Still there?

Gathering gloom

I looked at the mac just laying there the other day. It brought back all those horrid things I learned so far; the marketing hype and later withdrawal; the tribal knowledge learning curve; the intuitively obvious that was only available to non-windows users.

I even fired it back up and started giving it another go. That lasted about five minutes. I don't even like the screen-saver I made for it. I get a sickening sad feeling in my gut sitting with it there so I put it back on the shelf.

Closing thought(s):

My iPhone just told me that the applciation I made and downloaded from the iMac is about to expire. Just reminds me of the $100 I'll never see again.

Mac depression

Slumping from the schlepping

The best thing about the conference was the sushi we drove to San Diego (technically Mission Bay) to get. Really, the best meal of my life. I think we dropped $160 and ate almost everything on the menu. The next day, we went there for lunch and made sure (I am serious about this) that we did in fact get everything on the menu that we missed the night before.

There just aren't words to describe the high art that can be achieved with sauce, care, dedication and recently dead fish. I have nothing to compare many of the new tastes that I was introduced to in those two days. Simply inspiring.

On the other hand, the conference was an abysmal disappointment. Even the keynote was about how the market for Apple stuff was going the way of the dodo. Although I liked the logic and arguments behind the talk, there wasn't a big take-away for development efforts.

Add to that the fact that there really are no business applications for an iPhone as it isn't really conceptually capable of it. Sure, something small and throw-away might help you for a month or two but its not the platform for the next killer app. I'll give in that we all can come up with a lot of simple applications that do that one thing so well. I sure have. But you can't have 1000 of them on your phone, you'll have to delete stuff just to stay organized. Odds are that your user is going to delete you eventually. Got a corporate application? Better check with the users. Unless you have something that is load/check/close all in about 15 seconds it won't get used like you think.

So you got games, and your price-point is $1, if you are really good maybe a little more. The development system is still a toy in itself and gears itself toward this. Why? This is a hobbyist platform (the new hobbyist not the one from 25 years ago) and quickly falling short of the new entries into the market, notable Google and Microsoft not to mention the big jump in $130 eReaders. Apple kids will be making flashlight copies while the rest of the world moves ahead.

I have thousands of dollars in a Mac, iPhone and development licensing from Apple. The Mac I haven't turned on since this show, the phone I mostly forget at home cause its a pain to carry around and the $100 development license I paid for so that I can get MY OWN apps onto MY OWN phone - well, lesson learned. 

REFS:

Sushi Ota for the meal of your life

Closing thought(s):

All that potential. Tsk, I am hoping for a change and will monitor.

The intuitiveness of the Mac

In windows, there is a keyboard button for this ...

If you want to do a screen capture for a particular application window, you can follow this:-

Switch to the screen that you wan to to do screen capture

Hold down Apple key ⌘ +

Shift + 4 and release all key

Now, You will see the mouse cursor will change to +

Press the space bar once

You will see the mouse cursor change to a camera

Now you can use the camera to select which application window to screen capture

Once finish, you will see a picture file in at your desktop.

That’s the screen capture picture!

REFS:

Answer source:

Closing thought(s):

And here I thought it was me...

Learning and relearning

Wahhaaaa?

The only thing I am learning is how much I don't know about UNIX.

REFS:

I Still feel like this!

Closing thought(s):

Practice not saying "In that space ..."

iThink therefore iMac

iSuppose

iThink iStudy iMac i2much.

What is this place?

New iMac is in ...

This is not as intuitive as people say. After working in Windows since its first release there are a lot of things I do without even thinking about them. Everyone of them is a discovery or , more often, a painful search. It's not the OS or what it does. It's a computer. It does the same thing the windows systems do. It's simply getting around right now.

I have no doubt that for a new user everything here is intuitive. I have to unlearn a lot of habits. Lots. It's not like its hard but it certainly just increased the time I have to invest.

Just editing this post is painful for me right now. Where the heck is the HOME key? Why does the delete key act like the backspace and where is the delete? Not to mention the fact that I keep trying to control-c/control-v when I should be doing the command-c/command-v paradigm and all the function keys are only accessed when using the function button? No wait, that actually makes sense.

Closing thought(s):

Function keys. Hmmmmm.

Essential videos

Brain swimming

Just finished the last in the 15 part series of "In-house App Development Essential Videos" that apple had in their development area. About 20 hours of initial immersion into the Mac world. My head is swimming but it certainly is a decent start.

My favorite was the one on design for iPhone (#13 in the series) named "iPhone User Interface Design". Lots of juicy concepts and things to think about.

REFS:

Apple Developer Center

Closing thought(s):

Just look for the "Getting Started Videos"

Apple Developer Library

Might be the FIRST place to look

I'm expecting the things in this version of C to be at least a little different. Probably in the implementation  but for sure in the memory management area. So this is my list of things to read in order to flush out what I don't know - as a starting point.

These are Apple Developer deliverables so you will need to be signed up to access them.

REFS:

Minimum Read
Apple Developer Objects
Apple Object Oriented Programming with Objective C
Apple Developer Objective C
The library at large ...

Wait wait wait

The hardest part

Computers won't be here until next Thursday. Serious bummer as I had hoped to get some "hands-on" over the long weekend. Not sure if its the waiting or the reading about it and not being able to do anything to solidify it.

If I knew I could get away with it I'd buy one at Fry's Electronics and return it when the one from work came in.

Bah!

More free education

From Apple

Here are Apple's technical sessions fro WWDC this year. Just use your Apple developer account to get in. Play it on your phone, mac, or iTunes if your still stuck in windows.

REFS:

Apple WWDC 2010

Closing thought(s):

Wonder what WWDC stands for?

Free iPhone Development

Lots of free courses on iTunes

I always avoided letting iTunes into my windows world. When they gave me an iPhone 4 for this development effort, I needed it so that I could enable it.

Since then, I have been finding more and more great stuff to use, the latest all the free education from top Universities. Today I found an iPhone course and I am looking very much forward to getting that computer to do the exercises.

REFS:

iTunes at Stanford

Closing thought(s):

I just started it but it looks really great!

Apple's got zombies

Should I be concerned?

Development has a nice helper concept that leaves the SHELL OF AN OBJECT around after it is removed. That lets there be something there to respond if you reference it again. That's a good idea.

Apple has a tendency to have a "fun" names. You would never see windows name something NSZombies.

Closing thought(s):

Now, how to make that into a t-shirt. Hmmmmm.

I didn't know I used that so much

In Windows they call it "hover help"

At least they used to. Microsoft changes marketing names of things all the time. Trouble is that the more I explore Mac stuff, the more this minor help feature seems to go the way of the dodo.

I first noticed it navigating around an apple store on the web. The links just didn't seem to pop up at you. Then, when I installed iTunes on my PC, I was looking for the PAUSE button for some downloads from the free SDK lessons. You cannot tell that's a button!

I mean, the color doesn't change, the size, the cursor icon remains without response. I found myself hovering and hoping for a tag - hover help that is - a little help - moving parts.

The next thing you know I'm asking myself the big question: When I press this, will it pause it, try to play it or some thing that I can not guess yet?

REFS:

This is the stuff I was downloading ...

Closing thought(s):

See if Cocoa or Objective-c has this capacity. Maybe it's just a cultural thing.

Our special food needs for DevCon

 

… will be handled by ourselves

 

http://www.cafejapengo.com/?src=ppc_google_brand_sitelink_officialsite

http://www.hashhouseagogo.com

 

Scary Clowns

This is why C scares me

Was it really a joke? Think about it.

REFS:

Thompson, Ritchie and Kernighan admit that Unix was a prank

The gathereing

Before the storm

Did a lot of roaming around looking to validate choices on how to learn this stuff as quickly as possible, without missing something vital. There is a lot of great information on the developer center from Apple, if you are a member (free), you can get at it (more free).

Cocoa and Objective-C book is awesome. Apparently the entire design of Cocoa is promoting the Model-Viewer-Controller ideas very strongly. Although there are apparently ways to paint yourself in a corner, I would think that is always the case if you look hard enough, or don't look hard enough for that matter.

Found an Apple PDF reference for enterprise deployment. Looks like a big corporation doesn't need to jailbreak the phones to keep their in-house applications in-house. That's nice. Wonder what kind of hardware we will need there?

REFS:

Apple Developer

Closing thought(s):

At least I know what jailbreaking is now ...

Dive in head first

What is that?

Got a lesson this morning from a co-worker on Macs in general. They got a bunch of 'G' stuff but its already old hat. The new monsters are all Intel-based (hence the 'i' prefix) machines and this is required for iPad/iPhone development. Guess I haven't strayed that far from the path of light and goodness.

Conference attendance is official. Got signed up for a cool $1000 of the companies cash. Best part is MysteryPerson from the other group is going with - awesome developer! Only the best can happen now.

Out to the bookstore on lunch. Found a couple of things at Barnes & Noble (see refs) that look promising. The goal here is to figure out what it is that I don't know, then rework from there.

Later this evening, I find out that I am getting a new iMacBook Pro and iPhone ordered for me today. I saw the specs (i7 core 17inch with a SSD). Should be pretty fun.

REFS:

Cocoa Design Patterns (Book Ref)
Cocoa Design Patterns (on-line)
Cocoa and Objective-C
Cocoa and Objective-C (B&N) There is a 2nd edition (dog on front, not the cat!)
Apple Store

Closing thought(s):

I feel like a kid in a candy store

What's that?

Cocoa is a hot drink

But not in this case. Apparently all this Mac stuff is built on Objective C and something called the Cocoa Dev system for iPad/iPhone.

REFS:

Other cocoa

Closing thought(s):

Note to self: marketing 'e' prefixes are 'i' in the Mac world. ?

A journy of a thousand miles ...

... starts with a single step

Signed up as an Apple Developer to start. I figure this will give me a place to figure out what I don't know; because right now I don't know what I don't know. About the worst position you can be in for any endeavor but I figure if you can admit it, recognize it, then you can move on.

REFS:

Devloper.Apple

Closing thought(s):

hope this really does happen

What were you thinking?

Knock Knock

Today the boss comes in and asks if I would be willing to go to a conference to grep some information on new technologies we need to work with soon. Turns out its an iPhone application. We are and always have been a Windows shop. I've been here almost eight years and we regularly laugh at anyone that even talks about alternatives.

But I secretly always wanted to know about the "other side" so I took the assignment. I don't actually know much about them but I'm not coding. I just need to figure out how to take the developer's code, build it on demand and over-night, provide QA services to validate it, set up and run automation testing and finally deploy new and updated releases to the users (ALL VPS!). Sounds like a nice challenge.

REFS:

iPhoneDevCon San Diego

Closing thought(s):

I'm getting fired up about this!