launchpad

Mountain Lion features you might have missed

The Mountain Lion Developer Preview was released last week and Apple was particularly excited to show off 10 of the bigger new features in OS X. Check out our First Take of the Mountain Lion Developer Preview here. But what else is under the hood in Apple's latest OS?

Poking around in Mountain Lion, I came across a lot of smaller changes to the UI and some feature fixes that users of earlier Mac operating systems will appreciate.

UI and System tweaks The Dashboard is home to your widgets, and in Mountain Lion Apple has made a slight UI … Read more

Q&A: MacFixIt Answers

MacFixIt Answers is a feature in which we answer questions e-mailed in by our readers. This week readers wrote in with questions on disabling Launchpad in Lion, reinstalling Windows XP with later versions of Boot Camp, restoring a deleted Garageband application, and concerns over negative reviews of MacKeeper. We continually answer e-mail questions, and though we present a few answers here, we welcome alternative approaches and views from readers and encourage you to post your suggestions in the comments.

Question: Disabling Launchpad in OS X Lion MacFixIt reader Jim B. asks:

I have read a great deal about Lion but … Read more

Switching to Mac even easier with Parallels 7

Making the switch from Windows to Mac isn't as hard as you might think. That's because there are great options for using Windows software on your Mac through Apple's Boot Camp and other third-party virtualization software. Today, Parallels Desktop got a major update adding features to make switching to a different operating system even more seamless. There's also an upgraded mobile version for iOS you can use to remotely control your virtual environments from your phone.

Parallels Desktop has always been a great way to switch seamlessly between operating systems without the need to reboot your … Read more

How to reset and manage the OS X 10.7 Launchpad interface

Apple is promoting the new Launchpad program launcher and organizing interface in OS X Lion, a means of managing applications that should be familiar to iOS users. I personally find Launchpad to be one of the more useless of the new features in OS X Lion, but regardless of whether or not you like the interface, it may take a bit of organization and customization to suit your needs.

By default Launchpad will show all of your installed applications, and if you click and hold one application they will all go into the familiar iOS "wiggle" mode in … Read more

Learn Mission Control and Launchpad in Mac OS X Lion

If you're a seasoned Mac user, you'll immediately notice that navigation is different in Lion. There's an entirely new set of gestures, some of which are used for two new features: Mission Control and Launchpad.

Mission Control is Spaces' successor and allows you to navigate multiple desktops, full-screen apps, the Dashboard, and all your running applications. Think of it as a bird's-eye view of your desktop, allowing you to quickly access the apps you need.

Launching applications changed, too. Pinch with your thumb and three fingers, and you'll get a tiled view of all your … Read more

Has Canonical licensed away its business model?

By announcing that it has open-sourced its Launchpad project under the Affero GPL version 3, a year after rumors swirled that it would, has Canonical licensed away one of its best revenue opportunities?

Roughly two years ago, I walked up London's High Road from Seven Sisters Tube Station with Mark Shuttleworth, founder of Canonical and the popular Ubuntu Linux distribution. Mark and I talked about a range of things, but one of the things that particularly caught my attention was Launchpad, a collaboration and hosting platform for open-source projects that makes it easy to track code, ideas, and other … Read more

Ubuntu Launchpad to go open source

Just seven days after Bastille Day, France's day for celebrating its freedom, Ubuntu will unfetter Launchpad as an open-source project, as announced on the Launchpad news blog.

Launchpad is an open-source project-hosting service that promises to make it "easy to share code, bug reports, translations, and ideas across projects." It's a great service--so robust that MySQL moved its project hosting to Launchpad in early 2008--but has been proprietary, and will remain so until it goes open source on July 21.

I'm a big fan of Launchpad and expect that opening up its source code … Read more

The best place to host your open-source project

Just a few short years ago, there was one open-source hosting service worth considering: Sourceforge.net. It was by no means perfect (Alfresco's analytics, for example, have been down for over a month on Sourceforge, with no apparent urgency to fix the problem), but it was good enough, free, and everyone else used it.

Today, there are multiple options, including Google Code, Microsoft CodePlex, CodeHaus, GitHub, and, interestingly, Canonical's Launchpad.

Yes, Launchpad. Launchpad is the brainchild of Mark Shuttleworth's Ubuntu team, but it has aspirations beyond hosting the Ubuntu code, aspirations that recently attracted MySQL to move its code over to the Launchpad service.

I don't recall Launchpad starting with this third-party code hosting premise in mind, but it certainly has gone there fast. OStatic has an excellent write-up on its new features, and whether they're compelling enough to put your open-source project there.

For a new project, it's definitely an interesting choice. But the larger question is whether an established project - especially commercial projects - gets adequate value from any hosting service to justify hosting with a prefabricated hosting service. SugarCRM moved from Sourceforge to hosting its own project, and other companies have done the same. (My own company is in the process of exploring options.)

Why host your own project? Why take on that cost?… Read more

The 404 126: Where we're going to miss George Carlin (except Wilson)

Today we celebrate the life of George Carlin, whose controversial brand of comedy paved the way for future acts like the 404. We promise to continue pushing the envelope, sir! On today's show, we give it up to Weezer, say bye-bye to Bill Gates, spout out some serious Bakalisms, pimp the greatest Web site on the Internet, and dish out our best advice to our teenage listeners. We also make plans to build a giant pool full of gold coins. The 404: Whoo-ooh! EPISODE 126 Download today's podcast