Life Is Rich

April 3rd arrives, and with it, the delivery of a new paradigm of end-user computing. Mine happened to be delivered by the UPS woman, all the way from Shenzen, China, molded and formed in the bowels of Cupertino at the bidding of one Steve Jobs. Even as I opined mere months ago in an attempt of prophetic speech, it could not have been anticipated by anyone who’s finger had not laid presence on the device how significant this day would be etched in the computing annals of some future era.

The future is now, and I have seen, nay, caressed it.

Ok, I wax dramatic. It’s some freaking glass, silicon and metal – a small computer with a 9″ screen. This isn’t a technological miracle – this is not some technical innovation that breaks all new barriers of speed, power or even size. What has been brought into this world is a design – albeit an incredible design, that breaks the mold of current end-user computing. After spending a half-day marveling at this device, all I can say is that it truly is a new way of approaching the end-user computing experience, and in every way I have experienced, a vastly superior one.

As of today, 95% of all end-user computing tasks, and probably 100% of most folks typical computer needs, are met with this single device. Not only met, but improved in ways I thought unlikely. This is the first real computer that my parents will ever own that will perform magical incantations of computing without getting in the way. This will be the only computer they will ever need (well, they both will need their own, actually). Amazingly, very few tasks are yet unattainable through this device, and most are external hardware related. Other than software development and some multimedia content creation, I can see even myself almost completely satisfied with this single device. I have no doubt a wave of innovation will appear as the masses explore the capabilities and potential of this device.

No doubt, the iPad has a laundry list of needed improvements and years of maturation, but even in this initial release, it exceeds any and all expectations that I had conceived. It needs a camera (maybe two). It needs some form of 3rd-party application multitasking. It needs better integrated cloud synchronization of data. It would be really swell if the homogeneous application conduit was more open and equitable. Most of the flaws will be fixed, functionality will be amended and increased, and the last vestiges of end-user computing yet attainable by today’s iPad will fall with it, leaving the era of personal computing changed forever.

If Android wasn’t enough, now we have Google Chrome OS. Welcome to the wonderfully bland, drab and unpleasant world of ubiquitous web applications. You can pry my native applications and my OS tailored for user experience (not one tailored to said companies cloud services) from my cold, dead fingers. Funny, one of my longest posts, and likely much better written than this sleep-deprived rant, follows a similar vein – when Steve Jobs told us that developers could do great things with the iPhone – you don’t even need an SDK, just use the web! It took less than a year for those words to be eaten. How many native applications are now available on the iPhone? (More than 50,000)

On a side note, I’m sure Chrome will run well on those netbooks that everyone is returning after realizing that they are nothing more than really bad web browsing calculators (and yes, I have used one). It has all the limitations of my iPhone AND my laptop with the benefits of neither. It’s the worst of both worlds.

For some reason, this news just really bums me out. Web apps are the dregs of computing. The lowest common denominator. We should be moving in a different direction. Using the web as the distributor of information head-ended by native applications that can take full advantage of the hardware and resources available to the end-user – i.e. web services. The answer is not to try to cram more crap through a browser (i.e. HTML5, Silverlight, Flash, Java applets, etc).

This is why I use a Mac. User experience. Thoughtful design. Great applications – both those provided by Apple with iLife and the OS as well as those from third-party developers who care about the user experience and quality. No matter how much functionality you add, you can only do so much with a browser. Not to mention, you have to fight long and hard as a developer to attain every inch. I did web apps for over five years – it sucks. You work your butt off to build an application that can never attain the level of quality, fit, and finish that is the goal of every good developer. It’s depressing. Your handicapped from the get-go.

“If the only tool you have is a hammer, you will see every problem as a nail.” Abraham Maslow

Not to knock some incredible work that people have done on the web (I mean, look at the .me Mail app – it’s amazing, but I wouldn’t in a million years choose it over its native counterpart). But no matter what examples you may have of amazing web sites, it’s not the norm, nor is it easy to accomplish. The browser wasn’t meant for this. We’ve bastardized it as the platform for all app delivery (or at least Google has). Please, let the insanity stop! This is not the world I want to live (develop) in!

Maybe computing is now like Wal-Mart or mass-produced plasticky crap that always breaks after two weeks. Lowest common denominator, cheap, thoughtless. Native applications, innovation and thoughtful design are relegated to the antique dealers and the rare specialty shops of craftsman made products – sequestered to the incredibly small minority of people who seem to care or haven’t been brainwashed in expecting so much less from their computing experience.

UPDATE: Someone in the mainstream press apparently agrees. I had over 200 visitors to this site in an hour after a link to this page found it’s way to the linkback section of the original Google Blog article. Interestingly, I had no comments. Either my post really really sucked, or everyone generally agreed and didn’t have anything to comment about. Probably a little of both.

Saw a fellow developer with this tweet:

Getting an object lesson in why relying on web apps can be a bad idea.

So true… so true…

So, if your computer had a toolbox, rsync would probably be the screwdriver – one of the most frequently used and powerful tools in the box. Its use on the Mac doesn’t come without a few caveats, so I figured it would be useful to send out some very important information about its usage on a Mac to my staff – not all of which are Mac folks. After sending it, I thought it might be useful to others, so here it is…
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The other day I came across an interesting article on the death of software patents (and many other patent types for that matter). I’m not a lawyer, so I can’t verify the validity of the claims – maybe my young uber-smart lawyer brother can comment, but taken at face value, this poses an interesting conundrum for the technology industry.

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I’ve pretty much always used a source code management system in my daily development since the day I learned they existed some dozen or so years ago. I used to use CVS for my personal projects (and CVS, PVCS, Dimensions, MKS, and ClearCase at work). Then Subversion (SVN) became the new hawtness and I switched to it – a fairly easy thing to do since it was very similar in many ways conceptually and continued the philosophical tenet of a centralized repository. Now, in the indie Mac blogosphere – and certainly in the open-source world, SVN is old and busted and a new generation of revision control systems seem to be making their way onto the field – the distributed revision control system.

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Now that I quit playing WoW, I was finally able to finish my promised SSH notes… In my backup article, I mentioned two things in regards to ssh:

1. If you expose your computers ssh port to the wild west of the Internet, you should harden (i.e. protect) it from attack
2. if you wanted to use rsync in an automated backup script between machines, you would need to setup public / private key authentication instead of pure password authentication

These two things are actually somewhat related, so I’ll tackle them both in one place. This article definitely requires some command-line fu (In other words, Dad, you don’t have to click the Continue Reading link if you don’t feel like it… no offense intended, really…)

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I’ve commented pretty extensively about the problems facing the oft-proclaimed panacea of open-source (parts 1, 2, 3), and in particular, the GPL.

The GPL crew is crawling out of the woodwork to denounce Sun’s announcement that some parts of the MySQL source code base will be closed and no longer open-sourced (in reality, actually a very small amount – some backup software particularly). The ignorance of licensing and why a company hides its greed behind the noble face of GPL is lost on many unfortunately.

A Slashdot user named martenmickos claiming to be the actual Marten Mickos, former CEO of MySQL and now SVP at Sun has a very interesting explanation of the reasons. They have to make money. This actually makes some sense and is very likely authentic. My problem with GPL is the deceptiveness of a corporations primary goal – “give away” software with an archaic restrictive license (GPL) then charge for the ability to actually use it under a more reasonable license – all the while taking ownership of the charitable work of others. Why can’t they just be honest? Why couch it in “we’re better than those people who believe the efforts of developers have intrinsic value”, then take those efforts and sell them back in a dark alley? Why foster a community that lashes out at anyone who wishes to make a fair wage from software development then actually profit from the charity of others? Because apparently it works.

Ah well. I don’t particularly like Sun, but maybe they are at least being a little bit more honest about their purchase. Maybe those supporters of Open Source “companies” will think a little better about it. Stop kidding yourselves. It’s not open or free, and it’s certainly not noble.