Plamwashed?

Couple of days ago, I was hanging out on the #webOS channel (IRC), when the conversation moved onto Apple's IP threats. Now, I mostly hang-out there because I know some folks that now work for Palm (and on the Pre), and not because I'm a Palm user or developer (in fact quite the opposite). Anyhow, during the conversation, I had to (kindly) correct one of the participant (clearly re-educated by Palm's political police) who believed the Palm Pilot to have come before the Apple's Newton ... Not only was the first Newton (OMP100) introduced close to 3 years before the first Pilot (Pilot 1000), but also the term PDA (Personal Digital Assistant) itself, was coined by John Sculley, then CEO of Apple.

To be fair to the Pilot, I just don't think both devices are comparable. The Original MessagePad, even with its laughable handwriting recognition, packed much more punch and capabilities than what Palm could delivers 3 years later! The same extends to the late MessagePads, which more than 10 years after its introduction, still simply rocks and is still been used by thousands. around the worlds (including yours truly up to June 2008). How many PalmPilot Personal are still been used in 2009? ....

Don't believe the Newton can still be useful? Check this article made by cnet.co.uk back in 2006, in which the Newton came out as the winner when compared to an UMPC!!

(Edit: the Casio/Tandy Zoomer did beat the OMP release by 2 months, and thus it is considered the first PDA. Palm Computing contribution to it was the Personal Information Management (PIM) software).

1984

Since we are only 1 day away of the 25th anniversary of the Apple's Macintosh release, it is time for me to indulge into a little bit of nostalgia and go back to January 1984 ... Back then, I was only 2 weeks shy of been 10 years old, and the personal computer revolution was in full swing (yes, even in France!). I probably wasn't aware of the new Macintosh and its game changing Graphical User Interface, but I was already been titillated by computers and programming, thanks to my dad whom was very much into it, albeit in mobile computing. Mobile computing? In 1984? Well back then it was called pocket computing, and my dad's favorite toy was his trusty Casio FX-702P (which he was using also for work) and he was fully equipped with tape recorder and the tiny thermal printer with its funky metallic like paper. The 702 was indeed great, and I myself falled in love with it in the following years when it was handed down to me. To the point that I used to carry it around (in its little pouch) with me everywhere. Not contempt to just being geeking on his calculator, my dad was also a member of the local computer club, where I had my first encounters with top of the line computers such as the ZX Spectrum, Oric Atmos, Apple IIc, Matra Alice and VG 5000. The later eventually became my very first personal computer (for christmas '84 I guess) for countless hours of gaming and BASIC programming. My dad, back then, had subscription to two french computer magazines (both long gone) which had tons of little programs to be typed in (yep, that's right typed in, not loaded!), so it was possible to spend lots of time on the computer without actually doing much of anything except entering the code. Trying to run it was always a bit of a frustrating experience since there was very often errors in the code which were making it un-workable (that and/or typing mistakes made by little fingers ...). Anyhow, my first encounter with what I'll call a modern computer didn't occurs until late '86, when a school friend got a Macintosh Plus, which we used to do the school newspaper on.

Did I knew back then that computer was what I wanted to do when I grew up? I like to said yes (of course) but unfortunatly it's not the case. I didn't really get into computers until the late 80s, and only decided to make it my profession in 92. Up to that point, all I really wanted to be was either a Naval officer or an Archeologist (the later was likely due to that romatic image of archeology imprinted in my mind by waaaay too much of Indiana Jones) ...

As for the very famous 1984 commercial, well I never saw it until years after the event. To be honest I don't think it was ever aired in France (I could be wrong though) ...

Happy b-day, Mouse!

Well, the mouse is officially turning 40 years old today. Well, to be exact, it's a little more than 40 years old, since it was first publicly demonstrated 40 years ago by Douglas Engelbart during what is now known as the Mother of all Demos. If you have 74 minutes to spare, make sure to watch the video of that demo from some pretty cool stuff ... that is if you are digging computing archeology ;-)

While, I'm on the subject, I'd like to point out also, an interesting interview of the legendary John Draper, which was recently published on Stories of Apple. The interview mainly focus on the early days of Phreaking and Apple, but here's an excerpt related to the main preoccupation of this blog (no, it's just not about weird music!):

"Yeah, it’s wired up, man. Fuckin’ wired up man. [...] It was borrowed from NeXT. Jobs owned all the code from NeXT, he brought it in to Apple. It’s part of Xcode, part of Cocoa."

MacBooking

So the MacBook I ordered back on the 15th finally made it to Vancouver this past Friday after a 7 days journey which took it from the banks of the Yangtze river to the Kansai region, then across the Pacific ocean to Alaska, Kentucky, Ontario, Aberta and finally British Columbia ... Way to keep the carbon footprint low there, UPS 9_9

Anyhow ... So far, I'm extremely pleased with the new MacBook. I was a bit worry when I got home Friday, that I may experience some of the issues I had heard about on the MacRumors.com's forums, but luckily non applied (dead pixels, loose battery cover, scratches, bent screen) to my unit (so far at least). In fact, I'm more than pleased: I love it! .. and for the following simple reasons:

• Small and yet very usable
• Sturdy and stylish (feel like a slab of metal)
  
• Nice screen (yeah there some reflections but it's not really a major issue for me at least ...)
• Great battery life
• Nice keyboard
  

Now, it's not (yet) all lovy dovy:

• Hang on me a couple of time
  
• Can't seems to be able to get the # character, it keep showing up as £ (WTF?)
  
• Plugged an external-screen to it and the MacBook display froze (it was still working but the unit own display wasn't, not was the external display)
• The trackpad is tricky to use (maybe that's just me)
  

Okay, we get it Apple ...

Like many people, I find the Get a Mac ads that Apple have been running since 2006, amusing. Poking fun of Windows and Microsoft while showing the many advantages of the Mac, was a great idea ... The problem is that lately the ads have been solely bullying Vista without showing anything that is related to how the Mac works nor make things easier for its users. Unless I'm mistaken, the last ads to have been really on the subject was "Office Stress", announcing the release of the new version of Office for Mac ... that's 10 ads ago. One may argue that "Off the Air" was kinda on the subject too (4 ads ago) ... but not really. Sure it's great that the Genius in the store can help transfer files from PC to Mac when switching, but that's no big deal (in my books at least).

October 20th, 1997

Today is a big day for the few of us for which this matter ... 11 years ago, to the day, the last of the Apple's Newton (MessagePad 2100) was introduced. Until I got my iPod touch back in June of this year, my trusty Newton had been my main PDA since March 1998. It is by far the oldest piece of technology I own that is still in working order (followed by my old Vaio laptop runing BeOS).

Even tough I like very much the new Apple's mobile platform, I still think that the Newton is, in many ways, still ahead of anything else when it comes to low-power, mobile software usage. I know it's hard to beleive if you have never used one ...

Prepared for Shipment ...

Ok, I'm bound to look somewhat silly (as usual), since just a few days ago, I was mostly hostile towards the new supposed look of the Apple's notebook. I changed my mind and ordered the 2.4Ghz MacBook ... The notebook looked much better during the event and on Apple's official pictures, than it did on the leaked shots ... and this new version is more than ever more akin to a small MacBook Pro than the old MacBook. Since I was on the market to replace our aging iBook G3 ... it looked like a very good deal and the reviews so far are mainly (very) positive. Can't wait to hold it in my arms! ... err, I mean start using it!

Pre Apple event blues ...

I have been holding out on replacing my old iBook (2003) with a MacBook (Pro?) since there was a rumor (confirmed last week) of a refreshment of the line. As usual, rumors have gone wild over the couple of days leading to today's event. The latest round of spy-like activities, spured some fuzzy pictures of what is rumored to be the new MacBook Pro ... And I sure hope this is a fake, 'cause I don't like what I see, nor what I read about some models of the line been left un-touched by the update. What kind of #%&@ed-up update will that be?? ... Maybe I should grab one of the current MBP at my local Best Buy before they get replaced by a mobile version of the iMac ...

So long NDA ...

Apple has just announced that it was dropping the NDA which have been in effect for the iPhone SDK since it's public release earlier this year. This is a very good news all around :-) And perfect timing for me since I just wrote my first little "application" for the iPhone last night. Nothing very fancy I must confess, just a port of the first Cocoa example from Aaron Hillegass' book (the random number generator). Unsurprisingly, the more I get to use Interface Builder, the less I'm been hostile to it ... Anyhow, now that the NDA is off, I guess I'll be able to include this side of my daily musing as part of this blog :-)

Speaking of Cocoa Touch, Bill Dudney has an interesting piece on why you should really learn Cocoa for OS X before working on an iPhone (the whole post was NDA friendly).

The Dark Side (TM) clouds everything ...

I have been observing for a while now how things are panning out with Apple and the App Store. Since I haven't started developing for the iPhone yet (but soon! I'm starting a new full time job doing just that in 6 days!!, I can't add anything of value to the on-going discussions, except joining the group of bystanders and shaking my head in disbelieve at each moves Apple made. Even thought I always had a soft spot for Apple since my days on an Apple IIc, I'm not naive enough to believe they can do no evil ... especially since they sort of have a proven track record of not always playing fair and square. Lots of fore front bloggers have commented about the whole situation (e.g Daring Fireball, Wil Shipley ...), including the still standing NDA, which have already caused the publishing of a programming book to be canceled. Now, as long as you can stay anonymous (does that really mean anything on Internet these days?), it is not impossible to post details (including tutorials) on Cocoa Touch. It is a bit of a risky endeavour I must said, but very much appreciated by newbies iPhone devs like myself ;-)

On another subject, but still related ... The Technologizer.com web site has an interesting post with a bunch of old to recent Apple's TV ads, make sure to check it out for a bit of nostalgia.

iCapricious

There has been a lot of talks on the Apple and iPhone developers communities lately about the issue of what application get to be on the App Store or be rejected from it ... The folks behind The Joy of Tech have summed-up in their hilarious (and yet lovely) usual way:

So far, since there has been only an handful of rejected applications, I don't think it is fair to Apple to said that they are abusing their gate keeper role ... however, since not all developers may be has vocal about their rejection as Podcaster's author ... who knows really?