Jacken’s Blog

So Apple released a new Intel Mac Mini today. And they use Intels GMA950 for graphics. How stupid is this? So this machine is a no-go for me. I’m so disappointed.

I have put up a test FWD number to dial to try out JackenIAX. Dial 748502 to try it out.

I just received a mail from a user of JackenIAX. He’s running a patched version of Mac OS X on a generic PC, and now the program works on his machine. Cool! So now I guess JackenIAX is working on Intel Macs as well. Debugging via proxy (I don’t have an Intel Mac) is not the way to go. You could press the Donate button on this page, and I promise to buy a Intel Mac for debugging. Nudge Nudge…

I’ve added a couple of new features in JackenIAX.

Added a symbol to indicate when you got new voice messages in your Asterisk server.
Rewrote all of the code for the indicator symbols. Nothing you will notice, but I feel good about it.
Now the codec selection actually work.
Input validation of all preferences.

I must say that I feel pleased when I see all the hacking going on putting Mac OS X on generic PC hardware. It’s a great way of introducing OS X for PC users, and may even give some converts. So why is Apple hunting the hackers with blowtorches trying to stop them? Sure, it’s a copyright violation, but still.

John C. Dvorak pondered that one of the evidence that Apple is moving to Windows instead of Mac OS X was the five year deal from Microsoft of producing Office for Mac. I don’t see the connection, but Isn’t it more likely that Apple in exchange for that deal promised not to release a generic Mac OS X that works on PC hardware? Makes more sense to me. And that would explain their current effort to stop OS X on PC hardware?

I just upgraded my graphics card in my old G4. But after comparing the prices for an ATI 9800 for a PC, I quickly realized that the Mac version is twice as expensive. So I followed the guide at www.strangedogs.com, and patched a used ATI 9800 pc version. And it works great on my mac. There’s even a image gallery to identify which version to get. I flashed from an old pc by making a boot diskette. I had to tape some of the pins on the card to get the 8x AGP card to work in an older Mac.

Hurray for Core Image support!

As you may know I recently released my new program for VoIP for the mac. I have written instructions on the home-page how to get a free account at FWD Free World Dialup to test. It seems they have a lot of downtime, so I get a lot of bug reports. I really need another free IAX provider to recommend. Anyone knows about one?

I just listened to the last PodCast from the TWIT guys. They talked about John C. Dvorak’s blog post about Apple possibly switching to Windows. And something interesting showed up during the conversation. They apparently got a lot of emails from “Mac Fanatics” on how wrong Mr Dvoraks article is. And as soon as someone defends their choice of using Mac OS X, they are automatically branded zealots or Mac fanatics. Five minutes later they where talking about the so called worm that showed up on the Mac. Leo Leporte got a shitload of emails from Windows users snickering, glad not being alone anymore. But here’s my point, why didn’t they call them Windows fanatics? It’s the same symptom. Maybe shear number of users makes you a non-fanatic?

So it’s finally time to release my IAX softphone for Macintosh. It’s still very much in beta, but I need feedback on how everything works. There’s a lot of stuff that I’m adding that didn’t make it into this release. Have a look here.

So we have another Mac OS X virus warning going around the net. And it’s like reporters must have validation for their hate of the mac.

A OS X myth is shattered to pieces
- Silicon Valley Sleuth

I’m sorry to report that it’s not a virus, it’s a trojan, and it does not spread. The trojan poses as a compressed file, and when you double click on it, you need to enter your administrator password to activate it. Not really what I would call a virus. This is something that a total ass hat would be able to program in Applescript in about ten minutes. I’m certain that we will see a virus that actually works under Mac OS X sooner or later, but this is not it. So I guess that companies like Sophos needs to hype up something else to sell their products.