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.