UPDATE: Apparently, the automated backups of WordPress that I’ve been making did not include any media assets. The pictures I can recover from the deep recesses of my iPhoto library most likely, but the one sound file of my 15 seconds of fame appears to be lost forever. Alas. This is ironic considering this (more recently augmented with Dropbox). Unfortunately, my web server somehow missed out on all the backup fun.

UPDATE #2: Through the miracle of the internet, I was able to recover another copy of the audio file. Meaningless to everyone but me, but glad I found it!

The Verizon / Google “policy” is in pretty stark contrast to the commentary from Google just four years ago… it’s amazing how a company when under duress from market pressures (i.e. mobile market / Android vs. iPhone) can so easily discard the (likely faux) commitment to be good.

First off, to get this out of the way, IANAL. That stated, Google’s creation of the Dalvik runtime for Android always reeked of underhandedness if not infringement. It was very clear that they didn’t want to be beholden to Sun and it’s licensing and restrictions surrounding J2ME / J2SE and Java, and attempted to skirt the letter of the law (or the contract / license to be more precise), by creating an alternate “universe” or run-time that just happened to be near perfectly compatible with the Java language and frameworks. Of course, Sun was a weak opponent at the time, and didn’t have the money or the muscle to take on an opponent like Google. I’m sure Sun’s pitiful state of affairs did not go unnoticed by Google in this decision. Who knew that Oracle would acquire the IP and technologies? So, do I think Oracle has the right to go after Google? Absolutely.

Unfortunately, for Java proponents, there is a much greater concern here. I’ve been somewhat critical of Java in the past. I feel entitled – I worked in the language full-time for nearly seven years (Java in my mind is fast on its way to becoming the next Cobol, but that’s really irrelevant to the purposes of this post!) Sun always maintained Java as the benevolent Dictator – or your idiot Uncle who always wore a leisure suit at family reunions – depending on your perspective. Numerous efforts were made to share control and input, but let there be no doubt – Java was under Sun’s control.

As Sun became weaker and more senile with age, it’s governance of Java also became even more incoherent. To be honest, while Java’s founders and a number of brilliant engineers at Sun managed to build a wonderful language, the strategic and business management of Java from the very beginning was a disaster. It never seemed that Sun ever knew what to do with Java, first pushing it on the client-side, then finding at least a justifiable position on the server-side. Of course, even then, it never provided Sun with a significant competitive advantage over the influx of commodity server vendors and seemed to be more of a distraction than anything else. If not for a number of “angels” – IBM, Oracle, BEA, and the fear of the common “enemy” in Microsoft, Java would have likely fallen into irrelevance long before it reached the ubiquity found today (noticed, it dropped from the #1 spot for the first time in 5 years last month). Interestingly, Oracle, and especially IBM, did know how to leverage Java within their organizations for competitive advantage.

When Oracle acquired Sun, the first thought running through my head is the literal fear that must be running through the minds of those saddled to Java – particularly IBM. While Sun was either a benevolent dictator – or incompetent stooge, they at least maintained a benign, if almost altruistic attitude towards Java. Sun was safe. The past has proven, Oracle is anything but benevolent — ruthless and cutthroat (and very successful) are more appropriate adjectives. Since the acquisition, the Java stalwarts at Sun including the primary inventor himself, James Gosling, have quickly exited the doors of the tall oval buildings in Redwood City (UPDATE: check out James Gosling latest blog entry). Outside of these unnerving departures, Oracle remained relatively mum on their stewardship of the language.

While this lawsuit seems perfectly justifiable, I think it’s definitely clear that this steward has teeth and will treat the technology much more as an asset to be protected and to be profited from than a philanthropic duty to the computing community. Oracle isn’t Sun. They aren’t going to sit idly by while a technology they own profits others with no consequent benefit to themselves. These are interesting days indeed, not only for Google, but IBM and a huge outsourcing community who built their organizations around Java.

No matter, with Microsoft relegated to lame duck, it’s exciting to see someone other than Apple and Google in the technology news these days!

UPDATE: This whole mess made me recall an excellent blog article I read on this very subject almost three years ago; seems almost prophetic now.

Paul Graham wraps up with this utterly awesome paragraph:

“Hacker culture often seems kind of irresponsible. That’s why people proposing to destroy it use phrases like “adult supervision.” That was the phrase they used at Yahoo. But there are worse things than seeming irresponsible. Losing, for example.”

Overall, this was the best WWDC for me yet — although this one was a bit different than past years. First, I realized, this was my 5th WWDC. That’s a bit mind boggling to me actually. It just seems like yesterday I started tinkering with Objective-C and Cocoa and cursing the bizarre syntax filled with brackets. It took at least a year I guess before I fell in love with the expressiveness and self-documentation of Objective-C, to the point where I prefer it now much more than anything else I have to deal with.

Probably the more significant difference from previous years was the near total focus on the newly coined, iOS platform – all things iPhone and iPad (and probably more in the near future). Whereas most of my opportunities at my day job and even in my free time were focused on Mac OS X projects, the last year has slowly seen my desire to play more with the iPhoneOS rise. The release of the iPad has pushed me over the edge (although the iPad pushed me over like a Mack truck hitting me at 100mph). I have no doubt that the iPad is revolutionary to mainstream computing – much of which can be credited to iOS, and to the applications being developed in Objective-C and Cocoa. So, the timing of this years totalitarian focus on iOS caught me at the perfect peak of my interest.

The sessions this year felt very well focused, well organized, and much more helpful than years past. Not that the quality was poor before – I just think the solitary focus greatly increased the cohesiveness and content of the sessions. Better yet, these sessions have been made available within 3 weeks to practically everyone for FREE (versus past years where they cost non-attendees $500+ and generally took multiple-months to release). This is truly awesome. You can’t see everything at WWDC – this year even more so than in the past. Often, the videos are so delayed, their timeliness has passed and they’ve already gone a bit stale. Not so this year. I’ve been filling all my spare time obsessively watching these things – including the sessions I had already attended. They also look great on the iPad.

As far as aprés sessions, I did a couple things different this year. First, I took the pilgrimage to mecca and visited Apple headquarters on Sunday. A couple folks (Jeff LaMarche and Scott Knaster I believe) graciously organized a chartered bus from Moscone down to Cupertino for a small fee. Amazingly, I’ve never been to Apple HQ, and I really enjoyed the opportunity to set foot at Infinite Loop and talk with a bunch of great folks on the way there and back.

Of course, Tommy’s was excellent as usual (I went twice). And I definitely like Anejo better than Reposado (which I guess makes sense). Wholly different this year, I generally avoided the crowded parties and opted for dinners and drinks and such with smaller groups.

The yearly Stump the Experts was excellent as usual, minus some commentary that it might be the last year for the even. I certainly hope not — this would be a travesty and also eradicate one of the last vestiges of history and homage to the Mac, and everything that has come before. Not to mention, it’s just plain fun. In “honor” of my experience a couple years back, I got introduced to the crowd at the start of the show again and given free goodies. It keeps my Stump t-shirt streak alive at three!

For those who weren’t able to attend this year due to the sellout, please make sure to buy your ticket on the 2nd day after they go on sale to insure getting a ticket (2nd day – since I’ll be ordering mine on the first day and I don’t want to take any chances!)

From many years with other languages and editors and IDEs, the concept that this would not only be missing from Xcode, but somewhat difficult to obtain was a bit foreign. Nonetheless, with a bit of Internet research, an external tool called Uncrustify, and some experimenting, I coerced Xcode to do my bidding. Oh, before I get started – the Edit->Format->Re-Indent option in Xcode is worthless, so we’ll just ignore it for this outing.

To note, I tinkered with multiple external formatters and the weak internal xcode formatter before I finally settled with uncrustify. Uncrustify has fairly good Objective-C support, can easily be integrated with xcode as a user script, and provides a centralized formatter for pretty much all languages that xcode natively supports.

First stop, acquire Uncrustify. I built mine from source, but if you want an easier route, it can easily be installed by using MacPorts.

Once you’ve verified that you have a functional version of uncrustify (uncrustify –version at the terminal command prompt should do the trick – I’m currently using 0.55), the next step is to integrate uncrustify’s usage into Xcode. We need to add a custom script, so open up Xcode, head to the Scripts menu (look for the funky little scroll-like icon) and choose Open Scripts Folder. We need to create a new script with the following:


#!/bin/sh
echo -n "%%%{PBXSelection}%%%"
/usr/local/bin/uncrustify -q -c ~/uncrustify.cfg -l oc+
echo -n "%%%{PBXSelection}%%%"


Input will be Entire Document. Directory will be Selection. Output will be Replace Document Contents. Errors will be Merge with Script Output. I set this script to have a key combination action of Shift-Command-P (P for Pretty).

The only thing left to do is to configure uncrustify to format our code in the specific dialect of style that we prefer. This task is actually quite a bit more difficult than expected. Uncrustify uses a very simple but daunting configuration file. My recommendation, take one of the supplied sample configs (ben2.cfg is very good), merge in the objc.cfg sample, and tweak as necessary. Once you’re done, place the configuration file where specified in your script (above, I used ~/uncrustify.cfg). For those interested, I’ve attached my uncrustify.cfg. I’m still tweaking it here and there, so it’s definitely a work in progress, but it does the job for the most part.

Now, any time my cursor is an editor, a simple Shift-Command-P will reformat my code quickly and to my liking. I find myself now often typing code very hastily without regards to style and formatting and following up with a Shift-Command-P to make it nice and readable.

Let’s just leave the actual “rule” from Apple aside for a moment and just speak from a user experience perspective.

First, let’s talk performance… The fact that you can make a good performing app with an intermediary language certainly isn’t proof that it isn’t much more likely to have a performant application that is written in a more native language. I mean, if hardware had not gotten faster, we would all be programming in assembly (or C). Abstractions are great for developers but not great for machines. There is a reason Java and C# haven’t taken over the desktop or game development – and the examples that can be given of the few sparse games in those two languages / platforms doesn’t change the fact that other than casual web games and a few Xbox toys, they aren’t used seriously by professional game studios. With mobile platforms, the hardware is going in the opposite direction from desktop hardware. Not to mention, I’m curious about the incongruities of a cross-compiler from a managed memory model to one that isn’t, but hey – maybe they’ve figured it out.

As for user experience, Gruber nailed it. The Kindle application is a very good example of the problem with many cross-platform libraries…. I’ve never seen an application for the Mac written in a language / library other than Objective-C / Cocoa that felt right – and that includes applications written in the Apple approved C / Carbon libraries (which are slowly being deprecated)… If MonoTouch is that good at traversing the paradigms between .NET and Cocoa, that’s damn impressive, but I don’t believe it… The problem is, that on every other platform, interface incongruities are just the norm – expected, so cross-platform libraries are not abhorred as greatly – the users aren’t as discerning. On the Mac and it’s derivatives, consistency of behavior and user experience are tightly defined. I haven’t seen people getting up in arms about the HIG (human interface guidelines). Did you know that you can be rejected from the app store from not complying with the HIG? Now, most would say that’s just more Apple restrictive behavior, but it’s not – it’s protecting the user experience and the platform. Obviously, most didn’t see the HIG requirements as offensive though, although these new requirements are truly enforcing the same thing.

Again, languages and frameworks are not difficult for any experienced developer to pick up. For most programmers, the basics of Objective-C and Cocoa can easily be picked up in days… proficiency can be attained in a couple weeks. Once proficient, why would you choose the targeted platform over another? .NET is a bit a richer than Cocoa, but certainly not worth forsaking the native platform, the tools, the documentation, etc. provided? Flash has no real benefits for a traditionally trained programmer.

As an aside, I think Mono outside of Novell is pretty much dead anyway. I can’t imagine it will ever make major inroads outside of certain niches – folks who need to develop for Linux but have a lot of .NET experience. Many couldn’t be doing Mono right now if they weren’t also Novell partners. Microsoft’s threats have gone a long way in making corporate lawyers nervous, and it’s only through the negotiated protections offered by the Novell / Microsoft partnership that have allowed some to move forward.

As much as everyone has belabored this iPhone OS issue, the rancor towards Microsoft and their general destruction of C# and .NET has never reached similar fervor. The real reason Microsoft has stifled these technologies is often applied to Apple – an anti-competitive bent of protectionism. I don’t deny – I’m sure there is a significant element of this in Apple’s intentions as well – but at least they have a pretty good logical and conceivably more benevolent reason as well.

Even Icaza said it:

“The most important part is that Microsoft has shot the .NET ecosystem in the foot because of the constant thread of patent infringement that they have cast on the ecosystem. Unlike the Java world that is blossoming with dozens of vibrant Java virtual machine implementations, the .NET world has suffered by this meme spread by Ballmer that they would come after people that do not license patents from them.”

Of course, Google is our angel – savior from the capitalistic bastards facing us in Cupertino and Redmond. If anyone thinks Google is any more noble and less evil, keep dreaming. Why aren’t they releasing all their new apps for platforms other than Android? Why did they buy AdMobile (which they knew would be a problem with the SEC) in a move to block Apple from acquiring it? To think that Google is any different is naiveté at its extreme.

In the end, I would rather the new iPhone/iPad platform be more open – or at least have more than one pathway to sale and deployment. But, the raucous rancor and fervor exhibited over the last week is nothing but hypocrisy. Bitter hypocrisy…

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.

Even though the “closed-ness” of the iPad (and iPhone) frustrates me, it’s more because I know that the computer world is making a dramatic change that’s no longer focused on me – the geek – and more on everyone else – “normal” folk, where open = complexity and advanced training. Apple has finally made the transition of offering a computer that *is* as easy and approachable as the TV or the standard appliance. This is the future of computing. Not that the open desktop and laptop of today will go away, but they will be relegated to the tinkerers and geeks – which will inevitably mean smaller markets, fewer choices, etc.

The one thing that I haven’t seen anyone comment on greatly is Apple’s recent North Carolina datacenter. I had an aha moment last night. Combine iPad with the cloud, and you have the future of computing for the “common man”. A continuously connected device that is always with you that always has access to your datastore sitting on the future me.com cloud services. It makes sense. Back ups, local storage – it’s not the realm of normals. You can’t make it easy enough. It works great for me, but it never will for my parents – or 90% of the folks out there. The future for the bulk of the population is a device like the iPad along with cloud storage. They can have the entire experience they really want from a computing device without all the mess. Saddens me somewhat, but Frasier is right – partially because the normals will no longer have to rely on me to make the magic work.

This isn’t the technology world I want to live in, but that’s ok. I’ve just gotten accustomed to living in a world where the only way to play the technology game is to be a tinkerer, a geek. That’s coming to an end — it was inevitable — and in the end, that’s a good thing.

If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.

Not that I’ve trusted Google and it’s supposed “Don’t Be Evil” policy (see my numerous previous blog entries), but this comment is really short-sighted. Unfortunately, most people are blissfully unaware that they are entrusting so much information and power to a single company.

The iPhone’s biggest enemy? Apple. The platform and the applications are what are driving the success of the iPhone. Microsoft had one thing right a few years back: Developers! Developers! Developers!

Ok, I have to show this somewhat unrelated clip now…

Ok, now that we have our Ballmer humor out of the way. Keep alienating developers and the technological first-adopters and your platform will collapse like a house of cards. Apple has a lot of coolness capital, but it doesn’t take long to go from coolest kid on the block to total loser.

This article in Fortune comes to nearly the same conclusion as well. Of course, one of the more interesting and likely valid points brought up by the author bares some concern – viruses are dead. The new hawtness in depraved and mischievous computer vectors are Trojans and spyware, which rely more on the fallibility of the human user than the failings of the operating system itself. Software can assist the user in making smart decisions, but stepping too far into this realm ends up creating a stifling user experience (i.e. warning boxes everywhere, confirmation dialogs that don’t really protect anything, or systems so restricted that they lose most of their usefulness). In the end, after having a secure and robust OS, the next most important step is a knowledgeable and wary user.

Shameless plug: Pre-order your Mac OS X version 10.6 Snow Leopard or Mac OS X Snow Leopard Family Pack (5-User) from Amazon with these links and I get a few pennies to help pay to keep the lights on while you get the best price (and best OS) around.

Unfortunately, I think this attitude has hindered broader acceptance and success. I’ve blogged before about Apple’s abysmal customer support, maintenance and repair policies – or lack of them (see previous rant). Limiting customers to a single avenue of hardware repair that can take days and weeks, including long waits at a retail store, is just reprehensible – especially if you expect to sell to businesses.

The iPhone app store is another good example of this arrogance. Marco Arment at Marco.org has an excellent blog post about Apple’s indifference to the issues developers are currently facing.

This arrogance and disregard for customers and developers will lead to Apple’s downfall if not corrected. It may be slow. It may be years. But it will happen. You can’t treat your partners and your customers this way forever – even with superior products.

UPDATE: More fun parody and comedy at Google’s expense from Fake Steve Jobs, some not so fun poking at the frightening behemoth that Google has become and its invasive nature (which I’ve belabored before – see Buy a Good Tinfoil Hat, Tinfoil Redux and Dark Clouds), and some pissed off Linux people.

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.

Head in the sand, dying technology, idiot comment of the day by National Association of Broadcasters guy:

“This is good for music,” said Dennis Wharton, the executive vice president of the National Association of Broadcasters. “It sets a rate where artists will receive royalities for the music they produce.”

Wharton said although these “pureplay” Webcasts are popular, he doesn’t see this decision affecting local radio stations. He said the 235,000,000 people who listen to the radio every day will probably stick with it. “It’s hard to beat a free and local option,” he said.

This year at WWDC, I was once again looking forward to Stump the Experts – the event that gave me my 15 seconds. I wasn’t planning on trying to identify any music this year. Everyone has the technology now, and I knew that if Fred Huxham and Mark “The Red” Harlan – the masterminds of this event were going to continue with the music identification tradition, it wouldn’t be recognizable by any published methods. I had my time in the sun. I was looking forward to meeting Mark again after his comments on this blog about the event last year. He even promised me a copy of his book on Texas Hold’em (which I’ll be reading on the plane ride back home).

I was a bit taken aback when at the beginning of Stump this year, I was invited onto the stage to sit with Apple Experts in front of a couple thousand people where the previous years events were retold and I was congratulated for “breaking” a part of the Stump. It was an amazing honor, and I thank Fred and Mark for extending my 15 seconds for a few more.

It amazes me how many times I’ve overheard people at the conference this year retelling the story of “that guy at the Stump”. Now that I spend more of my time managing developers and working with finance and business development, I have little opportunity to extend my geek cred with programming projects. Sure glad that I spent some of my spare time on that little skunkworks development project – it has definitely paid back in spades. It also reminds me why I started programming computers back on an Atari 800XL some thirty odd years ago – the thrill of creation and seeing a piece of code deliver its magic…

NOTE: If you happen to have any photos of the beginning of Stump this year, please let me know. I really would like to have a photograph of myself up on the stage!

UPDATE: More #googlefail articles: PC/Mac World and this amazing graph of the “Great Googelapse”.