One of the big feature developments of the iPhone (and the iPod Touch, by extension) has been the use of iBooks as an e-book reader.  I find that reading long-form text on such a small screen to be difficult and tiring.  The iPad is much better suited for that kind of information consumption.  I live out of my RSS reader, and I’m constantly on Twitter, but I don’t think that the small form factor of the iPhone allows for the kind of experience most folks are looking for in an e-book reader.

I service computers for a living, and have done so for a long time.  I am also a barely-there programmer who needs a lot of hand-holding.  In both of those realms, there is a wealth of information stored in PDF format.  iBooks is a great PDF reader with pretty good performance for searching the contents of the stored documents, especially in such a small form factor.  I keep device user manuals, reference documentation, and occasionally download service manuals.  I don’t use iBooks for e-book reading at all.

I enjoy the fast access to information that would otherwise be unavailable or available with difficulty and frustration.  I can’t imagine myself being alone in this reality, and would love to hear from anyone with similar experiences.

Let’s review a recent addition to the app store: Cannabis.  The app allows you to find the nearest dispensary in locations where marijuana has been decriminalized.  Currently, Apple has rated this program 12+ for “infrequent/mild” drug use or references.  Personally, I think that telling a 13 year old where to find marijuana, even if he/she cannot purchase it, is probably not a fantastic idea.  Here’s the screenshot if you’re still not sure:

Let’s compare this rating to another app on the App Store: Eucalyptus.  This app, because you are able to access “obscene” texts from Project Gutenberg, has a rating of 17+.  Essentially, even if you’re a minor and reading a PHYSICAL book that Apple considers to be a 17+ bit of content, you have to get parental permission first before running this app on your iPod or iPhone. Even if the kid already has the printed version in his or her hands.  Here’s the screenshot:

Just thought I’d throw some more fuel on the fire that is raging about how apps are rated by Apple and why developers are pulling their goddamn hair out trying to find any sort of logic or consistency.  I don’t envy them at all.  Not one bit.

Let’s get this out of the way: Adobe’s software used to be pretty fucking cool.  And in some ways, it still is.  I have wet dreams about running Photoshop 3.0.5 on an 8-core Nehalem Mac Pro with 32GB of RAM filled with Velociraptor drives and Quadro cards because that would be the best photo editing setup EVER MADE.  PS3 was quite simply the best mix of features, size, speed, and stability of any version of Photoshop I can remember.  Since that point, it has only gotten worse.  And since that point, Adobe’s licensing bullshit has gotten astronomically worse.

I’ll say that I work in a direct customer-facing position where my job is to support my employer’s products.  Because of the nature of the job, and the customers, it has become incumbent on myself and my coworkers to support EVERY OTHER COMPANY’S PRODUCTS if is can so much as be imagined to interface with my employer’s products.  I have the utter joy of explaining to a customer why their $1500 Creative Suite 2 installation won’t work properly on an Intel Mac and why Adobe’s activation scheme, much like WGA, forces them to reactivate the software with a phone call whenever they pass gas.  This happens ALL THE TIME.

Lots of examples of Adobe’s bullshit can be had here, here, here, and especially here.

They have my ass in a corner when it comes to Flash.  I keep that shit updated because, as is evidenced by their Acrobat dev team’s skill, they can’t keep it together when it comes to zero-day arbitrary code execution vulnerabilities.  However, since Flash is necessary to use most of the intartubes, I use the glorious free ClickToFlash plugin for Safari/WebKit. Coupled with Safari AdBlock (yeah, I know it’s funny since I have Google Adsense on this site anyways) my web browsing experience is much less likely to cause a seizure and only loads Adobe’s goddamned Flash plug-in when I want it to be loaded.

I currently use Pixelmator, VectorDesigner, ChocoFlop, Graphic Converter, Aperture, VueScan, and Raw Photo Processor to work with the various images in my day-to-day life.  And while that may give you readers pause, let me tell you, it’s absolutely great not having to think about what shit is going to go down on my system the next time I launch a CS program.  Coupled with the fact that it’s all legitimately purchased software, I feel like I’ve been liberated from the shackles of Adobe.  Much like Linux users are supposed to feel when they rid themselves of Microsoft, except I’m actually getting shit done on my operating system.

I’m no so naïve as to think that the world has no use for Adobe Creative Suite. I know that many folks would not be able to get their work done without the full fledged versions of Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign.  However, I’ll attest to being one happy motherfucker when I realize I don’t need their crap on my system any more. That, my friends, is a good feeling.

I was on my honeymoon last year, and Garmin’s RoadTrip software, at version 2.0, had some serious bugs.  I really needed to download the 2.0.1 update. I was in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean on a cruise ship with SLOW internet access.  I consider it a modern miracle to have internet access on the ship ANYWAYS, but I digress.  After downloading the large disk image, I ran it through DropDMG‘s bzip2 compressor and shaved something like 30MB off of the disk image file.  If Garmin had done that in the first place, they’d have cut down on the internet time I had to burn downloading the damn thing, plus they would save a little on their bandwidth costs.  I’m sure that 30MB per download of their Mac software is negligible, but still worth taking into consideration.  Bottom line is that there’s no good reason to ship a disk image that mounts as read/write, nor is there a good reason to ship a non-compressed DMG.  Devs: prove me wrong.

Now, some of you losers still running OS X 10.3 might be complaining about not being able to use bzip2 compressed DMGs.  Lucky for you, Apple still supports legacy zlib compressed DMGs.  And if you’re running 10.0 and need an ADC compressed image, you need to figure out how the hell you got to this website in the first place and SERIOUSLY re-evaluate your technological budget.

Now, this part of my rambling is going to be an unsolicited whoring of myself for Michael Tsai over at C-Command.  Not only is DropDMG one of my favorite utilities for DMG archival and processing, his other big product SpamSieve is quite possibly the most brilliantly written third-party spam filters ever made.  It is essentially seamless with OS X Mail, and support for all of his products is completely first-rate.  No other spam filter has ever worked as well as his for my use, and I cannot thank him enough for saving my inbox.

So, developers, please save your customers time and support a wonderful member of your community: process your DMGs properly through DropDMG before posting them for download.  I’ll be happy, and isn’t that really all that matters?