techno.blog("Dion")

I was excited to see that Apple have released a new version of Java that gives you Java 6 support. This is great timing, since JavaOne is next week.

You may be thinking “great timing”, but for poor fellows like myself, it is a double edged sword. If I install it, will it somehow mess up my demos and cause a good blue screen while on stage? What a tease.

In fact, for one of our demos, Ben and I need to use Windows (had fun with that today :/) because we are using some of the new Update 10 work. The demo next week should be a lot of fun if we can pull it off. It is a little out there!

I look forward to installing the new Apple update, right after our JavaOne talk ;)

Believe it or not, I have not been an iTunes purchaser. I didn’t want to deal with the DRM and the mess associated with multiple computers and syncing.

However, I was waiting for my flight from SFO to LHR and thought I would finally give it a whirl. The experience was very poor.

The first problem was in purchasing the darn film I wanted. iTunes kept giving me a generic “Error, try again” message. It finally worked on the five try for some reason.

Then the kicker. The airplane food was over, so I could sit back and relax wit the show of my choosing. I go to play, and get:

“This computer is not authorized to play “Your Movie”. Would you like to authorize it?”

This is why I hate iTunes. I want to be able to just download and play things without all of the hoops. I have just purchased the movie on this computer so LET ME PLAY IT :/

Instead, I have to choose between Bee Movie and Elizabeth: The Golden Age. I choose my RSS reader, podcasts, and a good book.

Nothing makes you curse more than the “convenience fee” that companies like Ticketmaster try to sell you. When I first say that I would be charged more for printing a ticket out compared to mail/will-call I was appalled. The whole point is that I am saving you money guys! No having to pay for call centers. No having to ship things.

Some companies see things backwards and want to squeeze money out of you. I feel this way with Apple sometimes, and agree with a certain Brian on the rentals.

How is it that I pay the same for a rental via iTunes as I would from Blockbuster? Blockbuster has the overhead of the brick and mortar crud (not for long ;). Apple just needs a few servers. Yet, because of the convenience they charge the same and take in all of the profits.

And what about the rest of the Macworld fun?

• You can’t have a great iPhone year every year, but it is clear that this one wasn’t for me
• A small laptop with a battery pain in the butt, no ethernet, etc etc. No thanks. My pain point wrt laptops is not to do with size. My batteries are a constant pain in the butt, so I can’t imagine having to take the bugger in a year later to get a replacement, let alone dealing with the flights to europe! I do think that certain people will love the Air, I am just not the target audience. This isn’t a developer machine, and I am not the kind of guy who buys one of each laptop and deals with the sync issues
• The iPhone update went smoothly for me. I didn’t have any of the update server issues that others had. That being said, although I am very happy to be able to catch up to 1999 and send multiple people SMS messages, the new features are hardly earth shattering. Wobbly icons are cool, but come on :)
• $20 to add apps that you get on the iPhone, and can get via a jailbreak, for the iPod Touch. Really?

When you get a name for constant innovation, it is tough when you don’t blow peoples minds one year. All I wanted was 3G :)

I land in SFO after the fun flight from London which I luckily didn’t miss (Mark Reinhold, also). What do I do after I land? Why turn on my iPhone of course. There is an obvious desire to check email and voice mail as SOON as you land a plane. Just look around.

The problem was that I couldn’t hear any voice mail. Hmm. I try to call, and no cigar. When I got to the car I could use the bluetooth integration, and it worked fine.

So, I did what I normally do, and I setup an appointment at the Stanford shopping mall store. I just got here, and after a lot of testing they realised that some lint fell into the mic line, and the sensor there told the phone “oh, the headset is on, so pump all AV out through that”.

So, if you don’t hear anything out of your phone, and it wasn’t the speaker setting, or audio sources, give this a try: blow into your mic input.

Today, I was able to launch a new section of Google Code that is focused on open source code related to the Mac. Since I am passionate about both open source AND the Mac, it was a really fun little side project to work on.

The core Google Mac team, and other developers at Google, actually have a fair amount of Mac related open source code. From small pieces of helpful code such as the Quartz Composer patches for Leopard, to large projects like MacFUSE to fun tools like iPhoneDisk to a new meta status updater called Statz. This is just the beginning of course, and now there is a home for this code.

One of the pleasures of working at Google is the slew of great people that you get to meet. On this project it was a real pleasure to work with Amit Singh (MacFUSE and much more), Nicholas Jitkoff (Quicksilver), and Dave MacLachlan (Adobe and much more).

You are always happy to see the first .1 release after a major bump in version. I was crossing my fingers for one fix.

My problem was that I Leopardized Emily’s machine, and for her the upgrade was bad. Everything worked great apart from one thing. When she booted into Scrabulous the fonts were messed up so she couldn’t see the scores and such. Since Scrabulous is her main usage on the computer, I was in the dog house.

“Fix it!”

Luckily with 10.5.1, it was fixed. Phew. Her scrabble games can continue!

I grabbed a new 1TB drive to put Time Machine backups and my media on. I can’t believe that you can get 1TB for just a couple of hundred bucks. Wow.

I really like what Time Machine is trying to be. Running backups has been a royal pain for the longest time. I know that there are other packages out there, and tar can even be your friend, but I have seen constant pain from non-technical family trying to get backups sorted out.

Being able to open up Time Machine and see the Star Wars time dimension is great. Jumping around in time is going to be a real saver. However, Time Machine still has problems:

a) California Fires

It is great to backup your system. If something messes up on your machine, rebuilding will be a breeze. But what if something happens to your location. Seeing your computer and backup drive go up in fumes is a nightmare. There are two solutions here:

• Off site: Have multiple drives and slave copy the main drives and take them offsite. Make sure that you don’t forget for a few months at a time (gulp)
• On line: Have the data stored in the sky. Maybe you use a hack on top of S3 (make sure to diff so you don’t send huge amounts all the time). .Mac is another choice for Apple folk, but the limits are poor. The future is surely in the “data in the sky” approach though.

b) Space Time

Backing up the data on your main machine is simple. The problem that I have is that the data that I have can not fit on my machine anymore. If I take my video, music, source code, and all of the other assets I need a lot of space. Too much for my laptop hard drive.

I need a solution that maps to space as well as time. I want to be able to selectively tag data as “this goes on my laptop” and “this can go on my mac pro” etc. I need the system to understand that I have a lot of data, and a subset is sync’d for me. My use case seems to break a lot of the tools, and means that I have custom scripts to manage it all. And, it is a pain.

So, I am looking forward to Space Time Machine, a solution that takes this all into account.

I cuddled up to the Leopard and once you install an OS you kinda think “erm, ok. now what?”.

There are a few small features that are good to see though. One of them is the Wifi drop down. In the past you had no idea if a network required a password a not which was really painful. Now you finally get told:

Finally we can stop talking about if it is coming or not… and second guessing Apple.

It’s coming. Things just take time. I can’t wait to see the applications that people come up with for the phone now. I have been amazed at what creative hackers have been able to do without an SDK…. so WITH it….

Third Party Applications on the iPhone

Let me just say it: We want native third party applications on the iPhone, and we plan to have an SDK in developers’ hands in February. We are excited about creating a vibrant third party developer community around the iPhone and enabling hundreds of new applications for our users. With our revolutionary multi-touch interface, powerful hardware and advanced software architecture, we believe we have created the best mobile platform ever for developers.

It will take until February to release an SDK because we’re trying to do two diametrically opposed things at once—provide an advanced and open platform to developers while at the same time protect iPhone users from viruses, malware, privacy attacks, etc. This is no easy task. Some claim that viruses and malware are not a problem on mobile phones—this is simply not true. There have been serious viruses on other mobile phones already, including some that silently spread from phone to phone over the cell network. As our phones become more powerful, these malicious programs will become more dangerous. And since the iPhone is the most advanced phone ever, it will be a highly visible target.

Some companies are already taking action. Nokia, for example, is not allowing any applications to be loaded onto some of their newest phones unless they have a digital signature that can be traced back to a known developer. While this makes such a phone less than “totally open,” we believe it is a step in the right direction. We are working on an advanced system which will offer developers broad access to natively program the iPhone’s amazing software platform while at the same time protecting users from malicious programs.

We think a few months of patience now will be rewarded by many years of great third party applications running on safe and reliable iPhones.

Steve

Leopard is coming. Will there be any cool secret features? I have said before that I am not that excited about the OS itself…. but finally we will get to see all of the new apps that people have been holding back because they rely on Leopard.

For example, this list isn’t exactly exciting:

• Google Maps integration with Address Book.
• Tricked out AppleScript.
• Automator UI recording / playback.
• Japanese dictionary support.
• New, easily-printable font books.
• Front Row now looks more like “Back Row” (the Apple TV interface) — too bad it’s still not more like Media Center.
• New AirPort menus that show WiFi encryption.
• Disk encryption now supports 256 bit AES.
• Built-in grammar checker. Lord knows we need it ’round these parts.
• Tabbed terminal.