Open source Articles on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog

iPad may soon run Android via OpeniBoot

by David Quilty (Nov 12th, 2010)

Not entirely psyched about your iPad because of its lack of Adobe Flash support, or unhappy with the iOS operating system itself? How about installing Android on it instead? OpeniBoot, an open source implementation of iBoot for Apple iOS devices, is on a mission to bring the Android OS to the iPad ...

Dissecting Android's openness

by Richard Gaywood (Nov 8th, 2010)

Oh, Steve Jobs, you certainly do know how to get tongues wagging. During last quarter's earnings call he attacked Google's stance that Android is the superior mobile OS because it is "open," restating the debate into terms of "integrated versus fragmented" instead -- with iOS on the integrated ...

Download, play, and convert most video formats with Miro

by Sam Abuelsamid (Oct 25th, 2010)

Apple's built-in QuickTime video player is fine if all you ever want to watch are files in the limited number of formats that it supports. However, if you need to playback files that are encoded in Xvid, DivX, WebM, or even the dreaded FLV, you'll need something with a bit more capability. VLC is ...

Does open matter?

by Victor Agreda, Jr. (Oct 19th, 2010)

Much has been made of Steve Jobs' presence on the earnings call yesterday. In particular, there's a little nerd slapfight going on between Apple and Google around the "openness" of their platforms. As Steve said yesterday, "open doesn't always win." Andy Rubin, the father of Android at Google, ...

Cyberduck adds cloud file management improvements

by Mike Schramm (Sep 8th, 2010)

My FTP app of choice, Cyberduck, has updated to version 3.6, and as you can see on the changelog, it's a nice, chunky update. The developers have added in support for Google Storage, made things easier for Amazon S3 users, and added a lot of little features and bugfixes that make the whole ...

PPC Macs 'likely' to be unsupported by Firefox 4

by Michael Rose (Aug 26th, 2010)

While it may not come as much of a surprise, it's still going to aggravate owners of aging PPC Macs that the upcoming Firefox 4 browser is probably going to drop support for the older architecture. Mozilla program manager Mike Beltzner noted that the next version of the open-source browser, ...

Facebook for iPhone's new 'pull to refresh' looked a little familiar

by Chris Rawson (Aug 20th, 2010)

While the new "Places" GPS check-in feature got most of the attention in Facebook for iPhone's latest update, a more subtle feature made its way into the app's interface: pull to refresh. Users of the official Twitter for iPhone app, previously known as Tweetie, will recognize this UI feature right ...

Mac 101: Checking in on CUPS

by Erica Sadun (Jun 1st, 2010)

More Mac 101, tips and tricks for new Mac users. Ever wonder how your documents go from screen pixels to paper printouts? CUPS is the open source printing system that powers Mac OS X output, built for a variety of UNIX systems and now developed (or at least assimilated) by Apple. It provides ...

Data Robotics gives Drobo FS full Time Machine compatibility

by Steven Sande (May 20th, 2010)

When Data Robotics announced the Drobo FS last month, one common complaint among potential buyers was that it doesn't offer native support for doing networked Time Machine backups. Just connecting a Drobo FS to a network of Macs could cause issues for Time Machine backups, since the built-in backup ...

reMail may be reIncarnated as it goes open source

by Sang Tang (Mar 7th, 2010)

Several weeks back, we noted that Google had acquired reMail, and had placed founder Gabor Cselle and others from the reMail team on other Google projects. The reMail app distinguished itself from the iPhone's built-in Mail.app in several ways: It could download all of your emails in a way that ...

Notational Velocity, Simplenote, and Dropbox bring child-like wonder

by TJ Luoma (Feb 19th, 2010)

The phrase "game changer" is no doubt cliché and overused, but every now and again it just fits. I had heard about Notational Velocity when Merlin Mann posted about it on 43Folders. It changed how I use my iMac, MacBookPro, and iPhone, bringing them all together in a very cool way. The app ...

Transmission 1.8 released, now featuring support for magnet links

by Aron Trimble (Jan 22nd, 2010)

Transmission, the venerable BitTorrent client for Mac, has just received an overhaul in the form of a "huge listen-to-the-users release." From the release notes the following enhancements are included: Added support for magnet links Added support for trackerless torrents Redesigned tracker ...

iPhone devsugar: SwapKit

by Erica Sadun (Dec 28th, 2009)

iPhone developer Emanuele Vulcano has been working on a new iPhone OS data exchange protocol called SwapKit [Apple Dev account required for link]. Hosted on GitHub, SwapKit provides App Store-friendly application-independent ways to publish data with custom metadata for sharing between ...

Homebrew, the perfect gift for command line lovers

by Brett Terpstra (Dec 25th, 2009)

If you're an OS X user who spends as much time on the command line as you do in the GUI, you're probably familiar with the MacPorts and Fink package management projects, making open source software easier to compile and run on Mac OS X. You may also be well-aware of the shortcomings of these ...

Development of VLC for Mac 64-bit is on hold, project needs developers

by Michael Grothaus (Dec 17th, 2009)

Development on the 64-bit version of VLC Player for Mac has hit the pause button. The Videolan team is looking for Mac development talent to help move the project forward, and revamp the program's interface to be more Mac-like. While the team says that reports of VLC Mac's death are 'greatly ...