. .

Macintosh

Time is Also Money

April 8, 2010 7:27:11.412

Phillip Greenspun notes that a "vanilla pc (netbook) can be had for the same price as the lowest end iPad, and has a lot more in the capability department:

During a discussion today about potential iPad sales, a friend and I got distracted by reflecting on the tremendous value delivered by a vanilla PC. Over on the Dell Web site right now, a basic 15″ laptop costs $499 and includes 320 GB of hard drive and 3 GB of RAM

However, it also has a lot more in the "personal administration" department. Plenty of my daughter's friends have PCs, bought instead of Macs for price reasons. These are all non tech folks; they are also constantly beset by problems - printers that don't work, virus infections, and then lost data due to their (mostly inept) attempts at cleanup.

This is where the phrase "time is money" comes to mind, and it's where I part company with people like Cory Doctorow who decry the iPad for not being a hackable device. Here's the thing: most people neither want or need a hackable device. What they want is a device that disappears into the background and lets them get work done. Most Apple products achieve that far, far better than their market competition

Does that mean that the iPad will win? No, because - like the PC space - price does matter. I stopped worrying about price at the point where I realized that my time had more value, but there are people for whom the differential is far more significant. I get that; I'm just (happily) not in that camp anymore

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posted by James Robertson

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marketing

Brands are Boring?

April 8, 2010 7:34:59.632

Spotted in Doc Searls Weblog

Meanwhile, lots of social media types are talking about brands and branding as if these were new and hip things. They're not. They're heavy and old. We need to move on, folks. Think of something human instead.

I'm not sure what else Doc has in mind. A brand is nothing more than a way to remember a product or service; it's shorthand. People like shorthand; it's easier to say "I like Bud" than it is to say "I like that beer you can get at the market on 23rd".

You need more than just branding, and I think that's where Doc is going - but you aren't going to see it disappear.

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Scaling Seaside in the Cloud

April 8, 2010 7:40:48.702

Ian Prince notes that making a scalable Seaside app on Amazon's cloud just got a whole lot easier:

It just got a lot easier to implement load balanced and fault tolerant Seaside servers on Amazon EC2 as sticky sessions have just been announced as a feature of Elastic Load Balancing.

Using VisualWorks or ObjectStudio, you can get to that scale pretty easily using the Cloudfork code in the public store repository.

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posted by James Robertson

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sports

A Good Start for NY

April 8, 2010 7:58:09.532

The good news seems to be that the pitching is holding up - as the Yankees took 2 of 3 from the Red Sox. If the pen does this well all season, the Yankees will definitely make the playoffs again.

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Numeric Collections: Video

April 8, 2010 9:04:25.172

Today's screencast looks at a small package of numerics added to the collection classes.

You can download the video directly here. If you like this kind of video, why not subscribe to "Smalltalk Daily"?

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Updating my Build Scripts

April 8, 2010 9:18:35.872

I have gone back to working on BottomFeeder a bit - I haven't pushed a 7.7 based release yet, and I figured I really ought to do that. So - I had to look at my build script, as there were a couple of interesting problems cropping up:

  • When my build started up, it still thought it was filing in the script
  • When my build started up, it was complaining about some missing source files

Neither is a good thing in the context of a runtime application :) So, I started pondering those, and redid the last part of my script, like this:


Parcel searchPathModel value: (List with: (PortableFilename named: '.')).
SourceFileManager default discardSources.

"Now save the image such that this file doesn't get looked for at startup"
[ObjectMemory permSaveAs: 'bottomFeeder' thenQuit: false] fork.
[(Delay forSeconds: 45) wait.
RuntimeSystem isRuntime ifFalse: [ObjectMemory quit]] fork

The first two lines clear the parcel search path (this is in case a VW user installs BottomFeeder - I don't need the app looking up parcels there). The second line simply discards all source pointer lookups, so that the system doesn't fuss about that at startup.

The next bit is trickier, but it's just a simpler version of what RuntimePackager does - Fork a process to save the image, and another to quit the current image. That way, the image that starts up doesn't immediately quit, and also doesn't try to save itself, or attempt to go find the filein. I've still got a lingering timing issue with saving files on quit, but that's unrelated to build stuff - once I get that sorted, I'll push a new release out.

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posted by James Robertson

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BottomFeeder

Coming Improvements

April 8, 2010 13:10:07.229

I've been remiss in getting BottomFeeder updated (as I wrote about earlier today) - so this morning and afternoon I've been taking a real run at it. In the 7.6 based build, there were interesting rendering issues on the OS X platform - text would just disappear from the browser window. That had something to do with the VM, I think, since it's gone in the 7.7 build (and there certainly haven't been any changes to the WithStyle component).

Additionally, things just feel more responsive. Now, starting in the last release, there was some kind of odd save bug - Bf saves the position of the window on save, and that wasn't happening on the save before exiting - instead, the file holding that information was getting truncated. I've been looking at that issue today, and discovered exactly the sort of things you expect to find in old code - stuff that makes you ask yourself "Did I really write this crap?"

Here's what I mean. In the UI, there's a method called #saveAll, that invokes the save behavior that occurs after every update (assuming that setting is toggled on). However, the save on exit was using a different code path. Why, I have no idea, but I vaguely recall having various issues with proper termination a few years ago. be that as it may, I just changed the code to all use the same exit path, and now, it seems to be working properly.

Since I've been playing a lot of "Dragon Age: Origins " lately, I'm tempted to say "Thank the Maker" :) Either way, I think I'm closing in on a stable build.

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posted by James Robertson

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stupidity

Stop me Before I Browse Again

April 8, 2010 14:39:24.753

It would be nice if the people running telecoms had the slightest idea what people use the internet for. Here's Verizon's clueless leader:

But when we now go after the very, very high users, the ones who camp on the network all day long every day doing things that—who knows what they're doing - But those are the people we will throttle and we will find them and we will charge them something else

Awesome. Maybe he wants FIOS to just come with Pine and Lynx and be done with it?

posted by James Robertson

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gadgets

Lockdown

April 8, 2010 22:24:06.320

It looks like Apple is really closing off development choices for the next gen OS for the iPhone and iPad - John Gruber quotes the new developer agreement:

Applications may only use Documented APIs in the manner prescribed by Apple and must not use or call any private APIs. Applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine, and only code written in C, C++, and Objective-C may compile and directly link against the Documented APIs (e.g., Applications that link to Documented APIs through an intermediary translation or compatibility layer or tool are prohibited

That certainly puts John McIntosh in an awkward position.

I guess they really, really want to completely control the user experience...

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posted by James Robertson

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news

Crowd Sourcing in Math?

April 9, 2010 9:50:50.997

Now this is interesting - a professor decides that an easier proof to a mathematical problem exists, but thus far, it's just beyond his grasp. What does he do? He posts on it, and invites comments. Over the course of a year, enough knowledgeable and interested people collaborate in the comments that he gets his simpler proof.

Maybe crowd sourcing isn't just for flash mobs...

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posted by James Robertson

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development

Away from Threads

April 9, 2010 10:02:57.462

I've always thought that multiple processes scaled better than multiple threads, and it looks like Chrome has inspired Apple to think the same thing:

WebKit2, which now runs browser elements as separate processes, much like Google Chrome. Actually, Apple's devs say it goes a little farther than Chrome, since the process model is built into the foundation so other non-Safari clients can use it.

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Using File Dialogs: Video

April 9, 2010 10:54:11.702

Today's screencast looks at File Dialogs in Smalltalk - both native and emulated.

You can download the video directly here. If you like this kind of video, why not subscribe to "Smalltalk Daily"?

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Smalltalk in Stuttgart

April 9, 2010 13:33:03.743

Instantiations is having a Smalltalk event in Stuttgart, Germany this June:

Join us in Stuttgart, Germany on Tuesday, June 8th, 2010 for a full day of discussion and learning on VA Smalltalk.This is a free event, but we ask that you please pre-register at the Registration Site so we know that you are coming.

posted by James Robertson

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culture

Retail, or Third Place?

April 9, 2010 23:14:44.394

Clay Shirky has an interesting post up on some absurd claims being made by the ABA (American Booksellers) - to wit, that lower book prices at online retailers like Amazon are somehow leading to the death of reading. Shirky starts from there, but goes on to the larger problems that a lot of street level retail outlets are developing - it's just easier to buy online. Where does that leave, say, bookstores? Maybe a future as a "third place":

The core idea is to appeal to that small subset of customers who think of bookstores as their “third place”, alongside home and work. These people care about the store’s existence in physical (and therefore social) space; the goal would be to generate enough revenue from them to make the difference between red and black ink, and to make the new bargain not just acceptable but desirable for all parties. A small collection of patron saints who helped keep a local bookstore open could be cheaply smothered in appreciation by the culture they help support.

As Shirky points out though, there's no assurance that such a model will work; there may not be enough money in it. I think Shirky is correct that retail is about to take a huge beating as people do more and more shopping online. Ultimately, I think bars, coffee shops, and restaurants will be the surviving "third place" - but go ahead and read his piece.

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posted by James Robertson

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itNews

Adobe's Evangelist isn't Happy

April 9, 2010 23:33:37.824

I think you could say that Adobe's Flash evangelist, Lee Brimelow, is not happy with the new iPhone OS terms of service.

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posted by James Robertson

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management

Apple's Language Restrictions

April 10, 2010 11:09:14.400

The more I think about it, the more Apple's new policy for the iPhone/iPad seems like BS. Consider their rationale for limiting you to the C language family (plus Javascript); they claim it's so that their new multi-tasking layer can properly ajudicate things. As one of my colleagues on the Smalltalk IRC channel pointed out:

if you were going to require something for multitasking, it'd be more of the form - Applications must implement the threadsThatNeedToRunInBackgroundIfYouWereToSuspendMeRightNow() callback. Any that do not, will not be able to benefit from multitasking.

So no, it's not about multi-tasking per se. I don't think it's strictly about controlling the development tools, although that is very Apple-like. No, I think that Adobe's product eveangelist, Lee Brimelow, is probably right with his veiled assertions - this is a shot directly at Adobe and Flash.

Had Apple specifically banned Flash, they might have generated some kind of lawsuit. THis policy smacks of "let's ask the lawyers how to kill Flash and get away with it". Here's what I'd like to know: this really doesn't strike me as a business decision. Think about it - why does Apple care what tools you use to create iPhone/iPad apps, if they all promote the device and the store? They already control the retail end, so they can (post hoc, if necessary) yank misbehaving apps.

No, I think this is all about Jobs. He has developed a deep antipathy to Adobe, and this is the latest step in how that's coming out.

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posted by James Robertson

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web

Geeks Vs. Everyone Else

April 10, 2010 12:38:04.685

I think Dare Obasanjo nails it in discussing the new official Twitter mobile clients:

As an end user and someone who works on web platforms, none of this is really surprising. Geeks consider having to wade through half a dozen Twitter clients before finding one that works for them a feature even though paradox of choice means that most people are actually happier with less choices not more. This is made worse by the fact that in the mobile world, this may mean paying for multiple apps until you find one that you’re happy with.

The The Paradox of Choice thing is real - there's actual research on it.

This move by Twitter is a rational business response to that dilemma - given a plethora of choices, most people will bail rather than wae their way through client after client, looking for the best one. If instead, the first hit in the app store (et. al.) is "The Official Twitter Client", that will make most people happy, and end their search.

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posted by James Robertson

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management

A Bridge Too Far

April 10, 2010 20:56:19.068

I wrote about the new Apple TOS stuff earlier today; since then, things have gone nuts. Greg Slepak actually got a response from Jobs, and sure enough, it looks like the policy is his idea. You can get the conversation via Mashable; it looks like Slepak's site is overwhelmed right now.

What Jobs isn't grasping is that he's pissing off a huge segment of the developer community that would happily write apps for his platform. Will that matter in the long term?

Honestly, I don't know, but going from a positive to a negative view within the larger development community can't help them. The flip side of Jobs' innate ability to bring focus seems to be an inability to climb down from ridiculous positions. It would only help him - and Apple - to do a climb down. I seriously doubt he'll do it though. Before this, his "anti-Flash" stance was just that - and it didn't bring any collateral damage to the party. What he's just done is set off a hand grenade in a crowded room, when he had been content to use a sniper rifle.

Consider a small example - the Squeak port to the iPhone. Absent this policy a number of Smalltalk developers would likely have picked that work up and created apps, "just for fun". Now? They just won't bother - or, more likely, someone will create a "Squeak for Android" package, and all of the energy will go there.

Now, that's admittedly a small set of developers in the grand scheme of things. But what about the legions of, say, Java developers? Or Ruby developers? Does Apple really want to send all of them over to Android? That's where inertia will send them. It may be enough to make Android a bigger player, it may not. What's clear to me is that it gives Google an opening - whether they can exploit that opening is something else again.

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posted by James Robertson

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music

iTunes in 1956

April 11, 2010 11:12:20.382

Not exactly, but this retro tech is kind of cool - an in dash record (vinyl) player.

posted by James Robertson

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gadgets

More on the New Apple Rules

April 11, 2010 19:47:59.898

Wow, Adobe's evangelist, Lee Brimelow, is really unhappy:

Me deciding not to give money to Apple is not going to do anything to their bottom line. But this is equivalent to me walking into Macy’s to buy a new wallet and the salesperson spits in my face. Chances are I won’t be buying my wallets at Macy’s anymore, no matter how much I like them.

Meanwhile, I have to differ with John Gruber's take on Kindle on Mac:

Consider, for one example, Amazon’s Kindle clients for iPhone OS and Mac OS X. The iPhone OS Kindle app is excellent, a worthy rival in terms of experience to Apple’s own iBooks. The Mac Kindle app is a turd that doesn’t look, feel, or behave like a real Mac app.

I just asked my wife, who's used both, and she didn't say anything like that. In fact, her initial take is that the Mac version is easier to use. Gruber is the classic tech weenie who doesn't ever talk to actual users, but is convinced that he knows what they think.

hat tip Rob Fahrni

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Concentrated Goodness, Part 2 (Audio)

April 11, 2010 20:27:30.713

Here's part two of our conversation with Dave Buck, about upgrading from older revs of VisualWorks to the latest. It picks up right where we left off; if you haven't listened to part 1, go here.

To listen now, you can either download the mp3 edition, or the AAC edition. The AAC edition comes with chapter markers. You can subscribe to either edition of the podcast directly in iTunes; just search for Smalltalk and look in the Podcast results. You can subscribe to the mp3 edition directly using this feed, or the AAC edition using this feed using any podcatching software.

To listen immediately, use the player below:

If you like the music we use, please visit Josh Woodward's site. We use the song Effortless for our intro/outro music. I'm sure he'd appreciate your support!

If you have feedback, send it to smalltalkpodcasts@cincom.com - or visit us on Facebook or Ning - you can vote for the Podcast Alley, and subscribe on iTunes. If you enjoy the podcast, pass the word - we would love to have more people hear about Smalltalk!

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Building a VisualWorks Menu: Video

April 12, 2010 8:06:44.870

Today's screencast looks at adding a menu to a VisualWorks UI, using the Menu builder tool. There's also a way to create a menu programmatically; that's a separate topic, covered in this screencast. If you're looking for a particular topic, you can find it the same way I just looked that up - try the Media Search application on our site.

You can download the video directly here. If you like this kind of video, why not subscribe to "Smalltalk Daily"?

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posted by James Robertson

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gadgets

Another Take on the Apple/Adobe Thing

April 12, 2010 8:45:04.380

I like the dispassionate take that Jean-Louis Gassee has on the Apple/Adobe thing, and - when I sat back and thought about it - this made a ton of sense to me:

Who, in his right mind, expects Steve Jobs to let Adobe (and other) cross-platform application development tools control his (I mean the iPhone OS) future? Cross-platform tools dangle the old “write once, run everywhere” promise. But, by being cross-platform, they don’t use, they erase “uncommon” features. To Apple, this is anathema as it wants apps developers to use, to promote its differentiation.

He goes on to say that allowing cross platform tools leads to other people winning the platform battle and low margins. While I'm not so sure of that (it depends on how much value those tools bring to the party), I do get the baseline worry about having outside tools effectively control progression.

Years ago, back in the VW 2.x and VW 3.x era, the source control tool of choice for Smalltalk (across multiple dialects for a time) was Envy. It was available for VW, for Visual Smalltalk, and for IBM Smalltalk. What both Digitalk and ParcPlace noticed was that customers were mostly oblivious to vendor upgrades; they waited until a new version of Envy was available. The process of "Envy-izing" VW or VS was involved and invasive, and both vendors let OTI do it. Eventually, Digitalk decided that was a problem, and they shipped their product with a built in version control tool. After some initial angst from customers, the upgrade lag stopped. ParcPlace=Digitalk did the same thing (later) with Store, and again - after some initial angst - the customer base stopped lagging upgrades so much.

That's what Apple is worried about - say they allowed the new Flash cross compiler, and Flash ended up staying as the standard video system. Skip forward a bit, and Apple wants to ship OS 5 for the iPhone - but for reasons of their own (maybe they have a crush of other projects), Adobe can't get to updating the Flash project for, say, 6-9 months. The new release falls into dead air, and "everyone" stays on the old release. Apple gets pressure to keep supporting the old release, and things are generally slower.

So I understand where they are coming from. That doesn't mean I have to like it; but heck, it also doesn't mean that I (or anyone else, for that matter) has to write apps for the iPhone/iPad ecosystem. I said yesterday that this policy might be "a bridge too far" for Apple, but today? I'm not so sure.

There's a flip side danger for Apple though; it depends on how things play out. Consider:

Adobe has readily courted most other mobile OS designs and has ported Flash to Android, webOS and eventually Symbian and Windows Phone.

Right now, Apple is the clear leader in the mobile space, and they are helped (ironically) by Google's desire to get HTML5 (which, in part, will obviate Flash) as the standard for web content. But... what if these other devices end up, in the aggregate, winning? At that point, Apple ends up lagging, as too much content simply wouldn't work on the iPhone (but would on the other devices). If Google weren't pushing so hard on HTML5, I suspect Apple's chances in this battle would be a lot lower. As I write this, it looks like they'll win this battle.

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Smalltalk in Cologne

April 12, 2010 22:14:29.170

A GLASS workshop is planned for May 6th:

Norbert Hartl is putting on a GLASS workshop in Cologne on May 6th. Norbert talked about GLASS at the March 19th Smalltalk meeting in Cologne and there was enough interest in GLASS that he decided to put on a workshop dedicated to covering GLASS and GemStone/S in more detail.

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Smalltalk from Argentina

April 12, 2010 22:16:39.000

Videos from the Smalltalks 2009 conference in Argentina are online now at the FAST website.

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posted by James Robertson

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management

This Plan Took Two Years?

April 13, 2010 5:53:39.928

I'm trying to figure out how this revenue plan for Twitter took two years to come up with:

The advertising program, which Twitter calls Promoted Tweets, will show up when Twitter users search for keywords that the advertisers have bought to link to their ads. Later, Twitter plans to show promoted posts in the stream of Twitter posts, based on how relevant they might be to a particular user.

That's "AdWords for Twitter". I hope they didn't stay up late figuring it out.

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posted by James Robertson

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development

Objectivity 10 Released

April 13, 2010 5:59:44.078

The choices for database back ends to Smalltalk are pretty open - Objectivity just pushed a new release, and it's had Smalltalk bindings for years.

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posted by James Robertson

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PR

Even More Apple and Adobe

April 13, 2010 7:25:22.057

Simon Owens notes that Apple has been happy to let the PR war over the new TOS for the iPhone/iPad play out in the blogosphere - fed by direct email responses from Steve Jobs. Why would they do that?

Well, because the general public doesn't care that much, and the traditional tech media isn't paying that much attention, either. This keeps the battle where Apple would rather see it - in the tech blogosphere, amongst advocates. Unless the issue boils to the point that developers start leaving the platform (for, say, Android), any damage stays very, very limited this way.

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posted by James Robertson

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Macintosh

Fanboys Unbound

April 13, 2010 7:43:27.568

I have to wonder whether John Gruber has even heard of Firefox, much less ever run it. After all, it's a cross platform tool for multiple operating systems; it must suck, and I'm sure that no one uses it.

And yes, I did note the issue of 3rd party dependence yesterday, but I really don't think Apple had to pull out the nuke to swat this fly.

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Using a SAX Driver: Video

April 13, 2010 10:05:35.263

Today's screencast looks at creating an RSS feed with a Smalltalk SAX driver. If you're looking for a particular topic, you can find it with the Media Search application on our site.

Here's the script I used to create the RSS Feed - it's using the package FeedWriter from the public store), as per the screencast:


"Using a SAX Driver"
stream := ('rss1.xml' asFilename withEncoding: #'UTF-8') writeStream.
writer := RSS20_SAXWriter new output: stream.

"start the document"
writer prolog.
writer startRSS.
writer startChannel.
writer title: 'My RSS Feed'.
writer link: 'http://www.somesite.com'.
writer description: 'My RSS Feed'.

"Now write an item"
writer startItem.
writer title: 'Test Item'.
writer link: 'http://www.somesite.com/item1'.
writer description: 'test item1'.
writer pubDate: Timestamp now.
writer endItem.

"end the document"
writer endChannel.
writer endRSS.
stream close.


You can download the video directly here. If you like this kind of video, why not subscribe to "Smalltalk Daily"?

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posted by James Robertson

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itNews

Where Storage is Headed

April 13, 2010 10:34:54.713

The price is high ($4k), but wow - a 1 TB solid state drive. As prices drop, this should really help laptop and portable device battery life out.

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posted by James Robertson

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itNews

I'd like a Pony, Too

April 13, 2010 21:35:39.321

Steve Rubel asks for a Digital Pony from Apple:

Edelman Digital calls on Apple and all companies to support consumer choice to allow consumers to have the same experience they are accustomed to on the desktop. Where once mobile devices were not powerful enough to run rich media technologies, that’s no longer the case. Why ban Flash and WMVs yet support Quicktime and PDF two other standards. It makes no sense.

For good or ill, Apple has decided how they're going to play the game, and it's hardball. I just don't see a hand holding, kumbaya moment coming on between the various internet players.

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posted by James Robertson

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itNews

Business Via Lawsuit

April 14, 2010 6:48:50.254

IT World thinks that the next step in the "no iFlash for you" saga is a lawsuit. I wonder what ground they'll try to stand on?

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Twitter from Smalltalk: Video

April 14, 2010 8:30:12.293

Today's screencast looks at using Twitter from Smalltalk. If you're looking for a particular topic, you can find it with the Media Search application on our site.

Here's the script I used in the screencast after loading the Twitter


"create settings file"
settings := TwitterClient.Settings new.
settings username: 'TwitterScreenNameHere'.
settings password: 'TwitterPasswordHere'.
settings saveTo: 'twitter_settings.ini'.

"get an interface"
model := TwitterModel new.

"get friend updates"
latestUpdates := model getFriendsUpdates.

"get Follower updates"
latestFollowers := model getFollowersUpdates.

"get the current trends"
trends := model getCurrentTrends.
daily := model getDailyTrends.
weekly := model getWeeklyTrends.

"user query"
args := UserQueryArgs new.
args screen_name: 'jarober'.
model showUser: args.

"get direct messages"
args := StatusListArgs new.
args per_page: 100.
model getDirectMessagesFor: args.

"set status"
model setStatusTo: 'From VisualWorks during today''s screencast'.

You can download the video directly here. If you like this kind of video, why not subscribe to "Smalltalk Daily"?

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posted by James Robertson

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itNews

Flash End Run

April 14, 2010 9:08:00.638

Looks like there may be an end-run solution to the "no flash for you" problem that doesn't involve a client level (iPhone or iPad) solution - RipCode has a cloud based transcoder:

RipCode, Inc., the leader in transactional transcoding, announced today its newest product, the TransAct Transcoder V6 can intercept Adobe Flash-based file or live video requests and convert them to a container, video codec, and audio codec accepted by Apple Inc.’s new iPad all transparently to the end user device and without the need for any pre-transcoding or device-based client.

For that to work on the client, either back end services (like, say, hulu) would have to cooperate, or RipCode would have to build a client that did the redirection through their servers. Since the client would be fully native, it might be hard for Apple to reject it with a straight face (not that they've been stopped by that before). If sites that use flash did the work though, it would all come transparently through the browser.

I wonder whether Adobe will be talking to these guys?

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posted by James Robertson

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gadgets

iPad Shortage?

April 14, 2010 10:18:02.743

So is this an actual shortage of iPads, or the kind of clever rationing that Nintendo did with the Wii to make sure that demand was always kept on edge?

Although we have delivered more than 500,000 iPads during its first week, demand is far higher than we predicted and will likely continue to exceed our supply over the next several weeks as more people see and touch an iPad(TM). We have also taken a large number of pre-orders for iPad 3G models for delivery by the end of April.

Apple runs a pretty tight ship, as does Nintendo. I'm guessing that this is a carefully orchestrated marketing plan in action.

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development

Web Development Questions

April 14, 2010 12:56:07.993

I ran across this screencast (long, but worth watching) comparing and contrasting various web development tools - starting from the premise that UI (including front end web development) really, really needs to be interactive and iterative.

I thought it might be useful to take his two test cases - "Hello World" and "Time Tracker" and do them in WebVelocity - a tool that's pretty much right up the alley this guy is looking at. So, tomorrow's screencast will be the "Hello World" app, and I'll have the time tracker example up on Friday or Monday.

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posted by James Robertson

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marketing

Bring the Crazy

April 14, 2010 13:01:05.219

Adam Singer notes that some social media marketing is based on utter insanity. Consider this, which he quotes in his post:

Vitrue analyzed Facebook data from its clients — with a combined 41 million fans — and found that most fans yielded an extra impression. That means a marketer posting twice a day can expect about 60 million impressions per month through the news feed.

They use that to value each "fan" at $3.60. You can read Adam's post to get the details - he does a good job of deconstructing the stupid, and there's no real need for me to do more than say "what he said".

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posted by James Robertson

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web

Very Enterprisey

April 14, 2010 14:05:56.814

Maybe Oracle needs to get fewer experts building out their website. I've tried to download their database (I've got valid OTN credentials) with the following results:

  • Chrome (Mac) - general failure to progress past login
  • Firefox (Mac) - initiated a download, saved 0 bytes
  • IE (Windows) - failed to login
  • Safari (Mac) failed to login

And people wonder why alternatives are so popular - at least you can try them out without first sacrificing a few goats...

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posted by James Robertson

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development

Just Say No to Waterfall Languages

April 14, 2010 21:41:57.185

I love this from Anders Janmyr:

Anyone, who has worked seriously with a modern dynamically typed language like Ruby or Smalltalk, know that they are more productive. Working with waterfall languages after working with agile languages is just painful. (Thanks to Andreas Ronge for coining the term Waterfall Language.)

Just give Smalltalk a try - make up your own mind :)

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posted by James Robertson

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gadgets

Not a Good Point

April 15, 2010 6:57:21.124

I have to part with Andres on this one:

Sigh. Just because things look cool, it doesn't make them good. For example, somehow it's a good thing to carry 1000 books in our pockets. What's the point, since we cannot meaningfully deal with even 5 serious books at a time? Moreover, 25% of Americans don't read books at all, and the rest reads about 1 book a month. Are Kindles or iPads worth so much just to read 1 book a month?

This all depends on where you sit. For instance, if you sit on a plane a lot, being able to carryv a lot of books on one small device is a huge win. Years ago, on a trip to Australia, I weighed myself down terribly with a bunch of books for the long flight. On another trip there, I bought a large book in Australia, and then had to figure out how to fit it in my bag for the flight home.

Now, does everyone travel regularly? No, but that's certainly one target for whom such devices make a lot of sense. We bought one recently, because my wife wanted to be able to read the same book upstairs and downstairs. Simple, you think - just cart the book, right? Except, with her knees, she doesn't like to carry stuff up and down. The iPad is small enough for her to handle more easily - and the Kindle app for the iPad and Mac synchs her reading position between the two devices quite nicely.

Ultimately, what makes or breaks any gadget is whether it makes the users happy. It's early days for the iPad, so we don't have a solid idea. Give it a few months, and I think we'll know a lot more - like whether the new restrictions on development irritate enough developers that the irritation flows down to users.

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posted by James Robertson

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development

Java Slide?

April 15, 2010 7:07:07.388

Interesting comments about Java from Josh Bloch, Google's Java architect - he says that there's no real direction, and licensing issues are starting to cause problems:

The problems around Java that Bloch mentioned largely predate Oracle's acquisition of Sun Microsystems, which oversaw the Java development process, and Bloch called on Oracle to step up as the prime steward of the language and associated platform software."Oracle should take the lead of Java once again," he said.

Over the last few years, Sun had been busy trying to find some way to make money - it doesn't surprise me that a money pit like Java development took a back seat. What will be interesting is Oracle's take. Oracle is profitable, and can afford to do whatever they want with Java - but just how much money do they want to shovel in that direction?

Oracle isn't without challenges of their own, with the rise of acceptable OSS databases - including MySQL, which they own (insofar as anyone can "own" a fully GPL product). I wouldn't be at all surprised to see continued drift, because I just don't know that Java's direction is all that crucial to Oracle's immediate future.

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Hello World in WebVelocity: Video

April 15, 2010 8:03:29.343

Today's screencast looks at a simple "Hello World" app in WebVelocity. If you're looking for a particular topic, you can find it with the Media Search application on our site.

You can download the video directly here. If you like this kind of video, why not subscribe to "Smalltalk Daily"?

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posted by James Robertson

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podcasting

Live at Noon Today

April 15, 2010 8:19:18.313

We'll be doing the podcast at noon eastern today, with Julian Fitzell. The topic? The ins and outs of cross dialect Smalltalk development - what to do, what not to do. Join us on justin.tv!

Update: We are running late, due to some timezone confusion...

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posted by James Robertson

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humor

Overheard

April 15, 2010 20:53:31.489

I liked this - I saw it float by in the Smalltalk IRC Channel:

"I have changed the terms of the deal.... pray I do not change it further" -- Darth Jobs

Heh

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Pharo Hits 1.0 MIlestone

April 15, 2010 21:09:28.584

The Pharo project has reached 1.0 - congratulations to them!

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posted by James Robertson

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development

Apple's New Policy has Consequences

April 15, 2010 22:24:13.839

Apple's new policy hit Scratch (a Squeak based instructional tool for teaching kids about programming. I saw an email from John McIntosh about it this morning, and now Lambda the Ultimate has noticed:

If the general idea wasn't enough to make you mad, or if you wrote it off as being purely an Apple/Adobe spat, this ought to cut a bit closer to LtU's heart... Apple removes Scratch from iPad/iPhone/iTouch. My wife has taught a couple of classes using Scratch with young kids, and to see the pride they feel at their creations is a marvelous thing. I think restricting their ability to share that feeling is really reprehensible. And the damage done to the programmers of tomorrow? Hard to say

Make chimes in on a similar note.

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posted by James Robertson

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social media

One Less Social Network

April 15, 2010 22:49:15.349

Looks like I won't be using Ning much longer:

Just a month after Gina Bianchini, co-founder of build-a-social-network service Ning, departed the company, it's cutting 40 percent of its staff and axing its free, ad-supported service.

I don't object, and I'm ok with the idea that they need to focus on a working business model - it's just that for my needs, facebook and YouTube work just fine :)

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posted by James Robertson

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