Bye & Bye

Firstly though I want mention that my move off Apple is not done out of deep seeded anger. Lately I’ve been reading some posts that are … well … very angry about the direction Apple is choosing to take. While I’ve made it very clear that I too do not approve of (or is it reject?) Apple’s current direction, in the grand scheme of things I don’t really care that much about it. I do think some bad decisions are being made, and I wont personally be supporting the direction. However, in the end it’s just a company with some products.

I don’t think the whole Flash thing is that big of a deal either. When I heard about Apple smacking Flash down, the right side of my mouth arced up into a half smile, and a quick puff of air flew from my nose. It’s not good to take pleasure from the misfortune of others, but given the opportunity to punish Adobe – I probably would have done it too. It almost makes me think Adobe can’t get into the mind of a developer.

My reason for switching is that Apple doesn’t seem to be going down the path of making products I want or can use – and if they are they wont tell anyway. So it’s just time to try something else. Plus, I think it’s good to change up your computing environment every now and again. It gives a fresh perspective and often leads to new ideas or at least new ways of looking at things.

Mac Projects

Since I don’t have a Mac anymore, I wont be working on (or likely able to answer any questions about) any of my Mac only projects. These are: cftextmate, xiaocidian, PIC Kit Burner, WebArchive Extractor, or any of the dashboard widgets. I will, of course, leave them up for as long as I can host them, and the source code is available for download for most of them.

Additionally, if I do make any howto videos, they will be about Ubuntu or Windows.

What I am Using Now

For the curious…

I’ve replaced my iPhone with an Android 2.1 phone. Specifically the HTC Desire (the Australian version of the Nexus One). It’s an amazing phone, and I highly recommend it. It has everything I need from Wordpress to Evernote to a guitar tuner, and I can put whatever I want on the phone. If I start a project for this device I can bring it to market. There is no one to stop me but me – I will say I am not sad to see the AppStore go.

I am really digging Android, and if I can swing it, I will buy an Android based tablet later this year. Unless Microsoft’s Courier becomes real.

For my main computer I am using a Lenovo Ideapad Y 550 running Ubuntu 10.04.

I almost went with Windows 7, but the lack of a shell made it lose out in the end (the $600AUD price tag didn’t help much either). Ubuntu 10.04 is beautiful; I am very pleased with my new OS. I am in a somewhat fortunate situation in that the only thing I really need from a computer is emacs, a shell, and a compiler. Everything else is icing.

The Ideapad’s form factor is “Ok”. It’s huge and a bit too busy – flashing lights everywhere – but the keyboard is nice and the screen is crisp. I wish System 76 operated in Australia, but I think the Ideapad is starting to grow on me.

Of course at work I use Mac, Windows, and Linux daily – I probably always will. I don’t think it’s possible to work in computers and not have exposure to all the main OSs (I love to you too OpenBSD; I am just saying). My personal environment, however, is now Apple free.

One of my goals for 2010 is to start to be a bit more … mindful of the things I think. Twitter is like a magnet for the opposite of that, but it’s a work in progress.

I’ve had all day to mull over the iPad, and I’ve had a few friends and family ask my opinion about the product (some didn’t ask, but they got my opinion anyway). I figure, why let the great void of the interwebs go on without my armchair opinions; plus, this is a good place to point my family to.

A Heck of a Lot of Work

I have a few friends that work at Apple, and to them I have to say it is obvious there was an amazing amount of work put into that product. (We have a don’t ask / don’t tell policy about Apple stuff so I am only guessing this based on the product demos.)

Apple made a whole processor for the thing. That is pretty amazing. I mean, I’ve always been impressed with their hardware when I’ve taken Macs apart, but building your own product down to the processor – that must have been all kinds of fun.

The rework of the iWork and iLife products are very, very nice. They look great on the device. I wouldn’t mind having some of those UI elements on my Mac proper.

I don’t want to belittle the work that went into the device, the hardware or the software. It’s not like anyone cares about my opinion, but from the product demo, the software and speed of the iPad was top notch.

Concerns

Now, I wont be buying an iPad, and judging from the direction Apple appears to be heading, I am not sure how many future products of theirs I’ll be buying. I have two major concerns that were brought to a head with the iPad launch.

1) Apple appears to be becoming Zenith

Mac OS X is the best OS I’ve ever used; however, it appears to me to not be Apple’s main focus anymore. Apple appears to be less and less of a computer company and more concerned with turning out Jef Raskin devices that use the iPhone OS and are tied to the AppStore. Heck, they dropped “computer” from their name, which maybe I should take as a hint.

I half expect to see the iBlender, iToaster, and iRefrigerator come out soon – all running the iPhone OS – and they only work if Apple approves of the food stuffs you put into them.

Granted, I am taking things to an illogical extreme here, but my concern is basically that the power, freedom, and workflow that first got me hooked on Apple products, specifically OS X, is going bye bye and getting replaced by devices that have little to no real world geek value; work value; unix value. Modern DVD players.

I vehemently disagree with, but can understand, the locked down nature of the iPhone because it’s a phone. I see the move of using the iPhone OS in the iPad as a sign of “things to come” (which I think they even said in the presentation).

2) The cake is a lie

Perhaps the history I thought I knew about Apple is wrong. I wasn’t there obviously, but I’ve met a few people who were. I’ve also seen movies and read things online that seem to backup what I’ve heard.

Apple’s core goal originally, I thought, was to free the computer from the clutches of the likes of IBM*. Woz and Steve built one of the first computers and showed it off at the Homebrew computer club with the idea that everyone could have the freedom of their own computer – they wouldn’t have to bow down to a multi-billion dollar corporation to ask permission… you see where I am going with this right?

So what’s the goal now? It appears to be a manifestation of what they were against in the first place. Or, perhaps, I was just confusing myself – which is completely possible.

I mean, there is no freedom with the iPhone, there is no freedom with the iPad, it’s all corporate controlled and you need to ask permission – repeatedly – to use almost any aspect of it. This is the vision of things to come?

It has become clear to me that Apple is just another company, another “IBM”*; there is nothing special about it, and that makes me a bit sad.

Well played sir, well played.

Dude, I thought you were talking about the iPad?

Yeah, sorry. The iPad, for me, wasn’t just a failure of what I wanted it to do, what I wanted to use it for, and how I was hoping the ecosystem would work, it was Apple jumping the geek shark. (Still dig Mac+OS X though.)

If the iPad looks like a product you would like, go buy it. If not, then don’t.

• I personally don’t have a problem with IBM :)

The Air version has the same features as the iPhone version had – the most useful being the “pinyin fuzzy search”.

Pinyin fuzzy search lets you search by pinyin when you are unsure of the tone, or can only hear or remember part of a word.

After you install the application, click the help button in the application for more information.

The Air version also has a few features the iPhone version didn’t. First, the HSK level of the word appears on both the result screen and also on the detail screen (a feature that was going to be added to the iPhone version). Second, since this runs on the desktop, copy and paste work from the word detail page. And lastly, the application works on Mac, Linux, and Windows.

You can download it from the xiaocidian.com web site by clicking on the install badge on the right side of the page, and you can read more about the application here. Have fun!

In order to recoup some of the code, I decided to port the application to Air – so I can at least use it on the desktop. (I’ve been chipping away at an Android version, but that has been a slow process).

Here is a screenshot of it in action:

It’s a beta release, but most of the important features are there. The usage is similar to how it works on the iPhone. In fact, the help file is a direct copy so parts of it might not make any sense.

It supports the much hailed wild card characters like the iPhone version did. You can do tonal fuzzy searches (“wo-” will return “wo” of any tone – see the help section.). Here is a shot of a tonal fuzzy search

And, of course, like the old iPhone version – did I mention that it got rejected for defining words? – the application can just figure out if you are typing Simplified Chinese, pinyin or English.

Since this version doesn’t have to conform to arbitrary made up rules that are applied differently to people based on their income and influence levels, this version can define any word in big, bold text.

And the best part of all, it should run on Linux just fine. You can install the application from the Xiao CiDian website by clicking on the badge on the right hand side of the page.

If you are in Sydney, don’t miss Code wars tonight – which should be really fun.

I never really mentioned it either, but I’ll be talking about iPhone Web Application development, and I’ll be hanging out talking about iPhone native app development at a birds of a feather chat if you are into iPhone stuff.

I am not sure if WebDU is sold out yet, but you might be able to score a last minute ticket…

Here is what the new Word of the Day widget looks like:

You can download the new widget from my Chinese Word of the Day site.

Own it today!

Aside from several bug fixes in the new release there is one new feature – 小词典 now supports the xcd URL protocol to look up words. This allows any one to interact with 小词典 from within their iphone application, or from any web page on the internet, or HTML emails.

Here is a quick movie showing the feature:

In an effort to increase the user base, Xiao CiDian is free for a short time. This will be the last release for a free full version, so if you have any interest you might want to grab a copy now because 1.4 will go back to being paid only.

You can download a copy from the AppStore.

(and I wouldn’t be mad if you rated it highly too :-D)

Min’s descriptions on these videos are the bees knees.

Register now – I highly doubt you’ll be sad you did.

I got tired of typing in a months worth of words, and started doing a weeks worth, then a few days, then I stopped for a month, then I did a month again… basically the service was pretty inconsistent. I’ve had “automate the thing” on my list of things to do for a while, and I finally got around to doing it last night.

I scrapped wordpress and wrote up my own simple custom thing. I did a nifty new design (well, I like it). I also added twitter integration so if you want to get a Chinese word of the day via twitter you can do that too. You can now get a word of the day in any or all of the following ways:

1) The traditional Mac OS X dashboard widget.

2) A Google Gadget (for iGoogle or the windows desktop using the google side bar thing)

3) By following 小词典 on twitter (there will likely be some sort of fancy integration with the Xiao CiDian iphone app in the future hint hint)

4) Visiting http://cn.robrohan.com from your iPhone or Android based phone (you’ll get a special UI, and can add it to your home screen)

5) Or you can just subscribe to the RSS feed directly in your favourite RSS reader.

The best part is the whole thing is now automated so there shouldn’t be anymore days with no new words (pending server outages and what not).

I’ve had a couple people email me concerned that the words have been trickling out slower than usual… I hope this fixes the problem ^_^.