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Tech News: In Brief

The WebKit Open Source Project: “Welcome to the web site for the WebKit Open Source Project. WebKit is the system framework used on Mac OS X by Safari, Dashboard, Mail.app, and many other OS X applications. It is based on the KHTML engine from KDE.”

This is an interesting development. There have been whispers that Apple’s relationship has soured with the KHTML OOS team, and this may be their effort to make things right.

Think Secret – New Mac OS X 10.4.2 build, Intel Mac benchmarks: “Overall, the Intel Mac are scoring between 65 and 70 with Xbench, a far cry from the 200 scores higher-end G5 systems reach. The CPU test is landing in the high teens compared with scores of 100 to 200 for G5 systems, but that appears to be primarily due to lackluster FPU scores. According to a recent Macworld story, Rosetta does not support AltiVec instructions, which substanties the results. “

Ahh yes, it was just a matter of time before XBench results would show up; but this soon?!? I have been contemplating grabbing one of those x86 development systems for OSX, but the little voice inside my head says, “don’t look back, you can never look back.”

Accelerate Your Macintosh! News Page – 6/8/05: “What does it mean? Open Firmware is responsible for a great deal of seamless work and a great deal of so-called ‘Macintosh experience’ is thanks to Open Firmware. With Intel-based Mac the Open Firmware is gone. What we will have instead? There could be two choices: the new 64-bit EFI boot driver initiative from major players like Intel/Microsoft/Adaptec/etc (http://www.intel.com/technology/efi/) or… the standard BIOS which would reflect the ancient PC motherboard architecture.”

A fascinating look into some of the development implications of Apple’s switch to Intel. Specifically, check out the great summary of the BIOS limitations.

Wired News: PSP Hackers Go Retro: “But the development of emulators for a new operating system is usually a slow and laborious process, so the speed and accuracy with which anonymous Japanese hackers have mastered the PSP has been surprising. “

This ALMOST makes me want to buy a PSP. If they somehow manage C64 on it then I am there.

[www.MyFreeBSD.com.br] – Eric Raymond talks about GPL and BSD licenses: “Freedom and choice are pretty cool. But we should talk about many other things. GPL is based on the belief that open source software is weak and needs to be protected. With it, we continue injuring ourselves, cutting ourselves from the economic benefits of BSD license”

Sun plans to make OpenSolaris available some time next week. Check out the specs for the XBox 360… sweet. If I had to guess, I would say that the plans to use the PPC CPU in the next generation of game consoles led to the split between IBM and Apple.

-m