Multiple XAP files on single web page – Part 1

Work in progress…

Delphi Prism 2011 RTM

From what I here, the Project X (Delphi IDE for Mac) is making its way in to Delphi Prism 2011, pretty exciting! Download Delphi Prism RTM from here  However, there is no way to install this edition as Embarcadero is yet to make the installation keys available! Also the “MAC” edition of Delphi Prism would be a seperate .dmg installer which will be avilable on the Delphi DVD. I am really eager to gets my hands on it as I have begun my journey as a Mac/iPhone developer and getting used to Objective C is not so easy for a seasoned Pascal / Delphi / C# programmer, like me 🙂

Update – June 2nd 2010, I was rather surprised to see Delphi Prism 2011 release today by Embarcadero, when I checked in to Delphi newsgroup. I will download it soon and try to share my experience with the new edition. Watch out for a full review soon.

Life on the other side of the neutral zone

Few days back, in my first ever writeup for this new blog, I talked about installing Snow Leopard Retail on a Intel Core2Duo assembled PC. It was very successful, worked faster than Windows in all aspects. But I did miss the hardware factors like the LED display and the cool new guesture enabled mouse pad. In my professional career of last 10 years, I had never bothered to buy a laptop, always liked a high end custom PC for my use. But now with 2 kids and a wife demanding all my attention when I am at home, leaves me no energy to drag my ass to a corner where my desktop is placed. I rather get a laptop and set myself on the bed and work, while my family goes to sleep. With the new Mac bug that I have been bitten with, I planned for a Macbook, looking around, I felt, all the Pro ones are too expensive. Luckily a new Macbook which was given a facelift in October 2009 (just after 3 days of my younger son was born), was right under my budget. Finally, on March 2nd 2010, I went down to the Apple Store on M.G. Road and got succumbed to the dark side. I now run OS X for all my work except programming assignments, which I do in VS 2008 or Delphi.

Its almost a week now since I got my Macbook, due to my new work assigment, I have not been able to explore it as much as I hoped to. But today I plan to install Windows 7 on the boot camp partition after which I will switch to virtualization using Vmware Fusion 3. Hopefully, I can update the blog with this new experience.

Now that I have switched side with the new OS X and the Macbook, I plan to use it for all my personal work and slowly get in to the XCode coding too.

Entering the new neutral zone

For years I have been drooling over a Mac while reading a Mac magazine or over a window shopping session at an Apple retail store in Bangalore. Besides being a cool gadget, I felt I will never really get to explore the Mac or OS X since none of my favorite programming tools existed for OS X. There was no Visual Studio for Mac or Delphi for Mac – all these years (Of course, there were few alternate options like Mono and Free Pascal). But above that I could never build a custom Mac rig all by myself, unlike a Wintel PC!

Somewhere in 2005, Apple shifted to Intel platform, rewriting OS X for Intel processors. This means that technically you could run OS X on any Intel custom made PC. Of course there are countless of hardware manufacturers on the Wintel side, which means OS X may not run successfully on your custom PC as it may not support all these hardwares.  Luckily, a cult started “Hackintosh” and its own distributions of patched OS X with Kernel extensions to support other hardwares. Check http://www.osx86project.org/ for more details. With OS X Snow Leopard turning into a complete 64 bit OS for Intel only, there is no need for hacks or patches, with the help of boot loaders it is easily installable on a standard Wintel PC.

My love for Apple happened when iPhone 3G was released in India (around mid of 2008), which I bought. I saw my then 3 year old son turning in to an iPhone geek!

With Macs being too expensive, I looked around for an easy way to get my hands on the OS X, before I really invest in a Mac. Recently I came across the Empire EFI, (http://prasys.co.cc/tag/empire-efi/
) using which, I managed to install a Retail OS X on my 4 year old custom PC.

Yes, I know what you are thinking! I am missing the “feel factor” of Apple’s hardware, it’s bluetooth aluminum wireless keyboard, the magic mouse, the back-lit LED display – I completely agree. But this is my first step to evaluate the Mac OS X that I have heard so much about. One day I will buy the Macbook or an iMAC, that day may come soon, I wait for the Intel i7 core mac books, until then I can experiment with the custom PC running OS X.

First impression –

I am completely new to the Mac OS X, I have no clue about it, except that its based on Unix kernel. I have been using DOS/Windows all my life (for the past 20 years or so). I do have about 1.5 years of experience with iPhone that runs the “mini” OS X. First thing I notice is the fact that OS X boots up way faster than my Windows XP or Windows 7. Secondly when I launch an application say iTunes or Safari, it loads up instantaneously on the OS X, while the same applications on Windows XP, chugs before its launched.

Internet is blazing fast! Web pages load much faster with Safari on OS X than on any browser that I have with XP on the same PC!

Learning XCode and Mono Develop (specially the MonoTouch using C# .NET for iPhone app development) is what I am interested in and planning explore all this week. So expect more write ups on using those 2 IDEs and frameworks and a direct comparison of these IDEs with VS 2008 or Delphi that I have been using for last 10 years or so. Exciting inn-it?