^(almost) murphy.de

…

After purchasing Victoria’s Hibari twitter client for the Mac, I was presented this:

What is this indie software dream? I don’t know from personal experience, since I never tried to sell my software (yet). You can Flattr CodeRay if you want, but thinking about the money I could possibly earn this way makes me giggle.

But I still take some part personally in the indie dream, by using and (more important?) buying and promoting software that I see as indie:

• Cinch window manager from Irradiated Software
• ExpanDrive from the company of the same name
• TextMate editor (Allan Odgaard)
• and the already mentioned Hibari Twitter client (Victoria Wang)

I don’t think of Mozilla (Firefox, Thunderbird, FileZilla) as “indie”. I’m not sure about Adium, which is developed by a larger team.

Free Software

Part of the reason why I never tried to sell anything I’ve written is that I’m not comfortable with the concept of paying for bits and bytes, or ideas. I like that the internet, information, and lots of tools are free. I think that language interpreters, Ruby gems, documentation, and simple tools should be free.

That said, it’s

Well, Gizmodo spoiled a lot of secrets about the next iPhone in the last week. But I think this won’t hurt Apple, or Gizmodo, or anyone. It’s already internet history.

An interesting side of this is that this might be the first time that we actually see new Apple hardware from inside before we see how it looks to the average user. Apple always focuses on user experience, and never flaunts with tech specs without connecting them to real-world benefits. This is especially true about the iPhone; they don’t even mention the CPU’s speed or the size of the RAM anywhere on their side. Apple doesn’t provide specs for the iPad’s A4 – they just state that it’s fast and efficient. This time, Gizmodo has stripped down their next child before we saw her face. It’s tech porn. I prefer Apple’s reality distortion field.

Well, my prediction was wrong. After all these years, rumors have become reality: The iPad exists.

So, here are my thoughts about it:

• The name is silly.
• The lack of multitasking (they would have mentioned it if it was allowed) is definitely a problem. I don’t mind this limitation on the iPhone, but I can’t see anybody doing office work without being able to switch to email, browser, calendar, and messaging applications. I’m sure Apple knows that, and has come up with some solution.
  • Maybe apps really save their state always, and are starting up so quick that it doesn’t really matter if an app is running or not, the springboard just mimics an Exposé.
• The A4 is running at 1GHz and has a graphics chip built in. I think this is interesting; Apple may become CPU/GPU-independent in the future. A4 in the 4th-gen iPhone?
• Nobody seems to know about the RAM. But I guess it’s not fast enough for tasks like video editing or compiling.
• Somehow, I’d like to code on that thing! TextMate 2 for iPad?
• The user interface seems strange to me…a crossover of the iPhone OS full-screen, one-app-at-a-time interface on a traditional Mac OS X desktop?
• Why in the world did they put in a compass and a microphone?
• The keyboard is “almost to scale” – what’s that supposed to mean? How am I to type on this thing? Do I always need a chair? (They really needed that armchair for the presentation.)
• Price: $499 is cool, but why is it so much more expensive with 3G or more storage? But I guess 64GB would be enough for almost every task, for now.
• GPS seems to be limited to the 3G model.
• No camera…so, I take a camera with me and…how to get the photos on the iPad?
• No ports. No USB, no micro display, no nothing. I want to be able to plug in USB sticks! They didn’t even put in one of those SD card slots that recently popped up in MacBooks and iMacs. The answer to this is Accessories. Some of those cost extra; I don’t know if the SD/USB dongles are included.
• Apparently the 3G model uses Micro SIM. That may be a problem, even if it’s unlocked.
• 10 hours battery are nice, but expected.

All in all, it seems I would still need a laptop to perform day-to-day tasks. In its current form, the iPad is no replacement for a MacBook, not even the Air. It will be compared to the Kindle and other tablets, and the price will surely be a major con.

But as Mel Martin says, I’m sure Apple improves it over the next years.

Heute geschlossen. Nicht, dass es jemandem aufgefallen wäre. Aber heute hat die Dorfkneipe von Bad Karma zu.

Es ist nämlich der Tag des jährlichen Vogelscheuchenwettbewerbs.