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Comment Re:Will the app store have the same lock down? (Score 1) 827

Will the app store have the same lock down?

Not quite, no. Apps can be installed from anywhere on OS X, the App Store is designed primarily as a distribution method.

With no apps that can use plug ins?

Incorrect. Plugins and extensions are in fact allowed, and are exempt from the usual 'no unadvertised functionality' clause.

No games with user maps or mods?

Given the previous answer, I would expect mods/maps to come under the same umbrella as plugins/extensions.

No sex apps?

Correct. Get sex elsewhere.

No fat app?

Incorrect. Apps will need to be intel-only, but can be 32/64-bit fat apps.

$99 year fee even for free apps?

Correct. The service you get from Apple for that $99 isn't going to be paid for in royalties is it? $99 for a code-signing certificate seems to be a decent enough rate from what I've seen, too.

fixed price points?

Quite possibly. It gives a standardized pricing structure across many currencies. Also note that there are price points basically for each dollar value between 1 and 1000, although they might thin out at the upper end.

will you be able to buy app and use it on all systems you own?

Yes, this was explicitly stated in the announcement.

Will app dev be able to have app that you need to buy per system?

Not through this distribution mechanism I think. Maybe wait for guideline revisions or a public API for the store (i.e. sell a feature-limited version, unlock per-computer perhaps?)

can apple pull a app at any time?

Yes, although you can still distribute it yourself after this time.

Will there be a max app size?

Probably tops out at 1GB when zipped, similar to iOS app store.

Comment Re: a simple change, but a new race condition (Score 1) 342

Garbage collection is robust enoughâ" the block gets copied to the (garbage collected) heap when it's passed into dispatch_async() or similar calls automatically, and it uses scanned memory to do so, meaning the collector tracks a refcount on 'self'.

In non-collected situations, it's up to the developer to ensure that this doesn't happen somehowâ" for instance by retaining 'self' before the first dispatch_async() and releasing it inside the last block.

Comment Re:I've been working with it in C (Score 2, Insightful) 342

it does is not help you in determining *what* should be done in parallel.

I'd disagree slightly on that point; agreed, the technology doesn't actually make certain code blocks suddenly go "me! me! me!" but it does significantly ease the burden on the developer in making those decisions. I can throw something into the parallelization engine with a couple lines of code to see what difference that makes.

The key example would be something like this one here, which Slashdot's filter doesn't like (it says please don't use so many junk characters, bah).

That's a nice and simple change to make, and is easy to drop into any code which previously required synchronous execution. I can just wrap the existing synchronous code in two calls to dispatch_async(), one to throw stuff onto the background thread, and another to throw the last step back onto the foreground thread. If it doesn't help the program I can remove it. If it does help, I can leave it in.

Comment Re:I just noticed a language trend (Score 1) 342

GCD doesn't support using GPUsâ" that's what OpenCL is for. That said, there were some nice demos at WWDC where, for example, a solar-system modelling tool (tracking the gravitational movements of a zillion objects in real-time) was rewritten by adding first GCD then OpenCL. Using GCD to offload calculations to other threads in parallel made quite a difference, then OpenCL just blew the lid off. It was SCARY just how much difference it made. And the nice part was that GCD gave a nice performance boost by adding a couple of lines here & there to wrap little bits of long-running code in calls to dispatch_async().

Comment Re:quicktime (Score 1) 214

...if you read in a divx avi file with an mp3 soundtrack, it had to load the entire file, generate its editing information, and convert it to a .mov in the background to even play it. Hopefully they can find a way to do the best of both worlds in the new version once it finally gets up to snuff.

Actually, the issue around that is that the original QT code always generated all that information, because there was no concept of a 'playback-only' stack there. In QuickTime X there *is* that concept, so this information gathering can be skipped completely. At present, QTKit enforces this, so to get the cleaner and more advanced QTX playback rendering engine you can initialize a QTMovie for 'playback only' purpose, at which point the movie will be initialized using the QTX stack. If you want editing, it'll launch using the QT7 stack (or as a proxy to a 32-bit background service, if your application is running in 64-bit mode).

Comment Re:It was AT&T (Score 2, Interesting) 541

There are a number of regions availableâ" the default option is 'all'. You can, if you wish, make your application available only in specific regions (for instance an app for Nasza Klasa might initially be made available only in Poland. An app for Spotify might not be made available in the US or Canada where the Spotify service just isn't available at all. In short: don't get your panties in a bunch, it's an opt-out system rather than an opt-in. It's there so developers of locale-specific apps don't have to deal with irate customers who bought an app they couldn't use at all (because they didn't read the info properly).

Comment Re:beta software (Score 4, Informative) 200

Would anyone care to look at the permissions on the -Caches- folder in question? I know, it'll make it harder to spout hyperbole about security, but it could be instructional I think:

MacBook-Pro:1tUM+kJcGEqwqSH2bBdLR++++TI jim$ pwd
/var/folders/1t/1tUM+kJcGEqwqSH2bBdLR++++TI
MacBook-Pro:1tUM+kJcGEqwqSH2bBdLR++++TI jim$ ls -l
total 0
drwx------ 92 jim staff 3128 12 May 20:53 -Caches-
drwx------ 13 jim staff 442 23 May 20:12 -Tmp-

As you can see, the permissions on the -Caches- folder mean it's only readable by the owner, namely the current user. So it has the same protections as something inside the user's home folder. Also, by benefit of being in /var/folders/xxxx/-Caches- the operating system can clean this out more or less upon a whim-- this is, after all, the purpose of temporary folders and caches.

Comment Re:Lets see... (Score 2, Insightful) 247

Numbers 5 and 6, as written, could clash with non-disclosure agreements & similar. For instance if I allow someone to inspect the code for my laboriously-written software for security purposes, I'd like to have a legally binding document with them stating that they're not allowed to hand over my source code to my competitors (or indeed anyone, unless they too sign the same agreement, etc.).

Microsoft

Microsoft PR Paying to "Correct" Wikipedia 355

Unpaid Schill writes "Over on the O'Reilly Network, there's an interesting piece about how Microsoft tried to hire people to contribute to Wikipedia. Not wanting to do the edits directly, they were looking for an intermediary to make edits and corrections favorable to them. Why? According to the article, it was apparently both to let people know that Microsoft will not 'enable death squads with their UUIDs' and also to fight the growing consensus that OOXML contains a useless pile of legacy crap which is unfit for standardization."
Microsoft

Submission + - Vista has "high impact issues" - Microsoft

EggsAndSausage writes: "Microsoft has admitted — in a roundabout way — that Vista has "high impact issues". It has put out a call for technical testers to participate in testing of Service Pack 1, due out later this year, which will address "regressions from Windows Vista and Windows XP, security, deployment blockers and other high impact issues."

It's hard to know whether to be reassured that Service Pack 1 is coming, and thus that there's now a sensible timeframe for considering deployment of Vista within businesses, OR to be alarmed that Microsoft is unleashing an OS on the world with "high impact issues" remaining in it.

In other news there's a battle raging over the top 10 reasons to get / not to get Vista. (And a rebuttal.)"

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