Barbed Wire Bytecode Bacon Burger

The past couple of weeks I’ve been playing with mobile apps development, both for Android and for iOS (meaning iPhone and iPad in layman’s terms). Being an open source kinda guy and very familiar with Java I immediately felt very comfortable with the Android SDK and the platform as a whole. It really is a great platform and very viable for creating great apps and experiences for mobile devices. However, there are a couple of key issues that I believe need to be fixed in order to push Android to the next level.

First and foremost, paid apps are still not available everywhere. Only users in a few select countries can download apps from Android Market that cost money and, even worse, developers in even fewer countries can publish non-free apps for people to buy. As a mere users there are ways around this but if you’re - like me - a Swedish developer there’s no way to get paid for your efforts. This is a really big deal since developers outside of the nine supported merchant countries also need to eat and pay the bills or whatever it is you use money for. Sure, one might claim that true hardcore developers will develop awesome apps anyway and give them away on Android Market because digital creativity is in our nature and this is true to some extent. But at the end of the day money is one of the best incentives out there and the fact that many potential Android developers can’t charge for their apps is most surely causing a lot of app-awesomeness from happening and keeping the platform from experiencing the kind of “gold-rush” that iOS is having.  It may even be driving some developers to the iOS-platform instead since they might reckon that if they can’t paid why should they bother with the platform anyway?

I don’t see what the frackin’ hold-up is here really. So Google, get off your asses and make this happen sooner than later. Market needs to have paid apps and developers getting paid everywhere, OK?

Another thing that is painfully obvious when you look at the variety of Android devices out there is that the hardware companies that sell them, companies like HTC, SonyEricsson and Samsung, care only about selling new devices. They have very little interest in delivering software updates for devices that customers have already bought. I mean, it took HTC a full year to push out an OS-upgrade for the HTC Hero and SonyEricsson is at this moment selling Android 1.6 devices with the plan to update them to 2.1 around New Year. Meanwhile, FroYo (Android 2.2) devices are starting to hit the market and the specs for 3.0 are already out there.

I fully understand that it may not be easy for these companies that are primarily manufacturers of hardware to wrap their business models and brains around the fact that these days, with mobile phones becoming more and more like “real” computers, software matters more than hardware. A mobile phone will become obsolete a lot faster due to an old OS than due to year-old hardware. So something needs to be done about this. HTC and others need to take care of their customers and push out the updates a lot quicker because not everybody wants to (or can) buy a new $500 mobile phone every three months just to get the latest software. Maybe Google should set up some sort of centralized repository that the makers of Android phones could use to make sure they’re all in sync with each other and with what’s new? I don’t know, but something should be done to keep the platform from fragmenting any further.

And finally one other thing that I think can be a real game-changer is Flash-support. Yes, there is Flash-support in FroYo, I haven’t experienced it first-hand myself though so I don’t know how well it works. But my point here is that since Apple is taking a serious stand against Flash on devices running iOS there is a chance for Android (and Adobe naturally) to shine here. Make Flash work flawlessly on all contemporary Android devices and you will have a feature on the platform that the main competition can’t and will not match, which naturally is a great advantage.

These are the major points that bother me at the moment and I believe them all to be more or less critical for the growth of Android. I want to underline here though that although there are flaws - every platform has them - I believe a great deal in Android and will continue to submerge myself in the platform with great joy.

So Google and everybody else involved, time to step it up a notch OK? I’ll be watching you

I found this auction on Swedish auction site Tradera (a site owned by eBay by the way) and I found the item description quite funny and thoroughly stupid. Here it is in English for the benefit of those of you who don’t understand Swedish courtesy of Google Translate.

As you can see this is not really a “real” firewall product. It’s just an old computer with Linux and some firewall software installed on it. Why would a firewall have a graphics card and a sound card for example? It wouldn’t.

What I find so amusing is that he says that “sure, you can use it as an ordinary computer but then you’d have to install Windows or similar on it”. Wouldn’t someone bright enough to handle a Linux firewall also know that Linux is perfectly good as a desktop OS as well? The mind boggles.

So my girlfriends iMac broke down today and since she needs a desktop computer for, amongst other things, the night classes she’s taking and can’t wait until the iMac comes back from the service shop I had to throw something quick together.

I had an old 17″ monitor that I hooked up to an EeePC and then connected her Apple-keyboard, Logitech-mouse, ethernet-cable and speaker system to it - parts that were all previously hooked up to the iMac - and there we are; a fairly functional desktop. It’s not a 20″ crisp 1680×1050 display, 4GB of RAM and a blazing 2.66GHz Core2Duo CPU (it’s a crummy 1024×768 VGA display, 512MB and an underclocked 900MHz Celeron M) but at least it’s something. It only took me five minutes but I think it will do pretty OK for now.

The new iPod shuffle looks really slick and has some neat features, just like Apple products always do and have. I’m sure it’s a solid piece of hardware and all that too but it fails tremendously in one aspect, and this one is a devious move on the part of Apple, a company I thought liked music but which is now taking a dump on anyone with a serious interest in the quality of sound moving from iPod to ear.

As revealed in this review and others like it the design of the third generation iPod shuffle and custom chip inside of it effectively makes your favorite pair of headphones unable to play nice with it. From the article on iLounge:

There is, however, something that many users will care about: the new shuffle doesn’t fully work with any headphones except Apple’s. Because of what Apple has done here—something sneaky and arguably terrible for consumers, especially if it continues with other iPod and iPhone products in 2009—if you plug your old third-party headphones of any sort into the new shuffle, you’ll find that you can’t do anything with the device other than have it continuously play music, without volume controls or interruption, unless of course of you turn it off. Surprise: the only third-party headphones that will work are ones that haven’t even entered manufacturing yet, because they’ll need to contain yet another new Apple authentication chip, which will add to their price. Your only alternatives will be third-party remote control adapters—also not yet available, as Apple’s not even making one—and using Apple’s earphones.

Personally I think this is evil or at least really stupid. It’s common knowledge that the headphones that have come with every model of iPod so far pretty much suck and most people I know who buy an iPod get themselves another pair of headphones practically immediately, as did I. But someone getting the new shuffle can’t do that and that sucks big time.

Sticking a piece of DRM-hardware inside an iPod like this makes it harder and thus more expensive for third parties to develop hardware, having to have license it through Apple in order for it to work, for this model of iPod and for what? Apple claims that this will benefit the customer since it ensures only the best accessories will be available. I call bullshit.

The only purpose this move serves is to milk the iPod generation out of a little more cash. Basically Apple is starting to choke every nickle and dime they can out of the culture they created and I think it’s pretty disgusting. They’re locking down things more and more and although they’ve done good with iTunes and dropped a lot of the DRM on there, their hardware is being locked down, chained up and suffocated by DRM and other nefarious schemes to the point where I’m starting to get a foul taste in my mouth.

For another example, just look at the whole HDCP-debacle with the new MacBooks. What the hell was that about? Sure, they did a little good after a storm of complaints but why were they doing it in the first place?

Apple started out as a company that wanted to “stick it to the man”. Jobs and Wozniak was a big middle-finger in the face of dragons like IBM and HP but now they’re starting to become that very corporate evil that they didn’t want to be associated with back then. It isn’t about “thinking differently” or having fun with technology anymore. It’s all about the mighty dollar, plain and simple. Sure, I understand that a company needs to make money to survive but they don’t have to repeatedly rape the people that gave them their success in the first place.

Fanboi much?

Apple knows they have a cult following and they know they have these fanbois by the balls. What they’re doing now is exploiting this fact and sneaking shit in little by little. It’s premeditated and it’s evil.

Quite frankly, I’m disappointed and this is also a huge part in why I decided to move away from full-time computing on the Mac-platform after less than a year. I’m afraid that Apple might be losing it’s soul and I don’t want to be trapped in a soulless prison any more than I have to.

I abandoned the dominating OS (yes, Windows), due to it being - in every sense of the word - crap, about eight years ago and started using Linux instead. With Linux it was almost love at first sight. Sure, it took some getting used to and some things were a bit tricky to get to work back then (soundcards anyone?) but in the end the experience was all in all a lot more rewarding than anything ever was while using any version of Windows. So I kicked Microsoft to the curb and haven’t looked back since.

Since November 2004 when I bought myself an iBook I’ve also been a casual Mac-user. This iBook is in many ways the computer that has served me best out of all computers I’ve owned. It’s taken a lot of abuse but after over four years it keeps on ticking as reliably as ever (it does get a bit hot on occasion though). Granted I had to get a new harddrive for it a year ago but that’s a pretty minor repair considering how much the iBook has been kicked around.

I’ve really grown to like OS X. It’s a robust and easy to use OS which does most things really well. And it’s Unix-like, which is a huge plus in my book. It is a really good fit for all of those menial every day computing tasks (e-mail, websurfing, organizing music and photos, word processing) that we all do. It makes ordinary tasks slick and easy to perform. This is what Apple excels at, dumbing down tasks and putting a shine on them so that they don’t feel as dull anymore. It is a prominent feature of basically all of their products.

So when my girlfriend decided to buy a new computer, a 20″ iMac (the shiny aluminum ones), this past July I got sucked in by the Reality Distortion Field and the Apple tractor beam and bought one too.

For months I was really happy with my acquisition and with “going Mac” full time on the desktop. I even sold my desktop-PC because in the months that followed I ended up hardly using at all. But then something happened.

Over the past couple of months I’ve found my productivity to be declining and a lot of the time I’ve had this nagging feeling that something just wasn’t right. It wasn’t until this past weekend that I figured out what it was. I’m not completely happy with my choice anymore. It’s crept up on me slowly and I haven’t wanted to admit it to myself, but that’s what it is. I’m sure of it.

Don’t get me wrong, the iMac is awesome and OS X Leopard is beyond great, but I think that maybe it wasn’t the perfect fit for someone like me to use for all of my computing needs. It’s sort of a cultural shock that I just can’t shake.

First of all, the Mac platform is way too locked down and obfuscated. Sure, it’s Unix-like and feels very familiar to a Linux-dude like me but it does things in odd and unorthodox ways that don’t make sense to me. Setting up Samba-sharing for example on Leopard is really weird in my opinion. And yes, there’s plenty of ways to customize your desktop-environment and experience but compaired to the endless possibilities when using a more open platform like BSD or Linux it’s not very impressive. You can only change what someone else has deemed appropriate to be changeable.

The biggest thing of all to me is the software culture of the Mac-world. Coming from a world where thousands of applications are free (as in beer and as in freedom) and pre-installed on your system out of the box it’s more than a little annoying to find applications that I take for granted missing from a basic OS X install. I mean, no nmap? Really? No wget? Come on! And what’s with all the shareware littering the software-landscape of the Mac? Every other piece of software is some handicapped version of an app that will cost me $20 to testdrive for real. That’s not what I’m used to and quite frankly it feels a bit like 1998. It also seems a bit like open source is still a bit of a mystery for the Mac-community, which seems very weird to me.

Also, even though many of my favorite applications are available for OS X they far from always behave like I’m used to. Thunderbird doesn’t filter things properly, GIMP looks horrible and isn’t really compatible with the user-paradigms of the rest of the system and the same goes for Bluefish, and the list goes on.

It’s not all bad though - far from it. I love iPhoto and I’m even starting to get along really well with iTunes. Adium is a great IM-client, better than most even. I like Transmit enough to fork over cash for a license. It’s probably the best FTP-client I’ve ever used. Overall Mac-apps have a very robust feel to them and crashes are few and far apart. Also, there seems to be a sense of pride amongst Mac-developers that isn’t always present on other platforms.

Another thing that I haven’t quite been able to get used to is the keyboard. It’s not the whole “use Option instead of Ctrl”-thing though, that’s not a problem. No, my headaches are from the fact that Insert, Delete, Home and End don’t work like I’m used to and these are keys that I use A LOT. So this really slows me down. I actually switched out the slick aluminum keyboard that came with my iMac for a Logitech-keyboard I used with my previous PC hoping that would change things. But that actually brought more hassle since the Mac couldn’t figure out what keys were supposed to go where. I had to use Ukulele to create a custom keymap in order to get the most critical missing keys back. Insert, Delete, Home and End still don’t work like I’d like them to.

Now this might come off as me coming down hard on the Mac, which is not really what I’m doing. I love the Mac and OS X is in my opinion the best commercial desktop-OS out there. I just think that in retrospect this wasn’t the best move for someone like me. The cultural clash between the Mac and Linux worlds was too great to make a full time switch possible. My computing needs require a larger amount of freedom and other things that don’t fit in the tight Apple-machinery. I’m too much of a tinkerer and a hacker, and as such I need more leeway and elbow-room than most. But I let the slick hardware, great OS and a bit of RDF fool me into believing that this was a world I could spend all of my computing time in. But I was wrong, and now I’m feeling really, really homesick.

Basically I need a Linux-PC again and I need it bad. So to remedy this I ordered a Dell XPS today, a notebook that I’ve been eyeing for some time now, and I got a great deal on it too - 3500 SEK off! The first thing I’ll do when it arrives is slap Fedora 10 on there and begin rebuilding the computing environment that I’m used to.

I’ll remain a part-time Mac-user though, so I’m not abandoning the Mac at all because as I said I still love the platform. I’ll still import the pictures from my camera to iPhoto and spin my music and podcasts in iTunes, I might even hack together a Cocoa-app of my own one day. Maybe I’ll downgrade to a Mac Mini though, if Apple decides to upgrade them soon that is. We’ll see.

This is me admitting that I did something that I may not have thought through properly, which is hard in itself, and this is me having learned a valuable lesson. You truly don’t know what you’ve got until it’s “gone”. Good thing though, “it” wasn’t really gone. I can go back, and I am already on my way.

So I’m coming home. Home to where I always belonged, and this I’m sure of now more than ever. Once again I’ll be comfortable in the open embrace of the penguin. (And that didn’t sound the least pretentious or dorky…)

Last week I got the idea to create a USB-cable with an on/off-switch. This because I have several USB-devices (mug heater, mug chiller, reading light, battery charger, etc.) that have no on/off-switch and I think it’s really tiresome having to unplug them every time I want them turned off.

So I looked up USB on Wikipedia and learned, amongst other things, that the 5V power that a USB-port supplies travels through the red wire inside the USB-cable. So it should really not be any more difficult than just cutting the red cable and connecting the ends to an ordinary on/off-switch that you can buy in any store that carries electronics and such.

It took me a couple of tries to get it right though. Inside a USB-cable there’s not just the four wires (red, black, green and white) that send power and data back and forth but also foil that wraps around all four wires and a bunch of thin metallic wires and apparently this foil and possibly also the metallic wires should not be removed when pealing the outer insulation off the USB-cable because then it will not work. It took me three USB-cables to figure that one out. Very frustrating.

But anyway, on the third try I got it right and I now have a USB-cable with a nice on/off-switch mounted on it and I can turn my mug chiller on and off just like I do the reading lamp by my bed. Mission accomplished.

Yeah, bitches! I can has memory upgrade on all my computaz!

And life on this side of 4 Gigs of memory is schwee-ee-eet, that I can tell y’all!