B. Mann Consulting

I spent some time this weekend updating a long ago how to post on configuring mass virtual hosting for Apache on Mac OS X -- the original version was from April 2004!

I do lots of testing on my laptop, and while I'm now quite familiar with VirtualHost entries from the dedicated servers I work with, this is actually even easier: just create a directory with the name of the host and requests for that host will be served from the directory. It all comes down to good old mod_vhost_alias. I probably should do some more direct examples of mixing and matching this with other host directives. As mentioned at the end of the article, aside from symlinking one directory to another, I don't know of another way to point multiple hosts at the same web root. I'll get to it if I end up needing it myself, it works for now.

OK, WWDC is on its way and we need to guess what might be announced. Here are some data points:

• a Macbook rev has been announced
• a Macbook Pro rev has been announced
• the iPhone is out and is supercoolawesome already 
• we don't know everything about Leopard
• usually something "cool" gets announced at WWDC

So, by that logic, we might see something not so exciting like "brushed steel iMacs" (rumor passing on credit to Dave Shea).

But, I'm going to take a stab at predicting what we might see: I think we're in for a 12" Macbook Pro (or a different name?). But with a difference. No keyboard. The entire surface will be a touchpad / tablet / screen thingie, kind of like the iPhone. You can use a virtual keyboard, or you can do crazy touch sensitive actions.

There are reports of patents going back a while (and yes, that might just be iPhone related), and then there is that crazy virtual keyboard company that I can't find a link to now, that Apple bought some time ago. 

There. That's it. That's my guess. I hope I'm right :P

Update: I found a link to a "leaked" outline for the WWDC keynote tomorrow -- talking about a 10" iPhone at Home...which is pretty close to the "tablet / non computer" that I've been thinking Apple would launch for quite some time.

I thought that Apple was going to do a big product release of *some* kind on April 1st, their 30th anniversary as a company. But, obviously, releasing Boot Camp, software that lets you easily install Windows XP on your Intel-based Mac, would really have been regarded as a practical joke, so they waited until today.

Dual-booting is really not that interesting. You don't really share files, and you can't switch back and forth without restarting the system and rebooting completely. I've been speculating if Apple will actually support Xen, an open source virtualization technology that lets you run multiple environments simultaneously. Perhaps Boot Camp is just a start -- Apple has already said that it will be included as part of Mac OS X 10.5, aka Leopard, so perhaps that is when Xen support will be rolled into the base of the operating system.

I'll be looking for mentions of Xen as people dig into the details of Boot Camp over the next couple of days.