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Hi all,
Just a small note to inform you that I've compiled a new GNU Emacs for Mac OSX 10.5 for x86. You can find the .dmg here. It's a brand new version, freshly compiled from cvs sources, with version number 23.0.60.
Interesting bit about the Emacs version numbering is that Richard Stallman decided to do away with minor versioning and treat every version as a major version. This explains the high number 23, which according to RMS should be read as 1.23. However, it seems human nature to have major and minor version number, as can be seen from the current number.
Zaaf 2.0.1
We're all familiar with the issue. Most of the time, when reading an article on a newspaper website, the information is in one column in the middle, flanked on the left with some navigational bits and on the right with some advertising pieces. We all know it and most of the time we don't look at it anymore. The web browser on the iPhone / iPod Touch however lets you zoom in on the text you want to read, thereby missing out on the junk surrounding it. This makes for a great uncluttered reading experience. So much so that when I switched back to reading news on a laptop instead of my iPod Touch, I immediately started to double tap on the column containing the article.
As a side note, some weeks ago I participated as a user in a usability test for a new website. The lady conducting the test noticed that I did not look at the information displayed at the left and right of the centre. Instead I just scrolled down to read that same information. So it would appear that my Mobile Safari webpage reading habits are already the dominant way of reading a web site.
So Web-developers, please stay in the centre and deliver us from junk,
Zaaf
It appears that I was wrong about one part of the iPod app on my new iPod Touch. The order of playlists is preserved. This means that, with great help of the intertubes, I was able to create an applescript that shuffles my albums in random order, but leaving the song order in tact. This applescript creates a playlist called Random, or if that exists, removes everything from it. It then takes the playlist "All Albums" and adds the albums for every song to a list. It skips the album if the album of the previous song had the same name. For this to work, the playlist has to be sorted on album of course. It then takes a random album and counts the number of songs on it and if there's more than one song in the album, it's added to the playlist.
If you're interested, you can find the script here.
Have fun,
Zaaf
Just a small blurb to complain to Apple about the availability of the iPhone developer program. Last week Apple released a mature set of tools to develop applications for their touch computers. It comes complete with a simulator and a remote debugger. The integration with Apples IDE XCode is seemless and within an hour after downloading the 2.1 GB package I had my own version of the obligatory Hello World program. Trying to run it on my iPod Touch however resulted in a compiler error stating that I do not have the required certificate.
It turns out that such a certificate will cost $99 and is only available to US residents after their application to enter the developer program is accepted by Apple. Hmmm, I really wanted to develop some silly apps like Memory and a Scientific Calculator, but now it seems that I have to wait seemingly indefinitely before running it outside the simulator.
Zaaf
I'm sitting in the train and sitting next to me is a man with a 17" widescreen HP laptop.He is currently reviewing a word document and as with almost all windows users word is opened full screen. However, the document is taking only half of the screen real estate leaving a lot unused. This makes me wonder why he bought such a widescreen laptop if he's using only half of it.
The default for macintosh and unix X11 apps is to opened in a windowed view. It always amazes me that Windows users feel obliged to use their apps fullscreen instead of having several windows open and semi overlapping. It is afterall called "Windows". Since it is somehow the default way of working, it must be something the way Windows is set-up that makes people work full screen.
So much for the Windows eXPerience,
Zaaf
The iPhone sdk is out. This will make it possible for a whole host of developers to make Touch apps. These are all compiled for the arm6 architecture. Of course in the future everything will be better. Let's hope that the transition to a newer better processor like the intel atom will be only a push of a button in XCode. Hopefully, the way I would like Apple to implement it is by generating Universal (fat) binaries like we have on the Mac. Because of the space constraints on the touch devices however, it is unwanted to have the same program for multiple processor architectures on the devise. Here iTunes will have to step in and strip it to the native app before sending it the device.
We can always dream,
Zaaf
My eight-year-old has a friend over for the weekend. He couldn't make it to my son's birthday so since he's here, he brought a gift. It is a PC-CDrom of a Harry Potter game. My son was very disappointed because it said PC and not Mac, so he was sure that it would not run.
Last night it was my task to make it work on my Mac Pro. And since I have Parallels Desktop I surmised that it wouldn't be a problem. However, the game ran so slow that it almost did not work at all. And it lacked sound. This was a big bummer, because it contains lots of spoken clues. So I finally broke down and installed Boot Camp and Windows XP Pro.
What a horrible eXPerience that install was. It reminded me of the MS-DOS 5.0 install. A blue, character-based user interface with a yellow progress bar telling me almost nothing. Then I had to choose the partition. All partitions, even those of my Time Machine RAID drive where presented as options. The only thing distinguishing them was their size, measured in mega bytes. And since all partitions are in gigabytes, it was hard to find. I picked the right one, but during the whole install-process I was haunted by that horrible feeling that I had wiped out my precious Mac partition.
When all was installed, I immediately removed all network access by disabling my active ethernet interface. This seems to work because IE could not connect to Microsoft's home-page. However, when installing the game and after several reboots, it came up with the announcement bubble that it had found new updates and if I would like to reboot now or later. Since I was busy trying out the game, I told it to not bother me and remind me later. When playing the game it went back to my desktop and bug me about the update. The bad thing about it was that I could not get back to the game afterwards. I had to restart the game every five minutes. Who at microsoft thought it to be a good idea that later is 5 minutes and not after I am ready with whatever it is I'm doing at the moment. And who thought that you could connect to the internet even when the ethernet to use is disabled. How safe am I from infection when I cannot disable my network?
Oh, and Apple provides drivers for everything and they work just fine. I have the Apple bluetooth mouse and after pairing it it worked. But after every reboot I have to pair it again. Why won't it remember that this is my mouse?
Let's hope that Vista is better, because Windows is bugging me on all kinds of levels.
Zaaf
Just a small follow-up of the webkit benchmark results. I ran it in Webkit 28949 on my Powerbook G4 667MHz Gigabit Ethernet and it appears to be 10 times as slow as webkit on my Mac Pro. The amazing thing is however, that those 10 times still not make it unusable. So I'm still not convinced I should buy a new laptop.
Zaaf
Webkit.org, the open-source rendering engine behind Apple's Safari browser and KDE's Konquerer Browser release a javascript benchmark the other day. It's called SunSpider and you can try it out yourself here. Naturally, I could not resist to try it on the few browsers I have lying around here. And to my surprise the fastest one was the webkit version running under Parallels.
Here are the details:
So IE7 is horribly slow, mainly due to their text handling. Firefox is faster than IE, but consistently slower than Safari. But it really surprised me to se that IE was so much slower (27x) than webkit. Granted, it is a webkit benchmark so they should do very good in there. I only hope that they cover all javascript areas and did not leave out any where they perform poorly. Not because that it skews these results, but mainly because when left out of this benchmark, the webkit javascript team won't notice that they need to improve this area.
But all in all Webkit looks like it has IE beat.
Zaaf
I just discovered a shortcut for getting back to the All Events view in iPhoto when you're in a specific event view. Just press Escape and you're back! It's that simple. Now you don't need this specific hint to do it.
Zaaf
One of the software products we use at work is ARIS. It is an business modeling suite of tools written in java. To activate it, you have to enter a 256 character license-key. Why would you need a license-key that has more possible combinations than there are atoms in the universe when you have only tens of thousands of licenses sold? A possible answer is that it is incredibly safe.
But is a 256 character license-key more safe than, let's say, a 10 character one? A 10 character key is something you might be able to remember, which with a 256 character key it is virtually impossible to do. So that means it is safer to use right? Well, a 10 character key can be typed into the license-key registration box by hand. For the 256 character key you'd need either a highly accomplished and very unimaginative touch typist, or use cut-and-paste. And when using cut-and-paste, it means that you've already stored the key electronically, so it is easily swapped with co-workers. This really diminishes the value of the license-key since you now need only one instead of many. It really feels penny wise and pound foolish.
Zaaf
Why would Apple Inc. make their web-browser Safari available for Windows? Apple is a hardware company that makes great software. Their income is from the hardware they make. So when Apple releases software it is with the expectation that it will sell them more hardware and thus make them a bigger profit. That is why they created Mac OS X: to sell computers. That is why they created iTunes: to sell iPods. That is why iTunes is a windows programme, so they can sell iPods to Windows users.
So if Apple creates software to sell more hardware, the question is then: "Why do they release Safari for Windows?" Do they have a new hardware product that will sell better because of the fact that Safari is available for Windows? The only new hardware on the horizon is the iPhone and one of its key selling points is that it runs the full version of Safari. However, the biggest problem with Safari is compatibility with some websites. This is because the web and especially the corporate web is geared towards Internet Explorer 5.5 or higher. My guess is that by releasing Safari for Windows, Apple is trying to get a higher market share for its browser. This will then cause companies to hopefully make their website more standards compliant, so that it runs perfectly in Safari.
Because it would be great if you could use your Internet Banking site straight from your iPhone while walking in the Mall?
Zaaf
I just tried to install Firefox 2.0.0.4 and because me being me, I read the License Agreement. The interesting part here is section 4:
4. PRIVACY POLICY. You agree to the Mozilla Firefox Privacy Policy, made available online at http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/privacy/, as that policy may be changed from time to time. When Mozilla changes the policy in a material way a notice will be posted on the website at www.mozilla.com and when any change is made in the privacy policy, the updated policy will be posted at the above link. It is your responsibility to ensure that you understand the terms of the privacy policy, so you should periodically check the current version of the policy for changes.In this they refer you to the web to read their privacy policy before you can accept the terms in the Licence Agreement which lets you install a browser with which you can read the privacy policy.
