Update on Chimoosoft

It has been quite awhile since my last post - I have been occupied with starting an awesome new job and moving from California to Pennsylvania! Due to my new employment, I no longer have much time to devote to Chimoosoft activities and have tried to open source as many programs as possible. Portions of AP Grapher are protected under an NDA which prevents its open sourcing, however I hope to have time to release TubeTV as open source. For the foreseeable future, I will not have time to work on Chimoosoft software; if you want to see the products move forward perhaps you can work on them yourself or find others interested in doing so. Thanks for your support and understanding, and I apologize if I have not answered an e-mail you've sent; I simply don't have the time anymore.

Terrabrowser Open Source

The time has finally come to open source one of Chimoosoft's largest and oldest projects: Terrabrowser. Terrabrowser has a long history with the first version appearing back in 2003. I have unfortunately not had as much time to work on the project as I would have liked, and hence the code base for Terrabrowser has more or less languished for the last three or four years.

Since it was (at one time) an interesting project which a lot of people were excited about, it seems only fair to release it as open source in the hopes that some other programmers will have time to improve the software. It would be nice to see the GPS waypoint/tracklog/route support improved, improved GPX file support, and possibly the addition of other mapping sources such as Google Maps or Yahoo Maps. In many ways, Terrabrowser was one of the first Mac equivalents of currently popular (but then unavailable) software such as Google Earth. I feel that the product had a lot of potential, so it has been somewhat sad to see it live by the wayside as other products have overtaken it. Let's hope this gives the old boy a fresh breath of life!

Open Source

Finally got around to open sourcing some Chimoosoft projects. So far, Kissphrase, Speech Toggle, and Simple Search. If you have the interest and expertise, feel free to head on over to the open source project page and have a look. Note that the code in some of these projects is quite old and hence isn't the cleanest bit in the world.

Dictate 1.0.1 Review

Until recently, the options available for dictation software on Mac OS X were severely lacking. The most popular option was a product called iListen by MacSpeech which was based on the Philips speech recognition engine. Although this product worked, it had severe limitations, crashed frequently, and behaved in general more like a Mac OS 9 application than it should have.

Introduced at MacWorld 2008, the new MacSpeech Dictate which is based on the popular Windows Dragon software offers a far improved speech recognition experience for Mac users. The training is quick, the recognition is accurate and fast, and it even works with the built-in microphone on computers such as the MacBook Pro (which the author is using to dictate this review). This is a huge advantage as it enables the user to quickly dictate a paragraph here or there with a single mouse click and no need to get out a separate microphone.

Although the product still has a few rough edges and is currently missing the ability to correct dictated text via voice, it represents a huge step forward and easily integrates into your everyday workflow. Note that an Intel Mac is required for this software to work - it will not function on PowerPC (G3, G4, G5) Macs. Next time you don't feel like typing out a lengthy e-mail, why not launch Dictate instead and use your voice?

• By MacSpeech.
• screenshot
• Product Page

Numenta

Today I'm offering up a recommendation for one of the most interesting speeches I've heard in years. Jeff Hawkins, the founder of Palm and inventor of the Treo, presents a keynote at the RSA 2008 conference about the mind's technique for processing and storing sensory information. How does a person (or a computer) tell the difference between a picture of a cat and a dog?

Yes, I know, he probably doesn't have an iPhone, but we'll forgive him for this due to his past!

His speech is especially interesting because it's not too technical for the average person to understand; even a child in grade school should find it intriguing. If you're watching this on a Mac, as I assume you are, you might want to install Flip4Mac (review) first to more easily view the WMV stream. A Flash stream is also available. You may also want to check out his company's website, Numenta and even download the research platform for the Mac.

OS X Picks Migration

Finally finished migrating all OS X Picks software reviews from the main Chimoosoft site to the Cocoa Musings blog. This should provide an easier way for people to post comments about the reviews and perhaps make them easier to find as well. If you notice any broken links, let me know.

Objective-C

I came across an interesting article today called "Inside the Objective-C Runtime" (see also part two). This article does a decent job explaining some of the benefits of Objective-C with Cocoa programming on OS X as compared with other object oriented languages. The article is a little dated (six years old), but most of the information is still relevant.

This led to a search for more articles touting the benefits of Objective-C. In "Objective-C: Dynamite!," the author begins with a relevant quote which should resonate with most Objective-C programmers:

"Objective-C is the result of adding object facilities to C with the goal of making programmers more productive. The result differs greatly from C++, which adds objects to C without making computers less efficient: quite a different goal." [PC Week, November 3, 1997]

Later on, for the humorously inclined:

"If a person on the street asks you for a flump, and you don't know how to respond, do you exit with a core dump?"

.Mac iDisk Woes & Warning

I use Apple's .Mac iDisk syncing feature to store some commonly accessed files locally and have them automatically sent to Apple's servers as a backup. Today, on a whim, I decided it was time to change my password and did so through the .Mac web interface. I then tried to access my iDisk in the Finder, and of course, the password was wrong so the access was denied. I opened the .Mac System Preference pane where it showed me an error message stating that my password was invalid, so I clicked the "Sign Out" button and then signed back in with the new password.

A naïve user wouldn't expect this to cause any problems, however signing out appears to have deleted the locally cached copy of my iDisk! It also forced me to reset all of my .Mac settings including which items are synced, and then re-downloaded the entire iDisk contents to the local disk. All I can say, is it's a good thing the iDisk had just finished it's last automatic sync before I changed my password, otherwise I could easily lost a lot of data! It would have been nice to have some sort of a warning when signing out of .Mac that the local iDisk contents would be lost.

So consider this as a warning to others; be careful how you go about changing your password and make sure to sync your iDisk first if you use syncing at all. For those of you that just access your iDisk over the network and don't sync to the local disk, this shouldn't be an issue.

Addendum: Turns out that the previous local iDisk was saved to my desktop as "Previous local iDisk for username.sparsebundle." This removes the previously mentioned concerns about data loss, but it still would have been a hassle to merge the freshly re-downloaded iDisk and the old one had they been different.

Techno Speak

"When the client process sends a message to the NSDistantObject object, the proxy captures the Objective-C message in the form of an NSInvocation object and forwards it to its NSConnection object. The NSConnection object encodes the NSInvocation into an NSPortMessage object, using an NSPortCoder object, and passes it to an NSPort object connected to an NSPort object in the server process. The client’s port sends the encoded data to the server’s port which decodes the data back into an NSPortMessage object. The port message is then sent to the NSConnection object which converts it into an NSInvocation object, using an NSPortCoder object. The invocation is finally dispatched as an Objective-C message sent to the vended object. Any return value from the object is passed back through the connection and returned transparently to the client process."

Yikes, that's really something, isn't it?

http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Cocoa/Conceptual/DistrObjects/index.html

Online Photo Backups

Common wisdom these days states that a file doesn't truly exist unless it exists in at least two places (one of which is off-site). Of all the files people back up, photographs may be the most important. For many people, they're high on the list of items they wouldn't want to lose in the event of an unforeseen disaster.

Several different online options exist which can be used for backing up photos; some are designed with photos in mind, and some are simply for generic file storage. I have chosen a few of the more common ones and written up a brief comparison of them below (in random order). Each option looks at the cost for backing up 30 GB of photos; this size was chosen to reveal price differences as your photo library grows.

Flickr

One of the most popular options, and also the cheapest. The Flickr Pro account starts at $2.08/month and provides you with unlimited storage, unlimited uploads, and unlimited bandwidth. The only serious drawback to Flickr is the lack of RAW file support (JPEG only). Additionally, the associated hassle and organizational issues that go along with having your backups stored in the same place as the photographs you'd like to share with everyone else. When backing up, remember to mark the photos as private, sort them into a different Set/Collection, etc.

Pro:

• Cheap ($2.08/month = infinite GB)
• Unlimited storage
• Aperture plugin
• iPhoto plugin
• Automator plugin
• Broadly supported due to popularity

Con:

• No RAW support
• 10 MB file size limit
• Organizational issues with other sharable photos
• Designed for sharing rather than backing up

Picasa

Google's Picasa service is a direct competitor to Flickr, but lacks an unlimited storage option and costs more money per month. For $1.67/month you get 10 GB; for $6.25/month, 40 GB, for $20.83/month, 150 GB, and for $41.67, 500 GB! I can't see any direct benefit of Picasa over Flickr for the task of backing up photos, although for sharing photos with friends, viewing on the iPhone, etc., it may have some benefits.

Pro:

• Large capacities available
• iPhoto plugin

Con:

• No RAW support
• Somewhat expensive ($6.25/month = 40GB)
• Organizational issues with other sharable photos
• Designed for sharing rather than backing up

Photo Shelter Personal Archive

Photo Shelter is actually designed for backing up photos in a permanent, redundant archive. For $9.99/month, you get 10 GB of storage, $29.99/month gets 35 GB, and $49.99/month 100 GB. Photo Shelter allows you to upload almost any format (including RAW), and the only real drawback I can see is that it's extremely expensive for the average user. This site is targeted more at professional photographers and those with money to burn - if you have the cash, this may well be the best option.

Pro:

• RAW support
• Aperture plugin
• Large capacities available
• Designed with backups in mind

Con:

• Expensive ($29.99/month = 35 GB)

.Mac iDisk

Apple's popular .Mac service comes with online file storage as well as e-mail, backups, and syncing between multiple computers. The cheapest plan starts at $8.33/month, and provides 10 GB of storage. For $12.49/month you get 20 GB of storage, and for $16.66/month, 30 GB. The iDisk has the benefit of always being a single click away in your Finder sidebar and hence is fairly easy to backup photos to - just drag and drop or export directly from Aperture or iPhoto. Any file format (including RAW) is acceptable since it's simply an online disk. The main drawbacks of .Mac are that you can't view the photos online, and the extremely high expense - this is the second most expensive option considered. Yes, it's true that you can create a Web Gallery or website with photos to share, but the first option uses lower quality files (not good for backups), and the second option makes them available to everyone by default.

Pro:

• RAW support
• Finder file copy
• Direct export to folder from iPhoto/Aperture
• Multipurpose generic storage space
• Designed with backups in mind

Con:

• Expensive ($16.66/month = 30 GB)
• Limited data storage capacity (30 GB)

Amazon S3

One advantage of Amazon's S3 service is that they charge you based on exactly how much data you store - if you only have 2 GB of data to store it will cost you significantly less than if you have 30. S3 provides 10 GB for $1.50 a month, 20 GB for $3 a month, and 30 GB for $4.50/month. As stated above, you can scale this to whatever storage size you need (a big advantage) although it becomes expensive when you get up to 70 or 80 GB. As with .Mac, absolutely any file format (including RAW) can be uploaded since it's simply online file storage. Amazon does charge a $.10 per GB upload fee unlike the other services, but since you're using this for backup, the one time fee shouldn't affect you too much. The main drawback of this service is the lack of convenience, and the price if you need a large capacity.

Pro:

• RAW support
• Multipurpose generic storage space
• Large capacities available
• Don't pay for capacity you're not using

Con:

• Somewhat expensive ($4.50/month + $3.00 upload = 30 GB)
• Have to use a third party tool to upload

Conclusion

Not surprisingly, Flickr offers the best value - for a whopping $2.08/month, you can have unlimited photo storage. The major drawback is the lack of RAW support, but for the price it's probably still the best choice. For someone like me with about 60 GB of photos to backup, Flickr is still $2.08/month, whereas Picasa would cost me $20.83/month, Photo Shelter would be $49.99/month, S3 would be $6 upload plus $9/month, and .Mac doesn't even appear to allow that much data storage, maxing out at 30 GB. If I had money to burn, I'd lean towards Photo Shelter since it's geared directly towards backup and archiving use. As it is, Flickr remains the best option for me, but your mileage may vary as they say.

Comments/corrections with your preferred online backup solution are encouraged.

iPod Touch Versus iPhone

Having recently acquired an iPod touch to use for software development work, a brief review comparing it with the iPhone seemed in order. First impressions? The Touch is much thinner than the iPhone. I knew this from brief encounters with it in the Apple Store, but actually having one around the thinness really becomes apparent; especially since my iPhone nearly always lives in a protective case whereas the Touch sits in its birthday suit on the desk.

• The touch is less comfortable to hold than the iPhone; the bevel around the front of the screen is actually kind of sharp! I don't consider this too much of a problem however since the lightness and thinness assuages my pain.
• The home button is smaller than on the iPhone.
• The headphone port is on the bottom next to the dock connector rather than on the top - so far, I prefer the iPhone's design.
• The iPhone earbuds don't appear to fit in the headphone jack which is kind of a hassle - I didn't want to push too hard, so maybe they actually do…
• The lock button is on the opposite side from the iPhone! This one is actually pretty annoying since I am so used to the iPhone and switch between the two devices. Why on Earth did Apple decide to do this?
• I don't miss the volume buttons on the side yet - the Touch always leaves its screen on unless you lock it (it auto dims) so the volume is accessible just by touching the screen. Of course, I'm using this as a development platform so I haven't actually tried taking the touch outside yet - if it was in my pocket this would probably be a bigger issue.
• I miss the built in speakers more than expected - no more quick trips to YouTube or listening to podcasts without headphones.
• It comes with a cute little plastic stand (iPhone has a dock instead) which lets the Touch sit at a nice viewing angle on your desk.
• No bundled AC power adapter or dock like the iPhone.
• Back is the same shiny iPod metallic material used on previous generation iPods so it finger prints like nobody's business. I prefer the brushed aluminum look of the iPhone.
• It's kind of nice not having the cellular radio in the Touch - I'm not afraid to leave it next to my head at night for the urgent need to google something which always seems to arise.

So there you have it: a brief comparison of the Touch and the iPhone. I don't really see any reason to own a Touch if you already have an iPhone except possibly as a bedside web browser or to keep docked in a set of iPod speakers.

Kissphrase

The Kissphrase release is going fairly well so far - positive reviews have been coming in. Check out this link for a nice little review.

Bugs reported so far: after installing, you must add at least one of your own keywords (or edit the existing "test" keyword) before Kissphrase will start auto-completing. Also, the first word word typed in a document won't auto-complete unless at least one space is typed preceding it. These will both be corrected in the next release.

Feel free to report any other problems you encounter either in the comments, or by the usual contact page.

Kissphrase Released

The first release of Kissphrase is now available! Version 0.5 is still considered a beta, so any feedback about how it works for you would be appreciated. Kissphrase requires Leopard or later to function and probably will work best for people with their computer's language set to English.

iPhone Takes Over the World

Exciting news in the iPhone world today from Apple: third party developers (e.g. Chimoosoft) will finally have a legal way to develop software for the iPhone. In addition, our software will be made available through iTunes and through an installer app on the iPhone itself called "App Store" which will let users install software on the go. Apple will let developers sell their apps (Apple takes a 30% cut) or distribute them freely. For all you iPhone owners out there, you're about to see a huge torrent of applications available for you! In this context, the word "about" means June, 2008 (but developers will have been working away on their software for three months by that point).

The other most important news is that the iPhone will fully support all the common enterprise needs such as Exchange, push email, remote disabling (and erasing) of stolen phones, etc. This is significant, and will go down in history as... the day the iPhone took over the world! Prepare to see as many people walking around with iPhones as you currently see people with iPods!

Kissphrase

A brand new program is nearly ready for its first release: Kissphrase. Developed partially to assist with answering support emails, Kissphrase will be a freeware auto-completion style program to assist with typing frequently used phrases. Look for it soon!

Computer Comparisons and Excel Rant

I am the expectant owner of a new MacBook Pro - it's about time considering that I'm still stuck with a PowerBook G4.  While checking out the specifications of the new laptop, I became interested in how quickly the Macs I've used over the years have improved.  I put together some graphs going back to 1984 and the Mac 128K which indicate improvements in RAM, disk, CPU speed (not benchmark, just clock speed which doesn't really mean much), VRAM, and others.  The dates indicated are the Apple release dates to the nearest month.

The first graph shows how quickly the number of pixels available to me has grown.  For computers I've used which weren't laptops, I've just indicated the maximum resolution the computer could output.

More charts will come in a later post when I have more energy to fight with Excel.  It is honestly beyond me how companies can produce software such as Excel which is so phenomenally hard to use that it boggles the imagination.  Certainly it's not that bad for people who have learned all its quirks through everyday use, but for people who only occasionally need to use such software, it's a nightmare.  Aside from the graphs being impossible to select correctly (I'm always selecting the wrong component somehow), simple things like scrolling around with my trackpad don't even work correctly.  I gave up when my attempts to change the maximum range on the y axis failed miserably.  It would appear that this post has become more of a rant on Excel, but that's okay - software like this deserves rants.

Apple's "equivalent" called Numbers (part of the iWork suite) is definitely a breeze to use, but it can't do simple things like creating a chart with one axis based on dates (it spaces them all evenly).  The graph you see above was actually created in Numbers and then exported to Excel to plot the dates correctly.   The real question is why can't either of these companies get it right?  Microsoft's offering is cumbersome but fully featured; Apple's is pleasing to use but missing essential features.  Doh.

Smaller Boxes

The trend in packaging software is certainly towards online delivery, but in the meantime it's nice to see companies like Apple reducing their packaging waste (and shelf space for the consumer).  As an example of how far things have come in a couple of short years, compare the Aperture 1.5 retail box (2006) versus the Aperture 2.0 box I received last week.  An amazing transformation I'm sure you'll agree.  And yes, in case you were wondering, Aperture 2.0 is an incredible upgrade!  I'll try to post a review at some point in the future.

TubeTV Notes

Happy Valentine's Day everyone!

In other news - the TubeTV 1.0 release is going well so far with only a few people reporting problems.  The problems people had have been solved by either (a) updating QuickTime/Mac OS X to the latest release, or (b) removing the TubeTV preferences file (com.chimoosoft.tubetv.plist) in the Preferences folder and re-launching TubeTV.

Another user wrote in about the x264 codec causing problems and said "if you have people contact you about blurry low bit-rate video, and they have x264 installed[,] let them know to update it."

Amazingly, TubeTV has been downloaded in the month of February at least 30,000 times!  Feel free to keep sending in your feature requests or ideas for future versions.

TubeTV on TUAW

Thanks to the people at the Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) for their nice article on TubeTV 1.0 which appeared this morning; a pleasant surprise while drinking my coffee and browsing the news.  They mentioned one of the main benefits of TubeTV over competitors - the fact that it works with many websites in addition to YouTube, not only YouTube.

PS: Here's a screenshot showing one way to create a smart playlist in iTunes to find TubeTV converted videos for the iPhone.  If you use the TubeTV playlist (an option in the preferences), then you could filter for movies in that playlist instead of searching the comments for "TubeTV."

TubeTV 1.0 Released

Finally!  TubeTV version 1.0 was released earlier today with nifty new features including bookmarking (favorites), history, utilization of flash caches to speed download, iTunes support, and a re-worked progress window!  Leopard is required for some of the new features, so if you fire it up in Tiger, you won't notice as many changes.

Thanks to Björn, Wolf-Jakob, Antoine, and Francisco for localizing this software into German, French, and Spanish respectively!

Head on over to the Chimoosoft Flickr site for some screenshots.

Objective-C Performance

Just came across this analysis of common Objective-C operations and their relative speeds in nano seconds.  Interesting to see how fast the Objective-C message send is - only 5 ns on a Mac Pro.

iPhone Satisfaction

First of all, yes, I am obsessed with my iPhone, and I'd definitely give it high marks for customer satisfaction  ;-)

Just came across this interesting graphic showing customer satisfaction for various mobile phone vendors.  Surprise, surprise, Apple beats them all.  Unfortunately though, for most people I know who might be interested in getting an iPhone, it's not the phone's cost that's putting them off - it's the cost of the AT&T service plan which comes to about $65 a month after taxes.

Localizing Cocoa Software

Localizing software (the process of translating it to multiple languages) is an amazingly time intensive process.  Apple's bundle layout, bundle loading, and localizable strings files are all very helpful, but amazingly, things always manage to find a way to go south.  Today, for example, I switched all of the localized .lproj directories to use the ISO 639-1 two letter naming conventions.  Instead of the older "English," "French," and "Spanish," I now have "en," "fr," and "es."  Great, right?  Well, not quite.  Turns out I forgot to change the CFBundleDevelopmentRegion tag in the info.plist to "en" instead of "English," so any time a localization for a language was incomplete, the nibs failed to load or the localized strings files were ignored.  Oops.  You get the idea.  ;-)

Consider the process for localizing a single nib file (which a product like TubeTV contains about ten of).

1.  Look up command line options for "ibtool" since it's impossible to remember them exactly between run times.

2.  Run "ibtool" to extract the localizable strings from the nib.

2. (a) Optionally, delete about 90% of the strings ibtool extracts since they don't really need to be translated and make the translator's job more difficult.  Sorry to the current translators for TubeTV as I didn't realize this until after I sent you the files!  ;-)

3.  Submit files to people around the world (in different time zones) who have agreed to translate them for you.

4.  Wait for files to come back, look for portions which may have been missed, go back to step 3 if necessary.

5.  Look up different command line options for ibtool to import the translated strings into a new nib file making use of the English nib as a basis.

5. (a) If parse errors occur in the strings file (which they often do is the localizers missed a semicolon or quote), use the plutil command line tool to find them.  Correct and move back to step 5.

6.  Correct sizing on controls and GUI elements in the nib since translations are often longer than English.  This can be very time consuming depending on the layout and must be done every time you update anything.

7.  Test.

That was the procedure for one nib.  Multiply that by the number of nibs in the project, and additionally, by the nibs in any internally developed included frameworks (such as our version checking system).  Want to change anything in any of your nibs?  No problem, just change the English language nib, delete all the translated nibs, and go back to step 5!  Or you could opt to change each localized nib by hand!  Ouch.

Perhaps now you have a better understanding for why much of the freeware and shareware software for the Mac isn't localized: it's a huge time commitment and it makes creating future versions much more difficult.  It would be interesting to see if this process is easier or harder than the process on other platforms such as Windows (or Java).  Anyone who has experience with those, feel free to post something in the comments.

TubeTV Imminent

The next version (1.0) of TubeTV should be released in the near future.  If you'd like the link for beta testing, visit the Chimoosoft contact page and drop me a line.  Version 0.9.9 is now in the process of being localized and hopefully will be out for the public in a few days.   The screenshot either directly shows or hints at some of the upcoming features.

More Cocoa Goodness

Came across another nice Cocoa Blog today called Living the Life which includes some freely downloadable classes for managing preferences.  The new version of TubeTV will make use of Dave's preferences class - thanks!  It literally took less than half an hour from finding the classes on the web to having the entire thing implemented in TubeTV - one of the quickest pickup times for third party additions ever!  Normally the problem integrating other people's work is just figuring out how in the heck you're supposed to use it, but Dave made the process entirely trivial.

Cocoa Examples

Every once in a while, I like to actually post something related to Cocoa since the blog is called Cocoa Musings.  Today during some research, I came across a nice page of Cocoa Bindings Examples and Hints.  Anyone out there who has experienced the complexity of Cocoa Bindings would probably appreciate this page.  ;-)

Netflix versus iTunes

The New York Times has an interesting article about Netflix versus iTunes streaming movie rentals.  Since the author neglects to mention the important fact that Netflix streaming doesn't currently work on Macs (unless you use Bootcamp, Parallels, or VMware), it's gratifying that a high percentage of the user comments at the bottom do note this.  In fact, I saw some of the most well written comments about this article that I've ever seen posted online - it really seems to raise people's ire.

In my opinion, the problem is not that Netflix doesn't currently offer Mac support, but rather that all Netflix subscribers (myself included) are paying for the service whether or not they're able to take advantage of it.  Charging users extra who wish to take advantage of the streaming, or discounting users who can't take advantage of it would be a more equitable solution.

I want to keep liking Netflix - they've been a great company and I have been quite happy with their DVD mail service.  Netflix also has a superior user interface to iTunes; they have intelligent ratings which give customers an idea of how well they'll like a film, and they make it easy to browse for and discover interesting movies to rent.  On iTunes, if you don't know the exact name of the movie you'll spend a lot of time clicking back and forth between text based lists of titles and stand alone detail pages.  Going back to the list forces you to scroll back down to your previous position; the interface needs a lot of work.

Netflix is also a money saver; for $8.99 a month, unlimited streaming is significantly cheaper than $2.99 per movie (or $3.99 for HD).  With iTunes, I can only rent three movies a month for the same price as unlimited Netflix streaming.  Of course, there's also the caveat that Netflix apparently only offers old and somewhat obscure (?) movies for streaming while iTunes offers more recent titles.  It will be interesting to see how this one plays out.

iMac RAM

I just upgraded the RAM on an aluminum iMac from 1 GB (Apple factory standard) to 4GB from Other World Computing. The total cost of the upgrade including shipping? $97. Ordering the iMac custom built from Apple with the same 4GB of RAM adds $850 to the price. WHAT? That's more than eight times as expensive! Is Apple just trying to make a killing on RAM upgrades, or is there really something superior about the RAM they use? It seems rather unethical to charge your customers eight times more than competitive (and well known) retailers.

PS: The procedure for installing the RAM in the iMac was the easiest I've ever followed - it literally took me less than five minutes start to finish including searching for a screw driver, so props to Apple for that.

Airy Thoughts

I had another thought about the MacBook Air - Apple is really trying to position this notebook as a completely wireless solution, but what about having wireless internet access on it when you're not in range of a WiFi base station? Without having any expansion slots, is it impossible to hook this device up to a fast 3G cellular network such as Verizon or Sprint? That seems like a big oversight. Perhaps it's possible using bluetooth?

MacWorld 2008

Spent the day at the MacWorld Expo in San Francisco yesterday wandering around the expo floor, playing with the MacBook Air, and generally being underwhelmed.  Turns out the MacBook Air is more interesting than I'd imagined; you'll have to pick one up and play around with it to understand.  It feels very solidly constructed, is amazingly light and thin, and has a beautiful bright screen.  If it wasn't $1800 and had a better graphics processor, I might actually be tempted.

Oh yeah, I got in trouble with the Apple rep for spinning the MacBook air models on the string.  Don't know why she was so worried - they had holes drilled through them to mount on the string, so they can't have been more than hollow cases.

My predominant thought after leaving the expo?  They should really rename it "iPod World."  Nearly the entire show floor was taken over with vendors selling iPod/iPhone cases, ear buds, and accessories.  Oh well.  They did have some comfortably cool computing chairs, nifty mounting brackets for your car, and, well, the MacBook Air of course. 

MacWorld = Apple Christmas

Today really feels like Christmas, an Apple Christmas that is.  A free update for my Apple TV which brings high definition movie rentals, Flickr support, full music store browsing, and other changes make the Apple TV about twice as useful as before.  As an early adopter of the device, I now feel much better about the money I initially spent on it.

The new iPhone 1.1.3 software update comes with improved Google Maps sporting a feature which finds my current location on the map!  Cool!  Bye bye GPS?  It will be nice to be able to customize the home screen as well.

Thanks Apple for helping me reach a state of technological nirvana!  I knew there was a reason I invested so much money in your products...

PS: I don't really care too much about the MacBook Air; pricey, under-featured, and small.  Hopefully it will appeal to some people out there.  The new Time Capsule wireless backup device looks pretty useful however.  Why on earth is Apple stock down to $169 a share?  Crazy.

iPhone Camera Use

Just came across an interesting graph from Flickr of mobile phone camera use over time.  As you'd expect, the iPhone has climbed the charts rather quickly only being bested by the Nokia N95 which has a much nicer camera.

Pingie

Pingie is a new web service I just read about which simply asks you to enter an email address, mobile phone number, and RSS feed URL.  When the feed updates with a new item, Pingie will send an SMS text message to your phone letting you know!  This is exactly the kind of web site I've been waiting for - there are many occasions when this would be handy; searching for something (like a Wii) on Craigslist is the obvious one which comes to mind.  Cool!

2008 and Web Stats

Happy 2008 everyone!  Work on TubeTV is progressing nicely and version 1.0 should be released in the near future; I think everyone will be pleased with the new (very frequently requested) features.  Keep in mind that the word "near" can mean many things, so interpret that as you see fit.  ;-)

In other news, here's an interesting graphic showing what times of the day people visit the Chimoosoft web site.  The graph is only since January 1st, but it tends to look about the same every month.  Enjoy. PS: The time zone for the graph is central time.