After thinking about it for a while (and reading other’s reactions around the web), it’s starting to make a little more sense… The iPhone (and, truth be told, the AppleTV) are the next outlets for OS X. I’m almost positive (as are others) that the next iteration of the OS will have a resolution independent scaling engine for the main UI elements. This is directly useful in the iPhone, since it’s display has a pixel density almost 4 times that of a standard computer LCD screen. Plus Core Animation. Plus a host of other things at the core of the OS. So it makes sense that the Leopard team would be working feverishly on the iPhone OS as well. It’s two strains of the same thing.

There’s an old axiom in computer science that states “adding developers to a late software project only makes it later.” (this applies to more than just software, but for that particular discipline, it’s acutely true). However, in this case, people weren’t added to a wholly different product. Their focus was just expanded to include a larger target platform space.

Have you noticed that there’s room for 5 more icons on the main iPhone screen? Do you think those “secret” features that haven’t been announced for Leopard are only for the desktop version of the OS? What if one of those secret features was the iPhone itself?

Something tells me that this will just make the iPhone better. And that’s a good thing. I’m still curious what it’s going to do for the Pro Apps, though. I’ll find out in Vegas in a couple of days.

Apple delays Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5) until October 2007.

Apple Statement
iPhone has already passed several of its required certification tests and is on schedule to ship in late June as planned. We can’t wait until customers get their hands (and fingers) on it and experience what a revolutionary and magical product it is. However, iPhone contains the most sophisticated software ever shipped on a mobile device, and finishing it on time has not come without a price — we had to borrow some key software engineering and QA resources from our Mac OS X team, and as a result we will not be able to release Leopard at our Worldwide Developers Conference in early June as planned. While Leopard’s features will be complete by then, we cannot deliver the quality release that we and our customers expect from us. We now plan to show our developers a near final version of Leopard at the conference, give them a beta copy to take home so they can do their final testing, and ship Leopard in October. We think it will be well worth the wait. Life often presents tradeoffs, and in this case we’re sure we’ve made the right ones. [Apr 12, 2007]

Wow. Bummer. Don’t get me wrong, I’m drooling for an iPhone as much as the next guy, but not at the expense of Leopard. The thing I’m curious about is how this shakes other things up. Like Final Cut Pro 6, for example. Guess I’ll find out about that on Sunday at NAB.

Boy, for some reason, I’m feeling old today.

ugh.

A few quick comments today:

This is stupid. Don’t these people realize how idiotic they sound when they say things like this?

When bridal shop owner Nancy Owen found ants in her store, she had two choices: relocate the critters or relocate her shop. Extermination was not an option.

That’s because the landlord of the Austin shopping center where her store was located is a supporter of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. The landlord imposed strict rules on tenants requiring that no meat or animal product be sold in their stores, and that no animals – including ants – be harmed.

“If you don’t have to cause animals to suffer – even the animals we don’t understand so well like ants or mice or chickens – why not choose to be kind rather than to be cruel?” asked PETA spokesman Bruce Friedrich.

Yeah, those ants sure are complicated buggers. There’s a lot we don’t understand there.

Here we go again with the stupid lawsuits.

A New Hampshire woman whose husband died in one of the planes that hit the World Trade Center sued President Bush and other government officials yesterday, contending their negligence of airport security resulted in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

First they say that the attempts to make things more secure invade our privacy, then they say they’re not doing enough. And how, exactly, was the state of airport security worsened when President Bush took office? I wouldn’t even try to pin that one on Slick Willie, much as I might like to.

And this just makes me mad.

OKLAHOMA CITY — A federal judge handed down bad news to those expecting their dinners to be forever free from interruptions Wednesday, ruling that the Federal Trade Commission (search) didn’t have the authority to slap telemarketers with a national “do-not-call” list.

…

The telemarketing industry has claimed the list, slated to take effect Oct. 1, could reduce its business by half and cost it up to $50 billion in sales each year.

$50 BILLION!!!Give me a break! That means that on average they expect to sell $1,000 worth of their crap to each of the 50 million who have signed up, per year. I don’t think so.

Things are getting stupid, folks.

When I finally do get my Dual 2Ghz G5 machine, here’s the monitor I want for it.

Apparently these guys have nothing better to do than sit around and dream up reasons to sue people. Sometimes it infuriates me that we have to put up with such ludicrous actions. Give me a break. Of course, a group filed suit years ago about the way monitor sizes were measured and advertised, and won. Did it change anything? Not much. The monitors are still the same size, it’s just now a 17″ monitor is actually a 17″ (16.2″ viewable) monitor. Lot of hoopla for a couple of words in parenthesis.

No wonder the US legal system can be called the “Legal Lottery”. You files your suit and you takes your chances.

And, by the way, if you think their suit actually has considerable merit, remember that ultimate drive capacity is actually limited to the file system you use on it. Different file systems use drives more or less efficiently. To make matters worse, file systems have a tendency to use “free space” faster when their closer to being full, or if the number of files is large. It’s a little more complex than I want to get into here, but it isn’t as simple as binary versus decimal.

This is hilarious, and well put. Let’s make sure that kids learning on computers are well versed in the art of “living with a windows machine”, and not actually learn something useful.

It’s like teaching kids how to live with the faults of a screwdriver and a hammer, but not getting to show them what they can build with it.

So after buying a load of groceries this morning, Cynthia comes home to find that the refrigerator is not working. Ice has melted and run down on the floor and whatnot. Argh.

After I run up to the store to get several bags of ice so we can transfer meat and such to an cooler, I make several calls around to see if I can locate a service person who can come out today and diagnose it. On the third call I manage to find someone and lo and behold, they’re there in an hour.

One defrost timer circuit and $180 later and we’re back up and running. Next is the oven, I suppose.

This will mess with your eyes, then your head.