Jim Carwardine wrote:
This appears to be a PC only upgrade. Is that true or does the Mac OS version contain the U3 stuff? Jim
At its core, U3 is just a novel interface to a feature built into the Windows OS:
On Win, any read-only volume can have an autorun.inf file in its root directory which causes the OS to automatically run whatever file is specified in that INF file whenever the volume is mounted. This is how Windows CDs have been commonly made for more than a decade, to the point that today Win users so expect the CD to "do something" that if you don't use an INF file they'll call your tech support to report that the CD is "broken". :)
U3 merely tricks the OS into making autorun.inf files runnable from flash drives, by partitioning the drive so that one partition (the one that contains the menu application) is read-only.
Partitioning is simple and soon many non-U3-member vendors were offering custom partitioned drives (you can order these from a great many vendors around the web), so U3 went further to differentiate itself with the recent addition of the auto-shutdown feature and a couple others.
Because the core of the U3 experience is dependent on a Windows-specific OS feature, currently U3 can only deliver that experience on Windows, and no on Mac or Linux.
And because Apple has explicitly expressed a disdain for the security risks introduced when any auto-run feature is added to an OS (they had this in an early version of QT, but after it was used to spread viruses they yanked it and vowed to never do that again), it seems unlikely that Apple would risk losing the advantage they currently enjoy in being perceived as more secure than Windows just for the modest benefit U3 provides.
Perhaps the coolest thing about U3 is that the vendors using it have really helped pushed the notion of delivering applications on Flash drives, which helps not only the millions of customers who buy U3 drives by the order of magnitude more who buy non-U3 drives.
And as Rev developers, it's always been a trivial matter for us to deliver fully self-contained apps which run from removable media without needing to modify the host computer. While Rev's work in the U3-specific additions are helpful, you can also deliver portable apps on ANY removable drive, U3 or not.
For the benefit of developers looking to deploy to the full range of Flash drives on all major operating systems, a discussion group has been formed to explore ways of establishing simple common directories and an open source player to make it easy for developers and simple for their users:
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/U4-Group/> -- Richard Gaskin Managing Editor, revJournal _______________________________________________________ Rev tips, tutorials and more: http://www.revJournal.com _______________________________________________ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
