market for five months now, but the company is about to face its first serious competition coming from Android-based tablets. Samsung will enter the fray by introducing its Galaxy Tab slate this week, and others are sure to follow. It will be interesting to see how devices based on an open source operating system fare against the iPad. GigaOM has a complete report today, found here.
ipad (add alternative, 1 review)
Is OpenOffice Next In Oracle’s Proprietary Plan? (9 comments)
Why Google Should Make Its Own Tablets (1 comment)
The war drums are starting to beat around Novell. Now that Oracle has subsumed Sun Microsystems, only Novell and Red Hat remain as large, U.S.-based public companies focused primarily on open source software, and Novell continues to stand on shaky ground. This week, the company underperformed its guidance for the fiscal third quarter of 2010, with earnings and revenues down. As Novell struggles, some foresee a VMware acquisition, and Red Hat may end up the big beneficiary.
Novell’s revenues were $199 million, a decline of 8 percent from the comparable quarter of 2009. The company reported net income of $16 million, or $0.04 per share, down from $17 million in the third quarter of 2009. Most worrisome, the company’s Linux revenues were $36 million, down 7 percent from the third quarter of last year, and Linux invoicing was down 11 percent. Regarding the Linux problems, Novell’s CFO, Dana Russell said “depletion of the original Microsoft certificates this year makes for a challenging year-over-year comparison.”
Novell fully admitted, for a long time, that it was heavily dependent on Linux-focused deals driven by Microsoft to drive its revenues and earnings. Now, the company is rumored to be the target of an acquisition by VMware, which has far-reaching partnerships with the company. Previously rumored suitor Oracle is almost entirely likely to have any interest in Novell. Meanwhile, a large hedge fund has an outstanding offer to buy the company, and is predicted by most observers to simply want to flip it for a higher price.
If you’ve ever been gridlocked in a group decision-making process, you know how quickly things can go from frustrating to downright unwieldy. Even with a common goal in mind, it’s easy to get bogged down in data and competing opinions. Analysis of Competing Hypothesis (ACH) is an open source application that’s been helping the CIA with its research methodologies for years and it’s freely available to the public to help groups look at — and solve — problems objectively.
“A natural human tendency is to give more weight to information that supports our favorite hypothesis than to information that weakens it. This is unfortunate, as we should do just the opposite,” notes Richards Heuer, creator of the ACH software notes on the Web site. ACH avoids this particular temptation by allowing users to enter and evaluate data within the context of the targeted goal. The group can work with one large table of data points, or create individual tables and let ACH merge them into one large one that identifies points of contention within the group.
ACH is a complex piece of software but it’s interface is quite user-friendly. Since a picture is worth a thousand words, let’s take a look at some screen shots.
Search Engine Optimization
