AppleInsider | Road to Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard: 64-Bits

Flickr user Balakov likes to take photos using Lego figures.  And not just any photos, Balakov actually recreates famous paintings, photographs, and scenes in painstakingly detail.  The attention to detail in his work is truly amazing and the result is wonderful.  I especially love the recreations of Star Wars scenes and the way Balakov has even went past the series and created scenes such as one depicting a Storm Trooper with a brief case, after the fall of the Empire.  Wonderful and truly unique work.

Lego Album on Flickr

This service looks to directly compete with current market offerings such as Meebo, which allow users to login to multiple chat services through a web interface, without installing software.  Sadly, because AOL has built the AIM application using Flash, it is not usable on the iPhone or iPod Touch.  I recommend either Meebo for a web based application, or using MobileChat or AIM as an application for the 2.0 iPhone Software from the iTunes Application Store.

AIM on the web

Meebo

MobileChat for iPhone/Touch

AIM for iPhone/Touch

If you’re looking for help with a Cocoa, iPhone, or web project, or have any ideas, I’d love to hear them.  I have a few ideas myself and have one in development, but I’m still up for more to take on.  Look forward to hearing from everyone!

SearchMe.com

I had put my camera in USB mode a few months ago and placed photos on there using the Finder, so I could take the SD card somewhere with me and have the photos with me.  When I was finished, I used the camera’s built-in “Delete All Files” option and everything seemed fine.  However, when importing subsequent pictures in iPhoto, there was empty boxes after all the pictures I had taken, when looking at the camera.  And after iPhoto was done importing the pictures, it could not delete those empty blocks.

I had just lived with this, until today.  I was looking online on how to format an SD card, and had a wonderful idea: I would try Apple’s own Image Capture utility already on my Mac.  Sure enough, I launched the application, clicked the ‘Download Some’ button to actually see the photos (noticing that the filenames started with an underscore, probably the root of all this evil) and easily deleted them from within the application.

I’d imagine using the Terminal to view the hidden files and deleting them would have worked as well.  Nothing showed up in the Finder, but that was probably related to the weird filenames as well.

Hope this quick tip helps someone!

Still in beta, v1.5 introduces several new features including:

• Support for .pkg files
• Support for receiving demographic information from users
• Can update bundles, not restricted to just .app applications
• Minimum system version checking for users
• Garbage Collection
• Better version comparison algorithm
• DSA instead of less secure MD5
• Won’t update if app is running from a disk image

Andy has also taken the time to dramatically simplify the Sparkle site itself, and move the project over to Launchpad for easier development. Be sure to check out this new version to incorporate into your apps to gain the new features.

Sparkle Page

Sparkle on LaunchPad

Create a document with your text layer. Duplicate that layer and flip that vertically, pulling the duplicate layer down so it is a reflection under the first. To feather this second lower layer out to make this effect more impressive, use the Square Marquee utility, with a feathering setting of 10px, to select the bottom half of the second layer and then hit delete. This effectively removes most of the reflection, and you can now play with the opacity of that layer to fine tune the effect even more.

Overall, I’m very impressed with this approach and it makes it so much easier to accomplish this task.

Sebastian Sulinski Design

For all the Knoxvillians out there, Pride is returning to East Tennessee this week. There are events each evening this week, leading up to the day long celebration of the LGBT community on Saturday, June 21st, from 3-10 in Market Square. And of course, there will be an after party at Rainbow West.

I will most likely be attending the Thursday night event, which is Sundown in the City. If you’re gay and are going to be there, wear red and show support!

Also, I hope to meet some fellow bloggers from the area at the Saturday event in Market Square. The Lambda Student Union from the University of Tennessee will be there with a table, providing information to allies and meeting people in the community. Look for our table and come up and say hi.

Knoxville Pride 2008

Lambda Student Union

There was buzz during WWDC ‘08 about Safari 4’s 1.61x Javascript performance improvement over Safari 3.1. Even more, it is 4.34x as fast compared to Safari 3.0. That’s very impressive improvements, placing Safari and WebKit out ahead of even the latest version of Firefox, version 3, released just today. Well, if you would like that performance boost today while running Javascript intensive sites, then download the latest nightly build from the WebKit site and have fun!

WebKit Open-Source Project

The community has been hard at work and before now the most notable project being developed was by the Shiira web browser team, called BlkAppKit.

Tim Davis from Binary Method has been hard at work creating an awesome framework of HUD controls. Unlike the few other kits already out there, BGHUD AppKit does not use images to create the controls. None at all. These controls are beautiful and ready for Resolution Independence. Also worth noting is the shear number of controls already available, the speed with which the developer is creating new ones and the community that is using it, including RealMac Software, developers of RapidWeaver.

Another unique feature to the BGHUD AppKit is theming. Tim has taken an interesting approach to theming the controls to better match your application, if you need something different than the default HUD style. Place your controls on the windows and set the custom class, as you would with any other custom control in Interface Builder. Building and Running the application at this time will show no difference. However, if you initiate an object controller, of either “BGThemeManager” or “BGGradientTheme” and connect the outlet of every control to this object, your controls are now updated. Using the “BGGradientTheme” gives you the default appearance, while using the theme manager lets you customize the controls.

This seems a little tedious upfront, especially if you want to just use the default appearance. However, if you needed to change the overall appearance of your application, instead of subclassing all of these controls, you can simply subclass and use the update theme manager. Therefore, it does pay off in that respect.

My personal recommendation: If I don’t set the outlet on my control to a theme manager, then use the default HUD behavior. That way I don’t even have to worry with it. But, the work put into this framework is phenomenal and it seems that Tim isn’t sleeping until he implements every last single available control perfectly. If you need HUD controls in your project, I strongly believe this is the best framework available. The work is beautiful, it’s under heavy and active development, the developer is responsive to requests, it’s easily theme-able, and all the controls are already Resolution Independent.

Update: Tim has already read the post and really liked my recommendation for simplifying the ThemeManager behavior. Even better, he’s already implemented the change into the framework, so checking out subsequent version from SVN are now more friendly. Check out his blog for more details and to get your copy.

BGHUD AppKit Home

Shiira BlkAppKit

RealMac Software

My previous post on HUD controls in Leopard

For one, the SproutCore website is now back online after being Dugg a couple days ago. And not only that, there is a very good introduction to models, records (including saving and retrieving) and a brief introduction to the local database, called the Store. If you’re interested in developing more full-featured, Desktop like apps for the web, you need to check out the SproutCore framework.

Models Tutorial

SproutCore Site

My Introduction to SproutCore

Objective-J, Cappuccino, and 280Slides.com

My Introduction to Objective-J and Cappuccino

Buy the EP on iTunes

Throughout the development of Mac OS X, Apple has reexamined the old ways of doing things in UNIX and proposed new architectures. One example is launchd, the process that manages the launching, termination, and supervision of other processes in the system. It replaces a variety of existing process managers including init, rc, inetd, xinetd, atd, crond and watchdogd. Few UNIX vendors would bother to engineer an entirely new way to do things, and if undertaken in the FOSS world, such an innovation would rarely be adopted by enough of the Linux community to ever matter.

and

Rather than expecting each developer to become an expert in the black art of multithreading, Apple has built sophisticated process management into the kernel where it belongs and added language conventions that enable mere mortals to take advantage of a wide variety of different hardware that users might have at their disposal.

Grand Central Dispatch manages processes in a manner analogous to modern networking. Old telephone equipment used to use circuit switching to transmit information over networks; a dedicated circuit path is easy to set up but it is also expensive and potentially fragile. Modern networking uses packet switching, which breaks up data, phone conversations, or video streams into packets and routes each of them independently in a far more efficient way that is also resilient to network outages. Packets get routed around the problems.

For those without a technical background, Grand Central is going to be big. The ‘black art of multithreading’ is not being said lightly. By adding elegant support in Mac OS itself, Apple is enabling developers to take advantage of multicore Macs with greater ease than ever before. The performance improvement in most applications, and indeed in OS X itself, will be available and noticeable immediately. However, just imagine the payoff we’ll see as Intel continues to deliver chips with more and more cores.

Roughly Drafted Magazine

Snow Leopard Teaser

SproutCore adds a MVC (model-view-controller) structure to Javascript. Of course, Cocoa devs will be happy to find the same features noted in Cappuccino, such as undo/redo, bindings, document management, client-side storage with HTML5, and more.

Roughly Drafted Magazine has a very interesting article detailing the implications from this powerful framework. The important ideas to take away from this article lie along the lines that this framework is basically Cocoa for web apps. Apple has already been using SproutCore for over a year in the .Mac Web Gallery, and now has fully deployed SproutCore in the rebranded and revamped .Mac service, MobileMe, in addition to hiring the developer of SproutCore himself. Putting all this effort into the framework and testing it by developing interactive and very Mac-like web applications gives the user the idea that web applications don’t have to suck. So, a new market is emerging.

This is an amazing article with lots of grounded arguments for Apple’s moves, and the industry’s attitude in general. While you’re checking out Roughly Drafted Magazine, be sure to read other articles which are just as amazing!

Roughly Drafted Magazine

SpoutCore Javascript Framework

280Slides Online Presentation Software

Signup for a free profile today. And while you’re there, be sure to check out my profile as well!

Elian Gonzalez joins Cuba’s youth Communists [From Elian Gonzalez joins Cuba’s youth Communists - CNN.com]

This is one of those moments that truly put my age back into perception. I’m only 21, but Elian Gonzalez brings up memories from my youth. And now the 14yr old is a member of the Cuban Communists. Not that I don’t condone that, but just interesting that he can still make news like this 8 years after the famous custody battle.

However, unlike Latitude, Mecca is being developed by the guys who make Fluid, the Mac app that lets you save web pages as individual ‘apps’ to click and run from your Dock. If you’ve been paying attention, Safari 4 will have this exact functionality built right in. Seems like the guys from Fluid have decided to take their product another direction to stay ahead of Apple.

Check out the Mecca teaser.

Check out the Latitude teaser.

I’ve already touched on the biggest impact for users: interface improvement. 280Slides looks and acts just like a real desktop application. All the standard keyboard shortcuts for copy/paste and undo/redo are supported right within the web app itself. Take a minute to tour the application and see how it compares to other online presentation applications. It feels more like Apple’s own Keynote, right?

Developers have even more reason to be excited. The whole Javascript/HTML/CSS design process to manipulate the DOM is abstracted to a higher layer with the introduction of Objective-J. The Objective-J language allows developers to write code in a style more like writing for traditional desktop applications. The developer doesn’t directly interact with the DOM or style the page with CSS. Instead, Objective-J itself manages all the views and drawing the objects to screen. More so, the Cappuccino framework provides functionality that is traditionally lacking from other Javascript frameworks, such as:

• copy/paste
• undo/redo
• document management and archiving
• vector graphics
• animations

This is a tremendous advantage for developers, allowing focus to be placed on the unique aspects of the web application itself. Cappuccino will be open-source and available soon, so keep a lookout at the Objective-J website. I think that we will see some amazing applications begin to rise in the future and this might possibly fuel a new era of apps on the web.

Also be sure to check out a newer article about SproutCore, a similar Javascript framework already released and in use in Apple's MobileMe platform.

Objective-J website

280Slides Application

Ajaxian Interview with 280 North team

HyperSpaces boasts such features as named spaces, desktop labels, different desktop pictures and desktop tinting. It makes heavy use of Leopards Core Animation and Core Image to beautifully let you organize your work. Currently in a private beta, check out the HyperSpaces website to register for a notification when HyperSpaces comes out in public beta shortly.

Related Links:

CocoaBots Software

Tony Arnold | Lead HyperSpaces Developer

Cocoia Blog | Creating the HyperSpace Icon

[Pictures from MacWorld]

Cool features such as placing a link to a picture or easily inserting your current location with a single tap of your finger, will make the iPhone version very pleasant to use and I easily agree with Dan from MacWorld in predicting Twitterific for iPhone being the single most sought after app from the AppStore when it launches later this summer.

Read more at MacWorld

http://www.apple.com/server/macosx/snowleopard/

Twing.com today announced the debut of its new online community and forum search engine, www.Twing.com. Created to be the Internet’s best resource for helping users search and discover opinions, information and conversations that match their interests, Twing.com includes its own blogs and forums to provide updated community information and an ongoing conversation with visitors and forum owners.

“Online forums are an established medium people have been using to communicate since the early days of the internet, even predating the web. The number of users of these forums has been consistently growing year over year, and recent estimates of U.S. users alone exceeds 50 million,” said Kevin Shea, General Manager for Twing.com. “As more users become active, more forums have been created and this trend is continuing. Our goal is to help these internet users to participate in discussions, ask questions, get answers and offer advice by providing a resource that organizes this category of online content and uncovers the discussions that interest them. We expect Twing.com to be an invaluable resource for forum users and owners.”

Twing.com’s use of proprietary software and algorithms enables users to search into forum content well beyond the limitations of traditional search engines. With Twing.com, Internet users can search the rich user-generated content found in online communities and forums, and access these discussions through highly relevant, easy-to-read search results.

Twing.com also caters to forum owners by enabling them to submit their sites to the Twing Forum Directory, a resource designed to generate traffic and enhance the quality of discussion taking place on forums.

“Just about any interest area has a forum, and sometimes hundreds of them,” added Scott Germaise, Twing’s Director of Product Management. “Forums are a great source of information, especially if you’re looking for advice or help from real people facing the same issues. The advantage Twing.com offers is its clarity of focus on forum content, which is the essence of online community. By offering multiple search options plus advanced filtering and sorting tools, people can effectively search forums in ways not available until Twing.com. We believe people will not only benefit from using Twing.com, but will also become more aware of and contribute to the ongoing growth and value of forum communities all over the Internet.”

Twing.com is easily used by entering search terms to quickly locate specific discussions and/or topics. Visitors can register – for free – to become a Twing.com member and participate in Twing.com’s forums and take advantage of current and upcoming personalization options.

However, we should take this time to mourn the loss of a very dear friend: iCards.

iCards was introduced with the introduction of iTools (the precursor to .Mac) back in 2000, in the OS 9 days. The service has remained practically the same, and has always been my favorite way of sending cards to all of my friends and family online. MobileMe will see the discontinuation of iCards. Everyone should take a moment of silence to commemorate the passing of an age.

From the Versions website:

Whether you’re a designer, developer, editor or project manager, chances are you already have plenty on your mind. Versions saves you the hassle and makes working with Subversion easy for your entire team. Thanks to Versions’ clear-cut approach to Subversion, novices and power users alike will enjoy using it. And if you haven’t moved to Subversion yet, now is the time.

Spaces was one of the new features in Leopard I was most excited about, but I found the actual implementation unusable. [Henry Story wrote a fine description][d] of the problems with Spaces in 10.5.0. When I linked to his critique, [I wrote]:

I’ve tried to love Spaces but can’t, because I want to divide spaces into tasks, and some apps, like my web browser, need to have windows in every space. If I’m in, say, space 3 and Command-Tab to Safari, I want Safari to activate in my current space, not jump me to whichever space contains the frontmost Safari window. In short, Spaces seems designed for app partitioning, not task partitioning.

Take, for example, the task of writing this article. What I want to be able to do with Spaces is dedicate one space solely to the task. I want Safari windows pertaining to any web pages related to the article, and MarsEdit and BBEdit windows for the article itself. But I don’t want all open Safari, MarsEdit, and BBEdit windows in this space — I only want those pertaining to the article. There was simply no way to make this work in 10.5.0 through 10.5.2; you could get the windows grouped this way, but you’d keep getting switched to another space when what you wanted to do was switch to another app within the current space. Spaces really only seemed suited to putting all of any given app’s windows in a particular space (or making all an app’s windows visible in all spaces). This isn’t to say Spaces wasn’t usable, only that it wasn’t usable for grouping a few windows from different apps together in one Space.

This week’s release of 10.5.3 brought good news: Apple has addressed this problem with a few seemingly minor changes to Spaces. Apple’s release notes for 10.5.3 hint at the changes, but don’t explain them in any detail:

Spaces

• Resolves an issue in which switching to a different space and returning back to the original space may reorder the application windows with a different active window.

• Resolves an issue in which activating an application from the Dock switches to a different space, even if there is a window for that application in the current space.

• Fixes an issue in which Command-Tab may incorrectly switch to a new space.

• Addresses reliability issues with Spaces when syncing preferences over .Mac.

Some of these are simply bug fixes. Clearly, for example, switching between spaces shouldn’t have changed the window ordering within a space. But some of these describe new behavior which only kicks in if you turn off a new-to-10.5.3 checkbox in the Spaces panel in System Preferences: “When switching to an application, switch to a space with open windows for the application”.

By default, it’s checked, which means app switching under Spaces remains much the same as it was on 10.5.0–10.5.2. For example, let’s say you have two spaces, with one or more Safari windows in space 1, and no Safari windows in space 2. If you’re in space 2 and activate Safari — whether by clicking the Dock icon, Command-Tabbing, or by opening a link in some other app’s window in space 2, then Spaces will jump you to space 1, where there are already open Safari windows.

If you turn this new checkbox off, however, activating an app, even one that has no windows in the current space, will not jump you to another space. Once you’re in a space, you stay there until you explicitly switch spaces, not just switch apps. This makes all the difference in the world for the way I, and others, want to use Spaces.

This is a major change to the way Spaces works, but the checkbox label doesn’t exactly make it clear. (I don’t have a better label to suggest; it’s a tough feature to describe in the length of a checkbox label.) Sadly, the help content for Spaces does not seem to have been updated to even mention this checkbox, let alone describe what it does.

One non-obvious detail is that you can switch to another space by clicking an app’s Dock icon multiple times. If you click a running app’s Dock icon once, that app will activate in the current space. If it doesn’t have any open windows in the current space, it will activate without creating a new untitled window. But if you click that same app’s Dock icon again, you’ll jump to the next space in which that app does have an open window. If the app has open windows spread across multiple spaces, subsequent clicks on its Dock icon will cycle through those spaces. So if you have four total spaces, with Safari windows in spaces 1 and 3, you can repeatedly click Safari’s icon in the Dock to cycle between spaces 1 and 3. If you’re starting in space 2 or 4, clicking Safari’s Dock icon once will activate Safari in that space but without a window.

Using Command-Tab to switch between apps, you will never automatically switch to another space when this new “switching” checkbox is turned off. (It’d be nice if the Command-Tab window provided some sort of indication for which apps have open windows in the current space.)

I also ran into an issue specific to web browsers. In the General tab of Safari’s preferences window, you can specify whether links from other applications open in a new Safari window or in a new tab in the frontmost existing Safari window. I had been using the “in a new tab” option. However, with this new Spaces feature, opening a link from another app in a space that has no Safari windows will jump you to the next space that does have one. Ideally, I’d like to see Safari create a new window in the current space in this situation, but as it stands, changing Safari’s preference to open links in a new window is good enough. (This same thing applies to other tabbed web browsers, such as Firefox and Camino.)

In short, if you were happy with the way Spaces worked through 10.5.2, you shouldn’t notice any changes, because the default behavior remains the same in 10.5.3. But if, like me, Spaces drove you nuts by switching between spaces when you only wanted to switch between apps within the current space, give it another shot after turning this new checkbox off. Kudos to the Spaces team.

---

Lastly, I should mention that I had problems getting this new feature to work at all. After upgrading to 10.5.3 and seeing the Spaces-related changes in the release notes, I tried it out. Toggling the new checkbox made no difference for me, however — I got the same old “jump to another space when switching apps” behavior either way. I solved the problem by trashing my com.apple.dock.plist preferences file (which, since Spaces is controlled by the Dock, is where most Spaces-related prefs seem to be stored). After logging out and logging back in, the new checkbox worked perfectly.

[From ★ Spaces in 10.5.3]

If you find any bugs throughout the site, which will most likely happen, please send me a quick email so I can get it sorted out. Thanks!

Read Article.

My simple question is whether I should upgrade to the v2.0 release that’s been out for quite awhile now? It has a few features, mainly an iPhone pepper, which I would like, but is there any other compelling reason to fork over the money?

I’d just like to hear some thoughts from other Mint users out there. 1.x seems to be suiting me just fine as it is.

My friends and I came up with a new game this past summer and this semester I’ve created a 2-player online version. It’s a ton of fun and I would appreciate any feedback you have. I do have a few more ideas in the works, as well as expanded documentation, but all in good time. I plan to officially release it into the wild this July.

Quick overview of the game:

• You’re dealt 9 cards, 3 of which you don’t see
• Then you pick 3 cards to save for the end of the game
• You can only play cards of equal or greater value each turn
• 2’s, 8’s, and Joker’s are wild
• Aces are high
• First player to completely go out of cards wins.

Start playing now!

It seems pretty obvious, doesn’t it? Someone is referred to the site because of a Google search every couple minutes. I spend time looking at the stats to see what you are searching for and where you end up once you are on the site. All important information.

Any thoughts?

Flow is exciting for a few reasons. First, it’s Leopard only. This means that the interface is super slick (lickable as the developer describes it). Views are animated and everything is simply gorgeous and simple to use. Leopard technologies such as Quicklook are also employed in the app. Quicklook files from your servers!

The first thing you’ll notice when launching Flow, is that it just feels right. It’s super responsive and fits in perfectly with the Leopard UI. Complete with tabs and a simplistic and intuitive interface, you’ll wonder how you ever lived without it.

Flow provides a built-in editor as well, which is fairly decent. The bottom pane of the window provides you with a live preview of your changes, and the editor actually supports syntax highlighting for HTML, PHP, XML and CSS. However, it seems that Javascript highlighting isn’t available at this time, but hopefully will be in a future release. Note: the image below is while using Quicklook in Flow, not from my Mac.

Bonjour is also available, right in the sidebar. Because I have “Remote Login” (ssh) enabled on my Macbook, my computer showed up under the SFTP folder here. Just double-clicking on my computer and entering my password instantly logged me in and brought up my home folder. If there were more computers on my network, this could be very useful indeed.

Droplets are very useful as well. Simply create a droplet from the “Bookmarks” menu and an icon appears on your Desktop (which you can move then anywhere on your Mac). Then, just drop a file or folder on the droplet, and whether Flow is running or not, the stuff is uploaded to your server.

A few things I’ve noticed. First, If you have a tab open and double-click on a bookmark to log you in, the tab will be used for that bookmark. This is the same behavior that is in Safari. However, I would rather stay logged in to both and have the bookmark be opened in a new tab. If that annoys you, there is an easy set in Preferences to enable. Just a heads up. Second, Bonjour connections seem to be just a bit buggy still. It took me a couple clicks to get the right information to show up in the login pane when clicking on my computer, and once connected, the name of the tab wasn’t updated to the new connection. However, bugs have been filed

This is definitely an exciting new app and is very refreshing as the previous leader in the FTP space, Transmit, was getting long in the tooth. Congrats to Brian from Extended Mac on his first release!

You can download a free 15 day trial from Extended Mac Software here. Flow is 29 USD for all 1.x upgrades.

The Lambda Student Union of the University of Tennessee is holding an event in Market Square, on Sunday April 6th, from 1-10pm. Women bands will perform all afternoon and evening, benefiting local charities and organizations. The event is free and open to the public.

Hope to see you there!

For a small fee, there is an extensive video series available detailing icon design.

Icon Resource.net

Take a look here.

If you want to execute a process in the background in the shell, just append an ampersand to the end of the command. Most of the time this isn’t that useful, but the special appeal is when launch X apps from the shell. If you don’t append the &, the shell waits for the X app to terminate before returning a prompt, so the window is useless.

I spend quite a lot of time in Unix and just now found this tip out, as I’m writing my own simple shell for one of my classes. Cool tip indeed.

Yes, you could use Cmd-t or use the menu item, but sometimes I’m just right there with the mouse and that’s the quickest way. With the ability to rearrange and drag-n-drop tabs that Safari 3 added, I’m very pleased with tab support now.

This passage from a reader email pretty much nails it:

Yes, it would make a difference if the checkbox for Safari were unchecked by default. Also, the “new installs” should be visually separated from the “updates to programs you’ve already installed”, and clearly marked as such. I’m all in favor of programs updating themselves — especially potentially network-exploitable apps like iTunes or QuickTime — but companies shouldn’t abuse that to push entirely unrelated software on end users.

The reason reactions to this controversy have been so polarized is that we’ve been mostly arguing about the wrong thing: how or whether Apple should offer new applications to Windows users via the current Software Update app. The problem is with the design of the Software Update app itself.

The reader is right: updates to currently-installed software are an entirely different thing than offers to install new software. Different things should look different; the current design of Software Update doesn’t allow for such a visual differentiation.

For updates to installed software, the simple plain list Software Update currently displays is perfect. New software — like, in this case, Safari — should be displayed separately and more prominently. A big app icon alongside a brief description, perhaps — something that, visually, is instantly recognizable as something different from the regular updates. It should be clear that what’s being offered is both new and optional. The default should be not to install — or, perhaps, the user could be required to explicitly click either “Install” or “Don’t Install”, with neither option selected by default. If the user chooses “Don’t Install”, Software Update should then offer the user the option to never again be prompted about this particular application. (You can do this now, using the “Ignore Update” command in the Update menu, but this feature should not be hidden in a menu.)

Maybe Apple realizes this, but they figured it wasn’t worth the effort to add an entirely new presentation mode to the Software Update app, because they don’t have any other new Windows apps on the horizon. I.e., that, given their current plans, it wouldn’t be a new “ask the user if they want this brand new app installed” feature, but rather, for all intents and purposes, really just an “ask the user if they want Safari” feature.

But laziness is no excuse. This entire controversy, minuscule though it may be, could — and should — have been avoided if Apple had followed the design principle of making things that are different look different.

[From ★ Update - Daring Fireball]

I think DF summed the whole “controversy” up with this post. Very well put.

Latitude is a powerful, content-centered browser for Mac OS X Leopard and above. Its core functionality is designed to make your browsing experience as straightforward as possible, without the limitations and rusty mold of existing browser conventions. Today, we don’t parse hypertext, but watch videos, keep tabs on news, slide through vacation photos and much more. Latitude is geared towards providing you with the tools to finally make the best of the wealth of content that is the World Wide Web. No manual required!

Latitude first came into being as a concept and list of features from Sebastiaan, on the Cocoia Blog. Sebastiaan detailed a list of features for the next generation browser and provided mockups for a working interface design. The idea sparked great interest in the Mac community and shortly thereafter development began in earnest on the project.

For more information about the Latitude browser and the team, visit the Latitude website. For updates on Latitude’s progress and other ramblings from Sebastiaan himself, visit his blog, Cocoia.

Read the interview with the Latitude development team, exclusive to Mac Fanatic, on the full post, here.

Everyone: First off, how do you use a browser? Are you a facebook junkie, casual surfer, or YouTube insomniac?

Team: Practically everything, thats part of the idea behind Latitude. All of the current browsers offer a flat experience not tailored to any of the new features of the internet. We want to change that.

Everyone: Can you safely say that you’ve tried just about every Mac browser available today?

Leo: No, I haven’t tried camino or Shiira.
Seb: I have tried them all except icab.
Danny: Same as Seb I have used them all bar iCab and omni web. But I’m sticking with Camino until Latitude is out.

Everyone: Do you feel that My Dream App has or will influence the development of Latitude? The whole process so far seems very similar. A mockup was made and developers are onboard to create the next big thing.

Team: No, we intend to build an application that you can use at the end of it. We aren’t a competition of any kind we are merely keeping the design process relatively open.

Everyone: Do you believe the Gecko engine to be a viable development option on the Mac today?

Danny and Leo: No not really. Webkit makes it so easy to create a fast, accurate, and standards compliant browser, that Gecko doesnt really come into the equation.

Everyone: Do you believe in a plug-in design for a browser, such as Firefox, or do you think a browser should provide most user’s needs exceptionally well and leave it at that?

Team: While plugins are great in some contexts, they shouldn’t be necessary for a properly designed application. For Latitude, we are completely open to suggestions but at the moment the only plugin support will be browser plugins (like flash) and input managers (such as 1password).

Everyone: Do you believe that the project will gain enough momentum to be a long-term success? The Mac browser market seems fairly saturated already. Also, the key to keeping a great 3rd party Mac app seems to be innovating features quicker than Apple can adopt them in their own applications.

Team: While we agree the market is completely saturated for old style browsers we think we can open up an entirely new one with a revolutionary browser. This, we believe, will be our key to long term success. We disagree that having a great app is just about iterating faster than apple, the key is simply having a great application.

Everyone: What is your primary browser? What would be your favorite feature from this browser and how would you integrate it into Latitude?

Danny: Camino, I genuinely don’t have a favorite feature, hence the need for Latitude.
Seb: Safari, its simplicity and straight forwardness. We will try to keep this the same in Latitude while adding more functionality.
Leo: Safari, (jokingly) the bookmarks bar. This will make an appearance in Latitude’s sidebar.

Everyone: What do you believe to be the strongest trait in OS X today? And how will that influence the development of Latitude?

Danny and Leo: The new improvements in cocoa such as Core Animation, these will feature heavily in Latitude.
Seb: The finder sidebar.

Everyone: What is your current Mac and how long have you been an Apple user?

Danny: I run a Core Duo Macbook at the moment as Im saving up Seb’s rig, and Ive been a user for 1 year 7 months, so Im a bit of a switcher.
Leo: MacBook Core Duo as well. And about 2 years.
Seb: Mac Pro, MacBook Pro, Powermac G4, MacBook CoreDuo…. *at this point Danny and Leo hang up the skype call*, I have been using for 2 years.

Everyone: Just for fun, what will be the first iPhone application you will place on your phone?

Danny: Frenzic.
Seb: Candy bar mobile.
Leo: I don’t have one, thanks for rubbing it in. *laughs*

Sebastiann: When I first saw your post about Latitude, I imagined this to be just another mockup of an app that was never to be. Did you feel the same way, or did you expect development to begin in earnest?

I just expected it to communicate to the people who make browsers in the hope that it would give them some decent ideas. I never expected a dedicated app to start being built so soon.

Sebastiaan: In an interview on Browsersphere, you mentioned that the Flock interface is too busy and Shiira doesn’t add any new features. However, a lot of the suggested features seem to be existing ones, only implemented in a more clutter-free way. Are there features that don’t exist in any form being developed, or is the focus of the project to modernize the Mac browser?

Both, there are lots of features that will be augmented but there are other, new, features that are simply required to give a better user experience.

Sebastiann: In the same interview on Browsersphere, you drew a few comparisons with iTunes. I love iTunes just as much as the next guy, but do you ever feel that maybe Mac developers spend too much time trying to imitate the iTunes interface?

Yes I think a lot of developers try to mimic the interface and simply do it badly by trying to force too many concepts. For our application it makes perfect sense.

Sebastiaan: When do you expect the official Latitude website to be live?

Now! latitudebrowser.com

Sebastiaan: Is the project going to open-source?

No, but the design process will be fairly open and we welcome any help. But thats more of a question that you should be asking Danny and Leo.

Sebastiaan: How can Mac Fanatic readers get involved?

By sending us lots and lots of money ;-). In all seriousness you are welcome to get in touch with the team through the website latitudebrowser.com, about any talents you can offer, but please don’t get in touch just to say you can test the app. We are no where near that stage. But stay tuned.

Now in the sidebar, are three more boxes with interesting data. First, there is a “What’s Hot” box that shows 5 posts, with the date of the last comment. Hopefully this will help everyone see where people are discussing posts on the site.

There is a box below that which shows the Top 10 Pages. This simply pulls data from my Mint installation and shows the 10 pages (right now also including the homepage and the blog itself). Once again, this is meant as a way to for everyone to see where most people are going on the site.

Finally, there is a box below that which shows the top 5 commented posts of all time.

If you have any other suggestions for the site, I’d love to hear them. Also, if you are interested in implementing something similar on your site, post a comment and we’ll follow up with that!

Pangea’s Brian Greenstone says:

My only concern is that everyone and their brother is jumping on the iPhone app bandwagon, so it may make it difficult to market a product when there are a zillion others coming out at the same time.

I think that Brian brings up an excellent point. There will be a ton of apps available relatively close to the iPhone OS v2.0 release, and customers will most likely be flooded with choices and some great apps will be temporarily lost in all the fuss. However, it will be a perfect time for bloggers, such as myself, to create “Top 20 new iPhone Applications” articles.

Simply put, using the Spotlight-like search on the site always worked, whether you were on the main page or viewing a post. But clicking the “View More Results…” link to get more than 6 results as well as excerpts, post timestamps, and the number of comments….well, that only worked if you were on the main page. That has now been fixed, so search away!

In a post from Knoxify, a site dedicated to building a community and “better everyone’s life” in Knoxville, Mac Fanatic was listed as one of seven blogs chosen for being “rich in content and color”.

I’m honored to be listed on that list!

However, the time came to renew and I figured that if nothing else, I at least wanted my own place to develop and test apps on the web, so here we are. Not exactly the brightest outlook for the site, and one that I don’t like when reviewing just how much time and effort I, and others, have put into this project.

You can easily create a UITextField to handle text input. The interesting part comes into play because there is a keyboard associated with the UITextField, obviously for providing input. That keyboard can be specified what action to do when the return button is pressed, giving a way to process the text. The cool part is, it’s extremely easy for developers to use the many different types of keyboards present on the iPhone. For example, there is a numeric keyboard, the default keyboard, one for entering URLs, one for entering email addresses, and so on. Below is a quick code block, adapted from the “Hello World” example.

aTextField.borderStyle = UITextFieldBorderStyleRounded;
aTextField.contentVerticalAlignment = UIControlContentVerticalAlignmentCenter;
aTextField.placeholder = @”Your name”;
aTextField.keyboardType = UIKeyboardTypeSingleEmailAddressing;

Some other examples of keyboard types:

• UIKeyboardTypeDefault
• UIKeyboardTypeNamePhonePad
• UIKeyboardTypeNumberPad
• UIKeyboardTypeNumbersAndPunctuation
• UIKeyboardTypePhonePad
• UIKeyboardTypeURL

At this moment, the page isn’t up, but I would imagine it would be available shortly.

You can download a quick Automator Application that will copy the two files and place them on your Desktop, or use the steps below.

or, in the Finder, go to:

/System/Library/CoreServices/

One of the many items in that folder is the “Setup Assistant” application. Ctrl-click on that and choose “Show Package Contents”.

Now find:Contents/Resources/TransistionSection.bundle and ctrl-click on the bundle, choosing “Show Package Contents”.

“Contents/Resources/intro-sound.mp3″ is the music that goes along with “Contents/Resources/intro.mov”

You can copy those files to your Desktop and run them through some software (iMovie or Quicktime Pro) and get them in one file, and you have a finished result!

AOL has done an about-face regarding third-party access to the company’s AIM chat network. AOL’s recently launched OpenAIM 2.0 provides open, uninhibited access to services like Meebo, or all-in-one IM clients like Pidgin, allowing them to freely and easily use the AIM instant messaging network. That’s quite a change from AOL’s previous stance toward such competitors, which seemed to be somewhere between sticking its head in the sand and unleashing a pack of angry lawyers. At the moment, multi-platform IM desktop clients like Pidgin or Adium (the popular Mac client) generally rely on hacking and reverse engineering access to chat networks run by AOL, Yahoo, Microsoft and others. Not only is that bad for developers since it means more work, it also means th [From AOL Opens Up the AIM Instant Messaging Network | Compiler from Wired.com]

Found via | Wired Blog Network

Cocoa is My Girlfriend

Feb 19, 12:34 PM EST Toshiba Quits HD DVD Business By YURI KAGEYAMA AP Business Writer AP Photo/Shizuo Kambayashi Watch Related Video Toshiba Quits HD DVD Business Buy AP Photo Reprints Your Questions Answered Ask AP: Political Ads, E-Mail’s Hyphen TOKYO (AP) — Toshiba’s decision to no longer develop, make or market high-definition HD DVD players and recorders will mean consumers can start feeling more confident about buying the victorious rival technology - a Blu-ray disc player. Analysts say competition is expected to heat up among the manufacturers of Blu-ray players and recorders, which include Japanese makers Sony Corp., Matsushita Electric Industrial C