Weblog
Stream of consciousness from the minds of es
Chirp, chirp
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
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Hi All, I thought it'd been long enough since you've heard from either of us, so it's time to let you in on what's going on at ES. Wade and I have been tossing around an iPhone application idea and have started noodling around with the SDK. The iPhone is a whole new world and everyone is starting from ground zero which is super cool. I'm excited to see what people come up with. Most likely we'll be starting our iPhone app later this spring/summer. In the here and now we've been working on the next version of Bookit which we're pretty stoked about. Besides adding support for all modern browsers we have a laundry list of other new features we think you'll enjoy. That said, if you want to see a specific feature in Bookit, please post a comment and we'll check it out. We've learned a lot since Bookit 3 was written many moons ago so we're taking time to rewrite a lot of it from scratch. This allows us to clean up, modernize and simplify the code base giving users quicker releases with more features. While we don't know when we'll be done, we just wanted you to know we're work'n on it. :-) cheers, will music: meg hutchinson comments posted at 10:39 PM |
Time Capsule...what about us Airdisk users?
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
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Hi All, Keynote fever has passed and we all lived to see another day...sometimes one can never tell with the rabidness of the Mac faithful. Overall, the keynote was just another keynote - some cool stuff, some lame stuff. But one announcement really got my goat. Time Capsule. First a history lesson, before Leopard was released Apple had blazoned all over their Airport Extreme/Time Machine product pages that Airdisk would work with Time Machine. I, like many others, thought this was a great deal. I purchased an Airport Extreme (and a 500 GB external drive) in preparation of the great Time Machine. I wanted a gigabit hub and wireless N router and was stoked to get a NAS disk add-on to boot. Well, a week or two before Leopard shipped they pulled any mention of Airdisk working with Time Machine. Needless to say, I was bummed. To add insult to injury, I've never gotten Airdisk to work correctly. After 12-24 hours it simply will stop accepting logins. Whenever I try and login, it will say the login is incorrect. The only solution is to reboot the router. After a reboot, it will work correctly for another 12-24 hours and then it will stop working again. This issue has been documented all over Apple's forums and I've even logged a bug on it (which is currently open). So you can start to see the rub here. First, Apple states Airdisk will work with Time Machine. Then they say, 'oops, nevermind.' Then Airdisk doesn't work correctly at all with no fix in sight. But to top it off, they announce a brand new product that is supposed to do what Airdisk was promised to do last spring (or later). All this leaves a sour taste in my mouth. I can only hope that when Time Capsule actually ships, they release a patch to fix all the Airdisk woes as well. cheers, will comments posted at 11:34 AM |
Another year, another keynote
Saturday, January 12, 2008
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With Macworld looming large on the horizon, the internets are a-buzz with rumors and speculation about what Apple will announce during Tuesday's keynote. I, for one, am hoping for the best... an all new Mac Tablet (gasp!). I know, I know, been there done that, it was called the Newton and Jobs personally struck it down, much to the dismay of Newton lovers around the world. Some wonder why Jobs would resurrect a Newton-like tablet when he himself killed it to begin with... well, let me tell ya, the iPhone is not a Newton and therefore opens up the possibility of Apple resurrecting a Newton-like device in the form of a tablet. I think the time is right for Apple to revive the Newton in 2008... just don't call it a Newton. Everyone I know who's used/seen/fondled an iPhone has been impressed... I mean really, how could you not be? (Lack of cut, copy, paste withstanding.) The smooth form factor, simplicity, multi-touch interface, OS X, the list goes on and on. I found myself suddenly thinking, "wow, this laptop of mine seems awfully clunky." When viewing images in Mail I want to zoom-in by pinch-dragging, not by firing up Preview and hitting the zoom-in toolbar button a few times. How blasé. :) This leads me back to the Mac Tablet... if Jobs went up on stage and said "Here's the Mac Tablet, it's just like an iPhone, but with a bigger screen (think 8") and lacks the cell phone capabilities of the iPhone." I'd be as happy as a green snake in a sugar cane field. ;) Throw in some bluetooth, wi-max (what the hell, why not?), and maybe a touch screen remote control for any nearby Macs or AppleTVs and all of a sudden this thing is a laptop killer. (An HD-capable AppleTV upgrade would also be a welcome update, but that's another post for another time.) As I see it, this device would be running OS X (the iPhone operating system), which, as Jobs announced a few months back, will be opening up in February when the official SDK is released. This will allow third-parties to make the "next big thing" on a multi-touch handheld device that's so small and portable, that you'd have it with you everywhere (instead of a laptop or pda). When the SDK is available I'm sure hundreds of eager developers will begin writing applications for OS X, which assures there will be a wide variety of third party applications ready and waiting for the Mac Tablet. The popularity of the iPhone has ensured a thriving third party community of applications which could work seamlessly across the iPhone and Mac Tablet. This device would be so closely related to the iPhone Apple wouldn't be risking too much to get it off the ground. They already have the software, and could use the iPhone hardware specification as a jumping off point. An 8" touch screen with 20-60 GB of flash memory would be an ideal hardware platform for the tablet. If Apple were to announce this renaissance of the Netwon, I know it would certainly be replacing the 15" MacBook Pro on my living room coffee table. In more realistic predictions, I'm guessing all this nonsense about a new sub-notebook is going to pan out. I think Apple will announce a 12" sub-notebook that will "blow your mind" in terms of thinness. (Think the iPod Nano of notebooks.) I would like to see Apple release a 10" variant as well, but I'm not holding my breath, as Apple tends to think bigger is better when it comes to notebook screens. PS: Will and I will be manning the Panic booth on Thursday and Friday for anyone going to Macworld. We may even be able to do a patented "twin rate" review of the Keynote for ya! ;) See ya there! Cheers, Wade Current Music: Neil Young, Unplugged (1993) comments posted at 12:48 PM |
68% of Mac Users are Pirates?
Monday, December 03, 2007
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Hi All, A software company I'm friends with recently released a new version of their application. This application, which is under $50 (aka affordable), has server side activation due to 'the times we live in.' Without fail, soon after the release the same serial number kept trying to be activated over and over. They realized this serial number had been posted to a pirate forum and blocked the serial number. Over the course of the next several days they watched the number of people trying this number go up and up while the paying customers leveled off. On one day, 68% of all activation requests were with this *one* pirated serial number. Are small Mac developers, like ourselves, just supposed to accept this rampant amount of piracy? Why do people feel they can simply steal software when it is affordable (they do own a computer after all)? Does every software company need to put in online activation to try and slow piracy? Do we need to increase the price of our applications to offset piracy? Ultimately, customers are the real victims here. For example, we do ES as a side project because we simply can't make enough on our software to make a living from it. If we could see a theoretical 68% increase in registrations we would probably be able to make it into a full time gig. That would result in more software, better software and quicker releases. Now think of that across the entire Mac shareware industry; imagine all the new and cool apps people would be making. The thought that 68% of our users could be pirates really makes me just want to quit. Our software is very affordable, but without a doubt, we still have to block pirated serial numbers every release. Even for a $5 application! Perhaps you might think twice before pirating your next piece of software... cheers, will comments posted at 5:41 PM |
Leopard, not all that
Monday, November 26, 2007
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Hi All, Now we've seen the dust settle from the Leopard release, and the subsequent x.0.1 update, I feel confident in doing a little reflection on its release. First and foremost, this is definitely not the most stable release of Mac OS X. If you use your machine for mission critical things or want rock solid stability, stick with Tiger. I've seen some 'odd things' in Apple apps which are new in Leopard - which I won't detail here - but overall it seems Apple applications seem to have weathered the storm OK. 3rd party developers are the ones actually feeling the brunt of the Leopard changes. We've seen numerous API (application programming interface) bugs throughout the OS, some (most?) being crashers. When they are reported to Apple they are almost all 'known issues.' Try telling a user that the bug is not in your application, but their shiny new $129 OS? Perhaps most alarming is the fact most of these bugs are in the old APIs. With Apple never having to back-port their applications it seems they are able to use the newer API. It would seem the older API was neglected when testing/fixing bugs in favor of the newer stuff and simply wasn't fixed for the Leopard release. In the past there was some of this happening, but nothing like what we're seeing in Leopard. It truly seems like Leopard was rushed out the door. With the API ever-expanding, I suspect we'll get less stable API with each OS release. The only way I see to stop this cycle is if Apple gives Developers a decent build long before the actual release date and are willing to fix reported bugs. That doesn't seem likely. I'm sure these issues will be ironed out with the various Leopard maintenance releases, but in the mean time we're left working around bugs in the OS that probably shouldn't be there. cheers, will music: tori amos | the beekeeper comments posted at 3:29 PM |
Leopard and ES apps
Saturday, October 27, 2007
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We, like everyone else, will be installing Leopard this weekend and will be evaluating how our applications run on the new cat. If updates are needed, rest assured we'll get them out as soon as possible. We don't expect any major problems, but one can never be too sure. =) thanks for listening, will music : the watson twins | southern manners comments posted at 9:55 AM |
Quick Note to Rick Rubin
Monday, September 03, 2007
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Just a note to Def Jam and Columbia exec Rick Rubin. I will never rent my music. Ever. Period. cheers, will comments posted at 11:55 AM |
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