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Hurricane in the Midwest

Take a look at the pictures on this AccuWeather Community Blog post. If you'd seen these without the article, you might think that a hurricane had made it intact to the plains! Or at least that you're seeing an example of the power of Photoshop.

Instead, what's really going on is the power of nature, and the natural spiral dynamics of a highly organized weather system, in this case a powerful snow storm. We see this organization in hurricanes, tornadoes, whirlpools, and even in the bathtub.

Since two weeks ago when I saw some of the tornado/whirlwind displays as part of the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, I've been mulling over the apparent power of this type of organization in an energy system. It's frequently used to describe the functioning of Aikido techniques, making it all the more compelling of an image (understood this way, it becomes less an image and more of a kinesthetic understanding)

All over nature, from the tiniest whrilpools all the way up to entire galaxies, we see sprial dynamics come into play.  Does the organization of a cyclone hold any merit as a metaphor for the enhancement of our lives? I've heard it mentioned but will need to study the question further.
We  frequently catch ourselves saying something has "spiraled out of control", for instance. Or maybe we were caught up in a whirlwind of excitement.

In any case, sprial dynamics can be a beautiful thing to watch; as beautiful as it is powerful, in spite of its potentially devastating effects as we witness in the U.S. midwest today.

Why Boot Camp is Not The End of OS X Development

It's been one day, and already the 'sphere is buzzing about Boot Camp and how allowing XP to run on the Intel Macs is going to allow software developers a way out from building Mac OS X versions of ther software. Why, they ask, would a developer spend the extra money to build for OS X when now they can simply ask their Mac customers to boot into XP?

Huh? These people are missing the point. We're talking about a dual boot setup! You have to leave OS X to run XP, and vice versa (we'll leave the Parallels announcement for another topic). 

Any developer that says "just reboot into XP instead of using OS X" is seriously delinquent in their customer service. Does anyone really think that software developers could get away with requiring customers to purchase an XP license just to save them money?

Mac developers will remain Mac developers.  Virtual PC didn't seem to harm the Mac OS development ecosphere, although that could be explained by the slowness of full processor architecture emulation. But remember, the successful companies are the companies that put the customer first. Saying "buy an XP license and boot into XP just to run our software" is exceptionally poor customer service... it's engineer-centric rather than customer-centric.




Technorati Tags: bootcamp, winxp, apple, os x

Apple Boot Camp Beta Allows WinXP SP2 on Intel Macs

In a surprise, non-April Fool's announcement today, Apple Computer has
released a public beta of Boot Camp, a utility that enables dual booting
Mac OS X and Windows XP on Intel Mac computers.

The utility first creates a special install CD that contains Mac drivers
for Windows as well as a startup disk control panel for XP.

Then, the utility facilitates partitioning and installation of XP SP2.

Says Apple: "Macs use an ultra-modern industry standard technology
called EFI to handle booting. Sadly, Windows XP, and even the upcoming
Vista, are stuck in the 1980w with old-fashioned BIOS. But with Boot
Camp, the Mac can operate smoothly in both centuries."

A glance at the Boot Camp page, http://www.apple.com/macosx/bootcamp
hints that this is a new angle to the Switch campaign, inviting XP users
right to Apple's doorstep and encouraging them to step through with the
assurance that their familiar environs will be close by.