Re: Power & signal & control

[Chris Hunter <cjhunter@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Nigel -

An extra thought - having just spent a few hours getting my wife's
AppleMac updated to Mac OS-X (Tiger) & connected (56 modem, using
Safari & Mail, for the first time) - I've discovered Xcode, Apple's
development environment for software, that comes free with Tiger ...

'must say it looks pretty good, comprehensive, and very professional,
and 'looks to be just what we will need for running our house, when
added to EIB or CBUS or Comfort ...

also looks like I must get on to Broadband ... to have full access to
resources, keep up to date & push forward ... connecting to the 'net
pretty-much only for e-mail & Google & Yahoo seems to be no-longer
an
option ... !

Chris


PS: some notes I made while delving into it :

EIB - open standard, but is it affordable?

CBUS - doesn't seem to be open standard, and maybe no more affordable

Comfort - not sure about openness, and seems to have quite low
addressing limits

X10 - more affordable, but press & pray

Xcode = full-featured code editor, debugger, compilers, linker + user
interface to many industry-standard and open-source tools, including
GCC, javac, jikes, GDB + all facilities to build a program
(application, kernel extension, or command-line tool) - can program
in C,  C++, Objective-C, Java, & Applescript (dead-easy), all compiled

Mac OS X = modular architecture & founded on Unix = Darwin core
operating system + diverse suite of application frameworks +
standards-based graphics systems + Aqua user interface = a lot of the
usual hassle taken care of

'can connect to Windows XP 2000 & NT, SMB/CIFS, NFS, FTP, WebDAV,
UNIX, Linux, Novell NetWare - via TCP/IP, AppleTalk, etc

'great thing about AppleMac is that it's very presentable, very well
thought-out & organised, very consistent & context-sensitive, very
intelligent & direct, with very few clicks & key-presses needed to
do
things & very low hassle, very informative & accessible, with a
Help
system that is actually helpful, very well equipped, with lots of
tools to help do things, without reinventing the wheel all the time,
and very modular & connectable, to other systems & operating
environments ...

and with Xcode they seem to be going out of their way to make
programming it accessible, even to those who've not done it before ...








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