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The Cult of Rails, The Cult of Mac

Mac, Mac, Mac…

One of the first things I noticed at last year’s RailsConf conference was that Mac laptops far outnumbered PC laptops. Outside of Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference (and possible FOO and BarCamp), you normally don’t see this sort of Mac-PC ratio.

I took the snapshot below last year. It of a group of attendees hanging out between sessions. Note that every laptop in the shot, including that of conference organizer Chad Fowler (4th from left) and presenter Adam Keys (5th from right) — is a Mac:

Geeks sitting with their Mac laptops at RailsConf 2006

Here’s a closer look — a video of a sea of Macs on developers’ laps:

Fearless Leader Uses a Mac

David Heinemeier Hansson: The Hottest Hacker on Earth

While most Rails projects are eventually deployed as production apps on Linux-based servers, OS X is the preferred development environment for Rails geeks. That’s no surprise, considering that Rails creator/figurehead/supermodel David Heinemeier Hansson is himself a Mac guy, as he writes in this article on his blog, Loud Thinking:

Paul Graham is writing about the Mac adoption amongst hackers in general and his own return in particular:

“All the best hackers I know are gradually switching to Macs… The reason, of course, is OS X. Powerbooks are beautifully designed and run FreeBSD. What more do you need to know? I got a Powerbook at the end of last year. When my IBM Thinkpad’s hard disk died soon after, it became my only laptop.”

It’s great to see that over the past few years it has become the norm, not the exception, that good programmers are wielding Macs. There’s the odd exception of Linux here and there, but the writing’s on the wall: OS X offers the best personal computing experience available today.

While I can certainly understand the reasons why some people go with Linux, I have run all but dry of understanding for programmers that willfully pick Windows as their platform of choice. I know a few that are still stuck in the rut for various reasons — none of them desire.

I would have a hard time imagining hiring a programmer who was still on Windows for 37signals. If you don’t care enough about your tools to get the best, your burden of proof just got a lot heavier.

It’s another interesting chapter in the rise of the Mac among the not-quite-mainstream programmer crowd, a trend that first became apparent during the first O’Reilly Emerging Technology Conference back in 2002. All through RailsConf 2006, I was reminded of Tim O’Reilly’s remarks in his 2002 WWDC keynote, Watching the “Alpha Geeks”: OS X and the Next Big Thing.

The Nonconformists

Seeing they were in the minority, RailsConf 2006 attendee Christian Metts handed out “Certificates of Nonconformity” to people sporting non-Macintosh laptops and took their photos. These RailsConf nonconformists were also photographed for posterity, and the photos have been collected in this Flickr set.

The most famous of the nonconformists was none other than the enigmatic Rubyist known only as why the lucky stiff, who posed in classic “why” fashion with his certificate:

“Why the Lucky Stiff” poses with his nonconformist certificate
Click the photo to see it on its original Flickr page.

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Specs for the New MacBooks

New 13″ MacBooks for May 2007

Okay, so the just-announced new MacBook line doesn’t have the OLED displays that Jobs mentioned Apple would have sometime this year, or the Santa Rosa chipset. You still get a lot of bang for the buck, which includes:

  • Faster processors, with 2.0GHz now being the slowpoke of the bunch
  • Bigger hard drives, with 80 gigs being the minimum (That’s just okay —
    I’ve always felt that Apple was stingy with drive space)
  • More beaseline RAM — 1 gig — which really should’ve been the bare
    minimum in the first place. OS X can be a hungry beast.

Apple does list the specs in their news release, but I’ve rearranged them into a nice matrix to make comparison shopping easier for you. You can’t say we at Global Nerdy ain’t never done nuthin’ for ya!

System

2.0 GHz 13″ White MacBook 2.16 GHz 13″ White MacBook 2.16 GHz 13″ Black MacBook
Price

US$1,099 US$1,299 US$1,499
Display 13.3-inch glossy widescreen 1280 x 800 display
Processor 2.0 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor 2.16 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor
Bus 667 MHz front-side bus
RAM 1GB of 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM, expandable to 2GB
Hard Drive 80GB Serial ATA hard drive running at 5400 rpm, with Sudden Motion Sensor 120GB Serial ATA hard drive running at 5400 rpm, with Sudden Motion Sensor 160GB Serial ATA hard drive running at 5400 rpm, with Sudden Motion Sensor
Optical Drive Slot-load Combo (DVD-ROM/CD-RW) optical drive Slot-load 8x SuperDrive with double-layer support (DVD+R DL/DVD+RW/DVD-RW/CD-RW) optical drive
Graphics System Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950
Video Out Mini-DVI out (adapters for DVI, VGA and Composite/S-Video sold separately)
Video In Built-in iSight video camera
Wired Networking Gigabit Ethernet port / 2 USB 2.0 ports / FireWire 400 port
Wireless Networking Built-in AirPort Extreme 802.11n wireless networking / Bluetooth 2.0+EDR
Audio In/Out One audio line in and one audio line out port, each supporting both optical digital and analog
Input Devices Scrolling TrackPad / Apple Remote
Power Adapter 60 Watt MagSafe Power Adapter
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Apple Online Stores Currently Offline – New MacBooks May be Released Later Today

More evidence that those rumors about Apple updating their line of consumer-level laptops today are true: as of this writing (Tuesday, May 15th, 8:35 a.m. EDT) online Apple stores worldwide are displaying a banner that reads “We are busy updating the store for you and will be back shortly”, shown below:

Banner from Apple Store site: “We are busy updating the store for you and will be back shortly.”

Here’s what Think Secret speculates the updates to the MacBook line may be:

  • These might be the first of the MacBooks to feature Intel’s Santa Rosa chipset.
  • The Santa Rosa chipset can be configured with the Core 2 Duo processors to run at 1.8, 2.0, 2.2 and 2.4 GHz — they expect that the MacBooks will run at the lower speeds in this range while the MacBook Pros will run at the higher speeds.
  • The MacBooks may incorporate the Intel GMA 3000 graphics processor, which should yield faster graphics performance.
  • They say ”
    The MacBook will not employ newer LED backlight displays; that upgrade will need to wait until the next revision.”
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Headin’ to RailsConf!

Headin’ to RailsConf!

The second annual RailsConf — the premier conference for Ruby on Rails developers — starts this Thursday, May 17th, with a full day devoted to tutorial sessions; the main conference starts on Friday, May 18th and runs to Sunday, May 20th and features three days of keynotes, sessions and gatherings of all sorts (here are the Friday, Saturday and Sunday schedules).

I will be among the 1,200 people attending this year’s conference (that’s three times the number of people who attended last year’s, which took place in Chicago), and I’ll be taking copious notes, photos, videos and podcast recordings as well as entertaining and/or annoying conferencers with the accordion. Watch this blog all this week for Rails and RailsConf-related posts!

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Web 2 Point Legit-to-Quit

In honor of Hammer’s inclusion as one of the experts at the upcoming TechCrunch20 Conference, we proudly present the truely unforgettable intro to the truely unforgettable animated series Hammerman:

If Arrington could just land Vanilla Ice and Gerardo, TechCrunch20 would have the perfect storm.

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HBO CTO BS: “Don’t Call it Digital Rights Management, Call it DIGITAL CONSUMER ENABLEMENT.”

“Mr. Burns” from “The Simpsons”In the Simpsons episode where the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant nearly undergoes a meltdown, there’s a cute little euphemism that Mr. Burns uses in a TV news interview:

Oh, meltdown. It’s one of those annoying buzzwords. We prefer to call it an unrequested fission surplus.

Ed “Freedom to Tinker” Felten writes that HBO Chief Technology Officer Bob Zitter might have beaten ol’ Burnsie at the euphemism-coining game:

People have had lots of objections to Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology — centering mainly on its clumsiness and the futility of its anti-infringement rationale — but until recently nobody had complained that the term “Digital Rights Management” was insufficiently Orwellian.

That changed on Tuesday, when HBO’s Chief Technology Officer, Bob Zitter, suggested at an industry conference that DRM needs a name change. Zitter’s suggested name: Digital Consumer Enablement, or DCE.

(If that’s “enablement”, I’d hate to see what he calls “disabled”.)

Here’s what Broadcasting & Cable reported:

Speaking at a panel session at the NCTA show in Las Vegas Tuesday, Zitter suggested that “DCE,” or Digital Consumer Enablement, would more accurately describe technology that allows consumers “to use content in ways they haven’t before,” such as enjoying TV shows and movies on portable video players like iPods.

“I don’t want to use the term DRM any longer,” said Zitter, who added that content-protection technology could enable various new applications for cable operators. One example could be “burn-to-own DVDs,” where a consumer would use a set-top box with a built-in DVD burner to record a movie onto an optical disc, thus eliminating the costly current process of pressing DVDs and distributing them physically at retail. Another possibility, says Zitter, is “early window exhibition,” either in the form of making a movie available through video-on-demand (VOD) the same day as the home video release or allowing home theater users to pay extra to see a high-definition version of a theatrical release in the comfort of their home.

Wired’s Epicenter blog makes a good point:

Yet while it’s easy to joke, Zitter’s comments at the industry event are revelatory into the disconnect between content consumers and producers. Instead of addressing the problems its customers have with DRM, HBO’s tech chief wants to call it by another name. It shows a fundamental distrust of the customer base. Some of Zitter’s ideas are great–burn to own DVDs that would let customers download and burn their own movies on demand, or “early window exhibition” that would make HD versions of movies available the same day as their video or theatrical release. Yet these things are being held up, apparently, by an industry that’s fearful of its inability to control where its content goes after it’s released to consumers.

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Chris Messina’s “State of Mozilla and the Open Web” Rant

Still image from Chris Messina’s video about Mozilla
A still from Chris Messina’s video, given a little LOLcat treatment.

It’s been getting some buzz in “The Swarm” (a Skype chat where the TorCamp crowd hang out to talk about anything and everything — sometimes even tech!): Chris “Factory City” Messina has posted a 50-minute video polemic about the state of Mozilla, Firefox and the future of the Open Web in light of the challenges being presented by offerings such as Adobe’s Apollo, Microsoft’s Silverlight and the most newly-announced platform for web apps on the desktop, Sun’s JavaFX.

I’ve only managed to catch the first 15 minutes of the video (it’s been a busy day), but TorCamp regular Mark Kuznicki and Web Worker Daily editor Anne Zelenka have already thrown in their two cents. I’ll throw in mine, but I need to carve out some time first.