Unixster

Well, it’s been a few weeks since the launch of Apple’s comically named “iPad,” and there’s no doubt the world has much to think over. That’s particularly true for those in the FOSS community, of course, given the decidedly closed nature of Apple’s new device. Fans of Cupertino may be swooning with delight, but the picture is less clear for those of us in the rest of the world. The new device is “a frightening step backward for computing and for media distribution,” according to the Free Software Foundation.

The Bordeaux Technology Group released Bordeaux 1.8.2 for Linux today. Bordeaux 1.8.2 adds support for Apple’s QuickTime 6.5.2 Player, IrfanView 4.25 the extreamly popular image viewer and editor. This release aslo bundles in Cabextract, Wget and Unzip to remove external dependencies. Our winetricks script has been synced to the latest official release, Steam should now install and run once again, There has also been many small bug fixes and tweaks.

British singer/songwriter Gary Go creates much of his musical accompaniment on his iPhone. His single, “Wonderful,” is available as a free download from iTunes. If you’re in New York, you can watch Go perform on his iPhone and Mac on Sunday, August 16 at the Apple Store SoHo. If you’re not, check out this video at keyboardmag.com.

While Psystar and Quo clone the Apple experience with Mac OS X and PC hardware, we can do it with a Linux based OS. This article presents a few ideas and suggestions for such a project under the fictional brands: "Mond Computers" and "Mond OS".

Open source isn’t just for Linux users, there are many excellent free open source applications available, ready to run, for Apple Mac OS X too. Part 1 of this 2 part feature takes a look at alternative browser, mail, messaging, productivity and image editing applications.

Microsoft’s latest 10K filing with the SEC sees the company officially acknowledging that it faces competition from Linux vendors on the client side of its business, namely desktop Windows. Citing Canonical and Red Hat as "competing commercial software products", alongside Apple’s products, Microsoft acknowledges that partners such as Hewlett-Packard and Intel have been "actively working with alternative Linux-based operating systems" and suggests that competitive pressures on OEMs and the low-price of netbooks are to blame.

Microsoft has warned investors about new threats to its precious client-side tech ecosystem, by listing Linux vendors Canonical and Red Hat as rivals in its annual Form 10-K filing. The software giant also acknowledged Apple’s impressive market share grab in the US, where it now commands fourth place for total shipments.

I read the latest words of our beloved Redmond executive we all like affectionately call “Steve”. From the way mr. Ballmer speaks to us you’d say there’s nothing wrong with paying for software. You’d say that the business model that Microsoft chose is the right one for every firm and company out there. What Steve failed to mention is that if every software firm and company out there would chose that particular business model, Microsoft would have been out of business. Competition is good Steve. Yes – Apple’s business model is radically different from the one Microsoft uses. And guess what? People LIKE it more. What that particular business model provides is exactly what people need. Apart from the fact that they’re using the same “push towards the consumer” tactic that Microsoft so dearly holds, Apple manages to actually deliver good stuff towards the same consumer.

The Mono developers have announced a limited beta and September release of MonoTouch, an edition of Mono for the Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch devices. The open source .NET implementation has had some hurdles to overcome to be able to work within Apple’s technical and legal requirements.

Apple realized some time ago that people might want to dual-boot their new machines so they created Boot Camp. Indeed, Boot Camp does make it easy to dual-boot and they even give you all of the drivers needed to make Windows support their hardware… but what about triple-booting? Maybe someday the Boot Camp developers will implement triple-booting but for now it only supports dual-boot. What is needed is a set of clear instructions for creating a triple-boot setup… and here they are.