The iTablet is all the rage right now, and it has yet to be more than a word. No doubt if Steve introduces it at the September music event it will appear revolutionary and mind-blowing, but it will be crippled. I am sure that if this announcement is part of the Music Event, we’ll see a similar product life to the iPod touch.

The tablet will debut as a very limited feature-set device, built around the project “Cocktail” (whatever that is.) Like the iPod touch first allowed for nothing more than a regular iPod plus the wi-fi music store and Safari – just to log in to WiFi hotspots, mind you – the iTablet will not be the tablet computer people are hoping for.

Things will get better in January-ish when, as with the iPod touch two years ago, the iTablet will get Apple’s apps: Mail, Maps, etc., then later be opened up to an App Store (likely a few months after Apple announces an easy way to port iPhone apps to the bigger screen.)

After a few iterations of software and hardware updates, the consumers will see what the iTablet was always meant to be, the tablet computer. But Apple will want to milk the money out of a few iterations before that.

This is speculation at it’s purest, but I’m fairly sure of it. The only way Apple will tie it into their September event is as a music device. Either we’ll see it there as such, or we’ll wait until 2010 for the full-featured tablet.

Today I dug out the PSD of my old “Dropbox Revised” icon and brought it up to snuff. The intention was to be an OS X-style 512 px icon for Dropbox, the phenomenal sync software. Now it’s somthing I’ll actually use.

It’s neat to see the difference in what I can do and what I classify as “good” between this year and last.

Download the new Dropbox Revised icon.

World Science Festival 2009: Bobby McFerrin Demonstrates the Power of the Pentatonic Scale from World Science Festival on Vimeo.

Hat tip: @phillryu on Twitter.

I’ve opted this time not to tie in the blog to the website, partially out of laziness and partially out of hope. Hope that I might want to update the blog more if it’s more like a Twitter thing than a professional thing. We’ll see. I have thoughts on the App Store, but I think that by and large that’s been covered in the blogosphere. Once again, we’ll see… SimpleTask’s current 3 week wait for approval (and counting!) may be fodder for an angry post if nothing else.

Don’t expect anything regular, but I’d hope (operative word) to write a couple longer pieces per month, so all one of you subscribing (oh, wait, that’s just me) can finally get what you aren’t paying for.

I’m still unsure how best to write the plural of “To Do.” But either way, I’m glad to announce that “SimpleTask,” my concept for my dream GTD/To-Do application, is becoming a reality.

Check out the splash page now, and put yourself on the mailing list for updates when we get the blog rolling and get betas out!

Check out SimpleTask

There has been a lot of insane blabbering about MacHeist yet again this year; it’s a favorite stomping ground for those who like to find injustices in the world. There are somehow still complaints that MacHeist is unfair to developers and that by buying the Bundle, we are supporting this vile conspiracy.

From Simone Manganelli:

Fundamentally, what it comes down to is that those consumers who are participating in the MacHeist bundle are tightwads. Even if you’re only interested in one of the apps in the bundle, it’s likely that only a little more than one of your dollars is going to the actual developer of that app. And you’re doing it all because you can get that app for a really cheap price, especially if you’re looking to get BoinxTV or Kinemac, which normally cost $200 or $300, respectively.

This sums up the attitude of his post: MacHeist is ripping off developers, developers are devaluing their own apps, and anyone who buys it is cheap.

Let’s say the bundle didn’t exist or the developers of App X didn’t participate. Right off the bat, that’s [insert number of bundles sold here] licenses not sold. Also consider the promotion and name recognition lost by not taking part in the bundle.

Manganelli would have a point if it was black and white: you either bought the app at the bundle price or you bought it at retail price. Of course in that case, the developer would be crazy to participate in MacHeist. But the fact is, if they didn’t participate in the bundle, none of those potential customers exist, and the amount of money made by selling a few licenses at retail price would be far less than selling at a heavy discount in heavy volume.

Keep in mind also that this is software we’re talking about. Past initial development, it doesn’t cost the developer to make more. The time and money spent on developing the app and licensing it to three people is the same time and money spent licensing it to three thousand. The only place where the amount sold factors in is with support, which most companies have user-run forums for.

MacHeist is not forcing these developers to participate. It doesn’t cost the developers anything to participate. They gain exposure, name recognition, a much larger user base, and quite a bit of money. They lose nothing.

Truth be told, if the MacHeist bundle didn’t exist, not one of the apps in it would be installed on my computer right now, and it’s likely the same situation for many others who bought. And that’s a lot of lost money.

NOTE: This was originally written for Appletell, and did not get published. I republish it here as it has some design-related value, and pisses me off as well, so that’s a plus.

Anyone who has ever used Adobe apps knows the constant struggle between the fact that they are the best (and really only) in the business, and the fact that they often behave in stupid and unnecessary ways. One website, Adobe UI Gripes, collects user submitted instances of Adobe’s weird and often downright perplexing UI decisions: faked drop down menus, Flash-based interfaces, useless error messages (including one with a placeholder “fill me in” as the message,) etc.

The issue that comes up most on the Mac is Adobe’s “faked windows.” In essence, the palettes are not one window to itself. The controls are laid on top of a bright background, laid on top of a transparent background. It isn’t a problem in general use, but with Apple’s built in system functions like Exposé, and much worse with Leopard’s introduction of Spaces, these “faked” windows become extremely annoying.

If you open a file in Space 1, and have Photoshop set to open in Space 3, as I do, then it’s likely that you will be whisked to Space 3 to find an empty window, without even your palettes. If you go back to Space 1, you’ll see your document stuck there. Click on it, and you’ll be transported back to Photoshop’s background window in Space 3. So essentially you can’t do anything. The solution is to click on Photoshop related things long enough to make the two window fragments come together. Hardly professional.

With the somewhat shoddy elements that are common throughout Adobe apps, it would seem that Adobe is fully to blame here. Turns out, this is one place where the blame isn’t entirely, if at all, theirs. According to Adobe UI Gripes, an anonymous tipster, the reason Adobe’s apps fall to pieces with Spaces is as follows:

1. Adobe combines multiple windows using a supported mechanism called Carbon Window Groups, because it’s the most flexible way to combine components from different windowing systems (old-style Carbon, new-style Carbon, and Cocoa). This is the Apple-supported way of doing what they’re doing.
2. Spaces does not work properly with Carbon Window Groups. This is entirely Apple’s fault.

Apple created Carbon for developers to be able to bring existing Mac OS 9 apps to Mac OS X natively with relatively little fuss. Apple clearly never intended it to be a long term framework, as evidenced by Snow Leopard’s complete rewrite of the UI in Cocoa, Apple’s entirely OS X framework.

Counting against Apple here is the fact that they should still be supporting all of Carbon in Leopard, as long as they support it as a framework (and many of Apple’s apps still are entirely Carbon-based.) Also, Apple promised 64-bit Carbon in upcoming OS X versions, then went back on that promise, forcing Adobe to have to switch up last minute and start rewriting Photoshop in Cocoa. They couldn’t do this in time for CS4, meaning that CS5 will be the first 64-bit Mac version of Adobe’s apps.

With Carbon’s loss will go the scattering windows. Hopefully they’ll use authentic UI elements as well so we have less to gripe about!

Here’s what Facebook overlooked when they decided to be influenced heavily by Twitter for their new homepage: Twitter is all tweets. Facebook is tons of different things. Making them all look the same is a horrible idea.

“Safari 4 is a Google Chrome Ripoff”

Safari 4 is just an Apple version of Google Chrome. Tabs on top… toy-like appearance… they even have the “most-visited pages” thing when you open the browser, they just made it prettier.

Safari 4 was already in far into development when Chrome was released. Due to time between Chrome and Safari, it’s a bit of a stretch to say that Apple changed the tabs to compete with Chrome. As a side note, Opera was first with both “tabs on top” and “Speed Dial,” or most visited pages.

Safari 3 is a billion times better and Safari 4 needs more customizability before a real release.

I don’t know what qualifies better, but Safari 4 is a ton faster. I also don’t know what customizability is expected, as Safari 4 is just as customizable as Safari 3 was.

Let us decide what buttons we want where we want them and whether we want tabs on top or in the normal place and people will stop b***hing. Also, why would they remove the progress bar? It’s useful, intuitive, and unobtrusive. The wheel thingy doesn’t tell you anything about what Safari’s doing.

I generally agree here, though I don’t think Apple needs to make tabs on top an option as much as re-think how it works (i.e. get the tabs out of the title bar, but keep them on top.)

“Everyone hates Safari 4 because they hate change!”

Man, why is everything in computerworld a religious war.  Yes, it takes some getting used to.  One has to retrain your muscle memory.  Some things are somewhat lame, like the “addbookmark button. But even somepeople like that.  And I can live with it.  All in all, I find it a refreshing change.  I think most of the dislike comes from the dislike of change.  But what do I know, I’m no expert.

The only reason this is in here is because it’s an invalid argument that many people are posing. Change is fine (speaking for myself), but when the change requires redefining a feature’s behavior, it’s not good change. Tabs on top makes sense in that the tab is the window, but in placing them directly in the title bar, both the function of the title bar and the function of the tabs is somewhat lost in an awkward compromise. Plus, the (over)implementation of clickthrough just sucks. I direct you to Daring Fireball for John Gruber’s explanation of that.

So Let’s Clarify…

I don’t hate Safari 4. Not by far. I’ll never go back to Safari 3. In fact, I haven’t even implemented the Terminal hacks to change the tabs back to Safari 3 style, or to restore the progress bar. If, at Safari 4’s final release, these features haven’t been thought out more, I will reconsider (and definitely re-institute the progress bar.) For now, as a beta product, Safari 4 is great, and the tabs on top is simply a flawed implementation of a sound idea. With a few tweaks, I would rather tabs on top any day.