Category Archives: Apple

Safari on iPad: Bleh

Posted on by

However, power-users will quickly bump into a kink in their workflow. The lack of tabs. If you’re anything like me, when you visit a news site you skim the front page and open any interesting article in a new tab.

The iPad’s Dirty Secret

Thankfully, someone wrote something on this, enough to get my blood boiling long enough to write this post.

I bought the iPad, not for the “Apps”, but for the 10 hour browsing experience. I was much more interested in how touch would change webapps.

I dislike Safari on the Mac, but oh man I hate it largely because of how much potential it has, and I hate waiting for the improvements to occur. The iPad browsing experience is better than a desktop experience in some ways, but in most ways it’s still not.

The post above sums up a couple of issues I have, one being the lack of a quick way to get at the tabs. I hate the Expose tabs button’s location and existence.

At first glance this appears to be a fair compromise, but as time goes on, it has proven to be a grinding experience. Having to touch a button to view your open windows is the equivalent of having to right click on a computer, pull up a contextual menu, and then selecting the window that you would like to switch to.

Sure, it looks nice, flush with all the other buttons, but it not entirely useful.

The Wishlist

  • Silent removal of tabs: This exists on both the iPhone and the iPad, but I hadn’t run into it until I used the iPad. I never used Safari on the iPhone long enough to open up more than a few tabs within one session. But on the iPad? I live in Safari from time to time, grazing the Internetz. How amazingly annoying it was to find this out by experience…

  • No history? I can’t undo closing tabs. (Shakes iPad. Nope, that would be too magical.)

  • Open pages in the background: “Middle Click” equivalent gesture would be awesome.

  • Gesture for Expose view of all pages opened: A nice three or four finger fan out would be nice.

  • A Home Screen’d app should not add to the tab count.

    • This infuriates me to this day: I have Gmail as one of the Dock icons, and to go to my browser, I instinctively hit the Home button, then hit Safari, just to realize I was in Safari already. Oh, and that it just ate up one of my nine tabs.

    • Really, Home Screen’d apps should behave like a separate app, much like how Fluid does it. When I quit it, actually quit it like a normal app.

  • Scroll To Bottom: Yes, webpages get long. And two fingering it doesn’t really work for me. (Flicking alternate index fingers. It’s fast, but not pretty.)

  • Find. Freaking FIND.

I’m hoping for Opera Mini to come to the iPad soon (it wasn’t pretty on the iPhone… but maybe on the iPad?), but I would be much more interested if Chrome came to the iPad ever. Fennec would be nice, too.

While writing this post, iPad Safari has crashed for the first time. The page is greyed out and completely unresponsive to any touch on the page. I had to shut it down. For the first time.

I think I angered some human deity somewhere.

3D Chess for iPad: A Possibility

Posted on by

Yeah, it’s that unfortunate day today, and I hate it. But I like to make the best of it.

But here’s something that I thought after seeing this: think if each Chess piece linked up to the iPad. Not sure how… can you add Bluetooth to each piece? (That would be a battery nightmare…) Or maybe a RFID 30 pin connector and put RFID tags on each piece? (Not sure how sensitive the iPad screen is, but… oh wait, there are more than 10 pieces per side… I was thinking of putting some unique markings on the bottom of each piece but I’m pretty sure it can only detect up to 10, and even then the screen is capacitive so plastic/felt won’t work…)

Think of the cool interfaces that could be added onto the board, like being able to play with someone far away (I’m talking more along the lines of… mail chess? what was that thing called? “Correspondence chess” it seems.), but more importantly helping the player play better. Or something.

I also saw another image recently of a group of people playing scrabble on their iPhones whilst using the iPad as the main board to place letters. That’s kinda neat.

Lots of interesting possible things, now that a touch screen device doesn’t have to cost a table Surface.

Microsoft Surface was a neat concept, but it wasn’t very good. Nowhere near $500 good.

I hope this post doesn’t start off a list of iPad related posts I’ve been holding back for so long…

OCZ Agility SSD vs Stock 5400 RPM Hard Drive

Posted on by

Probably the first of many posts on my recent SSD upgrade, but here are some hard numbers for now.

Using Xbench, first, the 5400 RPM stock drive that came with my 17″ MacBook Pro.

Results 25.96

    System Info

        Xbench Version      1.3
        System Version      10.6.2 (10C540)
        Physical RAM        4096 MB
        Model       MacBookPro5,2
        Drive Type      FUJITSU MHZ2320BH FFS G1
    Disk Test   25.96

        Sequential  29.52

            Uncached Write  31.66   19.44 MB/sec [4K blocks]
            Uncached Write  34.00   19.24 MB/sec [256K blocks]
            Uncached Read   24.57   7.19 MB/sec [4K blocks]
            Uncached Read   29.57   14.86 MB/sec [256K blocks]
        Random  23.17

            Uncached Write  9.73    1.03 MB/sec [4K blocks]
            Uncached Write  38.94   12.46 MB/sec [256K blocks]
            Uncached Read   41.98   0.30 MB/sec [4K blocks]
            Uncached Read   49.22   9.13 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Compared to the new OCZ Agility SSD drive.

Results 225.00

    System Info

        Xbench Version      1.3
        System Version      10.6.2 (10C540)
        Physical RAM        4096 MB
        Model       MacBookPro5,2
        Drive Type      OCZ-AGILITY
    Disk Test   225.00

        Sequential  218.78

            Uncached Write  288.14  176.91 MB/sec [4K blocks]
            Uncached Write  250.35  141.65 MB/sec [256K blocks]
            Uncached Read   121.72  35.62 MB/sec [4K blocks]
            Uncached Read   384.23  193.11 MB/sec [256K blocks]
        Random  231.58

            Uncached Write  74.76   7.91 MB/sec [4K blocks]
            Uncached Write  421.12  134.82 MB/sec [256K blocks]
            Uncached Read   2764.59 19.59 MB/sec [4K blocks]
            Uncached Read   862.34  160.01 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Freaking A. An order of magnitude difference. I can feel it, too.

It’s nice to see how the drive performs over the max write speed of 135 MB/s. Probably will go down as I start using the drive more. All in all, a nice investment.

My Head Hurts

Posted on by

Indie developers, indie musicians, indie authors.

App Store, iTunes Store, Kindle Store. iPad, iPhone, Kindle.

I don’t really want to talk or read or think about this anymore. It seriously hurts my head.

All the while, nothing is getting done. I’m getting more knowledgeable on the issues, but man, it’s just a huge time vacuum.

Interview With Steve Jobs

Posted on by

From the Archives: A Revealing Interview With Steve Jobs

Rolling Stones interview with Steve Jobs. In 1994.

“To make step-function changes, revolutionary changes, it takes that combination of technical acumen and business and marketing — and a culture that can somehow match up the reason you developed your product and the reason people will want to buy it. I have a great respect for incremental improvement, and I’ve done that sort of thing in my life, but I’ve always been attracted to the more revolutionary changes. I don’t know why. Because they’re harder. They’re much more stressful emotionally. And you usually go through a period where everybody tells you that you’ve completely failed.”

When Did They Make iTunes Connect Suck So Much Less?

Posted on by

While traipsing around the iPhone dev site… I realized that the iTunes Connect has improved tremendously. Does this mean that I’ll be heading back into iPhone development? Not so fast.

But I would definitely love to make a game on the iPhone, put all those lovely game design principles I’ve been gleaning from all these unposted blog posts…

If I did any sort of iPhone development, it’ll probably be a game. I wouldn’t know where to begin developing one…

Apple Magic Mouse: Quick Review

Posted on by
Mighty Mouse

Note: I don’t own the mouse. Anymore. You can see where this is going.

A couple of quick thoughts on the Apple Magic Mouse.

For a pro-trackball user like myself (both meanings of the prefix “pro” ;-) ), I’m still waiting on Apple to create a multitouch trackpad as a separate USB or Bluetooth device. And no, we’re not going to talk about some rumored device servicing this need. We’ll get to that when it happens. Or not.

Looks? Looks great, and matches the aluminum/glass aesthetic that Apple has applied across multiple product lines. But are you seriously going to be looking at your mouse while using it? Maybe. Okay, I’ll give you that. Moving on.

Left and primary click. Feels satisfying, crisp. Nothing really new here.

Right click? Also seems to work as it should. From what I remember, the older Mighty Mouse required the left finger to be down for a right click to register. Thank goodness that got fixed.

<EDIT>

I remembered completely the opposite. From Wikipedia:

Although the Mighty Mouse can sense both right and left clicks it is not possible to press both sensors simultaneously. The user must learn to lift the left finger off the sensor surface before attempting a right-mouse click.[9]

From Marco.org:

It still has the inconvenient behavior of Apple’s recent mice that requires you to lift your left finger off of the mouse in order to right-click. This hasn’t been a huge problem for me, although I have accidentally sent a left-click event when I intended a right-click a few times.

I didn’t have this problem and it might be because I didn’t really play with the right click all that much. And off of this thought, one could write about having physical buttons to push being a good thing, but that’s another post.

Scrolling is smooth, and behaves much like the iPhone. Scrolling down with momentum feels amazing. Scrolling up is not as enjoyable. I always feel like I’m moving my finger in an unnatural way.

I feel the same way with the two-finger horizontal swipe and the horizontal scrolling. These motions would feel natural if I let go of the mouse, and use the vertically positioned mouse as I would use a trackpad. But the mouse tends to slide around a bit too much. I had to peg the mouse down with my thumb and ring/pinky fingers, but where do I grip the thing? The slim profile and the large click surface leaves only a small area to hold the mouse.

</EDIT>

One very specific annoyance I had was with dragging and dropping across large distances. Click, hold, then adjust by lifting the mouse. First time I had to do this, I had to contort my hand to stay clicking, all the while cup the mouse into the air.

Sidenote: Trackball users don’t have to deal with this. Huzzah.

Maybe it’s just not having enough time with it… Maybe it’s because I haven’t used a mouse as my main pointing device in a long while… But I didn’t feel like I clicked with this Apple product.

Rating: 2/4. I’ll use it if I have to. And maybe this will turn into a 3/4. Oh, and if someone can hack this mouse to work horizontally and respond to multiple clicks and make me doughnuts in the morning? Totally a 4/4.

Bonus: Apple Trackpad Vs Apple Magic Mouse

I’m not sure what to think about this, but there are some differences between the trackpads of the MacBook Pros and the Apple Magic Mouse. Some actions are just completely not replicated on the Magic Mouse, and some actions are requiring less fingers. I’ll let you chew on that, as will I.

Postscript

I really need to stop writing puns without actually writing them. I must have some evil process running in the background inserting them willy-nilly. Seriously, I completely overlooked that “clicked” business until my final read-through. Yeah, I even italicized it and didn’t even know what I had done.

Welcome To The Microsoft Store

Posted on by

Does this feel really eerie? I’ve heard that the MS Store was going to be similar to the Apple Store, but wow. The huge glass façade, floors, tables, the employees with their bright-colored shirts… I did notice the nice screens wrapping the walls, though, that was a nice touch. I expect BSODs to be wonderfully hilarious. ;-)

But this goes into a larger issue with Microsoft’s strategy in trying to copy the best of Apple. Sure, at first glance, it feels great, but I wonder if their version of the Genius Bar won’t require you to reserve a spot months in advance.

(via @ehjayb via @cabel)

9/9/9

Posted on by

Here’s a list of things that are happening tomorrow. I’m almost certain there are more things, but I can’t recall them right now.

The Beatles: Rock Band

Never was a true Beatles fan, but I like Rock Band lots… I’ve been practicing the singing and the guitaring, together, this past weekend (not specifically for this, but I’m sure it’ll come in handy).

And no, not this. This is happening next year. 10/10/010. [shudder]

9, The Movie

Looks interesting, but probably will wait until the DVD. Trailer here.

Apple’s “Rock and Roll” Event

Whatever happens, happens.

Nothing From HanMeta

I’ve been working a lot on the startup I’m working for, and so things haven’t been going so well with my projects. It might be like this for a while… but hopefully, I’ll find some time off to tinker.