As cool as this seems, why would Apple not wait to show this off with a Retina Display iPad in a few weeks?
Year: 2012
On the Macintosh File System
After listening to this week’s Hypercritical, on which John and Dan discuss file systems for about 17 hours, I realized that I didn’t know much about what came before the Hierarchical File System.
HFS, of course, is the grandfather of HFS+, which the Macintosh uses today. It was first released with the Hard Disk 20 for use with the Fat Mac in September 1985.
Apple dropped support for MFS in System 7.6.1.
The original Macintosh shipped with the Macintosh File System. Designed to run on the 400k floppy disks that Mac owners knew so well, it had several notable features:
Resource Forks
A resource fork stores information in a specific form, such as icons, the shapes of windows, definitions of menus and their contents, and application code (machine code). For example, a word processing file might store its text in the data fork, while storing any embedded images in the same file’s resource fork. The resource fork is used mostly by executables, but every file is able to have a resource fork.
At first, the resource fork was used to store all graphic data for a file for being drawn on the screen of the Macintosh. These files helped the original Mac team run the machine with a measly 128 KB of RAM, down from the 1 MB the Lisa required for its GUI.
Today, resource forks are still a part of HFS+. They store icon information, program associations and more.
Character Limits
MFS supported file names with up to 255 characters. However, the Finder didn’t support file names longer than 63 characters. When Apple released HFS, the limit was dropped to 31 characters in the OS. With OS 8.1 (coupled with HFS+), 255 characters were supported, although Finder’s limit of 31 wasn’t changed until OS X.
Flat File System
The most dated feature of MFS is that it was a flat-file system.
The concept of folders existed under MFS, but they weren’t nested as we are used today — there was no hierarchy of directories on the original Macintosh.[1]
They were visible in Finder windows, but not in the open and save dialog boxes. There was always one empty folder on the volume, and if it was altered in any way (such as by adding or renaming files), a new Empty Folder would appear, thus providing a way to create new folders. MFS stored all of the file and directory listing information in a single file. The Finder created the illusion of folders, by storing all files as a directory handle/file handle pair. To display the contents of a particular folder, MFS would scan the directory for all files in that handle. There was no need to find a separate file containing the directory listing.
Good times.
- My pal Thomas Brand has clarified this on Twitter. Nested folders could be created, but were just an illusion built with metadata. Far out, right? ↩
Farewell, Old Friend and Enemy
They’re about to tear this down.
I only cut through the medical district yesterday on a whim, and while I knew this day was coming, I was shocked to see that the room in which my life — and the lives of my family members — changed forever was about to get demolished.
Part of me wanted to chain myself to the equipment, and another part of me wanted to tear what was left of the building to the ground for them.
Huh.
An Exclusive Look at Mac OS 9
…speaking of Thomas Brand, this is great.
Dual Booting with Mountain Lion
A reckless enthusiast might throw caution to the wind, install 10.8 over their existing operating system, only to complain about the rough edges later. An experienced veteran of beta software knows you can’t easily undo an operating system upgrade and prefers to preserve their current OS while dual booting into 10.8.
Depending on your Mac, dual booting between two versions of OS X can be accomplished in a number of ways.
I have it running on an SSD inside an external FireWire 800 case. It is crazy fast.
App Recommendation: ReaddleDocs for iPad
At $4.99 in the App Store, some might think its pricey, but ReaddlDocs scratches me right where I itch, so to speak.
For my day job, I have to carry (and be familiar with) hundreds of PDFs worth of building plans, schematics, cut sheets and service contracts.
Now, I have a 13-inch MacBook Pro which, while being ridiculed by some, is the perfect machine for me. However, my iPad 2 is obviously much more portable, with better battery life.
ReaddleDocs for the iPad sits on my home screen, and for good reason. Using the built-in Wi-Fi sharing function, I can add files to my iPad without dealing with iTunes. The app super fast, handling large PDFs better than any app I’ve tried. The app lets me keep the same folder structure I have on my Mac, so finding files is just as easy. It really saves me a ton of time in meetings and in the field.
And unlike GoodReader, I can look at the UI without wanting to die. I just wish Readdle would make the iPhone version so handsome. As it stands today, it’s pretty bad.
Setup: 1984
AP Unveils New Logo
‘I Hesitated’
From a great post by Elizabeth Cawein, editor of my student newspaper my junior year of high school:
And then, very abruptly, I’d written: “Someone asked me today if I was passionate about journalism. I hesitated.”
I went on to push at all the big questions: is this really what I want to be doing? Is what I’ve always planned for my life and my career the right thing for me? Do I love this or not? Does that matter?
[…]
As much as I love what I’m doing now, I still wonder. All the time.
All Gannett Papers to Gain Paywall, Sans USA Today
Two Journalists Killed in Syria
CNN:
The deaths of two Western journalists Wednesday in Syria — where at least three other journalists have been killed in covering the uprising — highlight the danger reporters face in covering conflict zones.
Marie Colvin, a longtime American foreign correspondent for London’s The Sunday Times, and prize-winning war photographer Remi Ochlik, 28, were killed in shelling in the city of Homs, the besieged center of resistance to President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
Tragic.
Kennedy Space Center 50 and Empty
Brian Vastag at The Washington Post:
Among the facilities available: A space shuttle launchpad, slightly used; a giant crawler for moving rockets, still servicable; two enormous mobile launch platforms; two space shuttle maintenance hangars; a 15,000-foot concrete runway, one of the world’s longest; and the blocky, 52-story Vehicle Assembly Building, with four soaring rocket assembly bays — and no waiting.
America’s spaceport turns 50 this year, and a wrenching middle-age transition is under way.
“I have a lot of facilities that we, NASA, no longer need,” said Robert Cabana, Kennedy’s director and a four-time space shuttle flier. “I don’t have the money to maintain them, I don’t have the money to tear them down. They’re just going to sit and rot.”
Such a shame.