There’s a page with all the books, videos, music and images used in the talk

Get it on the Mac App Store (US$19.99 for a limited time).

• John Gruber
• Andy Ihnatko
• Marco Arment
• Guy English

I have not heard any complaints from the iPhone toting people I know about how the Clock app ignores the Silent switch. And now that iOS 5 has Reminders, less people will try to use the Clock app to “remind” them of something. The way it works now suits the way I use the the Clock app so I’m not complaining.

Navigating within the app is mostly done through swiping or “flipping” gestures as Flipboard would like to call them. This makes it almost effortless to spend a lot of time getting immersed in the content. On the iPad, you reveal more content by flipping left. On the iPhone it’s done by flipping up so it was a little disorienting at first. However after spending more time flipping up, it does feel more natural when going through content on an iPhone. When you’re on top of a section, flipping down triggers a refresh. Although there is a back button to bring you back to the previous screen, flipping left does the same thing with less effort since you don’t have to target a specific place on the screen.

They’ve also made the flipping animation very smooth and responsive making the experience delightful. I’m really glad they’ve been able to successfully translate the very enjoyable Flipboard experience from the iPad to the iPhone.

• It’s just so much fun to use.

The way they are displayed is very confusing. It’s almost impossible for you to know who the retweeter is. Unless you’re into memorizing all the avatars of the people you follow and can discern what their avatars look like when it’s small and almost a quarter of it covered by another avatar (that you probably can’t recognize). Disregarding the avatars and just reading the text, you might even think the author is retweeting him/herself.

Compare it to how a native retweet is displayed in two other Twitter apps on the iPhone:

Tweetbot for iPhone:

Twitter for iPhone:

On both apps, with just a quick glance you’ll be able to know it is a retweet and who retweeted that specific tweet.

On another note, it has become confusing as to what platform Nokia really want developers to invest their time in. The N9 is a MeeGo device. However, earlier this year they have announced that Windows Phone is their primary smartphone platform. Maybe they’re pushing MeeGo for the European and Asia Pacific markets, Windows Phone for the U. S. market.

Online Backups

I put all my important files and stuff I’m currently working on in Dropbox. Since I’m dealing mostly with code, I have yet to exceed the free allotment I have (4.9GB). I would probably go Pro once I consistently go near the limit. Most of my code also gets pushed to git repositories on my Linode. For all the other files, I use Backblaze.

Disk Clones

From time to time (if I remember) I clone my boot disk via Carbon Copy Cloner onto a 500GB FireWire disk. Once I get another hard disk, I’ll probably set up an actual schedule for cloning my disk.

Time Machine

I have a 500GB partition that is accessible via our AirPort Extreme for Time Machine backups. Having a 5GHz network makes this a bit more bearable especially since Time Machine seems to always want to start backing up just when I’m about to use the computer.

The romantic image of an über-programmer is someone who fires up Emacs, types like a machine gun, and delivers a flawless final product from scratch. A more accurate image would be someone who stares quietly into space for a few minutes and then says “Hmm. I think I’ve seen something like this before.”

Lately, I’ve been having a lot of these “staring quietly into space” moments. Instead of directly writing code on the computer, I find myself looking at the ceiling then doodling and writing on a piece of paper trying to figure out the problem. I feel I understand better what needs to be done and what constraints need to be handled when I start off this way. Once I have a general idea on how to approach the problem, that’s the time I start writing actual code.

So for someone who does not understand programming, I would really look like someone who spends a lot of time doing and producing nothing, specially during the first few hours of working on a problem.

• Daring Fireball Review
• Macstories Review

After trying it out for a couple of days, Tweetbot has already secured a place on my iPhone homescreen mainly because of the following features:

• Easy access to Twitter lists
• Easy access to conversation view via swipe right to left gesture
• Easy access to replies to a tweet (related tweets) via swipe left to right gesture

However, there are also a lot of little things to that I like about it. The sound effects are subtle but a very effective way to tell me that Tweetbot is doing or has done something. The bar in between newly loaded tweets and past tweets is a nice touch reminiscent of Birdfeed. The customizable tab bar that now enables me to have quick access to my favorites. It’s really fun to use. If you’re not happy with the official app, I suggest giving Tweetbot a try.

Prompt is a clean, crisp, and cheerful SSH client: it helps you when you need it, and stays out of your way when you don’t. Perfect for system administrators, web developers, movie-style hackers (“Let me just TCP/IP into the UNIX port!”), or any person who needs to connect remotely and type some magic.

I’ve always admired Panic’s copywriting.

• Finder — Well, ’cause it’s always there.

• LaunchBar — For most things I do on a computer, I still find it easier to type in commands rather than use the pointing device (I absolutely love my Magic Trackpad for scrolling and gestures though). Like Justin and Marco, the clipboard history is also one of my favorite features.

• Terminal — Because I work with servers a lot, I would usually have at least one Terminal window open. I have also been discovering a lot of useful commands that are just easier on the command line.

• Safari — There was a time when Firefox was my default browsing browser, then it got bloated… and slow even if I only had a handful of add-ons . So I switched to Safari and didn’t go back ever since. It also helped that all the banking sites I have to go to support WebKit browsers so the need to use Firefox just faded away.

  (The newly released Firefox 4 looks pretty and fast though)

• TextMate — Whenever I need to write code in PHP, Ruby, JavaScript, CoffeeScript, HTML or Markdown, I always go to TextMate. It has done a lot of wonders in making me more production in writing code. Although I see a lot of people recommending MacVim, I haven’t really gotten around to having the time to get myself to try it.

The other day, one of those undistilled words just became an idea for an app. It’s a very simple app but it’s something that I will certainly use regularly. There’s at least two apps in the App Store that offers similar features, but not exactly how I want them to be so I decided that I’ll just build my own. I already have a name for it and a very rough idea in my head on how it’s supposed to work. Now, it’s down to sketching some screens and writing some code. I guess this is what they call “scratching an itch.”

In order to really focus on the writing, I decided to just start fresh with a very simple layout and go on from there. I’m using Jekyll to run the weblog after reading Brent Simmons’ A plea for baked weblogs. Jekyll also enables me to use any plain text editor and Markdown to compose my thoughts. I find a sense of tranquility in doing so as opposed to typing into a textarea inside a browser, like I used to when I was using WordPress.

Hopefully, I will get to write more with this change of scenery.

Retina Display

The Retina Display is just all kinds of beautiful. You get to appreciate it a lot when you have a homescreen full of optimized app icons or when reading a lot of text. You can use smaller font sizes and it won’t get fuzzy. Viewing photos is also such joy, which leads me to the next favorite thing, the camera.

Camera (5MP + VGA front-facing)

I’ve been taking a lot more photos now that the camera is a lot faster and with the added HDR feature in iOS 4.1, it’s a good replacement for a point and shoot. Having a front facing camera, it’s also become quite a handy mirror for the rare times I need to use one.

A4 Processor and More RAM

Multitasking just feels a lot better on the iPhone 4. On the 3GS, I did experience a bit of slowdowns when switching between a whole lot of apps. On the iPhone 4, I seem to have never reached the point wherein there is an apparent slowdown. I think it can be attributed to the faster processor and twice the RAM that the iPhone 4 has.

Three-axis gyro

I’ve only played one game that uses this technology — ngmoco’s Eliminate:GunRange [iTunes link]. But, I can see a lot of potential in games and other immersive apps that can use this feature.

Battery Life

Battery life seems to be better than the 3GS. I’m getting usage times (the one shown in Settings > General > Usage) now that are more almost 6 hours as compared to the 3GS where the average was a little over 3 hours.

FaceTime

This is one feature I haven’t really used but am quite excited about, especially once there are more FaceTime capable devices. I think it will be very useful for people like me who are far away from their relatives. It’s easier and more intimate to share moments with a handheld video conference device compared to having to use a laptop.

(Another plus I think for me is it somehow helps in making me keep a better posture. It is quite difficult to use when in the full-on slouching position.)