The Daring Fireball Linked List

Thursday, 20 Nov 2008

Ffffound’s Clever Keyboard-Based Navigation ★

Ryan Singer on Ffffound’s excellent keyboard shortcuts. Design isn’t just how things look — it’s about the experience of using them. (The Boston Globe’s Big Picture uses similar shortcuts.)

The iPod Touch Doesn’t Have a Proximity Sensor ★

DF reader Mark Handel, via email:

I can’t remember — does the iPod Touch have a proximity sensor? If it does not, that’s probably the reason that the proximity sensor is undocumented: Apple is trying to keep a very common “reference” hardware platform in the API. I think it was you who mentioned the problem with Android being that there was not a common hardware model: some have only touch screens, some have keyboards, etc.

The iPod Touch does not have a proximity sensor. The primary — and perhaps only — reason the iPhone does is so the screen can turn off and stop accepting touch input when you’re holding it to your ear for a call. I’m not sure this explains why the more useful proximity sensor APIs are undocumented, but it’s an interesting theory. And, clearly, some of the iPhone-only hardware features — the camera and microphone come to mind — are very much documented in the public APIs.

Apple: ‘iPhone Your Life’ ★

New section on Apple’s iPhone web site promoting third-party apps. Interesting for at least two reasons: (1) I’ve already found a couple of interesting apps I’d never heard of before, and (2) it shows you which iPhone apps Apple considers worth showing off.

The Faces of Mechanical Turk ★

Andy Baio:

Last week, I started a new Turk experiment to answer two questions: what do these people look like, and how much does it cost for someone to reveal their face?

Mobispine MMS App for iPhone ★

This is the app that the Swedish carrier Telia will be providing to Swedish iPhone users.

On the Death and 441-Year Life of the Pixel ★

Jonathan Hoefler has an example of pixel-based typography from 1567.

Apple TV Software Update 2.3 ★

With actual, albeit sparse, release notes:

Third-party Remote Controls — Apple TV can now learn other remote controls and use them in addition to the Apple Remote.

I can’t find any developer documentation for this yet. Update: Ah, I see, it’s a feature that allows the Apple TV to pair with existing universal remotes.

Tweetie 1.0 ★

Tweetie, a brand-new $3 iPhone Twitter client by Loren Brichter, is now available from the App Store. I’ve been using beta versions for a few weeks, and it is currently my favorite iPhone Twitter client by far. Tweetie shares a few conceptual similarities with Tweetsville, another very good new iPhone Twitter client — both take a very different approach than the king of the hill, Twitterrific.

The biggest difference is that both Tweetie and Tweetsville support loading additional tweets from further back in your timeline when you get to the end of the list. This makes it possible to “catch up” with older tweets in a way that just isn’t possible with Twitterrific. Tweetie also makes it possible to view individual users’ timelines within the app, using a left-to-right “drilling down” metaphor that allows you to go back to where you were. Tweetie wins out over Tweetsville by being faster, more stable (Tweetsville seems to more frequently run into low-memory situations when showing inline web views), and offering a more carefully thought out interface. The only thing I dislike about Tweetie is the SMS/iChat-style tweet list.

Note2Self (iTunes Store) ★

Note2Self is a $3 audio recording app for the iPhone, and, I believe, the first iPhone app with a “just lift it to your ear to record” feature. (It shipped with the feature in July.) However, unlike Google Mobile, Note2Self doesn’t use the proximity sensor, only the accelerometer.

I bought it last night to try it out. It works better than I’d have thought, but it’s far more finicky than Google Mobile’s implementation. With Note2Self you can trigger the “lift to record” feature just by moving the iPhone and holding it at the right angle — without putting it near your head. And sometimes when you do move it to your ear it doesn’t trigger. I think it’s about as good as it could be by sticking to the published APIs, but now that the proximity sensor cat is out of the bag, I expect to see an update that uses it soon.

Erica Sadun on Using Undocumented iPhone APIs ★

She makes an interesting distinction between the venial sin of using undocumented methods in a public framework (which is what Google has done with the proximity sensor), and the mortal sin of linking to a completely private framework. Sadun — who’s the author of the very good iPhone Developer’s Cookbook — even shows source code for an example app that catches proximity sensor events.

Based on some of the email I’ve gotten this morning, I think the occasional use of undocumented methods in public iPhone frameworks is actually pretty common in third-party iPhone apps. But that doesn’t make it safe, and I think Sadun is stretching the innocuousness of this practice when she writes:

Using unpublished APIs means that your applications can break at any firmware upgrade; Apple does not guarantee that routines will not change the way they stand behind the published APIs. However, developers use these routines for all sorts of good reasons both for items in App Store as well as out. And, often, the routines don’t break and have been stable for a long long time.

Undocumented routines are undocumented for some reason.

Wednesday, 19 Nov 2008

Frenzic for iPhone ★

I’ve played a bunch of iPhone games that, while fun on the computer, just don’t translate well to the iPhone. Games that are best suited to control using a keyboard, joystick, or mouse often just aren’t fun when using the accelerometer or touch screen for input.

Frenzic, a joint production of The Iconfactory and ARTIS Software, is the other way around. When Frenzic came out for the Mac in February 2007, I thought it was a neat concept, but it required far too much precise mousing for me to find it fun. It’s so perfectly suited to touch screen controls that it’s hard to believe it wasn’t designed for the iPhone all along. $5 at the App Store.

A Two-Year-Old Smoking ★

Some of these photographs in Google’s new Life archive make me insatiably curious about the articles that accompanied them in the magazine. Like, say, this series from 1959 featuring a two-year-old cigarette smoker.

Chuck Klosterman Reviews ‘Chinese Democracy’ ★

Chuck Klosterman:

Reviewing Chinese Democracy is not like reviewing music. It’s more like reviewing a unicorn. Should I primarily be blown away that it exists at all? Am I supposed to compare it to conventional horses? To a rhinoceros? Does its pre-existing mythology impact its actual value, or must it be examined inside a cultural vacuum, as if this creature is no more (or less) special than the remainder of the animal kingdom? I’ve been thinking about this record for 15 years; during that span, I’ve thought about this record more than I’ve thought about China, and maybe as much as I’ve thought about the principles of democracy.

The Penguin Blog: Designing Classics ★

Exquisite book cover designs by Coralie Bickford-Smith for Penguin’s new range of hardback classics. See more images in Penguin’s Flickr account. (And how cool is it that Penguin has a Flickr account?) (Via The Book Design Review.)

NumberKey ★

$2 app turns your iPhone or iPod Touch into a numeric keypad for your MacBook. I have no need for this personally, but I can’t help but link to it given that one of the themes matches the Apple IIgs ADB keyboard.

Jason Fried: ‘Why the Drudge Report Is One of the Best Designed Sites on the Web’ ★

Jason Fried:

To clarify, my definition of design goes beyond aesthetic qualities and into areas of maintenance, cost, profitability, speed, and purpose. However, I still think that the Drudge Report is an aesthetic masterpiece even though I also consider it ugly. Can good design also be ugly? I think Drudge proves it can.

I agree completely.

PC Magazine Ceases Print ★

I have a feeling that print publications turning into online-only publications is going to be a recurring theme during this recession.

Tuesday, 18 Nov 2008

‘The Definition of a Slow News Day’ ★

Mena Trott skewers Valleywag’s Owen Thomas. The perfect response to a jackass post.

Jesper: ‘Translation From P… Uh, Swedish to English of Selected Portions of Swedish MacWorld’s Report About iPhone MMS Availability in Telia’s Swedish Network’ ★

Definitely suggests that it’s Telia that will be providing the app, but no word as to how they plan to distribute it. The only way would be through the App Store, and the App Store requires Apple’s blessing. Are there any carrier-specific apps in the store now? I’m not aware of any from AT&T here in the U.S., at least.

VoodooPad 4.0 ★

New from Flying Meat: VoodooPad 4.0. Lots of new stuff, but the big new feature is syncing via WebDAV (including to MobileMe).

Swedish MacWorld Reports MMS Coming Soon to iPhone ★

Google translation of Mikael Markander’s report in the Swedish MacWorld:

One of the most common complaints of iPhone is that you have to hack it to send and receive multimedia messages. But soon, those who dislike Apple’s mobile need to look for new arguments. For in an interview with MacWorld confirms a spokesman for Telia that it will shortly launch an application for MMS.

Not sure if this means Telia is writing their own MMS iPhone app, or if they’re suggesting that Apple is adding MMS support to the system software. I haven’t seen any reports of MMS support in the iPhone OS 2.2 betas. Update: Several Swedish DF readers have confirmed that the original article makes clear that it is Telia that plans to offer this app, not Apple.

And, yes, the Swedish publication spells “MacWorld” with a capital “W”. The U.S. version does not. (Via Waffle.)

Life Magazine Photo Archive Hosted by Google ★

Google:

Search millions of photographs from the LIFE photo archive, stretching from the 1750s to today. Most were never published and are now available for the first time through the joint work of LIFE and Google.

This is Google at its best. Beware — you could lose the rest of your day searching this archive for gems like this and this and this. And most certainly this. (Via Andy Baio.)

Update: More gold here, here, and here. Just wonderful.

Deconstructing Google Mobile’s Voice Search ★

Andy Baio is trying to reverse-engineer how the Google Mobile app’s voice search works. (That the audio files being sent from the iPhone to Google’s servers are only 100-300 bytes helps explain why it’s so much faster than I expected it to be.)

Voice Search in Google Mobile App for iPhone ★

The update to the Google Mobile iPhone app with voice-driven search is now available, and while I think it’s more gimmicky than useful overall, it’s certainly interesting. If you don’t have an iPhone, at least watch the demo video — my favorite part of the app are the sound effects it makes when it’s ready for you to dictate a voice query and finished processing your query. These sounds are just perfect.

Accuracy seems inconsistent. When I asked for local restaurant names here in Philly, it did well. When I asked for “You Look Nice Today”, Google nailed it. But when I said “Beat up Martin”, well, the result was Newton-esque.

Monday, 17 Nov 2008

Jerry Yang Steps Down as Yahoo CEO ★

Seemed inevitable given Yahoo’s recent stock-price plunge.

Versions 1.0 ★

€39 Subversion client from Pico and Sofa, featuring a slick UI that is intended to make version control usable for developers and non-developers alike. Has been in public beta since June.

‘Adventure’ for iPhone ★

The classic Atari 2600 game “Adventure”, as a free iPhone game by Peter Hirschberg. (Via Andy Baio.)

New ‘Star Trek’ Trailer ★

Trailer of the day: J.J. Abrams’s upcoming Star Trek prequel.

Choosy ★

A clever idea from George Brocklehurst — Choosy is a sort of meta web browser for Mac OS X, for people who use multiple web browsers. You set your “default” web browser to Choosy, and then when you open web URLs in other applications, Choosy will either prompt you for which browser you want to open the link in, or it will choose for you automatically based on rules you define.

Base 1.0 ★

New £10.00 (about $15 USD) desktop SQLite tool from Menial:

Base is an application for creating, designing, editing and browsing SQLite 3 database files. It’s a proper Mac OS X application. Fast to launch, quick to get in to and get the data you need.

Not a Rumor ★

Anthony Ha, on Adobe’s efforts to get Flash running effectively on ARM processors:

The mobile market is an important target for Adobe — on web-enabled desktops, on the other hand, some versions of Flash already have 98 percent market penetration. Flash’s dominance is less-assured on mobile devices, where web-browsing capabilities are only now emerging as a mass market, where Flash has been criticized for the demands it places on device resources and where Apple is rumored to encourage development on Javascript, rather than Flash or Microsoft’s Silverlight platform.

That’s not a rumor. That’s a fact. WWDC had a slew of sessions last year about developing with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, and they’ve emphasized these technologies as the way to develop for the iPhone as a mobile web platform since before the iPhone even debuted.

PCalc 1.2 for iPhone ★

The best iPhone calculator app keeps getting better.

Sunday, 16 Nov 2008

Open Radar ★

Wolf Rentzsch on the nascent Open Radar — a mirror of third-party developer bug reports sent to Radar, Apple’s internal (and non-public) bug database. Worth keeping an eye on.

My Journey to Tweetsville ★

Ed Voas on the story behind Tweetsville, the clever new $4 Twitter client he wrote (but which he sold to Tapulous, because he’s going back to work for Apple):

For the next few weeks I worked pretty much 24/7 getting things to cache properly, push things off onto threads as much as possible, use a real database, etc. and make sure that things just worked correctly. Despite the simplicity of what Twitter is, making an application to really behave properly and ensure that things are always as you expect is pretty darn hard. Even something as ’simple’ as clicking a tweet and then iterating your tweets with the up and down arrows in the upper right was interesting. Not because of the iteration of the items, but because you now have yet another view that needs to be aware of state changes in the application. For example, if you favorite something, I needed to make sure that if it was showing elsewhere in the UI the change was reflected. Good times.

How to Price Your iPhone App Out of Existence ★

Thoughtful analysis from Andy Finnell on App Store pricing.

I agree with him completely that prices under $5 just aren’t feasible for developers who wish to make a full-time living selling iPhone software. The problem with prices at $10 and above, however, is that the App Store doesn’t make demo versions or trial periods possible, nor is there an official refund policy.

Saturday, 15 Nov 2008

‘Outliers’ ★

Amazon pre-order link for Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers — looks like it’s set to ship in three days.

Sitzfleisch ★

Tying together yesterday’s link to Brent Simmons’s advice for would-be indie developers (“You need to wear out that chair and then buy a new one and then wear out that one”) and the previous link to Malcolm Gladwell’s conclusion that it is perseverance and above all else extraordinary amounts of practice that separates the great from the not-great, is the wonderful German word sitzfleisch:

The ability to endure or carry on with an activity.

(Thanks to DF reader Mark Eli Kalderon.)

10,000 Hours ★

Fascinating excerpt from Malcolm Gladwell’s soon-to-be-released Outliers: The Story of Success:

This idea — that excellence at a complex task requires a critical, minimum level of practice — surfaces again and again in studies of expertise. In fact, researchers have settled on what they believe is a magic number for true expertise: 10,000 hours.

(Thanks to Tom Davis.)

Friday, 14 Nov 2008

Favorite No More ★

Here’s a YouTube clip from Steve Jobs’s 2007 Macworld Expo keynote, where he announced the iPhone. It’s the segment where Jobs demos the iPhone’s phone features. He calls Jonny Ive (who’s sitting in the audience), then Phil Schiller calls Jobs, and Jobs merges the two calls into a conference call.

Then, starting around the 5:15 mark, Jobs shows off the Favorites list. He starts by adding Phil Schiller to his favorites list. Then he shows how to delete an entry. Guess who?

Brent Simmons’s Advice for Would-Be Indie Developers ★

Brent Simmons:

But you have to actually build it. You have to work every day. You have to sit in the chair and stay seated. And sleep and come back to the chair. You need to wear out that chair and then buy a new one and then wear out that one.

John C. Welch on Apple’s Enterprise Strategy ★

John C. Welch:

Here’s the simple truth: Enterprise hates surprises. It’s not what they want. Enterprise wants predictability. They want to know when, what, how much, and that it will be all new and cool, yet change nothing. (Yes that’s contradictory. Have you ever tried to use “Enterprise Software?” Winning usability awards is so not happening there.) And they want to know everything in detail a year ahead of time. Can anyone seriously imagine how long Apple would survive under that model? Right, not long.

Failing Hard Drive Sounds ★

Some of the most terrifying noises known to man.

BBEdit 9 ★

My thanks to Bare Bones Software for sponsoring this week’s DF RSS feed. Bare Bones describes BBEdit 9 as “the leading professional HTML and text editor for Mac OS X”. I describe it as “the app in which I do all my work”.

BBEdit is highly scriptable, both with AppleScript and with shell scripting languages like Perl, Python, and Ruby. It has the best search-and-replace features in the business. New in 9.0 are features like text and clipping completion, a new Projects feature that lets you group associated files — including those on SFTP servers — together in one window, and the ability to edit files directly from within disk browser and search results windows. If it were legal in Pennsylvania I’d marry BBEdit.

Google’s Upcoming Voice-Driven iPhone Search App ★

John Markoff, reporting for The New York Times:

Users of the free application, which Apple is expected to make available as soon as Friday through its iTunes store, can place the phone to their ear and ask virtually any question, like “Where’s the nearest Starbucks?” or “How tall is Mount Everest?” The sound is converted to a digital file and sent to Google’s servers, which try to determine the words spoken and pass them along to the Google search engine.

The search results, which may be displayed in just seconds on a fast wireless network, will at times include local information, taking advantage of iPhone features that let it determine its location.

Is it really going to be more convenient than just typing out “how tall is mount everest” in the Safari search field? I’m highly skeptical.

And why did Google do this for the iPhone before doing it for Android?

Red Digital Cinema’s New Camera Announcements ★

I’d like to see Red do more shipping and less pre-announcing. Still, though, these sensor sizes are astounding — the biggest will shoot still images at 261 megapixels.

High Quality YouTube Video Hack ★

Jason Kottke shows how to embed higher-quality versions of YouTube videos.

Thursday, 13 Nov 2008

Safari 3.2 ★

Bug-fix and security update for Mac OS X and Windows.

Apple Publications Style Guide 2008 (PDF) ★

Apple’s in-house style and usage guide, first update since January 2006. Excellent resource for technical writers of any sort, filled with useful nuggets like this. (Via today’s issue of MDJ.)

AppleInsider Obtains Legal Documents From Apple/IBM Papermaster Case ★

Including a complete copy of Mark Papermaster’s declaration (PDF).

Update: Seems weird that they watermarked “APPLEINSIDER” repeatedly over every page in the PDFs; they’re readily available on the web. Go to justia.com, search for “Papermaster”, and there you go.

Pierre Igot on the Adobe CS4 Installation Experience ★

Is there a worse installation experience for any mainstream Mac software?