you want to start something?

Still don’t know what I was waiting for
And my time was running wild
A million dead-end streets and
Every time I thought I’d got it made
It seemed the taste was not so sweet
So I turned myself to face me
But I’ve never caught a glimpse.

- Bowie, David

This has been a week of changes for me. I’ve been forced into the situation that I have to take stock of where things are going in my personal life and at the end of last week, everything changed.

I don’t think anyone can afford to sit back and idly watch time go by. I don’t think it’s right for you to put your life on hold while others obsess about their past. If, through inaction, you permit something to happen, then you are just as guilty.

I’ve blogged about this sort of thing before but I’m been procrastinating for an age and done nothing. Shame on me.

On other news, we have a hit-list of things we need to do before release and we have to start getting on with things. Aidan is taking this weekend off and so am I. After this weekend, a long weekend extended by the May Day bank holiday, nothing will be the same.

Tags: News by mj
No Comments »

You may have noticed I’ve not posted anything to our blog for the past couple of weeks. Unfortunately, my wife’s grandmother died about two weeks ago, and we’ve spent the intervening time preparing for a trip back to the UK (Yorkshire) for the funeral.

Given that we’d already planned a trip back to Northern Ireland for July (and a subsequent trip to Disneyland Paris for the kids), we decided it would be best for my wife just to stay in N.I. until I could come out and join her. At the last moment, she felt very uncomfortable about the whole thing and I’ve ended up coming with her.

The upshot of all this activity is that I’m on leave from my day job, and in Lisburn (that not-so-well-known market village pretending to be a suburb of Belfast). I met up with MJ on Saturday for the first time in almost three years (and he’s not become _that_ fat) and we’ve kicked off the activities necessary to turn infurious into a limited company.

Also, while offline for about two weeks, I started work on our second product, and I’m pleased to say it’s come on very well – to the extent that we may be able to launch it around the same time as SyncBridge (although it has less broad appeal).

Tags: News, infurious by mj
No Comments »

Forgive the Daily Star-style headlining

I spent about 7 hours with some smart people yesterday. One of them, a dyed-in-the-wool Windows sysadmin, showed us some cool technology but it was very noticeable the way he expressed how he had no idea how to sell Vista to his clients. He could force it upon them but how to actually “sell” it and make it actually “value” was proposed as something that would be difficult.

We’ve seen how Microsoft is courting games developers to make new games only run under Vista in the old-fashioned concept that games drive the industry forward. Hey, Billy-Boy, games drive sales of hardware, using it as a club to make people buy your next piece of software is going to be a hard sell – especially to developers who want to appeal to everyone with a vaguely recent machine.

Even Paul Thurrott claims Microsoft’s handling of Windows Vista has been abysmal

So, how is this going to be pushed? I figure a version of Office will be thrown out the door which only supports Vista and does something new and exciting with pivot tables. They’ll kill all OEM sales of XP so that Dell and the other box builders will be forced to ship Vista to everyone buying new hardware. (Hint to PC-based companies – stock up on your XP licenses if intending to grow).
I’m actually looking forward to running Vista on my MacBook Pro – just in virtualisation you understand. By then I’ll be running Leopard for day-to-day operations and it’ll be nice to compare. Based on what I’ve seen of Vista and based on the testimonials of the guys I know on the beta track for Vista – it ain’t going to be ready for January.

Tags: Commentary by mj
No Comments »

This guy really gets it.

“Apple are treading a very fine line with this application though between functionality and bloat, now I am very pleased to say that in my opinion they are definitely on the right side of that line at the moment.”

This is what it’s all about. It’s slightly different to the Windows Tao which is “cram features in there and beat out everyone else cramming in features” and it’s also different to the UNIX Tao of “It does one thing. It doesn’t do this, it doesn’t do that. It does one thing.”
Preview is a essential application on Mac OS X because it provides exactly the essence of what a good application should. It does its job….and then a little more….

Need a little more? there’s iPhoto. Need a little more than that? Aperture. And if that doesn’t ring thy bells…..Photoshop.

Tags: Commentary by mj
No Comments »

James Stoup has written a long-winded bit of speculative fiction about how, with the departure of Avi Tevanian from Apple, Mac OS X might be switched to the monolithic Linux kernel.

Of course, xnu, the hybrid kernel used in Mac OS X is derived from the mach microkernel but is not strictly a microkernel and has many monolithic kernel features.

The licensing of the Linux kernel is also a serious stumbling block.

I suppose it would be bad not to give the link of the article so I’ve added it in. Everyone’s a pundit.

Tags: Commentary, infurious by mj
No Comments »