Yet more iPhone rumours? Español | Deutsch | Français | Italiano | Português

I've been trying to ignore them, but iPhone rumours are yet again running the Apple rumour mill ragged. We've been talking about the possibility of an Apple iPhone for two years now, and the rumours haven't really changed that much.

CREDIT: iCreate/russellbeattie.com

This concept image comes from the UK magazine iCreate which has a habit of dreaming up possible new product lines for Apple, and is now over two years old.

Maybe I'm just being cynical from over two years of iPhone rumours which led to nothing beyond the clunky Motorola ROKR E1, but surely if it was ever really going to happen, it would have happened by now?

Update: The latest rumours (via TUAW) are suggesting that contracts have been signed and that Apple are, usually for a handset manufacturer, going to be shipping unlocked handsets. Oddly enough this could actually add weigh to the rumours that Apple might be rolling out their own MVNO. Despite my better judgement, I'm actually starting to get excited about the possibility that an iPhone might finally be more than a long running rumour...

Update: There has to be something wrong here, rumours of a second phone (via TUAW) before the first one even gets released? Have Apple Insider gone totally nuts..?

As agile as a herd of rihno? Español | Deutsch | Français | Italiano | Português

Joel Spolsky is one of my favourite dispensers of wisdom, which is why it annoys me so much when he says something so obviously wrong, and especially when he contradicts himself doing it...

This week I've spent most of the week locked in my office with my headphones on hammering out new code, actual new code, to do actual new things I couldn't do before. That felt good, its not something I get to do that often any more now I'm hip deep and sinking fast in operations.

As a project matures more and more time gets sucked into maintenance, support and making sure things only break when you expect them to break. Adding features becomes an incremental thing, but sometimes you get the chance to crank out a really big block of code. These chances don't come along that often and shouldn't be squandered. By ignoring several moderately important "other things", I've managed to compress a month long project and a seriously large chunk of code into a weeks work.

That just wouldn't be possible if I'd had to context switch that much. For really short context switches like people ignoring the sign on my door telling them to go away, or a quick email response, I've found that pausing the music I'm listening to, dealing with the interruption, and them restarting the music will allow me to "check point" the state my head is in and the data structures I've built there while I'm working. I'll still loose ten or fifteen minutes because I won't be rolling along at full speed any more, but the damage is fairly limited.

Longer switch outs are more problematic, in fact there was one point this week where I had to drop what I was doing and do something else. It took me two hours, and then it took me another six hours to carefully reassemble the pile of stuff in my head and get back to where I was before I was interrupted. So that was eight hours gone because I had to drop what I was doing for two hours, there isn't such a thing as a short interruption when you're coding, not really...

I'm all for agile development, but agile development shouldn't mean that you get locked into endless fire fighting or you'll never get those big features out the door.

Now where? Español | Deutsch | Français | Italiano | Português

For the last few years I've got my broadband from Plusnet and watched it go from a moderate sized technically savvy company to a sprawling less technically savvy, or at least less responsive, company.

However during the entire time I've been with them I have had no problems and almost no down time, despite numerous hardware upgrades at their end. I've also now got an 8Mb/s connection for what I was initially paying for a 1Mb/s line. So no complaints from me...

Now I hear that they're going to be bought out by BT. I've been with BT, so it's time for a new broadband provider. Any suggestions?

The end of the OS? Español | Deutsch | Français | Italiano | Português

As Microsoft releases Vista to manufacturing in preparation for its public release in a few months, David Sobotta asks "where is the innovation?", as he rakes over John Dvorak's article in PC Magazine where, as controversial as ever, Dvorak ask whether Vista is a dead end?

...it's possible that Microsoft is out of ideas, and Apple is out of ideas from which Microsoft can borrow.

Like David, I don't hold Dvorak in high esteem as a technical journalist, I think he's out of touch with what's actually going on but sometimes he makes a good point, and this time he might be right.

Dvorak's arguments that Vista will be the last major version of Microsoft's operating system have a certain ring of truth. However perhaps that's possibly because I agree with him, although for different reasons.

Running with Dvorak's arguement, David talks about the main problem facing Apple right now, the very reason for its current success, Steve Jobs. What happens to Apple when Steve either loses interest in computers, if he hasn't already done so, or since no one lives for ever, up and dies on them? Apple doesn't seem to encourage a culture from which an obvious successor for Steve would organically arise, and like many I'm sure that there is some really worried people in Apple's upper management right now, and of course like Microsoft Vista, you have to wonder where Apple should go from here with OSX?

While there is a growing agreement that out "traditional" view of operating systems might be due for a rethink, nobody really agrees what's next. Well you know what I think, Russell Beattie had it right,

If someone's using a PC to demo the next big thing, then it's not the next big thing... - Russell Beattie

The future is in mobile computing, ubiquitous computing and location based services, and if you're building something that even requires a desktop machine to access you're not looking very far ahead. Whatever happens it's going to be a interesting few years, because we're not just going to go on as before, that certainly isn't one of the options...

More firmware updates Español | Deutsch | Français | Italiano | Português

Hot on the tail of the Macbook firmware update which seems to have fixed the unexpected shutdown problems on the previous generation of MacBooks, it looks like Apple have released a whole slew of firmware updates (via Apple Insider).

There has been EFI firmware updates for the; iMac, MacBook, MacBook Pro, Mac mini and Mac Pro which should fix several Boot Camp, start up, and wake-from-sleep issues.

Apple have also released a Firmware Restoration CD (20.5MB), which can be used to restore the firmware of an Intel-based Macintosh computer, and an update for the Apple X11 framework which enables it to better handle GLX stereo visuals and offscreen rendering to GLX Pbuffers and Pixmaps. Hopefully these firmware updates should alleviate the hardware problems people have been seeing with the new Intel Macs.

Sun to open source Java Español | Deutsch | Français | Italiano | Português

Robert Scoble and Tim Bray are reporting that Sun is going to open source Java. This is major news, even for those of us who dislike the language.

I'm mostly a Perl guy. Actually, I'm mostly a non-statically typed language kind of guy but that's another story. However I'll turn my hand to anything at need, I'm not proud, and have written more Java than I really care to remember. So, for me, this is a really good thing.

Why? Well, hopefully it'll give a major boost to Parrot and we'll end up with an implementation of Java running on top of the Parrot virtual machine, which will pretty solve all my problems in a single blow. Of course, Parrot with or without Java, will pretty much solve all my problems. Here's hoping...

Automating Google Earth Español | Deutsch | Français | Italiano | Português

A couple of months ago Craig Stanton discovered that Google Earth now had acquired Applescript support.

Applescript is amazingly useful, but scripting applications using it still requires some basic programming knowledge. Which is probably why Apple introduced Automator with the release of Tiger, which allows you to script your applications simply by dragging and dropping predefined actions into a workflow, no coding required.

CREDIT: Automator.us

Building a Google Earth workflow
So the next step is obviously to put together some automator actions for Google Earth, and that's now been done with two such actions; Go To Location and Save Screenshot, having been built around the Google Earth Applescript library and released as the Google Earth Action Pack (GEAP) on Automator.us.


Google Earth for Mac with Automator actions
As Ogle Earth points out this is perfect for building scripted tours with voice overs, although with the limitation that Automator has no easy way of playing prerecorded sound files, so at least for the moment you have to use a synthesised voice.

Two more for the road Español | Deutsch | Français | Italiano | Português

Less than a month after the release of the updated MacBook Pro, Apple have just announced an updated MacBook, now with Intel Core 2 Duo inside.


The new Intel Core 2 Duo MacBooks, in black & white...
To be honest, I wasn't expecting an update to the MacBook range until Macworld in January, to coincide with the rumoured design refresh to the MacBook Pro range. Shows what I know...

Tags: Apple Macbook Intel Core 2 Duo Release

Deep-Fried Pizza Español | Deutsch | Français | Italiano | Português

If there is one thing the Scots do right, it's deep fried pizza. Well it looks like civilisation is, at long last, spreading outside my native land and this excellent comestible is now available in the States (via Slice).


Of course these guys are doing it all wrong. The entire point of deep-fried pizza is that it's the cheapest, nastiest, pizza that you can get your hands on, and as for that green stuff they're sprinkling on it? That just isn't right at all...

Tags: Pizza

Disassembling the Macbook Pro Español | Deutsch | Français | Italiano | Português

The new Intel Core 2 Duo Macbook Pro was only released last week, and already someone has taken it apart (via Engadget and Digg).

CREDIT: iFixit

The insides of the new Macbook Pro
It looks like the worst kept secret in the world, that the new Macbook Pros are shipping with an 802.11n card, is now confirmed.

Tags: Apple Macbook Pro Disassembly