RoughlyDrafted Archives: February 2007

February 1st, 2007

Daniel Eran Dilger
Index page for articles from February 2007.

February 2007 (newer articles on top):

Will Steve Jobs License Apple’s FairPlay DRM?
Steve Jobs’ thoughts on music presented an overview of Apple’s music business, the existing state of DRM, and presented three possible alternatives for the future of the digital music industry.

How FairPlay Works: Apple’s iTunes DRM Dilemma
Understanding how Apple’s FairPlay DRM works helps to answer a lot of questions: why it hasn’t been replaced with an open, interoperable DRM that anyone can use, why Apple isn’t broadly licensing FairPlay, and why the company hasn’t jumped to add DRM-free content from indie artists to iTunes.

Apple TV: iTunes Store Movie Quality vs DVD, HD, Cable
How does audio and video content from the iTunes Store compare with alternatives such as DVDs, cable and satellite feeds, and the new HD disc formats such as Blu-Ray and HD-DVD? Here’s a look.

Windows XP Media Center Edition vs Apple TV
Apple critics tried hard to pretend that this year’s Macworld was a huge disappointment because no new Macs or iPods were trotted out on stage. Of course, these same critics have also long lambasted Apple for not offering a “true video” iPod, nor a handheld mobile, nor a Media Center Mac, nor other copies of Microsoft strategies.

Windows Home Server vs AirPort Extreme
In addition to its assault on Windows Server and Exchange in office workgroups, Apple has also quietly released a paralyzing attack on Microsoft’s future server plans for home users. Disguised as the new AirPort Extreme wireless base station, it adroitly blows Microsoft’s plans out of the water months before any can even ship.

Innovation: Apple at Macworld vs Microsoft at CES
Each January, Bill Gates addresses the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, outlining Microsoft’s plans for new products. Around the same time, Steve Jobs addresses Mac users at the San Francisco Macworld Expo. The difference between the two speakers and what they present in their keynote presentations is further apart than the 570 miles that separate the two cities.

Mac OS X Leopard Server
In Mac OS X Leopard Server, Apple sets out to improve upon the existing Tiger Server and fix a number of its limitations. Here’s a look at some of the more interesting new features in Leopard Server and how its components integrate together to offer far more than a sum of its parts.

Open Source in Mac OS X Server
Apple has leveraged open source software to make rapid progress in developing a new server business after its efforts to enter server markets fell flat in the mid 90s.

Cocoa and the Death of Yellow Box and Rhapsody
Between 1996 and 2000, the market’s rejection of OpenStep and then Yellow Box resulted in Apple significantly reworking Mac OS X to serve its own needs, rather than trying to offer a cross platform environment like Sun’s Java or Microsoft’s .NET and its open source Mono implementation. Here’s why Yellow Box as a strategy died.

Apple’s NeXT Server Offensive on Microsoft
When Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, he described the new Apple, armed with NeXT technologies, as “shepherding some of the greatest assets in the computer industry.”

Steve Jobs and 20 Years of Apple Servers
Apple is preparing to launch Mac OS X Leopard Server later this year, the seventh major version of its Unix server product based on technology acquired from NeXT. Here’s a look at where it came from, and how Steve Jobs intertwines with twenty years of server products at Apple.

Apple’s Open Calendar Server vs Microsoft Exchange
Apple’s new Calendar Server is part of a new push into workgroup servers. Rather than trying to copy Microsoft’s tools, Apple is building its own vision of collaborative workgroup services. Why Apple is offering a calendar server might come as a surprise.

Apple Takes On Exchange Server
Apple is leveraging the power of open source development in a new effort to directly target Microsoft Exchange Server. A new standards based, open source Calendar Server will debut this year with Leopard Server; the source itself is already available at MacOSForge.org.

Readers Write About Apple’s Open Source Assault
What is the Microsoft business that Apple is preparing to target with a resurrected product category newly reanimated by the power of open source?.

Apple’s Open Source Assault
While rebuilding its business over the last decade, Apple under Steve Jobs has armed itself with an incredibly powerful force: open source. It has leveraged that power to both rapidly outpace Microsoft in desktop operating system development and to build partnerships within the industry. Apple will soon be unleashing the power of open source to target a major line of Microsoft’s business in a new way.

2007 – Apple Strikes Back
Ten years ago, Apple was in no position to do much of anything. Today, Apple wields so much influence in online media markets that some Europeans want to socialize music to give more control to the mostly European music labels. Here’s how things changed so dramatically, and how Apple’s new firepower relates to Microsoft.

Steve Jobs and the iTunes DRM Threat to Microsoft
Ten years ago, Apple was in no position to do much of anything. Today, Apple wields so much influence in online media markets that some Europeans want to socialize music to give more control to the mostly European music labels. Here’s how things changed so dramatically, and how Apple’s new firepower relates to Microsoft.

Windows 95 and Vista: Why 2007 Won’t Be Like 1995
What if Microsoft threw a party, and nobody came? Despite its best efforts to create excitement for Windows Vista at release parties held in a variety of retail stores this last week, nobody seems to care about the product. Just over a decade ago, things went very differently at the release of Windows 95. What’s killing Microsoft’s party this time around?

Readers Write About Symbian, OS X and the iPhone
Responding to Origins: Why the iPhone is ARM, and isn’t Symbian, sources from Sweden and Finland offer a revealing look inside Symbian development and how the OS is regarded at Nokia, and what that means for development on the iPhone.

Mac OS X vs Linux: Third Party Software and Security
The biggest difference between Linux and OS X in mobile development is that OS X is only available to Apple. For open source advocates, this raises issues about freedom of control, access to code, and the development potential available to third parties. Foes of both platforms have also raised alarmed concerns about security.

Mac OS X vs Linux on the iPhone and Mobile Devices
Windows Mobile, Palm OS, Linux, and Symbian currently power the world’s smartphones. How does each stack up against Apple’s OS X in the iPhone? This article presents an overview of Linux.

Origins: Why the iPhone is ARM, and isn’t Symbian
Windows Mobile, Palm OS, Linux, and Symbian currently power the world’s smartphones. How does each stack up against Apple’s OS X in the iPhone? This article presents an overview and lineage of Symbian.

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Daniel Eran Dilger is the author of “Snow Leopard Server (Developer Reference),” a new book from Wiley available now from Amazon as a paperback or digital Kindle download.

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