iWork'08

El lanzamiento de los nuevos iMac aluminio y cristal ha eclipsado uno de los lanzamientos adicionales más esperados. Anteriormente ya comenté mi especial ilusión al ver como Steve Jobs anunciaba la esperadísima versión beta pública de Safari: la gran decepción del Tiger (hay que ver lo que cuesta desarrollar un navegador, verdad Bill?).

Al incombustible Pages (editor de texto) y el excepcional Keynotes (no hay otro igual, es quizás una killer application en el entorno de las presentaciones) se une un esperado "hermanito": Numbers, una hoja de cálculo compatible para empezar con Excel de Microsoft Office y el nuevo formato OFX entre otros.

Quizás lo más significativo como dice la web de apple es que son las hojas de cálculo tradicionales al mas puro estilo Mac: tablas inteligentes, canvas flexible, impresión interactiva, plantillas, etc. Impresionante!

Como era de esperar...

Apple saca a la venta los nuevos iMac de aluminio anodizado y cristal más potetes y más delgados aún si cabe. Y por supuesto con una nueva familia de accesorios - teclado y ratón en sus versiones de aluminio con o sin cables.

Desaparece la versión de 17 pulgadas (quién iba a comprar esa versión de todas formas...) y reaparece en sus versiones de 20 y 24 pulgadas de pantalla panorámica y tarjeta gráfica ATI GDDR3 de alta definición con 128 Mb o 256 Mb. Con las acostumbradas conexiones USB, FireWire, Ethernet, Wireless y Bluetooth, aumenta la capacidad de almacenamiento estándar desde 250 Gb hasta 1Tb en discos serial ATA de 7200 rpm, y en cuanto a la RAM DDR2 de 667MHz desde 1Gb hasta 4Gb.

Las nuevas versiones del procesador Core 2 Duo de Intel de 2.0GHz o 2.4 GHz acompañan al novedosísimo Intel Core 2 Extreme de 2.8 GHz. Se presentan adicionalmente las nuevas versiones de las suites iLife'08 e iWork'08: seguro que nos sorprenden cada vez más... y esto a la espera del nuevo Leopard que ha sido presentada recientemente en su última versión antes del lanzamiento de octubre.

Apple got certified unix 03

It's no secret that OS X is based on BSD Unix, and it looks like Apple let a little more of those roots shine through with Leopard -- The Open Group has just awarded OS X 10.5 Leopard UNIX 03 certification, meaning that Apple joins Sun, HP, and IBM as the only certified vendors. The spec covers libraries, system calls, terminal interfaces, commands and utilities, internationalization and the C language, meaning that software vendors can easily port server and non-GUI apps to and from OS X with minimal effort. Although this was already mostly the case, it's always nice to see the circle complete, isn't it?

OS X's commercial credentials recently got a major boost from the Open Group. Thanks to the efforts of Apple's OS boss Kevin Van Vechten and his team, Leopard has cleared all of the hurdles required to attain UNIX 03 certification. That places Apple in elite company. Only Sun, IBM and HP are certified, so OS X turns the Big Three into the Big Four.

Here's Apple's Open Group brand certificate http://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/certificates/1190p.pdf, which entitles Apple to use the UNIX brand. I suggest printing this on high rag content paper, framing it and hanging it in your server room or your Mac-graced cubicle. There are UNIX pretenders, and there is the real thing. Mac users, realize that qualifying for UNIX is no small feat, especially for an open source, BSD-based OS. The Open Group standards, the PDFs for which are idiotically marked as free but blocked from PDF download unless you buy your way into a membership, are rooted in System V. Apple is to be commended.

The UNIX 03 specifications cover libraries, system calls, terminal interfaces, commands and utilities, internationalization and the C language. That's the whole enchilada for ISVs (independent software vendors) porting their server and non-GUI applications to OS X. UNIX ISVs ought to climb on board, because once Leopard ships in October I expect Xserve sales to take a leap. Software developers should also keep in mind that the Leopard client OS is the same as Apple's server, minus the quite exceptional administrative tools, and the installed base of four and eight-core Mac Pro desktop/workstations is even larger. MacBook Pro users are carrying 4 GB notebooks. If you're put off by Objective-C and Apple's proprietary UI frameworks--you needn't be, although I do wish that someone would give Apple's frameworks the Mono treatment--you've got OpenGL, SDL, X Window, Wine, Java SWT, Flash, DHTML with Apple's Canvas extension, and my old flame, curses. Microsoft's Silverlight is sweet as well, and it's picking up steam.

Wondering if you want in? You do. Imagine coding on Mac and porting by recompile to RISC big iron.