Good thing it’s not going to be hot OR cold today:
Archive for the 'Apple' Category
Today Apple published another open letter from CEO and cofounder Steve Jobs, this time about Apple’s environmental policy. Apple has come under a lot of fire lately from groups like Greenpeace for their perceived lack of environmental consciousness, including their use of toxic chemicals in computer products and their computer disposal practices. In the letter, Jobs addresses these concerns, providing information on how Apple has removed chemicals from their products and timelines for future removal. He also compares Apple’s progress to that of other major computer companies such as Dell and HP.
Apple highlighted how in mid-2006 they eliminated CRT monitors, which each contain 3 pounds of lead, from their entire product line. In a rare candid moment, they expressed the intent to begin shipping computers with LED-backlit displays by the end of this year*. These will replace the fluorescent backlighting currently used, which requires the use of mercury. They also expressed the intent to remove arsenic (used to make the display glass smooth) and PVCs from their products by the end of 2008. Apple’s commitment to recycling was also discussed, including the 10% discount you get on a new iPod if you bring back your old one to be safely disposed of.
Apple has called out the other computer makers by showing how it has already done more and by adopting more aggressive timelines for future progress. If this open letter provokes as much discussion and action as the previous letter on DRM did, then I expect we will soon see responses from all across the industry.
*As a side note: I believe that all home and industrial lighting is (eventually) going to be provided by LED’s. They are cheap, use almost no power, and do not contain any toxic chemicals. Unfortunately, their light output is small compared to traditional incandescents and fluorescents, but researchers are working on this.
I am relatively new to TextMate, having been converted from Emacs less than a year ago. Emacs (pictured below) has extensive support for coding in VHDL. I was quite surprised, then, when I learned that there is no VHDL bundle available for TextMate. It turns out that both VHDL and Verilog (the two most popular hardware description languages) are on the bundle request list.
When I think about this more, it makes sense. The Macintosh is not the platform of choice for hardware designers, who are probably using UNIX or Linux. The VHDL simulation software that we use in school only runs on Windows, but there are some command-line simulation tools such as GHDL that have been ported to run on Mac OS X.
I’m considering writing my own bundle, which would be a good excuse to buy that new TextMate book that I’ve been wanting. Syntax highlighting and commonly used snippets/declarations would be the main priority, followed in the future by GHDL integration. Of course, I would add the bundle to the Macromates SVN repository once it was in a useful state.
If you got here from Google, what functionality would you like to see in a TextMate VHDL bundle?
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