The big tech news yesterday was of course the joint press conference in London by Apple and EMI. Below links cover that stunning news:
A couple of years ago I played with something called Camel Bones.
It is a Cocoa framework with a perl module an Xcode template.
It allow a programmer to use perl to write desktop Cocoa application for Mac OSX
It was fun, although the application built are not the fastest in the world.
I was thinking of that when I read this blog article about dynamic language to write Mac OSX desktop application. I’m particularly looking forward to Objective-C 2.0 and it’s new garbage collector.
That will make a big change, as I remember that when writing a Cocoa application with objective-C, a programmer has to handle manually memory allocation and de-allocation.
I don’t entirely agree with Scott Stevenson when he says that Obj-C 2.0 will obviate the need of using a dynamic language to write Mac OSX application: One of the reason of doing so is to give practitioner of a popular scripting language an entry point to Mac OSX programming. Also it facilitates cross-platform reusability.
If you’ve written a perl application with CLI on Solaris, you can make it a GUI application on Mac OSX by adding a GUI layer using Camel Bone or using TK to get it work on Linux. Additionally, outside Mac OSX, Obj-C hasn’t got a huge user base as perl and python have.
These bridged applications won’t be as fast and as integrated to Mac OSX as a native Objc-C application though.
Using Dynamic Scripting Languages for Mac OS X Application Development: “
There’s been a lot of interesting discussion over the last week regarding the use of dynamic scripting languages for programming desktop applications. Here are a few links that caught my eye. “
(Via Daring Fireball.)
Years (2 or 3?) ago, I was always struggling for space on my hard drive.
Although today I haven’t go this problem on my desktop anymore. It still an issue on the laptops. One of the tool that I found helpful at that time, was a shareware from the Omni group, called omnidisksweeper.
It calculates the space taken by files and directories and then sort the results in the familiar NeXT-ish hierarchical multi-columns view that so pervasive in Mac OS X. If you’ve your shareware you can sweep entire files and directories at the push of a button. The premise being that the system and third party software create lots of temporary huge files that are not easily visible unless you know what you’re looking for.
Grand Perspective is a software that goes further in helping you figure out where your disk space is going by constructing a two-dimensional map of the content of your hard-drive. Not only it gives you an at a glance view of the entire data usage but it’s also not ugly to see 
And it’s free and open source.
I was looking for the Macintosh Human Interface Guideline on Amazon and found this gem (Newton Interface Guidelines)
Though it’s not available anymore, I’d be curious to know how valid it is when developing applications for nowadays PDAs.
Maybe one of the reason the iPhone will be closed to third parties it’s because Apple prefer to have enough experience in developing their own software, before writing an application design guide and open the handheld to external developers.
I think the environment in which the iPhone will evolve is so different than Newton’s.
Now, everything is connected, worms, malware and phishing also spread on mobile devices, on IM. PDA are now expected to be multimedia player while connectivity comes into multiple wireless flavours, all eager to drain the battery’s life (it was an excellent idea to put 2 batteries in the iPhone)
Also cautious users want snappy interface and the shortest time to completion for whatever they want to do because each second spent messing with the UI is another second of exposure to thieves in public transports.
That’s a challenge.
I think it’s a wise decision for the iPhone to starts its life closed to third parties software.
Interesting article about software design methodology: design for one or two typical users, don’t try to satisfy all users.
It makes sense to me it’s a better to make one user happy than discontent everyone.
The trick I suppose is to correctly profile this one typical user.
I think it does apply to any product, not only software.
I wonder how Apple do identify THE user and what is their typical user’s profile (called ‘persona’ in the article linked above). I ask that because I like so much some of their product I feel like they were designed for me alone
Although I like technology It very rarely translates into an acquisition: I still don’t have a portable media player.
It’s only when I need it enough and like it a lot both inside and outside and feel like it was made for me that I may consider a purchase action (that can take weeks or months).
One of the Nokia E-series smart-phone is about to land in the purchase action and the Nintendo Wii has left the parkway for the runway, but I don’t how long is the flight
The other interesting thing is there seems to be a relationship between money earned by product sold and a user’s satisfaction.
It might sound like stating the obvious but not to all company seem to get it.
Apple and Nintendo are making huge amount of money for each product they sell compared to their respective competitor (Sony loses money for each console sold, PC market is sluggish with a industry’s growth far below Apple’s)
Why?
I bet they are a lot of users of Apple and Nintendo who feel like their acquisition was designed for them. It makes them happy and make them in better disposition to invest more into the product (service and software, new versions).
(an interesting comparative read is the “after the honeymoon” reviews for the Wii and for the PS3 at Ars Technica: guess which one of the review feels more positive and transpire reviewer’s happiness at using the product?)
Typically when designing for a subset of the users population, you’ll reach a smaller number of people.
I think that’s called a niche market, but who cares as long as both side of the transaction are happy: Product maker earns money (typically the margin are higher) and the user (notice, I didn’t say consumer) is happy, a perfect virtuous circle.
Now that’s obviously not true for the iPod whose market share cannot really be called a niche.
I think, in addition of an excellent user profiling, I suspect there is the fashion effect. At least here in the UK, I’m sure most people who buy an iPod do so because it’s fashionable, not because they studied what media players are available and selected the iPod because it’s the ONE (by the way, this is how I bought my first mac in 1996, after months of study of what’s in offer by the computer industry at that time).
That said, some of them will find the iPod is not what they wanted, while other will really like it and makes them happy of their purchase. They will explore the possibly of iTunes (software) , buy more songs on iTunes Store (service) and possibly look into other Apple products: the Halo effect.
Transforming a normally niche (i.e: small market share, high margin) product into a mass-consumption product is probably the dream of any company.
Apple has now made it, Nintendo’s got the idea and works on it and Nokia made it long time ago.
The others?
Just too busy milking as many as possible uninformed or misinformed consumers (notice, I didn’t say users) ’till the last drop while trying to destroy each other.
I’m not saying the mentioned brands don’t do that, I’m saying that’s it’s not their main focus and they don’t get carried away by the necessity of a capitalist world.
Disclaimer: I’ve mentioned Apple, Nintendo and Nokia because they made products that I’m happy with, I fully understand that people can be happy with product from other make, we are all different after all It just turns out that, in my opinion, these three are coincidentally particularly good at designing product with specific profile of user in mind, which explains why they excel in their niche(s).
One last message to gadget makers:
If you are desperate to get me buy your product, read my mind (but don’t listen to me) and design it just for ME, then may be I will.
All the fuss around the iPhone has probably triggered a wave of nostalgia about the Apple device that created the PDA market.
from the digg summary:
“We were all wowed by the iPhone last week, but back in 1993 Apple introduced a revolutionary product called Newton that defined the PDA industry. Watch this Newton “getting started” video from 1993 and wonder why your 2006 PDA can’t do half the things Newton revolutionized fourteen years ago!”
Now that Apple unveiled the real “thing“, This website shows a photo gallery of some fake designs that appeared on the web when the “thing” was still a crazy recurring rumour.
I’ve tried Adobe Lightroom beta 2 on my iBook G4 last year and found the software interesting. A promising interface, but a bit rough feature-wise and it was darn slow (the 512MB of RAM and 4200RPM hard drive were really hurting)
Recently I’ve started using Adobe Lightroom beta 4 on my new better spec-ed MacBook and the experience so far is very good, good enough for me to make it my main tool for working with my photos.
These 6 shots in the film strip were the last pictures I took in 2006. They were tests shots to prepare for the midnight firework. Some of them turned out quite nicely though.
You may already know about this robot vacuum cleaner, the roomba.
You may already know how hackable it is and that an entire community has appeared around it.
You are not impressed anymore by all the hacks that involve Apple Sudden Motion Sensor.
Now, a new step has been reached: Tilt and roll your MacBook to control your Roomba.
It uses Bluetooth, the MacBook SMS and a perl script.
Details here.
Apple was the first to introduce digital camera (Quicktake) and PDA (Newton) to a mass audience long time before then became product of mass consumption which is why they commercially failed(can we call it The Tucker syndrome? or maybe the NeXT syndrome for the geekier of you). These products are probably the tip of an iceberg, the hidden part being all of the prototypes that they didn’t put into production like the ones described in this article by Apple Gazette (also read the comments for more):
Apple Prototypes: 5 Products We Never Saw by Apple Gazette
One can wonder what else they are concocting in their labs now given the evolution of Apple R&D budget:
