Woz’s editorial comment on Gray Powell, the engineer who left the iPhone prototype in the bar. Personally, I think it would be genius for Steve Jobs to invite Gray Powell up on stage for the phone rollout…
– Dave
From Channel 9, this is the first of 3 videos introducing Microsoft’s upcoming “iPhone Killer”. Very interesting, well worth the watching, especially for iPhone developers…
– Dave
HP recently posted the video below on their Voodoo Blog. To me, the video shows several things.
First and foremost, the video highlights the ubiquity of Flash on the web. As far as I know, Apple still has no plans to support Flash on iPad. I’ve always heard that this was due to bugginess in Flash, as well as Flash’s cost in battery life. On the Mac, battery life is less of an issue, and the Flash code is isolated from the main browser code. If Flash crashes, the browser notifies you of the crash and then restarts Flash. Apparently, either this is not possible in the iPhone OS browser, or the battery cost of Flash is just too great. The video points out that tablets like HP’s Slate are based on Windows 7 and get Flash support by default as part of the overall Windows 7 experience.
The video also highlights the basic differences between Apple and Windows 7 vendors like HP and Dell in their approach to the tablet market. As they did with smart phones, Microsoft’s partners are working with a scaled down version of the desktop operating system. A process or application you run on your desktop has at least a chance of working on the tablet. Certainly, the browser experience will be nearly identical. Apple’s core approach is different, as different as the toolboxes offered by Mac OS X and iPhone OS. The SDKs for both are quite similar, but there are a vast sea of differences. Clearly, there’s no simple way to port an application from one platform to the other.
The video also shows off the HP device, gives it a real chance to shine. And, in my opinion, this is where Apple really comes out ahead. HP’s Slate is thick and chunky. The iPad is graceful, subtle, elegant. And thin.
All that said, I think this is going to be a very interesting new phase in the evolution of computing. Will Apple force Flash to change or, perhaps, open the door so a Flash competitor can enter the market? Or will the ubiquity of Flash eventually force Apple to allow Flash to play under iPhone OS. Interesting, interesting times!
– Dave
Yesterday was a huge day. Tons of activity, conversations with friends and colleagues about the iPad. SO much discussion. There are definitely flaws in the design. This post captures the biggest of them, I think:
http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2010/01/8-things-that-suck-about-the-ipad/
But though this post does point out a number of things that Apple could improve on (and I suspect they will, over time), bottom line, I think the post misses the bigger picture. Apple has created something new and incredibly useful. Right out of the gate, I can see two markets where the iPad can really shine.
The most obvious of these is the eBook market. Great for me, the avid reader, great for me, the writer, great for Apple’s shareholders. Though I am a big fan of the Kindle (do almost all my reading on one), the iPad definitely makes my Kindle look old and dingy. There has been an explosion of eBook readers over the past year, and the iPad just leaps over all of them, much as the iPhone did over its smartphone competitors. And books are typically more expensive than CDs (those round shiny things from the old days), so more revenue for Apple, less dead trees. And as an author, Apple gives me a much more efficient path to the marketplace. Win, Win, Win.
The less obvious, but no less important marketplace for the iPad is in health care. The iPad has an important role to play, putting the latest patient data in the hands of their doctors and nurses, ensuring that a patient’s history and current drug regimen is front and center. The iPad can add intelligence and rigor to that process, ensuring that a doctor doesn’t forget about a particularly subtle condition noted several years ago, or about a newly released drug interaction warning. This market is particularly underserved right now, and the iPad is stepping in at the perfect moment. The fact that it shares an OS with the iPhone and iPod touch means a wide range of choices for health care professionals.
There are many markets where the iPad will change the status quo. To me, focusing on perceived shortcomings of a device that has not even arrived is incredibly short-sighted. The iPad is a leap forward, no doubt in my mind. And I can’t wait to get my hands on one.
– Dave
This is beyond awesome. I SO want to do this to my car. From the folks at National Instruments’ Waterloo Labs. Check out their web site for plans, schematics and source code. Buh-rilliant!!!
– Dave
Thanks to Allen for this one:
A French Mac web site, Mac4Ever.com, reports that a free Swiss traffic info app, mogoRoad (not available in US App Store), grabs your phone number and sends it to a remote collecting database. Some time soon after users ran the app, they received a telemarketing phone call.
A big deal is being made out of the fact that an app gained access to the user’s phone number “with only a single line of code”. Let’s be clear here. The fact that an app can easily retrieve your phone number is a cause for celebration. What a tremendous platform we work on. Apple puts an incredible amount of power in the hands of its developers who use that power to create great apps. Would you have Apple hamstring the SDK so you could not access the Address Book? Ridiculous.
In my opinion, developers who use their apps for evil should lose their ability to bring their apps to the App Store. That’s the solution. Please stop complaining about this. The iPhone SDK is a remarkable achievement, on a par with the original Mac Toolbox. I love the fact that I can so easily do so much with so little code…
– Dave
Yesterday I came back from a week at the beach and found my copy of Snow Leopard waiting. I have an up-to-date Time Machine backup, so I figured I’d dive right in. The upgrade was the easiest OS upgrade I’ve ever experienced. It took an hour, but required no babysitting. Really quite impressive.
Once I was booted in Snow Leopard, there were a few things that required my attention.
The first was Adobe Flash. I read this article, which says that the Snow Leopard upgrade replaces the current version of Flash with a previous version that is vulnerable to a variety of attacks. No problem there. Once you finish your Snow Leopard install, go to the Flash site and download/install the latest version of Flash Player.
Next up is for developers. You’ll need a new version of the Mac and iPhone SDK for Snow Leopard. In the past, this has always been an all-in-one upgrade. For the moment, Apple has split Xcode and the SDK into two separate downloads. And, as far as I can tell, there’s no single page containing both downloads. Argh.
Go to http://developer.apple.com to download the SDK. As usual, you’ll need to first select the dev center you are interested in, then login. Once logged in, scroll down to the downloads area and download the SDK of choice.
Next, go to http://connect.apple.com to download the Xcode package. Login, click the Downloads link, scroll down to Xcode 3.2 and download/install. I don’t believe the order matters. I installed the SDK first, then Xcode and everything worked fine. Note that you can pull Xcode off the Snow Leopard install DVD (see the Optional Installs folder – thanks for the pointer, @akulbe), but if you do have net access, I’d always go for the download, since it ensures that you’ll always get the latest version.
The third item I needed to deal with came up when I double-clicked on a .wmv file. I got the message:
“quicktime player must be installed to run this application”
Turns out I have Flip4Mac installed to play my .wmv files. I went here and downloaded the latest version. Installed, and the .wmv file now opened in the gorgeous new QuickTime Player. Brilliant. Note that you don’t necessarily need Flip4Mac if all you want to do is play .wmv files. You can just use “Get Info” and associate .wmv with the QuickTime Player. Thanks to @mikejuergens for that suggestion.
Overall, an incredibly easy upgrade experience. Now to go find my new printer drivers. 
– Dave
Interesting article, sent over by David Sobsey, about the impact the iPhone and other smart phones are having on network traffic load and service reliability. In a nutshell, iPhones use about 10 times the network capacity of more traditional cell phones and this is placing more of a demand on AT&T’s network than it can meet, resulting in spotty service and dropped calls.
Ultimately, this problem will go away as we upgrade our infrastructure, but that will take time. The US is well behind many countries in Asia and Europe in both cell technology and broadband speed. You might have seen a series of articles about a week ago claiming that the US is 15 years behind South Korea in broadband. This story from eWeek tells the story well.
– Dave
This one is via Kevin Anderson. The iPhone Stencil Kit lets you quickly sketch out iPhone UI prototypes:
Comes with UI Stencil, Zebra mechanical pencil, printable template, stickers. From designcommission.com…
– Dave
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