Apple to Merge iOS, OS X

CUPERTINO—Just a day after Apple announced the merger of its iOS and OS X teams, talk of a merger of the two products is running rampant with some claiming that engineers have been well into the process for years.

Rumors began in October 2010, when Apple previewed OS X 10.7 Lion, showcasing many features from the company's mobile operating system that were making the jump to the company's desktop operating system. Lion's successor, OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, continued this trend with its release in July 2012.

But, according to Ahmad Singh, a former Apple operating systems engineer, a string of public releases have indicated such a move for years. “[OS X 10.5 Leopard]'s release date was pushed back multiple times, debuting a year late. The excuse was software engineering for the iPhone,” he said. “It started with Intel support in Tiger and a desire for a mobile version of OS X.”

Fuck Firefox 14

It had been a few weeks since I last used Firefox because it sucks so fucking hard. Instead, I've been using Safari. With my recent upgrade to Mountain Lion I checked out Safari 6 and wondered what Firefox 14 was like in comparison. I decided to approach it with an open mind and did the old launch-check-install-relaunch routine that I've done over a dozen times in the last year or so.

Apple Releases Safari 6 Beta ahead of WWDC ’12

In anticipation of its World-Wide Developers Conference taking place tomorrow, Apple has released a public beta of Safari 6, the next big upgrade to the company's web browser.

Other confirmed product previews include iCloud, iOS 6, and OS X Mountain Lion, alongside rumors of new Ivy Bridge-based Macs and third-party apps for Apple TV. So far only Safari 6 has been generally released, however, with several new features.

Firefox Sucks! Unlucky Thirteen Is Useless

I just started up Firefox and, once again, there was another whole-number version update waiting to interrupt my use and enjoyment of the world-wide web.

Didn't Firefox 12 come out about a month ago?

Once I applied the update and got running again, nothing was changed. Not a thing. Okay, well, a new tab homepage. But seriously? Showing me a few sites that I visit frequently? I know how to use browser bookmarks and history, thank you. But in addition to useless new “features,” Firefox 13 also screws stuff up.

The damn thing won't load new pages to about:blank now, even though I've tried to configure it to do so. The Firefox team also fucked with page scrolling, so that now instead of moving in discrete increments, they have some half-assed “smooth” scrolling that tears across screen refreshes on OS X.

These are just a few in a laundry list of many complaints about Firefox that I have compiled since Firefox developers think that wasting my time is some kind of design goal. Here's what doesn't work as of Firefox 13.

Ellison Debuts “Oracle XII,” Vatican Demands Apology

Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle Corp, received flack from the Vatican as he announced the company's new strategy meant to leverage their Sun Microsystems purchase made back in 2010 that will introduce considerable changes to their Oracle, Solaris, and SPARC product lines, dubbed “Oracle XII” The Vatican has demanded an apology for some imagery Ellison used during the announcement.

Despite subsequent comments denying his intent to offend, Ellison remains the center of scandal as the Church wages a public campaign to disassociate itself from the database giant. Cardinals in the Vatican's office of public affairs have also suggested a censure for Ellison.

Despite the controversy, Oracle has something hot on its hands. It may have taken a couple of years, but a pervasive, top-to-bottom platform for Oracle database products has emerged and it looks like it might have a chance of unseating IBM's Power7-based offerings from being the top database platform out there. The announcement came in three parts, discussing hardware and software improvements all focused on making Oracle's database products more powerful.

What remains to be seen is when exactly Oracle Corp's new platform will debut, and whether it will be hotter than the heat Catholic officials are turning up against Ellison.

Miss Amiga? Try DragonFly!

Amiga users are the longest-suffering technology loyalists that the computing industry has ever seen. Though once the best solution for 3D and special effects work, the operating system has long since been superseded as mainstream options, such as x86 hardware and new Mac and Windows operating systems, have become more powerful.

For instance, AmigaOS only gained support for memory paging in 2008, with AmigaOS 4.1, and USB 2.0 in 2011, with AmigaOS 4.1u3. That's over a decade after the USB standard was released, and three years after its successor, USB 3.0, was finalized. Amiga support for modern operating design and peripheral hardware is, to say the least, beyond hope.

On top of that, AmigaOS only supports dead, 32-bit processor architectures. AmigaOS 3.9 supports the Motorola 68k series up to the 68060 (released in 1994). AmigaOS 4, while slightly more modern, only runs on older P.A. Semi PA6T, Freescale e600, and IBM 750 parts. At best, AmigaOS is a decade behind.

So what is an Amiga user to do? If you're at all familiar with Unix or FreeBSD, there is one option out there that Amigans can look to—as long as they're okay with rock-hard stability, modern operating system design, and pervasive 64-bit support.