techno.blog("Dion")

Being a power user sucks, as you are often in the minority. The marketing folks are drooling over the middle of that bell curve, and you are clustered at one end with a few of your mates.

I got reminded of this again with the iPhone 2.2 update that gave me this:

I get it, some people didn’t know that the search icon would do what that huge block on the right hand side now does. Make it like the “normal” browser and maybe they will get it. For me though, the space that they gained with the reload/stop URL bar integration is destroyed by the huge search box which does nothing for me.

If you could change it back, that would be OK. about:config away. But Apple doesn’t do this for us. We live in a Jobsian society where his vision is our vision. One more gripe with the iPhone even with this update…. I keep expecting the team to give us a decent friggin cache. PLEASE let me give the iPhone as much space as it needs to keep my stuff around! A mobile browser that is often on a crap network needs this more than anyone else! Cache more aggressively. Save my JavaScript and CSS! At the very least, don’t let me hit the back button and wait for the entire bugger to be grabbed again for the love of god! Why can’t I about:config and up the caching space and rules :(

I find this common with the Apple tools in general. They often get away with it as the engineers hide things in Apple prefs that we can change. The UNIX sometimes gets a chance to shine through for us there. Developers can sneak in a few more settings that don’t show up in the UI that Mr. J probably looks at with a fine tooth comb.

Argh. So close. Does anyone else feel this way? Maybe it is time to check out Linux? Nah, I am not that crazy ;)

I had the same machine for a couple of machines, and with the most recent move to a newer Macbook Pro, I decided to take a leaf out of the smart movers guide. I am sure you have heard of the simple spring cleaning opportunity when you move house. The system is simple. When you get to the new house, keep non essentials in boxes. If six months or a year later you aren’t using items, then you don’t need them and you can go ahead and sell / donate away.

I have a large list of Apple software that I have kept on Tada-list for a long time.

It started as a “what I run” kind of list, and then it morphed a little. There are more than a few applications that are duplicative in functionality, so I often only have one of them installed.

With Leopard, a lot of the applications aren’t needed. Virtue Desktops? Not so much (even though I am still frustrated by Spaces from time to time!)

Anyway, with the new machine, I am not doing what I normally do; go through the list and install the apps that I have on my old machine. Instead, I am installing on a “need to use” basis. After a few weeks I have been surprised at how little I need some of the applications. We will see if that changes when I get back into more serious work :)

Related

I ran into Joe Hewitt at a local coffee shop in Palo Alto (the beauty of living here…. I get to run into people of the caliber of Joe :) and at some point we talked about Textmate, and how it is surprising that we haven’t seen 2.0. I seem to remember thinking that it would launch pretty close to Leopard itself, so I wonder what is happening. It must have some pretty amazing Core Animations in it by now ;)

Michael Cote also just put up some Mac Tips which has some nice applications for you to install and try…. but only if you need to use them ;)

I have been wanting a Nintendo DS for quite some time. I have watched friends with their special ROMs that have every game under the Sun on them, and some of the games have phenomenal game play. I always love a device that focuses on that rather than raw graphics.

I don’t know why I didn’t get around to getting one. I think that the reason partially lies in the fact that I had bought a PSP when it first game out. It was great fun to play, but since I had a child quite shortly after, I think that my nephews have played it more than I.

There lies the rub. For me, the only real time that I get to play something like that (including a DS if I had one) is on a flight. In those times when boredom sometimes strikes, the Internet isn’t there to help, and you are stuck in cabin where the idea of doing anything useful on the flight disappears.

So, I never have got a DS. I don’t think I will end up with one now, because I can just download games to the iPhone. There aren’t any that I love right now, but I can enjoy a short period playing Tetris and trying out some free / very cheap new games that try to use the gyros.

I trust that the same will go for the Amazon Kindle too. I really like it in theory, and I am waiting for the next version to come out. But by then we may have a MacBook Touch that will illuminate the need.

Sometimes the convergence play doesn’t work. The bulky “I do it all” stops making sense, and you just want something that does that one thing really well. Apple is nailing it though, and I think that the iPhone is actually going to be THE computer in the years to come.

Bluetooth to headsets, glasses that show the screen directly on your retina, voice controls, magic keyboards, and a hell of a lot of processing in the cloud.

I am sorry that I will only be buying a few devices in the future. I always remember my iPhone. I often forget the PSP etc.

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.