Archive: Mac

FRANKFURT/LONDON (Reuters) - British chip designer ARM (ARM.L: Quote, Profile, Research) will demonstrate a prototype of Google Inc’s (GOOG.O: Quote, Profile, Research) Android mobile phone platform in action next week at the world’s biggest wireless fair, a source close to the company said.

Source: Reuters

I’ve played a bit last week with Android, it’s a really promising technology.
It’s a full stack, based on Java, it’s open and it should be really a “write once run everywhere” technology (not like JavaME!).

It’s a big change: they first wrote the OS, the software and then finally they found an hardware to support it. It might really work.

I like to think that the Google team was so frustrated working with J2ME for their (very nice) JavaME apps like GMail and Maps that they suddenly decided to write a full OS to support their ideas.
I remember an old Cédric Beust post about his intense, crazy experience on writing the Gmail app.
Is it only a coincidence that he’s working on Android?

Android offers many things, missed for too many years by Sun on the JavaMe platform.

- Deep phone integration (ability to interoperate between apps, make calls and so on with the phone)
- Ready to use “widgets” like maps
- Pretty nice pattern to write an application: what was a MIDlet in the JavaME world is now and Activity.

- Easy to write apps from any platform (yes, also Mac!)

The battle begins now, I-Phone: closed source, basically only web apps, nice screen with nice features or G-Phone. I can’t predict who’s gonna win but I’m sure that there are some losers on this battle already: Sun Microsystem, Nokia, Microsoft: all the old good companies, unable to make any decent progress in the last years. (where is MIDP3?!!!)

I’ve been very frustrated with the JavaME technology, I hope that Google will change now how things works in the mobile world.

Troubles upgrading to Leopard?

I had few troubles upgrading to Leopard.
Basically the Mac didn’t start anymore(*).
The problem was on the hard disk nodes, so I reckon a disk check before trying to upgrade. If there are problems, the Mac disk utility will not help you, better to try with DiskWarrior.

If you’re reading this post because it’s too late and you’re in troubles, I fixed the system installing Leopard to my firewire disk, installed there DiskWarrior and fixed the disk from there. (credits to Luca for the pragmatic solution).

(*) I was sweating blood since the Lacie Backup utility “forgot” to backup all my iTunes library! :’-( Now I feel much safer with the time machine, great app.

I always used a text file for my todo list, I never found something better than moving lines coping and pasting, nothing so easy and immediate.

I’ve tried for a while tadalist  which is cool since it goes on the web, you can share it, it has an RSS interface, but the usability wasn’t so great.

Yesterday searching for a software that I’ve seen on the Gaz Mac I’ve found another one,  iGTD

The guy says:

You are a busy person, aren’t you? And there’s an easy way to track all things that have to be done… and to get those things done! iGTD takes some concepts from Getting Things Done methodology and makes them easy to understand and use in your every day life. But it’s definitely not limited to the GTD concept - you can really use it the way you want.

It’s simply one of the best Mac Os apps I’ve ever seen, I try to list here what I love of it so far:

  • Export to iCal: awesome
  • Easy to use, simple, logical, keyboard shortcuts for everything
  • Integration with Quick Silver: cool
  • Widget, integration with almost all the apps
  • It’s free

Are you still reading this? Let’s try it out!

 Just a confirmation of what I wrote some weeks (month? can’t remember!) about bye bye Java on the phones, the Java ME failure and how cool is the iPhone.

Actually more than one friend of mine told me to change the domain, I’m thinking on…

iPhone to Support Third-Party Web 2.0 Applications
WWDC 2007, SAN FRANCISCO—June 11, 2007—Apple® today announced that its revolutionary iPhone™ will run applications created with Web 2.0 Internet standards when it begins shipping on June 29. Developers can create Web 2.0 applications which look and behave just like the applications built into iPhone, and which can seamlessly access iPhone’s services, including making a phone call, sending an email and displaying a location in Google Maps. Third-party applications created using Web 2.0 standards can extend iPhone’s capabilities without compromising its reliability or security.