Archive for the ‘Mac OS X’ Category

Royalty

November 29th, 2007
Filed under: Apple, General, Mac OS X, Macintosh, Politics, Society | Huibert @ 5:00 pm

Having been raised in Switzerland, a country which was never ruled by a king, I have always seen royalty as a ridiculous idea, even though I am Dutch and therefore I am a citizen of a country “ruled” by a Queen.

Since it doesn’t look like my fellow countrymen are particularly interested in getting rid of this ridiculous and expensive remain from a distant past, I am at least glad that in The Netherlands we got the next best thing, a smart royal family.

The proof is that both crown prince Willem-Alexander and his wife Maxima have recently purchased an iPhone while shopping at an Apple Store in the U.S. Even better, it seems that he is an avid Mac user who participates regularly in Dutch Apple Forums. I wonder if he listens to the “One More Thing” podcast, one of my personal favorites.

Even though I am still convinced that my country should be a Republic, it is nice to see my future king making the headlines for his good technological taste, instead of the shameful behaviors displayed by other royal families.


Mexican Apple on-line store open for business

November 20th, 2007
Filed under: Apple, General, iPod, Mac OS X, Macintosh | Huibert @ 6:08 pm

Yesterday Apple finally opened a Mexican on-line store. There is still no iTunes store, but this is a great (unexpected) first step.

The good news is that on-line prices seem to be reasonable. While it still is cheaper to buy in the U.S., the difference is now much smaller. This is good news because it may encourage many customers to shop locally. Until now, Mexico has been a minor market to Apple if you look at the sales numbers. However, that is not really true because wealthy Mexicans (those more likely to buy from Apple) tend to buy their mobile products (those that can be easily smuggled through the customs) in the U.S. and that skews the numbers significantly.

For example, if you were to walk into any Starbucks in Mexico City today you would have a good chance to see Macs outnumber PCs. The same happens with iPhones and iPods which can be found everywhere. Most of these sales never go through Apple Mexico and are therefore accounted as U.S. sales.

While this new on-line store may actually have a negative impact on both local dealers (used to low unit sales and high margins) as well as the physical Apple Store sales in the U.S. it may give Apple Mexico a chance to grow significantly beyond their current small local market (desktops used by graphic designers and universities). If this turns out to be true, we may finally get better local support, which is badly needed.


Leopard new cool APIs for developers

October 26th, 2007
Filed under: Apple, General, Mac OS X, Macintosh | Huibert @ 12:29 pm

Since I haven’t received my Leopard DVD from Amazon yet, I still have some time to blog.

However, having played with the Developer Preview I got at WWDC a couple of months ago i must say that I am surprised that except for a couple of honorable exceptions, all the OS reviews I have seen so far focus on the end-user features that are available right out of the box. That is just plain wrong. Reviewers should also have spent some time discussing what new features are available for developers and how applications could take advantage of these new or expanded APIs to create better applications for the Mac over the next few months.

It is too bad that the mainstream press didn’t take more time to review the developer CD because if it lis like the one handed to developers last June, it contains a lot of hints on how Mac applications will outshine their PC counterparts over the next two years. My two favorite APIs nobody has talked about yet are:

  • Pub-Sub
  • Core Text

Ever wondered why there aren’t that many applications that work with RSS feeds? The reason is that there are many different versions of RSS (not even counting Atom) that a developer needs to support if he/she wants to avoid any incompatibilities. RSS Readers must also be able to work with malformed XML files, which are unfortunately very frequent on the Internet. Writing such a flexible parser is boring and time consuming. Apple understood that and decided to include an API to make it easy for any programmer to either generate or parse all kind of RSS feeds. This is great news because now we will probably see many new innovative uses of RSS in Mac applications. I am planning for example to publish puzzles created with my upcoming application as an RSS feed including custom XML files. The client will use RSS to download the latest puzzles included as attachments just like podcasts today include MP3 files.

Core Text is also new in Leopard. Core Text replaces most of all previous text handling APIs. Now it is easier than ever to write applications that can easily handle gorgeous text in multiple columns wrapping around complex objects. Expect to see many specialized text editors to improve dramatically as developers start using this new technology.

Many seem to believe that Leopard is just another small evolutionary step over Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger because they haven’t seen any applications yet that take advantage of all the changes that were made under the hood. I suggest to everyone to take a look at the developer sample projects included on the developer tools DVD to understand what Leopard really is about.


Teenagers

October 23rd, 2007
Filed under: Apple, General, Mac OS X, Macintosh | Huibert @ 5:12 pm

The IBM PC was introduced on August 12, 1981. At the time I was 15 but I was already an avid Apple II user who enjoyed programming in assembly language. I must say that I didn’t pay much attention to the announcement. After all, it was just another boring monochrome computer. However, it soon became clear that the PC was a commercial success and a clear threat to Apple. The truth is that, like most teenagers, I couldn’t care less about the business market. As long as Apple could maintain their lead in the education and home markets, I would be happy.

In 1983, however a new threat emerged, the IBM PCjr. This product was squarely aimed at the market that Apple had dominated for years, at least in the U.S. That is when I started to hate IBM. I felt that they were forcing me to switch to a platform that wasn’t as exciting against my will. Of course, years later the same anger made me revolt against Microsoft and I progressively started to forget about IBM. That is a good thing by the way because I have just celebrated my tenth anniversary at IBM. Of course it helped a lot that I have always worked at IBM’s Software Group, a division that is operating system agnostic and allows customers to choose their preferred computing environment.

Today, almost 23 years after the introduction of the IBM PCjr, Apple is the most valuable computer maker in the world. What has changed? We now live in a world ruled by consumers, not corporate suits. Consumers want exciting new products, not boring, barely functional products. That is good. Some may complain that teenagers are driving the consumer electronics industry but I am ecstatic. I still remember why I was so excited by Apple as a teenager. The reasons I had then were not driven by style or peer pressure, they were driven by a passion for radical new products that made no compromises to achieve greatness. In general teenagers do not tolerate mediocrity as well as adults because they are not scared by change. That is why Apple is successful now with a new generation. They are fighting the establishment with superior products and this is a battle teenagers can perfectly relate to.

However, make no mistake, this is not just a marketing gimmick. Unlike Pepsi who wanted to artificially create a generational gap with their “Pepsi generation” campaign, Apple decided to focus on creating exciting new products that have since been adopted by a new generation. That is why it worked.


Using Macs at IBM

October 1st, 2007
Filed under: Apple, General, Mac OS X, Macintosh | Huibert @ 9:47 pm

Today is a date I will remember. It is the day I have been waiting for since IBM announced that we would be selling our PC division to Lenovo. I just got a memo that describes a procedure to purchase a Mac as my primary computer. At this point it is not clear wether this initiative will be limited to the U.S. or be more global in scope, but it is certainly another crack in Microsoft’s armor since I understand that IBM is Microsoft’s largest Windows and Office customer. Way to go IBM!


Pixelmator

September 28th, 2007
Filed under: Apple, General, Mac OS X, Macintosh | Huibert @ 9:31 am

A couple of days ago, without much fanfare a great new Mac application, Pixelmator was released. Despite the relatively lack of interest of the mainstream Mac press, this is major news.

Despite what graphic pros may say, Pixelmator is a direct competitor to Photoshop. Granted, it does not offer yet advanced capabilities such as 16 bit per channel images or even RAW support (although it seems that this particular feature will be included later this year in a future update), but for most of us, Pixelmator, with its great user interface, small memory footprint and perfect integration with Core Image, is a perfect replacement for the much more expensive Adobe product.

Personally I see this announcement, as the culmination of Apple’s strategy to reduce their dependency on Adobe without having to create a Photoshop competitor themselves. It is probably a surprise to many that it took so much time for developers to use Core Image to create a photo editor. After all, Core Image is available since Mac OS 10.4 which was released two and a half years ago. Apple had done most of the hard work by providing a powerful API to easily composite layers and support non-destructive filters. Why did it then take so much time to create such a product? Well, it seems that everyone believed that Apple would use Core Image to create their own Photoshop competitor. Competing against Adobe is difficult enough but if you have to take on both Adobe and Apple that is a really scary thought. That is why I am not really surprised that Pixelmator was created by two young brothers who probably have not much to lose, even if this project does not become an instant hit. However, I sincerely hope that their app becomes extremely popular. They deserve it and the Mac community needs more innovative developers like them who are willing to take risks. I have already paid my US$59 license. Will you?


Why?

August 9th, 2007
Filed under: Apple, General, Mac OS X, Macintosh | Huibert @ 3:51 pm

When Steve Jobs appeared on stage last Tuesday, he finally had some great news for the Mac faithful. We all know that he is a man of vision and that what he is visualizing is a world where portable devices will eventually replace most desktop computers. While this may be true, the Macintosh is still a cornerstone of Apple’s business and perhaps more surprisingly for him, an engine of growth for the company.

That means that even if there is doubt within Apple about the future of the PC, they still have to push the Mac, at least for now. My personal feeling is that those efforts are half-hearted at best. The new iMac is hardly a revolution, although it is still a great machine. The real news was software related. New versions of iLife and iWork were exactly what the Mac crowd was clamoring for. For those who are not familiar with the Mac platform, all this excitement about a new software release may seem strange. However, on the Mac, elegant, easy-to-use software is as important, if not more, than hardware. For Apple die-hard fans, Numbers is probably the most important announcement, as it allows most Mac users finally to work on their computers without having to rely on any products from Microsoft. The general public will probably care more about the major upgrades made to iPhoto and iMovie. Despite all the improvements and new features that will make iLife’08 and iWork’08 an instant success (by Apple software sales standards) I think that Mac users deserved more. My gut feeling, as a developer, is that Apple is not devoting a lot of resources to these products, otherwise we would have seen even more improvements. After all, they had eighteen months since the last release to update the software. Besides, some programs like iWeb or iDVD saw little change. I would love to believe that Apple is listening to their customers and that they have worked as hard as possible to deliver a release well planned years in advance, but it doesn’t seem likely. It looks much more like the work of a couple of passionate (and talented) developers.

The truth is that while I am very happy with all these announcements, as a Mac user I cannot help feel a little worried. This was probably the best keynote delivered by Steve Jobs to the Mac community in years. It deserved to be delivered during a high profile event. Instead, it was delivered to a small group of journalists at the Apple headquarters. Why?


Third time is a charm

June 28th, 2007
Filed under: Apple, Mac OS X, Macintosh | Huibert @ 5:31 pm

For me, at least, the third time was a charm. I was finally able to install Safari 3.02 on my IBM ThinkPad. Having been unable to install any of the previous betas I did not expect a stable product and I was not disappointed. The Windows beta is definitively not ready for prime time as it gets hung quite frequently and seems to still have serious memory management issues, specially when working with a large number of tabs.

Despite all its current flaws, I enjoy using Safari on my laptop at work. Unlike regular Windows users, I like the way it renders fonts and images. It makes me feel right at home. In my mind there is no doubt that other Mac users will also enjoy it.

Something is missing in the current version of Safari for Windows, though. I would really want to be able to use .Mac syncing with it. Right now this is impossible because there is no iSync for Windows, and that is fine with me. However it would be nice if Safari had a preference pane to set .Mac preferences. I have already submitted a bug report asking Apple to support this feature and I encourage all .Mac customers who agree with me to do the same. Who knows, maybe Apple will listen?


Safari on Windows, not just for the money

June 19th, 2007
Filed under: Apple, General, Mac OS X, Macintosh | Huibert @ 8:18 pm

There has been a lot of speculation on the Net that the main reason for Apple to release Safari on Windows is the money they can get from Google or Yahoo by directing users to their respective search engines. While there is a lot of money to be made from this rather trivial functionality (estimations put the the annual income of the Mozilla Foundation at over US$ 70 million because of their search agreement with Google), I doubt this is the main or even one of the most important reasons Apple decided to release their browser on Windows.

It is important to understand that there are many areas where Apple stands to benefit from having their browser ported to Windows.

So far, Apple’s most successful has been iTunes. With over 500 million distributed copies, the digital jukebox application is probably one of the most popular applications ever. On Mac OS X, the iTunes store view is implemented using WebKit (the core web render engine used by Safari). On Windows, since WebKit was not available, they probably had to embed IE. That means that there are serious limitations to what Apple can do with the look and feel of their music store. By releasing Safari on Windows (and hence WebKit), iTunes can now use the same web engine on both platforms. This simplifies web development and allows Apple to use many of the advanced HTML features not available on IE. Safari 3 also offers great integration with Quicktime which will allow for better video support inside the store. Once Apple releases Safari 3 and bundles it with iTunes on Windows, they finally get a lot more design freedom that will help them differentiate from other music selling sites that have to support older browsers.

Another area where Apple should to benefit from releasing Safari 3 on Windows is their .Mac online service. Today Apple has to make sure that .Mac can be used on any web browser. Developing the online .Mac mail reader application must have been extremely complex because of substantial differences between the main browsers. Now that Apple offers Safari on Windows they could decide to drop support for other browsers. This would allow them to save money, release new services more quickly and offer an enhanced user experience. Dropping support for IE is something most Apple .Mac customers can probably live with, specially if that decision comes accompanied by new interesting services enabled by a better browser.

Finally, as many have pointed out, by increasing Safari’s market share, Apple is cornering web designers into testing their sites against that browser, which will help both iPhone and Mac sales.

This is just a short list of ideas that could explain why Apple decided to release Safari on Windows, but it certainly proves that there are many more reasons that justify porting Safari than just easy money.


CocoaHeads WWDC Meeting

June 16th, 2007
Filed under: Apple, General, Mac OS X, Macintosh | Huibert @ 6:45 pm

On Wednesday, after another exhausting day, I went to the CocoaHeads meeting held at the San Francisco Apple Store. The theatre was totally packed to listen to a panel of independent Mac developers talking about the challenges of getting into this industry.

I think that it is fair to say that this session was extremely interesting. The insight provided by Wil Shipley of Delicious Monster (who, by the way, had just earned one day earlier an Apple Design Award for his upcoming version of Delicious library) was very valuable, as well as just plain fun. He proved that there currently is a market for innovative independent developers, although he also made clear that there are many challenges on the road to success. All in all, it was a very interesting, open and fresh discussion.