Month: October 2010

I think so. Apple just announced record profits. You would think Jobs would be happy, but I think he sees Android and Google as a real, serious threat.

What is Steve Jobs so afraid of?

“There’s a saying that the more you have, the more you fear losing it.Apple’s CEO made a surprise appearance during yesterday’s fiscal 2010 fourth quarter earnings call. Jobs said he couldn’t resist participating, given Apple’s record $20.34 billion revenue. But he leveled most of his comments at competitors, and in quite defensive posture. Now why is that? Apple’s iPhone blew past Wall Street estimates by as many as 3 million units. The iPad outsold Macs and, according to Gartner and IDC analysts, sucked sales away from Windows netbooks and low-cost notebooks. Apple controls the largest and most successful applications store on the planet. The company sits on a cash horde of more than $51 billion. Then there are the quarterly results, which topped consensus estimates by nearly $2 billion.”

Yet, Jobs fussed about Android, and tried to diminish it.

“Jobs moved on to Google and recent statements by Eric Schmidt, its CEO and former Apple board member, about there being 200,000 Android activations per day and 90,000 apps in the Android Marketplace. “Apple has activated about 275,000 iOS devices per day on average for the past 30 days” with the number topping 300,000 some days, Jobs asserted. It’s an apple and oranges comparison. Apple isn’t just activating iPhones but iPads and iPod touches, too. Nearly all Androids are phones; for now. It’s a me-too claim that demonstrates Jobs’ fear Android may do to iPhone what Windows did to the Mac during the 1980s and 1990s.”

Interesting. I think Jobs is sweating. And Android rocks. Just sayin’!

So… it all started when I noticed that OpenOffice.org wasn’t getting frequent updates anymore. I figured something was up. I even figured it had to do with Oracle buying Sun Microsystems, who had “owned” and sponsored OpenOffice.org. Now, come to find out, the developers that were constantly developing and updating OpenOffice.org have left OOo to form “The Document Foundation” and start a fork of the project called LibreOffice.

“Libre” is, of course, “free” and the new version, which is in beta, is free as well, in the fine tradition of Open Source! It looks like LibreOffice may eventually even be better than OpenOffice! The Document Foundation is also backed by such Linux veterans as Red Hat, Novell, Google (Android) and Canonical!

Here’s what their “Welcome” Page has to say about “The Document Foundation:”

“It is an independent self-governing meritocratic Foundation, created by leading members of the OpenOffice.org Community.
It continues to build on the foundation of ten years’ dedicated work by the OpenOffice.org Community.
It was created in the belief that the culture born of an independent Foundation brings out the best in contributors and will deliver the best software for users.
It is open to any individual who agrees with our core values and contributes to our activities.
It welcomes corporate participation, e.g. by sponsoring individuals to work as equals alongside other contributors in the community.
The Document Foundation is proud to be the home of LibreOffice, the next evolution of the world’s leading free office suite.”

For more info check the link here:

The Document Foundation Mission and Team

In the meantime, I would stick with your OpenOffice installtion until they are out of Beta… but, then, hummmmm… I think I will switch!

Check it out! ARS Technica has a neat article on the new Ubuntu 10.10… it looks like it is worthy of a download and install on my netbook!

Ubuntu 10.10 arrives with impressive new netbook environment

“Canonical has announced the availability of Ubuntu 10.10, a major update of the popular Linux distribution. The new version introduces the Unity netbook environment, which offers a custom desktop shell that is optimized for ease of use on small displays and has a global menubar to conserve vertical screen space. Ubuntu’s installer got a major overhaul in this release, with substantial user interface improvements and new features. The new installer can start downloading updated packages during the early stages of the configuration process in order to save the user from having to run a full update immediately after installation. It also has a new option that lets users choose to automatically install closed-source components, such as multimedia codecs.”

Yeeeaaah! I don’t think I would trust it yet! Can you imagine a blue screen of death being a REAL blue screen of death? Yeeshh!

Google Car Test Drive

“You didn’t actually think that you’d need to drive the next wave of cars, did you? The seemingly all-conquering Google has announced that it’s road-testing cars that steer, stop and start without a driver. The cars use video cameras on the roof, along with radar sensors and a laser range finder to ‘see’ other traffic. The aim? To ‘help prevent traffic accidents, free up people’s time and reduce carbon emissions’ through ride sharing and ‘the new ‘highway trains of tomorrow,” project leader Sebastian Thrun wrote Saturday on Google’s blog. Engineers told the New York Times that venturing out to the highways was pretty much incident-free, save from a bump when the car was reportedly hit from behind at a traffic light. The cars have so far covered 140,000 miles, taking in the likes of San Francisco’s Golden Gate bridge (as well as the city’s sloping streets) and Lake Tahoe.”