This week, there was some discussion of what might be Apple’s name for the next version of Mac OS X, 10.6. According to one writer who investigated last year, trademark filings show that Apple has only two names left: Lynx and Cougar. The hypothesis was that Apple wouldn’t have two successive releases that start with the letter “L,” but I don’t really believe that. I also doubt that Apple would pay much attention to the current use of the term Cougar as an older woman in search of younger men.

Lynx has two possible connotations. The first is that it’s not a big and powerful as the other cats and names Apple has used. On the other hand, small, fast, and lightweight (compared to Vista) might be a favorable comparison.

JavaOne was held this week at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. My wife attended and passed on her observations to me. First, in the 90s, Apple’s WWDC was very emotionally driven — because the company was desperate for success and survival. About the year 2000, when Apple’s success was modest, yet assured, things got down to business with a more mature atmosphere. However, at JavaOne, my wife still felt that sense of excitement, all things possible, and emotional hype created by Sun. Next, there were a lot of attendees at JavaOne. I don’t have the exact numbers, but from what I heard, the attendance was much higher than WWDC, yet Sun managed to provide decent, edible food. Ever since Apple departed San Jose’s McEnery Convention Center, the WWDC food has been, well, not so great. The photo below summarized how a lot of us have felt recently.

At JavaOne, one would expect to see a sizeable fraction of Apple MacBooks, and there were. Perhaps one in four was the casual, non-scientific count. Who wants to be seen at the JavaOne conference with a dreaded PC notebook? New and important technologies like JRuby and Groovy, scripting for Java, were prominent. Sony Erisscon appears ready to embrace Java for a new mobile phone.

Don’t let anyone kid you. While Apple developers work with Objective-C, out in the enterprise, military and government communities, C++ and Java are the object oriented languages. Why there’s aren’t more native Java applications for Mac OS X and why it has taken so long for Apple to deliver a limited version of Java 6 for Mac OS X go to cultural and historical issues with Apple that are worth exploring.

This week, I ran across an interesting bug in Mac OS X. I launched some trial software from its .dmg file after it mounted. After it ran nicely, I copied it from the mounted dmg volume to /Applications. Then I right-click quit the application from the dock. CRASH. I’ve been told by a major developer that this is a bug in Mac OS X.

Oh, my.

After seven years? Mac OS X 10.0 shipped in March 2001. How many years does it take to attend to a bug like that? Apple engineers should be embarrassed.

On Thursday, it was reported that the FBI tried to demand information from a non-profit digital library, that operates the Wayback Machine by using a National Security Letter. One problem. The archive’s founder, Brewster Kahle, is on the board of directors of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). Oops.

The EFF and the ACLU sued the FBI under the amended Patriot Act which protects libraries from having to disclose what their members are reading. Its a good story.

On Friday, ITWire carried a story about how, in the UK, if you play music so that someone else can hear it, that’s a “broadcast” and you could be breaking the law. That’s according to the Performing Rights Society. So the next time you’re in the car on the way to work, playing the radio, make sure your carpool buddies hold their hands over their ears. That’s in the same league with the spokesperson a few years ago who said that getting up to go to the bathroom, and missing TV commercials, is a violation of your implicit contract with the TV show.

Finally, if you thought software is the only threat to your privacy on the Internet, think again. The FBI is investigating whether some counterfeit chips, made in China, may have made their way into some Cisco routers. It isn’t clear yet whether the hardware was designed to have a backdoor or to allow snooping and stealing design secrets of the hardware or both. In any case, now we have hardware to worry about.

I really believe the TV networks are clueless when it comes to communicating with their viewers. If Steve Ballmer throws a book, let alone a chair, in his office, I hear about it. If Apple has something to say to its millions of customers, sending out a mass (opt-in) e-mail is not a problem. Intuit, which has millions of TurboTax customers, has no problem reminding me that it’s time to purchase this year’s tax program. But poor, whinny FOX TV. They move “House” from Tuesday to Monday, no one knows about it, and viewership is down 22 percent. They only have themselves to blame.

Here’s an idea. Each network sets up a single opt-in page where I can identify my favorite shows with a check box. (Good data to have, no?) Then, if the TV show changes its schedule, I get an e-mail or a message on my iPhone. TiVos can adapt to this, but not everyone has a TiVo. NBC would rather spend millions on Hulu so I can watch old episodes of Hill Street Blues, with commercials, than let me know that Heros is a new episode this week.

On Monday, Tamir Khason took a look at the relationship between computer languages and the facial hair of the developer(s). No hair — no future!

For those people who just love to fire up Numbers (or Excel) and mess around with Apple’s Gross Profit Margins, I saw a story on Tuesday at Barron’s that goes over the top and looks at every little percentage contribution to the GM numbers from Apple’s Q2 earnings report. If this doesn’t make your head hurt, nothing will.

Also, on Tuesday there was a story about how a judge, in an RIAA case, Atlantic v. Howell, decreed that merely putting a music file in a shared folder on one’s own computer does not constitute the act of distributing copyrighted material. The core of the case goes to understanding how one’s computer works, and this couple apparently did not. They won an appeal on that basis. In that light the defense, which sounds dubious at first blush, actually works: The defendant claimed that “he was not the one sharing the files, but that it was the computer that was sharing the files.” Also important was the argument by an EFF attorney: The case “amounts to suing someone for attempted distribution, something the Copyright Act has never recognized.”

I saw a story on Wednesday that speculated Apple is going to become more involved with WiMax (IEEE 802.21) and promote it, along with Intel, the father of WiMax, just as it launched Wi-Fi at Mac World New York in 1999. WiMax is a technology that has gotten off to a rocky start, but Apple combined with Intel could make it happen. This was an interesting read, but still speculation.

On Thursday, I saw a story dear to my heart. Apparently, Plasma TV sales in the U.S. are still suffering from myths about severe screen burn in, and that has made LCD HDTVs the darling of Americans. However, Plasma TV sales are growing by leaps and bounds outside the U.S. I will admit, I had my own concerns about Plasma TVs, and it took a lot of research and a trip to CEDIA to alleviate those concerns. Advertising is the key, and I think it may be time for Panasonic to get on that bandwagon. Modern Plasmas don’t have much problem with short lifespans, high altitude, buzzing and burn in. I hope they start telling that story before Plasmas die a premature death in the U.S.

Finally, this week I saw this picture and story purporting that Steve Baller gave a presentation with a Mac. But I didn’t run it because Mr. Baller wasn’t in the picture and there was some discussion about it being leftover from a previous presenter. In this case, a picture does not tell the whole story, and I ignored it.

On Monday, I saw that another house had burned down thanks to a faulty power supply in an Xbox 360. “The console owner’s house has been reduced to a near shack-like state following the fire,” a local TV station reported. It’s sad, and it’s not the first time this has happened. Fortunately, the owner wasn’t home this time.

Also on Monday, Eli Hoffmann asked if Dell is “Dead Money” at this point. He cited several reasons why buying the stock at this time is a bad idea. In Wednesday’s earnings report, Apple COO Tim Cook mentioned that Apple has now surpassed Dell in notebook sales to education if I heard him correctly. Whatcha Gonna Do, Dell? Lower prices? Push Vista?

Years from now, people will ask why, if we saw it all coming, why we weren’t more definitive about the expected fate of Microsoft. There is very little evidence that Microsoft can change its fate and Windows is just too bloated to fix. Apple is coming on strong enough that, while it won’t surpass Microsoft for a while, it’s time someone said it. Every indication is that, at some point in the future, Apple will become a larger, wealthier company than Microsoft. There. Done.

On Wednesday, Apple published its earnings results and conducted the customary analyst call in. One analyst asked if Apple will continue selling the current model once the iPhone 3G ships. Tim Cook laughed and countered that Apple doesn’t comment on new products. But wait! Both AT&T’s Randall Stephenson and Apple’s Steve Jobs have already announced the iPhone 3G! Mr. Stephenson announced in November 2007 at the Churchill Club in Santa Clara when he said, “You’ll have it next year.” Mr. Jobs announced the product wen he was in London in September for the O2 launch, and explained in detail why Apple couldn’t deliver it earlier. So I would have expected the analyst to counter, “Oh, but Mr. Cook, the product has been announced. We’re just asking for whether the old one will be discontinued.”

Or something like that.

What’s in store for smartphone customers, in addition to merely paying for goods with an encrypted data blast tied to their credit cards, was discussed by Steve Smith on Thursday. Bar codes as coupons on the smartphone display are just the beginning. Just wait until your local grocery store realizes you shop at Kroger every Thursday night and starts to send coupons and offers. Jim Cramer added color when he pointed out that the iPhone is now a fashion accessory for teenage girls.
I thought that was a great video by Mr. Cramer and showed signs of things to come.

You heard it before. A company claims they’re growing faster than the competition. That, of course, means they’re smaller than the competition. Every math major knows that. At Seattle pi, a Microsoft blogger took pains to reminds us of that with a nice set of charts showing Apple’s growth. The glass half empty people see the PC dominance lasting forever. The glass half full people see trends. What ever camp you’re in, the charts are a handy reference for historians. Personally, I tend to put more weight on trends than I do the current status quo.

Finally, I saw an article at Seeking Alpha about how, coincidentally, Motorola’s loss was almost exactly the same as Apple’s financial gain in the mobile phone market. I’m always dubious about drawing strong, technical conclusions when I see that kind of accidental relationship. Even so, one has the gut feeling that there is a relationship. I remember watching Sydney Bristow on Alias pull out her black RAZR in 2004, and it was sooo cool. Now, it’s Dr. Amita Ramajuan on Numb3rs with her iPhone. My how quickly Motorola succumbed to Apple.

Who will be next?

It’s been an interesting week. Intuit got through the tax deadline filing without a major hitch, and TurboTax for Mac OS X just keeps getting better and better. No one likes collecting receipts and documents and ploughing through the endless questions, but TurboTax makes it almost fun.

A few years ago, H&R Block abandoned its Apple customers for one year without warning and with no explanation. While they’re back on the Mac now, that brief encounter with Tax Cut left a bad taste in my mouth. After that fiasco, I’m back to TurboTax and haven’t looked back.

On Monday, Blockbuster started thinking about buying Circuit City. I saw it as handwriting on the wall for those brick and mortar companies that simply rent plastic discs. Jeff Gamet, TMO’s Morning Editor, and I noticed that in Denver, a chain called Hollywood Video is going out of business. Big companies have the resources to at least try to act to control their fate, and poor Hollywood Video looks like one of those that hasn’t been able to. Even so, I question whether Blockbuster has the technical savvy, if it does acquire Circuit City, to integrate it into their operations and make money. After all, Circuit City just passes on products made by others. That’s not a prescription for profits.

Speaking of acquisitions, there was an intriguing opinion article at 9 to 5 Mac on Monday about how Apple may have just hired an attorney who is an expert at acquisitions. Lots of people have made predictions and suggestions about what kind of company Apple might acquire. Sun is certainly not one of them. Neither should Circuit City or any other retail chain be on the list. The best one I’ve seen lately is Adobe — that would sync with Apple’s ambitions in content creation. A plus is that the two companies aren’t very far apart, Cupertino and San Jose. It’s intriguing thinking about it. But when it does happen, we’ll all sigh, smack our heads, and say, “Of course!”

I’m not sure about the date on this one, but I ran across an article pointed to by one of our readers about how the Switched Digital Video system being tested by the cable companies, through its research arm, CableLabs, is designed to torpedo CableCards and the intentions of Congress. In my opinion, I don’t think so. SDV is essential if the cable companies, sans optical fiber, are ever going to successfully challenge satellite providers DIRECTV and Dish Network. CableLabs is already working with TiVo on integrating the SDV boxes to allow continued, unattended recording. Anyone else who says their equipment is not compatible has been asleep at the wheel. It also just shows how slow the U.S. Congress can be dealing with technologies. Laws that try to promote competition are an oxymoron.

The true value of a fiber optic connection, and some of the headaches, were described by Max Kalehoff on Friday when he had Verizon install FiOS, short for Fiber Optic System. For $99/month he’s getting phone service and 20 Mbps on the Internet. In my case, I’m paying for an official 6 Mbps with Comcast, but in the past I’ve routinely averaged 10 Mbps downloads. The other day, doing research for an Apple TV, I ran Apple’s suggested speed test at the very bottom of the Apple TV technical specifications page. You’ll need a connection with 6 Mbps to be happy with an Apple TV. Here’s what I got.

That’s not so bad at all, but I admit, I’m in a neighborhood where I’m not sharing a lot of bandwidth with tech-happy neighbors. By and by, we’ll all get to the holy grail of 100 Mbps into our homes.

On Monday, MultiChannel News noted that the premiere of Battlestar Galactica got off to a great start. But that’s a relative term, since they only had 2.1 million viewers and a 1.6 rating. Considering the fact that BSG is a great TV drama, I don’t understand why the audience isn’t larger. Come on TiVo users. Party on Friday and watch BSG on Monday, now that we have no more Sarah Connor Chronicles.

On Tuesday, TV happenings expert Phillip Swann predicted that Sony and Microsoft would come to terms on a Blu-ray player in the Xbox 360. Sony will, not doubt, demand that the player be inside this time, not an add-on attachment. Then, when supplies mysteriously dry up because Sony is putting Blu-ray players in their HDTVs, Microsoft can watch their Xbox sales tank. Ah, the irony…

Mr. Swann also predicted that Blu-ray player prices will drop below $200 by Christmas. Considering that Walt Mossberg just slammed the entire U.S. broadband industry, the question is: Can broadband in the U.S. advance faster by Christmas than Blu-ray player prices? I doubt it. Comcast has rolled out DOCSIS 3.0 cable modems in Minneapols/St. Paul and is offering 50 Mbps for $149/month. That’s gonna be a real winner in this economy for sure. I think Blu-ray discs will be around for a long time. While I’m on Blu-ray, engadgetHD said on Thursday that a boxed set of the short-lived, cult SciFi show Firefly is coming to Blu-ray. If you missed this one season SciFi show on Fox, check it out. It was the precursor to the theatrical movie Serenity.

On Wednesday, it was reported that Hewlett Packard shipped a batch of USB keys infected with the W32.Fakerecy and W32.SillyFDC worms. The worms can infect Windows 98, Windows 95, Windows XP, Windows Me, Windows NT and Windows 2000 systems. I thought it was odd that a company with HP’s resources would allow something like that to happen.

On Thursday, I saw a really cool article on how the current technical era, bursting with new technologies, can be compared to the discovery of the laws of nature in times past. It used to be that the workings of nature were a puzzle to figure out, and men like Newton and Einstein spent their whole lives working out the details. The ecosphere of the Internet today is just as marvelous and complex and ripe for discoveries. I think it also explains why physicists make the best programmers … if I may say so myself.

Also, on Thursday, there was a completely ridiculous article at CW about an Oxford University professor who believes that the closed, proprietary systems like the iPhone are killing the Internet and innovation. The idea is that when people can’t tinker, like they did with their PCs, life and innovation will die. To cap it off, he used hackers and thieves who stalk the Internet as proof that user tinkerable systems are preferable. I guess he never heard of Xcode and the Apple iPhone SDK. I would have written a rebuttal editorial, but no time.

Also on Thursday, there was a rumor about Blockbuster thinking about building a box to deliver streamed movies to user’s home TVs. The idea is to combine their huge movie library with instant gratification. It was called a rumor by Blockbuster. But if they’re thinking about it, it has to be one of the worst money losing ideas ever. Think box fatigue.

Finally, on Friday, I found out about a completely open source alternative to Windows, ReactOS. It’s a free, open source OS that functions just like Windows XP with binary compatibility for applications and device drivers. It’s similar to what Linux did to the UNIXes of old. It’s still in extreme alpha, but has all the earmarks of a disruptive technology that could have Steve Ballmer throwing yet more chairs around his office. Check it out.

On Thursday, Channel Web reported that Windows XP, SP3 has been released to manufacturing. That update has to be one of the best kept secrets ever as Microsoft hopes that people will just forget about XP and briskly move to Vista. And on Friday, Bill Gates is so excited about Vista that he talked about how Windows 7 may be coming sooner than believed. Can things get any more confused? Probably.

Now for all those who just can’t wait to install Vista into Parallels, Microsoft is offering a secret, cost saving ($110) upgrade to Vista by purchasing the SP1 upgrade alone. Microsoft knows about the loophole. I guess it’s a good idea to sell Vista in as many ways as possible.

Earlier in the week, for all those who aren’t entertained by Microsoft enough, the New York Times reported that Microsoft has reached an agreement with a company headed by Peter Safran, a veteran producer, to produce original content for the Xbox. One can have a lot of fun thinking about what kind of original stories Microsoft and Mr. Safran will dream up. Is John Hodgman the real Iron Man? Who knows?

On Monday, the Mercury News pointed out that an iPhone can turn one from a mere know-it-all into an incredibly annoying know-it-all, and Erica Sadun can prove it. After all, if you have the entire Internet in the palm of your hand…

The Newton Virus is a piece of software that exploits the accelerometer in a MacBook Pro to create all kinds of havoc on the screen. The idea is that you wait until the target, er, user, steps away and then insert the USB drive with the code. People should think long and hard about this stuff. We all like to think we have a good sense of humor — except when it comes to our PowerBooks. Watching the promo movie is probably more fun than getting shot at or fired after you install this software on your boss’s Mac.

Of course, we all know why Blu-ray discs are so expensive, right? They require new equipment to make and can’t be made on the old DVD mastering equipment. That truth, however, probably doesn’t reveal the fact that it costs maybe 50 cents to master a DVD and $1.50 to master a Blu-ray disc. So why not sell movies for $40? Greed seems to work for Hollywood. These prices aren’t going to last long in this economy. The studios better wake up fast.

It seems game manufacturers are getting hammered by piracy and are turning more and more away from PCs to game consoles. The result this week is that EA announced that there will be no Madden 2009, according to ars technica. We could be off to the passing of an era.

Finally, in ultimate irony, Sony BMG has been accused of piracy. A French company, PointDev, found unlicensed software on Sony’s servers in France. “For Sony, the development seems to mark a copyright-related public relations debacle,” according to MediaPost. Delicious scandal indeed for a company that backs the RIAA.

[23:15 UTC] On Tuesday, Steve Jobs mentioned some possible candidates to become his successor. Two were Apple COO Tim Cook and CFO Peter Oppenheimer. These recommendations to the board say a lot about Apple’s future.

In the not too distant past, Apple was a beleaguered company, at risk of going bankrupt. When Mr. Jobs returned, Apple was struggling to generate revenues of US$5B. Now, in 2008, Apple is a $25B company, almost certainly headed for $40B in just a few years. They have more money in the bank than the gross domestic product of Nicaragua.

Mr. Jobs’ choices say several things to me. First, Apple is a confident company. While many enjoyed kicking them around in the past, the stark reality today is that Apple is a force to contend with and no one is making fun of them anymore. That’s going to translate into a substantive threat to Microsoft — just as father Steve intended.

Next, Apple is looking for a stable, sober manager to manage Apple’s growth and finances. The next CEO will be a seasoned businessman, an executive to guide the company through its new found success. Mr. Cook may be a little on the sedate side and Mr. Oppenheimer isn’t exactly rock star material, but that no longer matters. Apple won’t be in desperate need of a firebrand to resurrect the company. Instead, it will need someone to guide it through the international introductions of future iPhones, advanced iPod touches, and new products to come.

What Apple will miss will be the taste and judgment of Mr. Jobs who knows just as much about features to omit as features to add. Even so, after ten years of Mr. Jobs at the helm, the culture is firmly in place.

Finally, as I mentioned, the threat to other companies will become even harder to ignore. Apple is well on its way to double digit market share with Macs. When we get into double digit market share of, say, 16 percent, that’s one in six Macs. The banking industry, developers, and the U.S. government will suddenly find that it’s no longer easy or convenient to ignore the Mac. American technical culture will change.

When the end of Mr. Jobs’ reign comes, and I hope that’s a long time from now, we’ll look back fondly on the fireworks and the RDF. But change is certain, and Apple will be a more mature, confident, wealthy and businesslike company in that future. What else could we wish for?

My wife uses Linux, Java, Perl, and C++ at work. Recently, she wanted to get a new PC with Fedora 8 so that she could do work and research at home on a fast system. Her old custom built PC was aging and is really only suitable for interface testing. The local shop that built it is out of business.

Now, running Fedora 8 is possible in Parallels on a MacBook, but she didn’t want to do that — she wanted direct access to the hardware with no hassles.

We looked around. PC Connection and the local Microcenter have various PCs, but Lea’s colleagues have advised that Hewlett Packard PCs don’t have the best quality parts. And she’s very allergic to Dell. We had a bad experience buying a notebook from Dell a few years ago and ended up sending it back. Also, the cheap retail PCs use shared memory for the graphics card which we wanted to avoid.

A friend of mine suggested we look into eracks.com. These guys will build a custom PC to your specifications, install the OS of your choice, and ship it to you. The order page has popups just like Apple’s store. If options you chose are incompatible or haven’t been tested, they’re generally blocked. In any case, the technicians at eRacks will size up your machine profile and let you know if you’ve done something too far out of the mainstream. We ordered one of the BOOQ series computers with a Core 2 Duo, 2 GHz, 2 GB RAM, 320 GB drive, and a very good graphics card with 256 MB VRAM.

I was very impressed with this outfit in California. I had a personal sales rep who clarified some ordering options, kept me advised of fab progress and provided the tracking number when it shipped. They’ll even include the install disk for the Linux distribution you select.

It took a little longer than quoted for build process, and we had a one day delay for President’s Day, but it was well worth the wait. Order day was Feb 5th and delivery was Feb 22nd, UPS Ground. (You get to pick the carrier.) It was packed very well. If you don’t want to build your own PC from scratch, and you want a solid PC built to order, these guys are the next best thing. I recommended them.