Funny Cartoon

http://www.geekculture.com/joyoftech/joyarchives/459.html

James Gosling prefers Macs as a premier OS for developing Java

http://www.apple.com/pro/science/gosling/

James Gosling
Mastermind of Java
By Barbara Gibson



James Gosling "I do most of my engineering on my PowerBook," James Gosling states flatly. "I find it dramatically more efficient than a desktop system because, on one hand, it has all the power of a full-blown UNIX desktop. On the other hand, I can take it with me because it has all of the laptop stuff. I can work on a airplane, at home, in a corner when I'm sitting in a boring meeting. And it's able to do not just email and browsing, it's got fully-functional, high-end software development tools."

Bringing the Internet to Life
Dressed in blue jeans, Birkenstocks and a t-shirt, Gosling could easily be mistaken for your typical card-carrying geek. Even Gosling's desk, spattered with bits of paper and a pile of toys, is characteristically geekish.

But James Gosling is an alpha geek. The mastermind behind Java, he created the programming language that brought the Internet to life and can be found in everything from smartcards to cell phones. And today, as a fellow and vice president of Sun Microsystems, he travels the world giving speeches, evangelizing Java and writing software on his PowerBook.

"Mac OS X on a Mac," he says, "is very much a UNIX machine, so it's got all the creature comforts. People who have been in the UNIX/BSD community for years have gotten used to all kinds of little utilities - such as the ability to write command line scripts and drive it at a fairly low level. All of these deep tools are just there. And they just work."

Semantic Modeling
These days, Gosling spends most of his time working with his research team at Sun to create a high-end tool that does semantic modeling for software developers. Designed to deal with today's massively complex systems, semantic modeling gives developers sophisticated ways to analyze the structure of an application.

"People in the UNIX/BSD community have gotten used to all kinds of little utilities. All of these deep tools are just there. And they just work." Developers, Gosling says, "love developing on UNIX platforms because they're rock solid. They have all the right security properties. But the reality is that developers need a volume deployment platform. And one of the nice things for Java development on Macs is that developers can build things for the platform that they love. But if you write Java programs, you can also deploy on Windows or big server boxes. You aren't forced by your user community to just slavishly do the PC thing."

Gosling and his development team, he says, "almost all have PowerBooks. It's amazing how many of them are showing up these days. They've been really popular at work. A certain amount of their appeal is little things. I do a lot of public speaking and the PowerBook automatically does the right stuff when I plug it into a projector. Also the PowerBook is the first machine that I've seen where the lid mechanism on the laptop actually works. You can close the lid and open it again and it's still running. Seems like a small thing, but it truly works."

Apple sells 1 million songs in first week

http://www.macnn.com/news.php?id=19342

Monday, May 5, 2003 @ 10:50am

Apple today announced that its iTune Music Store sold over one million songs during its first week: "Over half of the songs were purchased as albums, dispelling concerns that selling music on a per-track basis will destroy album sales. In addition, over half of the 200,000 songs offered on the iTunes Music Store were purchased at least once, demonstrating the breadth of musical tastes served by Apple's groundbreaking online store. Apple also said that over one million copies of iTunes 4 have been downloaded, and that it has received orders for over 110,000 new third-generation iPods since their introduction a week ago, with more than 20,000 sold in its stores in the U.S. this past weekend.

Apple also announced that the iTunes Music Store will be adding over 3,200 new tracks, including major new album releases such as Jack Johnson's "On and On," Andrea Bocelli's "Tosca" and Fleetwood Mac's "Say You Will," as well as pre-release tracks from upcoming albums by artists David Sanborn, The RH Factor, John Scofield, Jesse Harris and Lizz Wright. Apple said that other albums from the Eagles, Michelle Branch's album "The Spirit Room," and new Featured Artist pages for Coldplay, including an exclusive track and music video, and Alanis Morissette, with her catalog of music.

Carving up Apple

http://www.thedeal.com/NASApp/cs/CS?pagename=CBS&c=TDDArticle&cid=1052340194595


by Joshua Jaffe
Updated 02:02 PM EST, May-12-2003


With sales of its splendid new G4 laptops gaining pace after the phenomenal five-year run of the iMac, Apple Computer Inc.'s shareholders should be beaming. Apple chief executive Steve Jobs, wearing his trademark black mock turtleneck and blue jeans, certainly hoped so when in late April he unveiled the company's much anticipated iTunes software, which allows users to purchase music online legally and affordably.

Most Apple shareholders, however, aren't applauding Jobs' sudden infatuation with the music industry. Nor are they particularly pleased with the company's otherwise moribund business strategy or a stock price that has stagnated for the past year.

What's the problem? Apple has failed to rebuild its flagging software and hardware businesses despite its brilliant marketing campaigns. And now the company's strategic direction appears more desperate than ever as it ponders whether to deploy its $4.5 billion cash hoard to buy and resurrect Universal Music Group, the world's largest music label.

Shareholders reacted to news of Apple's informal negotiations for Universal with ailing French conglomerate Vivendi Universal SA - reported prior to Apple's unveiling of iTunes and then denied by the company - with a sharp share selloff, dropping Apple's market capitalization below $6 billion.

Many close observers of the legendary Silicon Valley company believe shareholders shouldn't be selling the stock. They should be buying it, they say, in order to press the 48-year-old Jobs to split Apple into two separate companies built around its hardware and software lines of businesses, or get new management that will. "Given what their valuation currently is, I think this is something they will eventually have to do," argues Rob Enderle, a research fellow at Giga, a research unit of Santa Clara, Calif.-based Forrester Research Inc. "They have to dig themselves out of the going-out-of-business cycle they are currently in."

Others agree. Several private equity players, requesting anonymity, have considered whether it would be profitable to take the company private in a leveraged buyout. They understand the strategic appeal of busting up the company yet found Apple's cash flow, debt levels and store leases to be insurmountable hurdles to an LBO (see story, page 12).

Some analysts who follow the company, however, believe Apple should take a page from the playbook of personal digital assistant maker Palm Inc., which in 2001 began splitting itself into a PDA operating system company and a PDA hardware maker. That decision is scheduled to culminate in July with the listing of PalmSource, its operating system unit, as a separate company.

Jobs, too, is aware of the appeal of a Palm-like restructuring at Apple, according to sources familiar with the company. They say the Apple CEO has set up another of his famous "skunk works" to examine the pros and cons of a breakup. An Apple representative did not return calls seeking comment by press time.

But the logic is compelling. Splitting this proprietary computer hardware and software maker would enable both units to compete more ruthlessly in today's cutthroat tech environment. A separate Apple software unit would be far better able to challenge Microsoft Corp.'s Windows operating system for market share. And a separate Apple hardware unit would become a true PC maker, not just a maker of Macs, broadening its sales horizon, too.