Charles Moore's Mailbag

Is Bing Stealing Google Search Results?, Programming for Windows 8, and More

Charles Moore - 2011.10.04 - Tip Jar

Is Bing Stealing from Google?

From Zed in response to Is Bing Good Enough to Replace Google Search?:

Charles,

Did you hear that Bing was caught by Google using their search engine to come up with Bing results? Google did a sting operation by setting up fake entries and then using Bing to search for it. So it should come as no surprise that Bing is as capable as Google, Bing is Google.

Zed

Hi Zed,

I hadn't heard that one, but I looked it up after receiving your note.

I thought the response from a Bing exec cited in Bing Admits Using Customer Search Data, Says Google Pulled 'Spy-Novelesque Stunt' sounded quite reasonable. If his explanation is accurate, Bing is not Google, but is learning from Google.

Charles

New Lion-Compatible Tex-Edit Plus Beta

From Tom Bender:

Hi Charles:

I finally have a Tex-Edit Plus beta that may be ready for prime time. It seems to run fine on both PPC and Intel, including Mac OS versions 10.4 through 10.7+. I have tried to minimize the formatting loss when moving between PPC and Intel documents. (Complex docs can be ported using RTF, if needed.) The speedup when upgrading from Rosetta to Intel-native is surprisingly dramatic for some operations. Please let me know if you find problems.

Sincerely,
Tom

Hi Tom,

Thanks for the heads-up about the new TE+ 4.9.9 beta. I've downloaded it to replace the earlier beta I've been using for a month or so now.

I agree that the Rosetta-less betas are significantly livelier than the older versions.

It will certainly be an enabler of Lion for me, when the time comes, although I'm still mainly using TE+ 4.9.8 in order to sync with my two old Pismo PowerBooks that are still in heavy production service running Mac OS X 10.4.11 Tiger.

Charles

Programming for Windows 8

From Brian:

Heya Charles,

In the case that not all C# developers must be created equally, I've been a Microsoft developer for over a decade and a half. I've written you before, too, on matters Mac. While my home computing environment and some professional mobile development is for the Apple platforms, what puts the meat on the table for me, primarily, is Microsoft development, which is why I'm surprised to hear a C# developer snivel about the Windows 8 platform. The nature of his complaints, for me, would cast some doubt on his professional credibility. Not to be mean spirited, of course, because everyone is entitled to their opinion.

I've developed a bevvy of touch screen apps in C++, VB/VB.NET, and C# over the years in Windows forms, and really, it's not much more sophisticated than attaching events to what you click on, be it by mouse or fingers on a screen. The app has traditionally not cared how the input arrives. Similarly, having now developed more than a few apps for iOS, I might say that while the wrapping around UI development to be solid in Objective-C and Apple's developer tools, it's still remarkably limited and cumbersome in places that I find C# development to be way more elegant. And if you want to break away from the release constraints of the App Store, you're left with developing to the local storage limitations of HTML5.

For piddly little entertainment pieces, this is fine. For enterprise-level, grown-up dev, though, this has serious implications for developers that have to bridge the gap between back-office systems and mobile. What Windows 8 demonstrates, and if Visual Studio 11's preview is any indicator, is that Microsoft's astounding capability to come late to market belies the fact that often, their late entry is more than satisfactory. I look at it this way, Apple demonstrated the creamy awesomesauce that is the GUI, but Microsoft put it on everyone's computer. From the nerd end, the control you have over UI design with all the things we expect with mobile-cum-desktop development is far deeper and extensible with .NET than Objective-C.

The renewed focus on C++ is a shining light as well. I've been hoping that Microsoft would embrace the Mono Project for the same reasons I'm happy about this - shaving time off of projects that require cross-platform development by allowing something as close to single-sourcing as possible. There was a time when, for the PPC, we had some hope that the open-source Linux focus of Silverlight, Moonlight (born of the Mono Project), could be used to perhaps make Netflix approachable for our rapidly dated G4s and G5s, as an interesting aside. If the project doesn't die, it is even highly likely that with MonoTouch, I can more easily port an app I developed for Windows 8 to the iOS without the parallel development I would currently have to commit to.

I can look at the VM installation I have of Windows 8 and lament how cludgy it is compared to what I am used to. However, I can also look at it and see that it never tried to tell me that scrolling backwards is natural, and it doesn't fundamentally molest the way I interact with my OS in the way that Lion has. A developer's assessment of a preview build of an OS should never be limited to the surface layer, however. I love Apple, but their SDK has never remotely approached Microsoft's.

I think, love them or hate them, Microsoft has a winner with Windows 8 because Ballmer is spot-on - it's all about the developers, and Microsoft still has the strongest base of lettered programmers out there. I'm saddened it's taken them this many releases to bring them back to that realization. Android had the right idea, but it never had a real foundational hope. Microsoft can leverage everything it already has going for it. So however they've buried the Start Menu aside, this is a great win for MS, even if we don't know it yet.

Brian

Hi Brian,

Thanks for the comment. It's always great to hear from someone who knows what they're talking about on these matters, and can explain them in reasonably scrutible terms for non-programmers like myself.

I'm inclined to agree with your assessment of Windows 8's prospects.

Charles

G4 Processor Replacement Question

From Jason:

Hey Charles,

Do you know if it is possible to put a G4 MDD Dual 867 MHz processor into a Quicksilver 2002 - specifically a 933 MHz? They have the same bus speed - 133 MHz. Can't find anything about it online and am curious if it would work.

Jason

Hi Jason,

This one's out of my modest level of knowledge/expertise/experience sphere. Perhaps a Mailbag reader will be able to shed some light.

Charles

Publisher's note: I can't answer Jason's specific question, but I can explain the issues he'll be dealing with.

All AGP Power Mac G4s use the same CPU connection to the motherboard, but the placement of that connector on the logic board varies between models, and the biggest factor isn't whether the CPU card will fit, but whether the heat sink will fit. Third-party CPU upgrades for these Power Macs sometimes have two different ways of mounting the heat sink to address this issue; Apple CPU cards, since they are designed for just one Power Mac model, do not. dk

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Charles Moore has been a freelance journalist since 1987 and began writing for Mac websites in May 1998. His The Road Warrior column was a regular feature on MacOpinion, he is news editor at Applelinks.com and a columnist at MacPrices.net. If you find his articles helpful, please consider making a donation to his tip jar.

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