On Loving Computers

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Speaking of old Mac stuff, check out this essay by Cabel Sasser, co-founder of Panic, which just released a new version of their excellent FTP client, Transmit:

It’s not to say that Panic, as a company, will shy away from making a Windows application. Hey, if it rakes in the big bucks, we’ll do it! But we’ll always be Macintosh first, and Macintosh at heart. The users are consistently more supportive, intelligent, less likely to use ALL CAPS in beta reports, and excited about products. I mean, our next product is an FTP program, for gods sake. Not exactly pure applicationary sex, but because our product is the best FTP program the Macintosh has ever seen (hey, it’s my job to plug) and takes a fresh approach, loads of people have expressed interest with little press. That’s what we love, and that’s why we’re glad we went with our intuition.

The Mac, truly, rules. Any developer that says otherwise has forgotten what it means to love computers.

The Fabulous Word 5.1

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Sebastian’s classic setup:

I use the fabulous Word 5.1 for writing business letters. After so many newer versions of MS Word I still consider this to be the best version ever. I also use my LC for Retro-gaming, bringing back memories of all those great games we used to play day and night during the nineties (Sim City 2000, Diamonds, Civilization and many many more). Right now I’ve been thinking of bringing my LC online to use it as an e-mail machine, but it’s not easy to come by the necessary hardware for a fair price. Also, I’m a bit disheartened by the fact that there is no up-to-date 68k Browser like Classilla. Any volunteers for a port?

One thing that always surprises me is how durable these old Macintosh computers are. This LCIII is about 16 years old and still running like the first day. Amazing. I’m not sure if my Intel iMac will make it even for the first ten years…

I love coming across stuff like this. There’s definitely a curve when it comes to retro computing — running System 7 or OS 8 on an old beige Mac is fun, but running 10.2 on an iMac G3 just sucks.

On the Future

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John Rust:

Ten years from now, there will be no need for a “real computer” as we know it now. Devices like the iPad will be capable of all the high-end tasks we now need fancy computers for, and I look forward to using a touch version of Final Cut Pro, despite the small screen of the iPad. The already-fast hardware of the iPad will only get faster, and will eventually match the capability of desktop computers.

Microsoft: Future is HTML5

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Dean Hachamovitch, the General Manager over Internet Explorer at Microsoft chimes in on the future of the web:

The future of the web is HTML5. Microsoft is deeply engaged in the HTML5 process with the W3C. HTML5 will be very important in advancing rich, interactive web applications and site design. The HTML5 specification describes video support without specifying a particular video format. We think H.264 is an excellent format. In its HTML5 support, IE9 will support playback of H.264 video only.

H.264 is an industry standard, with broad and strong hardware support. Because of this standardization, you can easily take what you record on a typical consumer video camera, put it on the web, and have it play in a web browser on any operating system or device with H.264 support (e.g. a PC with Windows 7). Recently, we publicly showed IE9 playing H.264-encoded video from YouTube. You can read about the benefits of hardware acceleration here, or see an example of the benefits at the 26:35 mark here. For all these reasons, we’re focusing our HTML5 video support on H.264.

The elephant in the room with Hachamovitch is Silverlight, Microsoft’s media plugin. I’m not counting Microsoft as a true member of the HTML5 camp until IE supports it fully, along with a bunch of other open standards. I hope the IE team can walk the talk.

iPhone Prototype Finder Outed

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Wired:

Brian J. Hogan, a 21-year-old resident of Redwood City, California, says although he was paid by tech site Gizmodo, he believed the payment was for allowing the site exclusive access to review the phone. Gizmodo emphasized to him “that there was nothing wrong in sharing the phone with the tech press,” according to his attorney Jeffrey Bornstein.

He seems to be throwing Gizmodo under the bus, unsurprisingly.

This part is interesting:

According to the statement from his lawyer, Hogan was in the bar with friends when another patron handed him the phone after finding it on a nearby stool. The patron asked Hogan if the phone belonged to him, and then left the bar. Hogan asked others sitting nearby if the phone belonged to them, and when no one claimed it, he and his friends left the bar with the device.

If that’s true, then I would expect whoever that person’s identity to come out at some point as well.

“He regrets his mistake in not doing more to return the phone,” says Bornstein’s statement. “Even though he did obtain some compensation from Gizmodo, Brian thought that it was so that they could review the phone.”

I call bullshit on that last bit.

Microsoft’s Courier Project Dead

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Frank Shaw, Microsoft’s VP of corporate communications:

At any given time, across any of our business groups, there are new ideas being investigated, tested, and incubated. It’s in Microsoft’s DNA to continually develop and incubate new technologies to foster productivity and creativity. The “Courier” project is an example of this type of effort and its technologies will be evaluated for use in future Microsoft offerings, but we have no plans to build such a device at this time.

This a huge bummer. This was the first thing out of Redmond in years that I actually wanted to use. Microsoft’s reluctance to launch products like this is going to get them in trouble sooner or later. They are going to lose the tablet market just as they have lost the smartphone market.

[via Engadget]

Steve Jobs, on Adobe Flash

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Jobs, in an open letter posted this morning:

Flash was created during the PC era – for PCs and mice. Flash is a successful business for Adobe, and we can understand why they want to push it beyond PCs. But the mobile era is about low power devices, touch interfaces and open web standards – all areas where Flash falls short.

While Jobs’ open letters are rare, they are always powerful. Even if you disagree with his assessment of Flash, it’s worth a read.

Adobe Previews New Flash Player for Mac

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Adobe Labs has posted a preview release of the next version of Flash, which will take advantage of Apple’s new hardware decoding in Snow Leopard. Here’s the scoop straight from Adobe:

Gala allows developers to preview Flash Player with hardware acceleration of H.264 video on supported Mac computers equipped with the following GPUs: NVIDIA GeForce 9400M, GeForce 320M or GeForce GT 330M. The hardware acceleration functionality in the Gala preview release of Flash Player is expected to be included in an update following the release of Flash Player 10.1.

Don’t miss this passive-aggressive jewel:

Approximately 75 percent of online videos viewed worldwide are delivered using Flash technology. The H.264 video codec supported by Flash Player provides excellent quality, but without hardware acceleration, H.264 requires a great deal of CPU processing power to decode

HP to Buy Palm

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Engadget has the details:

The word is that Palm’s existing hardware roadmap is basically untouched at this point by this acquisition, but the good news on the HP end of things is that the company sees webOS as a “prized asset,” and they intend to “scale it across multiple connected devices.” That sounds like tablets to us, and HP didn’t beat back that assumption. On the Palm hardware end, Jon is very fond of saying “scale,” referring to the money and manufacturing resources at HP’s disposal, but he also says that he sees Palm working hand in hand with HP on devices.

Sounds like a great move for both companies.

iTunes Store Turns Seven

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Wired:

Much to the chagrin of the Recording Industry Association of America, internet users quickly caught on to digital music as a free alternative to paying for albums. In fear of declining album sales, record labels filed lawsuit after lawsuit against online services Napster and MP3.com for hosting digital music, as well as Diamond Multimedia, a Korean company that released an MP3 player called the Rio. Clearly, for the recording industry, change wasn’t easy.

In stepped Steve Jobs. The Apple CEO harbored a vision in 2002 of an online music store hosted by Apple that would be easy to use, complete in selection and reliable in performance. These factors, Jobs thought, would be enough to convince customers to pay for something they could otherwise obtain for free illegally. The store, then, would enable record labels to compete with pirates rather than pursue a futile attempt to destroy them.

Steve Jobs to be at D8

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Kara Swisher:

Apple CEO and Co-founder Steve Jobs will appear at the eighth D: All Things Digital, in an interview on the opening night, kicking off our tech and media conference that will also include famed Hollywood director James Cameron, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, among others.

Too bad I want to stab my computer every time I see Kara Swisher on the screen.