Too Many iPhone “Developers”
Yesterday, I came across this gem on Daring Fireball where John Gruber discusses the change in the rules for developers:
My reading of this new language is that cross-compilers, such as theFlash-to-iPhone compiler in Adobe’s upcoming Flash Professional CS5 release, are prohibited. This also bans apps compiled using MonoTouch — a tool that compiles C# and .NET apps to the iPhone. It’s unclear what this means for tools like Titanium and PhoneGap, which let developers write JavaScript code that runs in WebKit inside a native iPhone app wrapper. They might be OK. This tweet from the PhoneGap Twitter accountsuggests they’re not worried. The folks at Appcelerator realize, though, that they might be out of bounds with Titanium. Ansca’s Corona SDK, which lets you write iPhone apps using Lua, strikes me as out of bounds.
Now, anyone who knows me is probably thinking I'm loving this because I'm some sort of mindless Apple fanboi. If you're one of these people, I'm sorry to disappoint you. This makes me happy because this rights a wrong.
With the advent of the iPhone, you all of a sudden had a great deal of people, even those who don't own a Mac adopting this hand-held computer from Apple. This is a good thing. Competition is good. No one company should own any market, whether it's RIM, Google, Microsoft, or Apple.
Where it went right and wrong at the same time was the massive influx of developers and "developers." Having 180,000 applications is a good thing for a platform. However, with the good comes the bad and you don't even have to look far to find the tripe. Just look at all the fart and flashlight apps that landed in the App Store.
Now, when I put developers in quotes, I'm calling out the script-kiddie equivalents in the developer community that have no skills and/or are unwilling to obtain the required skills to develop quality applications. To see these "developers" and their rage in their full "glory," check out this fine example from TechCrunch.
Developers have nothing to lose from the recent changes to Apple's Developer License Agreement. It's the "developers" that have everything to lose. Sadly, though, it appears as though many "developers" are still safe...for now. Under the new rules, you have a few options for developing your iPhone OS apps: Objective-C, C, and C++. As I understand it, even if you're developing for the latter two, there's no avoiding Objective-C if you utilize iPhone OS UI elements. If you try to "develop" an iPhone app using Flash CS5, MonoTouch, or some of the other frameworks that allow a "developer" to create an app without using the iPhone SDK, you're out of luck.
The people most affected by this are those Microsoft-centric developers who are upset that they need a Mac to develop for the iPhone. No complaints, however, about needing Windows to develop for Windows. If you don't test your app in the operating environment on which it would run, you're not a developer. You're a hack. Some may still cry for the iPhone/iPad emulator for Windows, but consider this: the Mac runs OS X. The iPhone OS is OS X. If a "developer" still doesn't understand this important point, then they need to give up their dream of being an honest to goodness developer.
Now, the loophole that lets some "developers" stay in the game is that it still allows "JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine." That's too general. What this does is allow drek like PhoneGap to produce "apps." The people who use this tool are lazy "developers" who don't want to put the time and effort into building great applications for the mobile platforms, those with no sense whatsoever about user experience, and just generally dishonest people.
What PhoneGap does is basically wraps a web application in WebKit and packages it as though it's a native application. First of all, this is completely and utterly dishonest. When people download an app, they are expecting an app that was built FOR their device and not some repackaged web site. It's fundamentally dishonest, no matter how the "developer" tortures logic or the English language to justify their deceit. These "developers" are merely hacks and haters seeking to reap the rewards from the gold mine without doing any of the mining themselves while bragging to anyone who would listen about how great a miner they are.
PhoneGap and tools like it let "developers" (again, the white-hat equivalent of script-kiddies) who know nothing more than basic web technologies to pretend they can develop "desktop" applications. John Gruber hinted indirectly at the danger this poses to not just Apple, but in my opinion the "developers" and iPhone consumers as well.
I don’t think Apple even dreams of a Windows-like share of the mobile market. Microsoft’s mantra was (and remains) “Windows everywhere”. Apple doesn’t want everywhere, they just want everywhere good. The idea though, is to establish the Cocoa Touch APIs and the App Store as a de facto standard for mobile apps — huge share of both developers and users.
So what Apple does not want is for some other company to establish a de facto standard software platform on top of Cocoa Touch. Not Adobe’s Flash. Not .NET (through MonoTouch). If that were to happen, there’s no lock-in advantage. If, say, a mobile Flash software platform — which encompassed multiple lower-level platforms, running on iPhone, Android, Windows Phone 7, and BlackBerry — were established, that app market would not give people a reason to prefer the iPhone.
And, obviously, such a meta-platform would be out of Apple’s control. Consider a world where some other company’s cross-platform toolkit proved wildly popular. Then Apple releases major new features to iPhone OS, and that other company’s toolkit is slow to adopt them. At that point, it’s the other company that controls when third-party apps can make use of these features.
So from Apple’s perspective, changing the iPhone Developer Program License Agreement to prohibit the use of things like Flash CS5 and MonoTouch to create iPhone apps makes complete sense. I’m not saying you have to like this. I’m not arguing that it’s anything other than ruthless competitiveness. I’m not arguing (up to this point) that it benefits anyone other than Apple itself. I’m just arguing that it makes sense from Apple’s perspective — and it was Apple’s decision to make.
There's the rub, basically. If a "developer" uses a tool like PhoneGap and Apple updates the OS, adding or tweaking APIs, there's no guarantee whether or when that "developer" can make use of these changes in their "app." This hurts not only the "developers," but also the consumers who miss out on using an app that takes advantage of these features. If you take short cuts to try to cheat the system, you or your customers will get burned. Dishonesty and laziness, in the end, does not pay.
Finally, the "developers" who use any of these tools to avoid learning Objective C or any of the other permitted languages are arguably the reason why the applications on Windows tend to be rubbish from a design and user experience point of view. The reason why there appears to be an utter lack of UI standards on Windows is that there's no enforcement. Even Microsoft rarely plays by its own rules. On the Mac side of the fence, even though Apple doesn't enforce the UI guidelines on third-party applications, the Macintosh developer community has been very good at policing itself. The userbase has also been quite effective at rewarding developers that create products that are "Mac-like." Care is put into the user experience to ensure that the user is using an application that looks, feels, and behaves like it belongs on that computer.
It's this culture of do whatever the damn hell you want and screw the UI guidelines that threatens the iPhone OS platform with this huge influx of "developers." It's also why these "developers" are so frustrated. Apple cares. They give a damn about the user experience. They know that people pay what they pay for Apple products because of the user experience. People are buying the iPad because of what it offers in the way of user experience. They're not targeting the crowd that shops based on a laundry list of tech specs. They're targeting people who care about ease of use and fit & finish and are willing to pay a small premium for it. To quote John Gruber, "Apple doesn’t want everywhere, they just want everywhere good."
My Thoughts On the iPad
I'm sure by now, you've read enough about the iPad to think, "oh, come on, not another article about that thing." Granted, the hype and rumors got completely out of hand. Contrary to the Windows zealots around me, they weren't all fed by Apple. I can't blame them too much, though. They don't know the history of Apple and the community-fed rumor mill that precedes any and all product announcements. This time, however, it was so bad that even mainstream tech press and blogs got into the act. The rumors got so out of hand that the general consensus was that it would completely change computing, end hunger, cure cancer, and bring about world peace.
The "Vision" Thing
Predictably, the tech press and blogs (I'll just file them under "pundits") followed up the official announcement by nearly unanimously criticizing the iPad as a complete and utter disappointment. Granted, the expectations that this device was held up to were ones that no product could ever hope to satisfy. However, it's not as simple as that. The punditry and typical commenters on sites such as C|Net and TechCrunch exhibited a severe lack of technological vision. It was like watching the Windows crowd (I was one of them at the time) getting all wrapped around the axle and hysterical when Apple released their original iMacs without legacy ports and ditching the floppy altogether.
I'm not saying that the silliness is going unanswered. For a thoughtful commentary, check out Sam Kington's piece.
An Analogy
One of the loudest complaints about the iPad (and iPhone) is that it doesn't support Flash. I was told by someone last Thursday that he wouldn't buy it because it doesn't have Flash. Well, to be honest, he wouldn't buy it because it's from Apple. Anyway, what a lot of people don't understand is that on OS X, Flash is garbage. If OS X or Safari crashes, you can easily bet your lunch money that the cause was Flash. Apple even called out Adobe on this issue when they were demoing Snow Leopard and Safari 4's plugin-level sandboxing. They were saying, "Adobe, we all know Flash is a steaming pile and this is what we're doing to protect our customers." A rogue Flash plugin would suck the iPhone (or iPad) battery dry in no time at all and crashes at the hands of Flash would wreck the user experience, leading to greater frustrations and customer revolts than they would have from not supporting Flash at all.
Since the release of the iPhone, Apple has been supporting the use of open standards in place of Flash. With greater effort nowadays being put into the development of HTML 5 and CSS 3, these standards are being given the blessing as the purest way to code for the web. The pundits and many in the IT world either don't know about the issues of OS X and Flash or they don't care. They don't get it because they're so far removed from the world of the average consumer. When told that HTML 5 is the way to go moving forward (especially for video), all they give you are blank stares followed with "but 'everything's' in Flash!" The problem is, they don't get the obvious analogy.
Flash is to the iPhone/iPad as the legacy ports were to the original iMac
In both cases, IT "pros" complained loudly that the dated and obsolete technology they've attached themselves to was given the executioner's axe by Apple. Apple was the first manufacturer to ditch the legacy serial ports (they never supported parallel ports in Macs) for USB and they were the first to ditch the floppy.
When the HTML 5 spec is completed, Flash itself will no longer have any reason to exist as it does now. With AJAX, there's no need to require a plugin to deliver interactivity. With H.264 and the <video> tag, there's no need to require Flash for true cross-platform video support. I'm sure I'll catch heat from Firefox fans (Firefox does not support H.264, but rather Theora), so here's my reasoning:
- Of the participants in the development of the HTML standards, the Mozilla Foundation is joined by Apple and Google, among others. Microsoft just recently decided to start participating in the development of HTML 5. More on them in a bit.
- Apple and Google both use WebKit, an open source project managed by Apple. WebKit supports only H.264 with the <video> tag. Neither Apple, nor Google are doing anything to drop it by any means.
- Google reencoded all of the YouTube videos to H.264.
- H.264 is increasingly accepted as the standard of choice for mobile devices, spearheaded by Apple's iPhone.
- YouTube and Vimeo, perhaps the two largest sources of user-created videos are now offering beta versions of their sites where H.264 video is provided without Flash.
- Though Microsoft owns VC-1, adoption has been scant, save for the few uses of Silverlight.
- Microsoft owns H.264-related patents and thus has stake in its success.
- Though Theora isn't bad, per se, H.264 is more efficient.
The future of video does not look favorable for Flash, especially when there'll be a choice between playback in the browser without a resource-hogging plugin and said plugin. For interactivity, it would be smart of Adobe to start positioning the product as a development tool of interactivity using HTML 5, CSS 3, and SVG. If they don't somebody else will.
This is a stance that Apple is not budging from. Take the intra-Apple town hall meeting where Jobs said of Adobe, effectively:
They are lazy. They have all this potential to do interesting things, but they just refuse to do it. They don't do anything with the approaches that Apple is taking, like Carbon. Apple does not support Flash because it is so buggy. Whenever a Mac crashes more often than not it's because of Flash. No one will be using Flash. The world is moving to HTML5.
Also note the time (13:04) in the demo when Steve Jobs visited the New York Times web site and had a "missing plugin" icon where a Flash movie was supposed to be was no accident. This was quintessential Jobs. He was sending a message to Adobe. "Your steaming pile (Flash) isn't going to be allowed on this device." The usual pundits and IT "pros" thought this was a funny gaffe exposing a fundamental flaw in the device. They apparently haven't bothered to understand how Jobs works. Let's take for example the announcement of the publishers that Apple partnered with in bringing the written word to the device. Jobs listed 5 major publishers. However, the one publisher (McGraw Hill) whose CEO announced on MSNBC the night before the reveal that they were working with Apple on the iPad was missing from that slide. This was no accident.
It's Not Just A Bigger iPod Touch
Those who are claiming the iPad is nothing more than an oversized iPod Touch are just exposing themselves as unimaginative. How so? Well, let's look at one announcement that commanded a good deal of time in the event: iWork. The Microsoft-devotees predictably laughed-off this portion of the event because they will not, under any circumstances, give iWork the amount of credit it deserves. It's not Office, you know. However, what these "professionals" missed was the underlying message: Not only can you upsize iPhone apps for the iPad, you can write full-featured applications originally found only on the desktop for the iPad. In fact, I look forward to Bento for the iPad. Not only is iWork for the iPad a (seemingly) fully functional full-featured application, but it's a technology demonstrator for those other development shops, large and small. Those developers and/or companies that realized this first will reap the earliest benefits. The pundits will be left scratching their heads, asking, "whoa, how did that happen?" when it comes to pass.
One common complaint, especially among the Windows fanbois was that they were disappointed that this device used the iPhone OS instead of the full version of OS X. A couple points here:
- iPhone OS is OS X
- The desktop OS is designed around precision pointing devices, not fingers
That second point is worth repeating. Desktop versions of OS X and Windows are not designed for use with fingers. Sure, Windows 7 has multitouch baked in. However, as was seen when Steve Ballmer fumbled with HP's Slate, he had a difficult time using the smaller UI elements in Windows 7 with his finger. This is the reason why Apple went with the iPhone OS. You get the ability to write full-featured applications with a UI designed from the ground-up for use with fingers.
eBook Poseurs?
One all-to-common comment from the iPad-haters is that the iPad is not a "real" ebook device. Those who would read books on the iPad are just poseurs and wannabes. For books that are only text, I'm quite sure the Kindle is just fine and probably handles the task with aplomb. However, many of the books I read and have read include color illustrations: Edward Tufte's books, Garr Reynolds' books, and Nancy Duarte's book come to mind immediately. This is a task that the Kindle fails at miserably because eInk does not support color. The developers of eInk are working on color, but so far, the quality is nowhere near where you would want it to be to view movies or play games, tasks that apple's iPhone OS handles quite well.
What these wannabe elitists need to realize that their specific use case isn't the one and only true and pure use case. In fact, to truly determine the worthiness of the iPad, you need to look at how this device could fit into your lifestyle, assuming it does at all. For my wife and myself, it's a perfect fit. I get a color eBook reader that gives me the more powerful computing capabilities that only a more powerful device with a screen larger than the iPhone's can give me. Netbooks lack the form factor that would ever be of any use to me.
Snow Leopard Really IS That Big Of A Deal
I'm going to take a break from writing about slide design and slideware for a moment to tackle another subject: Snow Leopard. As you're probably aware, Apple's newest OS, Snow Leopard (OS 10.6) was released barely more than a week ago. Pundits all around have been quick to criticize the OS release, citing reasons for their criticism such as "it's not really 64-bit," "I don't see anything different (features)," "some software is breaking," and as Leo Laporte recently said in last week's TWiT and MacBreak Weekly podcasts, "it feels like just a service pack," and "was it worth it for all that broke?" Over and over, the theme was Snow Leopard is to Leopard what Windows 7 is to Windows Vista.
In short, those are very short-sighted comments that miss the point. Whereas Microsoft loudly proclaims they bet the company on .Net (It's a fool's bet actually. Enterprise shops won't not choose Microsoft. Enterprise IT shops are run by MCSEs who wrongly see anything non-Microsoft as a threat to their job security and managed by suits too afraid to buck the status quo), Apple quietly bet the company on Snow Leopard. Snow Leopard isn't a minor operating system release. I wouldn't even qualify it as a major release. It's a strategic release. Here's why:
- 64-bit
- Apple's switch to Intel
- Carbon and Cocoa
- OpenCL and Grand Central Dispatch
- Quicktime X
- What's next
64-bit
One of the loudest complaints, especially among the professional Apple-haters (the aforementioned Microsoft-certified IT workers) and tech commentators have been trying to hammer Apple on this issue for the past few weeks. The more they do this, the more they show themselves to be either shills, angling for page views, or just plain old missing the boat. Leo Laporte is a prime example of the latter. In his enviable quest to be the anti-shill through professional objectivity, he missed what isn't being said: The move to 64-bit is progressive and deliberate. Take, for example, this graphic from an excellent piece by John Siracusa of Ars Technica:
Credit: Ars Technica
The Enterprise IT pundits have been especially brutal when it comes to the roll-out of 64-bit by Apple. To understand why, we need to look at the world they live in.
Their world is Microsoft Windows. The Operating System that comes in so many flavors, it could even make Baskin Robins nervous (am I showing my age here?). Windows Vista is available in 32-bit and 64-bit versions, each sold separately. Windows 7 will be sold the same way. Those who install the 64-bit version of Windows unwittingly (consumers like my in-laws) run into a host of issues such as application incompatibilities and driver issues. Apple, as we know, sells one desktop OS version. Since they won't and shouldn't fragment their OS offerings the way Microsoft has, Apple needs to be very deliberate in the way it moves to 64-bit. Go all the way at once, and Apple will find itself with their own Vista: an OS nobody in their right mind would want and be caught trying to cope with the vast majority of their user base refusing to upgrade.
Apple's Switch to Intel
True, Snow Leopard does have a 64-bit kernel, but it doesn't boot into that kernel by default. That's kind of the point. You don't keep your customers happy and loyal by cutting their legs out from under them. Now, granted, some did have that happen to them, but unless you're entrenched in "the Windows way," there's no way you didn't see that coming. By "the Windows way," I mean slavish devotion to backwards compatibility, no matter how old the technology is.
I'll use my father in-law as an example of this backwards-compatible mess. He has a Windows laptop and likes to connect his Meade telescope to his computer so he can find the stars, galaxies, and whatever he's looking for and download the pictures to his hard drive. He also has a scanner (CB), that he can program from his laptop. His problems with Vista are quite evident in his troubles with the telescope. The drivers are Windows 98 drivers that Meade doesn't think need to be updated. Backwards compatibility was just assumed by Meade and they didn't seem to think it all that important to update them. Now his scanner issue is particularly amusing (unless you're him). It uses the old-fashioned serial port to connect to computers. The software looks for COM ports. I kid you not. He bought this just last year. The fact that some computers still have these outdated technologies (floppy disks, anyone?), encourages this resistance to drop dead technologies.
It's this kind of situation that Apple is avoiding by dropping (killing) technologies before they become a burden. When Apple killed the floppy drive on Macs, they sent a strong message to software developers: don't release your software on floppies anymore if you want to sell any software to our customers. Likewise with those legacy serial and parallel ports: don't sell printer with parallel ports instead of USB if you want to sell your wares to our customers. Microsoft, on the other hand, trying to protect its OEMs (Dell, HP, etc.), won't make those tough choices. That slavish devotion to backwards compatibility is in large part why Windows is so bloated. Apple, by declaring PowerPC the new floppy disk, was able to trim the size of its operating system and make it faster than its predecessor, a feat unheard-of in Windows.
It's been three and a half years since Apple started selling Intel-based Macs. The normal lifecycle of a computer should bear this point clearly: "It's time to get with the program. We're moving on. Time to come with us."
Carbon and Cocoa
With each OS upgrade, Apple brought its consumers along to 64-bit land gradually, giving all of us time to adjust, peripheral lifecylces a chance to run their course, flushing out the old junk, and software and hardware vendors a chance to get on board. Before Leopard came out, Apple warned that its Carbon Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) were made available so that developers could make the transition from OS 9 to OS X smoothly.
For those of you who may not be technical, the Carbon an Cocoa APIs are merely instructions programmers can use within Objective C (Apple's programming language) to perform routine tasks and avoid reinventing the wheel. Carbon was designed to allow for easy migration of application code written for OS 9 to work in OS X, which is a vastly different operating system. Cocoa is the code name for Apple's APIs that are designed to be free of this legacy baggage.
An example of a company that didn't see the writing on the wall the moment Carbon and Cocoa were each made available and ignored Apple's warning prior to the release of Leopard (10.5) was Adobe. Much was made of the fact that Photoshop CS4 for Windows was available in 64-bit while the Mac version was still 32-bit. Blame went back and forth, but in the end, Adobe should have asked themselves some simple questions:
- Apple has two APIs available. Why?
- Given (1), should we expect Apple to keep two around with equal capabilities?
- Which API will have legs?
- Given (1), (2), and (3), which should we choose for a product as important as Photoshop?
Microsoft got the message and released Office 2008 as a Cocoa app. Many others did the same, which is why many of the Mac apps out there now work only on Leopard (and by extension, Snow Leopard). Granted, many of the apps are Leopard-only because they leveraged Leopard-specific technologies, but those that were 64-bit had to be written in 64-bit Cocoa, which was made available in Leopard. 64-bit Carbon didn't, doesn't, and won't exist.
Like the switch to Intel, this is a transition that will likely culminate in 10.7 being fully 64-bit without any support for Carbon. The reason is a good one, too. OS X was released in 2001. That was eight years ago. If you are still clinging onto that OS 9 legacy code, then your application is a dinosaur, much like that scanner with the serial port.
OpenCL and Grand Central Dispatch
Apple, in reworking the plumbing of OS X made some pretty important and dramatic changes to Objective C itself that they are submitting to the standards bodies responsible for the C language(s). I'm not going to get into the nitty gritty with those changes, but basically, Apple is making it easier for developers to write better code and get the most out of our hardware, which gets us to OpenCL and Grand Central Dispatch.
OpenCL is an complimentary technology of OpenGL, the open standard for 3D graphics used by OS X, Linux, and game consoles such as the Sony PSP, PS3, and Nintendo's Wii. What OpenGL does for graphics, OpenCL does for computing. Most of us have computers with pretty powerful graphics cards installed. When we're not playing games, chances are, our video cards are barely breaking a sweat, if they're doing much of anything at all. OpenCL taps into this "computer within a computer" to allow your computer to do more at once. Applications that make effective use of OpenCL will be much faster than those that don't.
Grand Central Dispatch is a technology that will allow all developers, not just the "code ninjas," to write applications that make use of all of the cores in our computers' CPUs. If you're using a modern Mac with an Intel Core2 Duo, you've got two CPU cores at your disposal. If you've got a Mac Pro (jealous), then you likely have even more; up to eight. Most applications we have on our computer don't make use of the two cores. They'll run on one core at a time, but not both. For applications such as Office, which can be a CPU hog for no good reason, this can give you the dreaded spinning beach ball as the CPU processes all of the application's threads. This happens while the second core is sitting there idle. With Grand Central Dispatch and the changes to Objective C that make this new OS X technology more readily adoptable, applications can finally make use of that idle core and get your work done much faster.
OS X: Now with less beach ball. Who says that's not a big deal?
Quicktime X
Another technology in OS X that is shedding some legacy baggage is Quicktime. With Quicktime X, Apple is shedding the baggage in Quicktime 7 that dates back to the 90s. If Apple wants to make OS X perform better, it's time to let the old junk go. Now, just as with the transition to 64-bit, consumers aren't left in the lurch. The Quicktime X player will call upon 7 as needed if you're trying to watch a video with some old codecs.
Some video professionals are bemoaning the loss of functionality found in Quicktime Pro (still available by manually installing the old version in Snow Leopard). What some of these pundits miss is the parallel with what Apple did with iMovie. In iLife '08, Apple completely rewrote iMovie from the ground up. There was a huge uproar about lost functionality (and some snickering from Windows users I work with), but those concerns were laid to rest a year later with iMovie '09. In that version, Apple put the missing functionality and then a lot more into the application. The rewrite was necessary to get iMovie to the level that we see it in the '09 version. Likewise, I see Quicktime X as analogous to iMovie '08. Complain now, but the next version will knock your socks off.
What's Next
All of what I have shared thus far brings us to this point. The pundits who dismiss all of these major, no, wait, strategic changes to OS X are not looking to the future. Some are looking to the future, but too far out. Each year (mostly), we see iLife updates in the MacWorld Expo time frame; January to be exact. Do you see where I'm going here now? OpenCL. GrandCentral Dispatch. Quicktime X. 64-bit. This all point to a major upgrade and performance boost for iLife in the as yet unmentioned '10 release. Those who keep saying they see no reason to upgrade now will finally get it when the next iLife comes out. Apple's pro apps (Final Cut Studio, Aperture, etc.) will also likely see major updates, though Final Cut Studio needs to join the Cocoa world (ironic, isn't it?).
The next OS, 10.7, which may not come out for another couple years will probably be fully 64-bit, killing off Carbon in the process. Pundits such as Andy Ihnatko, who herald 10.6 as the slowing of major feature releases for OS X will probably find themselves backing off those statements since Snow Leopard is the foundation for the amazing functionality and features to come.
While Microsoft is cleaning up their UI and some of the inefficient code underneath for Windows 7, Apple is doing more than just fixing long-standing bugs or annoyances from Leopard. This is a strategic upgrade of their OS that positions it in such a way that makes the OS immediately faster and leaner and in the short and medium term, we'll see applications start to come out taking advantage of the new technologies. When you consider all of the new Mac OS developers the iPhone has given us, this time next year, the punditry should be exclaiming the sucker punch to the Windows platform delivered by Apple's bet-the-company OS: Snow Leopard.
Keynote ’09: Share – The Somewhat Hidden Functionality
On Apple's Keynote page, they do make quick mention of the new Share menu and how you can quickly share a slide deck with others by email. What they don't mention and what didn't seem to get any press is another feature in the Share menu: "Send to [insert iLife app here]." In this submenu, you can also send your slides to YouTube.
When creating a Pages document for my presentation's handout, I needed copies of individual slides to paste into the document. Using this menu option, I was able to save copies of my slides as images and have them automatically added to my iPhoto library. This made it far easier to add them later as needed. This new capability didn't come at the expense of the traditional export. You can still export your slides as images the old fashioned way if you so desire. However, with iPhoto's export options for flickr and Facebook, you're just a couple clicks away from other places to put your individual slides.
Granted, with the iPhoto export, you are limited to still images. If you added narration and timed transitions, you can export your presentation to YouTube as a movie. Yeah, it does seem kind of odd to choose YouTube given that SlideShare is the place people go for content like this, however, it's better than nothing. With that said I sure would like to see an option in the next version for "Send To SlideShare." That may depend on Apple and the SlideShare folks either working together since SlideShare's API is available free for "non-commercial use" and it's not maintained by Slideshare itself.
I've recently upgraded to iWork '09 and I'll be sure to share hidden gems as I find them.
Safari 4 Beta: A Review
The news that has the tech and Mac communities all abuzz this week is Apple's release of the public beta of Safari 4. I'm not one to run beta software on my machine, especially software so critical as a web browser. However, since I'm looking at replacing this computer real soon, I figured it wouldn't hurt to go ahead and give it a try.
Well, I surely was not disappointed. First, let's see what's new:
Updated Webkit core. Webkit, Safari's engine has seen itself emerge as the first engine to get score a 100/100 in the Web Standards Project's Acid 3 test. In comparison, Firefox 3.0.6 scores a 71/100, Opera 9.51 scores an 84/100, and Microsoft's Internet Explorer fails badly at 12/100.
Faster HTML rendering. Apple claims Safari 4 is 3 times as fast as Firefox on the Mac, 3.25 times as fast as IE7, and 4.71 times as fast as IE8 beta. Though I have no means to do accurate timing, my impressions are that it is indeed faster on this Dual G5.
Faster JavaScript rendering. Using the i-Bench scoring, Apple claims speeds of almost 2 times as fast as Google's Chrome (which also uses Webkit, though an earlier build), 5 times as fast as Firefox 3.0, 5 times faster than IE8 beta, and almost 11 times as fast as IE7. Apple makes similar claims using the SunSpider benchmark, with the exception that IE7 is humiliated even more than in i-Bench. Again, I don't have a means to measure this objectively, but my impressions are that the performance truly is better.
Top Sites. Like Opera, Safari 4 now offers an opening page (accessible at any time) with your most visited sites displayed as a bank of screenshots. The difference between the two, however, is that Safari's pageis arrayed like a bank of screens. Those with stars in the corner have changed since your last visit. Click on one and it will zoom in to fill the window and then automatically be replaced by the live web page. It's a very slick implementation.
History in Cover Flow. Apple gets panned from time to time about their love for Cover Flow, but seriously, it makes perfect sense here. Instead of browsing through a bunch of page titles that may be the same, but represent different web pages (happens a lot), you can flip through your history and choose the page by the screenshot. This makes the browser's history function far more useful than any of its competitors.
Fully History Search (+ Cover Flow). This is another function where Apple added Cover Flow. Again, it works well. Searching your history searches the full text of the pages stored in your history. Again, choose your selection by the screenshot.
Tabs on Top. This is perhaps the most controversial of all of the changes. Apple haters mock them for taking a feature from Google Chrome. Many Apple fans grumble that it's an un-Apple UI. Here, I beg to differ.
The concept behind the Mac UI is that each window should represent a document rather than an application (unless the application has no document). That central concept is what makes the menuing scheme in place since 1984 work so well. The thing that has always bugged me about Safari in the past (as well as other browsers on the Mac) is that the traditional tabbed interface broke this convention. It visually gave the document window the feel of being the application itself with the tabs as the documents in a Microsoft Windows-style MDI interface. Moving the tabs to the top, in my opinion is an elegant and very Mac-like compromise between one window per document and the efficiency that tabs brings, especially for those of us who regularly have 10 or more open at a time.
Windows Native Look and Feel. I won't spend much time on this because I only use Windows because I'm forced to at work. Otherwise, it's been exiled from my home. Well, for you Windows users, Apple slipped Safari into a Windows-native look and feel, which for all its faults, is the right thing to do. I constantly b**** about Microsoft not complying with Apple's UI guidelines in their Mac software, so Windows users' complaints were justified.
Smart Address Field. This is much like Firefox's Awesome Bar, which if there was one draw for me to Firefox, this was it.
Phishing and Malware Protection. Overdue. Long overdue. This will warn you if you are attempting to access a site that is known to be dangerous.
Apple lists more at http://www.apple.com/safari/features.html. One feature, which isn't new, but would make many photographers happy if Safari were used more and more by those who view their work online is the ICC color profile support.
Safari uses advanced color management technology to deliver web images with rich, accurate color. In fact, it was the first browser to support International Color Consortium (ICC) profiles and has done so from day one, so the photos and images you see in your browser stay true to the original.
Now, a word of warning. This is beta software. With that comes the risk of crashes and data loss. However, based on my usage, it's pretty darn solid. I have read reports of people having Apple Mail issues when installing the beta and judging by what I've read, it seems to be related to the Growl plugin for Mail.
If you're comfortable with running beta software, then by all means, give this a try. Apple has raised the bar for browsers and this is good for everyone, even if you don't use Safari.
The Scourge of Arial
Can you tell which is which?
I was reading this article by Mark Simonson where he writes a brief history of Helvetica and its Frankenstein-like relative, Arial. It's, in my opinion, a very interesting read, covering areas like font studios, companies' different strategies dealing with font licenses, and how a simple desire not to license the already well established Helvetica font led to Arial. If you've ever used a Microsoft product, it's a guarantee you've seen text in that font. While Apple licensed Helvetica (Apple's core pro customer base needs it), Microsoft decided to go with the cheaper knock-off. Arial has always looked a little odd to me and I could tell the difference between the two. I just never figured out why until I read this article.
Monotype, the creator of Arial, took the high road, and instead of copying Haas Foundry's Helvetica like many others were doing, they took a similar font that they owned and tweaked the proportions and weight to bring it in line with their competitor's font. What you have, then, with Arial is a font that has the same dimensions and weight to Helvetica, but is just different enough to not be an absolute rip-off to those knowledgeable enough to tell the difference.
Arial appears to be a loose adaptation of Monotype’s venerable Grotesque series, redrawn to match the proportions and weight of Helvetica. At a glance, it looks like Helvetica, but up close it’s different in dozens of seemingly arbitrary ways. Because it matched Helvetica’s proportions, it was possible to automatically substitute Arial when Helvetica was specified in a document printed on a PostScript clone output device. To the untrained eye, the difference was hard to spot. (See “How to Spot Arial”) After all, most people would have trouble telling the difference between a serif and a sans serif typeface. But to an experienced designer, it was like asking for Jimmy Stewart and getting Rich Little.
Reading The Information Design Handbook has gotten me thinking quite a bit lately about fonts and how to use them. This article, though, just spurred that interest on even further. The two have me constantly evaluating the one or two fonts per slide deck that I use and putting a lot more thought into my font choices. Issues such as whether it's a decorative font (e.g. Arial Narrow) or not, its x-height, its weight, and the size of counterforms are all things I think about now when I consider which font to use since each of those factor into the legibility of the text.
Those font characteristics are all things to take into consideration when you consider your audience. How far away are the Bob Uecker seats? How old is your audience? What's the lighting likely to be?
I won't get into the nitty gritty about all these characteristics. There's just not enough space and I'll leave it to the pros. However, I do think that Jenn & Ken Visocky O'Grady's The Information Design Handbook
By the way, the one on top is Helvetica. 
MSNBC Using Macs Now?
Yeah, I haven't posted here in a while. However, if you've been following me on Twitter, you'll know I haven't exactly been doing nothing.
Now, I saw this today, which I'm sure has Steve Ballmer throwing chairs:
Mac Laptop In Use By MSNBC Staff
That would be a Macbook Pro. The other woman to her right also had one. Must be standard issue at the Microsoft partner.
Macs Making Strides In the Enterprise?
Apparently, the key to getting Macs accepted in the enterprise is by winning the hearts and minds of the people, including CIOs. Now, where I work, that's impossible because if you're not using Windows and other Microsoft products by default and without consideration for alternatives, you're an impure heathen and a heretic. Now, more than ever, the fear and loathing of Apple and their computers is beyond ridiculous. Stupid, even. The Newsweek article linked above is a surprisingly balanced and fair-minded article, given the treatment of Apple by the business press in the past. It would be good if people in my office would read that article without prejudices, but, well, umm, yeah.
Mac Consumer Market Share Breaks 20%
Well, this ought to give the Microsoft cultists seizures. According to Piper Jaffray's chief Apple analyst, the Mac's market share in the consumer space is now at 21% in the US and 10% world-wide. Almost every day, I'm surrounded by people who consider using any non-Microsoft product is heresy. Much to their chagrin, I was able to get Safari to our list of supported browsers. If they had their way, we would support only Internet Explorer and leave any Mac or Linux user to basically screw themselves. Such closed minds are a wonderful thing to waste and have no place in our line of work.
Switchin’ Back
I've been doing a fair bit of thinking lately, and perhaps my previous post about Windows users was a bit hasty. You see, Windows does have 90% of the market. That must mean they're doing something right. There's no way they would have gotten that market share without being the best platform.
Well, the point is, I'm switching back to Windows and to make sure the switch back is done right, I'm promising not to install any non-Microsoft software if there's a Microsoft product in that space. In fact, here's what I'll be replacing my Apple, Adobe, RealMac software library with:
- Windows Vista Ultimate (If you think about it, $400 is a steal)
- Office 2007 Ultimate
- the Expression Suite
- Internet Explorer
- Windows Media Player
- Zune (yes, screw the iPod)
Market share doesn't lie. Open standards don't mean jack. Let Microsoft define the standard. Interoperability doesn't matter either. Think about it. If you're not using Windows, you're probably just some heretical zealot trying to brainwash other people into using something twice as expensive and proprietary with no software options.
Safari/WebKit The First To 100/100
Well, well, well.... Good ol' "proprietary" Apple will have the first production browser with a perfect score on the Acid3 test, it seems. Such devotion to supporting open standards is exactly what the market needs. One thing to note is the score of the IE8 beta, which Microsoft is claiming will be standards-compliant. Situation normal there.
I forwarded this info and in return, a Microsoft zombie sent me three links with snapshots in time reports of browser market share. Only someone so hopelessly closed-minded could think that an appropriate reply, suggesting that sheer numbers makes open standards support or being the first to nail it is unimportant. The thing is, besides offering better standards support, Gecko (Firefox, etc.) and WebKit (Safari) are taking marketshare away from Internet Explorer. Given Microsoft's history of sitting on IE and doing nothing to benefit the Web-using community through improved interfaces or standards support until Firefox started taking market share from them, IE losing share is good for ALL of us, even those who can't function outside of an all-Microsoft environment, much less comprehend how anyone can not devote themselves fully to Microsoft's ecosystem, as polluted as it is.
