Billibala

Steve’s honest advice to Adobe

Can you spot the difference from the screenshot?

Hm… let me tell you, Apple posted their thoughts on Flash in its home page. (bottom left corner of the screenshot)

What does that mean?

It means they want everyone to know their take on the Flash thing. (BTW, Steve, great essay)

I can’t recall his last time writing long essay to public. Steve Jobs lays out 6 reasons why he doesn’t allow Flash on the iPhone. Please do check the essay for the reasons. If you are too busy to read the whole thing, here’s the executive summary:

“Perhaps Adobe should focus more on creating great HTML5 tools for the future, and less on criticizing Apple for leaving the past behind.”

Now, I am very eager to see Adobe’s response.

WWDC 2010 – going?

Got SMS from @leonho last night telling me about the widely anticipated event – Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference 2010.

I was in a pub and didn’t get good cell signal there. Still, as a true Mac geek, I couldn’t help squeezing every bit of juice from the crappy connection.

Got the site loaded. My first impression is… WTF $1600! That seems to be more expensive than before. I remember the ticket last year should be $1300.

Another thing is… the ADA (Apple Design Award) looks like only accepting iPhone and iPad app nomination. Apple can name their own Mac category winner as their own wish. But it seems like there’s no public Mac app nomination.

Well, ADA doesn’t have much to do with me. But $1600 USD does. Think I’ll pass this time. That doesn’t mean I am not going. Maybe I’ll just go to San Francisco for the 3rd-party events during that period and visit some friends.

There will be lots of great Mac developers and indies that you can meet up with. Folks from Panic, RealMac Software, Sofa, SmileOnMyMac, etc are really setting a high bar for indie software quality. It’s definitely worth going for the 3rd party events, meet up with those folks and get inspired.

Last year, I got a chance to visit IDEO’s office with TEDx Taipei team. My friend offered me a tour

So, WWDC trip is definitely more than the conference itself if you know how to make connection.

My decision? Still thinking… but I won’t, for sure, pay USD $1600 (though I’ll buy the conference video).

Numbric – Headnix new app coming soon!

Been busy crunching code lately for my new app. It is called Numbric. It’s an iPhone app which turns your iPhone into a wireless number pad.

The inspiration of this app is similar to my other app Finger. Instead of making your iPhone a Chinese handwriting tablet, this time,  it turns you iPhone into a wireless number pad.

The app is now pending for Apple’s approval. More about the app is coming. Stay tuned!

Spam mail

Got the HKU Master of Computer Science prospectus by mail a few days earlier. I didn’t request for it. It a bulk mail mailed to engineering graduates.

Not sure how many copies they mailed. But I can honestly say physical bulk mail is the most ineffective and non-green way of marketing.

Come on… University is suppose to lead the society with new thoughts and ideas. Do they know there’s better ways to let their voice heard?

Kindle + iPhone = me + Bonnie?

Working on client’s stuff (an iphone app) in starbucks this afternoon while Ms B was checking out the April issue of Men’s Uno magazine. The “Personal letter Hong Kong” column by 賴百樂 wrote…

Not sure if he’s referring to us :p

Magazines on iPad

It’s the iPad weekend. (hm… who still remember it’s Easter?) Personally, I have enough iPad news. It’s such a relieve that the thing it finally out marking the end of the pre-launch iPad hype. (yeah~)

My iPad has NOT arrived yet. Even if it’s here, I am not interested in posting first time hands-on comment nor unpack photos… (don’t ask me to show you my iPad either… I don’t have time entertaining people who are interested in my iPad but not me) To me, the device is about a new chapter in personal computer industry. As an iPhone developer, I am very interested in getting into this new era. The era where my interaction with the machine is by touching it and holding it.

Publishing is the industry I am most interested in knowing how they transform the reading experience from books and magazines to large touch screen devices. Many magazines and newspapers have posted iPad apps – New York Times, Time Magazine, GQ Magazine, WSJ, etc.

Brad Colbow did a nice review on some of the apps from those heavyweight publishing giants.

iPad Magazine Art Direction from Brad Colbow on Vimeo.

These magazine/newspaper apps are not that excited at this time. It’s still more a direct translation of their web counterpart to the iPad. There’s still long way to go to fully leverage content in the “magical and revolutionary” device. Say, better experience in reading the content, integration with web services and social media… Anyway, these are only gen 1 apps. Can’t wait to see the “real” next generation reading experience!

MobileMe service needs some openness

Well, Apple’s MobileMe should be second to AppleTV in terms of un-popularity.

I’ve got a bunch of friends who are hard core Mac fans. It’s still not too common that they have a paid MobileMe subscription.

For one thing… it’s not that cheap – $99 USD a year. You get loads of stuff actually… Email, Calendar, Contacts, Photo Gallery, iDisk (web drive), iPhone related services (remote wipe, locate iPhone, over-the-air data sync and push mail). Sounds like a lot…

One hugh problem… MobileMe does not have an open API. Worst, it’s not available to 3rd-party developer on iPhone yet. In Mac OS X, there’s a Cocoa Framework – Sync Services which provides data synchronization support. With Sync Services, application’s data can be synced with MobileMe server. If the user has more than one computer, MobileMe can automatically sync data of that application across Macs. This is actually a great idea. It’s just that not many 3rd-party applications support that.

This comes back to the lack of an open API. Say, I develop a native Mac application with Sync Services support. By no means, at the time of this blog, I can develop a web service which grabs the synced data from MobileMe server and display in my web application. User’s data is locked up to the server and is only retrievable through a formal sync process.

Besides openness, Sync Services is not supported on iPhone 3.1 (iPhone OS 3.2 is still under NDA at time of this post). Unless you are Apple, you can’t make access data on iDisk through 3rd-party app.

What a bummer!

Sigh… since when Apple is good at openness?

I’d better make my app sync with Box.net.