The Blog is Dead, Long live the Blog

At long last I have got a blog running on my own website (Streambyte) so its time to say goodbye to blogger and ignore another blog

A Small Percentage But Still Big Numbers

In the PC Developer world many developers ignore the MAC because its market share is so small. But in a huge market small percentages still mean big numbers as Apples last quarter results show as they shipped 1.3 million new MACS last quarter.

Can a Market that has 1.3 million new customers a quarter really be considered as small. For the solo developer looking to write a software product the MAC market has to be considered. Yes there are 20 times less MACS than PC's but there are Probably 50 times more PC developers than MAC developers meaning the MAC platform has a better customer to developer ratio. Also the PC market is awash with free (and usually crappy) software while the MAC market still (and hopefully will continue to) demands quality and is on the whole prepared to pay for it. So yes its a smaller market .... but its not a small market , less competition and a customer base that doesn't expect everything to be free, its got to be worth considering.

4Chaps Go Wild

Last weekend I attended the first social meeting of the 4ChapsFromBlighty. We met up in beautiful Swindon for a beer and a chat and to generally throw abuse at one another in person instead of over email.

You may have already read reports of the evening on one of the other chaps blog...... I have to say as much as the intention may have been for a meeting of the type described on the afore mentioned blog the reality of it was rather more sedate.

Having met up just after 5pm and hitting the bar the 4Chaps all showed signs of their rapidly approaching middle age by being knackered by 9pm ..... moving to soft drinks by around 9:30pm and then managing to stay up until a staggering 11:00pm before having to retire.

What is even worse is a couple of the Chaps showed that maybe they were already well into middle age when they revealed that they now woke early , couldn't stay in bed on Saturday morning and demanded breakfast was no later than 8am.

As for the whole of Swindon being on alert , I would be surprised if even the landlord of the Carpenters Arms where we met was fully aware of our presence.

I do have to say that the evening may have been slightly more exciting than I remember because in the photo shown on guys blog Brian is most definitely having a broom handle pushed up his bottom, and I am sure I would have remembered that.

Still it was enjoyable none the less and I look forward to our next meeting where we look to move slightly up market and meet in Slough.

MAC Fun

Not sure how long they will be there but check out the new ads on the the Apple website.

There are some things you just cant avoid

Ok heres my latest findings.

After much research I have had to conclude the best OS X office suite is................ MS Office.

Its not that there are not other good office suites on OS X. Apples IWork 06 has a great word processor and excellent presentation package (no spreadsheet) but the main problem with all the suites I have trialed over the last month or two is ......MS Word Compatibility.

You cannot survive in the world without being able to read and write MS Word documents and even though most of the suites claim to have this compatibility when they open the documents it doesn't look exactly as it does in Word. Even with documents as simple as my company invoices the layout wasn't close enough. Another issue (that is also solvable in a different way) is fonts. Windows has default fonts that OS X doesn't , when you buy MS Office 2004 for OS X you get all these fonts which makes life a lot easier. So my first purchased software for my MAC is from Microsoft....... life is strange.

MAC OS X 10.4.6 Released

Apple release OS 10.4.6 this week , this upgrades from OS 10.4.5. With Apple a sub point release add both features and fixes.

The update is about 46MB for PowerPC and a little larger for the Intel based Macs and can be installed via Software Update

Windows XP on Mac (Real this Time)

Yep its official Apple have released a boot loader that allows you to run Windows XP and Mac OS X on one of the new Intel based Macs.

Apple supply real windows drivers for all the Mac hardware in the new MACS including bluetooth, wifi, USB etc.  Providing you use FAT32 and allow the MAC Utils to set yp and create the partition then Mac OS X  can see the Windows XP partition. (The reverse is not true)

Check it out on the Apple Web Site 

Windows XP Boots on MACBook

Its official this site shows Windows XP Boots on one of the new MACBook Pro notebooks.