A company like Adobe, which has hundreds of engineers working on Photoshop, releases ONE version every two or three years, and maybe a single bug fix release in the interim. For the most part, we’re all cool with that, myself included! :)

But a shareware company that has, say, one or two people working on a product, is somehow expected to do releases every few months — even free major ones — or people start getting itchy.

Well, you don’t see people anxious for new releases of BBEdit or Transmit, even though those two programs are equally essential to many people’s workflow.

So it might have something to do with Coda missing some major features that should have been there from the beginning.

Like, say, multi-file search and replace.

P.S Oh, and people want new versions of Photoshop to happen more often tοo. Have we forgot the CS3 outcry?

When I first saw it I thought mr. Gruber was giving us some sort of insight into his writing process.

Then I saw the exact same thing in some other feed and I realized it has nothing to do with mr. Gruber. It’s actually a feature of NetNewsWire, that highlights the changes in a newsfeed. A diff for rss, sort of.

Here is the before-and-after of one of his latest posts. Notice how improved the second version is, yet how subtle the changes —most of us would not have bothered. Sweating the details. That’s what it takes to become an A-list blogger —or an O.C.D patient.

Before:

Simply the best new movie I’ve seen in years. You can also save a few bucks and get the Cheapskate Edition instead.

One of Hitchcock’s gifts to cinema was the insight that the key to building suspense is to let the audience know something the characters do not. With its title alone, There Will Be Blood accomplishes this before the film even starts. There’s an ominous dread hanging over even seemingly innocuous scenes in the film that wouldn’t otherwise be there — or at least would be lessened — if the film were titled, say, Oil! (which was the name of the Upton Sinclair novel from which it was loosely adapted by Paul Thomas Anderson).

After:

Simply the best new movie I’ve seen in years. You can also save a few bucks and get the Cheapskate Edition instead.

One of Hitchcock’s gifts to cinema was the insight that the key to building suspense is to let the audience know something the characters do not. With its title alone, There Will Be Blood accomplishes this before the film even starts. There’s an ominous dread hanging over even seemingly innocuous scenes that wouldn’t be there if the film were titled, say, Oil! (which was the name of the Upton Sinclair novel from which it was loosely adapted by Paul Thomas Anderson).

Some Google employess released a blatant (semi-endorsed by Google) rip-off of 37 Signals’ Campfire.

When people all around the Intertubes complained, Google took it down.

Michael Arrington comments on TechCrunch:

Google showcased HuddleChat, a real-time chat application, as one of many test applications (directory here) to show off their new Google App Engine platform last night.

Some bloggers noted that the application was a rip off of Campfire, a 37Signals product. And 37Signals CEO Jason Fried used HuddleChat as a PR opportunity, telling ReadWriteWeb “We’re flattered Google thinks Campfire is a great product, we’re just disappointed that they stooped so low to basically copy it feature for feature, layout for layout…We thought that would be beneath Google, but maybe its time to reevaluate what they stand for.”

So, Google can rip-off his company’s product, but when Jason complains he uses the rip-off as a “PR opportunity”? That’s beyond double standards.

Frankly, the reaction is fairly ridiculous. But this is apparently a fight that Google doesn’t want to be involved in. They pulled the application and replaced it with the above notice.

Ridiculous, why exactly? Because mr. Arrington does not make any money out of Campfire? Because it is OK to rip-off a user interface verbatim?

Would mr. Arrington complain if someone copies his article word for word -maybe with some adjectives changed? Or if Google launched a TechCrunch clone, with the same layout done in blue?

I wonder if Darren Delaye, Braden Kowitz, and Kyle Consalus, the Google developers who created HuddleChat, had much of a say in the decision. And why, since HuddleChat is not an official Google product, was it Google that made the decision to pull it down and not the developers who created it? Google was very careful to say that they were not affiliated with HuddleChat while it was up - that, apparently, wasn’t the case.

Obviously that wasn’t the case, just a lame excuse used by Google. To begin with, according to the law, code by Google employees belongs to Google. Furthemore, this was not a code submission by some independent developer, or a Google guy in his spare time. It was done as an inside project, and released to showcase Google’s new application platform.

As far as I’m concerned, this is the first case of censorship on the new Google App Engine platform, and a bad precedent.

Why? Are there any other web application platform vendors that gladly host rip-offs on their platforms? Would Amazon host a widget-by-widget and form-by-form rip-off of Flickr on AWS, for example, or would they take it down?

Our test application for Google App Engine is here.

See if we care.

The rest of the comments are just as hilarious.

Some argue that “all chat clients have to look more or less the same”. E, no, they don’t. Adium, MSN, Yahoo Messenger, Skype!, GTalk, all are quite different beasts from a GUI perspective. If I was to release a widget perfect rip-off of any of these, with a different color scheme, people would call me a thief. For good reason.

Others complain about the whining done by 37 Signals on the matter. Without noticing that 37 Signals has not done any. It was third party bloggers, journalists and users complained about HuddleChat.

Other’s still, green with jealousy, complain about 37 Signals and it’s founders. They are “arrogant”, they say, and they had “enough of them”, etc. Like it has anything to do with the case at hand.

Against Intertube’s crowds, god’s themselves contend in vain.

Gruber calls bull:

Mossberg’s the same guy who claimed in July last year that Apple would release an iPhone update with Flash support “within the next couple of months”.

Update: Regarding my “I have no idea why…” question, reader S. Ben Melhuish writes: “This one’s easy — it’s because so many Mac and gadget writers want it to be true.” That sounds about right.

Then again, hard evidence might prove ole Walt right:

Discovered by the creators of the popular ZiPhone jailbreak and unlocking utility, a small, nondescript entry in the new firmware used to identify the phone’s chipset refers to a device known as “SGOLD3.”

(…)

Still, the newly discovered hardware references all but confirm the dependence of a 3G iPhone launch on Apple’s firmware overhaul, which is officially scheduled to debut sometime in June. It also corroborates past claims by analysts that predicted an Infineon chip at the heart of an iPhone upgrade due in mid-year.

As with every rumor worth its’ salt, we’ll have to wait and see.

Google App Engine gives you access to the same building blocks that Google uses for its own applications, making it easier to build an application that runs reliably, even under heavy load and with large amounts of data.

Now, where have I heard this one before?

Don’t assume that we don’t use Cocoa and CoreImage. Photoshop CS3 already does in places.

Interesting.

It’s by Jonathan A. Zdziarski and you can read a printer-friendly version of it here.

Let’s examine mr. Zdziarski’s claims.

With the release of Apple’s SDK for building iPhone applications, many have plunged head-first into this new platform for the first time, with the new-found excitement that comes in discovering something entirely new and innovative. The energy surrounding the iPhone has been building steadily since its release last June, and Apple’s initial “beta” offering of their SDK gave developers many of the tools they needed to get engaged. Within a short time, however, the community hit a brick wall in many respects, leaving many disenchanted by the restrictions imposed on developers. While Apple insists that the SDK provides the same tools used to create their own software, developers have found that they don’t have access to the same low-level functions of the iPhone, such as the ability to run applications in the background, build certain types of objects, or use low-level frameworks such as CoreSurface, Celestial, or LayerKit — all of which provide direct access to graphics and sound components. These, along with many other features, are found in Apple’s own applications, but nowhere to be found in the SDK.

Em, I call BS here.. Apple never said that the SDK “provides the same tools used to create their own software” in the sense that those are the only tools they use. They really are the same tools Apple uses, just not the only ones. Every developer knows that every SDK has some internal APIs, and for good reason, don’t they? Thus, there is no reason for the sensationalist tone. Besides, Apple explicitly stated the restrictions imposed upon the SDK (no background apps, no device drivers, no using the phone network, etc).

Furthermore, several Mac and iPhone developers pitched in on why such restrictions make perfect sense, especially the no running in the background policy. Reasons include stability, battery life, CPU utilization etc. And it makes even more sense considering that the user will be installing an unspecified number of apps (consider the battery drain of 10 background running apps checking the network periodically). Actually there’s an excellent post from Craig Hockenberry about this.

Jump ahead to March 2008. Apple finally realized what a huge financial opportunity they were missing out on when they snubbed third party developers, and decided to release their own version of what the community already had been using for nearly a year, a software development kit (the Apple SDK) and application distribution chain (the iTunes AppStore). Ironically, due to this delay, Apple was surprisingly the one lagging behind the open community, and rather than the open source community duplicating commercial efforts, Apple embarrassingly became the one trying to duplicate the open source community today.

I’m afraid I’ll have to call BS again. Apple “ snubbed the third party developers”? Apple “finally realized what a huge financial opportunity they were missing out”?

Since mr. Zdziarski is, as it seems, I programmer himself, he should know that releasing an SDK takes time. To get it right, to finalize it, to ensure that you won’t burn your developers with unneeded changes down the road, etc. Isn’t this essential knowledge on Software Engineering 101? It is, therefore, silly to imply that Apple only recently jumped on the iPhone SDK bandwagon. The breadth of work, the quality of the documentation, the preparation of the App Store, the negotiations with third parties —such as Microsoft, shows the exact opposite: Apple has been working on an iPhone SDK for a long time.

I cannot understand the line about how Apple“ embarrassingly became the one trying to duplicate the open source community today”. WTF? Jailbreaking the iPhone and linking to a non stable, internal API somehow amounts to the same as the production of a proper SDK? Besides, Apple is not duplicating anything. The company polished and SDK-ized the internal APIs that they themselves produced, those same APIs that the open source community unofficially used.

It was used to write applications that could look and act just like Apple’s preloaded software, so when Apple announced that their SDK was “the same set of tools,” many expected that it would look and feel like the open tool chain.

Very few had anticipated the many restrictions they’ve come to find in the official SDK.

Only those very few with any sort of programming experience in the real world, I guess.

While roughly 75% of the two SDKs do overlap, the remaining 25% has shown to be very restrictive, removing the developer’s ability to do “the real fun stuff” with their application.

I’m not sure I would want anybody to do “the real fun stuff” on my cellular phone. You know, the same one I carry all day, and use on emergencies and such.

Back to the present, the APIs available in the Apple SDK are useful for building your average game, or your average application, but very lacking for building applications with more sophisticated, low-level requirements. Fortunately, there is another set of interfaces that Apple never wanted you to know about, the “real” set of APIs that Apple uses.

So how the proper API is not real? Especially since it overlaps with 75% of the unofficial stuff, except the low-level stuff. Also, doesn’t mr. Zdziarski know that Apple really does limit itself in using the official API on most of the applications on the iPhone, except where it is critical not to do so (a few selected apps such as Safari, etc).

The rest of the article is a guide for using the unofficial, non-SDK API. Which is all nice and fine, and something that I have no qualms about. Except maybe about this line:

It’s important to note that it is unclear whether using these hidden APIs will disqualify your project from being listed in Apple’s AppStore.

Anybody out there that also thinks that “it is unclear”? I have a bridge in Brooklyn you might be interested in.

I would accept this kind of BS from Dvorak or Thurrott, but mr. Zdziarski is a Mac programmer. And he is writing for O’Reilly. He should know better. Perhaps he does. Maybe he is just bitter because the official SDK came out now that he has just published a book on the unofficial SDK.

P.S Also what’s with the article being on OnLAMP.com? Where’s the L, the A the M or the P?

Still, his latest post regarding IE8 standards support is, to put it succinctly, lame, what with the contrived examples about martian headphones et al.

I just don’t understand what the whole problem about some pages being broken on IE8 is. Here’s what he has to say:

Almost every web site I visited with IE8 is broken in some way. Websites that use a lot of JavaScript are generally completely dead. A lot of pages simply have visual problems: things in the wrong place, popup menus that pop under, mysterious scrollbars in the middle. Some sites have more subtle problems: they look ok but as you go further you find that critical form won’t submit or leads to a blank page.

These are not web pages with errors. They are usually websites which were carefully constructed to conform to web standards. But IE 6 and IE 7 didn’t really conform to the specs, so these sites have little hacks in them that say, “on Internet Explorer… move this thing 17 pixels to the right to compensate for IE’s bug.”

And IE 8 is IE, but it no longer has the IE 7 bug where it moved that thing 17 pixels left of where it was supposed to be according to web standards. So now code that was written that was completely reasonable no longer works.

IE 8 can’t display most web pages correctly until you give up and press the “ACT LIKE IE7″ button. The idealists don’t care: they want those pages changed.

Some of those pages can’t be changed. They might be burned onto CD-ROMs. Some of them were created by people who are now dead. Most of them created by people who have no frigging idea what’s going on and why their web page, which they paid a designer to create 4 years ago, is now not working properly.

Pages burned on CD-ROM? How more of a contrived example can you give? Who cares about those pages? You can have a seperate installation of IE7 or IE6. Why doesn’t MS make one available? They could even add a “Switch Rendering Engine” button -hell, their customers are used to even worse abuse. But, honestly, I visit the web with Safari and Camino and I very, very, very seldom (like one in a couple thousand) meet a page that does not render well in them. Most of the time the culprit is some abused Javascript code.

For the other cases, like Google Maps, bank sites, portals et al, they will have plenty of time to adapt. In the long run, things will be better, since all rendering engines with have to conform to stuff like the Acid Tests and all.

The fact that most, if not all, of these pages now work with IE7, even though they initially broke, kind of refutes his argument altogether. Yes, for a while some pages will be broken, some people will complain, IE8 adoption might be lower than it could, they all will be OK.

Where by all I mean “every web page that matters”. Maybe Jack’s Chipmunk worship page, with it’s garish javascript animations and ActiveX chipmunk clock will suffer. So be it. Does every old DOS program run on Windows Vista? Not, really. Get on with the program.

He also says:

The victory of the idealists over the pragmatists at Microsoft, which I reported in 2004, directly explains why Vista is getting terrible reviews and selling poorly.

Emm, no. Vista being too little, too late has far more to do with it. Very few of the features promised where there on launch, plus the thing is slow and buggy. While people complain, they do adapt to change. On the other hand they don’t react all that well to crap.

98% of the world will install IE8 and say, “It has bugs and I can’t see my sites.” They don’t give a flicking flick about your stupid religious enthusiasm for making web browsers which conform to some mythical, platonic “standard” that is not actually implemented anywhere. They don’t want to hear your stories about messy hacks. They want web browsers that work with actual web sites.

Really, they are gonna say “It has bugs and I can’t see my sites”? Strange, since, all this 98% of the world will, at large, visit sites that already work fine on Firefox. If a 10% of the US or nearly 20-30% of web surfers in Europe can get by with Firefox then so can those 98% of naive windows users installing IE8.

Will they really care if some obscure site or some “pages burned on CD-ROM” no longer render correctly? Hardly. At large, no. And even if they do, who cares? It’s not like they can do anything about it, except delay switching to IE8. Firefox is also standards compliant, so they won’t get anything by switching to it. So what are the adverse effects on MS? Some complaining?

What Joel calls “pragmatic thinking” is probably what got MS in such as mess. And all this talk about “backward compatibility” with older Windows versions and special modes etc, is what made the computing world so fragmented. Like, how it’s so difficult to provide .doc compatibility, read/write NTFS support, properly support IE html et al.

Now, if what he talks about is “customer lock-in”, yeah, he is probably right. But that is another story.

Nothing official on the WordPress blog yet, but according to a post on Planet Wordpress there are code quality problems at the moment and the new release date is 3/17/2008.

Just a week more then. Nice. Although the lack of an official statement is not very reassuring.

(In my opinion, the KDE project always excelled in this kind of transparency in development).