The enviable second place

While many companies have done everything to get the head of sales and maintain the domination of a market is a plight in many ways, and can be very expensive.

Long time, Apple has based its communication on the facetious irreverence against a titanic adversary. IBM, Microsoft or Intel in turn symbolized the order established that Apple was annoying, even this upset little game of gadfly could sit at the Cupertino company during a time when she was still a figure of outsider, but then it became one of the most expensive companies in the world and can now most of its competitors in terms of profit and turnover, it must affect a First a little more humble and respectful of the smallest it, otherwise it could tarnish its image.

A small guide to NAS - II

 NAS has the advantage of being accessible from any machine on your network, advantage can become a disadvantage. In the professional environment your new intern does not need to access your accounts or even your home, your child may not have needed access to all your data, even if only to prevent an unfortunate loss of data.

That is where the operating system scene of your NAS, usually based on GNU / Linux. In the same way as a conventional Linux or OS X, you can set what is called user rights. Every user - or group of users - can access data from the NAS that will not appear in others. In this way, on the same machine on a network segment can access information.

OS X Lion: Understanding the puzzle of sandboxing

With OS X Lion, Apple has introduced many new features for users, but also for developers. One of them is the sandboxing applications, mandatory term for distributed applications through the Mac App Store. What is sandboxing? What changes does it for users? And especially that he changes for developers?

A sandbox with walls twelve feet high

It is traditionally possible for an application to access all data and software and hardware functions available. This logic, which makes the operating system on the front of the stage, has allowed the development of many system utilities, drivers, and most advanced applications. In this case, an application is free to come and go on his playground, and to do what she wants.

Android 4.0 against 5.0 iOS.

 These two main operating systems for mobile devices are experiencing a major update. The revision to the Google OS is perhaps even more important than Apple, if only because it is the first unified version of the system for Smartphones and tablets. It will be interesting to see if this version also manages to give new impetus to the shelves equipped with Android. Anyway, this should make life easier for developers. The Android GUI has been redesigned so as to provide a more consistent user experience on Smartphones and tablets. The key word in this version is sobriety. Google has made sure to make use of its system more enjoyable reworking many details, including animations.

IPhone OS Project: Fadell gives his version

Vic Gundotra, senior vice president at Google, he does not say enough about its competitor "Scott is a pretty amazing type. For the management of a team developing an operating system, it is one of the best I've seen." Businessweek points out, however some of his mistakes, more substantial anecdotal or even if he was not directly responsible. One during a keynote when disguised as a scientific and an iPhone he missed a demo supposed to be funny. A wolf that Steve Jobs reminded him several times in the teasing in meetings that followed. Then there was the case of the iPhone 4. 

Jobs wanted to limit the number of prototypes that engineers could carry with them. Forstall persuaded his boss to let a few dozen of his men take the future iPhone to test it under real conditions of use. The rest is history. Random factors that did not prevent the vice president to consolidate his position at Apple. He also pushed the acquisition of Quattro Wireless, which became iAd and was counsel for the acquisition of the origin of Siri. It is said also well received by developers iOS third parties. A community in which Apple said it had donated $ 3 billion in two years that the App Store opened. Analysts and developers who have had to work or chat with Forstall stressed his ability to listen: "Forstall took detailed notes, without pen, paper, or laptop.

 "He listens to you and starts typing on his iPhone," said Matt Murphy, partner at Kleiner Perkins and the manager of a fund that invests in iOS developers. "You think he does not care what you say and he is sending an SMS, and then you realize that it is taking notes." Asked about the possibility of transforming the iPhone into a credit card with NFC (Near Field Communication) has answered more questions, about how developers can benefit from this and what it would bring to users. Clearly, a free technology uses concrete marketing has no immediate interest. It would also have refused to large developers have priority access to the validation of their securities, and that in fairness. The article ends with the close relationship that bound Forstall and Jobs. 

The second liked to see the future developments of Ios, in the same way he took a particular pleasure to have a look on the work of Jonathan Ive and his team installed a floor above. Like Cook, Forstall has probably lost both a mentor and ally with the disappearance of Jobs.

Mac OS X Lion New revolution ahead Part.III

Again Apple wanted to streamline the Airdrop, which allows exchanging files with Mac nearby, without configuration and without any Wi-Fi network; however, this method gives a semblance of consistency to the file, so that everything in Lion pushes the use of IOS as: applications become points of access to their own files, for a presentation as a library.

This mode of use has had some detractors, not unreasonably given the way so far, management of files for each application was made in iOS iTunes. Again icloud addresses this problem and provides a consistent solution: the file no longer exists. Those who demanded a Finder IOS will be for free: the concept itself has become simply obsolete. It remains to propose a way to exchange files with other users on how to easily Airdrop of IOS.

And it took many steps to arrive at the disappearance of the file as we have always known. These functions are direct descendants of Time Machine, but also Spotlight: it is the search for metadata that is likely to make navigation file obsolete term. Integrated with facial recognition photos can do research on the content of images them, without having to remember the name and location of the jpeg. Various teams are currently working on generic object recognition in images.


But Apple is not his first attempt. In 1995, she tried to redefine the boundaries between applications and files with OpenDoc, which allowed the use of application functionality scattered within a single document. Certainly, there was no question at that time to end the file, Apple still had tried a different approach, which proved unsuccessful, and to which he was terminated shortly after the return of Steve Jobs at Apple, then as special adviser Gil Amelio.

Still, for users of Mac OS X, there will be definitely a before and after Leo. In the future, you may rethink the way you currently manage your files with some amusement.

Mac OS X Lion New revolution ahead Part.II

In common use, you can switch operation between various parameters Version: block the file status (not to automatically save the changes you might add), clone the file (to create a working copy, thus incidentally create template files), and return to the status of the document as it was when you opened it. Let us make no mistake: with this feature, Apple editing for the first time since the first Macintosh in 1984 not backing up files.


In other words, these functions would have greatly benefited from the support of ZFS, which incorporates features specifically iterative and incremental backups, among others. Unfortunately Apple has had to abandon plans to support ZFS in Mac OS X as a matter of license. Apple will have no rest, probably at the cost of a little more space on the disk and less flexibility, HFS + cannot bear comparison with ZFS.

The Finder itself reflects these “flattening” files: the default view window now displays all the files on the disk equally, with no indication or hierarchical file. Ultimately, it is conceivable that Launchpad takes precedence over the Finder to become the default access mode, although direct access to the files will remain indispensable for some time.


Apple has also brought another part of the answer to this question with icloud, which synchronizes your devices seamlessly. A user will no longer have to use USB or send each its own files by email to make them move from one machine to another, which a little disembodied file. There remains the problem of communication of a file to another person.

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Mac OS X Lion New revolution ahead Part.I

Apple had already obliterated the notion of IOS file; it will push the logic even further with Leo. Who among us has never found a raging against fatal crash, which occurred "unexpectedly" before any backup job in progress? And conversely, never regretted a backup unfortunate, disfiguring involuntarily working hours following a false manipulation '?


So far, it was the user that he belonged to "make clean" to manage their files, save, classify, list them, in short, time well productivity unnecessarily flown by itself, and worries that everyone without. In the absence of any alternative, we had to do against bad luck, good heart.

Mac OS X 10.7, two technologies relegate such practices to the level of inconsistencies of the past as automatic backup of IOS, and versions, a system that allows to go back on the various stages of changes in your.

With the automatic backup, you will not have to worry about any crashes, power failures and other accidents: the application opens in the state where you left off, reopening the file on which you were to work. Better yet, the windows are repositioned such that you had placed before leaving the application, and even the current selection is returned in the same condition. Nothing distinguishes the application state between the two moments.

Versions promises to further ease the use of software: with a format similar to Time Machine, you can navigate in time to return to previous versions of your document. If you want a version you can scroll the document window to inspect it, and even make a copy and paste from an old to a new version. This feature alone promises new ways of working and use your Mac. The work is temporal and it will be possible to annotate a document as and when its edition to appear with nothing in the end and a simple return on the file's history will reveal these notes.

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QuarkXPress 9 Part.III

The tool "Publisher history" (Story Editor) is to display the text of a page layout in an interface similar to that of a word processor. The text can be read in a different font and a body of the model without affecting the formatting of the layout. The text changes have a direct impact and are instantly reflected in the model. This tool will be useful if the text of the model is very small, rotated or distributed across multiple pages.

The tool "ImageGrid" function targeted for photographers and graphic designers. It helps to create a contact sheet with little difficulty. The tool can import a folder of images and automatically build a catalog with many options for page layout. Each image can be associated with its file name and be indicating its resolution and size. The number of pages will also be determined by the number of images and their size indicated in the setting box.
Leo: full screen mode unsuitable for multi-monitor configurations. During the presentation of Mac OS X Lion, Steve Jobs has placed great emphasis on the fact that many innovations were inspired by IOS. Full screen mode is the same illustration.

Many applications come with Mac OS X 10.7 use. This is the case among others Safari, Preview or Mail. In some cases, this new method is very convenient. We find this type of use that is sometimes the strength of the iPad (but also its weakness) is the possibility of being able to focus on a specific task.

Unfortunately, this method was not designed for configurations with multiple screens. When you activate this mode, the second monitor is useless. It is not possible for example to use another application on it. This is unfortunate, because there were better things to do.

This behavior with every version has not changed. And given the status of the system, it's a safe bet that the way it is managed by mode does not change its marketing.

Note finally that builds succeed, and Front Row is still not showing. Those who used the media center of Apple will have to be a reason...

QuarkXPress 9 Part.II

The tool "ShapeMaker" (below) allows the creation of forms from simple to more complicated. The mere wave of a block in a spiral or a complex polygon, all types of blocks are possible. The dialog box provides an overview of real-time convenient for viewing directly the development of the block in which all parameters are customizable.

Entire page could with earlier versions of XPress, but required the stunt (mode railway ...) and worked only from one document to another. This time, we can affect any part of the document or one or more pages within a single project. The dialog box lets you choose what to copy and the destination area. It will choose the options to complete the copy operation in the current layout, a new file in a new layout ... or by splitting into single pages or splitting the layouts in the project. Many options are comprehensive and indispensable.
"Linkster" is also a tool that can be described as obvious. It fills a gap in the options of linking text blocks. He knows indeed loose blocks and keeps the entire text without causing overflows. All the text of each block of a chain remains in the block after hairline. The dialog is very well designed and allows, for each option selected; understand the impact on the existing block chaining.

The "bullet style, numbering plan and" is it, any kind of structured document according to a precise indentation. Not necessarily very useful model releases, this function will be of great help in editing and everything that affects directly or indirectly to the book. It allows selecting and applying automatically to all the paragraphs style bullet or numbering via a drop down menu. Each style plan has nine levels of indentation. The dialog box allows you to finely manage all of the parameters of indentation.
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QuarkXPress 9 Part.I

Now over 25 years that the veteran of the layout is to work. Mock press advertising XPress ... went from the golden age of electronic publishing to the even more modern, cross-media publishing with line of sight iPad and all that matters tablets on the market electronic reading lights. Launched a few weeks ago, QuarkXPress 9 is still not able to export its contents to the iPad. It was not until the end of July to have this opportunity as a free update. For now, we have only a brilliant demonstration of the publisher of the export module in Quark QPS to ensure the full potential of the tool "AppStudio". It is very easy to use and will convert the models into interactive content for iPad.

Nothing distinguishes the version 9 of the previous one, except the home screen of the software. No effort to take control of the interface is therefore requested.

Meanwhile the extension "AppStudio" XPress itself to export its content to various industry standards. We can convert our documents into electronic books in ePub format (for Apple iBooks, the Amazon Kindle ...) or for the electronic reader Blio eReader. The tools allow XPress easily redefine the formats of models specific to these formats while defining the different meanings of reading. Tools used by any designer "paper", which should be the same philosophy for the tool "AppStudio" and the transposition to the iPad. Still, the layout for a reading lamp and a print magazine does not carry the same creative imagination and it will take getting used to manipulate the tool in getting rid of paper patterns.

XPress does not miss the turn to digital publishing, but does not neglect his business. The design and publication of paper documents are still the heart of the target and the ninth version brings some new tools. They consist mainly of changes in this version. One also wonders why some of them (e.g. Clone) were not incorporated into the software from version 3.32 ...
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Remote Viewer on the Mac iOS

Remote Viewer opens a window on the remote folders on your Mac from an iPad or iPhone. This free utility is the first to BeLight Software IOS. It gives the user a way to browse folders defined in advance of their Mac via Wi-Fi or remote and, when the formats of documents are managed by the system to display the content (images, PDF, iWork, videos, etc.).


It must install on your Mac a server component. The settings are very simple, they give select the folder you want to share and combine it with a username and password. It is accessible from the menu bar.

On IOS, the Remote seeks the Mac server and then displays the file said. Access is by entering the IP number of the machine, or simply on a local network, auto detection.

Once the procedure is self-explanatory, we navigate in the tree of the shared folder and file content is displayed consistent. This also works for mp4 videos, but in our tests - locally - the flow was really not optimal to do in each case and the connection conditions. Finally, the images found on the Mac can be transferred to the album of the iPad / iPhone or sent by email.

Microsoft unveils Windows 8 Part.IV

As for the management of the autonomy of the iPad and responsiveness, precisely because they are unmatched IOS "cut the fat" over "real" multitasking, and a start in record time. What happens when the hard drive goes into tablet mode on Windows 8? What happens to excel, always in the background when you go on reading a magazine? Better yet, what happens if the file open in Excel was stored on the external drive when passing in tablet mode? So many questions that need answers, and we do not know for the time actually little more on this new version of Windows. Microsoft still has time to perfecting his copy and gives all the answers by the system output. However, it seems to introduce here a long transition during which it has perhaps more ways: you cannot take the train when it left the station.

Although the two modes do not live in total isolation: thus it is possible to live a touch application and pre-Windows application 8 to the screen by the method of sharing discussed above. One imagines, too, although Microsoft has not demonstrated that the keyboard can be used with older applications. As such, the touch-sensitive layers of Windows 8 is not a simple overlay, and wait to see the other features that Microsoft will unveil in the future to measure the interpenetration of two worlds. Nevertheless the two approaches, as presented, go together. While it is easy to see that this approach may provide to Microsoft, it is much more difficult to see the benefit to its users. And ultimately, it's still good to them that are: no one will do the update for the sheer joy of giving pleasure to the editor.

As John Gruber points out, this has been the undeniable success of the Apple iPad is well made clean slate. Pages, Numbers and Keynote have been totally redesigned for the touch interface, and this is what works. The simplicity of the iPad also reflects the disappearance of the management of files and their backup. The impossibility of making a direct port of an application for Mac OS X to iOS ensures that third party developers think their application specifically for IOS, which contributes to the strength and consistency of the platform. Microsoft has not had the fortitude to abandon what made his fortune so far, this may well be a shot in the future too heavy to drag.

Microsoft unveils Windows 8 Part.III

After all, the software giant is on familiar ground: Windows itself has not he started his career as a simple wrapper for MS-DOS before finally, after many years, for committing patricide in engulfing its venerable ancestor? The method has already worked once, why would it not therefore possible to repeat the process?

There are still major differences between the transition, and paradigms MS-DOS/Windows windows / touch: in the first case, there were not two very different types of machines that have been associated with each interface. This is the biggest problem for Microsoft: Do we imagine that users of Windows 8 on desktop applications will support the new touch less powerful than those on shelves and x86 bothering with old menus and windows, do if only for the honor and advantage of using Excel to the old one? He should still see the thing for measuring the ineptitude: tap on the title menu, tap on the menu item, draw a line on the screen with your fingertip to move or resize a window, and that 'happens to the "rollover", actions that are initiated by the hovering, when there is no pointing device? The very notion of having an anti-virus running on a shelf today may raise eyebrows more than one user iPad.

However, we can consider Microsoft's proposal as a "best of both worlds," and the idea as such may seem attractive: the same machine could be adapted to your consumption patterns, and move from one mode to other seamlessly. In this case, Microsoft is going even further than what Apple provides with Mac OS X Leo, compared to merely take a few visual and behavioral IOS surface. The Tablet PC would become media when you need it and vice versa. But summarize the experience of a tablet media such as iPad Touch the only interface would be very simplistic. The iPad made changes much more profound in the user interface and operating system: more file management, even more backup while Windows 8 is always the good old records and other DLLs.

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Microsoft unveils Windows 8 Part.II

But precisely on x86, what about the substantial repository of Windows, the very one on which Microsoft built its empire? The answer is given 3 minutes in the video presentation: they have changed nothing. There are the "good old" windows and interface of Windows 7 when it launches a program of the old world.

What promised to be a radical change is a trivial cosmetic addition. In short, Windows 8 is just a wrapper graphic-touch Windows 7. It must be said that Microsoft has tried to square the circle with this process:

- Provide a usable interface on touch pads
- Maintain compatibility with its software library
- Providing an outlet to Windows 7 Phone on the Smartphone market

The first and second point are contradictory, and the third it only makes it harder still. Indeed, by delivering the touch interface with all future PC, Microsoft intends to educate its customers using Windows 7 Phone: being on familiar ground on their PC, they may be more inclined to choose a Smartphone that So they will already be using, and who can share part of the repository of their PCs (the famous touch applications in HTML5 + JavaScript. Incidentally, the next version of Windows Phone, Mango, you can create applications in HTML, and SilverLight). The approach clearly shows how much Microsoft has realized the strategic importance of mobile devices.

For transform its flagship product, the one on which it draws the vast majority of its income, single Trojan for the Smartphone battle is far from trivial. In short, Microsoft has to agree with Steve Jobs noisily about the "post-PC": here tomorrow Nearly Everything will be played.

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Microsoft unveils Windows 8 Part.I

After months of "teasing" unsustainable, Microsoft has finally lifted the veil on Windows 8. The Redmond Company promised a revolution at the interface. And the least we can say is that Microsoft's proposal is not timid: some concepts incorporating Phone Windows 7, Windows 8 offers everything for the first touch, with a presentation by "tiles" in place and place as icons on Windows Phone 7. We also note the presence of a "store" on the home screen, but we had plenty to expect.

A virtual keyboard on the screen, which can veer from each side of the monitor for more comfort on the large slabs, a system of sharing the screen between two applications that come together, all of which Microsoft no bold We were not used so far.


The trend was started with Windows 7 Phone, which inherits many in Windows 8: sweeping away the demons of the past, Microsoft is managed to stand out and offer an interface not only consistent but also original and full of discoveries.

The applications in this mode are based on HTML5, JavaScript, and can therefore run on any hardware platform. However note that Microsoft has changed its tune over Windows 7 Phone, which focuses on the development with Silver Light. Anyway, this choice is important given that Microsoft has promised a version of Windows 8 dedicated to ARM processors. This family of processors with different machine language than x86 processors, there necessarily arise a problem of compatibility for existing software compiled. In such situations, we usually use emulation (this was the choice made by Apple to the passage of 68,040 to PowerPC and the PowerPC to x86), but Microsoft has a problem: the significant difference in capacity between the processor ARM and a tablet core Intel desktop PCs. Emulation has never been possible, when the new processor is more powerful than the old. And indeed, Microsoft said it would not propose emulation for x86 applications on Windows for ARM, thus limiting Repository shelves ARM applications made solely in HTML5 and JavaScript, which they can be shared between two processors without difficulty.

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IPad multitouch gestures: a false good idea?

With IOS 4.3, Apple offers developers new multitouch gestures to switch quickly from one application to another with a shift to four or five fingers, or to exit an application with a pinch of four or five fingers. Very quickly, Apple announced that these actions would not be offered to the general public in this version of IOS (read: iOS 4.3: iPad new gestures will not go in the final) and they are absent IOS 4.3, least to enable it via Xcode (3.99 €) (read: iOS 4.3: enable multitouch gestures for iPad). These acts seem alluring, but are they really a good idea?