So I read daring fireball by John Gruber and enjoy the little snide comments about the current tech item of the minute. So the current news item is the new photos of this previously unphotographed tribe living in the amazon.
John’s Comment:
Someone needs to let these people know about the upcoming new iPhone.
Funny funny shit. Nice to see that he can recognize the frivolity of the same industry that he works in. Good job.
Getting all my tax stuff together and over to my accountant and I was reviewing everything. Being that my father is a CPA he sold some of my apple stock off this year to diversify my IRA a bit.
I bought Apple stock on 10/24/2000 at $10.44/share. I sold it this year at $190.28/share. Nice.
Now if I had only bought more than the few shares I did, as I bought under 100 shares. Oh well.
So I have had this iPhone for a little while now, and I have gotten pretty used to it.
I also have had this MacBook for a while now.
On the MacBook, you can use 2 fingers on the track pad to scroll. Obviously, 2 fingers going down on the trackpad scrolls down. Two fingers up scrolls up. Amazing. I use it all the time. Love it.
Recently though, I have noticed myself thinking ‘lets scroll down’ and my fingers 2 finger scroll up. My mind says ‘wth’ and my fingers do it right. You know how it is, it happens quickly and you you think nothing of it. It just now dawned on my it is a result of the fact that the MacBook and the iPhone do OPPOSITE motions for scrolling.
It is kinda frustrating. Opposite paradigms for the same thing. Both make sense.
I have played with 2 things in the last couple days that I had high hopes for, Google Reader from Google and Coda from Panic.
I usually use Safari’s built in RSS support to read my stuff. I had it nicely setup and organized. It pulls the feeds, and have each set of feeds in folders on my bookmarks bar. When a new article is posted, the number next to the folder name increments. Immediately. Works great. But, at the urging of others, I have decided to give firefox a hardcore try, as safari has been my preferred browser for a while.
So I switched default role to firefox, and poof, there went my RSS reader. I started to play with Sage, but I wasn’t impressed, as I did not find an easy way to add my existing feeds into it, and I was not about to manually go to each page again.
So I exported my feeds from Safari, and dumped them all into Google Reader. While I am on my own laptop all the time, a web based solution does have some benefits. The interface is nice, grouping via folders and tags is nice. The ability to pull out starred and shared items as its own RSS feed is a feature I was liking to feed this page.
The biggest problem I am having is that the update cycle on the feeds seems to suck. For example, as I type this, Robyn and Harper have both posted things. NEITHER of them are in the reader yet. Hell, I was just reading them on harpers aggregate site instead. Lame.
That might just be the deal breaker there, which is unfortunate, as I was kinda getting to like it. I think I will try Sage again, I am sure there is an import option. Otherwise that developer needs a swift kick in the shins.
Meanwhile… Coda was released, and it looked cool. Personally, I do all my coding in BBEdit. Pure text. I have also been using CSSEdit for some nice immediate gratification CSS tweaking. I don’t have a problem with WYSIWYG editors, but I can’t handle the code they produce. While the sites I personally run (my blogs, my horribly out of date other sites, etc) all are shit, the sites I produce for clients are perfect, code wise. Ok, perfect is not what I mean, but I ensure that they validate properly via W3C, I get all anal about tabs, space, and other white space things. I want my source to look right and be super clear. It is partially anal, partially because it makes it WAY easier to make a tweak 3-6 months down the road when I am not fresh on the page. And lets not get into the includes, I love includes.
So when I was reading the product page for Coda, I was intrigued. Sure, BBEdit already has the text environment, GREP, code coloring, etc. It doesn’t auto complete, but I often find that more annoying than it is worth. And BBEdit has built in FTP, so that is already there. But I was excited. I had a small 1 page brochure page that was a print piece that needed to be ‘web-ized’ and they wanted the same look. So I figured perfect chance to play with Coda in a real situation.
Lets just say I finished the site in BBEdit and CSSEdit. Coda operates on the premise that having a text editor, a FTP client, a reference library, and a browser open as multiple apps is a PITA, and thus having one app that does all that is easier. I have always preferred component stereos over all in ones, so I might be biased, but I didn’t see this as a strong point for Coda. I still have a finite amount of deskspace, and I still need to be in all those apps at some point, so I still have to click around alot. Savings, marginal. And I still need to test in multiple browsers, so the savings wasn’t insane. I found myself still bouncing into YummyFTP to make changes, due primarily in part to my next complaint.
Coda and I don’t lay things out the same way in terms of the file hierarchy. I like the have everything separate. Everything. Hell, Dylan recently got me on the concept of keeping the images for the layout and the images for the content in different places. I like keeping all the CSS organized and in their own files. So when Coda wants to put my styles in the file I am working on, albeit at the top and not inline, I was like, no. But Coda had already decided that. So I have to go and create the incl folders and CSS folders, etc, then move my files there manually, etc. All while Coda wanted to do it in the file. Their may be a way around that, but I couldn’t find it. And if I have to search much harder, it ceases to be a ‘feature’ or ‘option’.
Coda also lets you dev locally, then push ‘publish’ and sent the files to the server. But since I had to keep changing the file structure, that wasn’t working well for me, and I started having 2 branches of the development going, and resyncing them wasn’t seemingly easy. So there I was, 2 version of a 1 page site, using an app that wanted to do things that I was not all about, and boom, my time savings was gone. The convenience wasn’t there, and in fact, it was causing me problems.
I think Coda has some nice features. The standard IDE popup as you type style thing for CSS and PHP was nice, but not that awesome. I find the BBEdit built in FTP more than sufficient, and YummyFTP is easier when I am setting up the folder structure. I can dev locally, since it is OSX and I have MySQL, Apache, PHP, etc all here, so on the off chance I am not online (like, on a plane?) I can keep working provided I plan ahead a tiny bit. CSSEdit is hard to beat, and Coda was not better, but was nice none the less. I never bothered with the reference library, isn’t that what the internet is for?
I think Coda could be cool. I am sure for some people it is great. I think that when Coda 2.0 comes out, I will see if my issues have been resolved.
So overall, I haven’t been thrilled with my 2 new technology test drives. I haven’t given up on google reader yet, and it isn’t like it is hard to keep using it. I have given up on Coda though, atleast until next version. Time to try Sage I guess.
so I watched as it was unveiled earlier today and I was so excited. It is amazing. I have rocked the nokia 3650 for years, and recently I have been rocking the moto v878, which is lame, but small and works fine, enough, for a phone. I have been in the market for a new phone for a while, but I was waiting to see the apple offering. The Nokia N series was the ones I had been eyeing, but I really want wifi on the next phone I get.
I knew that the apple phone was going to be cool, but I didn’t imagine it would be this cool. I was sitting there ready to order it up on the spot until they got to the ‘cingular’ part. I REALLY don’t want to dump tmobile. seriously. weak. Why does it need to be exclusive? I hate that. The only thing they need it for is the visual voicemail, which is fine, but as far as I can imagine, it is a pretty layer over IMAP email. I mean, it is cool, but I am not THAT impressed with it. But as a friend pointed out, if you had to screen LOTS of voicemail, it would be nice. I don’t get that much voicemail. or rather, I just don’t ever listen to it.
But yeah, I keep coming back to the iPhone. I keep checking plans on cingular’s site. I keep looking at the Nokia N Series. And I keep coming back to one thing:
All the other phones suddenly suck.
Seriously. I mean the iPhone’s interface is SO nice, that even the best Symbian stuff is lame. Let alone the motorola clunky menu system. Palm OS is still stuck in 1996. And I won’t run a Win based phone, not that I think it is a great interface either. The transitions are amazing. It is like a fancy flash website that is done CORRECTLY. The touch screen interface should pan well, since Apple cares enough about that to not mess around. The screen quality in terms of pixels per inch is supposedly insane.
And what can I do? Seriously, switching to cingular is my current option. OR… they are saying release in the US in june, so lets say that is q3. Europe, q4. I doubt that there will be a europe exclusive carrier, since europe doesn’t really work that way. So I would wager there will be a carrier agnostic version by next xmas/early 2008. I guess I could wait for that. And in all honesty, we are taking about an extra 3-4 month wait, I can do that.
But man. The other phone builders need to get their rear in gear. Even the best nokia hardware is going to suck unless there is a major software update.
I must have watched the iPhone minisite videos 5 times already. I am impressed. I want one sooooo bad.
I have often wondered more about the way iTunes does stuff, but I don’t have the time that the authors of these 2 articles do…
How Much Does iTunes Like My Five-Star Songs?
I will admit these came a from a /. story.
so I hacked my xbox. Yes, it allows me to play xbox games without buying them. Eh. I don’t spend that much time gaming, although I am sure Rebecca would argue. And I do buy games if I actually play them. But there are cooler parts.
The first cooler part is the xbox media center, XBMC. It it basically a fancy media launchpad. Videos I have downloaded or have on disc. MP3s. Pictures. I can load all those on the xbox or access my computers on the network from the xbox and watch those on the big screen. Slick. No more watching dumb videos on the laptop. Now I can watch dumb videos on the big screen easily. I could have hooked up the laptop to the projector, but that is too much work.
The second cooler part is emulators. All the old video games I had played as a kid I can get running on the xbox. It rules. Of course I only play games I own. But it is fun to relive those old games. It really drives home how much video games have changed in such a short period of time. Play mario brothers. Then play GTA:San Andreas and the level of involvement is so much more. The free roaming ability, the non player characters, the options for the user. It is great, and is much more enjoyable then constantly running to the right side of the screen. They are more complex, and some would argue unnecessarily violent, but that is a conversation for anther time. Lets agree they are WAY more kick ass today.
So I would recommend all you xbox owners, breath some new life into your xbox. Order up a chip and play around. It is pretty cool.
so not that anything HORRIBLE is happening… but it is turning into an annoying day…
first… while attempting to repair my mom’s iMac, I find that the hard drive is not readable. For those who don’t know… her iMac was working fine… then half of the town lost their power. Then the power came back on, but her iMac won’t work. I have tried everything, couldn’t boot it up… Not that I have lost any of MY data, it is still frustrating… We got her a new iMac (20inch iMac G5) and it is very nice. Now she may start backing up on DVDs and this can be alleviated.
Then I stayed home waiting for the couch to be delivered. I cleaned the house a bit, organized stuff, etc. Got ready for the couch… they showed up around 1:20 or so, and low and behold the couch won’t fit up the stairway. Damnit.
So I have a clean living room and a couch I like, just no way to get it up there. I have some thoughts on how to remedy this. It involves removing walls. We shall see.
So now I am at back at work… Get some shit done, then go check out a garage space with dylan tonight before my parents get into town…
word.
and robs pointed out it has been a while since I updated… so word up…
got the website up, although not without much hassle from the hosting firm… but it is up… finally. I reiterate, they suck.
On to better things… I got the jetta running on saturday. Well, it wasn’t NOT running, but it was leaking coolant. Dylan and I replaced a hard pipe on the coolant system and she is running fine now. Oddly enough, Cali sat on the street for nearly 2 months (end of may to last saturday) and still started right up. That was cool. Remember that key item, it will come back in a minute. We replaced the line because on Sunday, I entered Cali into the CVO’s annual car show, Treffen.
Since Cali is hardly a PRETTY car much less a show car, I had to have some fun with it… Here are the pics… I won ‘Jetta Least Likely To Make It Home’. It was a good time. There were some nice cars there. I got a fair amount of amusement out of watching the other people laugh at my car. I was having a good time.
It did however remind me that I want to get this engine built and into the jetta so I can actually have a better running, non-leaking jetta. It would rule.
So that was the weekend for the most part. I have been working lots, due to things at work not working correctly. Stupid computers. But they seem to be coming together nicely. Monday night we went out to my parent’s house to go couch shopping and so that I could fix my mom’s computer. Her iMac died when the power went out… so I had low hopes and I think I am correct, I can’t get the machine to boot AT ALL. I will try tonight to see if I can recover the files on the hard drive. Fingers crossed.
We did find a couch and my parents threw in some money and it will be delivered tomorrow. I am excited because we NEED a couch in that room. Or something to sit on. I am of course grateful that my parents helped out, although I feel a bit… not sure of the word… extremely grateful… not uncomfortable per se… but anyway. It rules though!
But between early saturday morning, early sunday morning, being in the sun all sunday, early monday morning, shopping and computer stuff monday night, I crashed come tuesday after work.
We ordered pizza hut. Pizza hut is one of those things that I THINK I want… and I think, man, I haven’t had pizza hut in a while. So we get it. and I eat it. And I remember that I don’t like it that much. But oh well. We ordered online and ordered the new twisty bread bread stick crust thing that they have been advertising the hell out of… only to have them call me after the order and tell me they don’t have it, since it was promotional. I am not sure if it is too early, or too late, but it seemed odd. Whatever I guess. The guy that delivered it was in a Lincoln Towncar. It was kinda odd. He also spoke in a such a way that you would think a MadTV or SNL sketch comedy person would talk in. It was odd. His name badge said “team manager”. weirdo.
So the couch is coming tomorrow… and I am getting mom a new computer tonight (eMac)…
is that a good enough post robs?
So I just read this open letter to apple from some dude….did you notice he is an embedded programmer? that would explain why he is so focused on stuff like assembly… who codes in assembly? Wait, hold on, let me check here, …. nope, it isn’t 1982 and the mac is not embedded technology… so word. ok cool. I’ll send this guy a memo about how compilers are pretty cool. But I digress…
I predict it went down like this… steve jobs is chilling in his office having just got off the phone with freescale/IBM and is pissed because deep down, he knows that they can’t give him the technology he needs. He is pissed, cause he likes that technology. He has built lots on it, and being apple and steve he is happy that until recently, it has been a successful chip with great engineering behind it not to mention it is different and arguably better than the x86 based architecture. But freescale/IBM is not delivering the chips or the new technology that steve wants. The laptops that he so loves touting and selling are not getting the speed increases people crave. He has a killer OS, he has new people coming into the mac fold each day, and yet he is looking at a supply line that he knows is both lacking the scalability he needs, both in terms of future growth of technology and pure supply. Not to mention he can see the the supplier has other clients of late that are also using both engineering and production resources (perhaps at the expense of apple.) So a decision needs to be made. Do we stick with this supplier whom we love, but has not been pulling through, or move to another supplier? What other supplier can meet the current needs? Who else is out there?
Thus we end up at intel. The only supplier that can guarantee both the supply and future technology improvements. Sure it will be a huge switch. Sure it will confuse people. Sure it is a potentially horrible transition from a marketing point of view. But what are the options? Who else? The magic (Mac OS) will work fine with a couple tweaks, it always has. The OS has been running on x86 since the alpha days.
So the big problem is the users. Those are the people steve needs to worry about. Honestly, most of them will stick with OS X. Most of them actually have little to no concern about the chipset, the CPU, etc. My mother doesn’t know RISC vs. CISC, nor why the Cell chip makes for horrible personal computing due to its inability to handle out of order operations well. Most people don’t. You will still go to the store and buy a new Mac. It will look the same, feel the same, run the same software. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Apple cover up the numbering convention over time to mask it all. That is all stuff I am sure Steve and the marketing team will figure out. That part is easy for Apple.
I am sure Steve lost some sleep over this one, but I don’t see what options he had. Sure it will be tough, but not really for the end user. More so for Apple. The average person will be none the wiser. Sure some developers have some work cut out for them, but that won’t be too bad either. There will be some long nights, but it won’t last long. And sure I will likely replace my mom’s iMac with an intel one, but she won’t care. It will still run her iTunes and iPhoto.
I understand the media needs something to focus on today, and I do think this is a worthy topic. But it isn’t the end of the world. I am sure it will all work out. And it if the spin is done right, Steve may even be able to bring more people into the mix.