I remember watching, in person, at Macworld 2007 the launch of the iPhone.

I love what I’ve been able to gather about his personality, his willingness to kick bad ideas to the curb, and his strong will.  I love his hard work and dedication, as evidenced by his persistence and drive for excellence throughout several illnesses over the years.  I have as much respect for the man as much as someone who has never met him can have.

I know there will be rampant speculation on the reasons for his resignation, and it isn’t unreasonable to believe it is related to his health.  Like anyone suffering from a chronic illness, it’s best to be supportive, to offer encouragement and respect, and most of all: to let them have their privacy.

Steve Jobs, I salute you.

Update 1: Giblet Amelio is a reference to an old Mac Addict article where Word’s spell checker wanted to replace Gilbert with Giblet.

philmoz has done some great work, and BLINDLY I might add, on the CHDK for 1.00e since his camera does not run the appropriate firmware.  I want to give a big shout out to all of the true geniuses who put in a lot of hard work to get this project working on as many cameras as possible.  There is no financial incentive, and all of the work is done out of love for the product.  I’m not a freetard by any stretch, but this is a great way to have community contributions in a software project.

More details can be had from this thread at the CHDK forums if you are interested in running CHDK on your G12 camera.

I haven’t flown them in 20 years, and it will be at least that long before I fly these fuckers again. Total lack of responsibility. Weather problems are in fact problems, but waiting 3 hours to get de-iced the first time and keeping a crew on the craft that was right on the edge of being unable to fly due to FAA requirements, that’s fucking negligent.

I knew there was a reason I avoided these assholes. Not to mention that my medication is in my bag that they refuse to get.

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.

If I find an iPhone and find on it a picture of Jesus Diaz, Jason Chen, Brian Lam, or any other one of the cocksuckers over at Gawker Media getting fisted in the ass, you can be damn sure it’s going up somewhere so that I can make a boatload of money from it.

I’ve already edited my /etc/hosts file.  I encourage you to do the same. See Craig’s page for the details.

UPDATE  1: Gizmodo apparently got a letter asking for the iPhone back. Gizmodo says they didn’t know the iPhone was stolen.  Except nobody said it was stolen. Reminds me of the TV show “Cops”: officer tells a perp that someone hit a pedestrian and they are looking for the driver, perp says he was at home watching TV and doesn’t know what happened, officer then says that he never mentioned what time the pedestrian was hit.  FAIL.

UPDATE FUCKING 2: The letter from Apple Legal says “a device that belongs to Apple.”  If Gizmodo didn’t do anything wrong, then it would have had to ask “What device are you referring to?”  I hope that if there are pictures on the internet of a Gizmodo editor being fisted, it’s by some member of Apple’s legal team.  I would make it my desktop background.

UPDATE 3: More good coverage from someone with a brain, Andy Ihnatko.

I have no doubt that Flash not being on the iPad is a result of a decision made by Steve.  The market penetration for Flash is insanely high for most types of interactive media, and when Flash is not working, people flip their shit.  Why do you think Apple includes the Flash player in its operating system distributions and its own Security Updates?  Because Apple recognizes its importance to the Mac-using computer world as a whole.  For better or worse, Apple has to support Flash on the Mac.

In terms of supporting it on the Mac side, I’m sure Apple has sifted through thousands of crash logs that people have desperately sent using the “Submit to Apple” button in CrashReporter.  You know what has got to be at the top of the fucking list?  The goddamn Flash Player plugin.  I have little comprehension as to why Apple would develop a completely new plug-in process isolator under OS X 10.6 (only works in 64-bit mode, by the way) unless they were confident the issue could not be solved any other way.  Let’s check to see what plug-ins I’ve got installed:

I use SafariAdblock which currently requires 32-bit mode, and that disables the plug-in protection in 10.6.  You know what I’ve had crash my browser running in 32-bit mode?  Flash.  Not Flip4Mac, not the third-party DivX codec I have installed in QuickTime, not the Java plug-in (I do have Java disabled, however), and not Quartz Composer.  Not even Shockwave has crashed my browser.  It’s all Flash.  In fact, the problem got so bad that I almost switched my browsing to FireFox, that ugly piece of shit monstrosity of an open source project, simply because it had the ability to block Flash.  Thanks to Gruber, I found ClickToFlash, and my life has once again regained simplicity.

I have a feeling that not many people have anything other than the factory web browser plug-ins installed on their computers, and with Flash being the least stable plug-in on the machines I work on, I have a feeling the process isolation technique was developed to be applicable to future plug-ins, but with one in mind (and let me tell you: it ain’t Flip4Mac.)

Back to Dowdell and his response to commentary.  I don’t have hard numbers on if the plug-in isolator has been successful, because I still have people come to me complaining about Farmville not working properly.  I have to calmly explain that, with their software (including Flash) updates installed, it is something between the developer and Adobe that will have to be ironed out on their end since there’s not much else to do.  I also suggest installing ClickToFlash as a way to prevent Flash from loading unless needed, and most folks are quite happy with the improved experience.

I’m assuming Apple doesn’t want to dedicate the resources to supporting a third-party’s plug-in on a platform that has very sensitive needs with regards to stability and power utilization.  Rather than go out of its way to get Adobe’s product working properly on its platform, Apple has tried to get folks adopting technologies that work well on its mobile platform (which also tend to work well on other mobile platforms, not just its own.)  I don’t think it will happen in the near term, but in the next 3-5 years, I can see Apple’s investment in less-proprietary technologies causing Mobile Flash to decline to the point of obsolescence in both Apple’s and other vendors’ mobile platforms.

I don’t see Dowdell’s points being relevant, except for the talk about personal attacks being mean.  I agree that personal attacks are mean, but I’ve been sick for almost 2 weeks now, and I’m feeling really fucking mean right now.  I also like how he approved a comment from someone stating that he’s convinced they aren’t a paid astroturfer.  Does John Dowdell really believe that people are paying other people to write negative blog comments about Flash?  I think we should coin a new term, the “flasher”.

A “flasher” is one who believes that negative commentary about Adobe in general, or Flash in specific, is coming from some deep dungeon in Cupertino, written by people who anally masturbate to images of Steve Jobs using Safari with a big “Click to Flash” gray box in the middle of the screen.  A “flasher” believes that the Flash plug-in code is gospel and that the interpretation or execution of the code is the cause of its problems.  A “flasher” believes that if it weren’t for Apple’s walled garden, the performance of the plug-in would be at parity between the two major operating systems.  ”Flashers” are the Adobe equivalent of truthers and birthers.  I don’t think it needs much more explanation.

I think that John Dowdell’s continued presence anywhere in public while being paid by Adobe is the worst possible idea Adobe could ever make.  They would be better off doubling his salary and making him ride a stationary bicycle in their basement to generate a little bit of power for the office.  Adobe would get more out of him that way, and it would cost them less in terms of their public opinion in the long run.

As a side note, the comment I linked to above appears to have been made by someone working for Unsanity.  For those of you who aren’t familiar with them, they are the creators of Application Enhancer, one of the least stable and most frustrating additions for OS X I’ve ever encountered.  I don’t see it around much any more, but back in the day, APE caused a lot of shit to break on a fairly regular basis.  And when the authors of that software are complaining about your product, it might be worth paying attention.

]]> http://drunkentech.com/2010/04/06/fuck-you-john-dowdell/feed/ 0 http://drunkentech.com/2010/04/01/joojoo-lifts-from-macbook-air/ http://drunkentech.com/2010/04/01/joojoo-lifts-from-macbook-air/#comments Thu, 01 Apr 2010 21:27:10 +0000 admin http://drunkentech.com/?p=295 Holy shit. I can’t believe how obviously the rear of the JooJoo:

was copied from the bottom of the MacBook Air:

Absolutely amazing.  On a side note, the JooJoo looks like it could be a useful and eminently hackable device.  Some of my friends might yell at me for that, but I think the iPad looks like a great “it just works” device whereas the JooJoo would be more for fucking around and breaking things.  Just my uninformed opinion.

Preliminary Stuff
Kiddo obviously doesn’t realize that Apple and Sony probably use the same contract OEMs to build their hardware: Quanta, Foxconn, Compal, etc.  He mocks Apple’s marketing for catering to hipster douches who show off at Starbucks, but says that Sony’s machines are superior to Apple’s in terms of technology and style.  I, personally, think that Sony’s computer design language is geared toward the Japanese market in the same way that shit & tentacle porn is geared toward the Japanese market: not many people outside of Japan get it, and those who do are usually a little bit weird.

Maximize Windows
I prefer the resize-to-fit of the Mac OS because it doesn’t waste space on the screen like maximize does on Windows. Personal preference. I also believe that the typical “run maximized” philosophy of Windows negates some of the usefulness of a multi-tasking operating system. Harkens back to the good old DOS days. Overshooting window edges is possible on the Mac and Windows, and the reason you can’t tell if the window is in “big or small mode” is because such modes don’t actually exist.

Window Resizing
I agree that this feature would be useful in some situations on the Mac OS. I don’t use it often in the rare cases I’m using Windows, but it’s kinda handy. I don’t know how Apple could properly integrate it into the user interface paradigm they currently have, but it’s certainly possible.

Switching Programs / Seeing What’s Running
Like on Windows, one can hit Cmd-Tab to see the list of running applications and switch between them, and then if you want to switch between different windows in the app, most developers integrate the Cmd-tilde function to switch between windows in the frontmost app. Much faster than going to the Start bar, and the triangle uses far fewer display resources to indicate that an application is running. I think it is a much more efficient use of pixels than the giant gray wasteland of the taskbar. Also, Expose may remove the frontmost task from view, but it does not “disrupt” anything in terms of running threads or processes.

Thumbnails
I can’t stand the OS processing images to show in a folder listing. QuickLook serves a useful purpose, and CoverFlow in the Finder is great for people who need giant pictures in a directory listing to navigate their porn collection.

Delete and Backspace Key
Checking my good ol’ Apple Extended Keyboard II from 1995, I’ve got a delete AND a backspace key. I do believe that the original Extended Keyboard had them too, back before the Brit douchenozzle was conceived. On Apple portables, you can hit the “Fn” key in the bottom left corner in combination with the “Delete” key to get a true delete rather than a backspace key (the one that’s labeled “Delete”). That functionality has existed since at least as far back as the PowerBook G3 Pismo, which I owned and loved.

Uninstall Programs
I agree that the package management in OS X should include much better uninstallation capabilities. However, a good lot of Adobe software still uses Installer Vise or other non-OEM installers, which aren’t governed by OS package conventions.  To be honest, though, I don’t have to uninstall software on a Mac nearly as often as I’ve had to do so on Windows.  Could be my usage patterns, though.

Home & End Keys
See my previous mention of the delete and backspace keys. On portables, Fn-Left and Fn-Right are the Home and End keys, respectively, and since you probably haven’t figured it out yet, Fn-Up and Fn-Down are Page Up and Page Down, respectively.

Drag & Drop Text Editing
Really? Have you used a Mac?

Battery Life
I envy you, having used every Apple laptop ever made. On my Early 2008 MacBook Pro, I’m currently running a 7200 RPM drive in the primary HD bay and a 5400 RPM drive where the optical drive used to live, and I still get between 2 and 3 hours of actual work out of it. On an OEM battery. I’m sure that I could get 8-14 hours of battery life out of my MacBook Pro if it was 3 inches thick (2 inches thicker than it is now), and had a tumor sticking out of it like this thing right here (original image):

Portability & Netbooks
I agree with your point that Apple doesn’t compete in the subnotebook market anymore. As a former owner of a PowerBook Duo 270c, I do occasionally miss the portability and dockability of that machine, but the throughput of wired networking, USB, FireWire, and Bluetooth quell my concerns for connectivity at home. Size-wise, I miss having a little Apple laptop. Moving to netbooks, I’ve run OS X on netbook hardware, and the performance, though good considering the machine it was running on, really does suck in comparison to even a MacBook Air. While the Air may not be satisfactory to those looking for netbook size, Apple isn’t willing to make the performance compromises needed to get OS X running on a “sanctioned” netbook-sized device.

Updates
Windows XP was released in the fall of 2001. Windows 7 was released in the fall of 2009, with a paid beta in the form of Windows Vista in between. Observe the progress Microsoft has made in 8 years, especially compared with the features they claimed would be added to future OS versions by 2010. Similarly, when OS X 10.1 was released in the fall of 2001, it was an improvement over what preceded it, but Apple has made significant progress on its operating systems in terms of functionality & features on 6 major OS releases in the time that Microsoft has made 3 major releases. Apple provided the 10.1 release as a complimentary upgrade to those running 10.0, and provided the 10.6 release as a $29 upgrade to those running 10.5 on Intel hardware. Both Apple and Microsoft provide free incremental updates to their release versions on a periodic basis.

Games
It used to be that the productivity software was what distinguished Microsoft’s platform from the Mac. In a complete 180, gaming is now the basis for initial comparison between platforms. Yes, there are fewer games on the Mac. I’m not a gamer, so I’m not the best person to respond to this. However, many game studios have found it profitable to port their products to OS X (see Aspyr, MacSoft, and others), and Valve has seen fit to release Steam for OS X along with many of their own game titles.

Apple is Technologically Backward
It seems that Apple doesn’t adopt technologies unless it suits their purposes of building the best products they feel they can sell in the open market. Carbon fiber is a great material, but I don’t miss it in my portables. LED-backlit LCDs were first adopted in the 15″ MacBook Pro in 2007, not in the MacBook Air, but were later added to other models as the panels rolled into full production. I think the eschewing of the ExpressCard slot in favor of the SD reader on the 15″ MacBook Pro was a terrible move on Apple’s part, primarily because the ExpressCard slot could be used for an SD reader, in addition to many other useful options. The addition of the SD reader to the 13″ metal portable where there was none before was a surprise to me, but a welcome if not overdue feature. A 3G SIM slot (or, more specifically, a 3G GSM/UMTS/HSPA modem) is something that Apple wants to leave to carriers to provide and not have to bother with since Apple doesn’t like to tie itself to rapidly changing standards like in the telco industry. It is for this reason that I was surprised about the inclusion of an SDHC reader, since SDXC is now a progression of the standard. Battery issues have already been discussed, and I don’t think that Apple will adopt the Sony Vaio X as a new technology as our friend seems to want. Apple’s portable display resolution is also a bit low on the 13″ and 15″ models, but on par with many other 17″ models from what I can tell.  How, though, is any of this “technologically backward”?

Hilarious Comparison
The MacBook Air may or may not be a copy of the X505, but the X505 sure looks a lot like my old PowerBook Duo, a lot moreso than it looks like a PowerBook 2400c. In fact, I believe that Apple was the first mainstream portable maker with a rear-positioned keyboard on their laptops. Previous portables had no wrist rests, which was a major selling point for the old 100/140/170 series. Apple’s adoption of chiclet keys starting in 2006 bothers me to no end, which is why I am typing this on a USB Pro Keyboard and prefer my non-unibody MacBook Pro.

Hibernation
I’ve rarely seen hibernation work properly on Windows machines, and I’m not a huge fan of the similar “safe sleep” feature on OS X & newer model portables. I guess experiences differ in this regard. My old Duo used normal sleep mode quite well, and I believe that the original Apple portables did it too. If I shut down the machine, I’d like to shut it down, not save the RAM state.  I’ll leave that to VMWare VMs, thankyouverymuch. Besides, unless you’re running QNX, it’s probably a good idea to reboot your machine every once in a while.

Disk Formatting
OS X can read and write FAT12, FAT16, FAT32, and read NTFS. NTFS write support isn’t presently enabled without third party software (or free hacks to enable Apple’s write functionality in 10.6.) Windows cannot read HFS, HFS Plus, or any other Macintosh filesystems without third party software. That’s correct: Windows has zero compatibility with Mac filesystems out of the box. Windows also does not fully support Apple’s resource forks, even though Apple has used them since 1984 and NTFS can technically utilize them through Alternate Data Stream functionality.  Apple has even deprecated the use of resource forks in OS X as an outdated technology before Microsoft has been willing or able to implement support for them in Windows almost 30 years later.

Selecting Text With Cursor Keys
Kinda like my comment on drag & drop text editing: have you ever used a Mac?

And moving on to this guy’s discussion of why Macs may be better than Windows machines, which is just as stupid and problematic:

Viruses
Apple machines have not always been as malware-free as they are today.  I have fond memories of WDEF viruses, among others, circulating via infected floppies in 7th grade.  There are fewer pieces of malware for OS X partially because it’s harder to exploit OS X in a similar fashion, and partially because it’s a smaller target than Windows is.  But if you think for one second that all you need on a Windows machine is Microsoft Security Essentials and nothing else, you might as well gape your butthole now because it’s gonna happen pretty soon anyways.

Stability
If you’ve not had a bluescreen in 10 years, that’s pretty impressive.  Excluding dumb shit I’ve brought on myself, I’ve had only a handful of kernel panics in OS X since I began using it, and most of the time it was faulty hardware causing it, not the software.  And in most of those cases, it was third party hardware, not Apple hardware.  And I must have missed Apple’s marketing department releasing the ads that say “Captain Dipshit’s Windows PC has had 3 BSODs a day for the past 10 years.”

Ease of Use
This is mostly opinion, but I think that my grandma starting on an iBook was much smoother and easier than if she started on a Windows XP laptop.  I believe that Apple has the easier to use product for those starting with a clean slate in terms of computing experiences.  I feel for any senior citizen who has to get help with their computer at an Apple Store. Could you imagine the same folks going to Best Buy or Fry’s for help with their PC?

Crapware
I  love how kiddo thinks that MS should be MORE demanding of OEMs in reducing the amount of crapware installed on their machines.  Especially his idea of charging extra to have LESS crap on the machine.  Wouldn’t that extra money be better spent on a computer that doesn’t have the bullshit on there in the first place?

Marketing
Apple’s marketing must have been doing something other than what kiddo is saying since Microsoft has been on the defensive for the better part of a decade now with its Windows advertising.  He mentions battery life and lack of 3G modem integration again, which is weird because it’s normally the PC users I see using a wall outlet, not the Mac users.  He also mentions lack of efficiency in the OS, which is never actually detailed in an accurate fact-based way.

(His) Conclusion
Macs drive this kid crazy, which is fascinating, because they aren’t efficient.  Again, no specific efficiency “facts” listed aside from his previous keyboard and app switching gripes which I have provided workable, quick solutions for.  For all of OS X’s supposed faults, it would only cost him 15 minutes of lost productivity in a day.  I’m sure he makes up that lost productivity by skipping the use of proper caps, apostrophes, and the remainder of the English language.  And what, exactly, are “knock on effects”?

Anyways, I’m really done with this kid.  Looking at his Twitter page made me realize he’s just another linkbait whoring social media douchebag who needs to suck a bag of dicks and drop off the internet.  I wish that Cockpunch over IP wasn’t still in early development stages.  I would also like to apologize for my terrible writing tonight, as I’m doing this with one of the worst flu bugs I’ve had in a while tearing me apart.

• Dual 1.25 GHz PowerPC G4
• 2GB DDR2 PC2700 RAM
• ATI Radeon 9000 AGP video card
• (2) Sony NEC Optiarc AD-7170A DVD drives (one dead, will be pulled soon)
• (1) 320GB Western Digital boot drive
• (2) 500GB Western Digital RAID1 backup set
• (1) 500GB Western Digital scratch/media drive
• Generic USB 2.0 PCI card
• Generic 1394b PCI card

Without adding a SATA PCI card to the mix, the machine is pretty much maxed out.  Recently, about once a week, the unit has been locking up where it doesn’t ACTUALLY kernel panic, but after a reboot, the machine logs kernel panics going to the ATA controller.  I’m hoping the boot drive just needs a repartition and a clean OS, but if anyone has a spare 4-port Seritek PCI card they don’t need anymore, I’ll be glad to take it off your hands.

Assuming this thing works properly, it will be back up and ready to go as a VPN server, file server, and occasional torrent machine again.  If anyone has any tips about getting the most out of these old things, please don’t hesitate to post a comment or shoot an email.

According to the listings, these people will “provide computer services, such as hardware diagnostics and component replacement, data migration, virus removal, setup, and other offerings” that are “within the new retail location of a major software company”.

Here are screenshots of the Craigslist posting and a snippet of the Flextronics RTS listing (in case they are pulled):

I don’t think there are a boatload of major software companies with retail locations in Mission Viejo, unless I missed the Adobe Store walking through the mall earlier this week.

I think that this demonstrates Microsoft’s lack of comprehension of how Apple’s retail strategy has soared compared with the alternatives that were available when they opened in 2001.  Apple’s retail stores have actual Apple employees fixing Apple products.  Microsoft Stores will have employees of a third-party fixing computers made by others (running their OS, yes, but not their hardware) in their stores.  More layers of management and outsourcing will create an experience that is not nearly as cohesive and focused as that provided by the Apple Store a few hundred feet down the hall.

I understand that Apple sells third-party products in their stores, and that Apple doesn’t service those products at the Genius Bar.  But have you ever been to the Genius Bar with a non-Apple product?  Most of the time, they’ve been more than happy to take a look at the iPod alarm clock dock or whatever it is and see if it is an issue they could resolve (with the Apple product connected to it) or refer to the manufacturer for service if it is not.  But these speaker systems and alarm clocks aren’t Apple’s core products.  Microsoft’s core product is integrated into devices manufactured by others.

From what I’ve read, Microsoft’s EMS contractor for the Zune and Xbox is Flextronics, which might actually be a bright spot in this whole thing.  It may give Microsoft the flexibility they need to provide better service in-store for those products that they have direct control over.  I don’t think, though, that Xbox and Zune customers will be the bulk of Microsoft’s retail service encounters compared with the computers they will sell and ultimately, service.

Like every discussion on “building the whole widget” business philosophy, I’ll admit that it is not the only solution to getting your product out there. However, Apple has taken the integrated product, and now integrated retail business model to a level of success that nobody seems to be able to duplicate.

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